How Much Is A Leader's Integrity Worth? *

From Enron to Volkswagen, we’ve watched in horror as leaders who lack integrity have destroyed businesses time and again. But the real tragedy happens when regular leaders, who are otherwise great, sabotage themselves, day after day, with mistakes that they can’t see but are obvious to everyone else.

In most cases, it’s slight and often unintentional gaps in integrity that hold leaders, their employees, and their companies back. Despite their potential, these leaders harm their employees and themselves.

“Look for three things in a person: intelligence, energy, and integrity. If they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother.” –Warren Buffet

Dr. Fred Kiel did the difficult job of quantifying the value of a leader’s integrity for his book, Return On Character, and his findings are fascinating. Over a seven-year period, Kiel collected data on 84 CEOs and compared employee ratings of their behavior to company performance.

Kiel found that high-integrity CEOs had a multi-year return of 9.4%, while low integrity CEOs had a yield of just 1.9%. What’s more, employee engagement was 26% higher in organizations led by high-integrity CEOs.

Kiel describes high-integrity CEOs this way: “They were often humble. They appeared to have very little concern for their career success or their compensation. The funny point about that is they all did better than the self-focused CEOs with regard to compensation and career success. It’s sort of ironic.”

Kiel’s data is clear: companies perform better under the guidance of high-integrity leadership. “Companies who try to compete under the leadership of a skilled but self-focused CEO are setting themselves up to lose,” Kiel says.

Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard. By studying these traps, we can all sharpen the saw and keep our leadership integrity at its highest possible level.

Fostering a cult of personality. It’s easy for leaders to get caught up in their own worlds as there are many systems in place that make it all about them. These leaders identify so strongly with their leadership roles that instead of remembering that the only reason they’re there is to serve others, they start thinking, ‘It’s my world, and we’ll do things my way.’ Being a good leader requires remembering that you’re there for a reason, and the reason certainly isn’t to have your way. High-integrity leaders not only welcome questioning and criticism, they insist on it.

Dodging accountability. Politicians are notorious for refusing to be accountable for their mistakes, and business leaders do it too. Even if only a few people see a leader’s misstep (instead of millions), dodging accountability can be incredibly damaging. A person who refuses to say “the buck stops here” really isn’t a leader at all. Being a leader requires being confident enough in your own decisions and those of your team to own them when they fail. The very best leaders take the blame but share the credit.

Lacking self-awareness. Many leaders think they have enough emotional intelligence (EQ). And many times, they are proficient in some EQ skills, but when it comes to understanding themselves, they are woefully blind. It’s not that they’re hypocrites; they just don’t see what everyone else sees. They might play favorites, be tough to work with, or receive criticism badly. And they aren’t alone, as TalentSmart research involving more than a million people shows that just 36% of us are accurate in our self-assessments.

Forgetting that communication is a two-way street. Many leaders also think that they’re great communicators, not realizing that they’re only communicating in one direction. Some pride themselves on being approachable and easily accessible, yet they don’t really hear the ideas that people share with them. Some leaders don’t set goals or provide context for the things they ask people to do, and others never offer feedback, leaving people wondering if they’re more likely to get promoted or fired.

Not firing poor performers. Sometimes, whether it’s because they feel sorry for an employee or simply because they want to avoid conflict, leaders dodge making the really tough decisions. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with being compassionate, real leaders know when it’s just not appropriate, and they understand that they owe it to the company and to the rest of the team to let someone go.

Succumbing to the tyranny of the urgent. The tyranny of the urgent is what happens when leaders spend their days putting out small fires. They take care of what’s dancing around in front of their faces and lose focus of what’s truly important—their people. Your integrity as a leader hinges upon your ability to avoid distractions that prevent you from putting your people first.

Micromanaging. You see this mistake most often with people who have recently worked their way up through the ranks. They still haven’t made the mental shift from doer to leader. Without something tangible to point to at the end of the day, they feel unproductive, not realizing that productivity means something different for a leader. As a result, they micromanage to the point of madness and fall off schedule. An important part of a leader’s integrity rests in giving people the freedom to do their jobs.

