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A World of Real Change

Wednesday, August 21st, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/24215558081/

Whether you’re talking invention or innovation, it’s important to remember that it’s often the simplicity of a solution, as opposed to complexity, that makes it truly elegant. Along with simplicity, practicality is important, as seen in the MYCOmmunity Toilet, and focusing on plain old common sense can create a viable business by addressing American bias against ugly produce.

Here are a few that actually have world-changing potential.

Following up on yesterday’s idea to re-freeze the Artic is best described as ‘back to the future’.

A California-based company called SkyCool Systems is in the early stages of manufacturing a cooling system that’s more energy efficient than anything humans have used for a century. It’s doing it using radiative cooling, a concept that was used in the Middle East and India hundreds of years ago.

Inventions like this are potential game-changers as the world stares down a growing climate crisis, spurred by emissions pumped into the atmosphere by human activity. Globally, about 12% of non-carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to refrigeration and air conditioners, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

There is a lot of the talk about “food disruption,” mostly focused on new ways to grow food, plant-based protein, etc. But ending food waste would go a long way to feeding the world’s population.

Europe is way ahead of us when it come to reducing food waste.

Nearly 2 million tonnes of food is wasted by the food industry every year in the U.K. alone. Of that waste, 250,000 tonnes is still edible, equating to roughly 650 million meals. When you consider the 8.4 million people in the U.K. struggling to afford to eat, there’s obviously a problem.

And that’s where the Danish-born Too Good To Go app comes in. The app, which is available in 11 countries in Europe, is simple: it connects users to stores, such as supermarkets, restaurants and bakeries, that have unsold, surplus food.

Getting a job when you’ve been in jail is beyond difficult, especially when 40% of the FBI data base is incorrect. Now there’s an app for that. Teresa Hodge and Laurin Leonard came up with a way for companies, landlords, etc., to get more accurate and nuanced background checks.

R3’s software assesses criminal records, as well as credit histories, employment experience and information self-reported by individuals, and produces a numeric indicator for each individual predicting future trends. Scores run from 300 to 850, to mimic the standard framework for conventional credit histories. The higher the number, the less risky the person.

Finally, on the lighter side, innovation women will really appreciate — convenient and safe.

Gina Périer and Alexander Egebjerg have designed an industrial-standard female toilet for festivals and outdoor events that allows people to pee sitting down quickly and safely.

Named Lapee, the pink plastic structure has three urinals arranged in a spiral, with curving back rests that provide privacy while allowing the user to remain aware of their surroundings.

All of these, even Lapee, have the potential to create major change in our world.

Image credit: Fritz Ahlefeldt (Hiking Artist)

Golden Oldies: Millennials, Change And History

Monday, January 14th, 2019

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Generation Y is the more accurate name, but you probably know them as Millennials. I, along with the rest of media, have been writing about them for more than ten years — too often disparagingly — and far too simplistically.

They didn’t deserve it.

So this week we’ll take another look at that much maligned generation.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Ryan Healy starts his post by saying, “There’s no doubt that Generation Y will fundamentally change corporate America.”

It’s an interesting post, filled with the brashness, dreams and optimism I’ve come to expect as each new generation enters adulthood—whether I read about or lived through them.

Still more interesting are the comments, whether they agree or not.

I can’t help siding with Carlos who says, “Every generation thinks that their generation is unique. The truly gifted on each generation is and will affect change, but this notion that today’s 20-somethings are any more intelligent or capable than those from 10-40 years ago is naive,” although I would change his 40 years to 4000.

Each generation, going back to Year One BC, sets out to change its world and in doing so lays the groundwork for the next generation to change it and the process repeats itself throughout all history.

Some of the changes are good and some not; some seek to address errors previously made, while some target good changes gone bad as a result of social or technical progress.

Changes can be revolutionary or evolutionary; they fuel both society’s progression — and its regression.

Image credit: PorcelainB

Golden Oldies: Management Messes: Pain and Threats

Monday, November 19th, 2018

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

For all the promise of technology people are still people and they respond as such. Further, I doubt that’s going to change within the lifetime of anyone currently breathing.

(Note: Although the “Chat with Miki” box no longer exists, I typically reply to email within 24 hours.)

