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The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

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Here are five choice articles from the business press to start off your workweek. I'm pointing you to articles about sports and money, Jim Farley at Ford, the perceived impact of age on leadership, handling email, and an innovation incubator at Dow.

From the Economist: Fun, games and money
"The greatest sporting show on Earth is coming to Beijing, and the organizers are leaving nothing to chance. They have crammed as many lucky number eights into the arrangements as they sensibly could. The opening ceremony of the 2008 games will begin at 8.08pm on August 8th. When the Olympic flame is lit, China will be hoping for a 17-day festival of sport and international friendship. It sees the games as marking not just its re-emergence as a global economic force but also as a country that the rest of the world treats with admiration and respect."

Wally's Comment: The Olympics have been big business for some time, as well as big politics and big economics. Only the key players on the fields and in the halls of power change.

From Business Week: Ford: A Toyota Vet to the Rescue
"Jim Farley is shaking up a calcified strategy and marketing culture, including giving dealers a real voice. Will it be enough?"

Wally's Comment: "Shaking up a culture" is one thing. Changing it is at least an order of magnitude harder. The problem that people who have been successful in strong and successful cultures have when they go somewhere else isn't that they don't know how to do things. It's usually that they don't know how to change things, especially in a place that's done things the same way for generations.

From Reliable Plant: Age and its perceived impact on leadership abilities
"The research suggests that Americans expect women to reach their peak performance as leaders at age 43, four years before men's perceived peak at age 47. They also believe women's contributions at work start to decline at 59.7, compared to age 61.3 for men, according to the nationally representative online survey of 1,996 adults"

Wally's Comment: How many years of experience should a man have to run a big company? How about a woman? The answers may surprise you. There's other interesting material here, like when the ability to lead is supposed to go into decline, at least according to some survey respondents.

From Kiplinger: We're Drowning in E-mail
"E-mail and other digital information comes at us fast -- so furiously fast that we spend nearly a third of each working day simply coping with it, based on data from the Information Overload Research Group (IORG), made up of experts from IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel and other tech giants. IORG's mission is to cut through the clutter."

Wally's Comment: Software and sophisticated sorting schemes may help, but I think the only way manage email is to turn it off most of the time and get the people who work with you used to the idea that you only check email a couple of times a day.

From Industry Week: Dow Corning Drives Innovation with Incubator
"'The incubator helps address the question of how to be innovative and agile in a company the size of Dow Corning,' says Dan Futter, B&TI executive director. 'We determined that the best way to do that was to form an incubator to create the time and space for our people to be creative; to have the time to think about new business models, about how you go about new technologies, and the type of relationships you need to make those things happen.'"

Wally's Comment: Dow's had the incubator in place since 2001. It has a fixed, cross-disciplinary staff and can call on experts from outside the unit if necessary.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.