Deloitte’s survey highlights how the weakening economy threatens to sap employees’ spirits by eroding bonuses and wealth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen about 39% over the past year, decreasing the value of equity grants that companies rely on for long-term rewards. Meanwhile, many economists say the U.S. is heading into a recession, which could push down results — and the annual incentives typically tied to them.

• Who’s the boss?  Now it’s “Who wants to be boss?” – 77% of employees say they wouldn’t want to be in their manager’s place.
• Great, great advice on how to give a good presentation.  This is one of my favorite presentations, great visuals, just the right number of words on a slide – the only problem is that sometimes the slides go faster than the presenter, which could have been fixed with a remote control.
• How to get a job in today’s economy?  Network.
• Accounting rules could be changing for managers.
• How to use Halloween as a moral booster and team builder. – I love Halloween, but have some concerns about this.  If done right this could really be a chance for people to be creative and to see another side of each other, but religious concerns and the worry of inappropriate dress and behavior probably keep a number of companies away from celebrating.

As a search provider, Google is confident, competent and a master of “scale” — the ability to keep its results flowing speedily and accurately even as demand skyrockets. But as the company tries to branch out, it miscalculates, makes beginner’s mistakes, and fumbles seemingly obvious maneuvers — like, if you’re planning to digitize the contents of the world’s books, perhaps some conversations with the companies that publish them might be in order?

Failure is a great teacher, but only a company as big as Google could make as many mistakes as it has with so little consequence.

• Have a clean, functional workspace. I’m pretty messy, and though I hate to admit it, it can really impede on my ability to get things done.
• For men or women, it never hurts to ask. You may even get a raise (and be thanked for bringing it up).

• Article lists the top Executive MBA schools
• Reputation of the school is, by far, the top reason for choosing a particular program.
• 24% of those surveyed, who had just completed an E.M.B.A. say they have received a promotion and a raise.  30% more expect both within the next year

And the Best Executive M.B.A. Programs In 2008 Are…
From the WSJ

I think the most telling part of this article is how important school reputation is in choosing which school to go to.  I think it is very unlikely that the #1 school is really any better than the #25 school (or the #100 school), especially since the professors at the top schools are all likely to be more interested in research than teaching.  If you’re thinking about an E.M.B.A. you should probably consider school reputation first, since that is what everyone else cares about, but also check out the professors who will likely teach you on ratemyprofessor.com.  You will probably learn more from a good teacher at a “mediocare” school than a poor teacher at a name-brand program.

• The goal of this blog is to provide its readers with the best and most useful information on management skills possible.
• This blog will not focus on finances, gadgets, world events, leisure and lifestyle, or anything else that cannot be used by every-day managers.
• This blog will have weekly “main feature” posts and more frequent “link to another blog” posts.

Why I started this blog

I’ve been thinking about doing this blog for quite a while. When I was in my PhD program I hated writing academic articles (which is why I did not finish said program), but always thought it would be interesting to communicate what is going on in management research to the people who could actually use it. Hence this.

I couldn’t find a management/business blog devoted to what has been discovered/is being discovered by researchers. Most of what’s out there in regards to improving management skills ranges from anecdotal to conjecture. I think that there is an audience for the tips, tricks and tactics that have been vetted by academic researchers, but which tend not to get out into the mainstream. It is possible that there isn’t a blog like this out there already because no one wants this knowledge, but I suspect otherwise. My guess is that it is a question of supply rather than demand, that there are plenty out there who want to know what science and academia have to say about managing, but that the people who know the most about it are busy writing esoteric journal articles for each other, and most people like myself are plenty happy to find a place in industry, make their six-figures and call it a day.

Six-figures sounds fine with me, and there is a lot about academia I will miss (teaching, mostly), but no matter what I do to make a living, I also want to learn about the cutting edge of management research, and its parent disciplines psychology and sociology. I want to communicate what is known to those who can use it most, maybe even start a dialogue.

What this blog isn’t

I believe that saying what something is not can be just as, if not more, important than saying what it is. This is not a blog about finance, personal or global. Nor is it about politics, gadgets, leisure and lifestyle, though any of those may be touched on tangentially in a post. Those other things are all very (very) interesting and I’m glad there are a number of other places that you can go to learn about them. But here is not that place. I want this to be a place for information that every-day managers can use. I would prefer that information to be academically rigorous, but that won’t always be the case. Not every idea has gone through the wringer of social science, but on the whole I put more faith in that which has been researched than that which has not.

Why I’m writing this post

This post probably won’t get any links, or be read by many. But it is important for me. There will be plenty of times that I will deviate from my original intentions for this blog, and need some sort of map to follow so that I do not get lost. I also want something to be able to change and augment if I find a better path in my journey. People, businesses and blogs all need to have some sense of their purpose and direction, otherwise how would anyone know if they were going in the right direction?

How this blog will work

The main part of this blog, I think, will be my weekly posts. In these I will either take a single recent article from an academic business journal and unpack it, explaining what it means and how it can help you, or I will look into a general management subject and report what the research literature has to say on it.

More frequently I will post a link to another article or blog post that I think could be helpful to a manager. These will be much shorter – an executive summary, a link, and a few statements from me – and will range a bit wider than the weekly posts.

I’ve never done this before, but everything good started somewhere, and fear of failure should never trump the fear of doing nothing.