8/18/2010
Daphne Wysham: Averting the next mortgage meltdown
THE economy is in the tank, and, unless we do something about it, it's about to get worse. It turns out the mortgage meltdown we've been suffering through is only the first wave. Wave No. 2 may be more like a tsunami: Between now and 2014, $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans are coming due. Most of these loans are for small and medium-sized commercial buildings and businesses that are either "underwater" - worth less than their mortgages - or close to it. Without swift intervention, the commercial real estate (CRE) crisis will cripple the still sputtering economy, throwing more people out of work, and precipitating more business bankruptcies and community bank failures.
Yet crisis breeds opportunity. And in this case there could be a double opportunity. It turns out that buildings are responsible for about half of America's emissions of greenhouse gases that are heating our planet. And we're heating, lighting and air-conditioning these buildings like there's no tomorrow. And by "no tomorrow," I mean: no polar icecaps, more droughts, more pestilence, more crop failure, and more climate refugees. We're also throwing good money down the drain.
Here's the crazy truth: With a national effort to boost energy efficiency, we could actually meet the building sector's greenhouse gas emissions targets set by the Obama administration for the next few years, put 1.3 million workers - 600,000 of them construction workers, 20 percent of whom are unemployed
- back to work, and dodge the next wave of mortgage meltdowns. Instead of monkeying around with complicated bills like the cap-and-trade nonsense that didn't make it through Congress, we could make a painless down payment on our emissions reductions goals, while giving some of our beleaguered businesses a tax break and saving money we're now squandering on wasted energy.AdvertisementHere's how: Architects and researchers from Architecture 2030 have developed something called the "CRE Solution," which would let small business and building owners about to default on their mortgages get a multi-year tax deduction if they retrofit their buildings to make them more energy efficient. The more energy efficient the building becomes, the greater the tax break. Commercial building owners could trade or sell these tax deductions to investors, who would provide the infusion of capital over a three-year time span. The capital would be invested in putting our highly skilled construction workers back on the job, retrofitting these properties. Property values would rise while energy bills decline. With good-paying jobs, construction workers would once again pay taxes, providing a much-needed revenue stream to state and local governments. For the $6 billion in tax breaks the federal government would provide for this purpose, Uncle Sam would receive $10 billion back in net federal tax revenue, while state and local governments netted $5.25 billion.
Saving our small businesses and our local banks from going under while avoiding deficit spending ought to be hard to resist. Restoring the tax base in our shuttered downtowns, putting money back in the coffers of our local schools, and jumpstarting the economy across this country ain't so bad either.
Do we still need fees on carbon emissions? Of course. And once we've achieved these and other similar common sense energy efficiency goals and stopped hemorrhaging energy, money and jobs, we should take up solutions like fee-and-dividend, in which polluters pay a carbon fee and the public gets a green check. But for starters, the CRE solution is where our focus should be.
Daphne Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies where she co-directs the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network (www.ips-dc.org).
Beneath the Tattoos | American Journalism Review
Beneath the Tattoos
Despite the stereotypes, Millennials represent a huge opportunity for news organizations.
By Barb Palser
Barb Palser (bpalser@gmail.com) is director of digital media for McGraw-Hill Broadcasting Co.
Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are getting old. Seriously, by the end of next year, they'll both be 30. That's when, according to the now-threadbare and mostly abandoned hopes of old-media sages, they'll swap their bedazzled iPhones or Sidekicks or whatever for the comforting heft of the Los Angeles Times.
As the first wave of Millennials (those born after 1980) hits the big 3-0, the news business approaches its own moment of truth: Will this generation fall in line behind its predecessors, maturing and morphing into steady news consumers? Or have the Millennials been so spoiled by the self-obsessed social enclaves of Facebook and YouTube that mass media and traditional news will hold little interest for them? While the former is a pretty logical assumption, the turmoil of the last decade has taught news managers to take nothing for granted.
The good news, supported by a voluminous report released by the Pew Research Center in February, is that many stereotypes about the Millennial generation seem to be flat-out wrong. Naturally today's teens and young adults do things that freak out their elders: They love their tattoos and body piercings, for example, and 83 percent of them sleep with their cell phones. (Interestingly, 50 percent of Boomers and 20 percent of adults over age 65 do the same thing--but probably for very different reasons.) Millennials also text while driving at a horrifying rate of 64 percent.
However, there are a lot of encouraging statistics underneath those tattoos and piercings. For starters, Millennials are the best-educated generation in history. Fifty-four percent of today's 18- to 28-year-olds have had at least some college education, compared with 49 percent of Gen Xers, 36 percent of Boomers and 24 percent of the Silent Generation (age 65-plus) when they were the same age. While younger people are historically less likely to vote in political elections, in 2008 the gap between voters over and under 30 was the narrowest it's been since 1972, when 18-year-olds were granted the right to vote.
Millennials are as engaged as other generations when it comes to volunteering, signing petitions and buying (or not buying) products based on a company's social or political values. According to Pew's survey, Millennials care far more about being good parents, having successful marriages and helping others than they do about being rich or famous. This hierarchy of values isn't significantly different from other generations', but it is different from the stereotype. Apparently they're not all Britney or Paris.
Rather than a vapid wasteland of tuned-out video game junkies, the 50 million Millennials sound like a gift to the news business. How else would you describe a generation that's civically engaged, well-educated and literally available to consume information day and night?
But there's a catch: Millennials simply will not take their news the old-fashioned way. Young adults' interest in local and world events may grow over time, but when it comes to technology, we can't expect Millennials to move backward. This is a generation that identifies technology use as the main difference between itself and other generations. After all, most of them are sleeping with a cell phone on the nightstand, ready for text messages and Facebook alerts; why wouldn't they expect that same technology to deliver their news?
