Northern & Southern Kingdom of Israel

http://www.bible-history.com/map_israel_judah/israel_the_northern_kingdom.html




http://www.bible-history.com/map_israel_judah/judah_the_southern_kingdom.html

8 Pieces of Professional Advice I Didn't Want But Definitely Needed

April 16, 2013

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Since screw-ups tend to be magnets for advice, I've received a lot ofpainfully diret -- yet ultimately very helpful -- comments along the way:

"Express your individuality on your own time." In my first job after college I sometimes let my personality overshadow my responsibilities and duties and it definitely hurt my performance and limited my opportunities.

We're all servants (in a good way) and our customers, peers, bosses, and direct reports all have needs. Meeting those needs -- on their terms -- is more important than somehow "staying true" to ourselves.

Maintaining your integrity is vital, but there's a big difference between staying true to yourself and "just being me."

"Face value has no value." It's easy to view the actions of others through the lens of how that behavior impacts us, especially if those actions impact us negatively.

Still, most employees don't try to do a bad job. Most customers aren't intentionally difficult. Most bosses aren't simply out to get you.

There is always more to the story. Fail to look deeper and you miss an opportunity to make a bad situation better -- for everyone.

"They're just as scared of you." I wrestled in high school and traveled to summer tournaments where other wrestlers often seemed larger than life. I assigned them a near-mythical status because they came from different states and wore t-shirts from high-profile camps and wrestling clubs.

I never imagined they might see me the same way.

The same is true in business. Under the Armani and Wharton School and high-profile name-drops is a guy or gal just as nervous and insecure as you. Symbols of success are often just a mask.

The playing field is always more level than it seems.

"When you fire someone and need to say more than, 'We have to let you go,' you haven't done your job." Except in unusual circumstances, firing an employee is the last step in a longer process. If along the way you've identified sub-par performance, provided additional training or resources, set targets and timelines for performance improvement, and followed up when progress is lacking, then there are no surprises, no additional conversations necessary, no arguments to have... the employee knows.

And you've done your job as well as you can. But even so...

"If you can sleep the night after you fire someone, something is wrong with you." Even if you've done everything right, firing an employee feels horrible. (I know they "fired themselves," but still.) You've impacted their career, their life, their family... you should feel awful.

If you don't feel awful, it's time to step out of a management role.

"Always sell yourself harder than you think you should." I'm fairly shy and often insecure so "selling" is hard for me. I felt more comfortable waiting for bosses to discover my talents and promote me. I feel more comfortable waiting for potential customers to somehow discover me.

That's a problem, because success in any field or profession is at least partly built on basic sales skills: The ability and willingness to determine needs, overcome objections, provide solutions, and to be charismatic and convincing.

Be enthusiastic. Be especially about yourself. People will respond positively.

"Seriously... just shut up." I used to talk a lot. I thought I was insightful and clever and witty and, well, I thought I was a hoot. Very occasionally I might have been.

Most of the time I wasn't.

Truly confident people don't feel the need to talk -- at all. I hate when it happens, but I still occasionally realize I'm talking not because the other person is interested in what I have to say but because I'm interested in what I have to say.

Never speak just to please yourself; when you do you end up pleasing no one.

"Pick something you believe in and stick to it." When I first started racing motorcycles the then-500cc world champion (this was before today's MotoGP; remember, I'm really old) told me he always walked an unfamiliar track before riding any laps. It was a ritual that allowed him to spot surfaces, bumps, and potential racing lines he might otherwise have missed.

Good enough for him, good enough for me, so I started doing the same thing.

Did it work? I certainly thought it did... and therefore, placebo or not, it did.

Think about a task you perform frequently, choose something you can do that actually helps you perform better, and start doing it every time: Whether it's how you prepare, how you follow-up, how you'll double-check your work, etc. Soon performing your "ritual" will give you more confidence, especially when the stakes are high, and as a result your performance will improve.

Think of it like wearing lucky socks... except in this case it actually makes a difference.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130416124012-20017018-8-pieces-of-professional-advice-i-didn-t-want-but-definitely-needed?trk=eml-mktg-condig-0108-p1

Attractive People Are More Successful. Really?

April 26, 2013

Beautiful people, both men and women, tend to earn more than those with average looks. They also get hired sooner, get promoted quicker, sell more, and even get a bank loan more easily than their less attractive counterparts. Believe that? Surprisingly there's substantial research to support the theory!