Bringing It All Together

The bad news is that these mistakes are as common as they are damaging. The good news is that they’re really easy to fix, once you’re aware of them.

How else do leaders compromise their integrity? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

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*

Dr. Travis Bradberry 

Coauthor Emotional Intelligence 2.0 & President at TalentSmart

 Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries. 

Dr. Bradberry has written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.

Bureau of Economic Analysis (US Dept of Commerce)

PERSONAL INCOME AND OUTLAYS: AUGUST 2015

Personal income increased $52.5 billion, or 0.3 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI)increased $47.1 billion, or 0.4 percent, in August, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $54.9 billion, or 0.4 percent. In July, personal income increased $69.6 billion, or 0.5 percent, DPI increased $63.9 billion, or 0.5 percent, and PCE
increased $45.7 billion, or 0.4 percent, based on revised estimates.
Real DPI increased 0.3 percent in August, compared with an increase of 0.4 percent in July.

Real PCE increased 0.4 percent, compared with an increase of 0.3 percent.

www.bea.gov/newsreleases/rels.htm.

Compensation

Wages and salaries increased $35.6 billion in August, compared with an increase of $43.8 billion in July. 

Private wages and salaries increased $31.5 billion, compared with an increase of $40.0 billion.

Government wages and salaries increased $4.1 billion, compared with an increase of $3.8 billion.

Supplements to wages and salaries increased $6.4 billion in August, compared with an increase of $6.7 billion in July.

Other personal income

Proprietors' income decreased $1.6 billion in August, in contrast to an increase of $10.9 billion in July. Farm proprietors' income was unchanged in August and in July. Nonfarm proprietors' income decreased $1.6 billion in August, in contrast to an increase of $10.9 billion in July.

Rental income of persons increased $3.2 billion in August, compared with an increase of $2.3 billion in July. Personal income receipts on assets (personal interest income plus personal dividend income) increased $5.2 billion, compared with an increase of $0.8 billion. Personal current transfer receipts increased $8.3 billion, compared with an increase of $10.5 billion.

Contributions for government social insurance -- a subtraction in calculating personal income -- increased $4.5 billion in August, compared with an increase of $5.3 billion in July.

One Reason Women Aren't Getting the Promotion: They Don't Want It (BusinessWeek)

New research from Harvard finds that women associate power with stress, burden, and conflicts.

Women are underrepresented in leadership positions for plenty of reasons: They’re stereotyped as being less competent than men, they aren’t as aggressive, and there’s a perception that they can’t lead and raise a family at the same time. Now, research from Harvard Business School adds yet another reason to the list: Women aren’t in leadership positions because they just don’t want the jobs as much as men do.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), incorporates nine studies conducted on various high-achieving groups. Combined, the research indicates that women value power less than men, and the studies try to explain the phenomenon.

In one of the studies, conducted on 650 recent MBA graduates, researchers had participants rank their current position in their industry, their ideal position, and the highest position they could realistically attain. Women had no doubt they could “realistically attain” the same level of success as men, but they listed lower ideal positions.

Another one of the studies helps explain that finding, by suggesting women have more negative associations with power than men do. “Women expect more stress, burden, conflicts, and difficult trade-offs to accompany high-level positions,” said Alison Wood Brooks, a co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard.

One explanation for why power stresses women out: They have less time in which to attain a greater number of goals. In another of the nine studies, researchers asked about 800 working adults to rank their goals, defined as “things that occupy your thoughts on a routine basis, things that you deeply care about, or things that motivate your behavior and decisions.” The women surveyed not only listed more goals, but a smaller proportion of those goals were related to achieving power.

“Right now, it is likely that women have more goals in life because pursuing career and family goals simultaneously is a relatively new concept for women,” added Brooks. In other words, women feel more inclined to have it all than men, who listed fewer personal goals, and that means making compromises somewhere.

“I hope these findings will lead people and managers to ask [workers their preferences],” said Francesca Gino, another co-author of the paper. “Some women may deeply care about power, some may not. Some may see too many negatives. For the latter category, talking may lead to identifying opportunities that remove some of those negatives.”

These Are the Careers Where Workers Are Seeing the Highest Pay Growth

U.S. wage growth remains subdued in general, but some of these jobs have seen pay increases of as much as 10 percent over the past year.

