Pot of Gold

Exclusion at work breeds resentment

It is perilous to leave co-workers or subordinates out of the decision-making process, says Don Maruska and Margaret J. Wheatley, authors of How Great Decisions Get Made (AMACOM Books): “When those who have been left out express their dissension, as they almost inevitably do, the group can’t move forward. Instead, it splits apart.”

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Candor should color response to calamity

Calamities need prompt company response, truth and candor, say Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar in Leadership Presence (Ariel/Gotham). When Johnson & Johnson put the public first during a poisoning scare in 1982, the firm lost $100 million with a recall of 31 million bottles: “Because it acted so swiftly and decisively, Tylenol regained 95 percent of its dominant market share within threes months of the recall.”

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Write an email? Think of it as a letter read to a jury

It pays to review some email truths, says Christina Cavanagh, author of Managing Your E-Mail (Wiley), and one of the most important axioms about email should be etched onto every computer terminal: “There is no such thing as deleted electronic mail. The best course of action is to regard e-mail as permanent and use it only for professional, legitimate and publicly known information.”

Anything worth not doing...

A lesson about honor came to Robert Fulghum, author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (Ballantine), after a trip to a shoe repair shop. The owner told him the shoes were too shoddy to be fixed. Then he disappeared into a backroom and wrapped the shoes. When Fulghum got home, he found a cookie in each shoe and a note: “Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well,” the note read.

Guesses during the day build intuitive powers

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Intuition can be developed, according to The Innovative Woman (Career Press) by Norma Carr-Ruffino, a professor of management at San Francisco State University: “Meditate every day to tap into subconscious and super conscious levels. Practice using your intuition every day, beginning with small predictions and messages and graduating to more important visioning, problem-solving and decision-making.”

Do not doubt the enormous power of prayer, M.D. says

Never doubt the power of prayer, says G. Ross Lawford in The Quest for Authentic Power (Berrett-Koehler). Larry Dossey, M.D., discovered more than 130 scientific studies on healing and many employed prayer. He concluded: “Not to employ prayer with my patients was the equivalent of withholding a potent drug or surgical procedure.” Strong and clear intentions have an enormous power.

Live life like a six-year-old

My greatest gift is my enthusiasm. I get excited about whatever I'm interested in. I'm like a six-year-old.

Francis Ford Coppola as told to Fast Company

Happy birthday to the most creative guy I know

February 24, 1954 – Pulitzer prize-winning political cartoonist Jim Borgman, co-creator of Zits, a comic strip about the life of a teenager named Jeremy that appears in more than 1,500 newspapers worldwide, is born in Price Hill, a neighborhood in Cincinnati.

Start-ups should focuse on nice niche markets

In the first few years of your start-up company, focus on niche markets, says idea guru Doug Hall and Jeffrey Stamp, Ph.D., in Jump Start Your Marketing Brain: Scientific Ideas and Advice that Will Immediately Double Your Marketing Success Rate (Clerisy): “These markets will be less price sensitive to your initial high cost.”

Foe of good enough is could be better

Is 'could be better' always the foe of 'good enough?' Yes, suggests Matt Weinstein and Luke Barber in Work Like Your Dog (Villard/Random House). “If we could remember several times a day – whatever we are doing – to take a deep breath and repeat: This moment is good enough. Perhaps we could cure some of the chronic dissatisfaction that so often haunts us...be here now.”