Emotions follow us wherever we go and greet us in every situation in life.  We cannot escape them however in business we must deal with them.   The calculation of profit is a mathematical equation that has a very logical and precise path that must be followed.  In business though many situations push and pull to challenge the seemingly logical approach to the profit calculation because of the emotions we bring our day.  If we were to recognize the emotions that are naturally in each business relationship and engagement we may be able to bring more success to the profit equation.   Success in the...

Sometimes we encounter folks in the course of business that are pushing the envelope on the logic of the day.  I affectionately refer to the people as flying their ‘Freak Flag’. The definition of freak flag from Urban Dictionary: Freak Flag: a. A characteristic, mannerism, or appearance of a person, either subtle or overt, which implies unique, eccentric, creative, adventurous or unconventional thinking. b.  Unrestrained, unorthodox or unconventional in thinking, behavior, manners, etc. One who espouses radical, nonconformist or dissenting views and opinions that are outside the...

UBS is coming to grips with the loss its ‘rogue trader’ has inflicted on its balance sheet.  The latest tally is approaching $2.3 billion which is a stagger sum of money.  It is safe to say that the hows and the whys will be sorted through, and debated for the months to come.  The one description of Kweku Adoboli (the rogue trader) that struck me in the Wall Street Journal is how his co-workers described him as being extremely polite.  Being polite is certainly a favorable character trait especially when it allows you to hide $2.3 billion in losses.  Of course if he were a rude...

Since January I have been trying to remove paper from my daily life.  This is for sure a big hairy audacious goal but one I think is achievable. I started off the year trying to use my HP Laserjet All-in-one printer to scan my documents and store them in an electronic archive.   Wow, a lot of work.  In order for anything to be useful it must be easy. I ended up giving in and buying a Fujitsu ScanSnap.  This is an expensive piece of hardware for such a limited function but it is proving to be well worth it.  To be fair you do get a Pro copy of Adobe Acrobat which does not come cheap either....

Keeping my desk clean and organized is always hard to do with the spaghetti like mess of wires coming off my laptop.  Apple has not introduced a docking station for their MacBook line so I have always relied on my iCurve laptop stand to assist the the clutter.   I found an interesting concept from Henge Docks which has made a nice do-it-yourself kit for making a functional docking station.  It helps that it looks cool too when you are done. Rather than using a “master port” like most Dell or IBM docking stations do to clip into the Henge Dock merely utilizes the ports already on your...

For those of us that have been using Apple products long enough to know how to boot with extensions off we also have missed the days of the “launcher”.  I have found memories of Mac OS 7.6 with the Launcher – all of my programs neatly organized and useful.  For the last eight or so years I have used DragThing as a best alternative to the Mac Classic Launcher.  I still have all of my apps neatly organized into categories which reserves my dock for the most important programs like Mail and Safari. I upgraded to Lion and was curious about Launchpad, the new iOS like program to...