While U.S. unemployment has continued its downward trend, wage growth has remained elusive.

In fact, Labor Department figures show U.S. wages increased in the second quarter at the slowest pace on record. But if you happen to have one of the 20 jobs listed below, you've probably been bucking this trend.

According to a new report from careers website Glassdoor, these are the 20 jobs that have seen the highest pay increases over the past year. (The methodology used here is pretty simple, with a few qualifications such as a minimum of 500 salary submissions per job title on its website. The method includes base salary plus bonuses.)

Unsurprisingly perhaps, a lot of technology and finance-related jobs make the list, but there's also a mix of roles outside those areas. Here's what Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain had to say:

We see a wide range of job titles among the top 20, but what stands out is the large number of tech jobs that are in demand, not only by tech companies but employers in finance, healthcare, government, retail and other sectors. Growing demand for tech-related skills in traditionally non-tech industries is putting upward pressure on wages for these jobs. For lower-skilled positions, there have been several high-profile minimum wage increases in the past year, and this is likely to have contributed to some of the wage growth we see for positions like baristas. Even if workers aren't directly affected by the minimum wage, employers often feel institutional pressure to raise wages for workers further up the ladder when wages rise for the lowest skilled positions.

There's also a huge range in compensation.

Here's a look at what the median salary was for 2015. 

Engineers and analysts were among the top earners, while cooks and cashiers still had relatively low wages despite the recent increase in pay. As Chamberlain said, part of the reason lower-skilled jobs have seen wage growth could be because of increases in the minimum wage at the company level and on a larger scale with states, such as New York, increasing wages for fast-food employees. 

E N M I O P I N I O N: Una valiosa experiencia

Por: Ricardo Tribín Acosta 

Estas frases que a continuación cito me generaron más de una inquietud y por ello me parece interesante analizarlas en detalle   " Mi perspectiva acerca de algo cambiara mi percepción. Mi percepción cambiara mi experiencia. Mi experiencia es mi vida". Interesantes verdads quevvale bien la pena leerlas en varias ocasiones para poderlas comprender y asimilar, aplicando también el punto de que para entender no se puede leer a las carreras sino dejando tiempo suficiente para asimilar lo leído. 

  

Entendamos en primer lugar que la percepción acerca de algo depende en un buen número de ocasiones del estado de ánimo en el que nos encontremos. De ahí que si por ejemplo estamos de mal humor y nos tropezamos con alguien el que de pronto sin tener intención nos empuja, es probable que nuestra respuesta sea " Oiga, que le pasa? Fíjese por dónde anda". Y que sucede entonces si de en tal instante nos damos cuenta que quien nos estrujo es una persona ciega? Probablemente la frase será diferente y quizás contenga algo como " Por favor discúlpeme", sin que la ira aparezca, más si quizás la consideración y el deseo de ayudar. 

En el caso antes citado la nueva percepción de haber tropezado con el ciego cambiara por completo la vivencia, punto que nos conduce al tercer aserto que afirma que la experiencia es nuestra vida, lo cual tendrá mayor o menor contundencia en la medida en que aprendamos de los errores cometidos y consolidemos las acciones buenas que hayamos realizado. De lograrse tal propósito podremos concluir, sin mayor duda, que hemos alcanzado realizar una valiosa experiencia. 

http://ricardotribin.blogspot.com  

Miami, Septiembre 23 de 2015

10 predictions for IT job market in 2016

2016 is fast approaching. If you'll be looking at IT job prospects in the year to come, these 10 predictions could optimize your search.

If you are just now ready to graduate from college, I feel for you. The job market is already overrun by applicants seeking the best of the best... and even the second best of the best. The descriptor "cutthroat" doesn't do the market justice. And in the coming year, this will only be made worse by companies desperate to recover from failed social media and a glut of competition.

That doesn't mean you can't be prepared. With a bit of planning you can ensure that your navigation of the murky waters of the 2016 IT job market is as smooth as possible. To help you out with that, I have 10 predictions I believe will drive the IT field next year.

