Business talk

Many people working in large companies speak business-buzzwords as a second language. Business language is full of pretty meaningless words. I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore article tells that the language of internet business models has made the problem even worse. There are several strains of this epidemic: We have forgotten how to use the real names of real things, acronymitis, and Meaningless Expressions (like “Our goal is to exceed the customer’s expectation”). This would all be funny if it weren’t true. Observe it, deconstruct it, and appreciate just how ridiculous most business conversation has become.

Check out this brilliant Web Economy Bullshit Generator page. It generates random bullshit text based on the often used words in business language. And most of the material it generates look something you would expect from IT executives and their speechwriters (those are randomly generated with Web Economy Bullshit Generator):

“scale viral web services”
“integrate holistic mindshare”
“transform back-end solutions”
“incentivize revolutionary portals”
“synergize out-of-the-box platforms”
“enhance world-class schemas”
“aggregate revolutionary paradigms”
“enable cross-media relationships”

How to talk like a CIO article tries to tell how do CIOs talk, and what do they talk about, and why they do it like they do it. It sometimes makes sense to analyze the speaking and comportment styles of the people who’ve already climbed the corporate ladder if you want to do the same.

The Most Annoying, Pretentious And Useless Business Jargon article tells that the stupid business talk is longer solely the province of consultants, investors and business-school types, this annoying gobbledygook has mesmerized the rank and file around the globe. The next time you feel the need to reach out, touch base, shift a paradigm, leverage a best practice or join a tiger team, by all means do it. Just don’t say you’re doing it. If you have to ask why, chances are you’ve fallen under the poisonous spell of business jargon. Jargon masks real meaning. The Most Annoying, Pretentious And Useless Business Jargon article has a cache of expressions to assiduously avoid (if you look out you will see those used way too many times in business documents and press releases).

Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business? article tells that most of what is called innovation today is mere distraction, according to a paper by economist Robert Gordon. Innovation is the most abused word in tech. The iPad is about as innovative as the toaster. You can still read books without an iPad, and you can still toast bread without a toaster. True innovation radically alters the way we interact with the world. But in tech, every little thing is called “innovative.” If you were to believe business grads then “innovation” includes their “ideas” along the lines of “a website like *only better*” or “that thing which everyone is already doing but which I think is my neat new idea” Whether or not the word “innovation” has become the most abused word in the business context, that remains to be seen. “Innovation” itself has already been abused by the patent trolls.

Using stories to catch ‘smart-talk’ article tells that smart-talk is information without understanding, theory without practice – ‘all mouth and no trousers’, as the old aphorism puts it. It’s all too common amongst would-be ‘experts’ – and likewise amongst ‘rising stars’ in management and elsewhere. He looks the part; he knows all the right buzzwords; he can quote chapter-and-verse from all the best-known pundits and practitioners. But is it all just empty ‘smart-talk’? Even if unintentional on their part, people who indulge in smart-talk can be genuinely dangerous. They’ll seem plausible enough at first, but in reality they’ll often know just enough to get everyone into real trouble, but not enough to get out of it again. Smart-talk is the bane of most business – and probably of most communities too. So what can we do to catch it?

2,693 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    PÄRJÄÄKÖ YRITYS ENÄÄ ILMAN VERKKOKAUPPAA?
    Spoiler: saattaa pärjätä. Suomessa on edelleen pitkä liuta yrityksiä, joilla voisi olla verkkokauppa, muttei ole, ja koronankin alla osa näistä on voitollisia. Sehän on ilmiselvä todiste siitä, että homma on mahdollista!
    https://www.keuke.fi/ajankohtaista/blogi/blogikirjoitus/?blogid=17&newstitle=P%C3%A4rj%C3%A4%C3%A4k%C3%B6+yritys+en%C3%A4%C3%A4+ilman+verkkokauppaa%3F&fbclid=IwAR0sHkn1aFsD2WHMokH5yuHj2znRmCmgvMwpV92Y017vCSvuhucQMCtvdgk

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    It appears that “white-collar workers, in industries from tech to banking to insurance, say they have found a way to double their pay.” Their schtick is to “Work two full-time remote jobs.” Like Fight Club, the first rule for these folks is “don’t tell anyone,” and “don’t do too much work, either.”

