More than three out of four women in a nationwide survey said they would be willing to relocate for the sake of their husband’s career. If the circumstances happened to be reversed, however, the husbands would be far less cooperative. According to a random sampling of 375 people in dual-career households, 77 percent of women and 58 percent of men said they would make the move if the spouse had a good career opportunity....

Suppose you have this wonderful idea, but you need to sell it to your company’s Powers That Be. If you’re a midlevel manager or blindly optimistic rank-and-filer, this might be your one chance to impress the chief executive officer and other people near the top. So how do you do it effectively? A DVD called “Speaking to the Big Dogs: A Boardroom Survival Kit,” featuring comments from 17 top executives, has a variety of u...

You can get a Pavlovian response from lots of people in horse racing. Just say “Smarty Jones” — and wait for a groan. You might even manage it with one word: “Birdstone.”Smarty was a huge favorite to win the Triple Crown over the weekend, becoming the first horse to do it in 26 years. But Birdstone, a 36-to-1 shot, ran Smarty down during the home stretch to win the Belmont Stakes.So, for the third year in a row and the 10th...

At the Indianapolis 500, workers go round in circles, over and over again. Does that sound like any jobs you know?There is a purpose to the madness at Indy, of course. The driver who completes 200 laps around the oval in the fastest time wins. But there are other lessons from auto racing that might rev up your career:Speed is essential — and sometimes overrated. No Indy driver goes at full speed all the time. Besides slowin...

Suppose for a moment that you had 415 million days of vacation. What would you do with them? Give ’em back, of course. At least that’s what American workers insist on doing this year, forgoing an average of about three vacation days per person, according to a survey from online travel service Expedia.com. That’s a 50 percent increase from last year, according to the sampling of more than 2,000 adults nationwide, conducte...

The hottest novel in the past couple of years has to be “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. It’s a classic thriller, but it also can lead to real-life religious debates about Jesus, his relationships and his legacy. It’s intriguing stuff — even for those who are not particularly religious.The premises behind those debates can have workplace implications, too, even if you wouldn’t think of discussing religion at work.Without s...

A great resume and a glib interview might still leave you jobless if you haven’t paid attention to that crucial last piece of landing a job: having good - and helpful - references. Try these steps:Mix well. Besides previous supervisors, include references who have worked more closely with you, such as colleagues, clients or mentors. As long as they’re familiar with you and your work, offer up the most supportive people you...

Let’s say you’re a manager and you consider 30 percent of your employees to be stars, 50 percent to be reasonably good and the remaining 20 percent to be people who basically do as little as they can get away with. Which levels of performance do you consider to be acceptable?That’s one of the questions posed by David Cottrell in “Monday Morning Leadership.” The book by Cottrell, the president and chief executive officer of...

I’ve written lots of times about how much you can learn about workplace politics by watching “Survivor,” but bosses also need to watch to appreciate the brilliance of creator Mark Burnett and the show’s staff. It’s not an accident that the show has endured, still thriving under the same basic format that it had several seasons ago.Besides having great casting and editing, the creators throw in twists every once in a while t...

Many executives would shudder at Ricardo Semler’s suggestions: Let employees set their own hours and pay — and choose their bosses. List everyone’s salary on the company’s intranet, let workers review managers anonymously every six months, do away with mission statements and corporate headquarters, virtually abolish the human resources department.But Semler has made those ideas a success at Semco, a Brazilian company with m...