One would think that when engaged in Organizational Development the OD consultant would encounter much resistance to change.  Those stakeholders each having their own priorities would support an environment where there is much conscious or sub-conscious sabotage to what the consultant is attempting to accomplish.  In reality, if the developer understands the stages that an organization can go through and know how to leverage the concept of enrollment, everyone involved  would be much more cooperative, allowing the aims of management and the OD Consultant to be attained.  I have relied heavily on the book, Tribal Leadership  by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fisher Wright available from Amazon.com
 
Shop Amazon.com 
                                                             

Introduction

 There is an old joke, how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The punch line is, only one, but the light bulb has to really WANT to change.  This joke can be extrapolated over to Organizational Development, The organization really has to want to change and since an organization is made up of people it is the people in the organization who must really want to change. Much to the chagrin of the OD Consultant, this is rarely an easy task; each stakeholder in the organization has their own interest and that is what they are looking out for.  In addition we as human beings are resistant to change.

         
In November, 2008, at the cusp of the greatest financial crises in seventy years, Barrack H. Obama was elected President of the United States promising change.  His party also made significant gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.  Despite this, every change he is attempting to make is being fought.  Is this just because the Republican’s are The Party of No and want to defeat Mr. Obama for their selfish interests?  Remember that until Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts in Jan 2010, the Republicans didn’t have much say yet despite the fact that the Democrats were 100% in control; President Obama was still having difficulty getting his reforms through the Congress.  There had to be something more going on than just party politics.  The difficulties that President Obama is having are difficulties that all executives face when attempting to implement corporate change.

Organizational Culture and Tribal Leadership

In their book, Tribal Leadership, Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Authors Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fisher-Wright discuss organizations as being made up of tribes, each tribe, a group of 20 to 150 group members (Logan, King & Fischer-Wright, 2008) Each tribe goes through stages which are to a tribe as the Maslow hierarchies are to individuals (Kohnen, J, 2009). The tribal stages are  as follows (Logan et al, 2008, p25)

Stage	Mood	Theme
5	Innocent Wonderment	“Life is Great”
4	Tribal Pride	We’re great (and they are not)
3	Lone Warrior	I’m great (and you’re not)
2	Apathetic Victim	“My life Sucks”
1	Despairing Hostility	“Life Sucks”

 

             

For organizational development to take place, the organizational developer must find out what stage of development the company is in and bring the company up to stage 4.  Until the fourth stage of development you can try any method of Organizational Development you want whether it be Lewin, Action Research, Positive Model or even the Donald Trump Your Fired method and none of it will work; it would be like asking someone who is low on the Maslow scale and concerned about where he is getting his next meal to be concerned with Global Warning.   Having a business with a stage 4 culture is also only the first step.  The stake holders still need to be sold on the plan that the OD Consultant has developed.  A stage 4 culture is only the first step which will ensure that stake holders are not subconsciously sabotaging the situation.

Enrollment

The OD Consultant is in a company with a stage 4 culture and has made the diagnosis as to how to change the company.  What comes next is enrollment, in other words the stakeholders must be inspired into action.  If the OD Consultant or manager were to tell the employees, “Follow this plan or you will be fired,” the company will have fallin back to stage 3 or below as the manager would essentially be saying, “Follow this plan because you all suck and I am better than you.”   We have established that a tribal culture must be in stage 4 so if you lower it to stage 3, Organizational Development will not work.  The consultant and management must find other ways to motivate the tribe.  One way to do this is to use one of the tried in true methods of Organizational Development such as the Lewin, Action Research or Positive models (Cummings & Worley, 2008).  These are researched, tried and true methods and using one of those does not make it look like the OD specialist just pulled something out of his or her hat!  The organization thus will know that the actions being taken was stuff that was researched and that there is a good probability that if they are taken, the organization will get the results that the changes are designed to achieved.

It is also a good idea to have a staff meeting to allow the staff to communicate their concerns with the plan and to listen to the plan.  This is primarily designed to get the concerns out into the open and dealt with.  Also, these plans are living documents, nothing about them is written in stone.  By discussing and brainstorming some good ideas could come forth to the surface which would add to the plan.  The plan must also be monitored and the staff kept in the loop so it can be fine tuned when things move off course or there is some unexpected external factor (such as the events of September 11^th 2001)

 Conclusion

So how do you make the light bulb want to change?  First, you must bring the culture of the organization up to stage 4, per Tribal Leadership.  This way the stakeholders are all on the same page with the attitude that We are Great (Logan et al, 2008).  By dealing with a stage 4 culture the OD consultant avoids the petty politics that are the norm of the I am great culture. Then the consultants i sell the tribes on the idea by inspiring and involving them so that they see that we can be even greater.

