Labor negotiations are often about value and power. To gain advantage and extract compensation, the worker side of the table needs to prove their value to the outcomes of the enterprise, and show their power to disrupt that outcome if that value isn’t recognized (we contribute value to the product or service you sell, we […]

If you’re not already creeped out by the depth and detail of personal, behavioral, and transactional information about you available to the business world (and honestly, why aren’t you?), then perhaps this will nudge you in that direction. The evolving marketing information systems are now adding location behavior to the mix, tracking not only what […]

Maria Popova offers a great summary of How to Find Fulfilling Work, philosopher Roman Krznaric’s treatise on employment with purpose and point — a book “for those who are looking for a job that is big enough for their spirit….” The summary, and the book, offers historic tidbits on when and why we started expecting […]

Some great thoughts from actor Kevin Spacey on how business practice and process either foster or flummox the stories artists can tell. In these excerpts from a speech at last week’s Edinburgh International Television Festival (article here), he shares the challenge of the traditional American ‘pilot episode’ model for program development, and the potential of […]

Nerdy-exciting news from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, as they just added a range of intellectual property items — books, movies, TV shows, music, photographs and greeting cards (yes) — to the nation’s most famous metric of economic health: the Gross Domestic Product.

Adam Huttler over at Fractured Atlas shares some interesting thoughts on the connection between private, publicly traded, and nonprofit finance and behavior. He quotes research that shows privately owned for-profit corporations invest twice as much in their companies, compared to similar publicly traded corporations — holding size and industry constant. The assumption is that private […]

It is a natural state of being in a nonprofit arts organization to be searching for more and different sources of revenue. Nonprofits are nonprofits, after all, because they produce or present or preserve work that costs more than it can generate in direct revenue. So there’s always a gap between direct revenue and expenses. […]

When people say that an action, effort, or initiative is ”in their wheelhouse,” they tend to mean that it lies in the area of their greatest ability. The phrase seems to have become popular in baseball to mean “That part of the strike zone in which the batter swings with the most power or strength; […]

It was 10 years ago today that I posted the very first entry in ‘The Artful Manager’ blog. Doug McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com, had been interested in adding new content and perspectives to his news aggregation site. I had been looking for a way to publish more current conversation on the business of […]

Anyone who does business with anyone will likely know the essential elements of a valid contract (I’ll give you a moment to review your notes). But we don’t often consider how many interconnecting contracts we’re a party to at any given time. There are all of our personal service contracts — mobile phone, Internet, utilities, […]