Category: Managing

HBR: Taking Longer to Reach the Top Has Its Benefits

Most career advice today encourages us to move forward passionately, intentionally, boldly — and above all, quickly. Career coaches don’t make a lot of money from encouraging people to “get ahead slowly.” However, in terms of fulfilling our long-term goals for career success, patience can be an asset. That’s not to say waiting is easy….

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HBR: What I Didn’t Know About Becoming a CEO

By Karen Firestone NOVEMBER 09, 2015 The company I co-founded is now ten years old. While we’re an investment firm, many of the things I’ve learned as CEO transcend any particular industry. In looking back over the years, there are some things that I expected to be tough, and they have been. But there have…

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Why Won’t My Employees Admit They’re Going on Vacation?

As another summer comes to a close, I find myself noticing once again that my co-workers and employees have been very reluctant to both commit to a vacation and to communicate that time off to everyone else. As CEO, I find this frustrating — it’s a waste of time to set up a client visit…

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New Hires Create More Anxiety at a Midsized Company

My company keeps growing. We add clients, revenue, profit, and of course, we need to add people when some of us are too busy to handle the added workload. But I’ve noticed a pattern over the past few hires: the very people who would benefit most from additional help at first resist the idea of…

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When to Tell Your Employees to Stay Home

When I sat at my computer last week, trying to write out a policy explaining under what extreme circumstances we might need to close our office and how we would define our work schedule on days when people might not be able to get to the office, I thought back to a situation several years…

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How Hard Do Company Founders Really Work?

 After the piece I wrote last year about never going out to play golf with clients, colleagues or friends, and deciding that I should do that once every few weeks this summer, I realized that I only left work early once, at 4:00, to play 9 holes after work. I began to think about why…

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Why You Should Try to Save Your Security Guard’s Job

Two weeks ago I found out that we were about to lose both our morning and afternoon security guards, who have worked for many years at our five story, 114,000 square foot downtown Boston office building.  The new owners authorized the management company to bid out all support contracts, including security, resulting in a different…

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A Small Firm’s Response to Higher Health Care Costs

There are many reasons I love May – the flowers and leaves emerge, including those on the tree right outside my office window in downtown Boston; it’s light enough to play golf until 8PM;  and we banish our heavy wools to make room for light-weight clothes.  However, here’s what I hate about May – my…

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