    The Remote Trend Of Working Two Jobs At The Same Time Without Both Companies Knowing
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/08/15/the-remote-trend-of-working-two-jobs-at-the-same-time-without-both-companies-knowing/?sh=6585b65d17f3&utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainFB

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    New York Times:
    Amazon has surpassed Walmart as the world’s top retail seller outside China; FactSet says people spent $610B+ on Amazon in the 12 months ending in June — Proof that the online future has arrived: The biggest e-commerce company outside China has unseated the biggest brick-and-mortar seller.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/technology/amazon-walmart.html

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    3 reasons your projects need workflow management
    https://www.zoho.com/blog/marketplace/3-reasons-your-projects-need-workflow-management.html

    Audits keep workflows optimal

    One of the first steps to achieving better workflows is knowing what’s going on. This can be done with a workflow audit. Broadly, this means examining your workflow to find its weaknesses and coming up with solutions. This audit can be performed in five steps:

    Map out every step of your workflow: How does a task move from point A to point B? How does it interact with other tasks? Who’s involved in each step? These are the kinds of questions you should be asking.
    Look for chokepoints: Are there places where teams seem to hit a brick wall? Maybe there’s a specific collaborator who’s overwhelmed or a tool that isn’t performing as it should.
    Find improvements: By this stage, you’ve figured out your workflow’s problems. This is when you try to come up with ways to fix them, like spreading tasks around or getting rid of a tool that isn’t doing what it’s supposed to.
    Implement your strategy: After figuring things out, it’s time to implement your changes.
    Review the results: The workflow audit doesn’t end when you change a few things. To make sure these changes were effective, it’s good to check in regularly to see how recurring tasks are going.

    Reply
  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    An Introduction To The Yield Curve
    https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/yield-curve/?utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainFB&utm_medium=social

    How the Yield Curve Works
    A yield curve offers an easy-to-understand visual snapshot of a given bond market at a single moment in time. Typically, it shows you average yields on short-, medium- or long-maturity bonds from a given day or week of trading.

    Interest rates on bonds sold by the same issuer with different maturities behave quite differently, depending on how investors are feeling about risk, trends in the broader market and the performance of the economy as a whole. A yield curve lets you visualize the different rates for different maturities on one chart.

    Reply
  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Big, Theatrical Meetings Are a Waste of Time
    https://hbr.org/2021/07/big-theatrical-meetings-are-a-waste-of-time?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

    Most organizations spend enormous amounts of time and effort on business review meetings. Some of these cover key projects, others top-line sales, and still others on overall company or unit performance. In all cases, the purpose is to create a dialogue between senior executives and operating managers about how the business or project is doing versus its strategic objectives, where gaps might exist, and what’s needed to close those gaps.

    When done well, business reviews are powerful tools. Without them, initiatives can go off track, projects that should be killed continue taking up resources, poor performance goes unnoticed and uncorrected, excellent people remain unrecognized, and you end up being surprised by issues that should have been addressed much earlier.

    Unfortunately, many business review meetings are more show than substance, becoming what I call “business review theater.”

    Whenever the CEO or CFO asked a question, the managers answered in a way that was intended to demonstrate their complete mastery of the business.

    But the CEO and CFO were not impressed. Although most of the businesses were doing well, there were worrying signs for the future: An aging customer base, changing macro-economic conditions, new competitors coming into their markets, and insufficient new product development and innovation. There never seemed to be time to dig into these issues at the reviews and questions about them were almost always dismissed with a description of how the business was already dealing with it.

    In my experience, this isn’t an isolated case. Many business reviews tend to be bereft of real conversation, significant questions, or follow-up actions.

    Why Do We Put on Business Review Theater?
    The first step is to understand the root of the problem. There are two basic reasons why business review theater is so prevalent.

    The first stems from senior leaders’ failure to set an appropriate agenda for the review meetings. If not given direction, managers naturally focus on areas that are doing well or will try to review every aspect of the business.

    The second is that managers of business units or projects fear that the reviews will reveal inadequacies in what they are doing, which could make them look bad or open them up to senior executive scrutiny or interference.

