Thanksgiving, better known as Stressgiving, marks the official start of the holiday season, so I thought it appropriate to offer up my version of inspirational reading in an effort to mitigate the negative effects.

A lot of actions this time of year seem focused on tasks instead of people. As folks gear up to get everything on their holiday list done on schedule and in budget, they tend to mow down anybody they perceive to be in their way. It turns out that there is a biologically-based reason that this happens and it isn’t limited to people in leadership positions. I find knowledge like this useful; it makes me more tolerant of others when they are acting like twits and lessons the likelihood that I’ll do the same.

The other challenge is that the circuitry for thinking analytically, such as thinking about the future or about concepts, switches off the circuitry for thinking about others. People spending a lot of time being analytical, conceptual or goal focused may have diminished circuitry for thinking about the minds of others, simply through lack of use.

With the holidays upon us anything that keeps saving, as opposed to spending, front and center is worthy of your attention. Startup SaveUp does just that and makes it cool enough to interest kids and teens.

The dollars-to-points ratio translates to one dollar per point.  Thus, for every dollar you put in your savings account or use to pay down your debt, you earn one point, and once you’ve accumulated 10 points, you can enter any prize play of your choice.  All prize plays cost 10 credits—which means you can use those 10 credits to enter a drawing for an iPad 2 or you can use them to enter a drawing to get $10,000 of your debt paid off.

Finally, if you’re looking to store some of your stuff and happen to live in New York City then you can do it in style for a modest $300 a month.

Behind the mute facade of a largely windowless neo-Gothic tower lies an ingenious system of steel vaults traveling on rails. Within those armored containers, which have been in continuous use since the Jazz Age… Day & Meyer, Murray & Young warehouse, and since it opened in 1928 it has been the storage building of choice for many of New York’s wealthiest families, most prestigious art dealers and grandest museums.

Have a wonderful weekend.

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Finding work, let alone meaningful work, these days is a challenge, to say the least. Here are stories of five entrepreneurial women and their unconventional solutions.

What would you do if you learned you had cancer? Thousands are diagnosed every day; many respond by raising money for research and some start non-profits, but very few respond the way Kris Carr, star of the documentary “Crazy Sexy Cancer,” or Lee Rhodes, founder of Glassybaby did.

Do teens fascinate you? They fascinate Madeleine P. Brennan, principal of 1,500-student Dyker Heights Intermediate School 201 in Brooklyn and they have for every one of the 48 years-and-counting that she has held the position.

Looking to make some extra money or find a new career path? Terry Marotta-Lopriore spent a lot of time visiting her father, who died six and a half years ago, and says it was his idea that she become a cemetery visitor for hire. Before you knock it try it, who knows, you might like it.

Now for a sweet finish.

There are dozens of cupcake entrepreneurs across the country, but how many cup of cake entrepreneurs have you heard of? Meet Sharon Tracy, who created the perfect solution for those who want to serve fresh, warm, sinful desserts to their guests, without missing the party to do it. She invented a way to put a Belgium chocolate soufflé cake in a cup that cooks in three minutes and founded “My Cup of Cake” to share it with the world. No more holiday stress.

Enjoy!

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Today is a collection of provocative, personal opinions on a variety of subjects. I hope you’ll take time to comment if one hits hard.

Since Steve Jobs died there have been dozens of tributes and a more recent outpouring of reality checks, because Jobs was not a saint—but then who is? I found the mortal Steve touchingly described in his sister’s eulogy and the business side balanced by Jesse Larner on products and Geoffrey James on management.

The articles on Groupon’s IPO have been inundating the media since it was announced. Keith Ecker provides a look at the repercussions from a changing culture beyond the analysts’ discussions of share price and value.

I’m sure many of you are following the heated debate sparked by a screening of the November 18 episode, “The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley,” from the CNN documentary series, “Black in America.” One result was a Twitter fight over comments by Michael Arrington, claiming in one breath that he doesn’t know of an African-American CEO and in the next that Silicon Valley is a pure meritocracy (which you would only believe if you are an under-30 white male with access to a great Rolodex). Read this commentary by Hank Williams, a successful, black entrepreneur.
Speaking of entrepreneurs, check out Josh Petersel’s, Harvard Business School Class of 2013, take on entrepreneurism.

Cindy Ronzoni, a communications and social media consultant, had heard a lot about the Zappos culture. See what she thinks about it and her experience when she took the Zappos tour at its headquarters in Las Vegas.

Finally, Gene Marks, offers up his thoughts on Why Most Women Will Never Become CEO. At first reading it comes over as pretty sexist, but read it again and the reality of what he says is plain, although I don’t completely agree with his final statement.

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Halloween has always been a favorite happening of mine, long before it became one of the top five retailing holidays (actually, I think I read that it is number two). I’ve always looked forward to trick or treating—when I was a kid it meant candy, but these days it has a

First for the tricks.

Trick 1 – I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the rich are getting richer, unlike the rest of us and now it’s been well-quantified.