1: Network systems and data communications analysts will top the field

This should come as no surprise, as network systems and data analysis have become the foundation upon which business is built. However, as we see continued growth in the likes of streaming services, the Internet of Things, and big data analytics, networking and data will become even more crucial to the enterprise. Anyone with high-level skills in either field will be valuable.

2: Internet of Things will become the Internet of Everything

When the Internet of Things began evolving, it was met with a laugh and a shrug... mostly because no one had a clue what it was. Now we know. And we know its importance in the scope of technology. In the coming year, the Internet of Things will explode with even more technological breakthroughs that promise to "smarten" every aspect of our lives. With that in mind, those looking to expand their resumes will need to consider the Internet of Things as the horizon to gaze upon.

3: Freelance will be on the rise

Companies will continue to look for ways to cut costs. I believe that 2016 will see a dramatic rise in the world of freelance—everything from development to design to data analysis... just about any IT specialty that doesn't require an onsite presence. What does this mean for a number of job seekers? A lack of benefits and less than ideal job security, but quite a lot more freedom.

4: Social media 1.0 will fade away

Facebook and Twitter, as we know them now, will die. In fact, I have been claiming that Facebook has "stripped the social out of social media" for a while now and made it more and more difficult for companies and artists to promote their products. Within the realm of IT and the job market, that may not be a bad thing. As social networking attempts to redefine itself, it will be on the lookout for new ways to bring people together and to bring people and businesses together. As you wind up the end of 2015, gather your best ideas and start creating apps and services geared toward building Social Media 2.0.

5: The first generation of "mobile-only" users will disrupt the market

It never ceases to amaze me that an entire generation of users will opt out of the desktop or laptop experience and interact (and even work) solely via mobile devices. This means a number of things: 1) The sites you maintain must be mobile friendly. 2) You will have to know mobile devices as well as you know desktops. 3) Wireless security will be critical. Without a sound understanding of mobile technology, you could find yourself left behind in 2016.

6: Multimedia will drive technology

It used to be that games drove technology. I'm fairly confident that 2016 will begin to see a shift in the landscape, with multimedia becoming one of the primary drivers of technology. As streaming services continue to expand, the need to grow network backbones, security, reliability, and redundancy will increase. When data pipes fail, people lose their primary source of entertainment (as well as the ability to work). Couple this with the need to develop better and better compression tools, players, and curation apps and you can see how the field could easily grow.

7: Mobile payment systems will drive up the value of security expertise

By the end of 2015, chip and pin cards should be the norm in the United States. Add to this the continued rise of Apple Pay and Android Pay, and mobile payment systems could easily drive up the need for businesses to further tighten network security. It's not like we needed yet another reason to clamp down. But now that more and more companies will be accepting mobile payments, they will be on the lookout for security all-stars. If you're on the fence as to what you should focus on in the remainder of the year, this might be your ticket.

8: Political cyber warfare will ramp up dramatically

I hate writing this, but the clues have been scattered throughout the year. Politically driven cyber warfare will see a massive rise in the coming year. The implications of this are far reaching. Security, backups, redundancy... so many specialties in the field of IT will be in high demand, all driven by fear of attack. And this won't fall only onto the shoulders of government agencies. Companies of all sizes will need to batten down the hatches, keep up with patches, and secure all the latches. Otherwise... your data could be fair game.

9: Big data becomes bigger data, increasing the need for engineers who specialize in massive databases

If you think big data is big now, just wait until 2016, when the Internet of Everything has expanded to nearly every device and service imaginable, Social Media 2.0 arrives, and mobile payment increases dramatically. Big data requires specialized skill sets, heavily focused on managing massive databases. If you want to land something seriously demanding, something with the potential of incredible payoff, think Bigger than Big.

10: Prospective employees must begin to think creatively, as businesses become desperate to entice customers

Thanks to the crash of Social Media 1.0, businesses will be clamoring for the next big thing. Businesses will have to start thinking creatively if they want to bring in new customers (especially those of the millennial generation). For that, they will need fresh ideas, newer and more connected apps, and staff ready to focus a creative lens on development and evolution.

Your job strategy

The new year is almost upon us. If you know you'll be back in the job market, I would highly recommend giving some thought to these predictions for 2016. Although it's impossible to predict with any more accuracy than a weatherman predicting rain in Louisville, KY, the trends are there and the signs all point to change.