    To foster more-productive business reviews, you need to solve for these two issues.

    Focus on the Future
    To create a more fruitful agenda, structure the review session around specific, actionable topics that can improve future performance. The word “review” implies a backward look and, indeed, it is important to know what’s happened in the past month or quarter to learn from it. But that information can be sent in advance so the discussion can center around why things happened in a certain way in the past and what, if anything, should be done differently going forward.

    Reply
  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Tunnista yrityksesi ydin tai mene kotiin – teknologia tuo painetta kehittää osaamista
    MAINOS Teknologia muuttaa asiantuntijatyötä ja lisää yritysjohdon painetta kehittää uudenlaisia ratkaisuja liiketoimintansa varmistamiseen. Teknologiakompetenssin haalimisen sijaan yritysten pitäisi keskittyä oman ydinosaamisen ja strategian kirkastamiseen sekä rakentaa sen ympärille räätälöity relevantti työkalupakki.
    https://www.hs.fi/mainos/barona/art-2000008088848.html

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Planning Doesn’t Have to Be the Enemy of Agile
    https://hbr.org/2018/09/planning-doesnt-have-to-be-the-enemy-of-agile?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=facebook&tpcc=orgsocial_edit

    Planning was one of the cornerstones of management, but it’s now fallen out of fashion. It seems rigid, bureaucratic, and ill-suited to a volatile, unpredictable world. However, organizations still need some form of planning. And so, universally valuable, but desperately unfashionable, planning waits like a spinster in a Jane Austen novel for someone to recognize her worth. The answer is agile planning, a process that can coordinate and align with today’s agile-based teams. Agile planning also helps to resolve the tension between traditional planning’s focus on hard numbers, and the need for “soft data,” or human judgment.

    Management by Objectives (MBO) became the height of corporate fashion in the late 1950s. The world appeared predictable. The future could be planned. It seemed sensible, therefore, for executives to identify their objectives. They could then focus on managing in such a way that these objectives were achieved.

    This was the capitalist equivalent of the Communist system’s five-year plans.

    The belief was that if the future was mapped out, it would happen.

    Later, MBO evolved into strategic planning. Corporations developed large corporate units dedicated to it. They were deliberately detached from the day-to-day realities of the business and emphasized formal procedures around numbers.

    Henry Mintzberg defined strategic planning as “a formalized system for codifying, elaborating and operationalizing the strategies which companies already have.” The fundamental belief was still that the future could largely be predicted.

    Now, strategic planning has fallen out of favor. In the face of relentless technological change, disruptive forces in industry after industry, global competition, and so on, planning seems like pointless wishful thinking.

    And yet, planning is clearly essential for any company of any size.

    The fact that you have a place to work which is equipped for the job, and you and your colleagues are working on a particular project at a particular time and place, requires some sort of planning. The reality is that plans have to be made about the use of a company’s resources all of the time. Some are short-term, others stretch into an imagined future.

    Universally valuable, but desperately unfashionable, planning waits like a spinster in a Jane Austen novel for someone to recognize her worth.

    But executives are wary of planning because it feels rigid, slow, and bureaucratic.

    The frustrations with current planning practices intersect with another fundamental managerial trend: organizational agility. Reorganizing around small self-managing teams — enhanced by agility methods like Scrum and LeSS — is emerging as the route to the organizational agility required to compete in the fast-changing business reality. One of the key principles underpinning team-based agility is that teams autonomously decide their priorities and where to allocate their own resources.

    The logic of centralized long-term strategic planning (done once a year at a fixed time) is the antithesis of an organization redesigned around teams who define their own priorities and resources allocation on a weekly basis.

    But if planning and agility are both necessary, organizations have to make them work. They have to create a Venn diagram with planning on one side, agility on the other, and a practical and workable sweet-spot in the middle.

