U said dat i f c k e d around i felt like u let me down.

Goals that are overly ambitious can discourage employees and decrease motivation, yet the idea of stretch goals is proposed as a way to get people fired up and motivated. as a manager, how might you decide where to draw the line between a “good” stretch goal and a “bad” one that is unrealistic?

Peppy roaney believes that pizza is a much more versatile dish than most people realize. as the national marketing manager for pizza guys, he observed how consumers were delighted with barbecue pizza, hawaiian pizza, mexican pizza and other unique combinations. his suggestions for other unusual pizzas, however, were met with a negative response by his superiors. even some of his colleagues laughed at his ideas. peppy's confidence in his ability to understand the market has led him to focus on planning a business of his own. peppy realizes that he will take a risk when he leaves his job with pizza guys and embarks upon a new venture: peppy's pizzazzeria. peppy is excited about the potential of profitably catering to the unmet desires of pizza consumers. peppy is confident that peppy's pizzazzeria will be a success, but only if he has enough money to do things right. since peppy has very little personal wealth, he knows he must obtain financial assistance. in order to prepare for meetings with bankers and p

Who is better at multi-tasking? in business, employees are often asked to perform a complex task when their atten-tion is divided (i.e., multi-tasking). human factors (may 2014) published a study designed to determine whether video game players are better than non–video game play-ers at multi-tasking. each in a sample of 60 college stu-dents was classified as a video game player or a non-player. participants entered a street crossing simulator and were asked to cross a busy street at an unsigned intersec-tion. the simulator was designed to have cars traveling at various high rates of speed in both directions. during the crossing, the students also performed a memory task as a distraction. two variables were measured for each student: (1) a street crossing performance score (measured out of 100 points) and (2) a memory task score (measured out of 20 points). the researchers found no differences in either the street crossing performance or memory task score of video game players and non-gamers. “these results,” say the researchers, “suggest that action video game players [and non-gamers] are equally susceptible to the costs of dividing attention in a complex task”