Tanya Menon, associate professor at Fisher College of Management, Ohio State University, explains how to recognize if your management style is too hands off. She's the co-author of "Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits."

Eddie Yoon, author of "Superconsumers" and growth strategy expert at The Cambridge Group, explains how companies can find their most passionate customers and use their invaluable insights to improve products and attract new customers.

Harvard Law School lecturer Heidi K. Gardner discusses how firms gain a competitive edge when specialists collaborate across functional boundaries. But it’s often difficult, expensive, and messy. The former McKinsey consultant is the author of the new book, “Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos.”

Erin Meyer, professor at INSEAD, discusses management hierarchy and decision-making across cultures. Turns out, these two things don’t always track together. Sometimes top-down cultures still have strong consensus-driven decision-making styles — and the other way around. Meyer helps break down and map these factors so that managers working across cultures can adapt. She’s the author of the article, "Being the Boss in Brussels, Boston, and Beijing" in the July-August 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Annie McKee, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book “How to Be Happy at Work,” tells the story of her journey to happiness—starting with her early job as a caregiver for an elderly couple. Even in later, higher-paying work, McKee saw that pursuing prestige and success for the wrong reasons ruined people’s personal and professional lives. She discusses how misplaced ambition, obsession with money, and fatalism are traps anyone, in any kind of job, can fall for—and how to not let that happen to you.

Scott Kelly, a retired U.S. astronaut, spent 520 days in space over four missions. Working in outer space is a lot like working on earth, but with different challenges and in closer quarters. Kelly looks back on his 20 years of working for NASA, including being the commander of the International Space Station during his final, yearlong mission. He talks about the kind of cross-cultural collaboration and decision making he honed on the ISS, offering advice that leaders can use in space and on earth. His memoir is “Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery.”

Irene Yuan Sun, a consultant at McKinsey, explains why so many Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up factories in Africa. She describes what it’s like inside these factories, who works there, what they’re making—and how this emerging manufacturing sector is industrializing countries including Lesotho and Nigeria. Sun’s new book is “The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa.”

Freek Vermeulen, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, argues that too many companies are following so-called best practices that are actually holding them back. They do it because of deep-seated industry tradition—and because it’s hard to know how seemingly successful business models will hold up over the long term. That’s why, he says, organizations should avoid benchmarking and instead routinely test their business practices before there’s a problem. Vermeulen is the author of “Breaking Bad Habits: Defy Industry Norms and Reinvigorate Your Business.”

Aron Ain, the CEO of Kronos Incorporated, explains why unlimited vacation can be in the best interests of employees and the organization. He describes how his software company tracks requests for time off and the conversations he's had with skeptical managers and longtime employees. Ain says the "open vacation" program benefits the business and serves as a template for other companies figuring out how to make unlimited vacation work for them.

Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, encourages leaders to approach their direct reports like teachers. As Finkelstein explains, being a teacher-leader means continually meeting face to face with employees to communicate lessons about professionalism, points of craft, and life. He says it’s easy to try and that teaching is one of the best ways to motivate people and improve their performance. Finkelstein is the author of “The Best Leaders Are Great Teachers” in the January–February 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company known as MSD outside of North America, discusses his upbringing and how it influences his leadership as chief executive. He is one of the few African-American CEOs in the Fortune 500, and shot to prominence after resigning from a council advising the Trump White House. Frazier discusses the importance of values in leadership and how Merck thinks about R&D and drug prices.

Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Paul Leonardi, a management professor at UC Santa Barbara, talk about the potential that applications such as Slack, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams have for strengthening employee collaboration, productivity, and organizational culture. They discuss their research showing how effective these tools can be and warn about common traps companies face when they implement them. Neeley and Leonardi are co-authors of the article "What Managers Need to Know About Social Tools" in the November-December 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Krista Tippett, host of "On Being," believes we are in the middle of a big shift in the workplace. For a long time, she says, we were taught to keep all of our personal opinions and problems out of the office — even if that wasn't the reality. Now, as worker expectations change and people bring more of their authentic selves to work, Tippett says managers need to discover how to allow more honesty and emotions and humanity in the workplace, while still delivering in a high-performing environment.

Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999. Since then, she has observed how companies with a trusting workplace perform better. Psychological safety isn't about being nice, she says. It’s about giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes, and learning from each other. And she argues that kind of organizational culture is increasingly important in the modern economy. Edmondson is the author of the new book "The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.”

Marcus Buckingham, head of people and performance research at the ADP Research Institute, and Ashley Goodall, senior vice president of leadership and team intelligence at Cisco Systems, say that managers and organizations are overestimating the importance of critical feedback. They argue that, in focusing our efforts on correcting weaknesses and rounding people out, we lose the ability to get exceptional performance from them. Instead, we should focus on strengths and push everyone to shine in their own areas. To do that, companies need to rethink the way they review, pay, and promote their employees. Buckingham and Goodall are the authors of the book "Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader's Guide to the Real World" and the HBR article "The Feedback Fallacy."

Kimberly Whitler, assistant professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, believes the days of transplanting well-worn Western marketing practices into national markets may be numbered. She has researched marketing campaigns in China and finds they are faster, cheaper, and often more effective than traditional Western ones. Moreover, she argues they may be better suited to today’s global marketplace. Whitler is the author of the HBR article “What Western Marketers Can Learn from China.”

Sinéad O'Sullivan, entrepreneurship fellow at Harvard Business School, discusses how space is much more important to modern business than most people realize. It plays a role in making food, pricing insurance, and steering self-driving cars. While moonshot projects from SpaceX to Blue Origin drive headlines, the Earth-facing space economy is booming thanks to plummeting costs of entry. As tech companies large and small compete to launch thousands of satellites, O'Sullivan says we are actually running out of space in space.

Oliver Hart, Nobel-winning Harvard economist, and Kate Vitasek, faculty at the University of Tennessee, argue that many business contracts are imperfect, no matter how bulletproof you try to make them. Especially in complicated relationships such as outsourcing, one side ends up feeling like they're getting a bad deal, and it can spiral into a tit for tat battle. Hart and Vitasek argue that companies should instead adopt so-called relational contracts. Their research shows that creating a general playbook built around principles like fairness and reciprocity offers greater benefits to both businesses. Hart and Vitasek, with the Swedish attorney David Frydlinger, cowrote the HBR article "A New Approach to Contracts."

Richard Boyatzis, professor at Case Western Reserve University, says that every professional can benefit from having a coach — and serving as one for someone else. He says that a coaching relationship moves beyond mentoring or sponsoring in that it focuses on long-term values and aspirations. The best coaches encourage a positive mindset and ask probing questions to help people make the best choices, not only in their careers but also in their personal lives. Boyatzis is coauthor of the HBR article "Coaching for Change."

Nir Eyal, an expert on technology and psychology, says that we all need to learn to be less distracted into activities that don't help us achieve what we want to each day. Unwelcome behaviors can range from social media scrolling and bingeing on YouTube videos to chatting with colleagues or answering non-urgent emails. To break these habits, we start by recognizing that it is often our own emotions, not our devices, that distract us. We must then recognize the difference between traction (values-aligned work or leisure) and distraction (not) and make time in our schedules for more of the former. Eyal also has tips for protecting ourselves from the external distractions that do come at us and tools to force us to focus on bigger-picture goals. He is the author of the book "Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life."

On The Anxious Achiever, Morra Aarons-Mele explores the way anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues affect people at work – for better or worse. In this episode, she speaks with clinical psychologist Ellen Hendriksen and Arvind Rajan, the CEO of Cricket Health, about the tension between work and social anxiety. "The Anxious Achiever with Morra Aarons-Mele" is part of HBR Presents, a new network of business podcasts curated by HBR editors. For our full lineup of shows, search “HBR” on your favorite podcast app or visit hbr.org/podcasts.