    Agile planning has a number of characteristics:

    frameworks and tools able to deal with a future that will be different;
    the ability to cope with more frequent and dynamic changes;
    the need for quality time to be invested for a true strategic conversation rather than simply being a numbers game;
    resources and funds are available in a flexible way for emerging opportunities

    The intersection of planning with organizational agility generates two other paramount requirements:

    A process able to coordinate and align with agile teams

    A process that makes use of both limitless hard data and human judgment

    Reply
  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Maailmanlaajuinen osaajapula pahin 15 vuoteen – ”edellyttää ajattelutavan muutosta yrityksissä” https://www.is.fi/taloussanomat/art-2000008213210.html

    Reply
  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Less Meat Consumption And Air Travel Necessary For Net-Zero World, Report Says
    https://www.iflscience.com/environment/less-meat-consumption-air-travel-necessary-net-zero-world-report-says/

    A new report into the feasibility of achieving a net-zero economy by 2050 has concluded that “a relatively small number of key behavior changes… will deliver most of the necessary emission reductions.” While this includes slight cutbacks in our collective meat consumption and air travel, the authors insist that the creation of a net-zero world “does not call for a reduction in living standards.”

    Produced by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the report grapples with the measures that the UK must implement in order to reach its goal of becoming net-zero by mid-century, as well as its interim targets of cutting emissions compared to 1990 levels by 68 percent in 2030 and 78 percent in 2035. Doing so will entail reducing non-renewable energy use as much as possible and offsetting any emissions that can’t be eliminated.

    Reply
  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | Tim Urban
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU

    Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn’t make sense, but he’s never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window — and encourages us to think harder about what we’re really procrastinating on, before we run out of time.

    Reply
  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    One of the Greatest Speeches Ever | Steve Jobs
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuw8hxrFBH8

    Steve Jobs delivers an inspirational speech. Listen to the end for the most life changing quote of all-time. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you cannot achieve your dreams.

    You will be inspired and motivated to go out there and achieve your goals. I hope you all enjoy this motivational video. :)

    Speaker: Steve Jobs
    Steven Paul Jobs was an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc.; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

    Reply
  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    One of the Greatest Speeches Ever | Steve Jobs
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuw8hxrFBH8

    Reply
  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How HOT WHEELS Beat Out MATCHBOX
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Aw1auPWe0

    There is no more popular toy in the automotive world than Hot Wheels. Most of us at Donut were introduced to cars through Hot Wheels, and most still collect them to this day. Much like us there are millions of people that are obsessed with Hot Wheels and have incredible collections. How exactly did Mattel create the biggest selling toy in the world? How did it best companies like Matchbox? And how did a failed guitar design save Hot Wheels from losing to the competition?

    Reply
  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Saat sitä mitä mittaat, eikö niin? Tutkimuksen mukaan tavoitteiden ja mittareiden viestintä ja seuranta unohtuu käytännön työssä helposti.

    Lue lisää löydöksistämme tuoreesta B2B-myynnin kyvykkyystutkimuksesta.

    Tutkimus suomalaisen B2B-myynnin nykytilasta ja ratkaisevista kehityskohteista
    https://getsales.fi/insights?fbclid=IwAR2IqgSjWy_8YUQTZPWD4KNPbLa1DJu5mBPpc6tobyge68X8zo9kDCS_6Ec

    Yli 70% B2B-myyntitiimeistä ei käy läpi säännöllisesti oman yrityksen kilpailuetuja ja erottautumistekijöitä.
    Noin 60% B2B-myyjistä pitää oman yrityksen tuote- ja palveluvalikoimaa epäselvänä.

    Tavoitteellinen työskentely
    Alle puolella (42%) B2B-myyjistä on selkeät ja mitattavat myyntitavoitteet.
    Vain joka neljännes B2B-myyjistä tietää tavoitteensa päivä-, viikko-, kuukausi- ja kvartaalitasolla.
    Vain noin kolmannes B2B-myyjistä asettaa asiakaskeskusteluille selkeät ja konkreettiset tavoitteet.
    Vain 13% B2B-myyjistä käyttää asiakaskeskustelun runkoa, jonka avulla keskusteluita viedään johdonmukaisesti eteenpäin.

    Systematiikka ja prospektointi
    Yli puolelta (2/3) yrityksistä puuttuu selkeä ja johdonmukainen tapa tehdä tarjouksia.
    Ainoastaan vain 20% B2B-myyjistä kysyy systemaattisesti suosituksia asiakkailta!
    Vain 23% yrityksistä kerää asiakasprospekteja ja liidejä systemaattisesti.