I have to say that I was surprised by the amount of solid research that supports the idea that physically attractive people are more successful. What made me research this a little was a conversation with a CEO of a well known global company. She insisted that anybody she hires into the company should have good looks. When I work with companies they often ask for my help in filling senior positions for Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Performance Officers, or Chief Data Scientists, etc. and looks was never one of my search criteria. But maybe it should be...here is why:

Research compiled by economics professor Daniel Hamermesh and published in his bookBeauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, shows very convincingly that beautiful people earn a higher salary than average looking folk. He also shows that good looking individuals are employed sooner, get promoted more quickly, and tend to have higher ranking jobs in companies. His work also confirms that attractive employees tend to bring in more money for their companies, and therefore will be seen as more successful. What's more, this bias towards beauty goes beyond our careers. Hamermesh's research even shows that beautiful people are more likely to have successful loan applications and pay lower interest rates than less beautiful people (even if everything else is equal).

In other research, Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at London School of Economics, shows that beautiful people tend to have higher intelligence than ugly people (especially if they are men). Furthermore, researchers David Ruth and Amy Hodges at Rice University show that people with more beautiful faces are more likely to be successful in job interviews.

So why should this be? Professor Dario Maestripieri from the University of Chicago concludes in his article 'The truth about why beautiful people are more successful' that it comes down to the 'sex factor'. He basically argues that attractive people are more appealing as potential sex partners. This means that subconsciously (or not) we chose to interact and do business with attractive rather than ugly people - because it increases our chances to have sex with them.

Whether the 'sex factor' conclusion is the right one or not, it looks as if beauty might be seen as a key to success. So was my CEO client right to demand only beautiful candidates? I am still not convinced yet, but are you? Do you feel it's time to up-date your LinkedIn profile picture and have a beauty make-over? What is your view on this? Would you hire someone for their looks? Are you more likely to buy from a beautiful sales person? Are we biased towards attractive people or is this discrimination that needs to be stopped?

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130426054620-64875646-attractive-people-are-more-successful-really?trk=mp-details-pymf-mpost

Meet Inc.'s Audacious Judges

April 18, 2013

Meet Inc.'s Audacious Judges

To make sure we had the right companies on our first annual Audacious list, we asked a few entrepreneurs--who are audacious in their own right--to weigh in.

Inc.

 

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They poke fun at Apple, elbow in on giant banks, lead SEALs to terrorists, and, literally, make the blind see. Welcome to Inc.'s list of the scrappiest, most creative, most disruptive companies of the year.
To make sure we had the right companies on our list, we asked some entrepreneurs and innovators who are pretty audacious in their own right to review our nominees and make their own suggestions. Read on to meet our esteemed panel of judges and get their takes on the definition of audacity.
Max Levchin on Audacious Technology
"An audacious company is one that measures its success or failure by the number of people whose lives are improved as a result of its work. It's all about the vision. Where is the company trying to go, and why? It's a pretty great way to consider whether you've spent your time wisely or not."
--Max Levchin, the judge in our Tech category, co-founded PayPal and more recently founded the payments start-up Affirm.
Ben Cohen on Audacious Culture
"The ideal culture is one where everyone really feels they are pulling together. Letting employees work with their hands, brains, and hearts. People who are engaged on all three levels, who are motivated, and who've bought in and have the owner's perspective, they have joy in the workplace, and they make better stuff. That's the ideal."
--Ben Cohen, who judged our Culture category, is a co-founder and the former CEO of Ben & Jerry's.
Bob Lord on Audacious Marketing
"Audacious marketing brings together not just creative ideas but also technology and data at the same time. So you know more about the customer. The brand experience is personalized. And you can make it more delightful for the customer. You merge all of these things together and keep the customer at the center."
--Bob Lord, who judged the Marketing category, is CEO of the interactive marketing agency Razorfish and co-author of the book Converge: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology.
James Dyson on Audacious Design
"The problem with having a new idea is that most people are dead set against your success. But a good idea backed up with an unwavering sense of purpose can overcome the naysayers. It took years of slammed doors before I went off on my own to design, manufacture, and distribute my vacuum."
--James Dyson, who judged the Design category, is founder and chief engineer of Dyson, which makes vacuums, fans, heaters, and hand dryers.
Scott Harrison on Audacious Social Impact
"When I was judging this category, I was looking for really innovative ideas that weren't obvious. There are so many companies that follow each other's example, and I was looking for something I hadn't seen before. Whether they're for-profit or nonprofit, all of these companies are challenging the status quo and have the world's bottom billion as their beneficiaries."
--Scott Harrison, the judge in our Social Impact category, is founder and CEO of charity: water, a nonprofit organization that provides clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

http://www.inc.com/audacious-companies/meet-the-judges.html?nav=featured

The Man Who Made the Cash Register Obsolete

ssie Lapowsky | Inc. magazine

Apr 18, 2013

The Man Who Made the Cash Register Obsolete

With the Square Card Reader, Jack Dorsey made it possible for anyone, anywhere to take credit card payments. Now, competition is heating up in the mobile payments market.