Again, the book, Tribal Leadership is available from Amazon.com  
Shop Amazon.com 

 

 

References

Andy Adcroft, Robert Willis, & Jeff Hurst. (2008). A new model for managing change: the holistic view. The Journal of Business Strategy, 29(1), 40-45.  Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1443668601).

            Cummings & Worley( 2008) Organizational development and change Mason, OH Cengage

Kohnen, J.. (2009). Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization  The Quality Management Journal, 16(2), 61-62.  Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1681059681).

Logan, King & Fisher-Wright (2008) Tribal leadership, Leveraging natural groups to build a thriving organization New York, HarperCollins

 

Introduction.

          Tiger Woods was one of the most respected figures in Sports.  He was an African American who had excelled in a field where there were not many African Americans.  He also had a likeable personality and he was the spokesperson for several different products.  Woods was the epitome of success.  Then a car accident brought to light that Tiger may have been having sexual relationships with women other than his wife, an act frowned upon in today’s society.  Tiger had to take a leave of absence from his golf career and had also lost several of his endorsements.  Will Tiger Woods just remain a memory in the world of golf or will he make that comeback and again be seen on the golf courses of the world, winning tournaments and impressing the fans?  The answer is in his resilience.  Resilience is defined as, “the maintenance of healthy functioning following exposure to potential trauma” (Bjorkland and Bee, 2008 p317).  It is recovering from the stress and trauma involved and rising up out of the ashes.  This is also know as, making the comeback.

            Human beings periodically encounter personal and widespread disasters ranging from personal bankruptcy, family deaths, and job losses to massive disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes.  My grandfather, Samson Meyberg, was a survivor of the holocaust.  In the holocaust, he lost his parents, 3 out of 5 of his siblings and a successful business.  He fled to Columbia South America with his pregnant wife and two toddlers and built a business from nothing.  Twelve years later, he had the opportunity to bring his family to the United States so again he left everything behind and moved his family to the United States. During the entire time that the author had known him, Meyberg never once uttered a bad thing about Germany or the Germans.  On the contrary, he would often spend time at the Germania Hall, telling stories and singing German Folk songs.  When he visited his home town in Germany a year before his death by natural causes, he was given the key to the city and a parade.

 

Acceptance

          Extrapolating Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of death and dying to the area of loss and grief, one would know that first have to go through the five stages to the stage of acceptance in order to make the comeback.  Samson Meyberg had to accept the fact that almost all of his family and everything he had was taken from him by the Nazis before he could move on with his life.  Tiger Woods is going to have to accept the fact that he cheated on his wife and all of the ramifications of that act.  It is essential for one to be able to accept life the way it is before they can move on to the desired state, in much the same way that if a traveler wanted to travel to San Francisco and that traveler thought he or she was in New York but in reality he or she was in San Jose, that traveler would end up driving into the ocean.

Forgiveness

          The next step in bouncing back is to be able to forgive the person or circumstances that caused the situation. Forgiveness is the act of giving up the right to get revenge or retribution and giving up of any anger, rage or resentment (Toussaint, L. 2003).  In a series of three studies done by Williams and Gonzales they found that the experience of forgiveness decreases the amount of Psychological pain felt and increases the amount of empathy felt for the offender (Williamson & Gonzales 2007).  Samson Meyberg had the difficult task of learning to forgive the German People, his friends that he had grown up with who had betrayed him when Hitler came into power, for the deaths of his parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins and the loss of his business and for forcing him to flee thousands of miles to a third world country.  Tiger Woods is going to need to forgive himself, his wife, the other women, the press and anyone else who was involved that committed any real or imagined transgressions. When forgiveness does not occur and one maintains the grudge, that person can become like Captain Ahab from the Novel, Moby Dick.  Before Ahab encountered this Great White Wail, he probably had goals and dreams to become a great whaler.  Instead he spent his entire life working on getting revenge against this creature of the sea (Melville, H, 1851).     

