I spent over an hour going through my article collection and found nothing that seems worth sharing; I seem to have used up all the good stuff on this week’s Saturday Odd Bits, check them out, especially if you’re interested in Microsoft, and be sure to subscribe via RSS or EMAIL while you’re there.
Then I remembered one item I’ve been meaning to share with you and this particular weekend seems like an appropriate time to do it.
You may have seen it, since it’s been making the round of the Internet, but even so, I still want to share it with you.
If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:
The village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific
51 would be male, 49 would be female
82 would be non-white; 18 white
67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian
80 would live in substandard housing
67 would be unable to read
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation
33 would be without access to a safe water supply
39 would lack access to improved sanitation
24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)
7 people would have access to the Internet
1 would have a college education
1 would have HIV
2 would be near birth; 1 near death
5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens
33 would be receiving—and attempting to live on—only 3% of the income of “the village”
Most stats about global conditions involve large numbers and are wrapped up in scholarly or, worse yet, political language that makes your eyes glaze over.
Seeing it reduced to just 100 makes it easy to grasp the implications of what’s going on.
Think about them with an open mind sans ideology and share your thoughts.
It’s a discussion that needs to happen—everywhere.
Saturday we looked at some incongruous actions and compensation of various CEOs and it reminded me of something I read a year or so ago, so I went looking and found it. Amazing!
I realize that housing is a touchy subject these days, but over the last few decade as houses got bigger and bigger I found it weirder and weirder.
There’s no way to ever convince me that any family or person, really needs a seven thousand-plus square foot house in order to live comfortably—let alone 10,000 and up.
The item I remembered article was an UpFront blurb in Business Week that I found hilarious.
The research was done by Finance professors David Yermack of New York University and Crocker Liu of Arizona State University and their conclusions casts housing excess in a new light.
The bigger or pricier the house…the greater the risk of lackluster shares.
If [the CEO] buys a big mansion, sell the stock. Many of these guys have been super performers, but at some point that stops, and they reap the benefits.
Seems reasonable to me.
Remember the old saying? Something about boys and the price of their toys.
Seems like the toys’ values are going up, while the boys’ values (and value) are decreasing. (Note: As used here, “boys” is genderless.)
I doubt that the current housing market has changed that particular mindset.
So the next time you go to invest, be sure to plug in the size of the CEOs home when evaluating a company and, thinking about it, the same probably applies to the entire C suite.
I’m unfamiliar with Strategic Strategist and have no idea what, if anything, this means, but still! So I told some friends and my b5 cohorts and received some very nice congratulatory emails telling me that I deserved it, etc. Fun!
But it got me to thinking once again that I just don’t have the ego for the networked, self-promoted, memememe world I live in.
It’s not that I don’t believe I have a lot to offer.
I think I’m a hell of a writer and that what I say has value, whether it’s of direct use or stimulates new thought paths.
To be honest, I’m often blown away when I read old posts here or at MAPping Company Success and realize I wrote them. The same goes for my book, The Swamp & the Alligators: a slightly irreverent guide to career planning and the search process. It’s 16 years old now and it’s still on Amazon.
I know my coaching is valuable and that it’s unique; it takes a different approach from much of the other coaching available.
But I’m always a bit amazed when others see its value.
Believe me, it’s not humility or any of those supposedly noble feelings. It’s just that it surprises me when the outside world agrees with me.
As my readers know, I’m very opinionated, but that doesn’t mean I assume or expect anyone else to agree—in spite of the law of averages saying that some will.
I’m lousy at “working the room,” whether in the real or cyber world.
Back when I attended parties I would hang out helping in the kitchen and over the course of the evening most of the interesting people would wander in and end up staying for the kind of conversation you can sink your teeth into (I’ve always been lousy at small talk).
I seem to do cyberspace the same way.
And, I’m grateful to say, the interesting people keep wandering in and staying to talk.
Do words really make a difference? Can just one word change people’s perception of a person or event?
I’ve read several items lately on the importance of influence in leadership. Several even make the point that it’s the ability to influence that marks a person as a leader.
Personally, other than socially acceptable definitions, I don’t see a lot of difference between influence and manipulation.
Both influence and manipulation seek to produce an effect without any apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.
But if you say someone has a lot of influence it’s a compliment; call the same person a master manipulator and you’d better duck.
It’s a good example of the real power that words have to inspire or crush even if their meaning is the same.
And it’s important to remember that words come with baggage that goes well beyond their actual definition.
That baggage was one of the main reasons corporate marketing departments made so many mistakes when moving from one culture to another.
Braniff translated its slogan relating to seat upholstery, “Fly in leather” to Spanish; only it came out as “Fly naked.”
Coors slogan, “Turn it loose,” means “Suffer from diarrhea” in Spanish.
Clairol, introduced a curling iron called the “Mist Stick” in Germany and learned the hard way that mist is slang for manure.
Gerber started selling baby food in Africa using US packaging with the baby on the label until they found out that in Africa the picture on the label indicates what’s inside since most people can’t read.
There are hundreds of similar mishaps. They made marketing departments a laughing stock, forced companies to hire locally, helped change the headquarters mindset and encourage global companies to be truly global.
The point of all this is to encourage you to take a few extra minutes to think through not only what you want to say, but also what your audience will hear when you say it.
That effort can make the difference between going up like a rocket or down like a falling star.
One item today, because it has several parts, all revolving around a new, way outside-the-box book.
I’m referring to Jeff Jarvis’ just-released What Would Google Do?, exploring how to apply the lessons of Google to other industries and companies.
Jarvis teaches at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism; his blog is BuzzMachine.
Business Week published an excerpt describing how a car company run by Google might function and why the auto industry would be resistant to the approach. Be sure to read through the comments, they’re as interesting as the article.