    Alle viidenneksellä yrityksistä on selkeästi määritelty kauppojen klousaamisen prosessi.

    Vain 50% B2B-myyjistä on miettinyt mukaansatempaavan asiakaskeskustelun aloituksen.
    Alle viidenneksellä B2B-myyjistä on selkeä toimintatapa vastaväitteiden käsittelyyn.

    Ainoastaan 22% yrityksistä hyödyntää moderneja digitaalisia kanavia ja apuvälineitä myyntityössä.
    Vain noin puolet B2B-myyjistä hyödyntää myyntityössä referenssiaineistoja.
    75% B2B-myyjistä ei hyödynnä asiakaskeskusteluissa tätä tarkoitusta varten laadittua käsikirjoitusta.

    33% myyntijohtajista pitää myyntiorganisaationsa asiakasprospektien ja liidien keräämistä systemaattisena. Myyjistä vain 18% on samaa mieltä.
    30% myyntijohtajista on sitä mieltä, että myynnillä on olemassa selkeät standardit asiakaskeskusteluiden valmistautumisen osalta. Vain 6% myyjistä on samaa mieltä.

    Myyntijohtajista yli 50% pitää myynnin tulostavoitteita selkeinä, kun vain 22% myyjistä on samaa mieltä.

    Mitä tämä käytännössä tarkoittaa?
    Kehityskohdat koetaan liiketoimintatiimeissä tyypillisesti seuraavanlaisina ongelmina:

    Priorisointi takkuaa
    “Aika ei riitä myynnin tekemiseen niin laadukkaasti kuin haluaisin.”

    Talenttia on haastava saada sisään
    “Uudet myyjät pääsevät hitaasti vauhtiin. Rekrytointi ei tuo sisään riittävän hyvää talenttia.”

    Asiakkuuksien kasvattaminen sakkaa
    “Meillä on hyviä asiakkuuksia, mutta strategisten kumppanuuksien muodostaminen ontuu.”

    Heikko ennustettavuus
    “Myynnin ennustaminen yli kuukauden päähän ei ole tarkkaa.”

    Liian vähän merkityksellisiä asiakaskeskusteluita
    “Asiakkaiden tavoittaminen on vaikeaa tai vaatii liikaa työtä.”

    Stressi
    “Työhyvinvoinnissa ja työntekijäpidossa olisi toivomisen varaa.”

    Prospektointi
    “Prospekteilla ei ole tarpeita tai kumppanit on valittu.”

    Asiakkailta ei saada päätöksiä
    “Asiakaskeskustelut ovat hyviä, mutta klousaaminen venyy tai sakkaa.”

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Voiko työtarjouksesta kieltäytyä? Kyllä, ja näin teet sen oikein!
    https://www.ukko.fi/yrittajyyskoulu/tyotarjouksesta-kieltaytyminen/

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Suomalainen yrittäjä haaveilee uusista asiakkaista ja myynnin kasvusta. Kyselytutkimuksen mukaan isoimpana haasteena on ajan ja osaamisen puute etenkin, kun kyseessä on verkossa tapahtuva asiakashankinta, markkinointi ja kaupankäynti.

    “Resurssiin liittyvissä haasteissa yrittäjän on hyvä muistaa, ettei kaikkea tarvitse tehdä yksin”, toteaa Netellon operatiivinen johtaja Mikko Sinilahti.

    ”Suomalaiselta yrittäjältä puuttuu rohkeus toimia” – tällaisia ovat suomalaisten yrittäjien haasteet ja haaveet
    https://kumppanisisallot.fi/kauppalehti/netello/suomalaiselta-yrittajalta-puuttuu-rohkeus-toimia-tallaisia-ovat-suomalaisten-yrittajien-haasteet-ja-haaveet/?fbclid=IwAR0QjlOhM6XsTSxF_cTOHW1OgH_ZEA2zCOJsdWClew4ivGCVTLVkbbdYIhA

    Reply
  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45
    https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=facebook&tpcc=orgsocial_edit

    It’s widely believed that the most successful entrepreneurs are young. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were in their early twenties when they launched what would become world-changing companies. Do these famous cases reflect a generalizable pattern? VC and media accounts seem to suggest so. When we analyzed founders who have won TechCrunch awards over the last decade, the average age at the time of founding was just 31. For the people selected by Inc. magazine as the founders of the fastest-growing startups in 2015, the average age at founding was only 29. Consistent with these findings, Paul Graham, a cofounder of Y Combinator, once quipped that “the cutoff in investors’ heads is 32… After 32, they start to be a little skeptical.” But is this view correct?

