From Fast Company Magazine

Best practices don’t make you the best. They make you the average of everyone else who follows them. Click here to read more

From World Economic Forum

Today’s college graduates tend to be highly trained and employable, but researchers say they often lack a key skill needed for post-college life: how to identify and ask their own questions. Click here to read more

From Inc. Magazine

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From Entrepreneur Magazine

Many modern businesses have at least some remote workers. Working remotely increases productivity, reduces stress and is more cost-effective than working from an office. Click here to read more

From MarketWatch.com

The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index rose to 51.8% last month from 49.5% in February. Click here for more information

From Inc. Magazine.

Check out these quotes from 21 successful executives who credit simple daily habits for helping them get ahead in business and life.

By Tom Reilly

"The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it." Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

By Bruce Merrifield

Global companies have formal, “enterprise accounts” programs. Distributors typically do not. Deploying a team of specialists (to augment the Rep) on the biggest, 1-5%, profit-potential accounts will yield, however, big profit gains, especially in down economies.

Profit-Ranking, Math-Facts

A cumulative, customer-profitability ranking report for distributors reveals stats like the top 40% generate about 150% of the financial statement’s profit total. More sensationally, the top 20% customers yield 140%; top 10, 95%; and, – in one case – the #1 account scored 25% of the peak internal profits.

Protecting the #1 Profit Account?

In the case above, the CEO decided to try an experiment to defend against competitive intrusions. He personally followed his company’s product and paperwork flow through the customer’s internal systems visiting with customer employees along the way. He knew he would find fixable inefficiencies, because:

From World Economic Forum

The changing nature of work in the decades ahead means that leaders to prepare their people to coexist and collaborate with machines. The skills needed today are very different than they were five years ago. Click here to read more

The loss a data breach could cost you has only gone up in recent years, leading many to reevaluate their cybersecurity strategies and adjust their insurance policies.

In a video recently published in the St. Louis Business Journal, Bill Goddard, Principal in the Insurance Advisory Services practice for Brown Smith Wallace, describes some important precautions to take to ensure your business is protected.

From Elm Sustainability Partners

Our previous article highlights the absence of any new information or guidance on US conflict minerals filings, the deadline for which is looming (May 31). The lack of information is creating confusion for some companiesand we have had a number of calls in the past weeks to clarify where things stand relative to Form SD and Conflict Minerals Reports requirements. Click here for a summary of the major points

From Brown Smith Wallace

The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 (PATH Act) made permanent many popular but previously temporary tax breaks for individuals and businesses. The PATH Act also enhanced many incentives. Click here for more information

The new guidance on reporting leases under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles has been the subject of intense public scrutiny. It’s received significant opposition from businesses that expect to add many billions of dollars in assets and liabilities to their balance sheets once the lease accounting standard becomes effective. Click here for more information

By Bill Conerly

When your company is planning its future, how can it understand the impact of technology on the business? Click here to ready the full article

By Bill Conerly

Businomics ®: Connecting the dots between the economy and business. Click here to see the February issue

From Brown Smith Wallace

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is asking for public comments on several key changes to its rules by the first quarter of 2016. Although its proposal on intrastate crowdfunding has garnered significant attention, the comment deadlines for five other regulatory proposals also are in early 2016. Here’s a heads-up on what regulatory changes are currently in the works. Click here to read more

By Tom Reilly

Customer satisfaction is a function of how you perform vis-à-vis the customer’s expectations. Satisfaction is often expressed numerically as a ratio: performance to expectations. Customer satisfaction is an attitude and attitude drives behavior, including retention which is a measure of the likelihood that someone returns as a repeat customer. So, what affects expectations?

From Brown Smith Wallace

From Elm Sustainability Partners:

Last week, the US Supreme Court granted the SEC an extension for filing an appeal of the Appellate Court rulings on the conflict minerals disclosure requirements related to the use of specific determination wording. Click here to read more

From Elm Sustainability Partners

As more companies complete their conflict minerals Reasonable Country of Origin Inquiry (RCOI) and smelter/refiner verification for their CY2015 SEC disclosures, many are surprised to find diminishing data gaps and uncertainties prevalent in previous years. Click here to read more