Must Reads

The AP Stylebook is the definitive style guide for journalists. Today AP editors nixed the term “illegal immigrant” and no longer allow the use of “illegal” as a description for a person.

Our lives are surrounded by regulations to influence behavior, from not smoking in public places to not polluting waterways and being civil in public. Usually, a violation of these regulations is associated with a fine or a tax to discourage greater use, as in the cigarette tax.

I learned a lot about humans from studying pigeons. It was 1985 and I worked at Professor Israel Goldiamond’s behaviorism lab at the University of Chicago. (And yes, pigeons are a lot different from people.) The biggest thing Professor G. taught me was, “the organism is always right.”

If I had a dollar for every time a CEO or business owner told me Oregon was hostile to business interests, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be quite so worried about how I’m going to pay my son’s college tab over the next four years.

BY JOE CORTRIGHT | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Sure, it would be nice to have a newer, fancier bridge connecting Portland and Vancouver, especially if someone else paid for it. But look closely at what’s actually being proposed — a $3.5 billion, 5-mile long, twelve-lane freeway widening project that just happens to cross a river — and you’ll see that there’s a strong business case against the CRC.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), often called “drones” in their military capacity, have jumped to the forefront of public consciousness because Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to let these vehicles fly around the nation’s skies within a few years.

When is anger okay in the work place? Never.

Leaders shouldn’t be “thick skinned” — not if that means shrugging off negative feedback that might actually be correct. Leaders need to be emotionally resilient, unattached to outcomes, and assume positive intent.

BY LINDA BAKER | OREGON BUSINESS EDITOR

The 20th annual 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon list was announced Thursday night at an awards dinner at the Oregon Convention Center. There were 273 companies participating in this year’s 100 Best survey, which analyzes Oregon companies’ best practices toward creating great places to work. This year, almost 14,000 Oregon employees completed the survey.

When I work with senior teams, they share a common bias across firms and industries — they over-value the uniqueness of their industry, firm, or niche, and they over-value innovative changes in their self-identified Core Business. And they fail to put appropriate focus on off-the-shelf innovations available in the non-core processes.