Internal Locus of Control

          Locus of control has to do with psychological ownership.  Those with an Internal Locus of Control have a high sense of ownership; they know that they are the ones totally responsible for the situation.  Those with an External Locus of Control believe that others are responsible for the situation ( McIntyre, N., Srivastava, A., & Fuller, J. 2009).  Being responsible for what happened is different than taking the blame.   When one takes the blame they are not being responsible.  They are merely making themselves wrong which is totally contrary to the intended purpose.  By being responsible, one is giving themselves permission to alter the situation or to leave it the way it is.  Samson Meyberg took responsibility for his situation by fleeing the country.  He didn’t blame anyone nor did he think about how it just shouldn’t be.  Had he done that, he, his wife and children would have been killed in the gas chamber.  Tiger Woods will need to take responsibility for his situation and then chose whether he wants to reboot his career or not.  Whatever he decides to, for his next step in life to be successful, he would need to engage in strategic planning.

Strategic Planning

          Strategic Planning is the process one goes about to get to the desired state from the present state (Anderson, P 1982).    It is figuring out what the goals are and then figuring out how to get from the present state to the desired state.  Lets again look at the paradigm of the traveler wanting to drive from NY to San Francisco.  The present state would be New York, the Desired State would be San Francisco and the road maps the plan on how to go about getting there.  After the failure is put into the past, one must make plans so that the next venture succeeds. Meyberg probably did not engage in strategic planning as he did not know about it.  It was not common knowledge in the 1940’s.  Business-wise, he never did attain the levels of success that he had in Germany before World War II.  The tools of strategic planning are however available to Tiger Woods and he indeed can restore himself to the level of success that he had before his accident.   

How this pertains to me?

          As an engineer during the Dot Com Boom of the 1990’s I had a comfortable 6 figure income with a good savings account and a retirement plan.  Then the bubble burst and in 2001 there was the Dot Bomb; I was laid off of my job and eventually spent all the money in my savings account and retirement plan. I spent over five years suffering before I was able to accept the situation, forgive the people involved, (including myself) and take responsibility. I would blame the “stupid investors” and the moronic managers of the companies I had worked for. I was unable to move on until I could accept the situation, forgive the people involved, psychologically own the situation and strategically plan out the next phase of my life. Today business owners and entrepreneurs are facing similar challenges. With my training and life experiences, I am in the perfect position to coach and consult these people dealing with their lives being turned upside down by disasters of their own or other’s making by coaching and consulting in the fields of strategic, tactical and marketing planning.  To that end, I do maintain a blog, www.super-abundance.com.

Conclusion

          Human Beings are subject to setbacks of all types, from minor setbacks such as a late flight arrival causing one to miss their meeting, to major layoffs such as Hurricanes and Holocausts.  Rarely are we able to control the circumstances but what we can control is how we respond to those incidents.  Resilience gives us the power to bounce back from these incidents.  How high one bounces depends on how well one can accept the situation, forgive everyone involved, be responsible for what happened and strategically plan their lives from that point forward.

 

 

 

 

References

 

Anderson, P (1982) Marketing, Strategic Planning and the Theory of the Firm,  Journal of Marketing Vol 46 (spring 82) 15-26 Retrieved from www.jstor.com

 

Bjorklund, B. & Bee, H. (2008). The journey of adulthood (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River:

             Pearson/Prentice Hall.

McIntyre, N., Srivastava, A., & Fuller, J. (2009). The Relationship of Locus of Control and Motives with Psychological Ownership in Organizations. Journal of Managerial Issues, 21(3), 383-401. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Melville, H (1851) Moby Dick New York, Harper

Toussaint, L. (2003). Levels of Forgiveness Following the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks. 1. Retrieved from PsycEXTRA database.

Williamson, I., & Gonzales, M. (2007). The subjective experience of forgiveness: Positive construals of the forgiveness experience. Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 26(4), 407-446. doi:10.1521/jscp.2007.26.4.407.

 

 

2009 is rapidly coming to an end.  For some of us it was a terrible year, The Economy" didn't do "well," we lost a lot of people who were important to us. Some of us lost our jobs and some of us lost our homes. For some it was a great year, Babies were born,People started businesses and some graduated from high school or college.  It is interesting that whether you think it was good or bad, it was the way that it was and what’s important is to leverage what happened in 2009 so that future years and the rest of your lives are lived with fulfillment.  Does that mean that every moment of our lives can be a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, no it does mean that you will have a blueprint to follow to tell you if you are on track or not.  This first step is to enter 2010 with a context of gratitude.  Then we can look at what we want to accomplish in 2010 and put together a plan to accomplish this. So this is my Prescription for ending off 2009,

1)     For the next week, every morning write down one event in your life that happened in 2009 that you are grateful for.  Communicate this to at least one other person.  If you have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or some other social media presence, you can communicate it through your social media.

