听力原文： Advertising expenditure worldwide was $225 billion last year, according to a rep

lworks in Philadelphia with a stopwatch and a notepad, managers have searched for tools to improve the performance of their organizations. In recent years there has been a sharp increase in the use and number of such tools. Taylor's "scientific management" now sits alongside more recent inventions such as benchmarking, business process re-engineering and scenario planning.

For the past 12 years, Bain & Company, a firm of consultants, has asked companies around the world how much they use such tools, and how satisfied they are with them. Its latest analysis, out this week, shows that strategic planning, used by almost four out of every five companies, is currently the most popular.

Bain's Darrell Rigby, founder of the survey, says managers are now particularly keen on anything that helps them get closer to their customers. Two-thirds say that "insufficient customer insight" is hurting their performance. Hence the steep rise in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)—from seventh last time to second.

Since the excessive spending at the turn of the century, executives have focused on cutting costs. Now, says Mr. Rigby, they see a limit to that process and are seeking other ways to deliver the value investors have built into their share prices.

Despite the impression that managers vacillate wildly from one trendy technique to another— mission statements one year, Six Sigma the next—most of the top slots are filled by hardy perennials. Strategic planning has been top since 1996. The current hot new tool—RFID, radio frequency identification, a tagging system that shot to fame in 2003 when Wal-Mart demanded that its 100 biggest suppliers adopt it—is way down Bain's list, used by a mere 13% of firms, mostly American.

The biggest change in the past decade is the rise of tools that rely heavily on the use of information technology. IT—intensive techniques such as CRM, supply-chain management and knowledge management are each now used by more than half of all corporations. Executives told Bain that they are more satisfied with their supply-chain management systems than with any tool other than strategic planning.

Given that managers are looking more to IT-based techniques to improve performance, why are corporate IT departments so often seen as mere back-office fixers? In "Why Today's IT Organization Won't Work Tomorrow", a new study, by Dan Starta of A. T. Kearney, a consultancy, the author Claims that IT departments are so focused on fixing the nuts and bolts of everyday problems that they have no time to think about wider business issues. "The best IT ideas are not coming from IT, but from the business side," says Mr. Starta.

His study's findings "shatter the notion" that IT departments are the early adopters of technology, and that general managers slow the process down. RFID is a case in point. AMR Research, a Boston-based firm, reckons that Wal-Mart's suppliers have so far invested $ 250m in the tags and readers required by the system. Few of them, however, have yet seen a business case for the investment beyond a desire not to lose Wal-Mart as a customer.

Doing things this way round, with the management horse pulling the IT cart, need not end in disaster. Although few of Bain's sample companies have yet adopted RFID, a significant proportion of those which have are extremely satisfied with the results, says Mr. Rigby. He expects RFID to rise rapidly up the list.

Nor are managers losing faith in IT: 90% of Bain's sample said they think IT can still create significant competitive advantages for them. Corporate IT budgets are slated to rise again this year. Who will determine where that money is to be spent—the general managers or the geeks? In a book published at the end of last year ("The New CIO Leader", Harvard Business School Press), two Gartne

me watching television to an increased risk of death. One of the most surprising findings is that it isn't just couch potatoes who were affected—even for people who exercised regularly, the risk of death went up the longer they were in front of the TV. The problem was the prolonged periods of time spent sitting still.

Australian researchers who tracked 8,800 people for an average of six years found that those who said they watched TV for more than four hours a day were 46% more likely to die of any cause and 80% more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than people who reported spending less than two hours a day in front of the tube.

Time spent in front of TVs and computers and videogames has come under fire in studies in recent years for contributing to an epidemic of obesity in the U. S. and around the world. But typically the resulting public-health message urges children and adults to put down the Xbox controller and remote and get on a treadmill or a soccer field. The Australian study offers a different take. "It's not the sweaty type of exercise we're losing," says David Dunstan, a researcher at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, who led the study. "It's the incidental moving around, walking around, standing up and utilizing muscles that doesn't happen when we're plunked on a couch in front of a television." Indeed, participants in the study reported getting between 30 and 45 minutes of exercise a day, on average.

The results are supported by an emerging field of research that shows how prolonged periods of inactivity can affect the body's processing of fats and other substances that contribute to heart risk. And they suggest that people can help mitigate such risk simply by avoiding extended periods of sitting. The report, being published Tuesday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, focuses on TV watching in part because it is the predominant leisure-time activity in many countries, researchers said, especially in the U. S. A study by ratings firm Nielsen Co. found that Americans averaged 151 hours of TV viewing a month in the fourth quarter of 2008—more than five hours a day. Dr. Hamilton says studies suggest that after just one day of inactivity, levels of HDL, or good cholesterol, which helps transport LDL or bad cholesterol out of the blood stream, can fall by as much as 20%.

Keeping such processes working more effectively doesn't require constant intense exercise, but consciously adding more routine movement to your life might help, doctors say. "Just standing is better than sitting," says Gerard Fletcher, a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Fla., who works standing up at his computer. "When you stand up, you shuffle around a little bit and use muscles not required when you're sitting or lying down". Simple strategies for increasing activity include incorporating household chores such as folding laundry into TV-watching time or getting up to change a TV channel rather than using a remote control.

According to the study, even for people who exercised regularly, the risk of death went up the longer they were in front of the TV. What's the reason?

ers. They need reassurance that they are doing "the right thing". Shy people are very sensitive to criticism. They feel it confirms their inferiority. They also find it difficult to be pleased by praise because they believe they are unworthy of praise. It is clear that, while self-awareness is a healthy quality, over-doing it is harmful.

Can shyness be completely eliminated, or at least reduced? Fortunately, people can overcome shyness with determined and patient effort in building self-confidence. Since shyness goes hand in hand with lack of self-esteem, it is important for people to accept their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Each one of us is a unique, worthwhile individual. We are interesting in our own personal ways. The better we understand ourselves, the easier it becomes to live up to our fuI1 potential. Let's not allow shyness to block our chances for a rich and fulfilling life.

17 or under. It found that one in four Australian parents regularly "borrow" money from their children's piggy banks to pay for anything from bread to luxury holidays. But almost 9 out of 10 still believed they were setting a good example of financial management for their children. The survey follows Reserve Bank of Australia findings that many Australians spent more than they earned in the past three years. On average, Australians saved only 2.9% of their annual income.

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n countries, Shanghai began to switch its focus of absorbing foreign investment to European and American markets.

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ces are also now at play.

The first is the resurgence of rivals, which have caught up with Dell's low price model. By driving prices down, Dell has unintentionally cut costs for its rivals too. "The supply chain has become as standardized as the components—the money has been wrung out," explains an expert. Dell, by not working through retail outlets, is still more efficient, but the cost benefits that this once brought have been whittled away.

The second factor hurting Dell is that growth in the computer business is coming from the consumer market and emerging countries rather than the corporate market, in which Dell sells around 85% of its machines. Increasing sales to consumers is difficult for Dell because individuals tend to want to see and touch computers before buying them. They also like to be able to return the machine easily if it breaks. Dell's tack of retail presence, once ballyhooed as a benefit, has turned into grave disadvantage.

A third problem facing Dell is its exclusive use of Intel chips rather than lower-priced ones made by Intel's sworn rivals, AMD. This arrangement lets Dell buy chips inexpensively and benefit from Intel's generous co-marketing programmes. But it has started to harm Dell's sales for higher margin computer servers.