I would like to take a minute to congratulate NASA for their exceptional work with the Mars Curiosity rover mission. But this tribute is not for the spacecraft design or rocket science. It's for NASA's exceptional job in telling their story and engaging the public throughout the mission.

Our organizations may not have $2.6 billion dollar budgets but we can mimic NASA's successful outreach work to increase awareness and public interest of our own missions.

I recently read an HBR blog entitled, "Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged," and it really hit home for me. For one, we here at Ascendant spend a fair amount of time working remotely when not on client site or traveling. And second, something that will resonate with others who have read Dan Pink's book, Drive, is that autonomy is one of the key factors in motivating employees.

Every morning, I run through Emory University. The evolution of this institution over time has been incredible. From a small Methodist college in a small town in Georgia, Emory has emerged as a major international university in the largest city in the southeast. The undergraduate, law, medical, and business schools attract students from literally around the world, and speakers like the Dalai Lama and President Carter have spoken at the university.

Hello, new world. Well, new world to me, at least. For many of you involved in performance and strategy management, you've been part of this orbit for years. So I'll be blunt: I'm hoping to learn a thing or two from you.

I was reading the Sunday New York Times today, and it got me thinking about education and the use of technology. I know it is Monday and the NYT I was reading was from July 22, but I found it interesting nonetheless. The graphic in the NYT was called "Advising by Algorithm" in a pullout section called Education Life. It spoke about how Austin Peay State University recommended classes to its students.

In the this post, Alexa Thompson discusses how in the present business environment, where collaboration is respected and valued, making sure employees are content can help increase individual productivity and improve corporate culture. As an author for resources on psychology, including organizational psychology, or "work" psychology, Alexa builds off of this blog's promotion of building collaborative teams by suggesting that changes to the overall culture of a business can yield better results.