Pew's research gives us some sense of how Millennials are consuming news today. Slightly more of them cite television as their main source of news, at 65 percent, with the Internet in second place at 59 percent. It'll be very interesting to watch that trend over the next five or 10 years. Of those who cited television, 43 percent said they get most of their news from cable news, only 18 percent from the major networks and 16 percent from local TV. Only 24 percent said they got most of their news from newspapers. In a separate Pew study released in March, 35 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they follow the news most or all of the time. That's a smaller percentage than older generations, but still seems kind of impressive.
Millennials who go online for news gravitate to aggregators such as Yahoo! and Google over top news brands such as the New York Times. That doesn't mean they aren't getting their news from the Times or the BBC or local TV and newspaper Web sites--but these are not their primary destinations.
Are news organizations paying attention to the promises and challenges of the Millennial generation? At this point, it's not very easy to tell. Newsrooms that are sending their content to portals and aggregators, taking mobile distribution seriously and making their stories easy to share on social sites like Facebook are moving in the right direction.
Until now, Millennials have seemed an enigmatic cohort that wasn't yet--and might never be--interested in news. As Millennials enter the news consuming population, their behavior will probably fall somewhere between the news industry's highest hopes and worst fears: They won't suddenly start subscribing to newspapers and obediently sitting through the evening news, but they will be ready and willing to know what's going on in the world. We just need to pay attention to what they want, and how they want it.
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Wed 18 Aug 2010
Has the Recession humbled Millennials?
Posted by Alicia under Gen Y, Generations in the Workplace, Millennials
No CommentsYes, according to some of the people recently interviewed by the Miami Herald reporter, Cindy Krischer Goodman. I am a huge fan of Cindy’s. She writes for the business section of the Miami Herald. Having been a corporate executive for over 25 years, I naturally gravitate to the business section of the paper and it’s usually what I read first. Cindy writes about a lot of different topics that affect the business world. One thing is always consistent in her writing and is the reason why I follow her: she blends the human element to the often impersonal, fact based and stodgy world of business. That is not an easy thing to do and that’s precisely what makes her articles stand out and pop. Wouldn’t you rather read the facts and figures wrapped up in an interesting story?
Anyway, in last Sunday’s edition, she wrote an article called “Recession Sparks New Attitudes for Gen Y“. In the article, she interviewed some of the local corporate executives who felt that the Millennials currently working for them had indeed become easier to manage. They were not being as demanding as they had been about fast tracking their careers. They were staying longer too.
A big focus of the article was on Millennials working in law firms. For years, Boomer lawyers have been going crazy trying to figure out how to deal with Millennials. Having worked with lawyers and being acquainted with many of them, I can personally attest to the frustration they feel with their Gen Y staff. I have shared with them many of the techniques I learned and developed as a result of putting my Millennial staff under the microscope. Although skeptical at first, these Boomer lawyers were able to see how I went from frustration to amazement as I got know and understand the Millennials. If I could do it, so could they.
I think the recession has touched all of us in some unexpected ways so it doesn’t surprise me to read about how Millennials are adapting to this “new normal”. Millennials are extremely adaptable. Look at the world they’ve had to live in. Rapid change has truly been the only constant in their young lives. No other generation, except perhaps the Veterans, has had to deal with such life altering events as they have over such a short period of time. The recession has undoubtedly made them evaluate their situation and they will factor that into their outlook going forward. Instead of seeing it as a negative, they will learn from it and grow from the experience.
However, leaders would be unwise to take the Millennials for granted and believe the corporation has the upper hand. The current events may provide some tweaks to the traits and values of this young workforce but it will not eliminate them. I agree with Stan Smith in the article who believes Gen Yers are compliant for now. That doesn’t mean that their values aren’t still there. Savvy leaders will continue to find ways to connect with this young group. They will challenge their legacy leadership principles and experiment with new techniques that will be effective in leading a very diverse and dynamic 21st Century workforce.
I like the ending quote from the article. Richard Berkowitz, the director of a local accounting firm learned something important by working with his Millennial staff: “They aren’t going to walk in and become great. You have to teach them how to be great professionals.”
Isn’t that what leadership is all about? What about you? How are you leading during this recession? What are you doing to help your staff become great professionals?
Fri 13 Aug 2010
Back in My Day (BIMD) Friday
Posted by Alicia under Baby Boomers, Back in My Day (BIMD), Corporate Trends
No CommentsAnother flashback. I was at a networking event this week and the subject of employee evaluations came up. The Vice President of Marketing of a Fortune 500 company was talking about the new evaluation system their HR Department had just rolled out. Mike, the VP of Marketing, was selected to be part of the pilot program to test the system and guage its effectiveness.
Mike was not thrilled with the new system. Apparently, it was cumbersome and time consuming. Although it allowed you to select from a list of criteria, it also forced the evaluator to comment on critical areas. Mike didn’t like that part. I didn’t want to remind him that as the head of his team, the more concrete and specific the feedback he gave the employee, the better the process was for the employee, especially if there were improvement issues.
This discussion reminded me of the evaluation process that existed when I was starting out in my corporate career in the 1980′s. The evaluation forms back then were not these fancy forms that are generated by an HR software program. Nowadays, everything is neatly and beautifully displayed and you have the ability to access the form online, give comments, and sign it electronically forever to be kept in your HR Department’s electronic repository.