Scott Young, who gained fame for teaching himself the four-year MIT computer science curriculum in just 12 months, says that the type of fast, focused learning he employed is possible for all of us -- whether we want to master coding, become fluent in a foreign language, or excel at public speaking. And, in a dynamic, fast-paced business environment that leaves so many of us strapped for time and struggling to keep up, he believes that the ability to quickly develop new knowledge and skills will be a tremendous asset. After researching best practices and experimenting on his own, he has developed a set of principles that any of us can follow to become "ultralearners." Young is the author of the book "Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career."

Michelle King, director of inclusion at Netflix, says it’s time to stop telling women to adapt to the male-dominated workplace and time for the workplace itself to change. Her prior academic research shows that diversity training and anti-harassment efforts address important issues but fall short of creating gender equality in organizations. She identifies the real obstacles and shares how leaders can create a culture of equality at work, for women and men alike. King is the author of the book "The Fix: Overcome the Invisible Barriers That Are Holding Women Back at Work.”

In 1915, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship became trapped in ice, north of Antarctica. For the next two years, he kept his crew of 27 men alive on a drifting ice cap, then led them in their escape. How Shackleton did that has become one of the most famous leadership case studies. In the first episode of a four-part special series on leadership, HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius and Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn analyze Shackleton’s leadership during the struggle to survive. They discover lessons in building a team, learning from bad bosses, and cultivating empathy.

Rebecca Henderson, professor at Harvard Business School, says that both capitalism and democracy are failing us. She argues that it will take public and private leaders working together to simultaneously fix these two systems because free markets don't function well without free politics and healthy government needs corporate support to survive. She is calling on the business community to take the first step. Henderson is the author of the upcoming book "Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire." And the March Big Idea article, "The Business Case for Saving Democracy."

In 1958, writer Rachel Carson began her exhaustive research on the effects of widespread pesticide use for her next book, Silent Spring. Over the next four years, she built up an airtight case showing how the world’s most powerful chemical companies were harming animals, plants, and people. Her effort was also a race against time, as she struggled against an aggressive form of breast cancer. In the second episode of a four-part special series on leadership, HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius and Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn trace the modern environmental movement back to Carson’s pioneering reporting and powerful prose. They discover lessons in how to strengthen your resilience, gather your energy and skills for a coming challenge, and why caretaking is an act of leadership.

Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, says that, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, we were facing another health crisis: loneliness. Studies show that, around the world, more people have been feeling a greater sense of social isolation, which has many negative affects, including increased blood pressure, reduced immune response, and decreased engagement and productivity at work. But organizations can be a place where people find a greater sense of belonging. Murthy wants us to take loneliness more seriously and focus on fostering the types of authentic connections -- face-to-face and virtual -- that we need to combat it. He's the author of the book "Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World."

Even with online shopping, holiday shipping schedules place the last day to order and still receive items (before the 24th) early next week.

FirstQuintile announces the launch of a major t-shirt eCommerce shop just in time for the release of the Hobbit movie. Proving it could be done against all odds, they completed JackOfAllTrades.com for licensed apparel manufacturer of the same name.

Stocking everything from original Scotch whisky to interesting blends from Ireland, Japan, Canada and the United States, Whisky Marketplace is a one stop destination to research and purchase the best brands in time for the holidays.

Sales and marketing firm Smart Advantages take time out to enjoy Winterval in Waterford, Ireland.

Three recent lawsuits present new challenges for the makers of the Bumbo Baby Sitter, a popular infant chair that are alleged to have caused a number of injuries after babies fell from the seats.

Bronze grapevine sculptures to inspire during luxe event April 4-7.

Online pawn shop PawnUp.com made another announcement about increasing their list of accepted items. This positive move is aimed at letting more people cash in on their valuables in 2013.

Matterport has updated their Capture app so that you can now "3D scan" spaces using the built-in camera on your iPhone or iPad. Meaning you take a bunch of photos, and the software stitches it together.

Now that everyone's cooped up at home, I can see tons of people wanting to capture their houses for fun…

…and the app lets you measure, tag items and label spaces too.