2)     Write down anything that happened in 2009 that you would have rather not have happened. Forgive anyone that you were blaming for those situations.  Realize that there is nothing you can do tokeep those things from happening.  These situations are in your past.

3)     Write down on a different sheet of paper, what youl earned from those situations.

4)     Take the sheet of paper that you wrote down the situations and shred it.  You want tokeep the paper with the lessons though, so if you didn’t follow what I said above, write the lessons down on a different sheet of paper.

5)     Envision yourself at the end of 2010. (If you really want to think long term you can envision yourself at the end of 2019, ten years, or even 2034 twenty five years, but if you do that remember to also do it for 2010)  What are your results?  To make this even more powerful, write them down as if they have already happened.  Results should be SMART. (See the entry, JimRohn on Goal Setting )

6)     To get those results, Where do you need to be at the end of each quarter, start with where you want to be on September 30^th,June 30^th and March 31^st.

7)     Write down the actions that you need to take to get the results; there are actions that you need to take at one time, daily,weekly, monthly, by monthly, etc.

8)     Schedule these actions into your Blackberry,I-Phone, Planner or whatever you use to manage your schedule.

9)      Track and Tweak:  Monitor your results on a regular basis,Revise the plan based on your results and any current events.  These plans are not written in stone, they are alive and if your results are not where you want them to be, you are going to need to change something.  Also,current events may force a change in your plans. For example, if you sell health insurance, or have a business where you have employees, I am sure you will need to change your plan based on what the final health care plan that congress passes.

10)   Celebrate! You have just completed another year in your life, celebrate your achievement by doing something that you enjoy doing. Me?  I am going to have a glass of wine and watch videos.

Of course, I am willing to make myself available to work with you on your business and marketing tactical and strategic planning. To contact me, email: levine_j@att.net

T756JQF9MK8G

It seems like more people have an opinion about Multi Level Marketing than do Tiger Woods.  Some people believe that you can make a ton of money in the Multi-level Marketing Business; others think it is a pyramid scam! If you are looking into starting a home based business, on either a full orpart-time basis, and are good at working with people, but have little businessknowledge and minimal capital, then Multilevel marketing may be for you. Beforeyou jump into a MLM company, you should consider the positives and thenegatives of an MLM company.

This article will show you the positives to look for in an MLM company andsome of the downsides of MLM companies.

An MLM company provides a product or service to the consumer through anetwork of distributors. The distributors make their money through a percentageof the products they sell. They also make a percentage of revenues from thecustomers of the distributors that they recruit and a percentage of thedistributors that their distributors recruit. This is why it is called multilevel marketing.

Reputable MLM companies also provide a low start-up cost, all the trainingyou need, advertising in one form or another, and supply you with a productline-up or service to sell.

Before you join an MLM company do your due diligence.

Here are the positive and negative factors to consider when choosing an MLMcompany.

 

POSITIVES TO LOOK FOR WHEN CHOOSING AN MLM COMPANY

-Established and marketable product line or service. -Striving to improve oradd to the existing line-up -Easy to sign up new distributors online. -Solidtrack record and good work ethic. -No experience required. -Training provided.-Excellent bonus plan with incentives. -Strong support system. -Successfulbusiness and marketing plan -Can work full time or part time.

These attributes would definitely belong to an ideal multilevel marketingcompany, however not all reputable companies excel in all these areas. Somecompanies will be better in certain areas than others. Do research on thecompany. Don’t just accept the motivational hype used by most MLM companies inorder to recruit.

THE NEGATIVES OF MLM COMPANIES

While the MLM model can be a great tool to achieve what you want in life, itwould be remiss not to mention the negatives of MLM companies.

-Watch out for disreputable MLM companies. -There are costs to running anMLM. -It usually takes a minimum monthly order to maintain yourdistributorship. -Watch out for getting paid to just recruit distributors andnot on sales volume. -Even though the companies insist the products sellthemselves, it is still going to take work to make money. -In MLM you have todeal with rejection.

