Entries by First Sun Team

Your #Career : Bulletproof Your Position: 10 Tips For Improving Job Security…The Key to Job Survival is to Find Ways to Make yourself a More Valuable Employee, So you Stand Out From the Crowd.

Sometimes, coming to work each day and doing your job isn’t enough to protect you from being let go due to “downsizing.” The key to job survival is to find ways to make yourself a more valuable employee, so you stand out from the crowd. Question: I’ve worked in the same job for several years, […]

Your #Career : How To Find A Second Act With Purpose…Today’s Workers are Already Anticipating the Need for Change with Plans to Extend their Working Lives.

Once you have some picture of where you want to go, get things moving by taking small steps toward that vision. What really matters is that you do a little something on a regular basis. When Doug Rauch “retired” in 2008, he was 56. He had spent 31 years at Trader Joe’s, where he led […]

#Leadership : 7 Mistakes Leaders Make That Make Everyone Miserable…“Look for 3 Things in a Person: Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity. If they Don’t Have the Last One, Don’t even Bother.” –Warren Buffet

From Enron to Volkswagen, we’ve watched in horror as leaders who lack integrity have destroyed businesses time and again. But the real tragedy happens when regular leaders, who are otherwise great, sabotage themselves, day after day, with mistakes that they can’t see but are obvious to everyone else. In most cases, it’s slight and often […]

#Leadership : True Grit: How My Team Learned To Thrive In The Face Of Adversity…Business is a Game of Dramatic Ups & Downs, Especially for Teams that are Trying to Create Something New or Bring about Meaningful Change in a Stagnant & Complacent Market.

It’s easy to feel a bit bipolar at times. Some days you’re on top of the world, and other days you’re just trying to stay alive. How a team manages these swings, and the periods of adversity in particular, is what separates successful businesses from failures. Every business encounters adversity. It’s one of the few […]

#Leadership : 5 Bad Habits That Make Meetings Miserable & Unproductive…Report Found that 67% of Meetings are Considered Unproductive by Executives & They take Up Roughly 15 % of every Institutions Time.

In 2015 organizations held more than 25 million meetings per day in the United States. This translates to more than $37 billion in lost productivity, according toa study by Fuze. One Harvard Business Review report found that 67 percent of meetings are considered unproductive by executives and they take up roughly 15 percent of every institutions […]

#Leadership : 8 Ways to Not Only Survive But Prosper Around Negative People…To Be an Manager/Entrepreneur, you Have to Have a Thick Skin & Not be Defensive to Customer Feedback & Constructive Criticism. On the Other Hand, No Manager/Entrepreneur should Tolerate Negative Vibes & Complainers on their Own Team.

The challenge is to understand the difference between these two situations — and to respond effectively to both. You can’t reinforce negative thinking and stay positive. Related: People Hating on You? Here Are 4 Ways to Use That Negative Energy to Your Advantage. Even active listening to negative team members and partners, as you would with customers, […]

#Leadership : 15 Tricks for Making Better Decisions Faster…The Thing about Most Important Decisions is That you Usually Don’t Have much Time to Make them. Question: What is One Trick you Use to Make Faster, Better Decisions?

“Measure the weight of a decision against your established set of core priorities for the company. Will the decision affect the top priority? Then allow yourself more time to deliberate and analyze various outcomes. If the decision pertains to one of your lower priorities or business goals, trust your instincts, get the opinion of one […]

Your #Career : 5 Ways Other People Can Help (or Hurt) Your Career…Work hard, Put your Time In, & Move Up the Corporate Ladder, Right? Not so Fast.

As important as it is to do your best at work and to gain experience, there are many mistakes you could make that would negate your hard work and damage your career. In addition, the truth is that you alone are not in charge of where your career goes (or doesn’t go); other people have more power […]

Your #Career : Ready To Leave Your Corporate Job And Start Freelancing? Here’s What You Need To Know…Projections of More than 40% of the Workforce Will be Made up of Freelance Workers by 2020.

Intuit projects that more than 40% of the workforce will be made up of freelance workers by 2020. Other research shares that by the end of this decade over half of the private workforce will be independent. If these projections holds true, millions of Americans will transition into a freelance career over the next four […]

#Strategy : A Wharton Professor Shares 3 Science-Backed Strategies for Raising Highly Creative Kids…If you Want to Raise Creative Kids, you Need to Teach them to Think for Themselves.

To do this, Adam Grant, a professor of management at Wharton, author of the new book, “Originals,” and father of three, tells Business Insider, you need “to foster an identify that ‘I’m somebody who doesn’t conform,’ that ‘I’m somebody who doesn’t follow the crowd.’” According to Grant, parents of highly-creative children think differently about how they […]