Every Friday, we select a few articles from the week that we think are worth your time as a construction financial manager (CFM). We look for compelling articles not only about financial topics, but about business, technology, and life, that challenges you to think about your role as a CFM in different ways. We’d love to hear from you about how we’re doing, and to have you join our community by subscribing to receive this weekly post by email. Follow #CFMReview.
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In honor of the last CFM Review of 2014, I’d like to change things up a bit. I’m making a list–of articles I’ve found helpful, inspiring, funny, educational, you name it. Some have to do with credit finance, some are more contemplative of everyday life, and some are lists of themselves–how meta.
I wish everybody a wonderful holiday season. See you in the new year!
Buy Experiences Not Things
“iPhones, clothes, couches, et cetera, just become background. They deteriorate or become obsolete. It’s the fleetingness of experiential purchases that endears us to them. Either they’re not around long enough to become imperfect, or they are imperfect, but our memories and stories of them get sweet with time.”
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5 Surprising Studies on What People Consider “Good” Customer Service
“…according to the 2010 Customer Experience Report by RightNow, the biggest reason people stop doing business with a company is due to a poor customer service experience.”
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Construction Financial Management: The Year in Review
“Luckily, technology platforms have been developed that allow construction industry participants to streamline and optimize their financial management, and financial risk-mitigation procedures. This ability turned the corner in 2014, and is poised to dramatically expand in 2015, encompassing not only cloud-based technologies that replace clunky out-of-date in-house platforms and procedures, but also machine-learning / artificial intelligence technology that can optimize processes and lead to making better more efficient decisions.”
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Being a Good Leader Makes You More Attractive
“I’ve discovered that things aren’t so cut and dried, beauty isn’t a fixed trait as many of us tend to believe, and that our perceptions of one’s attractiveness can be enhanced in positive ways depending on the situation.
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The 15 Best Infographics of 2014
“These 15 [infographics] managed to stand out. My criteria here were not scientific. I looked for infographics that I simply could not stop reading til the very end — or in the case of the interactive ones in the latter half of this post, the ones I couldn’t stop exploring.”
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When Not to Celebrate Failure
“The real challenge for leaders is not to either accept or reject failure, but rather to differentiate between whether they are in execution or innovation mode. Being in execution mode means that standard operating practices have been developed and need to be implemented with as little deviation as possible… Innovation mode, on the other hand, is when standards still don’t exist and best practices are still being discovered and tested.”
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After a Disaster, a Winery Starts Anew — and Finds a Better Business Model
“In one day, she lost 84,000 bottles. She had just been about to reap $4.5 million by shipping the wine to restaurants, distributors and exporters. And then poof. ‘I had absolutely nothing,’ she said.”
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“Enjoy the list of the 30 weirdest words I found in the 2014 archives — some may make you raise an eyebrow, others should make you laugh, and some you’ll be surprised were only added in 2014. (Baked potato? Really?)
Warning: A few words on the list are NSFW.”
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