4 Ways to Unify Your Team

Have you ever watched a football game where a team is performing so well, so perfectly in sync, it?s almost magical? Their actions look more like ballet than sport.

There is a reason for such grace?unity. The players are working as one, putting the good of the team ahead of their own personal glories.

Luckily, unity is not confined to the gridiron. You can find it in business too. In fact, it?s a major characteristic of nearly every successful company. They don?t have employees?they have team members who care for one another, their leaders and, ultimately, the business.

So how does unity happen? It?s not magic. It can be created intentionally and become part of your culture. As Dave teaches in Lesson 7 of EntreLeadership Master Series, people don?t naturally unify; they must be led to do so. And that starts by showing your team that you care. Here are a few ways to begin.

1. Share Your Purpose

A football team?s ultimate goal is pretty simple: win the game. For your company, it may not be so simple. For a team to pull together, they have to know what they are fighting for. Restate your goals, vision and mission early and often. At our company, everyone is required to memorize the mission statement. Each player knows how they fit into the game and what they must do for the team to win.

2. Be an Open Book

Be open with your team and always share the news, both good and bad. Lack of communication leads to fear, anger, disunity and turnover. What they don?t know will hurt them. In fact, they?ll probably make it 10 times worse than the actual reality. By simply letting your people know what?s happening, you?ll see your team come together, whether in celebration or during tough times.

3. Let Them Eat Cake

Nothing says ?Let?s unite!? like a free ham sandwich. Breaking bread together naturally bonds people. It?s also a great way for those in your company who don?t know each other to meet and begin building relationships. Dave feels it?s so important, he provides lunch for his team each week. Once a month, everyone gets together to celebrate birthdays with cake and ice cream. Our Christmas party is legendary as much for the food served as it is for the lavish gifts, and the meal creates incredible synergy among our team.

4. Be Golden

The best way to let your team know that you care is actually the simplest: follow the Golden Rule. As it says in Luke 6:31, ?Do to others as you would have them do to you.? Put yourself in their shoes and then act the way you?d want to be treated. When you would expect to be praised, praise. When there?s a problem you would expect help with, lend a hand.

By intentionally fostering a culture of unity, you can take your team and company to a soul-satisfying place, where people are passionate about their jobs and customers are always served. It?s like scoring a touchdown every day.

For even more great ideas on team unity, download Dave?s EntreLeadership podcast that includes a very special interview with former NFL coach Tony Dungy.

In 20 years, Dave has grown his company to a national winning brand with more than 300 team members who have impacted millions of lives. His company has been named one of the ?Best Places to Work in Nashville? four years in a row. EntreLeadership is how he?s done it and how you can do it too. Get your copy of the new book now!

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Source: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/4-ways-to-unify-your-team/lifeandmoney_business

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PRESENTING: The Best And Worst Stock Pickers On Wall Street


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2011 proved to be a particularly frenetic year for equity investors. The S&P 500 closed exactly were it started at the beginning of the year. But tremendous volatility translated into losses for many traders.

At the beginning of 2011, most experts forecasted stocks would rise by year end. Deutsche Bank's bull Binky Chadha forecasted stocks to end 2011 at 1,550, but he was horribly wrong.  Only a few strategists, like Morgan Stanley's Adam Parker had the guts to make the bearish calls that ultimately proved accurate. 

Click here to see the ranking >

Background
Strategists like Chadha and Parker make calls on the S&P 500, which can be helpful for index investors.  But not everyone is interested in index investing.  Many want to invest in individual stocks, and they'd like to use the good research calls associated with those stocks.

Price Target Study
We reviewed the price targets each major brokerage firm had at the beginning of 2011 for each of the 30 stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Then we compared those targets with the price of each stock at the close of 2011.

Once we figured out the margin of error for each analyst and the stock they covered, we combined those figures for each bank to determine a weighted score measuring the accuracy of each firm.  The highest possible accuracy score would be 100, which would mean each analyst at the firm had price targets that match perfectly with the year end closing prices.  (For more details on how we scored each firm, see our methodology.)

Findings
As expected, analysts generally forecasted the stocks they covered to rise.  So, the analysts who were the most accurate were also the ones who overshot by the least.

No firm completely dominated in the rankings.  Most had at least one analyst who was the most accurate analyst covering their stock.  But most also had an analyst who was the worst in their category.

The most inaccurate analysts were the ones covering Bank Of America, which closed the year at $5.56 after losing more than half of its market value. The average price target at the beginning of 2011 was $17.27 with a range of $13 to $20 per share.

Deutsche Bank's Chadha may have been one of the most inaccurate strategists on when it came to forecasting the S&P 500.  However, Deutsche Bank's individual equity analysts scored relatively well in our study.

Generally speaking, the largest investment banks scored highly on our list with Goldman Sachs leading the bulge bracket banks.

But Goldman Sachs didn't take the crown in our study.

Click here to see the rankings >

Sam Ro also contributed to this project.

Click here to read how we created this list >

#14 Stifel Financial

Score: 58.3

Comments: Stifel's analysts made the worst calls for Bank of America, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola, Intel, and Microsoft, which weighed heavily on their score.

However, the firm had the most accurate analyst covering AT&T.

#13 FBR Capital Markets

Score: 59.0

Comments: FBR's call on Verizon proved to be the most inaccurate.

However, they were relatively close on their price targets for JPMorgan and Microsoft.

