The television network has killed the best show on television, Eli Stone. Please sign the petition to save it.
Check out A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis. Do you understand all the connections?
Staying on that theme, check out this video (long). It’s a cross between Mulder and… I’ll go with “Dragon’s Lair.” But there’s some scary stuff in there about the growth of the money supply. Almost everyone has something to learn from this.
Some of you have been wondering when I’m going to drop some science again. Here we go: this year’s Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Paul Krugman, wrote a paper in 1978 entitled The Theory of Interstellar Trade. The abstract says it all:
This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest rates on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.
The best part of this abstract is the assumption that there’s a body of economic work surrounding interplanetary trade that needs to be extended.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter may know that I’m not a fan of the Toyota “Saved By Zero” commercials. (Full disclosure: I drive a Toyota Corolla.) Now there’s proof: these commercials can kill.
Finally, if you haven’t checked it out yet, www.change.gov, chronicling the Obama-Biden transition.
The next time you take stock in your career, the next time you think about what it will take to get that promotion or not next job, start with integrity.
Without personal integrity, it ain’t happening.
Some people hold the perspective that everyone you deal with professionally is a client to your personal brand. How well you serve your colleagues, your bosses, your subordinates, your team members. When there is no question from anyone who knows you that your every action flows from a set of high standards, when you have integrity, then you are lowering a barrier. You’re making it easier for the people who will make decisions regarding your career.
One of the easiest ways to lose integrity is by not being sensitive with information.
You can be the most competent person in the company at whatever you do. You can show you company that you’d be excellent at a job with more responsibilities and more accountibility. But if you can’t be trusted to keep information contained to the right audience, none of this matters. Once you make this mistake, even once, then you have a long road ahead to prove your integrity and win back trust:
- You have to acknowledge to your leaders that you made an error in judgment.
- You have to wait until your leadership decides to allow you to have sensitive information again.
- You have to demonstrate, probably for a long time, that you can use that information in appropriate ways.
Talking “out of school” is a bell that’s bery hard to unring. It’s also easy and fun to do. Who doesn’t want to create the secret information club. “Guess who is moving to another team?” “Guess who’s on the short list to get fired?”
You will hit your personal career ceiling hard without perserving your integrity with sensitive information.
Sensitivity to information isn’t the only measure of personal integrity. Have any other advice to share about maintaining integrity in the office, and in life? Please share your comments with us.