    Reply
  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Tutkimus osoitti ylivertaisuus­vinouman pätevän myös politiikkaan: Mitä vähemmän ihminen tajuaa aiheesta, sitä enemmän hän luulee tietävänsä
    https://www.hs.fi/tiede/art-2000005648347.html

    Reply
  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    It turns out the way to do this is to make them visualize themselves as Superman.

    Psychologists Turn Conservatives Into Liberals With One Strange Thought Experiment
    https://www.iflscience.com/brain/psychologists-turn-conservatives-into-liberals-with-one-strange-thought-experiment/

    Studies have consistently shown that turning liberals into conservatives (at least temporarily) is surprisingly easy. All you need to do is scare them. 

    For example, one group of experimenters asked students to think about their own death before taking tests designed to assess their political beliefs. Over several experiments, the researchers, from the University of Central Arkansas, found that when the participants had been asked to think about their own death they became more conservative, and had attitudes in line with their conservative classmates on issues from capital punishment and abortion, to rights for gay employees.

    The theory goes that the liberal students became much more socially conservative than the control group (who thought about television) because thinking about their own death made them feel vulnerable.

    “Moreover, defensive conservatism appears to be a general psychological response to vulnerability that is not necessarily strategically linked to the eliciting threats.”

    Now researchers have discovered an easy way to do the reverse – turn conservatives into liberals. Psychologist John Bargh has written about experiments his team conducted in which he managed to turn conservatives liberal through another thought experiment.

    It turns out the way to do this is to make them visualize themselves as Superman.

    In John Bargh’s book Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do he writes that he and his team asked participants to picture themselves as Superman. They were asked to really picture what it would be like to be as invincible as Superman – Business Insider reports – where bullets, fire, and falling off a cliff wouldn’t hurt them. The control group was asked to picture themselves merely having the ability to fly.

    The participants were then asked to rate statements to assess their political beliefs. This time the experimenters found that it was conservatives’ beliefs that shifted. They became – albeit briefly – more socially liberal than they were, whilst liberals’ attitudes remained unchanged by the thought experiment.

    Reply
  21. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Remember professional just means you get paid. It means nothing about quality!

    Reply
  22. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Pienelle yritykselle osakas on suuri riski
    https://www.mandatumlife.fi/life-magazine/2019/pienelle-yritykselle-osakas-on-suuri-riski/

    Yrittäjä tunnistaa liiketoiminnassaan jatkuvasti erilaisia riskejä, mutta yrittäjään itseensä kohdistuvat riskit unohtuvat helposti. Henkilövakuutuksilla turvataan osakkeiden lunastamiseen tarvittava rahoitus, jos jollekin yrityksen osakkaista sattuu jotakin ikävää.

    Reply
  23. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Science Of Persuasion: How To Overcome Strong Opinions
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kwamechristian/2021/08/29/the-science-of-persuasion-how-to-overcome-strong-opinions/

    Psychology has become increasingly mainstream in recent years, with enormous attention being paid to how our psychologies, often unconsciously, shape how we behave and the world around us. Andy Luttrell is a professor at Ball State University and host of the Opinion Science podcast, which focuses on the science behind the opinions we hold, and why we hold them.

    Reply
  24. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Kathryn Dill / Wall Street Journal:
    Harvard study details how automated hiring systems, now used by 99% of Fortune 500 companies, exclude 10M+ qualified workers in the US from hiring discussions — Automated-hiring systems are excluding many people from job discussions at a time when additional employees are desperately needed

    Companies Need More Workers. Why Do They Reject Millions of Résumés?
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-need-more-workers-why-do-they-reject-millions-of-resumes-11630728008?mod=djemalertNEWS

    Automated-hiring systems are excluding many people from job discussions at a time when additional employees are desperately needed

    Companies are desperate to hire, and yet some workers still can’t seem to find jobs. Here may be one reason why: The software that sorts through applicants deletes millions of people from consideration.