Back in the day, the evaluation process was not as stringently followed as it is today. There was a lot more flexibilitiy and leeway given to managers and department heads and as such, it was your responsibility to ensure that you prepared evaluations for your team members and had a formal review with them. HR was not holding your hand through the process and sending you countless reminders as they do today.
For starters, the evaluation forms were very long. They required you as a manager to write extensively in each of the categories and also give specific examples. Since the HR oversight was not as visible as it is today, the evaluation forms themselves were often hard to read. The managers kept blank copies of the forms. Sometimes the blank forms were copied so many times that there would be words missing from the edges of the form. The quality of the document could be so poor that the wording was hard to read. Remember that I started out my career working for Citibank, not a slouch of a company by any means.
But here’s the great part. The evaluations were handwritten . As a reviewing manager, you had to handwrite each and every LONG evaluation form for each member of your team. Do you have any idea how time consuming that is and how much your hand hurts when you’re done? But here’s the even funnier part. As an employee, if you had a boss with lousy penmanship you could never read or understand what had been written. The running joke was that the more illegible the writing the better the review. Why? Because how can you improve or act on something when you can’t understand what your boss wrote? So you basically ignored the review and convinced yourself that you were doing just fine. Sometimes for giggles, if you had a boss with horrible handwriting you would ask them to decipher something he or she had written on the review. Most of the times they couldn’t. The writing was so bad they themselves could not understand what they wrote. So how effective was that evaluation? I’ll let you decide.
I shared that story at the networking event and a Generation Xer asked me why the evaluations weren’t typed. I reminded him that PCs were still rare in corporate settings in the 1980′s and only secretaries had typewriters. The staff and management did not. You could opt to have your secretary type all the employee reviews but 2 things would happen: she’d hate you for months to come since the forms were long and the timeline for completion was tight. You would be forcing her to type for days on end, backlogging her normal work. Secondly, evaluations were supposed to be confidential and nothing violated that confidentiality more than giving it to a secretary to type for you. Typically only the very top executives on the team would do that. These execs worked in very posh settings and their offices were removed from the rest of their team. Their secretaries were not only pretty isolated but very protective of the executives and their reputation so the chances of a breach were minimal. The confidentiality issue was moot. If you were lucky enough to receive a typed evaluation form you almost framed it because they were so appealing to read and understand.
The next time you complain about having to complete online evaluations for your employees think about what a pain they were back in the day. Some things do get better with time.
What about you? Do you have copies of the old handwritten evaluations forms you received from your boss back in the day? How legible were they? Can you imagine the look on a Millennial’s face if you gave them a handwritten evaluation today?
Happy Friday, everyone!
Tags: Baby Boomers, Managing Teams, Workplace
Wed 11 Aug 2010
Do You Shut Out Members of Your Team?
Posted by Alicia under Communication, Corporate Trends, Generations in the Workplace
No CommentsYou probably don’t think you do and certainly don’t purposely do it but chances are it may be happening. The truth is that today, with 4 generations working side by side in most organizations, communicating is not as easy as it used to be. Here’s an example. I was at a client site yesterday and when I arrived, my client was in a tizzy and clearly flustered. Apparently, they were testing their crisis management procedures and one of their key alert messages was left on people’s voicemails both at work and on their cell phones.
The reason he was in a tizzy was that a large portion of their employees had indicated they had not gotten the alert and the managment group couldn’t understand why. How could so many people miss the alert? Were they purposely ignoring this step? Were they not giving a lot of importance to crisis management? My client explained that the process is clearly documented and that everyone is trained on how the system works. To make matters worse, word had gotten to the management team that some employees were complaining that they felt left out of the process. They felt shut out. Management was perplexed to say the least.
Clearly, it was the wrong day for me to pay a visit to discuss the project they had hired me for. But it turned out to be the perfect day to give my client an easy but overlooked lesson in generational communication. I have seen it happen many times and the problem is so subtle and so imbedded in generational communication preferences that it easily gets missed. In fact, instead of dealing with a much simpler problem, it gets blown up into a much bigger issue.
After asking a few key questions, I realized the problem was that the organization was relying on its employees to buy into 2 basic premises that they clearly were not. The first is that the organization assumed that just because people know and are trained on a procedure that they will actually follow it when they need to. Time and time again, I have seen employees act in the exact opposite manner as the “procedures” require them to act. Important things are often documented and not regularly tested to ensure the correct behavior is drilled into everyone’s thought process. If you want it to sink in, you have to put it in practice often.
Most organizations don’t have the time or inclination do that. Even though crisis management is a key risk mitigator for all businesses today, organizations rarely test their crisis management procedures more than once or twice a year. Will that frequency ensure you get the behavior you’re looking for in a crisis? Probably not. Employees are creatures of habit and extremely busy with their day to day work. To get their attention and cooperation on key initiatives, you need to get them to practice, practice, practice. Otherwise, they will act as they choose, not as you need them to.
The second premise was that the organization once again assumed that all employees accessed the same communication channel which in this case is the telephone/ voicemail system. Big mistake. Even though everyone has an extension at work and they can access voicemail remotely, how many people today do that? Years ago, the percentages would have been high but today with the proliferation of texting, instant messaging, emails and so on, not everyone automatically checks their voicemails – at work or on their cell phones. There are too many other ways for people to reach them when they need to.
I think most Veterans and Baby Boomers today still do a lot of their communication by phone or cell phone and have the habit of checking voicemails frequently. Maybe some Generation Xers do too, even though I think they are more comfortable with emails. Generation Y? No clue that voicemail exists. They don’t use it, don’t listen to it, don’t want it. I can’t tell you how many times I left voicemail messages for my Gen Y staff only to find out days later, after I was frustrated and upset, that they never checked their voicemails. It simply didn’t occur to them to do it. So you see what can happen when you use one form of communication to reach a diverse population. The results are hit or miss.