What are your plans for the 2016 job market? Will you stay put? Will you reach out for something new?

Editor's Note: The record for past predictions is "regular" at its best.However always is interesting to watch "gurus" exercising their "predictor capacity". The past has confirmed that technology usually is ahead of everyone...

Measuring the Fallout From Volkswagen's Diesel Disaster (BusinessWeek)

The pollution-masking scandal couldn't come at a worse time for the giant auto maker.

Volkswagen lost almost a quarter of its market value in a matter of minutes, but the fallout from its recent corporate crash over diesel emissions will go on for quite some time. After admitting that it cheated on U.S. air pollution tests for years, the German auto giant faces up to $18 billion in fines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. European regulators, state regulators, criminal prosecutors, and consumer-rights groups are just starting to dig into the details of the case. Four issues, however, are becoming quite clear.

1. The scandal could not come at a worse time for VW

Volkswagen is a brand adrift, particularly in the crucial U.S. market. Its sedans–the Jetta and Passat–look pretty much the same as they did a decade ago. The SUVs are either too small and boxy (the Tiguan) or too expensive (the Touareg) for the tastes of U.S. drivers these days.

Between 2012 and 2014, Volkswagen sales in the U.S. plunged 16 percent, while the auto industry at large posted a 14 percent gain in vehicles moved. The brand skidded another 4 percent this year through August.

2. A very raw deal for dealers

Bearing the brunt of this slump, in addition to the executives in Wolfsburg, Germany, are the 650 or so dealerships selling—or at least trying to sell–the vehicles. Late last year, Alan Brown, a Dallas salesman and chairman of Volkwswagen’s dealer council, told Automotive News that up to 30 percent of the brand’s dealerships have been struggling to turn a profit.

Today, those same shops have been told to stop selling a wide swath of models that includes all 2015 and 2016 vehicles with the company's 2.0 liter TDI engine. Meanwhile, VW has been on a recruiting mission to expand its dealership count by 15 percent in the U.S. by 2018. The recent diesel disaster won’t pad those stats. It may, in fact, do the opposite.

3. A knock on diesel's rehabilitated image

Americans, generally, haven’t warmed up to diesel the way Europeans have. It can be expensive and hard to find, and it smells funny. Now Volkswagen's emissions gamesmanship has sullied diesel among some of the its only champions: environmentally conscious consumers.

Volkswagen is one of the only automakers that has managed to make some momentum with diesel in the U.S. BMW and Mercedes sell a few models, and the pickup companies always roll out a small batch of diesel trucks. But VW puts up real numbers in the category. In August, the company sold almost 9,000 diesel models in the U.S.—16 percent of its business.

4. Whither Porsche?

Almost 300 of the diesels VW sold in August carried a badge that reads Porsche, one of the best-selling and most profitable brands in the industry of late. Thus far, Porsche hasn’t been tainted by the scandal engulfing its parent company. But rest assured that the EPA and others are taking a close look at the engines on its diesel offering, a version of the Cayenne SUV starting to $62,300.

Wall Street's Mr. Fix-It Faces His Toughest Test (BusinessWeek)

Frank Bisignano, chief executive officer of First Data Corp., shakes a reporter's hand on the grounds during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9, 2014

Las Vegas. Aria hotel. Electric violins. Strobe lights. Frank Bisignano takes the stage. A woman in silver leggings struts down the aisle. She’s delivering what the audience really came to see: a new system for accepting credit-card payments.

That November 2014 extravaganza was Bisignano all over: a heap of dazzle and a dash of self-promotion to make what could be boring fun. Now Bisignano, a 56-year-old who’s spent 30 years cleaning up messes at Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., faces what may be his biggest challenge yet: taking First Data Corp. public for Henry Kravis and George Roberts, co-founders of KKR & Co. It’s a tall order for the man colleagues call Wall Street’s Mr. Fix-It, especially with world financial markets in one of their most volatile runs in years. 

KKR took the payment-technology firm private in 2007 in a top-of-the-market purchase that loaded the company with $22 billion in debt. First Data’s finances are in better shape now, but it’s still debt-saddled, and revenue is growing slower than rivals.