    Employers today rely on increasing levels of automation to fill vacancies efficiently, deploying software to do everything from sourcing candidates and managing the application process to scheduling interviews and performing background checks. These systems do the job they are supposed to do. They also exclude more than 10 million workers from hiring discussions, according to a new Harvard Business School study released Saturday.

    Job prospects get tripped up by everything from brief résumé gaps to ballooning job descriptions from employers that lessen the chance they will measure up. Lead Harvard researcher Joseph Fuller cited examples of hospitals scanning résumés of registered nurses for “computer programming” when what they need is someone who can enter patient data into a computer. Power companies, he said, scan for a customer-service background when hiring people to repair electric transmission lines. Some retail clerks won’t make it past a hiring system if they don’t have “floor-buffing” experience, Mr. Fuller said. This reliance on automation filters big sections of the population out of the workforce and companies lose access to candidates they want to hire, he added.

    Harvard’s findings—resulting from a survey of companies and workers conducted by the business school’s Project on Managing the Future of Work and consulting firm Accenture PLC—offer new insight into the current challenges of matching employers with potential employees as the economy reopens following a pandemic-led downturn. That process is proving to be unusually slow and complicated. The number of open U.S. positions surged to a record 10 million in June, the most recent month for which government data is available.

    Many company leaders—nearly nine out of 10 executives surveyed by Harvard—said they know the software they use to filter applicants prevents them from seeing good candidates. Firms such as Amazon.com Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. said they are studying these tools as well as other hiring methods to understand why they can’t find the workers they need. Some said the technology can be changed to serve them better, while others are turning to less-automated methods to find the right people.

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  25. Tomi Engdahl says:

    ”Suomalaiselta yrittäjältä puuttuu rohkeus toimia” – tällaisia ovat suomalaisten yrittäjien haasteet ja haaveet
    https://kumppanisisallot.fi/kauppalehti/netello/suomalaiselta-yrittajalta-puuttuu-rohkeus-toimia-tallaisia-ovat-suomalaisten-yrittajien-haasteet-ja-haaveet/?fbclid=IwAR0Xa9pkeUclgnVldgzsUnbjz7UIiWgYnF_zAy9X6J8Nc20rtqWzdtZYPbA

    Suomalaisen yrittäjän haaveet ovat yleensä kohtuullisia: myynnin kasvua, pärjäämistä ja tunnettuutta. Haasteet liittyvät yleensä resursseihin tai pikemminkin niiden puutteeseen.

    Iltalehden ja Kauppalehden yhteistyössä Netellon kanssa toteutetussa kyselyssä tutkittiin digi- ja verkkokauppaan liittyviä haasteita ja haaveita Suomessa. Vastaukset eivät olleet kovin yllättäviä. Haasteissa korostui resurssien, kuten ajan ja osaamisen puute. Haaveiden puolella nousivat esiin erityisesti myynnilliset tavoitteet ja yrittäjänä pärjääminen.

    ”Olemme jatkuvasti tekemisissä suomalaisten yrittäjien kanssa ja tunnemme heidän haaveensa ja haasteensa erittäin hyvin, eivätkä nämä vastaukset yllättäneet”, kertoo Netellon operatiivinen johtaja Mikko Sinilahti.

    Asiakkaita kaivataan lisää
    Monessa vastauksessa suurimmaksi haasteeksi mainittiin asiakkaiden puute. Tämä on ymmärrettävästi todellinen haaste, sillä mikään yritys ei menesty ilman asiakkaita.

    Yrittäjien vastauksissa korostuu priorisoinnin vaikeus. Asiakashankintaan ja markkinointiin pitäisi panostaa, mutta aika ei millään riitä kaikkeen. Verkosta ei saada riittävästi asiakkaita eikä osaavaa kumppania ole löytynyt.

    Esiin nousi myös oikean kohderyhmän tavoittaminen. Markkinoinnissa onnistumiseksi pitäisi olla paljon ymmärrystä siitä, missä haluttu kohderyhmä liikkuu eikä tätä tietoa useinkaan löydy.

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