Read other Golden Oldies here.

“Clint” used the ‘Chat with Miki” box in the right-hand frame to ask me this question.

Have you ever heard this?  “People usually won’t change until the pain of NOT changing exceeds the pain of changing.”

Since this is a pretty common idea I thought I’d share my ideas with everybody.

I’ve heard this and many variations of it over the years, especially when applied to the workplace where it becomes a form of management by threat

For example, if your company or boss decides on a change and people’s jobs hinge on that change, they will change.

The problem is that they will also disengage at some level, maybe a little, but sometimes a lot. Not always obviously, but over time it will show in lower productivity, less creativity and, eventually, higher turnover.

Clint then asked if I thought that vested self-interest could be used instead of increasing the pain.

The answer is absolutely.

VSI is the perfect opposite to increased pain.

By rethinking a desired action, such as change, and presenting it in terms of its value to employees you can trip the VSI switch—but not if it’s a con.

As I’ve said a million times, people are not stupid; if the desired action is not really in their best interests there is nothing you can do that will convince them. VSI will still kick in, but the result will be resume polishing, lots of LinkedIn action and conversations with recruiters.

Clint decided that by using vested self-interest he could reduce the pain of changing. He plans to connect his organization’s goals to his people’s goals, which will effectively reduce the pain and increase the likelihood that they will do what he needs them to do—painlessly.

Handy little item my chat box. Try it, I’m usually here.

Image credit: nkzs on sxc.hu

Consumer Power

Wednesday, November 14th, 2018

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dinomite/6192822061/

 

Do you care about the appalling conditions of many workplaces? Not overseas, but here, in the US?

Do you care about the impact enterprise has on the environment?

On people?

Do you fret, because you can’t DO anything?

Or can you?

Fashion has a terrible environmental report card, especially so-called “fast fashion.”

Change happens when we consumers vote with our feet and take our money elsewhere.

Fast fashion may be on its last legs. Take it from H&M, which was forced to admit in its March financial report that it had $4.3 billion of unsold inventory left hanging on its racks, along with a massive drop in sales. In fact, the Swedish company has started incinerating clothes in power plants to generate energy. When you consider all of the raw materials, chemical pollution, human labor, and transportation costs required to make just a single shirt, the scale of the waste is astounding.

Brands may seem impervious to complaints, negative press and exposés, but the operative word is ‘seems’, as Ivanka Trump learned when she was forced to shut down her fashion line.

The business seemed to be floundering: One source found that online sales of Ivanka Trump products sold on Amazon, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Zappos fell nearly 55% over the last year. (…) The brand was the target of a massive boycott, spearheaded by Grab Your Wallet, a movement urging people to protest the Trump family’s ethical violations by refusing to shop with retailers selling their brands.

The article made me wonder if the same approach could affect Amazon, the 8 thousand pound gorilla of ecommerce

Wait a minute, didn’t Amazon just agree to pay minimum wages to all workers?

Today (Oct. 2), he announced that he will be raising the minimum wages for his e-commerce company’s US workers to $15 an hour, a move that will affect 250,000 full-time employees and 100,000 seasonal workers.

Yes, and while it looks like a big deal, it was more in the line of self-preservation.

Earning $15 an hour isn’t likely to impress Amazon’s Prime customers, who mostly earn far more (it takes 8 hours of very hard work to pay for Prime).

But just as fashion takes a huge toll from the environment and labor, the people who deliver your packages pay an exorbitantly high price for the privilege.

For Amazon, paying third-party companies to deliver packages is a cost-effective alternative to providing full employment. And the speed of two-day shipping is great for consumers. But delivering that many packages isn’t easy, and the job is riddled with problems, (…)  Others, including several labor experts, said they felt blame should be placed with Amazon, adding that the company was pressuring courier companies to deliver more, faster. They said Amazon was profiting off cheap labor that it doesn’t have to protect because it’s outsourcing the job to companies that it doesn’t adequately supervise.

Read the article and you’ll see conditions similar, maybe worse, to those that have led to protests, boycotts and change when they’ve happen on production lines overseas.

Amazon’s response is typical.