The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades…

Trick 2 – I take this trick very personally, in spite of the fact that I’ve been guilty of doing it on occasion. The problem is that, like many tricks, it can backfire in ways you’d never think.

“From his perspective [iPhone user] they look like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({}). He then ran around his lab showing colleagues excitedly what I had just sent him. Half (mostly men) concurred with his interpretation, and the others (mostly women) didn’t and probably thought he was kind of a desperate perv.” –Lisa M. Bates, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia (Blackberry user)

Now come the treats.

Treat 1 – Just in time for Halloween, comes scientific information that may help alleviate any guilt you feel for indulging in some of those bit-size candy bars your kids will collect.

Most people, he said, will be more satisfied by eating a 50-calorie cupcake than a dozen carrot sticks with just as many calories, because the sense of deprivation is less and the craving for “bad” food is calmed, if not entirely extinguished. “Smaller treats give people license to eat it all, which is a very powerful thing,” he said. “Psychologically, it’s exciting and comforting.” –Brian Wansink, Cornell professor and the author of “Mindless Eating”

Treat 2 – In my humble opinion I saved the best for last. May I present you with a link to (sound of trumpets, roll of drums) the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize winners and they are truly superb this year—as they are every year. It makes you wonder how they can keep improving. For those of you unfamiliar with the Ig Nobels, here is a sampling to whet your appetite.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of JAPAN, for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.

REFERENCE: US patent application 2010/0308995 A1. Filing date: Feb 5, 2009.

LITERATURE PRIZE: John Perry of Stanford University, USA, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.

REFERENCE: “How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done,” John Perry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 1996. Later republished elsewhere under the title “Structured Procrastination.”

Enjoy!

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There are many recommended behaviors that most of us follow, but to which we give little thought. They are accepted as common wisdom, but are they? Today’s links are to articles that question that “common wisdom,” but before you dump them give thought to whether you should and how you would implement the changes.

Politeness is something we are raised with; even in these days of total candor people often tend to wrap criticism and other critical communication in a blanket of politeness—but is that good?

Politeness can become problematic, however, when it causes us to sacrifice clarity. … Even worse, say the authors, it takes more of our cognitive resources to process these kinds of polite statements.

Along the same lines, but far blunter, is this advice that says you should criticize in public, across the whole company, to avoid repetition by others and to ‘toughen’ your employees. My own reaction is that very few companies have the culture or managers the skill to do this effectively.

“When somebody does something wrong, you correct him or her individually and then one person learns that lesson. Or you can send an email to the whole company and the whole company learns that lesson. …to survive in that environment, you have to develop a soft shell but a very hard core. You have to be able to take those hits…If you make it through, you’re unbelievably strong.”

More contrary advice comes from research into envy, showing that it actually has positive effects, with one negative that is very new. (I wrote about ego depletion here.)

They were apparently victims of what psychologists call “ego depletion,” a state of mental fatigue originally documented in people whose energy was depleted by performing acts of self-control. Now it looks as if envy depletes that same resource.

Finally, a note about the importance of showers in creative thinking and why you need to create spaces in your day for the “creative pause” that a shower represents.

There’s something about showering that tends to spawn new ideas which may not occur otherwise. …a model for the “creative pause” — the shift from being fully engaged in a creative activity to being passively engaged, or the shift to being disengaged altogether.

Enjoy!

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Company cultures are much like the people who create them, unique on the outside, but similar basics on the inside—good like good or bad like bad. It’s how those basics manifest themselves that the world calls culture.

First up from Forbes is a quick overview of the basics; it’s a long way from comprehensive, but it’s a place to start.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how Millennials are demanding/driving change in corporate culture, but when you look at what they want it’s similar to what most people want. The difference is found more in their attitude—as it is in all generations.

Creating culture is an inside out function—what is inside the boss will form the foundation of what is inside the culture—for better or worse—so know the culture and you know the boss and vice versa.

• Pamela Fields, CEO, Stetson
• Lars Björk, CEO, QlikTech and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year national winner in the technology category.
• Amanda Lannert, CEO, Jellyvision Lab; Kevin Willer, co-founder, Google’s Chicago office; and Ed Scanlan, founder/CEO, Total Attorneys.

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CEOs are an interesting species of executives.

CEOs are often lauded one quarter for their vision and leadership and derided the next quarter for the same thing.

Some suffer from severe arrogance syndrome, while others have either temporary or chronic foot-in-mouth disease.

But whether world-class geniuses or world-class asses CEOs  are rarely boring.

For those who set their career sights on the corner office, success used to be measured by the size of the company and bigger always equaled better—but in technology that’s changing.

CEOs, especially those of large, public corporations, have one especially cat-like trait—they always land on their feet even when they are fired—as happens more and more frequently these days.

As with everything there is a right way and a wrong way to fire a CEO, with Carol Bartz and Mark Hurd the poster children of the wrong way. So, here’s some good advice on how to do it the right way.

