Being fully competent at your job is no more than the first step.
In my article "How to Rise Fast at Work" I told the true story of two first-year analysts at a small investment firm who took vastly different approaches to getting ahead at the job, with vastly different results. Mark focused on learning about his organization from top to bottom, helping to
bring about meaningful change wherever he could and developing his skills beyond what his job required so he could address needs he discovered at the organization. Ted, meanwhile, concentrated on doing his work faster than others, speaking regularly to important people in senior management and making
himself and his abilities known at every available opportunity. Mark shot ahead; Ted languished. Mark and Ted's stories confirm that competence at one's assigned tasks is hardly all it takes to achieve success and become a leader...
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The Disposable Worker Temp jobs may save or ruin your company. Know how to keep productivity up.
You're a bad manager who's driving us nuts, and here's what those of us who report to you want to tell you—whether you like it or not.
Welcome! I'm so glad you made it. Make yourself comfortable. You're probably wondering why I invited you. You're in for a treat. You see, this is your annual review, the one your boss never gave you, the one that really matters.
Don't get up. This isn't going on your permanent record. It's just between us, one professional to another. In reality, I guess you could call this an intervention. As with any wake up call, I'm doing this because I like you. You have so many gifts. But you've lost your way. And frankly, you're doing more
harm than good these days. This is going to be hard to hear, but I'll say it anyway:...
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True, you may not have to don a headset and man the company’s 800 number. But Finance does need to put its best customer service face forward.
So how well are you doing? Check out four customer service best practices to see how many your department has embraced:...
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It’s no shock many Americans are unhappy with their current financial situations. But what about the fact that more than a quarter of people blame their employer for their personal money problems?
That’s what a recent Harris Interactive poll uncovered. Overall, 29% of all participants blame their employers for their “financial situation.” The numbers varied depending on what age group the poll participants belonged to. Here’s a breakdown by age:...
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Expect your largest customers to request you to do a lot more for them in the upcoming months.
Many companies are reporting that their larger customers are increasingly dictating unfavorable terms...
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The end of the year came and went without formal approval of the “Tax Extenders Act of 2009.” But this new legislation is expected to be signed shortly. Alert: Once enacted, the new law would retroactively extend a bunch of key tax provisions that expired after 2009. Generally, it will preserve these tax benefits for one more year. So Congress will probably revisit the same issues again at the end of 2010. The Senate is expected to go along with the House-approved version of the bill. Here are the main tax winners for individuals and businesses....
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Created in 2004 as a reaction to the Enron and Worldcom scandals, Section 409a — requiring the valuation of company stock plans — takes effect this year.
Even though the additional regulatory cost is annoying, 409a valuation will help you avoid onerous penalties on the company and participating executives. 409a valuation must incorporate the financial features of a company’s capital
structure to allocate the value of the equity among different classes of shareholders. Noncompliance with IRC 409a can lead to...
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Starting Feb. 1, the IRS will begin intensive audits looking into employment tax compliance of 6,000 randomly selected employers. The audit project, which was quietly announced by the IRS in October, is the tax agency's "most significant audit initiative in decades," according to a report by the Morgan Lewis law firm.
These National Research Program (NRP) audits will generate the IRS’ first statistical snapshot of employment tax compliance since 1984. According to Morgan Lewis, the audits are expected to initially focus on the following four areas before expanding to other issues:...
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Five tips on climate change and tax Whether or not you believe in Global Warming, it has a big impact on your company’s bottom line. Learn how you can benefit from “Going Green”.
Yes, going green is about social responsibility. But it is also a business issue, with tax implications that boards should know about.
Climate change has moved from the fringe of business to the mainstream. Far from a monolithic issue, it is a set of complex challenges that companies face on a strategic level and in day-to-day activities. Climate change has spawned new regulations and taxes, with more than 300 introduced worldwide last
year. However, “green business” has also created opportunities for enterprising firms to serve new markets, develop innovative products and services and enhance their reputations in the process. Conversely, companies that are not responding to these opportunities may risk damage to their brand,
a loss of market share, rising energy costs, and decreased interest on the part of investors and potential employees. In addressing these risks and opportunities, leading companies are undertaking a broad range of activities,
many of which have tax implications. [Directors can maintain proper focus on green tax issues by keeping in mind the following principles:...]
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Credit card issuers have lost billions of dollars on bad loans during this economic downturn, and new rules might hurt their revenue streams further.
In May, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, a law designed to protect consumers from rapid interest rate increases and certain penalties. Some of its provisions began in August, and the next become effective on Feb. 22. Issuers are trying to find ways to boost
their incomes, and these efforts will likely come at the expense of cardholders. Here are some predictions for the credit card industry this year:...