“We have worked with our partners, listened to their needs, and have implemented new programs to ensure small delivery businesses serving Amazon customers have the tools they need to deliver a great customer and employee experience.”

Nothing about driver experience.

The problem has nothing to do with Bezos’ wealth, he earned that, and everything to do with Amazon using it’s savvy, backed by it’s power, to change the game.

So how do you get the attention of an 8 thousand pound gorilla?

The same way consumers moved the fashion industry — money.

Think of the effect if just 20% (or more) of the 100 million paying Prime members bought just two items a month from a different merchant.

There’s no question that would get Amazon’s attention.

Image credit: Drew Stephens

Why Vote?

Thursday, November 8th, 2018

https://hikingartist.com/2015/06/13/scaffolding-conversations/

 

Yesterday was election day of course and it was a doozie. I live in Florida and have found that it can be a bizarre state to reside in when it comes to election time.

Like most states there is a rural and urban voting divide. However, this state seems to be fairly even on that split and that results in extremely close elections.

I looked at past data for the state and it looks like 75% of eligible voters vote in the general election and around 50% vote in midterms. I am not sure what drives those numbers, but the election always comes down to less than 100,000 vote difference.

In Florida we are inundated with ads, money and agendas. I am registered independent (thinking it would spare me from phone calls, which it didn’t) and I received calls from campaigns, dozens of text messages and countless mailers.

I tend to tune it all out. I go search the info on the candidates and make a rational decision well before the election. However, I have found that Florida is anything but rational.

Depending on your leanings you believe your  guns will be taken, socialist are getting elected, migrants are being rounded up and so on. It seems that only the extreme version of both parties is presented to the public. What is funny though is when you actually listen to the candidates themselves they all seem fairly rational.

What drives us to our political camps? I know for me it was family initially; they all voted a certain way and so did I.

As I have come into my own I have learned to evaluate a candidate on their merits. Not by party or ads. Work and friends are another way. I am in tech and in an urban center. Most of my population is more left. As a result I tend to think most feel the same way. I could not be more wrong. Even in my county when you go to different areas you see a change in mentality.

Where else do you find the influence comes from? Religion and faith can drive it. Education of course. Income. I don’t have one answer but it’s obvious that it’s a cultural driver.

Now that the election is over maybe we can reach across the fence and begin mending it.

We are all in this together and have different ideas on how to get things done, but we gave value as humans.

Kindness goes a long way.

Image credit: Hiking Artist

Golden Oldies: News, but No Surprise

Monday, September 10th, 2018

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

I wrote this back in 2014. Obviously, I didn’t mention harassment because the post focused on what was in the news, and it wasn’t talked about all that openly, unlike now.

Sadly, nothing has changed. It’s still news and people are surprised.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I get it. I get what’s going on in terms of women in the workplace is news.

I get it that it is important to remind people that for all the progress that’s been made some things haven’t changed.

It’s still assumed that it’s OK to ask professional women, such as lawyers and marketing execs, to do stuff that would never be asked of the men in the organization.

“…plan parties, order food, take notes in meetings and join thankless committees…bring cupcakes for a colleague’s birthday, order sandwiches for office lunches and answer phones”

By the same token, it’s news that board diversity is moving at glacial speed, primarily because boards only want people with experience and to have experience they need to serve on a board.

“Recruiting women and minorities to boards is being slowed because of boards’ unwillingness to look at candidates who have not yet served on boards,” said Ron Lumbra, co-leader of the CEO and board services practice for Russell Reynolds. “There’s a premium on experience.’’

So while I have no problem with these subjects being presented over and over in the news, there is one thing I don’t understand.

Why are so many people surprised by the information?

Is the general population so naïve that they actually believe women are no longer asked to do tasks that are closer to house work than business work?

Do they really believe that the lack of board diversity is a function of the lack of experience as opposed a desire to spend time with people like themselves who are well within their comfort zones?

The sad part is that while it’s still news, it’s certainly not a surprise.

Flickr image credit: Arya Ziai

Role Models: GM’s Mary Barra

Wednesday, August 1st, 2018

Empowering people is something every good boss, from CEO to team leader, wants to do.

