A good article appeared last week in Forbes' online magazine about how to retain top talent.  Actually, it sought to answer the question: "Why does top talent leave?"  The author boiled ten reasons down to two primary factors: Top talent doesn't like being poorly managed Top talent doesn't like "organizational lameness" (shifting priorities, no vision, uninspiring atmosphere) So, to flip this over to the positive side, how do you retain top talent? If you are a manager, learn to manage well.  Your staff or employees don't require perfection; but they respond well to a leader who is growing and sharpening their skills.  If you are in a hiring position, hire managers with good people skills.  Competencies can be supplemented with additional hands and feet.  You can't contract out people skills. Secondly, examine your culture.  High capacity people want to make more than a marginal difference.  They can't swim long in…

Passing this along from yesterday's Wall Street Journal. ********************* Thinking Outside the Box - Literally By Christopher Shea Just how potent is the metaphor “thinking outside the box”? To find out, researchers built a literal box out of PVC pipe and cardboard — 5′ cubed. Roughly 100 test subjects were given a 10-question word-association test designed to measure one kind of creativity (sample item: What one word links “measure,” “worm,” “video”?). As they answered, participants sat inside the box, sat outside of it, or sat in a room sans box. People sitting outside the box answered more questions correctly than either of the other two groups (and the difference couldn’t be explained by claustrophobia or confusion, both of which were measured). Creativity seemed to be spurred by the acting out of a familiar figure of speech, the researchers said. (The cover story for the experiment was that was exploring the…