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Best of the Blogs

December 27, 2005

The Best of the Blogs for the past couple of weeks:

• Workers can survive three months without their managers Bosses have just three months in which to fill middle manager vacancies before the lack of leadership and direction resulting from their absence has a detrimental effect on morale and productivity, a joint British and U.S survey has suggested. (ManagementIssues)
   
• Survey of Mexican Migrants, Part Three The Economic Transition to America The vast majority of undocumented migrants from Mexico were gainfully employed before they left for the United States. Thus, failure to find work at home does not seem to be the primary reason that the estimated 6.3 million undocumented migrants from Mexico have come to the U.S. Policies aimed at reducing migration pressures by improving economic conditions in Mexico may also need to address factors such as wages, job quality, long-term prospects and perceptions of opportunity. (Pew Hispanic Center)
   

• TREND OF THE WEEK: Be careful with your instant messaging application. The IMlogic Threat Center (an global consortium that provides global threat detection for instant messaging) last week said that IM security threats increased by 3,266 percent in November 2005 as compared to November 2004. The group said attackers are increasingly using rootkit software to hide the process, files and registry keys for software used in their attacks. This causes infected end users to "remain unaware of their infection and continue to serve as a point of exposure and propagation," the center said in a statement. (DemoLetter)
   
• Rule No. 5: Niche Thyself Be like our president, high and to the right—on the marketing graph, that is! This was Apple veteran Guy Kawasaki's advice for the Autodesk 'Realize Your Dreams' audience. The fifth lesson I'd like to pass on to entrepreneurs is, niche thyself. This is the Holy Grail of marketing. Keep this simple graph in your mind: The vertical axis measures the uniqueness of what you offer; the horizontal axis measures its value to the customer. If you're high on this graph, you have a unique product. If you're far out to the right, you have a product that's valuable to customers. You want to be like our current president, God bless him: high and to the right. (Always On)
   
• The Worst Job Ever (very strong content) (Putfile)
   
• Why Microsoft's classifieds service will be better than Google Base I spent some time a week ago with Microsoft discussing their new online classifieds service, code named "Fremont", which is in internal testing now. While the news is out there, I thought I'd provide my take on how this differs from – and in my opinion, is better than -- Google Base. I do this with one HUGE caveat – both of these services are brand new and beta, with Fremont not even available yet. (Charlene Li's Blog)
   

• Living The Google Life Hylton Joliffe alerted me to a great piece in the latest issue of Newsweek on the "secret sauce" in Google's management practices ("Google: Ten Golden Rules"). It's a great recipe for leveraging the talent in your knowledge workers. I wrote about the same issue briefly just last week at the Future of Work blog, stimulated mostly by Intel CEO Paul Otellini's new insights into Google as a recently appointed Google director ("Intel's Inside Scoop on Google"). Getting the most out of your knowledge workers is clearly the key to success in the future. And Google's a terrific role model. And for a more comprehensive Google story, be sure to check out the December 5 issue of Business Week ("Googling for Gold "). (FutureTense)
   

• Female brain-drain "a myth"  The "hidden brain-drain" of high-flying women opting out of the U.S. workforce to spend more time with their kids is a myth, a new report has claimed. Instead, the real reason for the decline in the number of women in the labour force is the overall weakness of the labour market. An analysis of labour force statistics by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) suggests that while the percentage of working mothers has been in decline since 2000, so to has the number of working women without children. (ManagementIssues)
   
• An old look at a new idea - the value of personal knowledge management  One of the blogs I've been reading on a provisional basis recently is "Inside Higher Ed." It provides an interesting contrast to the Chronicle of Higher Ed's Wired Campus blog. Both offer valuable perspective on the life of knowledge work and knowledge workers that goes well beyond their specific focus on the world of higher education. In a column from November, Scott McLemee reflects on a 1959 essay by the sociologist C. Wright Mills "On Intellectual Craftsmanship." You can get your hands on a copy by buying a copy of Mills's The Sociological Imagination. At the core of Mills's recommendations is the notion of maintaining a file or journal, which ought to sound quite familiar. His description is worth sharing at length: (FutureTense)
   
• One in six Americans claim workplace bias Almost one in six U.S. employees claim they were discriminated against at work in the last year, with middle-aged women and those from ethnic minorities far more likely to be victims of bias. A poll by Gallup carried out to mark with the 40th anniversary of U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has found that while progress has been made in fulfilling the promise of equal opportunities, more remains to be done. (Management Issues)
  
  
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  (GapingVoid)
   
• The Changing Behaviour of Organizations Like people, organizations tend to change slowly, and in response to external forces. In people, changes are more evident from generation to generation (the cause of generation 'gaps' and a great deal of family stress). New organizations, likewise, are more likely to manifest behaviours responsive to the needs of their customers, employees, and other stakeholders than those that have been around awhile. We call these behaviours, collectively, culture.  What changes in the needs and wants of stakeholders will precipitate changes in organizational culture in the coming generation? Here are some likely bets: (How to save the world)
   

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