“He’s going to have a tough job convincing investors that First Data’s growth can be a lot faster than it is now,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. “The business is what it is. There’s only so much he can do to make it look better.”

Still, he didn’t get the nickname for nothing. A son of middle-class Brooklyn, Bisignano did so well at JPMorgan there was talk at one time that he might be among potential candidates to succeed Jamie Dimon as CEO.

Dimon recruited Bisignano to work for him after Bisignano transformed Citigroup’s transaction-services division into a profit machine. “That’s still one of Citi’s greatest businesses,” said Robert Druskin, the bank’s former chief operating officer. At JPMorgan, 

Bisignano worked on the integration of Bear Stearns after its emergency acquisition in 2008, helped turn around the troubled mortgage business inherited from Washington Mutual Inc. and handled tough negotiations at its London business as the government weighed new taxes on compensation.

When it came to getting things done, “he was above politics and would always do the right thing,” said Greg O’Hara, a former chief investment officer of JPMorgan’s special investments group. “He fosters loyalty among his employees, he can really get the best out of people.”

Still, he sparred with some members of JPMorgan’s operating committee at the time, according to people with knowledge of the matter. By 2013, Bisignano was looking for a new job.

Fateful Omelet

Executives at JPMorgan, via a bank spokesman, declined to be interviewed. Bisignano and First Data executives also declined to comment because of regulatory restrictions ahead of the company’s IPO.

Scott Nuttall, KKR’s head of global capital and asset management, jumped when he heard Bisignano was available. KKR had acquired First Data in 2007, sinking $2.7 billion into the company in a buyout completed just before the financial crisis. KKR then watched as the value of its investment tumbled 40 percent by 2009 during a downturn in consumer spending. Less than a week after Nuttall and Bisignano met for breakfast at the Short Hills, New Jersey, Hilton in 2013, Nuttall had his man.

“We call it the fateful omelet,” Nuttall told Bloomberg last year. “I left the breakfast knowing he was our guy, the person we’d been looking for for five-plus years. It was very clear he could tackle hard issues and was not afraid to drive change.”

To announce his new job at First Data, Bisignano invited professional contacts and friends to dial into a conference call so he could tell them all at once, according to people who were on the call.

Strained Relationship

First Data processes payments for banks and merchants and offers a variety of other services and products, such as systems for accepting credit cards and preventing fraud. Once Bisignano was there, JPMorgan accused him of poaching executives, including Guy Chiarello and Christine Larsen, who became president and chief operations officer respectively.

First Data settled the dispute by agreeing to pay JPMorgan millions of dollars. Bisignano has since been in contact with his former boss, calling Dimon after he was diagnosed with throat cancer last year.

In 2014, KKR led a $3.5 billion equity deal that shaved debt to $21 billion. That hiked its investment to $3.9 billion, KKR’s biggest ever in a company.

Silicon Valley

Bisignano has cut costs, revamped the company’s operating structure and invested in bolstering First Data’s sales team, in some cases driving to client calls himself. To fend off competition from new technologies, he’s forged ties in Silicon Valley and introduced smarter products. Last year the company posted its first profitable quarter since being taken private.

First Data’s revenue has been climbing at a 2 percent rate, compared with 11 percent growth in global payments volume -- a sign First Data is losing share, according to Lisa Ellis, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. After the IPO, assuming the company raises $2.5 billion, it will still have more than $18 billion of debt. That could make it harder to invest in new technologies to stave off competition from startups such as Square and Stripe.

While First Data’s revenue growth has accelerated under Bisignano’s leadership, rivals such as Vantiv Inc. and Total System Services Inc. are boosting their revenue at more than five times First Data’s pace.

First Data filed for an IPO in July and selected 15 underwriters to manage the offering. JPMorgan is absent from that list.

Awkward Time

It’s an awkward time for Bisignano to pitch the IPO. After a surge in deals last year, the U.S. IPO market has cooled. It’s easy to see why. Among the biggest companies that have gone public in the past 12 months, about 40 percent have fallen below their debut price. And stock markets are all over the place. The Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Volatility Index jumped last month to levels not seen since the financial crisis.

