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Top tech toys

Bored executives used to watch balls swing but now office sorts are getting their kicks from sticks -  that's stick people in boxes. Cube World (below right) has been named the top tech toy for working folks by Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

This list of top tech toys for Christmas 2007 was developed by three Tuck MBA students -  Adam Bulakowski, Shilpa Karnik and Kate Reiling under the direction of Professor M. Eric Johnson, director of the school's Center for Digital Strategies. Johnson is a toy industry expert who has consulted with and written case studies on Mattel and Hasbro.

The full list of top tech toys for big kids and their offspring are:

Cube World (Radica Games) "This toy isn't for everyone. In fact, it didn't make our list last year. But after a year on our desks, and the addition of another pair, we could see how these cubes could provide some workplace fun." Recommended for working adults.

Tooth Tunes (Tiger Electronics) "Brush with a little force and music streams out of the bristles, vibrating your teeth, and turning your mouth into a music chamber." Recommended for everyone over age 7.

Tamagotchi Connection (Bandai) "An update on the ultimate virtual pet. Not only do you get to raise a Tamagotchi, you can now interact with others who have Tamagotchis." Recommended for 8 to 14 year olds.

Cosmic Catch (Hasbro) "A great way to encourage kids to get outside and play." Recommended for 7 to 11 year olds and their unfit parents.

EyeClops (JAKKS Pacific) "Fun for the exploring (or gross out) types." Recommended for 6 to 11 year olds and anyone considering a career change into lab work. 

Hot Wheels Maniacs (Mattel) "This $30 toy won't make your kids any smarter, but it will make them laugh." Recommended for 5 to 9 year olds.

Rescue Pets (MGA Entertainment) "This toy pet grants access to an online world through a secret access code around the pet's neck." Recommended for 3 to 7 year olds.

Easy Link (Fisher-Price) "Interfaces with a parent’s computer to provide controlled online play and learning." Recommended for 3 to 6 years and office luddites.

GBaby Magnetic Play System (Geomag) "The delightfully attractive blocks are the right colors and size to catch an infant’s fancy." Recommended for children aged 9 to 24 months old

Have the business boffs have got it right. Will we really all want these for Christmas?

Gospel according to Lukes...

...Martin Lukes, that is, of the FT. Please tell me that "care-frontational" (as opposed to confrontational) is a delicious invention of Lukes' alter ego Lucy Kellaway. It is 50p in the swear box for any of these as well..."buy-in", "this storied company", "facilitate", "roapdmap", "talent alignment", "skillsets", "cognizant", and, of course, "going forward."

Read the piece in full, here. And do not be afraid to laugh.

Beam me to the office

This is Cisco TelePresence - one guy is on stage in India, the other is in San Jose California, 8000+ miles away. Yet they both appear to be on the same stage. The interaction between them wasn't recorded either. It's way cooler and greener than air travel.

Just think of the possibilities: no more having to get up close and personal with fellow commuters, clients, colleagues or the boss, you can act it all out from the comfort of your own home or bar. Although hang on a minute, who'd buy the next round? Beam me up Scotty.

Top 14 spurious productivity surveys

Last week I wrote about workplace productivity, and claimed barely a week passes without someone somewhere publishing an outlandish, pr-inspired survey supposedly exposing a way in which workers waste time. Eager to maximise my own productivity, and eager to minimise the workplace productivity of timesonline readers, I kept a record of the weirdest ones as I did my research, and am now delighted to present a list of the top 14 most ridiculous productivity surveys, as presented in the press, in reverse order of spuriousness. Somehow “14” seems an apt number for an arena that routinely sees the production of bizarrely precise estimates.

Career advice: is it ever a good idea?

I'm not much of a fan of advice. Mostly this is because, when people offer it to me, it's likely to involve me doing something I don't enjoy or stopping something that I do (swapping to decaf coffee falls neatly into both categories; I had a headache for a week and I forgot how to spell). However, in the great tradition of aged relatives across the world, I'm not going to let my dislike of receiving advice stop me from giving it. Or, to be more accurate, passing on advice from other people. That's journalism for you.

Alpha monkeys trump dead fish

Competitive chaps impress their colleagues with firm handshakes because a good grip asserts their social dominance: hardly breaking news. More interesting is the suggestion, published in BusinessWeek, that only 35 per cent of the manly grasp's strength is determined by the shaker's environment; 65 per cent of it is genetically determined, according to research by psychologist Gordon Gallup. He attributes this to our distant ancestors: monkeys with powerful hands swung easily through the trees, thus impressing lady monkeys with their genetic excellence, while their weaker-palmed pals were more likely to drop to earth.

