Twenty One Blue Jaguars

Jack Welch: An Oral History

Check out this Business Week article on Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, as a people leader. He has an incredibly motivating style. I admire him. (Thanks, Claire)

Kat Cole – President, Cinnabon Inc

Neat story -- I bet none of you will guess her first job. Read more in the Little Pink Book. (Thanks, Tom)

When the Work-Life Scales Are Unequal

Neat gender-neutral article on balancing family responsibilities and how that impacts others at work (with families and without). Read more in the NYT. (Thanks, Tom)

The 3 Habits of Happiness

A short and deceptively simple list of practices to bring more happiness and meaning into our lives:

Practice gratitude - write all the big things and little things that you're grateful for. Sometimes, it takes five minutes.. other days you may want to write for an hour or more! Our minds are hard wired for ingratitude. It was a survival mechanism that was valuable thousands of years ago when we lived out on the savanna, but it no longer serves us right now. We know to be successful in business and successful in life – is about spotting possibilities where others are looking for problems.
Remember to savor - When you’re drinking a cup of coffee, don’t just drink a cup of coffee while you’re thinking about your emails. Drink a cup of coffee and actually savor, savor the flavor. Savor the coffee. Savor your environment. If you start to go through life and you savor the breeze, the car drive, your teammates or your children at home, life starts to take on a much richer context.
Find work that matters or even more importantly, find meaning in your work - A job is only just a job if you chose to see it as a job. All work is a chance to be of service. All work is a chance to express your gifts and talents. All work is a chance to be helpful to other human beings. All work is a chance to change the world. It’s up to you to find meaning in your work so that everyday you feel like you’re on a mission!

Adapted from this article on happiness. (Thanks Joanna!)

HBR Daily Stat: Ex-East Germans Retain Strong Egalitarian Views on Gender Roles

People from the former East Germany are 28 percentage points more likely than former West Germans to believe that it's good for children to have working mothers, and 22 percentage points more likely to disagree that wives should stay home, say Stefan Bauernschuster and Helmut Rainer of the University of Munich. The findings show that decades after reunification, socialism-inspired attitudes about sex roles strongly persist among former East Germans and that the gap in egalitarian beliefs between East and West has only widened, the researchers say.

Read the full research paper.