Description: Follow Your Fear by Bob Morand from The Stepping Stone Newsletter, July 2004, Issue No. 15.

Description: At the 2004 Annual Meeting, four industry leaders, David Atkinson, Patricia Guinn, Bruce Nicholson, and Salim Manzar, shared their insight on a variety of questions. This article briefly covers their responses to a few of those questions.

Description: An update on recent and upcoming activities of the International Section Council as it continues to find ways to serve its members and other interested parties who are either working overseas or have a strong international interest.

Description: Book review: George W. Bush memoir

Description: A compilation of reader responses is presented to a real life situation posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision. This issue’s case study involved management hiring someone to make changes, then ignoring all suggestions.

Description: Latest installment of a series applying lessons from Buddhist philosophy to the working world of actuaries. This installment focuses on practicing the yogic principle of "ahimsa" or non-harming with ourselves, and the importance of respecting and caring for oneself in order to better serve the needs of others.

Description: It is well established that empowerment of staff is a critical leadership trait. But what are the metrics to recognize that you have achieved it? What steps enable this achievement? Which psychological attributes explain its efficacy?This article proposes to answer these questions through a multi-disciplinary examination of empowerment in the context of three leadership domains.

Description: The article describes principles for optimal sub-tasking of a project goal. Two experiments each one comparing different approaches are presented. A summary of principles for optimal goal setting presents seven key points: i)levels of outcome goals should be recognizable and lack ambiguity; ii) each subtask should be atomic, i.e. not be capable of being broken up into further subtasks, iii) the subtasks should be uniform, lacking ambiguity, so that any new trainee could master it without the need for further guidance; iv) each subtask should be attainable in a reasonable amount of time; v) mentor feedback should be provided during the initial stages of learning or training; vi) upon mastery of each subtask trainees should be encouraged to maximize their overall score; vii) after mastery of individual subtasks, while attempting to maximize scores, trainees should be provided with a mixture of easy, intermediate, and difficult tasks.

Description: This article addresses dealing with distractions, avoiding habits like multi-tasking, and providing guidance on how to reach a state of "flow" to concentrate on deep work.

Description: The author reviews works from Greco-Roman literature from 800 B.C. to 400 A.D. and discusses how they relate to business and management, strategy and tactics.