Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. This is definitely not your father’s business book. One of our favorites. Full of counter-intuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensible? This book, by Seth Godin, explains how “linchpins” are the essential building blocks of a great organization. Linchpins, according to Godin, are inventors and leaders (regardless of title). Linchpins connect others, make things happen and create order out of chaos.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, shows everyday people how to combine the power of their rational and emotional minds for dramatic business results.

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, aks and answers the question: What makes high achievers different? You will be surprised by some of his findings.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink, provides evidence that the use of the “carrot and stick” is the wrong way to motivate workers. Instead, Pink shows examples of how successful companies encourage workers to grow, develop and reach their fullest potentials.

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.

Seventy-two percent of global workers surveyed said there is a direct connection between diversity of leadership teams and financial success, up 12 percent from a year ago (85 percent of women agree compared with 58 percent of men). However, the share of respondents who said their companies have gender diversity as a top 10 agenda item held steady at 28 percent.

Removing Barriers for Women in Business

The actions most likely undertaken over the past five years to recruit, retain, promote and develop women include:

• Options for flexible working conditions and/or locations (49 percent).
• Support programs and facilities to help reconcile work and family life (32 percent).
• Programs to encourage female networking, role models (38 percent).

The biggest barrier to gender diversity, according to global respondents, is “lack of awareness or concern for gender diversity as a critical matter.” As a result, many feel C-level and executive team involvement is a key ingredient for success.

“CEOs and top-level executives who are aware of their potential impact on the issue can benefit their companies by paying visible attention to it,” according to the report.

How Women Take Command

If you ask Gloria Feldt, author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, she advises women to take matters in their own hands rather than wait for corporate policies to help them rise to the top.

In her New York Times blog, You’re the Boss, Adriana Gardella asks Feldt, “What are some examples of the barriers women create for themselves?

Says Feldt: “Waiting politely to speak during a meeting only to hear a male colleague offer the idea you planned to suggest. Learning that a man with the same qualifications and job as you started at a higher salary because he asked for it and you didn’t. Taking on the major burden of household duties because you know it’ll get done that way.”

On her book site, Feldt says that “the key to change is to shift the way women think about power and leadership.”

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.

Here are some of the work-related posts, but be sure to check out all the clever stories at the contest site:

“Accidentally sending the boss a text message meant for a co-worker, which made fun of the boss. Then running into the boss five minutes later in the hallway.”

“I saw a co-worker whom I had not seen in a while and I asked her when her baby was due? She replied, ‘I’m not pregnant, my baby is in school!’”

“I was walking into a business appointment and the entire sole of my shoe fell off. I do presentations for a living and I had to do the entire presentation in my socks.”

“Meeting with my new boss, I was looking to make a solid first impression. During our sit-down discussion, I tipped my chair forward to show interest, but went a bit too far, and I toppled face-first onto the floor.”

“I met with the new buyer for an account of mine. She was much older and very professional in appearance. In the course of conversation I made an unflattering comment about tattoo’s. The buyer then lifted her skirt to display a tattoo.”

“I was in a rush on morning trying to catch a flight for a important meeting. I was going through airport security and waiting for my bag and shoes to come out of the x-ray machine. When the shoes did come out they were two different dress shoes.”

See yourself in any of these stories?

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.

For example:

Uncomfortable is seeing that your mom is calling you at 7 p.m. — on HER birthday.

Uncomfortable is setting your clocks for daylight savings a full week ahead of time.

Uncomfortable is dressing up for Halloween as a Pinata.

Submit Your Best Uncomfortable Moment Stories

These are just some of the uncomfortable moment stories that have been entered in the Johnston & Murphy Ultimate Comfort Contest. Once you make your entry, you’ll be eligible for a chance to win a number of valuable prizes: 16-gigabyte iPad, 60-inch flat-screen television, premium leather recliner, surround sound system, Blu-ray DVD player, Flip Video camera, $300 Johnston & Murphy gift card and more.

Entries will be accepted through December 17, but get your entry in soon so you can start sharing and campaigning for votes!

Something for Him

The Ultimate Comfort Contest celebrates Johnston & Murphy’s new collection of men’s dress casual, casual and rugged casual shoes with patented XC4 comfort technology.

The holidays are just around the corner. Your man will love these lightweight, waterproof XC4 styles that are the ultimate commuter shoes for men and perfect for road warriors.

Shop the XC4 styles at www.johnstonmurphy.com.

For a limited time, take 20% off all regular-priced Women’s footwear from Johnston & Murphy.  This includes our fabulous, best-selling boots!

Enter promo code WOMENSFALL20 online or you can redeem this offer in stores or by phone at 800.424.2854.

Happy Shopping!

Michelle Obama

Forbes has identified the 100 most powerful women (top 10 listed here), led by First Lady Michelle Obama.

This year’s list is one of the most diverse groups of women ever. “The list itself also represents a cross-section of races, ages, elasticities and sexual preferences,” writes Jenna Goudreau, in her Forbes blog, The Other Half.