Photograph by Peter Yang

BRING IT ON Jack Dorsey anticipated early skepticism about Square and confronted it directly.

 

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COMPANY PROFILE

Company: Square

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2009

Employees: 500

It started with a list: "140 Reasons Why Square Will Fail."
In 2009, Jack Dorsey distributed the list, replete with counterpoints, to potential investors to prove that he knew exactly what his new start-up was up against, and more important, that he knew how to face it. Square's plan was to use technology to allow anyone, anywhere to take credit card payments. The list was a cheeky reference to Dorsey's last company, Twitter, and a clever nod to the naysayers who doubted that the guy who invented a microblogging service could take on the financial industry. "I didn't have a finance background, my co-founders didn't, and we didn't hire anyone who worked in finance until we reached 25 employees," Dorsey says. "We get to design what we want to see in the world rather than doing what other people think should be done."
The market buys in
One guiding philosophy at Square is that technology should be so intuitive that no one stops to question how difficult it must have been to create. That philosophy is paying off. In 2010, Square introduced the Card Reader, a 1-inch-square white dongle that plugs into a headset jack and, voilà, turns any iPhone, iPad, or Android phone or tablet into a credit card processor. Today, more than three million merchants are using the Card Reader to process $12 billion a year in transactions. The reader, which is free to order on the Square site, connects to Square Register, a souped-up point-of-sale app that replaces the traditional cash register, allowing customers to pay with cash or swipe a credit or debit card and sign on the screen with a finger. In 2011, Square launched a consumer-facing app, Square Wallet, that allows customers to walk into a store and pay by just saying their names. It's being used at more than 250,000 locations in the U.S. and Canada.

"The idea for Square came from a frustration, one that many small-business owners have struggled with." --James Dyson

Square charges merchants just 2.75 percent per swipe or, for merchants who swipe less than $250,000 a year, a flat fee of $275 per month. For small-business owners accustomed to hidden fees and rates that can run in the ballpark of 4 percent per swipe, this transparency is the cherry on top.
Despite Square's rapid growth, which recently earned the company a valuation of $3.25 billion, there's not a single salesperson among its 500 employees. "The product sells itself," Dorsey says. That fact was apparent at the Artists & Fleas pop-up craft fair in downtown Manhattan, which Dorsey visited one Friday afternoon in March. "It's fantastic!" a thoroughly tattooed, classic New York character named Tony Stinkmetal gushed. He and his friend Keith ("Golly") Bishop run Golly NYC, a company that sells custom superhero T-shirts, housewares, and clothes made of children's sheets and sleeping bags. Stinkmetal says he started using Square because his last credit card processor took several days to deposit money into his account. Square does it overnight. "Everyone who has a business right now is kind of scrambling," he says, "so those two days make a big difference." Mike Lindwasser, a photographer with a booth at the market, praised Square's analytics. Standing nearby as Lindwasser tells his story, Dorsey looks proud. This is why he started Square.
Creation myth
As the oft-told story goes, the idea for Square came about after Jim McKelvey, Dorsey's friend and former boss, who is a computer engineer and skilled glass blower, missed out on a $2,000 sale of one of his glass faucets. McKelvey, like millions of small-business owners in the country, couldn't accept his potential customer's credit card. So he, Dorsey, and an iOS engineer named Tristan O'Tierney developed what would eventually become Square to ensure this would never happen again. "I knew what it was like to be a small merchant and be excluded from commerce because I didn't have a credit card system," says McKelvey, who now sits on Square's board.
As it turned out, Dorsey, McKelvey, and O'Tierney's dream directly violated the major credit card companies' rules. At the time, they banned so-called payment aggregators, which allow people to accept credit cards without a merchant account. (The aggregator acts as the merchant.) The card companies had made an exception for PayPal, an online aggregator, but mobile aggregators were a different story. If Square was going to work, the card companies would have to rewrite their rule books. So Dorsey took a clunky but functional prototype to the major banks and credit card companies and gave them a demo. Within six months, they came around.
In many ways, Square is building the quintessential technology of a new generation. If the past decade was about the iPad, the iPhone, and other gadgets we hold in our hands, Square's success suggests the next decade will be about the technology we never see. Instead, we will merely accept, and come to expect, that it's working all around us. That's the future Dorsey imagines.
The product that edges closest to that future is Square Wallet. Dorsey challenged his engineers to build a product that would let him walk into a coffee shop, place an order, tell the barista his name, and walk away wondering if he even paid. Square Wallet does just that. Users open the app and choose a participating merchant. When they arrive, the merchant has a photo of them on Square Register. With the tap of a button, the merchant can charge the customer's account.