In today’s hectic and technology rich world, savvy companies know that they must embrace multiple communication channels to ensure they are not shutting out segments of their employee base. Veterans and Baby Boomers will get a voicemail alert, but for Generation Xers an email or better yet, a voicemail imbedded in their email will work, and for Millennials a text would do the trick.
Understanding how each generation communicates and what makes them tick is not a nice to have anymore. To ensure that you are not unintentionally shutting out or neglecting your employees, you need to recognize their preferences and communicate your message in a variety of formats they will all embrace.
So how about you? Still relying on traditional communication channels that no longer reflects the generational makeup of your team or organization? Maybe it’s time for a communication makeover? Get your team to chime in on their preferences and you’re sure to never shut them out again.
Tags: Baby Boomers, Communication, Corporate Trends, Generation X, Generations in the Workplace, Millennials
Tue 10 Aug 2010
Will Apple Overtake PCs in Tomorrow’s Workplace?
Posted by Alicia under Corporate Trends, Innovation, Millennials, Technology
No CommentsThis has been a question I’ve noodled around for quite some time and it resurfaced as I was reading a ZDNET article by Zack Whittaker titled “Apple Overtakes Dell, HP as student laptop choice”. Being in the IT field for as long as I have, I know the Apple vs. PC topic is a highly contentious one with both sides having very strong opinions and outlooks on the subject. I don’t want to chime in on either side. I’m really just curious about what are some of the possible changes in the corporate IT landscape as the 21st Century unfolds.
One thing I can say from my observations of Millennials: they do appear to prefer Macs over PCs. All the Millennials in my office had Macs as their personal laptops. Some of them constantly badgered me about why we didn’t allow them at work. I’m sure many IT leaders may be facing the same question from their young workforce today. I really never had a very good answer for them except to say that PCs were the defacto standard in the company and as such, everyone had to conform to the standard. It was a lame answer and the Millennials knew it. At the time, I could get away with it because Millennials didn’t comprise a large portion of my team or of the workplace.
But will that lame answer work in the future, in the next 5 years or so when Millennials begin to represent a larger, more cohesive portion of the workforce? We’ve talked about how the consumerization of IT is a huge issue for IT leaders and their staff. This is another example of it. As students begin to prefer and embrace Macs over PCs, this will spill over into the workplace. Initially, Millennials may conform to the de facto standards imposed by organizations but will they do so forever? Remember, unlike other generations of users, the Millennials are not intimidated by or challenged by technology. They may take it upon themselves to test the de facto standard and push for change. Will you be ready for that?
I have two lovely twin goddaughers who started college last year. My graduation present to both of them was to give them a laptop to take to college with them. I gave them the choice of what laptop they wanted to get. Their choice: the MacBook Pro. When I asked them why they chose the Mac, they simply said it was easier to use. That comment piqued my interest and I started to observe Millennials when I was out and about. I wanted to see if my goddaughters’ decision was unique to them or more pervasive within their group. My first observation was that most of their friends also had Macs. I took it a step further. I am on the Board of Advisors at a local university’s Masters IT program. At our last meeting, I arrived a few hours early and spent time in the cafeteria and other hangouts. I counted the number of Macs and PCs I saw. In my very informal and non-statistically based observation, I did find that the Millennials in my field of observation did carry more Macs than PCs.
My informal survey does somewhat validate the premise of the ZDNet article but more importantly, it may be pointing to a trend that will be unfolding in corporate America in years to come. Spotting trends is not always easy but once I think I see one unfolding, I always like to research it and test it out to see if it has any teeth. If it does, I now have the ability to get ready for it instead of having it hit me like a 2×4 in the future.
What about you? How aware are you of your surroundings? Try doing your own Mac vs. PC Millennial survey and see what you come up with. You can start with your own college kids and their friends. As the saying goes ” Forewarned is Forearmed”. Today’s students will be your employees tomorrow. The more you know about them, their preferences and tastes, the better you’ll be. Let me know what you find out.
Tags: Innovation, Millennials, Technology, Zack Whittaker, ZDNet
Mon 9 Aug 2010
Are Assumptions Creating Lost Opportunities in Your Team?
Posted by Alicia under Baby Boomers, Leadership, Millennials
1 CommentI am always surprised how assumptions creep into our decision making process and often prevent us from seeing and leveraging great opportunities. Asssumptions are stealth beliefs that we carry with us and we don’t realize are there. Because we are not aware of them, it becomes very difficult to question and challenge them. But I believe the successful leaders of the 21st Century will be the ones who become adept at finding ways to identify the assumptions behind their decision making process. Once you understand what those assumptions are, you have taken a big step forward and can now begin the more difficult task of questioning whether those assumptions are valuable or detrimental in your ability to lead a 21st Century organization.
Let me give you a personal example of how assumptions crept into my decision making process. As you know by now, I have spent a lot of time observing Millennials in the workplace. One of their greatest strengths is their comfort with technology. I have said many times that they don’t see technology as technology but rather as a way of life. Because Millennials have always been around PCs and Macs, those are their preferred platforms. They have become experts on these platforms and leverage them in ways previous generations have not.
Their proficiency in those platforms automatically created an assumption in my way of thinking: Millennials will never learn or embrace the old mainframe systems. Mainframes are not something Millennials have been exposed to, learned in school or have worked on. For them, the technology is outdated and not terribly exciting when compared to all the Web 2.0 stuff they love.
