Anne Benedict: Defining Quality Leadership from Behance Magazine

“No team, creative or otherwise, can exist without focus or direction. However, success rarely occurs in dictator-esque environments. “Good leadership and management practices apply across all types of work, both creative and traditional, because the common denominator is people. People in every oeuvre have skills, motivations, aspirations, personalities; each person brings their own mix to the table. Work, by nature, is accomplished through groups of people working towards a common goal and leading and managing are fundamental to the effectiveness of reaching that goal.”

Here’s a three-step plan for allocating your time wisely and strategically.

Though most managers understand intellectually that time is their scarcest resource, few make the effort to gain a strategic perspective on how they spend their hours each week. Still fewer make a regular practice of keeping track of how the priorities they say are most important jibe with the way they actually spend their time. “Those we label natural born leaders know how to leverage their time,” writes Warren Blank in The 108 Skills of Natural Born Leaders (Amacom, 2001). For those in whom this talent is not innate, here’s how to do it.

Click here to read the full article

Official Google Blog: How to avoid getting hooked

Millions of people have gotten “urgent” emails asking them to take immediate action to prevent some impending disaster. “Our bank has a new security system. Update your information now or you won’t be able to access your account,” or “We couldn’t verify your information; click here to update your account.” Sometimes the email claims that something awful will happen to the sender (or a third party), as in “The sum of $30,000,000 is going to go to the Government unless you help me transfer it to your bank account.”

People who click on the links in these emails may see a web page that looks like a legitimate site they’ve visited before. Because the page looks familiar, these people enter their username, password, or other private information on the site. What they’ve actually done is given an unknown third party all the information needed to hijack their account, steal their money, or open up new lines of credit in their name. They just fell for a phishing attack.

This is an excellent write-up on this issue. If it doesn’t benefit you, it will benefit someone that you know. Click the link at the top to read the entire post.