Here of the world’s top 10 most powerful women for 2010, as identified by Forbes:

1. Michelle Obama, 46, First Lady of the United States.
2. Irene Rosenfeld, 57, chief executive, Kraft Foods.
3. Oprah Winfrey, 56, media executive.
4. Angela Merkel, 56, German Chancellor.
5. Hillary Rodham Clinton, 62, Secretary of State.
6. Indra Nooyi, 54, chief executive, PepsiCo.
7. Lady Gaga, 24, singer and performance artist.
8. Gail Kelly, 54, chief executive, Westpac.
9. Beyonce Knowles, 29, singer and fashion designer.
10. Ellen DeGeneres, 52, talk show host.

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.

For their companies, 65 percent of women expect improvements to their business prospects this year, according to a National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) survey. Likewise, capital investment plans are on the rise: 21 percent of NAWBO members plan to increase capital investment this year, up from 17 percent in early 2009.

“With the market for early-stage capital beginning to bounce back, I’m once again fielding calls from entrepreneurs wanting to know how much of their company to give away to investors to raise the money they need to launch their businesses or take them to the next level,” writes Rosalind Resnick for WSJ.com (How to Win the Valuation Game).

Resnick is the founder and CEO of Axxess Business Consulting in New York, an expert in developing business plans and financial projections for start-ups. She is also the author of The Vest Pocket Consultant’s Secrets of Small Business Success.

“In the past,” she notes, “I probably would have advised my client to hang tough and keep looking. In today’s market, with smaller amounts of early stage capital available and venture investors looking to scoop up bargains, I’m urging my clients to draft a deal that’s palatable to both sides.”

Winning Cash for Your Business

Forbes.com provides 10 Tips for Bagging Startup Cash:

1. Stick with what you know. “Establish a company in a field you are familiar with.”
2. The first investor should be you. “This will show investors you approach later that you are serious about your long-term commitment to your firm.”
3. Approach friends and family. Friends and relatives are most likely “to take a chance on you and support you in other ways, such as contributing free labor.”
4. A bank can be your friend. You should “establish a relationship with your banker before applying for a loan.”
5. Know the difference between angel investors and venture capitalists. Angels come in early. Venture capitalists come later. “They take a percentage of your company with the hope that it will become large enough to eventually be sold or go public.”
6. Network. “Women tend to lack contacts among individuals and companies looking to invest in startups. Attend venture-capital conferences to meet investors.”
7. Be prepared. Have a detailed business plan.
8. Seek the right investors. Know which kinds of companies that investors work with. “Don’t waste their time.”
9. Understand equity capital. Know what the offer terms are.
10. Discuss your business plan openly. Many entrepreneurs are afraid that someone else might steal their business ideas. “But if the loan officer or investor can’t discuss your request with others, the idea will be dead in the water.”

Demonstrating Commitment

Myra M. Hart, a Harvard Business School professor and authority on entrepreneurship, agrees that it’s important to float your business idea in the beginning.

“The real success will depend on your organization and execution as well as the basic concept,” Hart says in an HBS Working Knowledge article, How Women Can Get More Venture Capital. “And almost everyone who is willing to talk about the idea finds that it continually gets refined and better. It also gets people to buy into the idea and to understand you, your capabilities and your business concept before you come asking for money.”

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.

By the turn of the century, job boards replaced newspaper classifieds as the preferred way for job seekers to learn about new work opportunities. A decade later, 2010 will go down as the year that job seekers and employers began to turn to social networks to find each other.

Most Emoloyers Now Fish Social Networks for New Job Candidates

A Jobvite survey finds that 83 percent of companies now use or plan to use social media to find new hires. Of the companies already using social networks for recruiting, 58 percent said they had made successful hires of candidates found through social networks.

“Success in this area is leading almost half of employers to increase recruiting program spending on social media,” according to eMarketer. “At the same time, more than a third of companies were lowering spending on job boards and search firms.”

Among companies that use social networks for recruiting:

• 86 percent use LinkedIn.
• 60 percent use Facebook.
• 50 percent use Twitter.

For women business owners, social media hiring tools make sense, according to Rieva Lesonsky, writing for AOL Small Business:

“The writing is on the (Facebook) wall: If you are looking to hire, low-cost or even free methods like social media can get even better results than the more traditional ways. This makes a lot of sense to me — I’ve heard complaints for years about the inefficiencies of job boards.”

Top Job Search Strategies on Social Sites

Writing for Mashable, Dan Schawbel, a master of personal branding, provides a number of head-turning tips for job seekers who want to attract employers in the Age of Social Networking. Here are a few of his ideas:

• Search for people at companies you like instead of searching for jobs.
• Construct a video resume and put it on YouTube.
• Advertise your personal brand using Google AdWords or Facebook Social Ads.
• Subscribe to blogs that have job postings in your industry or area of expertise.

Also, see Schawbel’s list of Top 10 Social Sites for Finding a Job.

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.

“If they’re on Facebook, you need to be there too,” writes Rieva Lesonsky for AOL Small Business. “It’s a great opportunity to get in front of them during key moments of their day.”

Women Love Facebook More than Shoes?