Sometimes that can be accomplished by making a small change that turns out to have a giant impact, as GM Chairman/CEO Mary Barra found when she became vice president of global human resources in 2009.

Barra wanted to change GM’s 10-page dress code to a simple, two-word one, ‘dress appropriately.’

Her staff didn’t agree.

But the HR department ironically posed my first hurdle. They started arguing with me, saying, it can be ‘dress appropriately’ on the surface, but in the employee manual it needs to be a lot more detailed. They put in specifics, like, ‘Don’t wear T-shirts that say inappropriate things, or statements that could be misinterpreted.’”

The kind of detailed instructions the hr staff wanted to add may not seem like that big a deal, but the underlying implication is that the company didn’t trust them. Remove the details and you have a radically different result.

“But if you let people own policies themselves—especially at the first level of people supervision—it helps develop them. It was an eye-opening experience, but I now know that these small little things changed our culture powerfully. They weren’t the only factor, but they contributed significantly.” (…)  By simply stating “dress appropriately,” Barra does exactly what she asks of other leaders: She avoids assumptions, instead choosing to trust her employees’ judgment—and has found the experience remarkably liberating.

Not to mention successful.

If that attitude works in a company with 180,000 employees it will probably work for you.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Ducks in a Row: How PwC’s People Crisis Drove Cultural Change

Tuesday, March 27th, 2018

 

What does a company like PwC do when it faces “crisis-level attrition” combined with little-to-no interest from new grads — their workforce lifeblood?

Run a study, of course. What else would a consultant do first?

Millennials, they found, did not object to long hours outright. They were as committed to their work as older colleagues. But they were also more willing to question long-held assumptions about how that work should be done. Given the abundance of connectivity, why was it necessary to be in the same physical building for 15 hours (on a good day) to get a job done? Why couldn’t they work from home when a project allowed?

No surprise there; the surprise came from a different segment of the 44,000 strong global workforce.

But here was the real surprise: Non-millennial employees wanted exactly the same thing. Virtually identical percentages of millennial employees and non-millennial workers said they would prefer to be able to shift their work hours to schedules that could accommodate both their personal and professional obligations—heading home early for family dinner, for example, in exchange for an early start or signing back on once the kids were in bed.

The only difference was that millennials were willing to speak up about their dissatisfaction, and to opt out when problems couldn’t be resolved. Over and over again, the results of the survey made clear: work was important, but a personal life was, too.

Duh. That “surprise” isn’t exactly rocket science.

For a company that makes its living from its intelligent counsel and problem solving skills, they really blew it. Beyond that, they seemed to ignore others’ research.

Research has found that productivity drops significantly after about 50 hours per week of work. Long hours come at a cost to employee health (paywall), which in turn leads to absenteeism, loss of productivity, and higher insurance costs for employers. It’s a game no one wins.

Every list I’ve seen, since millennials started working, describing what they wanted in the workplace more or less duplicated what I’d heard from other candidates for more than 30 years.

Millennial workers were just the first generation to call the game out as bullshit, in numbers large enough to force the rules to change.

Big mouths and a willingness to walk got McKenzie management’s attention, but the difference between McKenzie and other companies with similar cultures is that McKenzie admitted the problem, found the cause, crafted solutions and followed-through implementing them.

There are plenty of others still in denial.

A recent Vanity Fair profile of Goldman Sachs’s president and probable next CEO David Solomon praised his commitment to “healthy work-life balance.” At Goldman this means working no more than 70 hours per week—so long as no pressing deals are in the works.

And forget law firms.

Industries that bill by the hour have no financial interest in adopting a leaner workweek. “Many people will say, ‘Diminished returns are better than no returns’.”

I think that, too, will change as Generation Z follows the Millennials with even more willingness to walk — if they even choose that path in the first place.

Image credit: PwC

How To Talk To Women

Wednesday, December 6th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/byzantiumbooks/16173360807/

Valeria Chuba is an intimacy coach (clinical sexologist) and has found three main responses by her male clients to the recent bevy of harassment complaints.

  • Defensiveness
  • Disbelief at the enormity and pervasiveness of sexual violence and misconduct
  • Difficulty with empathizing

No surprises, but her commentary is interesting and useful.