That assumption highlighted a big problem in the future. Mainframes are the backbone of many US industries and large corporations. Think about banking, healthcare, insurance, federal & state government agencies, utility, manufacturing. They all utilize mainframes. My assumptions around Millennials and mainframes made me wonder what would happen in the future as Baby Boomers began to retire? Who would support these mainframes? Would we have to outsource all of our mainframe support and if so, for how long? To me there was a huge gap brewing. How were we going to pass the mainframe baton to the newer generations?
And then I came across this article written by Patrick Thibodeau in CIO Magazine called “ Daughter Follows Her Father Into a Mainframe Career”. After reading it, I realized that another sneaky assumption had crept into my decision making process and was preventing me from tapping into a great opportunity. The article talks about how at 12 years old, Kristine Harper’s dad took her into his offices as part of the now famous ”Take your Daughter to Work Day”. Kristine’s father, Tom Harper, was a mainframe programmer and after showing his daughter what he did all day she said to him: “Dad, I love you, but if this was the last job on the planet, I wouldn’t want it”. Now that would be a typical Millennial response when faced with the non-sexy but critical elements of running mainframes.
Fast forward to today. Kristine is a 27 year old Millennial working in the research and development unit of company called Neon Enterprise Software, Inc. in Texas. Same place her dad works. What does she do? She works in the mainframe department! Can you believe it? A Millennial who actually CHOSE to work in mainframes. But it gets better. According to the article, Kristine actually has quite a prominent role in the mainframe community. She is part of a group that she organized herself called the IBM Share user group’s zNextGen project. There are over 700 engineers, all of them Millennials, that are “looking to improve mainframe technology skills and find places to use them.” This group will certainly lead the way in trying to close the gap that currently exists in the mainframe world between the retiring Baby Boomers and the much needed younger generation to replace them. Through their example and vast social networks, they will undoubtedly get other Millennials excited about mainframes and others will join the cause.
Can you imagine the exciting opportunities that the companies that employ these 700 engineers have ahead of them? These Millennials will surely bring their own unique approach to looking at mainframes. They will see things and try things that the Baby Boomers may never have seen because they were so immersed in the old ways of looking at mainframes. I’m sure they will give mainframes a much needed makeover and boost into the 21st Century.
Many leaders believe that Millennials don’t appreciate how and why things were done. They feel Millennials need to be led by the hand to see the forest from the trees. Kristine and her Millennial Mainframe Posse clearly disprove these assumptions as well. They saw an opportunity that probably their own bosses did not see. They collaborated as they do so well, and will find ways to blend the old with the new and develop and deliver a better product.
Even as someone who has worked closely with Millennials, I would have let my assumptions get in the way in this particular situation. Instead of providing opportunities for Millennials to immerse themselves, talk to and learn from the mainframe experts, I would have “assumed” that the fit was not good. A great opportunity lost. That’s why identifying and challenging our assumptions are critical techniques to lead effectively in this dynamic and ever changing workplace.
What about you? How many times are your assumptions getting in the way of innovation, of finding wonderful opportunities to do things differently and do them better? How many times is it getting in the way of seeing the value that Millennials bring to your team? In how many ways are those assumptions costing you and your organization? Watch out for those pesky stealth assumptions in your leadership approach. They creep in there in ways you can’t even imagine.
Tags: Baby Boomers, CIO Magazine, Leadership, Millennials, Neon Enterprise Software, Patrick Thibodeau
Fri 6 Aug 2010
Back In My Day (BIMD) Friday
Posted by Alicia under Baby Boomers, Back in My Day (BIMD), Vintage Commercials
No CommentsI ran into this website called Classic TV ads that shows vintage commercials going as far back as the 1950′s. What a great walk down memory lane. They show you a list of commercials broken down by groups such as Eat, Drink, Clean, and others. You can go into each section and see a quick description of the commercials. Then if you want to see one, you just click on the one you want to see and voila, you’re back in time watching the commercial.
I have to warn you that some of the commercials especially the ones dating back to the 1950′s are very grainy and difficult to see but most of them are in great condition. They even have a group of commercials called Smoke. Yes, they actually show you cigarrette commercials from back in the day. Looking at some of them brought back so many memories because I remembered seeing them as a kid. My favorite part in looking at the commercials was remembering the jingles. There was a description for the Shake-A-Puddin commercial and instantly, I started singing the jingle. So you know I had to click the video and sure enough, I was singing along with the commercial. It was the perfect release from a stressful day.
Can you imagine what Millennials would think of those commercials? Share the link with them. It’s good for them to get a perspective of things they have no knowledge of. You’ll be amazed at what they will find interesting and weird.
Happy Friday, everybody!!!
Tags: Baby Boomers, Vintage Commercials
Thu 5 Aug 2010
What Price Would you Pay for Integrity?
Posted by Alicia under Generation X, Integrity, Leadership
[6] CommentsExperts believe that Brian Davis paid well over 1 million dollars for his recent behavior on the golf course. Many of you are probably thinking that Brian Davis did something bad, right? The media is constantly inundating us with all the bad things that sports figures and celebrities do that this question automatically makes us think negatively. But not in this case.
Here’s the deal: Brian Davis is a 36 year old British Generation Xer who recently played in the PGA Tour at the Verizon Heritage at Hilton Head, S.C. Now I know what you’re all thinking: I keep saying I don’t like sports but I keep bringing up examples of things that happen in the sports world. Am I secretly a sports fan? Truly, I am not but it just happens that really cool things are happening with sports figures that I think are worth highlighting.