When considering getting involved in an MLM company take the time to choosethe right company. There are many different companies to choose from. Resistthe temptation to just join any company, but do your due diligence.

Starting an MLM business can make you a fortune, however it is going to takeconsistent and diligent work to succeed. Make sure that the company that youchoose to work with has all the positives mentioned above and also take thetime to consider if you are willing to put in the work that is necessary tomake MLM work. And remember, God loves you.

For more information, contact  Jeff Levine,. Jeff@tamianassociates.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Rohn

        

          Even though Businesses are owned by their shareholders and thus responsible for giving them a return on investment, the focus of a businesses must not become turning a profit, but how they are going to make a difference in the world.  Once a business begins to focus on their profits and losses, they lose focus on the things that make the business unique and valuable and this opens the door to anything that turns a profit being OK.  Unethical behavior can then destroy the business.  When a company is staying focused on its purpose, the profits will be incidental.

          When I was growing up in the 1970’s in upstate NY, I remember having to stay up until after 11:00 PM to talk on the phone with my Grandfather in California where for him it was 2:00 AM.  This was because ATT, “The Phone Company,” had a monopoly on phone service and the daytime rates were prohibitively expensive.  Also, the telecommunications technology in use was basically the same as it was forty years prior; ATT had controlled all telecommunications development through its subsidiary, Bell Labs.  A small company in the Midwest named Microwave Communications Inc. (MCI), which had sold two way radios to truckers, wanted to provide better and less expensive long distance service so they challenged ATT’s monopoly. (Saint 2001) This led to the breakup of ATT and today my wife calls her mother in Ft Worth TX, from San Jose CA several times a day and we just pay a flat rate of $24.00 a month using our internet phone connection.

      

      Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, MCI became WorldCom.  Today, if you were to ask the average person on the street, they probably wouldn’t identify WorldCom as the company that took the stand that allows them to call their friends and family at any time, inexpensively. They wouldn’t necessarily discuss how MCI’s challenge of ATT resulted in the technology that allows them to chat on their MySpace Page being available. They would likely be thinking about the accounting scandal that brought down MCI / WorldCom and how it’s CEO, Bernie Ebbers, is now in jail for twenty five years for fraud

          In the early part of the 20^th century, a young architect, when challenged, handled things quite differently.  This architect had lost his young daughter to illness.  The architect, like many a parent who had lost a child, had blamed himself because in an economic downturn he had lost his job and was forced to move his family into sub-standard housing without proper heating.  The architect had decided to kill himself.  With nothing left to lose, at the last minute, R. Buckminster Fuller chose instead to conduct an experiment to see how much of a difference one human being could make to humanity.  By the time he did pass away of natural causes in 1983, in his late 80s, Fuller has made several archeological, scientific and sociological breakthroughs such as The Geodesic Dome, “Bucky Balls”, The Dymaxian Map, The Dymaxian car, The Hunger Project, The World Game Institute along with  several others.  He was also the person who had coined the terms synergy and Spaceship Earth.  In 1980, Fuller had stated, “For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the 'more with less' technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option of becoming enduringly successful." (Fuller, 1980 www.worldtrans.org)

           Business can be a path to all humanity becoming highly successful. Business is essentially a form of communication.  I communicate to the clerk at Subway $5.00 and the clerk communicates back a foot long sub sandwich, there is an exchange of ideas at a certain level.   The more people who walk into Subway for this exchange, the more profits Subway makes.  They then open more stores, hire more people who go out and buy stuff at other places.  As markets expand and ethical company will expand.  As it expands, it brings more and more into the fold until it is all encompassing. 

          Thriving businesses also keep us at peace.  If there were a Subway in Baghdad and Baghdad gets bombed and 20,000 people are killed, that is a potential loss to Subway of 20,000 foot long sub sandwiches.  If each of those people would have just had one foot long sandwich a week that would be a loss to Subway of $5,000,000 a year, not to mention that the survivors would probably be a bit more afraid to go to the mall and thus  buy even less.  It is bad for business to have a war and kill off potential clients so expanding ethical businesses will also make war obsolete.  It is necessary however, in an ethical company is for someone to have a vision.  One example of the power of a vision is that of Professor Fredrick Terman and two of his students.