(Note: the article says that there's no correlation between the strength of a woman's handshake and her behavioural competitiveness, although it does suggest good health.)

Weird or What? Economics, Catholicism and Management

At the risk of killing interest in this post before anyone reads to the end of this paragraph, may I recommend a new book that contemplates not one, but two, sure-fire conversation-nobblers - religion and economics? It is by a chap called Edward Hadas, a stockbroker turned journalist who works for the online financial comment site breakingviews.com. OK, so it is all a trifle weird - as is the prospect I have of attending its launch party in a Catholic church. But the book is intriguing.

As a taster, consider these two observations. Economics, Hadas emphasises, is often considered to be a thing...some sort of inanimate science akin to physics or tectonics. But economics does not, and cannot exist, separate from humanity. Laws of physics and tectonics would exist irrespective of whether the world is populated with people. Not so economics: or trade, or inflation, or money. Without people all these concepts would disappear faster than you could say "endogenous growth theory."

Buzzwords and bingo - no. 3

Communitainment.

A word created from community, communication and entertainment.

According to the report The User Revolution, by analysts PiperJaffray, "Over the next 10 years more than half of internet usage will be communitainment."

What are they talking about? Websites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook.

Faffing around on the internet has never sounded so complicated.

How to be happy

Most people want to be happy. But what makes us happy?

A paper by Stefan Wills, a programme director at Ashridge Business School, offers a simple explanation in the school's journal 360 degrees.

Wills argues that to be an effective business leader you need to be happy: "If leaders who radiate happiness can achieve better relationships with their followers, who in turn create happier customers, it is worthwhile for leaders to reflect on their own degree of personal happiness."

In short no-one wants to work for a grumpy git.

Buzzwords and bingo - no.2

It's been a high scoring morning on the bingo front. Here are two terms I heard this morning that can be added to the Snakes and Ladders glossary.

C-level suite: yes, I know it is an American term - but do I have to hear it in Wapping, London, UK? In case you're wondering, it's a term where the C stands for Chief as in CEO, CIO, CTO, CFO etc. What we call the board or boardroom. Ironically - it was in the boardroom where this term was uttered.

Schedually-challenged: I'm not going to be able to make our meeting. Usage - "Seeing as we are all schedually-challenged this afternoon, can we rearrange our lunch."

Silicon Valley comes to Oxford

One of the most informative ways of finding out about exciting new websites is to ask people who create exciting new websites. This is precisely what happened during the opening plenary of the Silicon Valley comes to Oxford annual conference at Said Business School. The panel included Chris Sacca, Head of Special Initiatives at Google, Reid Hoffman, founder of Linkedin and Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter.

Of course, we want you to be responsible and not surf in company time, but here are the pick of the sites that were mentioned by the panel.

Cock-Up Watch (part 2): Steve McClaren

Is the manager of the inadequate England football side a scapegoat? Or is he a sheep, a bellwether leading a motley bunch of air-heads around in ever more pointless circles?

Steve McClaren has failed because he has failed to secure what most supporters of this dismal game assume is a minimum requirement: to qualify for each of the two big football tournaments, the World Cup and the European Championship.  In any sensible reading of the situation he is only partly to blame. Yet to listen to supporters now, and in recent weeks, it would appear as if all England's football woes lie at the door of the luckless Mr McClaren. In the sense that players produce - or in this case do not produce - the goods, McClaren is a scapegoat.

The law of Billy (no mates)

Last Saturday I examined why friendships formed at work – “workships” as some call them - are so difficult to sustain beyond the office, and received some intriguing responses. One reader wrote in enquiring whether companies really do, as I mentioned, have so-called "non-fraternization" policies in place to stop employees developing friendships outside the office. I could barely believe it when I read it either, but they really do. Some businesses apparently even put up posters encouraging staff to grass each other up – though it remains unclear how transgressions would be defined. Where would you draw the line? A drink after work? A smile across a supermarket aisle?