I like the Management Tip Sheet; here are the headings, but the real value is in the details, so be sure to click the link.
Manage Abundance, Not Scarcity
Make Mistakes Well
Give Up Control
Get Out Of The Way
Low Prices Are Good (Free Is Better)
Don’t Be Evil (Contrary to popular opinion the phrase has an internal focus, not external.)
Finally, here’s a video of Jarvis talking about his ideas; there are several other interviews that offer different slants and information.
Just to be clear, this isn’t a book recommendation. I think there are good lessons to learn from Google, but there are good lessons to learn from most truly innovative companies.
I know of none that can be applied straight across the board or are one-size-fits-all.
But all the companies that still believe “if we make it they will buy” are in for a very rude awakening when the economy turns around—as it will.
I have very smart readers from all over the world. That means a variety of cultures, experiences, politics, attitudes and ages that provide a wide range of MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).
I’d like to take advantage of that diversity to ask some questions.
I ask them because either I haven’t heard ideas that strike me as solving anything or because I haven’t seen them directly addressed. I honestly want a range of answers, not necessarily ones with which I agree, but a stimulating conversation! To that end I’m offering only the questions, no commentary or opinion.
I hope you’ll treat this post as a conversation among friends, perhaps over a good bottle of wine on a Friday afternoon.
Please add your own queries, whether you want to respond to mine or not.
If it turns out you like this feature we can do others in the future.
Relatively speaking, how global is the sense of entitlement so visible in certain areas today?
Can people at any level in an organization drive real cultural change if it goes against the “leader’s” MAP?
How large a role does ideology play in the business world?
There’s nothing like something free to add an incentive, beyond the bottle of cyber wine, to a good conversation, so I’m going to give away a copy of Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict Into Strength by Diana McLain Smith to one lucky participant—no matter where you live.
Conversations involve lots of give and take, back and forth, therefore every comment posted will be assigned a number. At midnight February 28, I’ll enter the total numbers into Random.org and announce the winner on this post. So the more you add to the conversation the more chances you have to win. How cool is that?
Would you like to work for a company where the 401K matching on 5% of salary is as much as 11%? Where you can become a manager earning $62,000 plus bonus and company car with no college degree, no Union, no trade—nothing but hard work.
Of course, you’ll have to put up with snickers and even scorn if you mention your job in public.
All of that is what’s available to the 6,700 managers at company-owned McDonald’s restaurants.
“While an average McDonald’s grosses $2.2 million a year, seasoned managers who motivate employees and keep customers coming back can add more than $200,000 to that total.“Restaurant managers are in the most important position in our company,” says Richard Floersch, McDonald’s chief human resources officer.”
Moreover, with corporate culture being recognized as the moving force behind corporate performance, why is it that articles about changing culture in major corporations employing mostly skilled, well-paid workers, such as IBM, are met with serious discussion, while changing it in major corporations with mostly minimum wage earners, such as McDonalds, is marked down as hype?
Why was a cultural change at IBM seen as key to the company’s survival, but instilling pride in the workers at McDonalds, Taco Bell and KFC is viewed as hype, “Raising spirits is cheaper than raising salaries.”
Why do we expect young people to take pride in their first ‘real’ job, or care about the customer, when they were laughed at for the same attitudes/actions in their minimum wage job?
Why does our society denigrate those who work low-paying jobs, when they are honest, hardworking, raise families and even pay taxes, which is more than you can say for their wealthier counterparts?
In the same vein, why is the four-year grad, with a degree paid for by mom and dad, considered a better candidate than the one who took longer working ‘non-professional’ jobs to pay for the same degree from the same school?
Maybe companies need to wake up. No matter what their family’s economic status, I haven’t seen the same high sense of entitlement in kids who spent their summers working in average and minimum wage jobs as I have in the ones who worked frequently overpaid jobs for their parents or didn’t work at all.
In 1979, the first spreadsheet software was introduced, Sony rolled out the Walkman, ESPN began broadcasting sporting events to cable TV companies, and on public television, Nightly Business Report made its debut. To celebrate their three decades on the air, PBS’ Nightly Business Report has teamed up with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, to select the 30 most important innovations from the last 30 years.
The full list will be announced on Nightly Business Report, in a special half hour program, next Monday, February 16, 2009.
The criteria upon which the innovations were judged:
1. Did it have a direct and/or material effect on quality of life?
2. Did it address a compelling need? Did it solve a compelling problem?
3. Was it a fresh, new breakthrough? Was there a “WOW” factor?
4. Did it change the way business is conducted?
5. Did it increase the efficiency of how resources are used?
6. Did it spark an ongoing stream of new innovations on top of the original innovation?
7. Did it lead to the creation of a vast, new industry?
For more information, or to speak with a Nightly Business Report representative, please contact Mark Ballard at 212-255-8455 or mark@rosengrouppr.com.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
I spent over an hour going through my article collection and found nothing that seems worth sharing; I seem to have used up all the good stuff on this week’s Saturday Odd Bits, check them out, especially if you’re interested in Microsoft, and be sure to subscribe via RSS or EMAIL while you’re there.
But it got me to thinking once again that I just don’t have the ego for the networked, self-promoted, memememe world I live in.
Are you getting as tired as I am of the never-ending deceit and downright illegality that keeps coming to light?
One item today, because it has several parts, all revolving around a new, way outside-the-box book.
I hope you’ll treat this post as a conversation among friends, perhaps over a good bottle of wine on a Friday afternoon.
conversation, so I’m going to give away a copy of 
All of that is what’s available to the 6,700 managers at company-owned McDonald’s restaurants.
Media Alert: PBS’ Nightly Business Report
