The Truth Behind Disappearing Office Supplies

New Survey Reveals “Supply-Jackers” in Offices Nationwide, Why Working Americans Pilfer Supplies, and the Struggle Professionals Go Through to Protect Their Favorites

It happens all the time. You open a brand new package of your favorite pens. The quality, design, and color are just right. The day comes and goes and then suddenly, the pen is gone, never to be seen or written with again. According to the new survey OfficeMax Workplace Undercover Survey, employed Americans are no strangers to this scenario, as supplies in their workspaces go missing quite often. Working Americans admit they take supplies from the office for their personal use at home or hold on to borrowed products they should have returned to their colleagues. But when their favorite supplies aren’t at their disposal, their workday suffers. When such productivity is put into question, the office supply enthusiast knows no bounds. They go the distance to keep their loot safe, from placing them in a special drawer to covering the item in labels sharing their contact information.


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About OfficeMax

OfficeMax Incorporated (NYSE: OMX) is a leader in both business-to-business office products solutions and retail office products. The OfficeMax mission is simple. We help our customers do their best work. The company provides office supplies and paper, in-store print and document services through OfficeMax ImPress®, technology products and solutions, and furniture to businesses and individual consumers. OfficeMax customers are served by more than 30,000 associates through direct sales, catalogs, e-commerce and approximately 1,000 stores. To find the nearest OfficeMax, call 1-877-OFFICEMAX. For more information, visit www.officemax.com.

About Kelton Research

Kelton Research is a full service global insights firm with offices in Los Angeles and New York, and is America’s fastest growing Market Research Consultancy. Serving as strategic partner to more than 100 of the Fortune 500 and thousands of smaller companies and organizations, Kelton Research utilizes a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to drive tactical recommendations for clients. For more information about Kelton Research services, please call toll-free 1.888.8.KELTON or visit www.keltonresearch.com.

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 40b – An Interview with Frank McIntosh, author of The Relational Leader, part 2 of 2

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 40b – An Interview with Frank McIntosh, author of The Relational Leader, part 2 of 2 examines how a people-centered relational leadership approach breaks down organizational barriers and engages and motivates employees for achievement of truly superior results. During our discussion, Frank McIntosh, author of The Relational Leader: A Revolutionary Framework to Engage Your Team shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • the methods Relational Leaders use to hold employees accountable for the achievement of assigned tasks and goals
  • the activities executives and managers should engage in to become more relational in their leadership approach
  • the actions executives and managers can take to transform their company into a relational organization

Additional Information

In addition to the invaluable insights Frank shares in The Relational Leader and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.FJMcIntosh.com.   Frank’s book, The Relational Leader published by Course Technology PTR – a part of Cengage Learning, can be purchased by clicking here.

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About the Author

Frank McIntosh is author of The Relational Leader. During his 36 year career, Frank has worked with many of the most recognized companies and executives in the world. He has provided consulting services for peers across the country and helped initiate Junior Achievement programs in Ireland, the Ivory Coast, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Uzbekistan. Frank was inducted into the Delaware Business Leaders Hall of Fame in October 2008, one of 38 individuals so honored and the first not-for-profit executive to receive this distinction in Delaware’s 300 year business history. To read Frank’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Portfolio Management Warning Flag Article

Portfolio Management Warning Flag 1 – Management Distractions

At times, organizations undertake ‘bet the company’ projects, initiatives so risky because of their sheer size, strategic importance, and/or operational impact that the project’s failure could bankrupt the company. ‘Bet the company’ projects necessarily demand heightened management awareness and focus, however, excessive diversion of leadership’s attention to these types of projects and away from others and/or day-to-day operations could also jeopardize the organization.


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Leadership Inspirations – Teachers

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

William A. Ward
(1921 – 1994)

one of America’s most quoted inspirational writers,
author of Fountains of Faith

Improving Your Creative Coordination

The brain has a unique approach to creativity. Several areas of the right hemisphere become highly active, while the visual processing area of the brain experiences diffuse, rather than focused, activity, according to a study by John Kounios, professor of psychology at Drexel University and Mark Jung-Beeman of Northwestern University, who monitored brain activity during creative problem-solving. Another recent study, by Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia and colleagues, found that the portion of your mind that wanders can sometimes cooperate with more focused regions of thought to help bring in fresh ideas and insights.

There are a lot of exciting new findings in brain research that suggest creativity involves complex coordination of many areas of the brain in particular, unique ways. Whereas we once might have described creativity as a sort of mental muscle that simply needed to be kept strong, now it appears that creative thought is a higher-level process involving the coordinated efforts of many mental muscles. Pumping a few ions every now and then in a brainstorming session won’t get you into peak creative shape, any more than lifting leg weights will prepare you to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. So, what can we do to be in peak creative condition?

Since creativity requires complex coordination of multiple brain areas and functions, from daydreaming to connecting distant thoughts, it’s important to exercise your creative coordination through a variety of complex creative challenges. Here is a great set of exercises you can use, alone or in a team or staff meeting, to increase creative strength and coordination within the brain:


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About the Author

Alex Hiam (www.alexhiam.com) is the author of more than 20 popular books on business, including Business Innovation For Dummies, Marketing For Dummies, and Marketing Kit for Dummies. A lecturer at the business school at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he has consulted with many Fortune 500 firms and large U.S. government agencies.