Cock-Up Watch (part 1): Alistair Darling, HM Customs and Revenue, and lost computer discs

The story of Alistair Darling's slipped disc will run and run. And as with all big news stories any and all special interest groups will manufacture some sort of angle....here is an early take from the management perspective. As, in essence, this is a failure of management process, the lessons are legion. Here are three that leap immediately to mind.

a) don't have secrets

b) don't do anything even in the slightest bit complicated or fancy (like post letters)

c) take a leaf from that part of the the actors' manual which warns about the danger of working with children and animals. Only add politicians to the list and remember that politicians can be more childish, and more beastly, than any toddler or pooch.

PS. the best coverage of the affair in in my own paper, natch. Alice Miles' column is superbly spiky. But Hamish McRae, easily one of the most under-estimated columnists writing, in The Independent newspaper, is also well worth reading on this one .

How much feedback should you get after a job interview?

A major graduate recruiter recently told me that every applicant who makes it to interview stage at his firm is offered feedback about why they didn't get the job if they don't win a place. From a candidate's point of view this is supposed to be good news because she can learn from that feedback, remedy any weaknesses in her CV or presentation and generally do much better next time.

Can McKinsey fix the US? Or is it more a job for Bain or BCG?

There was a time when political candidates used to run their campaigns on the basis that they had the answers needed to fix things. Now, says Michael Kinsley in Time, they just promise to call in the consultants to sort things out; the only question is which firm to choose.

But why not skip the middleman? If consultants are going to run government, it would seem simpler for them to pitch their PowerPoint presentations directly at voters so that we can decide who gets their hands on taxpayers' cash. Plus from a career point of view,  "ran the US government, 2008-2012" would look great on any CV.

People would rather have coffee than sex

I like starting my working day with a cup of coffee. It's hot, it's caffeinated and it gives me something to do with my hands while I listen to my boss outline our schedule. I do not, however, like it enough to give up sex. This apparently puts me in a minority: Fast Company reports that more people would give up sex than would give up coffee.

I'm not sure if this means that they have access to truly fabulous coffee or utterly dreadful sex.

If you pay peanuts...

This is one of the shortest, and most useful management training videos I have seen for some time. It begs a huge question: is it what you want your people to do, or want your people NOT to do?

More top women

Following on from Robert's list of women. Here is another list for you to ponder. What do these 20 women have in common?

JK Rowling (author), Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop), Margaret Thatcher (first female British Prime Minister), Jacqueline Gold (CEO of Ann Summers), Martha Lane Fox (co-founder of lastminute.com), Karren Brady (MD of Birmingham City), Delia Smith (cook and broadcaster), Michelle Mone (founder of Ultimo lingerie), Nicola Horlick (founder of Bramdean Asset Management), Dame Stella Rimington (first female director of M15), Katie Price aka Jordan (model), Deborah Meaden (Dragon's Den panelist), Chrissie Rucker (founder of The White Company), Stella McCartney (fashion designer), Tamara Mellon (founder of Jimmy Choo shoes), Clara Furse (first female CEO of London Stock Exchange), Victoria Beckham aka Posh (performing artist), Elle Macpherson (model), Kelly Hoppen (interior designer) and Rebekah Wade (editor of The Sun).

Women in business

The Wall Street Journal's latest list of 50 female movers and shakers of the corporate world is well worth combing. It is a good list, but Lubna Olayan, arguably the most powerful business woman in the Middle East, is surely an omission. My own list of wealthy and influential mid east business figures (male and female) can be found at the GulfPower25 microsite. I had Olayan at number 6.

What is the most boring job in the world?

Desert Island Discs must be the best personality interview format ever invented. It is interesting and informative even when the subject is less than either of these things. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the recently retired director-general M15, on yesterday (Sunday, 18 November 2007), was fascinating.

Get rich quick

I absolutely love this list of 10 totally stupid online business ideas that made someone rich. From selling pixels to plastic wish bones these are the ideas which should have failed but didn't. It almost makes one feel dumb for not being dumb.

You know what they say: big car, small...

When it comes to assessing our suitability for jobs, companies have countless tools at their disposal. They can interview us. They can interpret our body language and/or analyse our facial features as they interview us. They can measure our IQ or EQ or SQ, examine our handwriting, ask us to undergo psychometric tests, contact former employers for references.

Friend or colleague?

Anyone who has moved city to take a new job knows just how hard it can be to make friends as a grown-up. Agony aunts recommend meeting people by joining sports clubs and interest groups, which is all very well except for the fact that impressing a new boss means working long hours and generally not asking to leave on the dot of 5pm to attend a medieval theatre workshop, no matter how lonely you're feeling.