The competition wakes up
Square is the golden child of Silicon Valley. So far, it has raised more than $341 million in financing from VC firms, Starbucks, and other investors. But its success has also bred fierce competition. There are now thousands of players in the mobile payments market, according to Gartner analyst Sandy Shen, including the very credit card companies that once blocked aggregated transactions. Bank of America recently undercut Square's prices with its mobile card reader, which charges vendors 2.7 percent per swipe. And Visa signed a deal with Samsung to equip Samsung's next generation of phones with Visa's PayWave app. PayPal, Intuit, and Groupon are also on Square's ever-growing list of competitors.
For now, Square clearly has the first-mover advantage, especially with small businesses. And last year, it struck a deal with Starbucks to roll out Square Wallet in 7,000 Starbucks stores, which is raising awareness among mainstream consumers. "We're trying to keep our stress levels low and just do innovative things," says Dorsey.
Within the next 10 years, Dorsey expects Square to be available worldwide. That's a tall order, but few people could have predicted the huge success of Twitter when Dorsey co-founded that company in 2006. Two years later, he was publicly ousted as CEO. A year after that, he founded Square. "You fail and you get back up," he says. "That's part of doing anything that people find to be revolutionary or important. You'll have tons of people saying, 'No, you can't do this,' but you do it again, anyway, and you don't let them stop you."

http://www.inc.com/audacious-companies/issie-lapowsky/square.html?nav=featured

The 25 Most AUDACIOUS Companies

How We Picked Our Audacious Nominees:

Starting a company from scratch is, by nature, an act of audacity. So think of the companies on Inc.’s 25 Most Audacious list as the embodiment of entrepreneurship: Each one is original, ambitious, and totally uncowed by impossible odds. Of course, how the companies manifest their audacity depends a lot on what business they are in, so we split our search among five broad categories: Design, Marketing, Tech, Social Impact, and Culture.

Click on the links above where you’ll meet companies founded by people who are both doers and dreamers. They have made big bets and trusted that customers and employees would love them and competitors would grudgingly admire them. And you? Well, we think you might find them just a little inspiring.

DESIGN

▲ SQUARE

The man who made the cash register obsolete

SECOND SIGHT MEDICAL PRODUCTS

Sight to the blind (literally)

LIT MOTORS

Bike! Car! Whatever. It's irresistible

SOMA

Purer than Pur, more elegant than Brita

AERODESIGNS

Inhale your food.
Literally.

MARKETING

LA COLOMBE TORREFACTION

Every cup an adventure tale

DOLLAR SHAVE CLUB

The video with the
"f---ing great" ROI

72ANDSUNNY

How to be cooler than Apple

▲ AFFECTIVA

Taking the
guesswork out of advertising

RED BULL

Building a brand 24 miles above Earth

TECH

SILENT CIRCLE

The hackproof network

CHAMTECH TECHNOLOGIES

The spray-on
Internet

▲ ORGANOVO

They're printing
what ?

WITRICITY

All of the juice with none of the wires

PALANTIR TECHNOLOGOES

Taking data analysis to the next level

SOCIAL IMPACT

CHANGE.ORG

Unleashing the audacity in others

COURSERA

An elite education for anyone. Free.

UNCHARTED PLAY

Turning playtime into power

MATTERNET

A whole other way of using drones

▲ AZURI TECHNOLOGIES

Power to the people (for a profit)

CULTURE

TREK BICYCLE

Unhealthful habits are not an option

▲ MORNING STAR

400 leaders,
0 bosses

NEW BELGIUM BREWING

It's all about ownership

MENLO INNOVATIONS

Taking teamwork to the extreme

DREAMHOST

Reelect the boss! Or not.


http://www.inc.com/audacious-companies?nav=special

The 10 Best Ways HR Can Improve Workplace Creativity and Innovation

By Cliff Stevenson from i4cp | April 10, 2013, Issue 570

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How do you improve creativity and innovation in the workplace on a systematic level? And how does HR play a critical role in fostering innovation?