So Brian Davis is hitting onto the green in a sudden-death playoff and apparently his golf club hits a reed when he does his backswing. Well, as I’m sure all golfers know and I did not, a reed is considered a loose impediment and moving a loose impediment is apparently a big NO-NO in golf. It came as a shock to me that there actually is a PGA rule that prohibits moving a loose impediment! So instead of keeping quiet and seeing if the tournament director catches the mistake, Brian calls a penalty on himself. Yes, he actually highlighted the mistake and requested that the two stroke penalty be applied to his game. This decision automatically put him in second place giving the win to his opponent, Jim Furyk.
Is that not an unbelievable and refreshing story? I was reading about this in my hard copy version of September’s edition of Success Magazine. As I am writing this post, the online version of the September issue is not yet available but here’s the link to Success Magazine. I’m sure the September issue will go online shortly and you can read it. The name of the article is “The Most Important Golf Story of the Year (That you Likely Never Heard About). The reporter’s name is Don Yaeger.
The article goes on to explain that interviewers and golf experts told Brian Davis that his act of integrity cost him over $1 million dollars in pay and sponsorship opportunities. Brian’s answer: “I just saw it as doing what I was supposed to do”.
Here are the 2 things I love most about this story. The first is that Brian was inundated with emails, texts and letters that thanked him for this wonderful act of integrity. Imagine how many people became his fans and admirers by his decision to lose instead of compromising his principles. I don’t even know who he is and I’m a big fan now! The second thing I like is more related to leadership. It has to do with the notion of leading by example which I think is a forgotten leadership trait these days. In the article, Brian talks about how he promised his son that he would buy a puppy as soon as he won a tournament. So technically, even though he won the tournament, he didn’t officially win it. Brian felt it was more important for his son to know that ” You have to do the right thing, even it if looks like it costs you. I wanted him to know I finished second, but can hold my head high”. What a great example of doing what is right regardless of consequences.
Oh and by the way, Brian did not get the puppy because as he said in the article ” I wouldn’t be a good dad if I just got the dog anyway”. Here is a Generation Xer not just telling us but actually showing us how to do the right thing. I can already hear people disagreeing with me saying that Brian’s actions are more representative of his personal convictions than of his generation. You can certainly look at it that way and you would be right. But, when highlighting people in my blogs, I always try to connect the person with his or her generation. This helps maximize and showcase the positive traits of the person’s generation wherever possible. Too often, generational discussions center around negative impressions when it’s more productive and useful to bring out the positive. As a member of Gen X, the generation that is often forgotten and overshadowed by Baby Boomers and Millennials, Brian shows the rest of us what it’s like to be a true leader living and leading proudly with integrity and respect. Kudos to Gen Xers like Brian Davis!
What about you? Does your integrity have a price?
Wed 4 Aug 2010
Can you be a Good Boss during Bad Times?
Posted by Alicia under Leadership, Management, Managing Teams
No CommentsAccording to Bob Sutton, we certainly can. Bob was interviewed in the McKinsey Quarterly. The interview was videotaped and it’s not long and well worth the time to see it. In the video, Bob talks about a recipe that he and his mentor came up with years ago that applies to leading in today’s tumultuous workplace. According to him, ”The recipe is prediction, understanding, control, and compassion”.
Nice recipe and one that as leaders we often forget. Especially the compassion part.
So what about you? What are you doing during these challenging times to show your team that you care about what they are thinking, worrying about and feeling? Remember that as things begin to stabilize in the economy and companies begin to hire, your team will remember what exactly you did or did not do during these scary times to make them feel part of YOUR team.
Enjoy the video!
Mon 2 Aug 2010
Does your Operating System of Leadership need an Upgrade?
Posted by Alicia under C-Suite, Leadership, Technology
No CommentsI’m on a kick lately combining technology terms with leadership concepts. It started when I blogged about patch anagement a couple of weeks ago. Don’t ask me what is behind the merging of the two. I guess it’s because I love both topics and am always reading stuff on each of them and extrapolating to the other. Take today for example. I was reading some articles on Windows 7 and I thought it was a great correlation to what many of us are facing leading in today’s workplace.
We have become so comfortable with the leadership practices we’ve used over the years that it’s become sort of our Windows XP version – old reliable. There have probably been instances where we entertained the idea of making a change here or there but like Vista, it scared us and made us go back to old reliable. It’s like a comfortable sweater that we just put on without thinking. That’s understandable. We all like the familiar and feel at ease there.
But what happens is that the workplace begins to show signs of change in a variety of areas. At first, you don’t even recognize the subtle changes and old reliable pulls you through. But then slowly many things come together and if you’re lucky, you realize that the workplace of today is nothing like the one where you learned and perfected those leadership qualities. You venture to think that there might actually be something better than old reliable. Awareness is the first step that will take you down the path of entertaining the idea of upgrading your old operating system of leadership.
How long has it been since you looked at your leadership style and practice? When was the last time you checked to see how effectively you were leading your team? All of your team not just your direct reports? When was the last time you asked for feedback from your team and peers not on how your team was doing but on how you were doing as a leader? When was the last time you experimented with a new leadership technique or idea? Did you fall back on old reliable instead?
In the months (and years) to come, as operating systems across corporate America are upgraded to Windows 7, we will all be excited about uising its new features and capabilities and we will forget the nightmare of Vista. We will probably wonder why we clung to XP, our old reliable like we did.
Can we do the same around our operating system of leadership? Can we get a trial version to test out new features and capabilities that will make us better leaders in the 21st Century? I know we can. A lot is riding on our ability to do it.
