I’m growing quite fond of my digital NY Times subscription because the paper provides some great fodder for my work blog. Oddly enough, the health writing seems to be providing the majority of this fodder so far. I purchased my subscription for half price late last year when they were running holiday deals and I’ll probably renew. Their marketing worked.
Category: work
RIM has been in the news a lot lately with the hiring of their new CEO. I dug up Aswath Damodaran’s article from over a month ago about what he thinks RIM should do (he’s a Finance Professor from Stern School of Business). It’s especially applicable when considering Apple’s awesome quarter and Monday’s news that the new RIM CEO plans to “stay the course” (met by an over 8% drop in stock price to close at $15.56).
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A Primer on Data Analytics from 37Signals
The folks at 37signals have some great software. They also throw up a lot of good content on their blog. I saw this article on data analytics and it resonated with me. Noah has a few great tips for any budding data analytics expert.
When iOS5 dropped, I used it as an opportunity to reorganize my home screen on my iPhone 4. I’d had the same three screens for about a year and they weren’t working. Plus, freshening things up would hopefully eliminate any tech-envy I felt towards those who upgraded to the 4S. So I rearranged – and rearranged – and rearranged. It got old fast.
I just saw an article in the New York Times entitled As Doctors Use More Devices, Potential for Distraction Grows. I feel that my industry, enterprise accounting and finance, falls prey to a comparable level of distraction. Personally, I need to take positive action to eliminate my Pavlovian reaction to a ringing or vibrating device. But that’s only part of the distraction problem.
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Book Review: Linchpin by Seth Godin
Seth Godin is primarily a marketing and management guy, so his books don’t often hit the list of books finance and accounting people should read. Which is a shame, because at times I felt like this book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
If you haven’t tapped your Receivables and Cash Applications staff for hints on collaboration and knowledge management, then there’s a risk you’re leaving a potential resource untapped. Let’s dig a little deeper into the nature of their jobs to see what I mean.
Did you see the recent Newsweek article entitled I Can’t Think! from science writer Sharon Begley? It’s about information overload and how our brains often struggle with too much information. It’s highly applicable to decision-makers in any organization and may help your Finance department get better at matching the right amount of information with the business decision at hand.
I use Google Apps and they’re getting better every day. Lately, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time building spreadsheets in Google Docs and experimenting with Google web forms to compile data. Yes, they have disadvantages, but most of them relate to speed and responsiveness, not functionality, which is heartening.
The Dutch appear to be way ahead of the US in regards to a flexible workweek according to this NYT article about part-time work in the Netherlands. They are struggling with it for sure, but I think we struggle with it a bit more here in the US.