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One thing I love asking sales leaders is “Do you know how long your sales cycle is?” The exchange usually goes something like this: “How long is your sales cycle? Do you know?” “Oh sure, it’s typically a 6 month cycle.” “How do you know?” “Well, there’s a 1 month trial and it usually takes …

Numbers don’t lie. Humans lie all the time, or at least we spin the truth (which, right there, is a lie). The often painful place that these universal facts meet in business is employee scorecards. After all, who wants a running tally of all the mistakes one’s ever made? There has been a recent backlash …

Recently, the Boston Globe had a fascinating article on how more areas of science are getting into crowdsourcing. In this example, scholars were faced with a huge task of transcribing and translating half a million pieces of ancient text. In fact, “after a hundred-plus years, scholars have been able to work through only about 15 …

The economy is saved! As hoped for, Black Friday descended on credit cards across the US and tallied up record spending to the tune of $52 billion, a 16% increase from the measly $45 billion in 2010. Hurray! All those riots over waffle irons were worth it. Or wait, was it? Clearly, the final numbers …