In trying to figuring out how to interact with women many men are choosing the easy route.

… men who want to enact the “Pence rule” (avoiding socializing alone with any woman who is not one’s wife) do so at a potentially enormous cost to their female colleagues, their organizations, and themselves. In fact, the notion that some men are confused as to how to “mentor young women without harassing them” is a troubling comment on masculinity.

Easy, because it takes little effort from them, while further screwing (pun intended) women and “keeping them in their place” — which is below and away from men.

There’s a better way to monitor your words and actions.

Best, it’s a simple yardstick with which to measure them.

Ask yourself if you would say the words, use the tone, or perform the action on your mother, sister or any female relative.
Measure other men’s comments/tones/actions the same way.

Think about how you would feel if they were speaking to your mother/sister/grandma/etc. If it was your mom/etc. would you let it go or would you call them on it?

That simple mental test is an excellent guide for men who are worried about whether they or someone else is crossing the line.

That said, men also need to understand that women may still make the wrong assumption and take it the wrong way based on her previous experience with other men.

Not because it’s a bad yardstick, but because trust takes time — especially when dealing with systemic social problems.

So keep using the yardstick; share it with your team; embed it in your culture, be an active part of the (eventual) change.

Flickr image credit: Bill Smith

Malcolm Berko Explains Disruption

Wednesday, October 4th, 2017

Have you heard of/read Malcolm Berko? He writes a twice-a-week column answering financial/investment questions — just one answer in each column.

In addition to being broadly educated and financially knowledgeable, he is a superb and truly witty writer, doesn’t suffer fools at all, and, after reading him for decades, has no sacred cows. (I highly recommend him.)

I thought this recent question and his response would explain the coverage, and downright scare hype, surrounding AI, robots and the tech upheaval of many industries, such as retail.

Here is the salient part of the question.

My professor believes that “its disruptive pricing power chokes employment, restrains wage growth and is bankrupting competitors.” He believes that Amazon is “too negatively impactive on our economy, especially wages, and must be restrained by government-decreed divestiture.”

Berko wasted few words on what he thought of the prof and went on to explain as follows:

Joseph Schumpeter, a brilliant economist and bald as an egg, who passed away in 1950, explained capitalism as a series 50- to 60-year waves of technological revolutions causing gales of creative destruction, or GCDs, in which old industries are swept away and replaced by new industries. These new industries generate new economic activity, employing more people, who buy more products, creating more demand and, resultantly, increased employment.

  • First GCD, between the 1780s and 1840s, was fueled by steam power. During those years, the steam engine increased our gross domestic product fivefold, and employment grew fourfold.

  • Second GCD, between the 1840s and 1890s, the railroads replaced wagon trains, stagecoaches and sailing ships. (…) Resultantly, our GDP exploded sixfold, and employment grew fivefold.

  • Third GDC, between the 1890s and the 1940s, was charged by electricity. Inexpensive electrical power hugely improved industrial efficiency and labor productivity. This bred a sixfold growth in GDP and a fourfold rise in our working population.

  • Fourth GDC between the 1940s and the 1990s was powered by oil and the automobile. People moved to the suburbs and families owned two cars as the GDP increased eightfold and the workforce grew fivefold.

  • Fifth GDC is information technology and the microchip. It’s making other technologies obsolete and altering our social, cultural, political and economic futures in ways we never imagined possible. We’re on the cusp of that wave today.

Excellent for understanding what’s happening, but what neither Schumpeter nor Berko adress is the enormous upheaval, fear and human pain that comes with each wave.

It is terrifying to be told that skills you have worked to develop and hone for 5, 10 or 20 years, or longer, have no value.

But in today’s world, where what-you-do-is-who-you-are, that often means that you, the person, has no value.

While Berko is correct about the potential of an unimaginable future, which you may not even live to see, that future is of little solace and does nothing to mitigate the terror and economic woes facing you today or tomorrow.

Two parts of the solution is to put your energy into coping and immediately develop the most important skill/attitude they probably didn’t bother teaching you in school.

Learn to love learning.

PS I sincerely hope you take the time to read Berko’s full column. I guarantee it will be time well spent, as are all him writings.

Image credit: Creator’s.com

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