As I age, I gain perspective on the illusion of wealth and status as forms of fulfillment. I don't want my life to be measured by dollars and cents, or the number of books I've authored. Rather, I want to be remembered by the lives that I've touched. I want live a life that counts.

Anybody can become a consultant. But not everybody does it well. Here's what you need to know to thrive.

Everyone wants to make it to the top in their chosen career, but not everybody achieves that goal. This article takes an in-depth look at the different stages an executive must go through to become a CEO or to earn whatever other job title is used to describe the person at the apex of a business organization.

This 
paper looks 
at 
the 
small 
group 
of 
investors 
that 
nurture 
the 
entrepreneurial
 elite
 by 
taking 
big 
risks
 and 
writing 
big 
checks. 
More 
specifically 
it 
focuses
 on 
just
 who
 these 
VCs 
are
 and 
how 
they 
earned
 their 
stripes. 
It 
attempts 
to 
identify
 attributes
 that 
successful
 VCs 
share
 and 
provide 
some 
insight 
that 
you 
can 
share with 
your 
son 
or 
daughter 
if 
they 
tell 
you 
they 
want 
to 
be 
a
 VC 
when
 they 
grow 
up.

The founder of Silicon Alley Reporter and Mahalo.com offers advice to employers trying to make the right hire and candidates struggling to land a job.

In today's diverse workplace, your actions and motives are constantly under scrutiny. Time to manage your own professional image before others do it for you. An interview with professor Laura Morgan Roberts.

Like just about everything else in the workplace, the conventional wisdom about how to manage the boss has evolved considerably in recent years. If you hope to climb the career ladder by impressing your boss, these are the new and revised rules of the road.

This chart is meant to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and give you a better idea of whether you're ready to become a small business owner. It could also be useful in your career exploration or even in a more conventional SWOT analysis exercise.

It's smart to give the recruiter a few minutes of your time, even if you're not actively job hunting. You never know when you might be.

A powerful way to improve executive effectiveness or promote connectivity in an organization is to work through each employee's personal network. Research has shown that people in more diverse, entrepreneurial networks tend to be more successful. Providing executives and employees with a means of planning their personal network development is an effective way to promote connectivity. Such feedback can help employees identify biases in their networks and understand why they might want to invest more in some relationships and less in others.

There are many ways to assess the composition of your network and its impact on performance, learning and innovation. For example, sociologists commonly look at the effect of certain similarities between people-such as age, race, education, and gender-on clustering in networks. But these demographics do not always illustrate the subtle means by which one's contacts affect learning. In many coaching sessions with managers at all levels in organizations, we have found at least six dimensions of personal networks to be consistently important.

Toxic managers are a fact of life. Some managers are toxic most of the time; most managers are toxic some of the time. Knowing how to deal with people who are rigid, aggressive, self-centered or exhibit other types of dysfunctional behavior can improve your own health and that of others in the workplace. This author describes the mechanisms for coping.

It's rarely discussed, at least as not as much as the habits of successful CEOs, but the truth is that it takes some special personal qualities to be spectacularly unsuccessful. This author has written a best seller on the subject, and in this article he discusses how leaders can be not only instruments of success, but sometimes also architects of failure.

Search executive Danny Sarch, who specializes in recruiting financial-services professionals, offers a selection of books, plus a Web site and movie, for b-schoolers eyeing careers on Wall Street.

Dick Costolo (aka Ask the Wizard) blogs about granting options or receiving an option grant.

Guy Kawasaki interviews Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.

If you've ever wondered why some employers don't seem to understand how to hire or retain their workers, you're not alone. Slugging Through the War for Talent, a just-released research study cosponsored by Development Dimensions International (DDI) and Monster, confirms there is often a big disconnect between what employers and job seekers are looking for during the hiring process.

To avoid the heartbreak of being sacked, follow these 12 steps for building currency in the workplace.

Sitting down to negotiate your salary and benefits can be a tense time. It's important to ask for what you believe you deserve, and go in prepared to defend why you're worth it.

The office is a jungle. That's why intrepid employees need a field guide to help them spot and identify the most powerful creature in the workplace: the boss. Here are ten common examples of the species, along with care and feeding tips should you encounter a manager in the wild.

You've got a brainstorm. It's bold, it's brilliant-and it might even make you rich. Learn how the pros transform great insights into big career breakthroughs.

You got the job. Now what you do--or don't do--in the next 30 days could determine if you keep it and how far you'll go. Here's how to negotiate the pitfalls and take advantage of the opportunities during that crucial first month of make or break.

Professional skills can help take you up the corporate ladder, but your ability to build good relationships and create a positive impression on senior management is just as critical.

Marketing professionals widely use the 4 Ps for marketing a product. But how do you market yourself when YOU are the product? How do you make your own accomplishments believable?

Most senior managers will step into a new job at some point within the next five years. Many will be recruited or promoted to the top post in their companies. A strong report card during the first 100 days can set the tone for the next 1,000. We asked 20 CEOs to come up with the agenda they would follow if they could start over in their jobs today. This publication details the ten actions that consistently came up.

Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work.