“KKR needed someone just like Frank who could shift First Data from its excessive focus on cost-cutting to a position where the company could really grow,” said Jim Robinson, the former CEO of American Express Co. and ex-First Data director who helped negotiate its sale to KKR. “Now, it’s all about execution, execution, execution.”

(An earlier version of this story corrected the name of a First Data rival.)

How the Fed’s Most Important Message Became Enshrined in Dots (BusinessWeek)

This is the story of the central bank’s “dot plot.”

In early 2011, Federal Reserve officials were winding down the second round of their post-crisis bond-buying program known as quantitative easing and plotting an exit strategy from their unprecedented monetary stimulus.

At the same time, Janet Yellen, then-Fed vice chair, and her subcommittee on communications strategy were working on a way to convey to the public more information about the central bank's view of the future, at a time when many expected that a major shift in its policy stance was not too far off.

If you work in the capital markets, there's a good chance you have become familiar with the result of that work: the Federal Reserve's "dot plot."

The chart released by the central bank four times a year has since become a market-mover. For investors, the appeal is simple. It answers the key question of where policymakers expect to take interest rates over time.

Officials on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee meet eight times a year to formulate their monetary policy. Before every other meeting, they submit updated forecasts for economic growth, unemployment, and inflation a few years ahead. The dots show the interest rate projections underlying those forecasts—the policy rate each official expects to set in order to make a given forecast a reality.  The Fed’s dot plot is a little hard to read.  So we took a stab at a more user-friendly version that let's you compare the current rate forecast to previous ones.

Forecasting the Future: The Fed’s Dot Plot

By the time the first dot plot was released in January 2012, the Fed was no longer expecting to chart an exit from stimulus soon. The economy had taken a turn for the worse; in fact, additional bond-buying was on the horizon.

Then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke consequently downplayed the dots, a tradition that Janet Yellen continued when she assumed leadership of the Fed at the beginning of last year. At times, the chart—with its 17 disparate projections of the future path of policy—can conflict with the unified message the committee is trying to send.

In her first press conference as Fed chair in March 2014, Yellen told reporters "one should not look to the dot plot, so to speak, as the primary way in which the committee wants to or is speaking about policies to the public at large.”

At the time, the dots were rising as members of the committee were marking up their projections of where interest rates would be in 2015 and 2016. Over the last several quarters, however, the dots have come back down, suiting Yellen's message that the pace of tightening to follow what would be the Fed's first rate increase in nearly a decade will be gradual.

So Yellen has turned back to the dots as "Exhibit A" for investors. During her press conference in June of this year, she pointed to it repeatedly when asked about the central bank's likely course.

Now investors aren't just seeking clues about the pace of rate increases likely to follow a rate increase. They are also looking at what the dot plot says regarding when officials expect to make that first rate increase in almost 10 years.

While the median official's projection was unchanged in its expectation of two rate increases in 2015 when the latest set of dots was released in June, market participants homed in on the fact that seven officials were now projecting fewer than two rate increases this year. That was up from only three officials making such projections in March.

Why dots anyway?

"We looked at lots of other ways of conveying the individual projections," said Andrew Levin, a former Fed economist who assisted Yellen and Bernanke in designing the dot plot while serving as a special adviser from 2010 to 2012. "This one turned out to be a good way of showing the distribution, but where—if a bunch of people have similar views, and a bunch of dots are close together—it draws your attention."

With only two meetings left in 2015 after this week's gathering, the new set of dots will send a strong signal as to what policymakers expect to happen over the next few months.

If the Fed doesn't raise rates and the dots still show one increase penciled in for this year, investors will assume that the Fed is planning to raise rates in October or December. If the Fed does raise rates and the dots show that only one increase was expected, investors will assume that the Fed has no plans to raise rates again until 2016.

"Sometimes it seems like the only way that people can really understand what the committee's views are," Levin said. "The dot plot was meant to increase transparency, not shape views on policy. It's like a very thin reed that is suddenly carrying a huge amount of weight."

10 ways automation may open up new IT job opportunities

Automation is taking off, and many IT pros are worried about the future of their profession. Check out these 10 reasons automation could actually mean more jobs in IT.



