Weekend Digest: The Be A Better Employee Edition

TV PREVIEW: BRUMMETT, SANDERS & THE PRIVATE OPTION
On this week’s edition of Talk Business & Politics: the Private Option. It is settling in to once again become the dominant and defining issue in the upcoming legislative session.

How will it be reshaped? Can it muster the votes it needs? And what does the plan’s chief architect and the Gov.-elect think about the health insurance program?

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist and Talk Business & Politics contributor John Brummett sits down with Sen. David Sanders for an in-depth conversation.

And the start of a new year always brings along the start of an old political tradition: the Gillett Coon Supper. Might this year’s event bring a new taste to politics? A preview with one of the Coon Supper’s biggest supporters.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics, Sunday morning at 9 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7.

ARE YOU FINDING IT DIFFICULT TO LEAD?
Harvard Business Review says it could be because you are working too hard. What? And you might say, “No way, impossible.”

HBR makes a case-in-point from Marshall Goldsmith’s book, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.”

In it, Goldsmith makes the case that many of the behaviors that initially propel high-achievers up the corporate ladder are paradoxically the same ones preventing them from reaching the very top. Habits like winning too much (the need to win every workplace disagreement, even when it doesn’t matter), adding too much value (adding your two cents to every discussion), and goal obsession (becoming so wrapped up in achieving short-term goals that you forget the larger mission).

“Early in your career, these behaviors demonstrate that you are driven. But the moment you step into a position of leadership, they become counterproductive.”

And what about disconnecting?

Like many of the practices Goldsmith identifies in his book, it is surprisingly hard to recognize the damage working excessive hours inflicts both on leaders and their teams.

HBR asks, “What happens to our interpersonal skills when we work to exhaustion?” And what dangers does fatigue and lack of energy pose on complex decisions you as a senior leader need to make?

So how do you solve this to make disconnecting easier? Go to this link to find out.

WANT TO BE A BETTER EMPLOYEE IN 2015?
Now that’s a New Year’s Resolution that may not be on your list, but should it be?

Most of us start the New Year hoping to be better versions of ourselves.

Our work lives, especially, are an easily quantified place to improve.

We’re starting 2015 by sharing 10 ways you can be better at your job this year.

Click here to get onboard with these tips from Fast Company.

SHORTAGE OF DATA SCIENCE PROFESSIONALS
CNBC calls it, “Big data’s big stumbling block.”

The world is in dire need of data science professionals as experts ring alarm bells over the shortage of talent in a field that has become crucial to global business.

A recent note from McKinsey showed only 18 percent of companies believe they have the skills to gather and use data effectively while 19 percent are confident that their data-gathering processes contribute to sales effectiveness.

So what do experts project the shortages to be in 2015 and beyond and why is there such a dearth of talent?

Go to this link to learn the challenges for filling these skill sets.

IPO CLASS OF 2015
Forbes posts, “After Alibaba is Uber the next blockbuster?”

“Every year, there’s been that one defining deal,” says Paul Bard, director of research at IPO-focused Renaissance Capital. There are other candidates for 2015 – Airbnb, Pinterest, Snapchat are among the 40 tech firms valued at more than $1 billion according to venture-capital tracker CB Insights – but to Bard, “Uber is the wildcard.”

When and why could Uber Technologies (car sharing on-demand) be positioned for an IPO, and what are some other potential members of the ‘Class of 2015’?

Connect to this link for your 2015 IPO primer.

FORMER NEW YORK GOV. MARIO CUOMO DIES AT 82
Unabashed liberal and national public figure, Mario Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York, died this past week at the age of 82 from heart failure.

He died shortly after Cuomo’s son, Andrew, was sworn in to a second term as New York governor. The New York Times pays a comprehensive tribute in this obituary.

Mario Cuomo led New York during a turbulent time, 1983 through 1994. His ambitions for an activist government were thwarted by recession. He found himself struggling with the State Legislature not over what the government should do but over what programs should be cut, and what taxes should be raised, simply to balance the budget.

Still, no matter the problems he found in Albany, Mr. Cuomo burst beyond the state’s boundaries to personify the liberal wing of his national party and become a source of unending fascination and, ultimately, frustration for Democrats, whose leaders twice pressed him to run for president, in 1988 and 1992, to no avail.