          In the 1930’s, The Santa Clara Valley in Northern California was world renowned for its fruit orchards.  It was called, The Valley of the Heart’s Delight, as a large variety of fruits grew there.  Stanford Professor Fredrick Terman had a different vision.  Terman was a professor in what was then known as Radio Phenomenon, now a part of electronics engineering.  Terman knew that for this field to grow into its potential, The Engineering Department of Stanford would need to surround itself with electronics businesses to have a symbiotic relationship.  He convinced two of his students, William Hewlett and David Packard to start a business in Palo Alto California, in Stanford University’s back yard.  Hewlett Packard was started in the garage of the house that Packard had rented.  Today, when you fly over the Santa Clara Valley, instead of seeing miles and miles of orchards you see miles and miles of office buildings filled with electronics companies and there is a sign in front of the old HP Garage on Addison Street in Palo Alto, California that reads, “Birthplace of the Silicon Valley.” (1996, Packard)

          David Packard of Hewlett Packard also had his own vision.  Packard wanted to change the way Management / Employee relationships worked.   In the day that HP had started most businesses were highly hierarchical in there structure.  While working as an intern at General Electric in their Quality Assurance Department, Packard had found that when he was out on the floor in dialog with the engineers, there were fewer defects in the end product.  “That was a very important lesson for me,” Packard wrote, “that personal communication was often necessary to back up written communication.” (Packard, 1995 p 27) Over the next several decades, Packard had developed this discovery into what he had called The HP Way. The HP Way is a very flat management structure of self managed work units. Hewett and Packard placed their trust on their employees.  During Packard’s tenure at HP, they only had one layoff in the 1950’s.  When he passed away in 1996, employees at HP held impromptu memorials for him in the lunch rooms. After Packard passed away the problems began at HP.  The management team put the HP Way on the shelf and concentrated on the bottom line was brought in to run the company.  They merged with another company over the objections of the Hewlett and Packard families causing thousands around the world, from both companies to get laid off.  When that action did not prove successful, another management team was brought in.  The chairperson and some board members were indicted for spying on other board members.    

          Hewlett’s and Packard’s live were about how a business can make a difference in the world just by the way they do business.   A business’s products, of course, can also make a difference.  When Bill Gates was a boy, he would run home from school every day to watch the TV Show, Star Trek.  He was fascinated that Captain Kirk had a computer on his desk and decided that it would be his life’s work to put a computer on the every desk in the world.  Several years later, when he saw that the Altair 8080 was on the market, he started Microsoft (Gates 1995) and now there is a computer on almost every desk most of which run some Microsoft Software and Gates is one of the top two wealthiest people in the world.

       

    Young Gates set his goal to put a computer on every desk.  He did not set the goal to be the richest person on earth.  That was just incidental and as a result of being generally successful in attaining his goal.  He wanted to do something that would improve the lives of others; he wanted to make a difference in the world and for that he was rewarded by having a profitable company.  The question to ask therefore is not what can I do to make money?  But rather, how can I make a difference in the world with my business or product?    Gates then took the money he earned and started using the money itself to make a difference.  Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates is using his profits to work on improving education in the United States and also ending Aids in Africa.  In 2005, Bill and Melinda Gates shared the Time Person of the Year with Bono from the band, U2    

          Fifteen years ago, CVS Pharmacy was a small chain of drugstores in New England.  During that time, its CEO Tom Ryan has “transformed the company . . . into a national health care colossus.” (Boyle 2009 pp 42 -49)  It is now one of the top twenty biggest companies in America.  Ryan did not build CVS by concentrating on profit but rather his goal, “to help transform America’s expensive and often ineffective health care system.” (Boyle 2009 pp 42-49) This is something beyond Ryan himself, this is what drives Ryan and while working on transforming the health care system he has incidentally built CVS in to the giant that it is today.