Finally, with the use of social media accelerating, the pros and cons of  CEO blogging have changed markedly from the original debates.

Have a terrific weekend!

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I owe my Saturday readers an apology. Expand Your Mind was absent last week and I have no excuse; worse, I have to admit I just plain forgot. That is embarrassing. I hope today makes up for it.

A rude awakening for all the companies and managers who believe they can treat their people any way they choose comes from an Aflac survey-based report saying otherwise.

77 percent of adults employed full/part time, and not currently self-employed, stated they would leave their current position to become an independent entrepreneur.

However, PeopleMetric’s 2011 survey on employee engagement says the opposite when compared to 2007.

…more employees intend to stay with their employer, feel motivated to put forth extra effort, recommend their companies as a great place to work, and say they love their current organization.

What’s the difference; why such disparate results?

More research from Harvard shows that what excites and engages people has nothing to do with money and everything to do with managers (you knew that).

According to recent research, the single most important factor is simply a sense of making progress on meaningful work.

Next, two excellent survey-based articles about women and work.
First, research from Harvard Business Review, looks at the factors that impact both women and men when competing.

…how women and men perform at work may be strongly linked to the gender of the person they are competing against.

And from McKinsey comes advice based on feedback that focuses on changing deeply embedded attitudes.

…a survey we conducted earlier this year indicated that although a majority of women who make it to senior roles have a real desire to lead, few think they have meaningful support to do so, and even fewer think they’re in line to move up.

Finally, a word about the poster boy of engagement, Richard Branson.

He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.

Not a bad way to live!

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Bosses; today we’re going to start with the very negative and move forward to the very positive. Have you (or someone you know) ever worked for a boss who you thought was nuts? You might be surprised at how accurate that “diagnosis” actually is.

One out of every 25 company high-flyers is believed to have the mental disorder but disguises it through their high status, charm and manipulation in the workplace.

Speaking of nuts, have you ever read a story where you couldn’t figure out which boss qualified as such?

A businessman at the centre of a £10 million High Court battle involving claims of drunkenness and lewd behavior among senior staff at Microsoft in Britain is the victim of a “boardroom ambush”, according to friends.

What comes between very, very bad and very, very good? It depends on who you ask.

And that brings us to Carol Bartz, who was fired by phone to avoid rumors, AKA board leaks. More interesting is the difference between the email to employees sent by the Board and Bartz’s blunt, honest comments in an exclusive interview; blunt in spite of probably costing her as much as $10 million for violating a non-disparagement clause.

Fortune today published an explosive interview with Carol Bartz, who on Tuesday was fired as Yahoo CEO after 32 months on the job. In it, she referred to her fellow board members as “doofuses,” and said that they “f—ed me over.”

Finally, moving all the way to positive, we have Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who, along with Tony Hsieh at Zappos (which Amazon acquired at Hsieh’s request) are the poster boys of great culture, employee engagement, innovation and profit. This profile from Fast Company is one of the best articles about Bezos that I’ve seen.

Has he been lucky? “Extraordinarily,” he says. It couldn’t have happened without “planetary alignment,” he explains. But luck isn’t all. Bezos’s success also springs from his ideas about running companies and creating innovation. His thinking is farsighted and intuitive. … “It’s one thing to be a data junkie who just looks at history, but Jeff takes a prospective view. He takes risks and he changes and changes.”

Enjoy!

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Is culture sustainable? Ask Jim Sinegal who, over 28 years, took Costco from $0 to $78 billion and built it into a global powerhouse without catering to Wall Street—workers have health benefits, margins are 14% (15% for house brands) and the price of a hot dog and drink hasn’t change since 1985. Does it work?

Shares of Costco have risen nearly 40 percent in the past year, whereas Wal-Mart shares are up just 6 percent even though the world’s largest retailer enjoys a gross profit margin of close to 25 percent compared with Costco’s 10.8 percent. Shares of another competitor, BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc (BJ.N), have risen about 21 percent over the last year.

Any day you look you’ll find an account describing problems in the money-losing airline industry. But if you keep looking you’ll also find bright spots, such as Southwest and Jet Blue, whose cultures engage their people’s passion and that translates directly into dollars.

A 2009 study by Gallup found that companies in the top decile for employee engagement boosted earnings per share at nearly four times the rate of companies with lower scores.

What do 3M and Virgin have in common? Cultures that invite, enable and revel in creative employees—intrepreneurs—that drive innovation, profits and keep their new product pipelines packed.

3M is 109 years old, the company continues to churn out new products like a young startup which explains why 31% of 3M’s 2010 revenues came from products that were developed during the past five years.

“Virgin could never have grown into the group of more than 200 companies it is now, were it not for a steady stream of intrapreneurs who looked for and developed opportunities, often leading efforts that went against the grain.” –Sir Richard Branson

Finally, and mostly to give you a laugh, here are the totally obnoxious actions from some of today’s truly monster egos.

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