Automation has helped numerous industries in ways many of us may never fully understand. But these advances come at a cost... jobs. In some instances, the automation of a job has made employee positions redundant. That's a pretty steep cost.

However, that doesn't mean the IT landscape will be mowed down by automation. In fact, it might open up new jobs for IT pros. Let's take a look and see how this could happen.

1: Development

All of that automation requires some serious coding. And every time a business needs to alter the shape and scale of the automation, programming is likely to be involved. This will be especially true when the automation lands outside the scope of traditional businesses and SMBs begin to rely on automation.

2: Mobility

Automation shouldn't always conjure up a massive scale warehouse filled with a corps of robots droning away at building automobiles. Automation falls all the way down to the small mom-and-pop shops. Consider the automated email response—or nearly anything within the world of the Internet of Things. Mobility itself will help drive a level of automation that only IT pros can handle. And the more traction mobility gains, the more automation will become a part of everyday life.

3: Security

All those networked devices... the ones that are actually doing the work humans once did? They will need significant security protectection. Not only to prevent someone from hacking into the system and stealing data, but to keep nefarious users from bringing systems to a halt. Your automated system comes to a halt and that bottom line you've bolstered (thanks to the automation) will bottom out. Security will continue to rise as one of the most important elements of IT—to the point where even automated systems depend upon you for safety.

4: Reliability

Automated systems won't just need an added measure of security, either. Reliability will become tantamount to success. No matter how brilliantly an automated system has been designed, if it doesn't work, it's worthless. IT pros will be depended upon to ensure those systems are reliable. This means keeping tabs on the code that drives the automated system, the code that binds the systems together, and the devices that are driven by the code.

5: Design

Those automated systems have to be designed. Guess who'll be doing that: engineers and IT pros. Automation isn't going to come easy for every business, and they'll lean heavily on those who can design systems ready to help bring them into a more modern and more efficient era. Some automated systems will comprise individual apps and services that must be pieced together... which is right in IT's wheelhouse.

6: Creation, repair, maintenance

Artificial consciousness is still trapped in sci-fi —at least for the moment. We are a long, long way off from robots begetting robots or robots repairing themselves (or the systems they belong to). Because of this, you will be responsible for the creation and the repair of automated systems. We are nowhere near a time and place where businesses can function without IT. It's simply not an option. So no matter how good the automated systems become, businesses will still rely on IT staff.

7: Limited reach

Until C3PO-like units are deployed as IT staff, there are still elements of business that automation can't control or serve. Take, for instance, email servers. Although we could feasibly reach a point where an automated system could maintain an email server, there is no way such a system could, without human interaction, recover bulk email from a specific time period or troubleshoot a server when the solution doesn't meet the standard criteria as outlined by the server manufacturer.

8: System complexity

As more and more automation makes its way into the world of daily business, the systems that have taken over tasks from humans will continue to grow in complexity. This means the average thinker won't be up to the task of keeping pace with the work flow. For that, they will need staff that can think on their toes quickly and formulate ideas and solutions on pace with what the standard IT pro considers daily routine. Management will, in some cases, need to be replaced by more IT-aware managers.

9: Continued advancement

All of these advances we are making in the field of automation will only help to create a demand for more. As businesses evolve towards automation, we will find that there are newer and better "things" that can be done. As those discoveries happen, the need for IT pros that can make them happen will grow and grow. Although automation could signal a decrease in certain sectors, it will only help to grow the IT field.

10: Decision making

The latest Tech Pro Research survey revealed concerns over implementing automation that included comments such as "Do not think human judgment per each situation can be automated" and "Machines—even intelligent ones—are still purely based on logic; machines don't have intuition or sympathy" and "There are nuances in decision making that cannot be duplicated via software." These limitations suggest a viable future for IT pros who can make critical business and technological decisions that won't be overtaken by automation.

Your take

Set your fears aside. Automation isn't going to displace IT in any significant shape or form. In fact, the more automated our systems grow, the more businesses will depend on IT to keep them evolving and running smoothly.

How do you think automation will affect the IT landscape? Are you taking steps to expand your skills or pursue a different field in case automation takes you