          Of course, having a greater good in mind for a business and wanting it to make a difference in the world is not a guarantee for success.  Today, in 2009 we are at the brink of one of the greatest financial meltdowns to have ever happened.  Several banks have closed or have been rescued by the federal government, who has committed close to a trillion dollars to save the banking industry.  One of the causes of this was that the banks were making loans to people who were not necessarily qualified.  It is easy for us to think that the banks did this because they are all run by lazy goniffs but some of these bankers actually wanted to make a difference by allowing the little guy to achieve the American Dream and own their own home.  They figured that with the price of Real Estate continuing to sky-rocket, the overloaded home owners would be able to refinance in a couple of years and even get some cash out of their homes.  After all, real estate prices couldn’t possibly ever go down because the population was going up so the laws of business and economics could just be ignored

           Yes, it is a good thing when businesses work on attaining their purpose and also work to make the world a better place but they have to remember that to achieve their goals they would need to follow the principles of business and economics just as a scientist or engineer must follow the laws of Physics and Chemistry.  If NASA had decided to ignore the Law of Gravity they would have never put someone on the moon.  If Grace Hopper would have ignored the laws of binary arithmetic and symbolic logic, she would have never invented the FORTRAN computer language.  By ignoring the laws of business and economics the banking industry has put itself into serious danger.    

          Indeed, while businesses are owned by their shareholders and thus are responsible for giving them a return on investment, businesses have a responsibility to not only turn a profit for their shareholders, but to also "turn a profit" for their communities and for humanity.   They do this by having a purpose and by staying focused on their purpose.  It is also important that a business follow all of the laws of society and nature.  Once a business leader becomes focused on profits and losses instead of its purpose, the door will become open to stupid, unethical behavior and failure.

For more info: www.tamianassociates.com

 

 

 

References

Boyle, M (2009, Feb 23)  CVS Dispensing Drugs and Health Reform. Business Week, 42-45

Gates, B ( 1995 )  The Road Ahead New York, Viking

Packard, D  (1995) The HP Way New York, Harper Collins

Saint, S (2001, September 2^nd) Telecoms Rise and Fall.  ATT’s Breakup Created an Opportunity

          for Telecommunications,  The Colorado Springs Gazette, Retrieved February 28, 2009

          from  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20010902/ai_n9991845

Shockley-Zalabak (2009) Fundamentals of Organizational Communication San Francisco

          Pearson

http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/bucky.html

Twentieth
Century leadership techniques will not work in the Twenty-first Century. In the
twentieth century a leader could be successful just by being a good technician
and knowing his or her product line.  He
or she could take care of any situation by promising a reward or threatening a
punishment. These rules served business since the days of Adam Smith in the
eighteenth century In the twenty first century, a new millennia brings us new
rules to apply.  There is a certain
technology of leadership, a leader must lead by context and a leader must
always inspire others.  These new rules
are collectively what is ...<< MORE >>

Creating a Vision

This is from .http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/cav.html.  It is a really great  

When you begin the process of strategic planning, visioning comes first. When visioning the change, ask yourself, "What is our preferred future?" and be sure to:

• Draw on the beliefs, mission, and environment of the organization.
• Describe what you want to see in the future.
• Be specific to each organization.
• Be positive and inspiring.
• Do not assume that the system will have the same framework as it does today.
• Be open to dramatic modifications to current organization, methodology, teaching techniques, facilities, etc.

Key Components for Your Vision

Incorporate Your Beliefs

Your vision must be encompassed by your beliefs.

• Your beliefs must meet your organizational goals as well as community goals.
• Your beliefs are a statement of your values.
• Your beliefs are a public/visible declaration of your expected outcomes.
• Your beliefs must be precise and practical.
• Your beliefs will guide the actions of all involved.
• Your beliefs reflect the knowledge, philosophy, and actions of all.
• Your beliefs are a key component of strategic planning.

Create a Mission Statement

Once you have clarified your beliefs, build on them to define your mission statement which is a statement of purpose and function.

• Your mission statement draws on your belief statements.
• Your mission statement must be future oriented and portray your organization as it will be, as if it already exists.
• Your mission statement must focus on one common purpose.
• Your mission statement must be specific to the organization, not generic.
• Your mission statement must be a short statement, not more than one or two sentences.

Here is an example mission statement: "By providing quality education, we empower individuals to become caring, competent, responsible citizens who value education as a lifelong process."

Benefits of Visioning

The process and outcomes of visioning may seem vague and superfluous. The long-term benefits are substantial, however. Visioning:

• Breaks you out of boundary thinking.
• Provides continuity and avoids the stutter effect of planning fits and starts.
• Identifies direction and purpose.
• Alerts stakeholders to needed change.
• Promotes interest and commitment.
• Promotes laser-like focus.
• Encourages openness to unique and creative solutions.
• Encourages and builds confidence.
• Builds loyalty through involvement (ownership).
• Results in efficiency and productivity.