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A Two-Speed World Is Emerging from the Wreckage of the Great Recession, as Companies in China, Brazil, and India Prepare to Accelerate Out of the Downturn More Quickly Than Their Western Rivals, Says BCG.
The world’s rapidly developing economies are poised to live up to their name in the aftermath of the Great Recession and to reduce the wealth gap between themselves and their great rivals in the West, according to new analysis by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), released today. From 2010 to 2015, if
economies follow the historical pattern of postrecession growth charted by the International Monetary Fund, the long-term annual growth rates in the United States, Europe, and Japan could fall below 2 percent. By contrast, it is likely that growth rates in...
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Escaping the executive bubble Open conversations and interactions provide a lot more information from employees and co-workers than open doors.
How finance chiefs can get the real story about their companies' problems and prospects.
Many CFOs know what it's like to ask a room full of employees if they have any questions — only to be met with deafening silence. Even when the finance chief earnestly solicits queries, employees often clam up. Perhaps they're not engaged. Perhaps they doubt an honest answer. These days, they simply may be
afraid of what they might hear. "It's a very difficult setting with the whole company there, with the whole range of company hierarchy. You're not going to get real questions in that setting," says Michael Roberto, a professor of management at Bryant University in Rhode Island and the author of Know What
You Don't Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen. "Many executives say 'My door is always open,'" Roberto adds. "But bad news does not come through an open door." In this volatile environment, where any insight into performance can be critical to planning and forecasting, how does a
finance chief stay in tune with operations and learn what employees really think? How can he avoid the separation from the day-to-day business that so often isolates the executive suite? To learn the bad news, Roberto says, a CFO must walk out the door and hunt for it...
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In today's volatile economic world, companies should be ready to ditch their best-laid plans at a moment's notice.
As conditioned as they are to a tight focus on success, corporate finance executives might be better off if they paid more heed to failure. In fact, one of the most important roles finance can play is defining the criteria for abandoning investments, according to David Axson, a business consultant and
co-founder of The Hackett Group. "The concept of failure is alien to Americans," says Axson, a Briton who has lived in the United States for 20 years. But with the current hypervolatility of markets and other economic
indicators likely to be long lasting, companies must be ready to pull the plug if a project's business case becomes moot...
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The recession may have yielded one positive for finance chiefs: more job security.
CFO turnover at big companies dropped by 28% last year, as boards shied away from nonessential change and private-equity firms slowed their efforts to woo public-company executives, according to new data from executive-recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles. Only 13% of all Fortune 1,000 CFO seats turned over in 2009, down from 18% in 2008 and 19% in 2007. Still, those numbers aren't that unusual in the broader sweep of history. "2007 and 2008 turnover levels were definitely higher than we had experienced before, so this is in some ways a return to normal," says Michele Heid, head of the financial officers practice at Heidrick & Struggles. Other hiring trends...
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A tough cell Errors in spreadsheets can cause havoc, so a few companies have ventured out to help others minimize them.
Will spreadsheet-management software ever catch on?
Tiny details can have large impacts. Just as the proverbial kingdom was lost for want of a nail, so a finance chief could find his job in jeopardy as a result of a mistake in a spreadsheet cell. The escalating consequences of such an error, once introduced into the financial-reporting system, may include an
audit delay, the need for a completed audit to be redone, a restatement of financials, and a restatement because of material error. In the latter instance, a stock-price drop could be collateral damage. Auditors do discover most material errors before much harm is done, but the huge number of
spreadsheets the typical company uses and the frequency with which they are updated multiplies the risk. To some degree, the danger is mitigated by capabilities in Excel and other spreadsheet programs that limit user access to cells and tabs. But managers often don't take advantage of those features,...
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How a swashbuckling breed of mathematicians and computer scientists nearly destroyed Wall Street.
On Thursday, President Barack Obama proposed new rules to curb a number of Wall Street's risky—and highly profitable—trading activities. One target: The secretive trading operations within banks that use large doses of leverage, or borrowed money, to make huge bets on the market. Wall Street says the
regulations are unnecessary, and since the financial crisis struck, most banks have cut back on these trading outfits. But when the downturn first hit in the summer of 2007, several of them were among the first to suffer, and collectively they lost billions over a matter of days. In his new book, "The
Quants," Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson suggests how this new breed of mathematicians and computer scientists took over much of the financial system—and the damage they inflicted in the 2007 meltdown...
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In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had
access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.
Those of you who edited your privacy settings prior to December's change have nothing to worry about - that is, assuming you elected to keep your personalized settings when prompted by Facebook's "transition tool." The tool, a dialog box explaining the changes, appeared at the top of Facebook homepages
this past month with its own selection of recommended settings. Unfortunately, most Facebook users likely opted for...
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Guidelines for Ethical Business Practice. We are committed to the proper use of
email and to protecting consumers from fraudulent or inappropriate
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