Lesonsky’s article is cleverly titled, Survey Says: Why Women May Love Facebook and Twitter More than Shoes (thankfully, since In Your Shoes is made possible by Johnston & Murphy, we did not find any evidence in support of the headline).

However, there are many interesting findings from the study, commissioned by the Oxygen Media Insights Group. For women, ages 18-34, the study found:

• 57 percent admitted to talking to people online more than face-to-face.
• 39 percent called themselves Facebook addicts.
• 34 percent said checking Facebook is the first thing they do when waking up in the morning.
• 21 percent check Facebook in the middle of the night.

“Addiction? Not so much,” writes Susan Getgood for BlogHer. “The majority of millennials seem to have retained a certain amount of common sense.”

For example, she notes that 66 percent of young women are still smart enough to pee before they check Facebook in the morning.

“Online media have replaced some percentage of face-to-face conversations and traditional media use for nearly everyone who goes online, in every demographic,” Getgood adds. “For one thing, there are more people to talk with than we would ever meet ‘in real life.’ Not to mention that, for some, being able to talk online is the reason they are online in the first place.”

Moms Hooked on Twitter

Twitter is also an addiction for many women.

The majority (54 percent) of Twitter-using moms said they check their feeds 10 or more times each day, according to a new Lucid Marketing study. Also, 58 percent of these moms said they tweet from their cell phones or smart phones.

When it comes to business tweets, the survey found that Twitter-using moms most like:

• Links to interesting articles, news (71 percent).
• Links to sales and special offer Web sites (67 percent).
• Links to downloadable coupons or discounts (63 percent).
• Updates on new products (55 percent).
• Funny tweets (52 percent).

“While moms are receptive to marketing on both sites [Facebook and Twitter], they’re a bit more protective of their personal space on Facebook, and a bit more focused on getting coupons and special offers there,” writes Jack Loechner for MediaPost. “On Twitter, they’re looking for good deals too, but they also want to be kept informed about news and articles that are relevant to their lives.”

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.

So, now what? It one thing to jump into the start-up world, but how do you stay afloat in these uncertain time?

It’s essential to continuously  transform your business model to survive this economic downturn, writes Entrepreneur.com’s Chris Penttila in Learn to Evolve.

Become a Game Changer

“This recession is different from other recessions in its scope and depth, and the worst thing you can do is more of the same,” Penttila says. Penttila offers seven ways that entrepreneurs can become game changers, including:

• Get comfortable with chaos, including constant economic turbulence from globalization and technology.
• Reassess your customers’ values. Know how people’s values and purchases have changed. “The answers could spark new product and service ideas aimed at value-conscious customers,” Penttila says.
• Understand that a good product always sells, even in bad times, of the product — or service — helps people solve real problems.
• Think new markets, not just cost-cutting. “Game changers see levers they can pull (e.g., affordability, convenience, accessibility, location and cost) that change a market or create an entirely new one.”

Lessons Learned from Women Entrepreneurs

Perhaps the best advice is to recognize that you’re not alone in these hard times.

Mike Michalowicz, in his Toilet Paper Entrepreneur blog, has compiled a list of more than 200 lessons learned from entrepreneurs. Here are a few from women entrepreneurs:

Nicole Dean of Busy Marketers Coach: “The recession has been an opportunity for me to reflect on the values of my business. “It’s challenged me to serve my clients even better by offering them more value for their hard-earned money, and only recommending products and services that I personally would recommend to my best friend. I had that attitude from the beginning, but it’s pushed me to take it to a deeper level. I think my customers appreciate that. By adding more value and giving more results, you’ll better weather the storm.”

Dotty Scott of Premium Websites: “The media will waste your time and pull your focus away. My number one lesson was to turn off the TV/radio and stop listening to the media. I found that I stopped worrying about the economy and gained focus on my business. My business started to grow in spite of the economy and that was a direct result of focus, work and not participating in the dooms-day attitude of the media.”

Nancy Rielle of VerveCards.com: “During a recession, folks still buy, they just buy way more judiciously. And, if your product or service is recession-friendly and actually helps people save money in a solid, value-added way, then recessionary spending can work in your favor!”

Siobhan Shaw of The Broke Wives Club: “The biggest lesson learned from the recession is that this is not the time to stick your head in the sand waiting for things to get better, for the government to bail you out or for money to magically appear. It’s a time for working hard, creating great ideas and networking. Keep plugging away at it until someone says, ‘YES!’”

Stacy Karacostas of The Unchained Entrepreneur: “Most entrepreneurs pull back on marketing during a recession because cash flow is tight. But that means there’s more opportunity for you to get noticed and get clients because there’s less competition. So cut costs elsewhere and do all the marketing you can, and you’ll get more clients — and more bang for your marketing buck. Plus, as the recession ends, you’ll be top of mind while your competition is forgotten.”

We Want to Hear from You!

How is your business weathering the storm? What lessons have you learned from the recession?

In Your Shoes is created by Johnston & Murphy, offering quality shoes and outerwear for women and men. We welcome your comments and contributions.