Vision Killers

As you engage in the visioning process, be alert to the following vision killers:

• Tradition
• Fear of ridicule
• Stereotypes of people, conditions, roles and governing councils
• Complacency of some stakeholders
• Fatigued leaders
• Short-term thinking
• "Naysayers"

Exercise in Creating a Vision

Take the time to assimilate this information, use the following example to exercise your planning techniques:

Respond to the following questions:

• How has the job market changed?
• What have we done to prepare our students for success in this world?
• What do we as board members spend most of our time doing?
• How are our meetings structured?

For more information on how to formulate your vision statement, go to www.tamianassociates.com

 

While reading my morning paper, I encountered this add in the San Jose Mercury News:

http://www.uscitizensassociation.com/pdfs/USCA_Ad.pdf

Why doesn't this US Citizens Association tell us what it really is, a Republican political group.  Don't get me wrong, they are right,  the country is moving towords socialism, what they are not telling us though is first, the United States has never had a capitalist economy, at best it has been merchantilistic.  In a capitalist economy there has to be no bariars for entry into the market.  In the United States, you at least have to have a business license,  tax permits plus a bunch of other permits.  If you want to enter a business such as insurance you also have to pass an exam, do continuing education and get licenses to sell different things; not exactly free entry into the market.  What we have in the United States is essentially a partnership between government and business.  Eisenhower called this the Military / Industrial Complex, economists call it Merchantilism.  Merchantilism does not work, we fought the War of Independence over that.


On the question of who is more socialistic, the Democrats or the Republicans. . . George W. Bush was a socialist.  People who beleive in free markets don't believe in government bailing out business.  In a free market economy,  you must have consequences for taking actions which are incorrect.  By bailing out the banks and the car industry, these companies became immune to the consequeces.  The US Govt even got equity stake in these companies.  If that isn't socialism, I don't know what is!

America has embraced Lemon Socialism.

The federal government -- that is, you and I and every other taxpayer -- has taken ownership of giant home mortgagors Fannie and Freddie, which are by now basket cases. We've also put hundreds of millions into Wall Street banks, which are still flowing red ink and seem everyday to be in worse shape. We've bailed out the giant insurer AIG, which is failing. We've given GM and Chrysler the first installments of what are likely to turn into big bailouts. It's hard to find anyone who will place a big bet on the future of these two.

It gets worse. While Washington debates TARP II, the Federal Reserve Board continues to buy or guarantee or provide loans for a vast and growing pile of questionable financial and corporate assets, much of which are likely to be worth far less than the Fed has paid or guaranteed or accepted as collateral. We're talking big money here -- so far over $2.4 trillion. (The entire TARP -- parts I and II -- in combination with the proposed stimulus package come to just over $1.5 trillion.)

Taxpayers are on the hook for this Fed bailout money, too, of course. We have to pay the interest on the ever-growing debt used to make these payments or guarantees and loans. Yet while TARP II and the upcoming stimulus package are receiving a great deal of attention, this much larger public commitment by the Fed is not. That's partly because the media doesn't much of understand it, but also because the Fed is doing it in secret, using provisions of its charter never before utilized, and avoiding discussion before the full Board of Governors for fear such meetings would be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Put it all together and at this rate, the government -- that is, taxpayers -- will own much of the housing, auto, and financial sectors of the economy, those sectors that are failing fastest.

Consider too that the government already finances much of the aerospace industry, which is still doing reasonably well but depends on a foreign policy that itself has been a dismal failure. And a large portion of the pharmaceutical industry and health care sector (through the Medicare and Medicaid, the Medicare drug benefit, and support of basic research). These are in bad shape as well, and it seems likely the Obama administration will try to reorganize much of them.

What's left? Most of high-tech, entertainment, hospitality, retail, and commodities. So far, at least, we taxpayers are not propping them up. And when the economy turns up -- perhaps as soon as next year, most likely later -- these sectors have a good chance of rebounding.

But the others -- the ones the government is coming to own or manage -- are less likely to rebound as quickly, if ever. If anyone has a good argument for why the shareholders of these losers should not be cleaned out first, and their creditors and executives and directors second -- before taxpayers get stuck with the astonishingly-large bill -- I would like to hear it.

It's called Lemon Socialism. Taxpayers support the lemons. Capitalism is reserved for the winners.

Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. His personal blog is Robert Reich's Blog.
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