#HR #RRHH Making love and making personal #branding #leadership

During the past decade, business analytics platforms have evolved from supporting IT and finance functions to enabling business users across the enterprise. But many firms find themselves struggling to take advantage of its promise. We’ve found three main obstacles to realizing analytics’ full value, and all of them are related to people, not technology: the organization’s structure, culture, and approach to problem solving.

I’m accustomed to handling clients who are at a crossroads in their lives and are looking for change—after all, I’m a career coach. So this usually involves guiding clients through some pretty heavy soul-searching to help them find the sort of truly fulfilling work that we all deserve.

This also means many of my clients are in an indecisive state at the outset—that’s to be expected. But I don’t think I’ve had a more indecisive client than Kevin. When I asked Kevin what sort of career he truly wanted to pursue, he blanked. I asked him what he enjoys doing and what he’s really good at, and he could never seem to articulate a direct answer.

Geeks—the two of us might fit the profile. Yes we have tendencies to contemplate things that probably shouldn’t be contemplated. We question. We prod. We poke…at everything. And, we’ve been known to engage in long, seemingly meaningless conversations about random things like: “Is the love of curry a genetic disposition or a socially experiential acquisition?” Or, what is the real meaning of the word “of?” That’s a valid question, right? Or, is it just geeky?

Being geeky, according to research by Imgur, is actually cool in today’s world—especially among Millennials. In fact, 60% of the 83 million Millennials consider themselves geeks compared to just 38% of GenXers and Boomers. And, the study also shows that geeks are the trendsetters and influencers (84% of geeks say people look to them for advice while only 60% of non-geeks say they get asked for advice).

This is, of course, welcome news for all of us who happen to randomly know Peter Parker’s height and weight (yes, we’re referring to the fictional character who turns into Spiderman). But, more than that, it’s also welcome news for all of us who geek-out about our own work—passionately probing to innovate, improve, dissect, and lead others to the discovery of their best selves.

Lately I’ve been spending more of my time and energy on freelance work because sometimes running a startup can be hard on the personal bank account. I’ve been lucky to be able to set aside time to take on that work and look for more, but it’s been a huge learning process. Balancing freelance and startup work can make life kind of crazy. And since I do remote work I’m often scheduling meetings and conversations across several time zones. I’m loving being busy though and am learning so much. One of the things I’ve learned is to make sure I take the time to have quiet, slow moments throughout my day. It helps me appreciate each day more. Here's how I do it:

Email is taking a lot of flak lately. And why not? We're inundated with it. It's cold and impersonal. People abuse it passive-aggressively for their own political agendas. And it can be --to be frank -- addictive.

Yet, no matter how much we gripe about it, and whatever options may be out there like Slack, email is here to stay. For now, at least.

But we can all do email better. Much better. I've been witness to --and often the victim of --a range of email offenses in my working life. And yet, even today, I see people continue to commit the same email offenses that I thought would have become forgotten or even outlawed by now.

So in the interest of raising awareness around these offenses, and with the hope that we can see them committed far less frequently, here are five difficult and uncomfortable things that you should never, ever put into your emails at work. Especially if want to build --and keep -- the relationships that matter to you most.

Each morning from 8:30 to 9:05 AM at our company’s headquarters, in San Francisco, we serve free breakfast to every employee. And I’m not talking about stale muffins and dry bagels. Today I ate a sloppy joe, cheesy scrambled eggs, home fries, crispy bacon, and sausage links. Healthy, I know. Tomorrow, I’m definitely going to grab a yogurt and some fruit. And don’t forget all the vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options. After all, this is California.

I know what you’re thinking. Free food is the cost of admission to the Silicon Valley tech scene. Our startup, Pivotal, calls the South of Market (SOMA) neighborhood home, alongside companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Adobe, Slack, Salesforce, and Uber. So, of course, Pivotal serves free, catered meals. It’s just expected.

I'm a big fan of Microsoft's Satya Nadella. Since taking over as CEO just three years ago, he's used a combination of effective leadership and brilliant business moves to return the tech company to relevance.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Nadella credits Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's best-selling book, Mindset, as the inspiration for the culture he's trying to build at Microsoft.

When I look back on my 20s, I see two different versions of myself. The first five years were dominated by feelings of insecurity and anxiety. I was living a life I did not want, and I wasn't confident enough to stop it. Then, in the second half of my 20s, I learned to embrace my purpose and began living the life I wanted -- the life of an entrepreneur. One thing is clear: The success I've experienced while launching and growing SkyBell would not have been possible with my old mindset.

Now at age 32, I can clearly see my shift from a negative mindset to a success mindset was caused by my developing more confidence. When you feel confident, the whole world seems to belong to you. You suddenly surround yourself with other successful and confident people, and both opportunities and success come your way with ease.

Here are 10 ways you can develop the mindset shared by the most confident people.

Life isn’t linear. No matter how well thought out your plans, they’ll eventually collide with a reality you didn’t plan on. Learning to "lean into the curves" when life doesn’t unfold as you’d hoped will help spare you untold stress, bounce back faster and emerge better off.  Here’s five ways to do just that.