It’s time to sunset our XP version of leadership and upgrade to the 21st Century edition. How ’bout it? Will you join me in piloting this exciting new edition?
Tags: 21st Century, C-Suite, Leadership, Technology, Workplace
Fri 30 Jul 2010
Back In My Day Friday
Posted by Alicia under Back in My Day (BIMD)
No CommentsHad another flashback yesterday to my early corporate days. I was at a client site waiting in the lobby for her assistant to “sign me in”. It was a few minutes before 9AM so I got to witness the mad rush of employees scurrying to badge in before 9AM. It dawned on me that today’s corporate version of the 20th Century time clock had become the badge activated turnstiles found in most large organizations. But I digress. As I observed the staff passing by me I was struck by the casualness of their dress. Now I don’t mean the typical casual Friday type garb. I mean jeans, crocs, T shirts – c a s u a l.
For someone who has seen corporate dress go from suits to khakis to jeans, it’s an amazing sight to see and shows me again how far we’ve come. When I started out in corporate back in the day, there were only 2 types of suits you could wear – navy blue & dark gray. Now granted, I worked for a bank so the stodginess level skyrockets but even still, most corporate workers wore suits. At the time, there was a very popular book called “Dress for Success” by John Molloy which all wannabe corporate types read because it explained what the corporate uniform was at the time. We all embraced it. Even the women.
There was a “Women’s Dress for Success” edition which basically was a carbon copy of the one for men except it left room for a tiny little more splash of color and a few acceptable accessories such as a conservative pin or brooch. Pantsuits were absolutely not allowed. I remember that for years, I never wore a pantsuit to work. All my clothes were suits with very long skirts or very conservative and boring dresses. The colors: Black, navy blue, charcoal gray. We basically copied the men. If you wanted to really go crazy you’d wear a kerchief with wild colors like pale pink or blue, light gray or white. On the rare occasion that you wanted to be insanely different and wanted to wear, say a blouse with a pattern on it, you’d avoid eye contact all day and pray that you wouldn’t be noticed too much.
We did everything we could to look like men. Over the years, we started adding bolder colors to our suits, we occasionally wore a nice conservative pantsuit and in the summer months when our legs were a bit tanner, we threw caution to the wind and left our pantyhose at home. After many, many years, we felt comfortable putting away our Dress for Success Bible. Actually many of us used its pages to stoke up the fireplace in the winter.
When companies began experimenting with casual Fridays, I remember thinking it was just a fad that wouldn’t last. Employees running around the company with khaki pants and nicely pressed long sleeve shirts or polo shirts? Are you kidding? Well, after a few years, I realized I had to go out and get another wardrobe for work. Shocking… Oh, and by the way, I always thank Generation Xers for pushing the envelope and getting companies to accept casual Fridays and a less uptight dress code.
Casual Fridays led to casual everyday to finally, the uber casual of today. Employees are going into the workplace as comfortable as can be. They express themselves not only in the casualness of their clothes but in the casualness of their accessories – whether that is a nose ring or a colorful tattoo on the arm or the leg. My, how the pendulum on corporate dress has swung. Some think it has swung too far. Of course there are still many industries (law, for example) and companies that have never embraced the uber casual of today but most fit somewhere in between.
My philosophy: as long as it fits with the norms of your clients, you should be ok. It certainly beats wearing an uncomfortable navy blue suit with a stupid kerchief and pantyhose on a blistering 90 degree summer day.
Happy Friday, everybody! For those of you that still work in an office, what did you wear to work today?
Tags: Corporate Trends, Workplace
Social entrepreneurship heats up in Portland - Oregon Business
Portland is earning a reputation as a hub for business minds who want to change the world. Several local companies are finding a way to make a profit and actually do a little good for the world at the same time.
The concept is called social entrepreneurship, and the idea is to find a business model that can solve a social or environmental problem while also being profitable and self-sustainable. The term was coined in the 1980s, but in recent years it has gained more attention and is finding success in the Portland area.
In February we reported on the Social Innovation Incubator that was launched by Portland State University to partner start-ups and established businesses and nonprofits with the resources they need to complete their own social venture projects.
One example of the incubator's work involved a large Portland nonprofit and a coffee importer with a long commitment to sustainability.
Adrienne Karecki, the director of business enterprises at Central City Concern (CCC), which helps Portland-area homeless people get back on their feet, was looking for a partner to help establish a business for her organization. At a PSU fundraiser event Karecki was approached by a fellow member of the PSU incubator, Sustainable Harvest, and an idea sparked.
Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers, which fosters sustainable fair-trade coffee growers, offered a roaster and expertise if CCC could provide the employees, management and a work space. The company was one of two Portland businesses, along with Eleek, a home manufacturing company that re-uses recycled scrap metal, to make the Bloomberg BusinessWeek second-annual list of America's most promising social entrepreneurs this year.
Karecki was thrilled with opportunity to work with Sustainable Harvest, and the PSU incubator.
“It was amazing timing and really the concept has gone back and forth between us, and if the numbers pan out and we can train a large number of people we want an ultimate goal of turning a profit to financially support both our programs,” said Karecki.
Through the incubator the companies are utilizing the PSU staff and students to crunch the numbers and perform a market analysis to determine whether the idea can make financial sense. If so, then PSU will help the companies to set up operations.
“As a non-profit we couldn’t pay the rates to hire the consultants to figure out if we could do this so for us it’s really an amazing resource and something I haven’t seen anywhere else,” said Karecki.
Expect similar stories to follow as the PSU incubator matures and expands its scope. In July PSU added Professor J. Gregory Dees and his impressive resume to the advisory board. Dees is largely regarded as a pioneer in the field of social entrepreneurship and has taught at Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Duke.