He had a pointed sense of humor. When an engine failed in a puff of smoke on a state-owned Gulfstream G-1 jet one morning with the governor aboard, he barely noticed, and kept talking about national politics until he noticed that a reporter across the way had stopped taking notes and had turned ashen. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Aren’t you in a state of grace?”

Mr. Cuomo served longer than any of his 51 predecessors except Rockefeller and, in the early years of the republic, George Clinton. He might have surpassed Rockefeller, but in seeking a fourth term in 1994, he was defeated by George E. Pataki, a little-known Republican state senator from Peekskill. Mr. Cuomo’s advisers had counseled him not to run again, but he overruled them.

To read more about his rise to state and national prominence, click here for the full obituary.

BEST AND WORST OF POLITICS IN 2014
U.S. News and World Report has taken a cross-section look back at 2014 with “The Best and Worst of the Year in Politics.”

“The best candidate, worst ad and biggest surprise of the 2014 campaign.”

In politics, 2014 will be remembered as the year of the Democratic drubbing.

But as in every election cycle, there were candidates and moments that left an indelible impression.

From the best and worst candidates to the most overrated and underrated, it’s all here.

2015’s TOP 10 LEGISLATIVE ISSUES TO WATCH
From environmental to tax policy, Governing has posted the top issues facing state legislatures across the country in 2015.

States and localities will spend much of their time this year grappling with troublesome new realities and trying to work out their relationship with Washington.

New realities are a given in any governmental year, but the 2015 crop includes some unusually potent ones. Legislators will be dealing with widespread water shortages, dwindling transportation funds, the emergence of new drugs that threaten to blow up Medicaid budgets, and revised pension accounting rules, among other challenges. There will be passionate debates about how to regulate the hospitality and taxi industries, and about how to safely transport the oil and gas pouring out of North Dakota and Canada.

In Arkansas, Governor-elect Asa Hutchinson will be grappling to pass one of his campaign promises.

Hutchinson is calling for immediate reductions for middle-income earners to be eventually expanded across all wage brackets.

For the top 10 list, plus a look at “five trending policies and problems to keep an eye on,” click here.

CAMPAIGN RESEARCH PUSHES THE BOUNDS OF PRIVACY
Politico reports in 2014 invasion of privacy against citizens reached new levels of outrage, “but by far the most sweeping violator of privacy wasn’t the government or big-box stores: It was the very political leaders to whom the voters were appealing.”

Campaign research data mining targeted just about anything from toilet paper buying habits to Viagra use.

Data mining has become so sophisticated that campaigns can now target voters by mashing together public records with much more personal information from Facebook feeds and consumer reports that offer such nuggets as who has sterling credit ratings but hasn’t purchased a car in seven or more years. One company even wants to get into the political market by selling campaigns data that identifies which voters sought information on Viagra and other erectile-dysfunction drugs.

But while privacy activists and campaign watchdogs are raising concerns, virtually everyone in the political establishment of both parties — even those who, like Sen. Rand Paul, trumpet the cause of personal privacy — is fighting to avoid any restrictions on campaigns over data mining.

For the complete story including comments from a variety of regulators and political operatives, follow this link.

A BEHIND THE SCENES REVEAL OF DISNEY SIX DECADES AGO
It was a November 1953 edition of LIFE where “the magazine took its readers behind the scenes at Disney.”

Up to 400 draftsmen, editors, artists, cameramen, musicians, idea men, special effects men, all kinds of technicians, are required for even the shortest cartoon. There are inventions of great complexity and ingenuity…

But being Disney, the special stamp of this machine is that it careens along looking as if every screw inside were loose. The wanderer through the studio will come across animators making faces in mirrors to get ideas for the looney animals they are drawing.

For a charming look of photos “that ran in that 1953 issue of LIFE — and several that didn’t,” go to this link.

FIVE KEY TRENDS THAT ARE DRIVING THE BUSINESS OF SPORTS
So what is the difference between a customer and a fan? Well that was one of the key points made during a conference sponsored by Stanford Graduate School of Business during its inaugural Sports Innovation Conference held last year.

While fan passion is as old as sport itself, leagues and franchises are now using cutting-edge technology not just to build winning teams but also to capitalize on the ardor of their customer base to grow another revenue source — corporate sponsorships. Here are a few of the business trends that emerged from the April conference.

For those trends as well as the answer for the difference between a customer and a fan, click on this link.