In i4cp's newest report, Human Capital Practices that Drive Innovation, human capital professionals were asked to rate their organizations' effectiveness across eight types of innovation, including often overlooked elements such as product development and process effectiveness innovation. By creating an index of effectiveness scores, combined with i4cp's Market Performance Index rating for each respondent, i4cp was able to determine the top ten human capital practices that not only drive innovation, but are also correlated to overall market performance.

The best news is that all of the practices that were found to be the most effective were those on which HR could have immediate impact -- from seemingly small things like promoting values to major changes such as the creation of online forums to foster new ideas.

And now, the ten best ways HR can improve workplace creativity and innovation (you'll need to provide your own drum roll):

10. Reward innovation via more engaging work and/or autonomy

Creative types aren't always motivated by money -- for them, the work is the reward. Allow those creative minds the flexibility and space to create.

9. Track innovation talent at both the college undergraduate and/or graduate level.

Innovation is one of the largest differentiators between high- and low-performing organizations, and the battle for that innovative talent is heating up once again. The most effective companies find the brightest minds earlier than their competitors -- sometimes even before graduation. Qualcomm leverages an intern program to attract technical talent from top universities, and encourages its best performers to return to their schools as "campus ambassadors."

8. Put in place a formalized or structured idea/innovation review process.

When the creative ideas come flowing in, the next step is to create gates that allow purposeful review of those ideas, so that budgets for new projects can be allocated correctly.

7. Provide internal training in creativity and innovation practices.

Innovation and creativity levels vary from person to person, but that doesn't mean those abilities can't be improved. Research shows there are proven methods of improving the innovation process in the brain - take advantage of these. Capital One Financial provides employee teams with the time, tools, training and settings to address specific business challenges in creative ways.

6. Put in place discrete budgets to fund innovation projects external to the enterprise (i.e. to generate ideas or products from non-employees).

Don't limit your avenues of innovation -- many groundbreaking ideas come from unlikely sources, and when it comes to innovation, more is almost always better. Even small rewards can be enough to interest customers in submitting their ideas.

5. Have a formal program to find and promote creative/innovative programs, products, or ideas.

There's innovation happening all the time at your organization -- without a way to harness and showcase that creativity, much of it could be going to waste.

4. Tie individual bonuses and/or salary increases to innovation.

You can't buy creativity, but you can show that innovation is a key component of your organization by rewarding the innovative minds in your business. Only 15% of companies surveyed by i4cp indicated that they had these financial rewards for innovation -- this is certainly an area for improvement.

Flextronics has instituted programs that reward creative ideas and innovations monetarily and through recognition. It has two bi-yearly awards focused specifically on innovation -- one chosen for the best idea and results overall, the other for the best cost reduction idea.

3. Include innovation as a major competency in leadership development plans.

Having innovative leaders helps promote the commitment to creativity in your organization, but only 26% of responding companies include innovation as a key competency. At 3M, innovation and leadership are linked directly, and innovation is part of each leader's responsibility.

2. Define and promote organizational values related to innovation.

Having an explicit message that innovation is important creates a more robust environment for innovation, and can allow employees to feel safer when taking the risks necessary for successful innovation.

1. Use technology-enabled collaboration/social media tools to share knowledge.

By using forums, intranets, and other media for group efforts, top companies are able to gather ideas from a diverse group of employees and sometimes even customers and company outsiders. IBM did some research on their online communications and found that the more sources of diversity that were represented the more productive, engaged, and inter-communicative people were. Creating avenues for communication and championing policies that embrace more input from social media can help find those diverse viewpoints...

A more detailed examination of these findings can be found in i4cp's Human Capital Practices that Drove Innovation (i4cp membership required). Also contained within that report are more recommendations of actions that can be taken to improve innovation, and further examples from some of the leaders in innovation today: IBM, Qualcomm, Flextronics, 3M and Sony Pictures. Innovation may seem uncontrollable, but it turns out that there really are ways you can harness it at your own organization.

Cliff Stevenson is an senior human capital researcher with i4cp, lead researcher for thePerformance Management and Evidence-Based HR Exchanges, and one of the authors ofHuman Capital Practices that Drive Innovation.

http://www.i4cp.com/trendwatchers/2013/04/10/the-10-best-ways-hr-can-improve-workplace-creativity-and-innovation