“You get the sense around Portland that it’s a progressive climate with a deep level of caring for finding solutions for social problems,” said Dees.
Jessica Hoch is an online reporter for Oregon Business.
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U.S. News & World Report Magazine Ranks Babson #1 Undergraduate Program For Entrepreneurship... -- WELLESLEY, Mass., Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
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U.S. News & World Report Magazine Ranks Babson #1 Undergraduate Program For Entrepreneurship - 14th Consecutive Time
WELLESLEY, Mass., Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. News & World Report has ranked Babson College the #1 Undergraduate Program for Entrepreneurship. This is the 14th consecutive time that U.S. News has ranked Babson #1 in this category.
Babson also tied for #23 in the Best Business Programs ranking.
"With many other institutions devoting significant resources to entrepreneurship, the recognition that we have retained and extended our #1 position is enormously gratifying. We are continuing to extend our leadership to entrepreneurial thought and action in the broadest array of settings. Our leadership as the #1 undergraduate school for entrepreneurship education goes hand in hand with our move upward as #23 among the best 25 undergraduate business schools in the country," said President Len Schlesinger.
The story of entrepreneurship at Babson is a story of firsts. Babson College was the first academic institution to:
- offer graduate and undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship;
- create an entrepreneurship center;
- run an undergraduate business plan competition;
- organize a conference to showcase global thought leadership in entrepreneurship research;
- develop a multidisciplinary integrated graduate curriculum that follows the life cycle of a business;
- provide an experiential venture creation undergraduate curriculum; and develop and host a symposium for entrepreneurship educators.
For more information about America's Best Colleges, visit http://www.usnews.com/colleges.
Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., is recognized internationally as a leader in entrepreneurial management education. Babson grants BS degrees through its innovative undergraduate program, and grants MBA and custom MS and MBA degrees through the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. Babson Executive Education offers executive development programs to experienced managers worldwide. For information, visit www.babson.edu.
SOURCE Babson College
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MSU to launch student business incubator | lansingstatejournal.com | Lansing State Journal
-->EAST LANSING — Michigan State University
is launching a student business incubator and entrepreneurship certificate program.
The university today formally announced the creation of MSU ENet, an entrepreneurship network, to provide business and education resources to students and community members.
A business incubator called The Hatch should open by early 2011 as a place for up to 25 undergraduate and graduate college students
to work on furthering their business ideas.
The 2,500-square-foot incubator will be housed at 325 E. Grand River Ave., home of the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center, a city-run incubator for technology startups.
MSU has committed at least $100,000, most of which will fund construction of the office space. The Lansing Economic Area Partnership Inc., city of East Lansing and Christman Co. also have pledged support to keep the incubator operating for at least two years, said ENet director Bryan Ritchie, a professor at the James Madison College.
ENet also will offer a certificate in entrepreneurship for MSU students and community members. It involves the equivalent of two college courses and a hands-on project.
The first part of the program — a course called “Venture Creation and the Innovative Mindset,” starts Sept. 8 and runs every week throughout the fall semester.
Read Wednesday's Lansing
State Journal for more on this report.
U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for August 18 -- WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
See more news releases in: Publishing & Information Services, Amusement Parks and Tourist Attractions, Surveys, Polls and Research, Domestic Policy
U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for August 18
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090226/CENSUSLOGO)
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090226/CENSUSLOGO)
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18: STATE FAIR TIME
Profile America — Wednesday, August 18th. This is the time for a very American celebration in many parts of the country — the annual state fair. Fairs in Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Montana, West Virginia and Wyoming are under way now. A total of 17 states will stage their fairs this month. Some will draw upwards of a million people to experience the special blend of eating, entertainment and entrepreneurship that make up a state fair. These events go back to the early 19th century and were started to celebrate the annual harvest and each state's contribution to the nation's agricultural progress. In 1920, there were about 6.5 million farms in the U.S. Today, there are just over 2 million — feeding a population approaching three times that of 1920. Profile America is in its 14th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events 2010
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p. 465
Statistical Abstract of the United States 2010, t. 3, 801
Statistical Abstract of the United States 2010, t. 1060
Profile America is produced by the Public Information Office of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on a monthly CD or on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).
SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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Asian Banks Not Supportive of Private Investment and Entrepreneurship Says Survey
Nearly half of Asia’s investors in private and unlisted companies (45%) claim that that banks are not at all supportive of investment and entrepreneurship.
(PRWEB) August 18, 2010
AsiaBusinessInvestor.com, a web portal connecting entrepreneurs and private investors in Asia and the Middle-East, recently released the results of a survey of the current investment climate for private investment in unlisted companies in Asia.
Responding to the survey 45% of those involved in raising capital and investing in private unlisted companies surveyed claim that banks in Asia are not at all supportive of private investment and entrepreneurship. Only 12% believe that banks are very supportive and 43% believe that banks are only partially supportive.
Key survey highlights:
The survey was conducted with AsiaBusinessInvestor.com’s database of over 4,000 investors, intermediaries and those seeking to raise private capital in Asia in unlisted private companies.
- Approximately, 60% think that the economic environment will improve in the next 12 months
- 64% think that now is a good time to invest in private and unlisted companies in Asia
The median deal size is between US$250,000-$500,000 with a third (33%) of the surveyed respondents involved in deals over US$1 million and 10% of respondents involved in private investments more than US$10 million.
For more information about the “Private Investment Outlook Survey” August 2010 survey, please call Nicholas Cameron at Asia Business Investor +65 68661960 in Singapore to receive a copy of the research findings.
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