#12 Credit Agricole

Score: 60.6

Comments: Credit Agricole made the most accurate calls for Alcoa, Chevron, DuPont, and Kraft.  But that was about it.

They were way off with their calls on Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/UKVXOdb72hY/presenting-the-most-accurate-equity-research-teams-on-wall-street-2012-1

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Should the Rich Lose Their Social Security Benefits?

--> Should the rich get Social SecurityMillions of Social Security recipients get minimum-wage benefits that are barely enough to make ends meet. At the other end of the spectrum, though, many retirees who could get by just fine without any Social Security payments at all receive much larger monthly benefits from the government.

With Social Security in crisis, does it make sense to give those big payouts to the people who paid the most in taxes along the way -- or should they be forced to sacrifice those benefits for those who are less fortunate?

Before you decide whether the government should cut off rich retirees from part or all of their Social Security benefits, let's first look at exactly how high-income earners get treated under Social Security currently.

What the Wealthy Get from Social Security

Under current law, Social Security benefits get calculated based on your average income throughout your career. The more you make, the higher your benefits are, up to the yearly maximum on which the government collects Social Security taxes -- $110,100 for 2012.

But what many don't realize is that in figuring your monthly check, not all earnings are created equal.

  • The first $700 to $800 in average monthly earnings counts the most, turning into $0.90 of benefits per $1 of income.
  • Above that level, the increases in benefits get a lot slower -- $0.32 per $1 up to about $4,600 in 2012, and $0.15 per $1 above that.
So even though top wage-earners get more benefits, they don't get as much more in benefits as their higher earnings would suggest.

Furthermore, many high-income retirees pay taxes on as much as 85% of their Social Security benefits. For top-bracket retirees, that has the same impact as slashing almost 30% off their monthly checks.

Two Ways to Look at the Issue

Obviously, arguments for and against giving Social Security to the rich create strong emotions.

On one hand, high-income earners pay a lot of money in Social Security taxes, and with the tapered benefit structure, many feel that they already don't get their fair share of what they put into the Social Security system. If Social Security calculated benefits without the earnings breakpoints described above, then high-income earners would get much more in their monthly retirement checks.

On the other side of the argument, many believe that the purpose of Social Security isn't to give people payback for the payroll taxes they've had withheld from their paychecks throughout their lifetimes, but rather to provide an economic safety net for all workers. With insurance for disabilities and other hardships as well as retirement benefits, Social Security acts as a supplement for those who need it. Proponents of measures like means-testing argue that if you don't actually need the money, you shouldn't get benefits.

Does Rolling Back Benefits for the Rich Really Help?

The bigger question, though, is whether cutting benefits for the rich would actually do any good.

A 2011 study from the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research concluded that phasing out benefits as income levels rose would have little or no effect on Social Security's viability going forward, especially when you consider the ways that the rich would respond to the move.

Right now, 90% of benefits go to individuals with less than $50,000 in annual income (not including what they get in Social Security). In order to have a marked impact on Social Security's financial health, a means test would have to hit far more than just the very rich. More importantly, the added costs of administering a means test would offset any savings.

Still, the practical impact of means-testing doesn't change the way many people feel about the fairness of the program. As long as Social Security remains in financial trouble, reformers will look at cutting back on benefits for the rich as a possible solution to a much bigger problem.

Motley Fool contributor Dan Caplinger doesn't count on Social Security for anything. You can follow him on Twitter here. --> Click here -->

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Source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/01/05/should-the-rich-lose-their-social-security-benefits/

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The 10 Huge NFL Playoff Stories That No One Is Talking About Right Now


James Harrison

Rejoice, the NFL Playoffs are here!

Everyone is buzzing about Tim Tebow, the Saints' ineptitude on grass, and the Giants' sleeper potential.

But there are a bunch of stories flying under the radar — like Denver's suddenly shaky defense, Big Ben's gimpy ankle, and the two big fat chinks of Green Bay's armor.

The Falcons exist

Atlanta wins the award for the Most Forgettable Playoff Team of 2011.

They were anonymous all year — earning comfortable wins over mediocre teams and losing relatively soundly to the league's best teams.

No one really thinks they have a shot to make noise. But they have a good QB, and a lot of weapons at the skill positions, so they should be able to put up points on the Giants.

You could argue that Eli Manning has been more impressive than Brees and Rodgers

Rodgers' MVP candidacy took a hit when random backup dude Matt Flynn threw for six touchdowns in his absence last week.

It's a little unfair, but it shows that Rodgers (and to a lesser extent Brees) have a ton of weapons at his disposal.

Eli doesn't have such weapons. He has no running game, a patchwork offensive line, and one good receiver (Victor Cruz). Yet he's still put up absurd numbers and won the (weak) NFC East.

The Packers are sort of a mess

Green Bay is without BOTH offensive tackles.

That's huge for a team that runs as many empty sets as the Packers.

In addition, their defensive has taken a step back from the form they showed in last year's playoffs.

Did they peak too early? We'll see.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook.

See Also:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/vBWBjgVMhnE/nfl-playoff-stories-2012-1

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Cisco Stock En Route To $21 With Cloud Revenue Rising

Cisco Systems recently released a new cloud-based service, OnPlus, that helps its small-business partners provide network assessment, management and advisory services to their customers more easily. We currently have a $21.21 Trefis price estimate for Cisco, about 15% above the market price.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/01/04/cisco-stock-en-route-to-21-with-cloud-revenue-rising/

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