The only thing I don't like: You have to upload everything to the cloud, which is where the stitching-together part happens. It darn sure better be hack-proof--it's bad enough we've spent the past few years bugging our own homes with smart speakers, now it's like we're creating maps for tech-savvy burglars.

Don't you miss last year, when we were killing each other with weapons rather than airborne droplets? When mass shootings and home invasions dominated the news, a company called Battenshield rolled out their design for a virtually unbreakable door barricade.

It's not the greatest-looking thing in the world, but I will say the functionality of the design is clever, along with half of the installation. The system with the battens simply hangs on the door.

What I'd worry more about is the ability of the average homeowner to install the brackets (particularly over trim with a wavy cross-section) and get the lags driven into the studs.

Interestingly enough, the system was designed by a former SWAT officer whose role was, you guessed it, the "entry team member" who breaches doors.

In 1970, Plymouth hoped to persuade Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro buyers to choose their Barracuda instead. One of Plymouth's tactics was to offer greater customization options.

At the time, the Mustang offered 15 exterior color options:

1970 Ford Mustang Exterior Paint Options

The Camaro offered 18 exterior color options:

1970 Chevy Camaro Exterior Paint Options

Note: This sheet pertains to multiple Chevy models. We have obscured the color options unavailable on the Camaro.

Plymouth went heavy by offering a whopping 25 color options. They demonstrated this to buyers not with a lame sample sheet, but by dropping this innovative-for-the-time rendering into the brochure:

1970 Plymouth Barracuda Ext. Paint Options

That rendering is freaking gorgeous, as are all of the colors. There's not a single one of those I'd decline.

As Hot Rod reports, automotive enthusiast Tim Wellborn, founder of the Wellborn Musclecar Museum in Alabama, had known about the rendering since childhood and recently decided he wanted a real version. According to My Classic Garage, "Collaborating with the Big Easy Motors television show on the History Channel, the Wellborn Musclecar Museum tapped famed builders at The Bomb Factory in New Orleans, LA [and] set out to create a real life version of the original 1970 illustration."

Here's what they came up with:

They did commit to a single color for the driver's side (looks like #17 on the chart):

While the "Paint Chip 'Cuda" isn't for sale, the museum sells both posters and banners featuring its image.

Handrail manufacturers often weld straight pipes to elbow connectors, then must grind the welds smooth. To speed this task, some use contraptions like this MB 650 RV product by German power tool manufacturer GeBrax, which attaches to an angle grinder to turn it into a flexible strip sander:

Other German companies, like Flex Tools and Fein, make dedicated pipe sanders:

There are also a host of sketchy-looking "As Seen on TV"-type companies flogging their own angle grinder attachments…

…but I think I'd stick with the reputable German brands.

Dave M. Finklang, CPA/CGMA, MBA, tax partner at Anders, has been named a Best Accountant in St. Louis by Small Business Monthly (SBM). Each month, SBM polls readers and asks them to help identify the best in the region in… Read More

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Accounting is an extremely competitive industry, especially for those fresh out of college. Accounting firms are always trying to recruit the best up and coming accountants to grow their staff. Accounting graduates may have certain firms that they are interested… Read More

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Giving back is part of our social responsibility and corporate culture at Anders, and we proudly support local charitable, civic, community and trade organizations. The Anders Community Impact Report takes an in-depth look at our commitment, connections and involvement in… Read More

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As recruitment processes for many companies continue to change due to COVID-19, virtual interviews are becoming a normal part of the process. There are many similarities between interviewing in-person and virtually, and ultimately, the end goal is the same. Whether… Read More

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October typically brings Halloween ghost stories, pranks and trick or treating, but scary stories about cyberattacks and trickery around data breaches run rampant all year long. Aside from Halloween, October is also National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), bringing awareness to… Read More

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All startups have one thing in common when it comes to cybersecurity: they all are at some level of risk of a costly data breach. Startup business owners may not even be aware of certain vulnerabilities including ransomware, phishing, data… Read More

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