As a result, it's much more time-efficient to make friends with colleagues. Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell if these are real friendships or mere acquaintanceships of convenience, as occur when actors fall in love on a movie set only to discover that they have nothing in common once they're out of costume.

Here's how to tell if your water-cooler pal will last the distance:

Ten steps to self improvement

Self improvement is a difficult thing, especially if you strive to be more stupid. But there is a course for every horse and here we profile our top ten alternative management courses:

What is the colour of management?

Of all the colours in the rainbow, which is the one that best matches the dismal art of management?

No self-respecting corporate blither can do without green these days, although most environmental evangelism is nothing but a transparent marketing ploy. Is any of it any more than lip-service, disingenuously paid to consumers who are savvy enough to say the right thing but shallow enough to do what suits their pocket? Red is traditionally associated with the City of London, but while crimson may be the colour of money, it cannot be the colour of management. To be in the red, surely, is to be in a terrible place. It might be blue, were it not for the fact that blue-sky-thinking is the stuff only of unreconstructed management dalks. It could be brown, judging by the colour of most aspiring managers' noses.

What happens when Batman goes to business school

Being a superhero is all well and good - but what do caped crusaders know about leadership, finance and strategy? They might be strong in 'ethics', but if they're really that 'super', why aren't they dabbling in stocks or putting together a hedge fund to generate cash to fight poverty? Here's a funny mockumentary which shows what happens when our favourite superheroes hang up their capes and go to business school. It's by students on the Leadership Effectiveness and Development Class at the The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. I'm sure those involved in the clip are on their way to becoming Masters of the Universe.

Making mistakes is the right thing to do

This, presumably imaginary, exchange, attributed to Jacques Barber by this University of Pennsylvania web page, was recently quoted by Stefan Stern, the management columnist in the FT who seems to be in grave danger of becoming my new best web friend. Please, Stefan, be assured that I am not a stalker, and that I love you only for your mind. 

Buzzwords and bingo

Oh do keep up. Can we not get ourselves aligned with a fully functioning web 2.0 orientation on the buzzword bingo interface? Whoever heard it called buzzword bingo? I know this is a family blog and there is never any excuse for bad language, but surely we can put BULLS and HIT together and come up with something that aids onwards and upwards navigation through the elevating envelope? Or is the learning curve just too gradient-rich?  Perhaps it time we all engaged with stakeholders on this global project and took a properly-scoped 360-degree view. It is, after all, mission critical that the group-wide impact on all customer-facing awareness bunnies is downwardly managed on a 24 7 basis...

BS ratio: 2.925 (that's total-blither-word-count / buzzwords, by the way...anything under 3 is benchmarkable...)

Gimme that jibba-jabba

Here at Snakes & Ladders we are dynamic, we work hard and play even harder. Every day we swallow frogs, push envelopes and square circles. So adept are we at thinking outside the box that we are truly off our trollies. So if you are on the beach with time to park that thought it might be worth reflecting on what on earth I am talking about.

A while a go Carly wrote an article to help us understand some of the management lingo out there. But this is a fast evolving language and we need your help. So read our buzzword bingo and drop us a line with some of the more unusual phrases and words you've heard, please remember to include a translation. Collectively we will boil the ocean.

Smile, it might never happen

I received a smile at work today. No, I didn't have newsprint on the end of my nose or my knickers tucked in my skirt. The emoticon was sent to celebrate the arrival of National Stress Awareness Day. Another e-mail on the topic told me that 24 per cent of full-time workers claim to be "generally stressed" at work. Yet another e-mail says that employers won't be able to tackle our stress unless they move some of the money they currently spend on our physical health - healthy eating intiatives, exercise plans and smoking cessation programmes - to initiatives focused on our psychological wellbeing. Might I suggest giving us the money in our pay packets so that we can take special care of our psychological health with frequent foreign holidays and good wine.

Anyhow all this fretting got me thinking about an e-mail I received several months ago announcing the arrival of a website for worrywarts, www.reallyworried.com. The bumpf told me that 17 per cent of us worry most at work (49 per cent worry most in bed) and that worry affects the working lives of 21 per cent of us. Among the most worried of professionals were those in the media and professional services. Is it any surprise that both these groups spend vast proportions of their time in front of screens staring at overloaded inboxes? Roll on National Delete Day.

10 places to have sex at work

One in five people claim to have had sex in their office building. I did some asking around (and, of course, some looking on the internet) and discovered exactly where: