#10 issue, September 2012
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The cover story is dedicated to the young generation, seen from four points of view: Thinking Out of the Box 09 Young Identity
By Karen Myers
• We Are Young By Phillip Ayoub
• A Blurred Identity 11 Young Passions
By Chuck Underwood
• We Are Volunteers By Emily Anatole
• We Are Successful By Molly Meyer
• We Are Passionate 13 Young Perspectives By Cali Williams Yost
• We Need Disentanglement By Travis Robertson
• A Fiercely Loyal Team 15 Young Retribution
By Sean Lyons
• Funny Things
By Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin
• Forget Price Tags
By Mark McCrindle
• Rewards
Revolutionaries 16 By Dominic Packer
• Rebels With a Cause 17 By Emily Balcetis
• Daydreamers, Visionaries, Treasure Hunters…
By Lisa Quast
Order your WorkStyle T-Shirts and the book Talking.
Earning Respect at Work
By Rohit Bhargava
The Respect Paradox
Recognition
Organizational Success
By Jennifer C. Loftus
It’s All in the Family
Health Leg Problems
By Francesca Morelli Working With Sciatica
EditorialEnrich is 24, German, just graduated from University of Leipzig with a degree in Sports Science. Josephine just graduated in social sciences from the Cézanne University in the southeast of France; she is 23, blonde, gracious and full of energy. Luca has a clear cut project for his future: despite his degree in law – mostly attained in order to make his dad happy – he is going to follow his own artistic vein: playing music on his classical guitar and the piano. He is Italian, 30, and lives in Berlin, Germany. Three young people of our times, three different stories with a common scenario: are they really entitled to freely shape their future? Does our society give them the opportunity to choose what they feel fits best with their personalities? Or, rather, isn’t that true that they will probably follow the current flowing through canals carved out by the erosion of general thinking and habit of our time? The subject of young generations entering into the work force is not easy to handle, both from an economic and a social stand point, this is why we have chosen it as the cover story for our 10th issue; a tribute to the “young contributors” of our society. What are the opportunities, then, for young people? Enrich, Josephine and Luca are all probably statistically recorded in the category of economically “inactive people”: that is, according to the International Labor Organization definition, those people who are not part of the labor force because they are neither employed nor unemployed; they are not working and not looking for work. But if they looked for employment the scenario would inevitably be dark and the percentage of the NEET population (not in employment, education end training) is even more frightening. Our days have prepared us to overturn assumptions: higher education – we were taught – facilitate employment and yet paradox does exist (e.g. in Italy) where a new type of unemployment is recorded amongst young people classified as “overeducated.”
The issue is not only of an economic nature; youngsters suffer a general discomfort in trying to express their personalities and passions in the work environment. Our “Thinking Out of the Box” section handles these facets. Taking all this into consideration means to unlock the innovative energy that young persons inject in the job and, ultimately, to foster reciprocal respect between employer and employee: an underground revolution to better cope with the complexities of our times.
Rosario Imperiali d'Afflitto Editor in Chief rosario@theworkstylemagazine.com
around the world for Work Style #10
Atlanta (USA)
Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin is president and CEO of Tribe, an internal communications agency that works with global clients like UPS, Porsche, Target and Coca-Cola Beverages.
Bangkok (THAILAND)
Santi Campanella is the Director of Glasford International Thailand.
Bella Vista (AUSTRALIA)
Mark McCrindle is the Director of McCrindle Research is a renowned social researcher, demographer and commentator.
Belo Horizonte (BRAZIL)
Maria Reggiani is Founder and Partner Director at Glasford International Brazil.
Bethlehem (USA)
Dominic Packer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Lehigh University.
He received his B.A. from McGill University (2001), and his Ph.D. (2007) in Psychology from the University of Toronto.
Bridgetown (AUSTRALIA)
Kate Henderson is a pattern designer and creator of the blog Two Little Banshees.
Buenos Aires (ARGENTINA)
Alejandro Bagnato is Managing Partner en Glasford International Argentina.
Cambridge (USA)
Margaret Curnutte is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Program on Science, Technology & Society (STS) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her current research focuses on the governance of emerging biotechnologies, including direct-to-consumer genetic testing and the whole genome sequencing industry.
Chicago (USA)
Richard Buckles has more than 30 years of experience in applying innovative concepts in organizational change management. He was one of the architects of a global organization and culture change strategy for Amoco Corporation.
Molly Meyer is a Millennial, marketing professional, independent writer and book author. She recently co-authored a book, It’s My Company Too. Molly is also the creative director for nuphorIQ – a Chicago based marketing firm.
Elaine Zacharakis is an attorney who specializes in corporate and regulatory health matters as well as
information technology issues. She has her own law practice, Zacharakis Loumbas Law, LLC.
Dallas (USA)
Julie Jackson is a pattern designer and founder and owner of Subversive Cross Stitch.
Denver (USA)
Tasha Eurich is leadership and business expert and principal of The Eurich Group, a US-based global consulting firm specializing in helping organizations succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders and teams.
Fourways (SOUTH AFRICA)
Gail Burns Managing Director at Glasford International South Africa Guelph (CANADA)
Sean Lyons is Assistant Professor at University of Guelph. He Teaches courses in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management.
Hobart (AUSTRALIA)
Helen Stubbings is a celebrated stitcher, Helen Stubbings, has been teaching quilting and embroidery since completing a Certificate in Needlecraft in 1995. Her design business, Hugs’n’Kisses began in 2001. Her second business, Pattern Press began in 2008.
Houston (USA)
Daniel Cohen is the Head Copywriter at The Greensheet and serves as an independent writer and communications strategist on behalf of a variety of businesses in different industries. He is also a featured writer at Waxing Unlyrical.
Istanbul (TURKEY)
Didem Gurcuoglu Tekay is the Principal Partner of Management Centre Turkiye Kampala (UGANDA)
Arne Doornebal is a Dutch freelance journalist and photo-reporter currently living and working in Kampala, Uganda. He writes for a series of publications including ANP, Revu and Supporter. In the past he has collaborated with The Amsterdam Times.
Krumpendorf am Wörthersee (AUSTRIA)
Ellen Maurer-Stroh is a patterns designer owner of Maurer-Stroh Cross Stitch Design.
Lake Zurich (USA)
Edward Tamson provides survey methodology, consulting services and performance based solutions for a diversity of organizational sectors.
London (UK)
Alex di Martino is a producer, writer and Managing Partner at Lost Pictures, a London based film company.
Los Angeles (USA)
Jenny Hart was born in 1972 in Iowa City and raised in rural Illinois. She is best known for her artwork in hand embroidery and her design company
Sublime Stitching.
Madison (USA)
Cali Williams Yost is the CEO and founder of Work+LIfe Fit, Inc. Clients range from BDO Seidman, LLP and Quaker/Tropicana to the United Nations, Ernst & Young and the U.S. Navy.
Madrid (SPAIN)
Jesus Espinosa Lopez is the General Director at Glasford International Spain.
Melbourne (AUSTRALIA)
Holly McGuire is a pattern designer, founder of the blog Two Cheese Please.
Miamisburg (USA)
Chuck Underwood is the under and principal of generational consulting firm The Generational Imperative, Inc. He’s one of the four or five seminal scholars who actually created and developed the field of generational study.
Milan (ITALY)
Paolo Citterio is an architect and founder of DA-A Architects. He graduated in 1996 at Politecnico, Milan, under the tutoring of Professor Cino Zucchi.
Mumbai (INDIA)
Nivedita Nagpal started out in the print media, and is now working on web media. She’s the creative mind behind Wordsmithatwork as well as the Senior Content Provider.
New Delhi (INDIA)
Himanshu Bansal is the Managing Partner, Glasford International India.
New Orleans (USA)
Hiroyuki Iseki is Assistant Professor at the University of New Orleans. He has a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA.
Newport Beach (USA)
Travis Robertson is a peak performance coach, business strategist, professional speaker, trainer and the CEO of The Don't Settle Group.
Newark (USA)
Laura Johnson is a pattern designer, founder of the blog Ellie Inspired.
New York (USA)
Emily Anatole is an Associate Editor/Research Associate at Ypulse, a youth media, marketing, and market research firm focused on the Millennial generation.
Emily Balcetis is Assistant Professor at New York University and holds a Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from Cornell University. Curt Ellis, 30, is a Peabody-winning filmmaker, writer, and public speaker. Curt co-created and appeared in the Mosaic Films feature documentary King Corn.
Bruce Jennings is Director of Bioethics at the Center for Humans and Nature in its New York office, and he teaches at Yale University in the School of Public Health.
Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health (the department she chaired from 1988-2003) and Professor of Sociology at New York University. Paris (FRANCE)
Helene Peingnez is the Managing Partner of Glasford International France.
Tezlaru Razvan is an MBA participant at INSEAD, with over 8 years of experience in consulting and banking.
Phoenix (USA)
Carrie Bloomston is a pattern designer and founder of SUCH Designs, LLC.
Placerville (USA)
Dan Desmond is an Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension. He currently works in El Dorado County, set in the foothills of the Sierras and bordering the rapidly growing Sacramento metropolitan area.
Princeton (USA)
Aditya Patel is Research & Development Mechanical Engineer for Dynamic Air Quality Solutions in Princeton, New Jersey where he is responsible for new product design and project planning.
Rome (ITALY)
Cary Fowler is an agriculturalist and the executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Previously, Dr. Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
Karen Myers received her PhD in 2005 from Arizona State University. Much of her work focuses on examining how group processes influence member integration and performance proficiency. Other areas of inquiry include health communication and marketing.
Halley Bock is the CEO of Seattle-based Fierce, Inc., a global leadership development and training company that drives results for businesses by improving workplace communication.
Lisa Quast is a certified executive coach and mentor, successful global corporate executive and business consultant, award-winning nonfiction author (“Your Career, Your Way!”), and founder/president of Career Woman, Inc.
Phillip Ayoub recently completed a PhD in Information Sciences & Technology at the Pennsylvania State University, focusing on the intersection of innovation, design, and strategy He holds a B.S. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin and an M.S. in industrial & manufacturing engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. He has worked at Boeing and Intel.
Peter Conrad is a Swiss born in Milan, he has lived in Hong Kong, Monaco and now Tokyo. Conrad worked as a banker until last year, when he decided to make a change in life. Now he enjoys the Tokyo lifestyle.
Washington DC (USA)
Rohit Bhargava is the best-selling author of Likeonomics, a book about how to use likeability to build trust, and an expert at bringing more humanity back to business. As one of the most sought after marketing speakers and thinkers in the world, he runs Global Strategy at Ogilvy, and teaches communications at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
When Millennials began entering the workforce in the 2000s, employers noticed that this generation believes it is special. Raised in an era of structured activities and “helicopter” parents, Millennials’ identities were bolstered by assurances that they can do anything.
Workers hold identities tied to their life roles. The salience of these roles varies by personality, SES, life stage, and cohort membership. Individuals of a generational cohort are affected by the same historical events, societal perspectives, technological advances, and the economy. Cohort members share values that cause them to similarly prioritize particular roles. In addition to believing that they are special, Millennials expect immediate recognition and authority. They challenge senior members if they have something valuable to contribute. Initially, coworkers resented this unwillingness to pay their dues. However, expectations are met in organizations shifting to team-based structures. Teams allow Millennials to work side-by-side with senior workers. Their identities lead them to express their opinions and share in success. But, given inexperience and overprotective parents, Millennials may be unwilling to accept responsibility for failures. Millennials’ desire for success doesn’t mean they prioritize their work over other roles. Career success is less important for Millennials than for previous generations. Many tout a working to live, rather than a living to work attitude of their parents, which affects workers outside their cohort. Many employees now understand that leadership positions and high compensation do not ensure happiness. Combined with the economic downturn, Millennials know that power and wealth are fleeting; better to find happiness by balancing work, family and other roles. •
One expectation of Generation Y is the level of flexibility and balance, particular in comparison to the Baby Boomers. With technologies such as Facebook, we see a blurring of the traditional workplace boundaries. Where the physical office once set the line between work and home for baby boomers, Generation Y now has a home office and a home in the office. From work dominating life to work-life balance, the younger generation now sees the relationship as a work-life integration. Technology has played a major enabler in this transition and reformation of the workplace. From mobile phones to other computing devices, technology has freed many from the physical boundaries of the workplace. Technology has also changed in the way people communicate with one another. Growing up with technology from a very young age, Generation Y has learned to navigate the socio-technical. This includes everything from knowing how to manage a digital identity to managing relationships, and even to creating a new language (e.g. lol). A person’s identity and how such is managed is also strongly influenced by these different mediums. Customizing your workspace or customizing your online profile leaves new ways of identity management. In the next 5-10 years, we’ll begin to see how these new boundaries are established, the new identities of the younger generation, and a lot of companies will have to see and question some of their assumptions. However, it will be those companies who cannot recognize their own generational frames and who cannot integrate multiple frames who will unfortunately face the greatest struggles and conflicts.•
KAREN MYERSprimary areas of research involve organizational communication. She was the 2006 winner of the W. Charles Redding Award for the Outstanding Dissertation in Organizational Communication.
recently completed a PhD in Information Sciences & Technology at the Pennsylvania State University, focusing on the intersection of innovation, design, and strategy.
The under-40s want their work/ career to contribute to a better world, not merely provide a paycheck. Among their special passions are the environment, continuing the tech revolution, and ensuring equal opportunities for both genders. They are showing strong interest in the "helping professions", gravitating away from money-only professions to teaching, healthcare, social work, and similar jobs. Millennials came of age with a generation of idealistic parents and absorbed many of their parents' same save-the-world ideals. They also experienced the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Indonesia and Japan tsunamis, the earthquake in Haiti, and brutal tribal and political violence in Southwest Asia and Africa. These events burned into them core values of compassion, volunteerism, and an empowerment that convinces them they can make a big difference in life on earth. And with that empowerment comes engagement: the willingness to participate in their communities and nation. In a 1990's Hollywood movie entitled An American President, actor Michael Douglas delivered one of the more famous monologues in movie history when he said this about the United States, "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight." Millennials in America - and in other democratic nations - get that. Because of the times and teachings of their formative years, they're willing to wade into the arena where freedom and democracy are argued every hour of every day.•
Our generation has always had information easily accessible, enabling them to pursue their passions at any point. And since their ideas have always been welcomed, it’s no surprise they want to work for a company that lets them channel their passions. Seeing value is the biggest passion for this generation. They want to know they’re making a meaningful contribution and see tangible results. They’ll take what job they can get in this economy, but they seek to work for a company whose values are aligned with theirs so they can blend their personal interests with their professional goals. If they’re proud of their company, they’ll even promote it on their social media channels. Moreover, young employees are also passionate about workplaces that give them a voice. Millennials believe in themselves. They are empowered by the Internet, frequent encouragement, and have grown up with a sense of responsibility to make things happen. Their passions are developed by companies who emphasize that everyone’s input matters. If they’re not passionate about what they’re doing, they’ll get involved in other projects. They’re innovative and will turn their hobbies into a profession. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are among their biggest role models and entrepreneurialism is increasingly important to them. They believe success comes through hard work and passion. For them, it’s not necessarily about money but personal happiness and fulfillment.•
We are interested in self-discovery, in the most public of forms. This has been heavily developed by the internet and other technologies that make sharing almost too easy, but also growing up in the age of the “participation trophy” has molded us with the need to feel unique and publicly recognized. The young generation is interested in the pride that comes with doing something we love to do… and then sharing it with the world. Again, growing up with social media and the ease of online sharing has made our generation extremely interested in publicizing how proud we are to be a kindergarten teacher, an information technologist or a sports columnist. We are passionate about competition. In the work force, in our personal lives, it doesn’t matter—we are a competitive generation that, contrary to what others might say, doesn’t feel entitled to everything without working for it. We like to win, whether that be winning a contract, winning a fellowship or winning an online poker game, and our desire to win has elevated the competition for attention, opportunity and success in everything we do professionally and personally. We are passionate about the here and now as well as change. Yes, satisfying our immediate needs is important to us, maybe even more so than anticipating where we see ourselves in twenty years. We are experts at adapting to change, and in many cases, are the leading cause of it in the first place. This makes our generation early adopters to nearly everything.•
founded The Generational Imperative, Inc. He’s one of the seminal scholars who actually created and developed the field of generational study.
EMILY ANATOLE is an Associate Editor/Research Associate at Ypulse, a youth media, marketing, and market research firm focused on the Millennial generation.
is a Millennial, marketing professional and recently co-authored a book, It’s My Company Too. Molly is also the creative director for nuphorIQ – a Chicago-based marketing firm.
The career goals of young people are often perceived as a little schizophrenic. They want job security but also a great deal of work flexibility at the same time. On the surface those two things may seem to contradict each other. When they say they want “balance” or work flexibility, older employees and employers tend to hear “work less,” when usually what Millennials are saying is “I want to work differently” not less. But unfortunately, that translates into the misperception the younger generation doesn’t want to work hard and the conversation shuts down. Millennials don’t understand why they have to be in an office space every day at the same time to do their job. This creative, flexible approach to the way work is done can be one of the great strengths of the younger generation. Yes, the often asked “why” when given an assignment. Again “why” is perceived to mean “I don’t want to do the work.” But what they’re usually saying is “tell me why because I don’t understand the value of this task and what I’m supposed to do.” Communication styles need to adapt. Employers should switch from the authoritative, command-and-control model and make Millennials part of the conversational decision-making as much as possible. Recognize that Gen Ys were brought up in a more peer to-peer environment, where their parents asked for and considered their opinions. The careers of Millennials will be deeply focused on creativity and flexibility. After all, Gen Ys represent change, and people are always slightly frightened of anything new and untested. What’s necessary for the future success of youths and organizations is to focus on developing new ways of communicating more efficiently so that we can learn from each other.•
Over 70% of Millennials will leave their first job within the first two years--the costs of which are staggering. Understanding what motivates this generation of workers means incredible opportunities for employers to attract talent from those that don't while retaining the talent they've invested in.
To Millennials, a career doesn't define who they are; it expresses it. Consequently, they place heavy emphasis on work-life balance. Employers can capitalize on this desire by demonstrating concern for what happens both during work hours and after employees leave for the day. The majority of an employee's life occurs outside the walls of an organization.
A new style of management recognizes that addressing the problem of turnover is more than simply rewarding employees financially. Millennials desire new challenges, an opportunity to grow in their skills, responsibility, autonomy and, most importantly, the ability to live fully outside the walls of their careers. They deeply value their relationships with families and friends and believe a career should not impede those relationships but promote them. Employers who encourage those values through programs such as workplace flexibility, results-based work environments, summer camps for their kids, or social activities will enrich the lives of their employees at work and at home. Consequently, they will find themselves not just in the position of having more qualified applicants than they can accept, but in the unique position of having a fiercely loyal team in place.•
is
When it comes to remuneration for people’s work, money is a funny thing. It has different meanings to different people: some view it as freedom, some as the means to a lifestyle, some as security, some as status, some as recognition. In essence, money can fulfill any of the needs that we address through working. That’s why it’s impossible to put a dollar amount on motivating young people. The wage or salary that is offered would have to meet all of these various needs to be satisfying for everyone. Of course, everybody needs sufficient earnings to pay for the necessities of life. Beyond this, however, today’s young people are more likely than previous generations of youths to put an emphasis on the status and lifestyle aspects of money, which means that they will be seeking wages that seem exorbitant to some employers and which are unlikely to be attained in today’s economy. For young people to avoid the dissatisfaction and anxiety that come with unmet pay expectations, they are going to have to assess what it is that they’re really looking for from their working lives – their true work values – and how they can achieve them without high salaries.•
Money and titles are not enough for Gen Y. They want much, much more than that. Beyond compensation and benefits, attracting and retaining Gen Y employees requires work-life balance, leadership opportunities and meaningful work.
Gen Y doesn’t have such a strong attachment to that division of work and personal time. A weekend email from the boss or a client text after-hours is not such a big deal – as long as they also have the flexibility to let their personal lives occasionally intrude on their workday.
Leadership for Gen Y isn’t about being the boss. They define leadership as being able to move a team towards a collective goal. As a group, they tend to be collaborative and very communicative. They are accustomed to using technology in their day-today lives and will naturally expect to have those same communication tools at work.
Meaningful work means means challenging responsibilities and not just menial tasks. Having grown up on the Internet and social media, these young people consider themselves global citizens – and they want to know their companies are making the world a better place.•
Generation Y members don’t seek a job as much as they seek an opportunity. The results of the different studies concur the size of the employer and or the recognition of the employer brand did not define an employer of choice but rather the job opportunity and challenge, varied role and career pathway, workplace culture, lifestyle benefits, management style, and work-life balance. The increase in workplace ping pong tables, lunchrooms equipped with coffee machines and sandwich makers, and work meetings held in the local cafe highlight the recognition of staff wellbeing, team engagement and activity-based working in achieving better retention and commitment. The favor is likely to be returned as well – with the advent of technology Generation Y is likely to be found checking their work emails frequently out of hours, as well as working on the weekends as well. It is self evident that every business, team and brand is just one generation away from extinction. Only by recruiting and engaging with the next generation of employees will we maintain an innovative outlook, a relevant workplace culture and a future proof organization. Oh, and it will probably be a dynamic and fun place to work too. •
is Assistant Professor at University of Guelph. He teaches courses in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management.
is president and CEO of the communication agency Tribe. She is the author of several books, including “Run Your Business Like A Girl.”
MCCRINDLEis the Director of McCrindle Research is a renowned social researcher, demographer and commentator.
On March 14, 2012, Greg Smith resigned as an executive director at Goldman Sachs in the most public way possible - on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. Smith decried what he saw as “toxic and destructive” changes in the culture at the investment bank. His resignation set off a firestorm.
It is convenient for people who are resistant to change and concerned for the reputation of their group to assume that people who challenge the status quo are self-interested malcontents. Why else would dissenters cause such disruption, threaten the image of the group and, in the case of Greg Smith and Goldman Sachs, trigger a one-day loss of $2.15 billion in market value? My colleagues and I have addressed this question in recent research. We found it implausible that dissent could be entirely explained by
By EMILY BALCETIS
Daydreamers transform markets by connecting the dots in unusual ways. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon by uniting disparate ventures. He connected Wall Street computer science, mail order catalogs, and a visit to the American Booksellers Convention to create the leading online marketplace. The success of Amazon.com brought Bezos a net worth of $18.4 billion and the title of Forbes’ 26th wealthiest person worldwide.
Daydreamers find inventive connections by allowing their minds to wander, research suggests. Social psychologists Benjamin Baird and Jonathon Schooler asked people to think of uses for common objects. After first attempts, some people were encouraged to let their minds wander and others simply rested. Then, they tried again. Participants who mind-wandered performed an average of 41% better than they did the first time. The other group did not improve at all. Daydreamers who permit their minds to take mental walks unleash their creative prowess.
Visionaries see the world differently than the rest of us. Take entrepreneur and artist Dale Chihuly, considered wildly successful with over $29 mil-
lion in sales a year. Chihuly found his sculptural genius only after losing the ability to hold a glass blowing pipe in a bodysurfing accident and losing an eye in a car accident. To redesign his approach to art, Chihuly explained that he took a step back and saw his work from a different perspective.
Visionaries see the world in unique ways because they are tuned in to their emotions and experiences. My own research, conducted with colleagues David Dunning and Shana Cole, suggests that personal desires shape perception. For instance, wants lead people to see a drawing in front of them as a horse when other people see it as a seal. Also, desires lead people to see more of the world as literally within reach. Visionaries embrace their ever-changing mental landscape and see the physical world differently. Treasure hunters take risks to find the silver lining. Robert Taylor wanted to corner the market on soap dispensed
selfishness. Most dissent is punished. In companies, dissenters risk demotion or firing. In communities, they risk shaming and shunning. And in many places around the world, they risk violence and death. It is much easier, given these costs, to keep one’s mouth shut. Why, then, would anyone dissent? We suspected that people usually dissent for a cause larger than themselves. They are often concerned about their group, and hope that they can change the group for the better by dissenting. We ran experiments in which we investigated what
via pumps, but soap was already patented. His solution? Taylor spent $12 million, more than the total net worth of his company, and bought every pump in America—100 million of them—putting the other soap companies’ pursuits on hold. The risky strategy worked, and Taylor sold the enterprise about 10 years later for $376.2 million.
Treasure hunters see risks as opportunities for innovation and capitalize on mistakes. Researchers Elliroma Gardiner and Chris Jackson studied the psychological profiles of pioneering risk-takers in the workplace. These types of treasure hunters were extroverted, with the social skills needed to promote new ideas. They were open to new experience and willing to go against the status quo. And they were less agreeable and able to handle others’ resentment. Treasure hunters persevere through failure and turn misfortune into fortunes. Today’s revolutionaries in the marketplace are the daydreamers, the visionaries, and the treasure hunters. Their innovation comes from thinking outside the box, seeing the world through a different lens, and finding the silver lining.•
types of people were willing to express dissenting points of view. We found that the people who expressed the most dissent were the people who cared the most about their group – in particular, those who felt that their identity was defined by belonging to it. These people did not gripe about personal problems. In fact, they were only likely to dissent about problems that they thought harmed the group as a whole. These people were apparently willing to sacrifice self-interest for what they believed was the good of the collective.
Innovators have always had great expertise and motivation. But today’s leaders transform the marketplace through unconventional approaches.
Earning respect from employees can happen from charisma alone, but for most, hard work is necessary.
It’s a two-way street, though, with employees trying to earn respect from employers to advance their careers.
Howard Behar, retired president of Starbucks, helped establish the Starbucks culture, which stresses the importance of people over profits. Earning the respect of employees turned out to be a by-product of the culture they created, not the initial goal. “We had our guiding principles and guiding statements and nothing in them said anything about coffee. It was all about the way we wanted to live our lives as a company. And as long as we could stay in sync with those, it helped create trust and respect within the company.”
Building a company culture of respect requires speaking and acting in ways that demonstrate management’s commitment. Noted Behar, “we approached creating the Starbucks culture in exactly the same way you approach building a healthy family relationship. We knew trust and respect were built by how you act, so we stressed three key aspects:
1. We’re all in this together
2. We want to have open conversations, and 3. Respond – speak up immediately.”
Earning the respect of employees is also about managers modeling the be-
havior they want to see. According to Sunny Kobe Cook, founder of Sleep Country USA, a large mattress retailer in the United States, “there should never be a task seen as ‘beneath you.’ Over the years I’ve done everything from cleaning the bathrooms to going out on mattress deliveries with various crews. If they were working, I was working!”
EMPLOYEES EARNING RESPECT
Earning respect isn’t just for employers. Evan Harris, a client service manager in his second year of work after earning a bachelor’s degree, stated, “I have a lot of friends who are still having difficulty finding work so I’m doing everything I can to earn the respect of my employer, keep my job, and obtain promotions. I look for ways to improve our processes, do things without being asked, and volunteer to help out even when I’m busy.”
Employers who take the time and make the effort to build trust and earn respect from employees reap many benefits. “A key benefit is commitment to the company and their jobs. Loyalty is another benefit [of respect],” said Cook. “People want to be part of something and this makes them feel like they belong. It be-
comes more than a job and reduces turnover.”
Earning respect from employers can also lead to many benefits for employees. “When I’ve earned the trust and respect of my employer I’ve found I have more fun and job satisfaction, more freedom in my role, and commitment of management to fight for my promotions,” stated van der Valk. Added Hogan, “Earning respect from my employer has given me greater flexibility to innovate, the freedom to be creative, and I can get more accomplished because I’m not asking for permission all the time.”
Earning respect at work is especially important due to the on-going global economic difficulties and high unemployment rates. Employers need productive, creative, and problem-solving employees with relationships built on trust and mutual respect. Additionally, employees need to earn respect from employers to differentiate themselves in the workplace, obtain promotions, as well as find and keep jobs. Earning respect in the workplace helps the bottom line of both groups.•
The only way to gain respect in the office is to create strong 2-way communication as Jason Arcemont, CEO of BrightBox Brand Marketing explains, “give people undivided attention. When you have worked with somebody and know what they say has value, there’s no reason to tune them out. People can tell whether or not you are giving them your focus.”
According to Venkat Maddikayala, CEO of V3Main Technologies, the IT
industry also demands a two-way route to respect, “during my first job at Fujitsu, we had a great team and diverse group of people speaking different languages. I felt management was informative and flexible,” he says. “We were able to meet deadlines and produce great results.” Gavin Skal, audio industry and staffing specialist, says “that’s when working there becomes intolerable.” “I once had a manager who had me work on his boat instead of setting up a large recording session for a client who was coming in the next day. I lost respect for him.”
If there is one hard and fast rule we all have likely heard at some point in our careers, it is that respect is not given, it is earned. We talk about respect as the holy grail of the business world. And if you don’t have it… you can learn it.
The real problem with all of this comes in the one fundamental assumption that we all make – that respect is earned through professional ability. If you just DO something intelligent, profitable, or otherwise professionally positive – then the people around you will start to respect you. The problem is that the world doesn’t usually turn out to work this way.
We have never respected people for their true ability. If we did, the smartest person in the room would always be the most respected as well. The most intelligent person would always win the election. The most skilled person would always get the job. But the fact is they often don’t. This is the Respect Paradox – and it means that earning true respect takes more than just being smart, having great ability or even delivering good results.
Scott DiGiammarino took over as the regional manager of a low performing office of American Express financial advisors. When he started, his region had been ranked 173rd out of 176 branches across the country. DiGiammarino moved quickly, firing more than half of his initial staff due to their low performance or negative attitudes. For the rest he worked to start to create a culture of making what he called “principle based decisions.” His biggest challenge in that moment was earning the respect of the team he had inherited which was still around.
One year later his North Atlantic region had gone from 173rd to number one. The rest of the financial advisor community was stunned. It was the biggest single year turnaround any region
had ever experienced, but DiGiammarino wasn’t finished. For 13 out of the next 15 years, he kept his region in that number one slot. One of his secrets was that every morning he would create an inspirational message to send out to his staff along with a video clip from a Hollywood film. Movies were his method to bring his lessons and philosophy to life and engage his staff. As he notes, “my team gave me best efforts professionally because they knew I cared about them personally.” Scott managed to command respect because he got to know his staff as real people and make a human connection. They loved him, and wanted to work harder and deliver better results because he inspired them.
The challenge of earning respect isn’t something you can earn just by being smart or doing good work. Of course, your intelligence and ability matter, but they won’t automatically lead to being respected. Instead, commanding true respect at any age requires the ability to connect with people on a personal
level and make them believe in your expertise and the value you can share. The bottom line is, respect is far easier to earn when people already like you.•
Alexander Prischepov is a photographer living and working in Moscow, Russia. He considers photography to be art, because each picture is a story, and it is selfsufficient: it has its own emotion and mood. He does fashion, portraiture and architecture photography.
01 Tangoing, the same harmony needed for respect
By JENNIFER C. LOFTUS
Effective leaders recognize that employees are the true strategic advantage. Machines can be replicated, processes duplicated. Each person, however, brings unique skills, experiences, & insights to his work that can be harnessed for organizational success.
Employers spend great amounts of financial resources to keep their employees happy. Base pay, benefits, perks, and training all contribute to an employee’s support of his or her employer and its vision. Wise leaders know that pay and benefits are insufficient for long-term success, however. While many employees spend a majority of their waking time at work, powerful influences are found in the off-duty hours. When an employee is home, family is front and center. While that definition of family may vary, those individuals’ views of the workplace can strongly affect an employee’s workplace engagement and motivation.
Consider Rusk Renovations, a mid-size high-end renovation firm headquartered in New York City. Rusk is one of the 50 Best Contractors in the US as named by Remodeling Magazine, & a 2012 Best Company to Work for in New York State. Rusk’s leadership team strategically includes employees’ families in a number of workplace matters. With the foresight to involve families, Rusk enjoys an employee turnover rate of 17.1%, considerably lower than industry averages above 70%. Through investing in employees up front, the firm saves the hard and soft costs associated with turnover. How specifically does Rusk involve families? According to Principal Mary Kocy, Rusk “sponsors semi-annual gatherings for families, including a Holiday party with Santa drop-off gifts & a summer picnic with Field Day games.” Such gatherings are enjoyable and well attended. The firm offers a variety of family friendly benefits, including health insurance, 401(k) retirement plan with employer match,
time off for birth or adoption of a child, & bereavement leave as needed. Rusk also garners additional family support through providing personal time off, including “time to attend parent / teacher conferences, graduations, & school day events where parents are invited.” Rusk leadership sees that many of their staff have school age children, & being able to participate in important events is cru-
cial for these employees. Furthermore, Rusk invites spouses to attend the firm’s annual benefits meeting & learn about the value Rusk provides its employees and their families. Interestingly, Mary notes that more often than not, “spouses don’t attend” the meetings. It is the genuine invitation, however, that speaks volumes of management & how they perceive their employees & the importance of family.
Future success requires constant evaluation and retooling of the present. As such, a pay & benefits package must be regularly fine-tuned to meet changing staff needs. For example, in 2013 Rusk plans to “implement our scholarship program for the children of field employees.” This is another example of Rusk’s leaders identifying employee needs, & recognizing that happy families lead to happy employees, which lead to firm success. Although employees are on an organization’s payroll, more than management influences the employment decision. To be effective in a changing social environment existing within a challenging economy, involving an employee’s family in the workplace generates success for all.•
• Include employees’ families
• Summer picnic
• Family friendly benefits
• Health insurance
• Retirement plans
• Time off for births or adoptions
• Personal time off
"Happy families lead to happy employees, which lead to the firm's success."
The lifetime incidence of sciatica is estimated to be between 13% and 40%. But the majority of cases resolve spontaneously with simple analgesia and stretching muscles exercises.
Working with sciatica is a living nightmare for anyone who needs to push itself to function in the workplace, while enduring the misery of chronic sciatic nerve pain that cause a debilitating set of symptoms affecting every aspects of life. Sharp, shooting pains, burning aches, and sometimes numbness, can make it difficult to sit comfortably or move around.
“The sciatic nerve is one of the largest nerves in the body and extends from the spine to the feet” says Jonathan Newman Grauer, Associate Professor of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, Yale School of Medicine. “Its contributing nerves can often be irritated as they leave the spine and cause pain anywhere along its length— from the back, to the leg, and all of the way down to the foot,” he adds. This irritation is often referred to as sciatica. Regularly, sciatica can be a temporary condition as a result of disc herniation from an accident or injury that may ease itself with time. Prolonged sitting or heavy activities may exacerbate symptoms when they are present. “For the majority, sciatica responds well to self-care measures–states Dr Grauer. The main treatments for this condition are non-invasive.” Local treatments such as heat, massage, and others can feel good at the time. Stretching and exercises with core training can help optimize the body’s response to such conditions. “Even in case of acute sciatica,” declares the specialist. “It is important to remain as physically active as possible. It may seem counterintuitive to exercise when you are in pain, but regular exercise is one of the best ways to combat chronic discomfort. Sustained, regular exercise prompts the body to release endorphins, the body’s natural painkill-
ers.” In the rare cases where non-invasive treatment are not successful in addressing sciatica, spinal or injection or surgery may be considered and are generally very successful for such symptoms. The things to watch for which warrant immediate attention include loss of neurological function. In the absence of such findings, it generally comes down to a prospect of “waiting it out” while doing all that can be done to optimize things during its course.
It is not always possible to prevent sciatica and the condition may recur, but following some suggestions can play a key role in protecting the back. First of all, especially at work, maintain a proper posture when sit choosing a seat with good lower back support, arm rest and a swivel base. Also consider placing a pillow or rolled towel in the small of the back to maintain its normal curve and keep the knees and hips level. When working at a
computer, adjust the chair so that the feet are flat on the floor and the arms rest on the desk or the chair’s arms, with the elbows bent at right angle. It is mandatory to take frequent breaks, even if it’s just to walk around the office. “Another important thing is to use good body mechanics,” says Dr. Grauer. “I mean being conscious of how to stand or how to lift heavy objects. If you stand for long periods, rest one foot on a stool or small box from time to time and while you stand, hold reading material at eye level instead of bending forward. And last but not least look forward to find a lifting partner if the object is heavy or awkward or if you are fatigued.”•
• The main treatments for this condition are non-invasive.
• It is important to remain as physically active as possible.
• Maintain a proper posture when sit.
• It is mandatory to take frequent breaks during the work day
Effective training can often help employees understand and accept change rather than to reject it and become dissatisfied with their work. We also know that certain industries are better at training employees effectively than others. According to TNS Employee Insights’ recent global survey, only 52-54% of all manufacturing employees were satisfied with the training they had received compared to 68% of healthcare employees. Manufacturing employees also reported some of the lowest satisfaction levels across all industries with only 62% reporting favorably. This tells us that inadequate training can deeply impact employee’s satisfaction with their employers and should therefore be taken seriously even when the economic climate is not ideal.
The most important thing to note about training is that it must be thoroughly researched and planned. Throwing a cookie-cutter training program at a problem in order to fix it as soon as possible is unlikely to produce the desired results. This is not to say, however, that pre-designed training is ineffective. It is simply to point out that
one must conduct a complete organizational needs assessment before selecting a training method for employees. For example, we know from previous research that showing a video on sensitivity of diversity to fix an intolerance problem will not work. Not only will it not work, it actually tends to make the problem worse. The researchers behind this counterintuitive effect, Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota, made a surprising statement regarding their data from 829 companies that diversity training had “no positive effects on the average workplace.” From this, we can see that an assessment of an organization’s needs prior to implementing a training program would allow one to first fully understand the root of the problem, to find out what methods work for the real problem, and to ultimately avoid wasting time and money on training that could actually make the problem worse.
The fact is that there are so many useful training methods available to companies that it would be impossible to
describe them all. This is where the careful planning and research should come into play for organization leaders. The good news is that there are effective training programs that exist; the bad news is that one must find them or design them which can prove to be costly. While there is a multitude of various options for training one’s employees, there are a few common themes for trends in training for today’s workforce, specifically for organizations that are coping with unplanned changes due to economic difficulty. These include e-training, rapid instructional design (RID), and embedded learning.
E-TRAINING: NEW GROUND E-training is already an extremely popular method that is only going to continue to become more prevalent as technology improves and the cost of online trainings decrease. Another type of training that would be of particular interest for organizations coping with the economic downturn is known as rapid instructional design. RID is a method that allows a company to skip certain steps that would normally appear in a full needs assessment in order to move on to implement the training and get
Throughout his career, Edward Tamson, senior consultant for TNS Employee Insights, has worked as a Training Director for both very large and medium sized organizations. Tamson shares his expertise on encouraging and developing training programs in this time of economic crisis.
What are the quantifiable benefits of a training program?
TNS Employee Insights also conducted a study in 2011 in which they gathered data from more than 17,000 employees in 21 countries
Companies’ leaders are often forced to make tough decisions in order to benefit the group as a whole. One such decision includes training options. While it would be easy to let training programs fall by the wayside, it is now even more important to focus on training employees effectively than ever.
Times Are Tough: That Doesn’t Mean Proper Training Should Be
results faster. An example of this would be if a manager used existing course materials (perhaps e-training) and adapted them to fit the situation at hand by including relevant examples, anecdotes, and exercises. This method is a great alternative to a traditional training development process because it allows one to customize the training to better fit the organization while still cutting down the time it may normally take to design a whole new training program.
A third option is embedded learning. This kind of training occurs only as needed and it is literally integrated with the work itself. Embedded learning is an option that eliminates hours upon hours of isolated training as well as any extraneous material that may not be es-
pecially relevant to the worker at that time. Hard skills are the easiest focus with embedded learning as soft skills are often too subjective and immeasurable to be targeted in this approach. Regardless of what method is utilized within an organization, several critical steps must be taken after the implementation to ensure that the training is effective. Some of these steps include assessing the training’s effectiveness through speaking with employees as well as collecting data and by making a point to follow up on the information provided in training to reinforce behaviors and keep the information fresh in the minds of those who receive it. Reinforcing training information is especially important for maintaining any improvements in soft skills as it tends to involve breaking old habits to form
new ones. If consistent reinforcement is not applied, any changes that occurred through training will revert back and the time and money invested will be wasted. Even though this extra step after the fact may take more valuable time, it’s the step that makes all the difference for the long term benefit of the organization. It is with these three major steps, planning, implementing, and maintaining, that an organization will see immense returns on investment even in a time of economic crisis.•
• It must be training thoroughly researched and planned
• E-training
• Rapid instructional design (RID)
• Embedded learning
"Inadequate training can deeply impact employees' satisfaction."
worldwide. The participants were asked to rate their current as well as their former companies. An analysis of high performing organizations found that when a company takes efforts to measure and increase engagement it is recommended 74 percent of the time as a good place to work by its employees. But what truly matters is the quality and variety of the program, which ranges from new hire training or teaching a new concept or platform to specific workgroups, to introducing new technology and systems.
What are the key questions to ask?
Direction: What key business goals need to be addressed?
Alignment: How are we tied to key emerging business issues?
Policy: What criteria and guidelines are used to make decisions?
Operations: What systems and structures are needed?
Continuity: How do we ensure relevancy and evolution?
In the world of global news, fast-moving markets and instant decision making, communications are as vital to a modern organization as typewriter ribbons once were to an office secretarial pool, both internally and externally.
Shan Lancaster is the director of a company in Brighton, UK, specializing in marketing photographic images to a clientele consisting of newspapers, TV broadcasters, PR companies, marketing and media groups. She specializes in the administration of the business which involves keeping track of tens of thousands of images at any one time - and knows the value of what she calls the 'Three C's' - communication, communication, communication.
“
Of course as the admin manager of a player in the large and fast-moving world of stock photography, I am very aware that communication is key to our company's survival,” she said. “Nobody knows we are there unless we can communicate with potential clients successfully and we can't meet clients' needs unless we can communicate effectively with photographers and make them aware of the rapidly-changing demands of the market.”
A good manager is someone who can handle the indexing and technical side of the business, keep the diaries straight, track the finances rigorously and keep up to date with copyright breeches and new trends. In a large business that is enough to justify a full time job and let someone else cope with the communication side of things.
“
But in a small company such as ours, unless that person can also respond quickly and with empathy to email and phone requests and brief photographers clearly and concisely, then they are not pulling their weight. They would not be a good manager for us.”
Time matters very much in our business. We rely on responding to trends and being ahead of the curve. So communication is vital but good communicators
who are poor time-managers and fail to follow up on leads or to schedule briefings are not going to be good managers either.
“I think there will always be a place for people with exceptional organizational/ financial skills who are not good communicators and good communicators will always be useful in business even if they are not the most efficient managers. It is possible to train people to communicate better - that is one of the uses of the good communicators. They are often very good at motivating others and helping them explore ways of improving their responses. Training communicators to be better managers is much harder in my experience.
"In the future - there will be less and less tolerance of long-winded old-fashioned business-speak. This will make it tougher for bad managers to hide behind a smokescreen of blustering business jargon. They will have to think on their feet and send messages and responses briefly and quickly in a variety of media. Good communication technology may actually mean better real communication in business.”
Neil McLeod Senior Consultant at PHA Media LTD, a London-based Public Relations company which advises clients including major companies, business leaders and entrepreneurs, sporting stars, celebrities and leading brands. It's owner Phil Hall is a former national newspaper editor who regularly appears on TV. Neil, a former journalist himself, said "communication isn’t vital – it is absolutely essential, a must, a given. Bad communicators can breed problems whilst good ones can inspire, build
By ALLAN HALLThere is a story from the trenches of World War One which, while almost certainly apocryphal, neatly sums up the catastrophe that awaits those whose lines of communication become garbled at times of crisis.
"Send reinforcements, we are going to advance," was the message relayed down a line of shell-battered telegraphic wires. When it reached the headquarters staff it had morphed into: "send three and four pence, we are going to a dance."
Two quite different messages with the potential for disaster.
If you're not keeping staff informed about company developments, rumors can spread, and morale and productivity can decline.
bridges and blur the lines of separation in organizations.
"The most memorable politicians and business leaders aren’t necessarily always the best but often manage hold a place in our memory banks and the history books because of their communication skills.
"And the world is a smaller place than it ever was – and is shrinking even as you read this. "Twitter and Facebook provide voices to anyone who can get online, while blogging and other forms of online media means pretty much anyone can have a voice at any time.
"The influence of social media is growing all the time. It has collaborated with uprisings, been blamed for riots and landed many a football star into hot water. How you use this Social Media voice is essential, and one key element to modern "PR is how clients engage with custom-
By Nathan Jones, photographer. "I spend most of my time on personal work, updating my daily blog with photos from whatever interesting things I've run across - mostly the local art scene in Savannah." [W nathanjonesphoto.com/bounce]
1 Communication Stereotypes. The first two photos are a collaboration with Artist Michael Boyle. They are documents of a performance on Tybee Island of businessmen -- complete with cellphones and briefcases -- emerging from the ocean for meetings and negotiations. Fortunes lost, castles crumbled, deals struck, rolodexes filled with sand.
2 Communication Network. It is a set of images is an environmental installation just up the interstate from Savannah by the Collective Collaborators. [W experiencecollective.com/The-Fog]
A 46,000 square-foot area of forest has been temporarily decorated with twine and fabric made from reclaimed cotton.
ers, would-be customers, employees and other stakeholders on a day to day basis. This could be a company CEO outlining plans for the company’s future, a football club chairman keeping loyal fans informed on a daily basis or a celebrity letting his Twitter followers know what he is up to. The thing is, nearly everyone is doing it these days and so getting your message out there properly, in a form that captures interest and drives home messages, is vitally important.
"The PR company of which I am part, PHA Media, coaches and trains clients in communication as well as being communication experts ourselves. It is true – some people are better ‘natural’ communicators than others. But we are firm believers that you can always train to be a better communicator, a better orator or better Tweeter, Facebooker or blogger.
"We pride ourselves on an unrivalled media contacts book – something that has been built up by that old fashioned form of communication: talking to people."
Internally in a company, communications are no less important. Robert Hosking is executive director of OfficeTeam, a leading staffing service specializing in the temporary placement of highly skilled administrative and office support professionals. OfficeTeam has more than 325 locations worldwide and offers online job search services. He said, "during times of economic and business change, employee communication becomes particularly critical. If you're not keeping staff informed about company developments, rumors can spread, and morale and productivity can decline. A recent survey by OfficeTeam found that managers feel they are on the right track—with 69 percent of those polled noting that messages to employees have become more frequent within the past year and 56 percent suggesting communication is of higher quality.
"The survey findings sound promising— until you consider the employees' perspective. Only 37 percent of workers surveyed agree that there has been a boost in the rate of corporate updates and only 38 percent believe communication efforts have been enhanced. Clearly, managers have room for improvement when it comes to employee communication. Here are some key steps to ensuring your staff outreach is effective.
"While you may not be able to disclose all of the details about business decisions or activities, you should keep your team in the loop. For instance, if your company is opening a new office nearby, explain the reasoning for the expansion and what it might mean for current employees. Will your location remain open, or will staff have to work from the new facility? Even situations that are positive may not seem that way to staff if they lack key information.
"Also recognize that there is such a thing as over-communicating. If you provide too many of the finer details, people may feel overwhelmed and overlook critical messages. When in doubt, ask yourself what facts are most pertinent to your employees and their daily job requirements. If staff members need to be aware of a large amount of information, consider prioritizing the specifics and conveying the messages over time.
"Frequent and effective communication can help employees feel more connected to your company and its goals. This can be a real asset as the economy improves and retention becomes a greater concern. People who believe their employers treat them with respect by keeping them inform-ed and listening to their ideas and concerns are less likely to leave for other opportunities. By refining your communication strategies, you can ensure you're on the right track and building a positive, supportive work environment."•
If you provide too many finer details, people may feel overwhelmed and overlook critical messages.
If a company cannot highlight 3-4 major risks it is facing, one needs to be seriously worried about the sustainability of that business. Either the business is not pushing itself hard enough or it is not aware of the risks that it is facing. From an investor perspective the thumb rule is that high risks in an investment have to be connected with the opportunity for an extraordinary high yield. Investors are looking for companies that can manage high risks.
Serious and integrated risk assessment is the point of departure for creating successful and sustainable businesses. Sustainability is in this perspective not “just” green sustainability, but rather the broader understanding of the term including both financial as well as non-financial risks. The course of the world shows that financial and non-financial risks are closely connected. And an increasing number of companies are doing integrated risk assessments to address and mitigate the risks that they are facing.
The Brazilian beer producer AMBEV takes on the broad and long perspective when assessing the risks of the business.
The company expects to be around for the next 100 years, so this is the starting point for assessing risks and developing strategy. Even though water is currently plenty and cheap in Brazil, AMBEV is focusing on and investing in reducing water consumption in the beer production. Clean water is already a huge problem in some areas of the world and it is in the future will become a global problem that AMBEV, with a long term sustainability perspective, has realized it is important to address.
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a highly influential NGO promoting economic, environmental and social sustainability and GRI is instrumental in helping companies to adopt a broader and more comprehensive risk assessment and report performance more consistently. It is actually a key instrument that:
• Helps companies putting structure to a sustainability strategy
• Helps a company finding the right key performance indicators
• Helps companies linking the non-financial and financial issues
• Makes companies more accountable to the process
• Encourages companies to track performance with key performance indicators and produce real results
• Helps companies addressing stake holders’ interest.
Additionally, reporting on a company’s performance from an integrated sustainability perspective is essential for the market’s valuation of the company. Unless the company reports about the non financial as well as the financial performance in a clear and transparent way, the company will not be credited for the effort made to build a sustainable business strategy. More than 1,000 institutional investors and ESG service providers have signed the UN Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI), which means that these investors have committed to taking environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into account when investing.
The integrated risk assessment process
By PALLE ELLEMANN KNUDSEN“I’ve
have to baby them. By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.” - Steve Jobs, Apple
will identify the material financial and non-financial risks for a specific company. Most companies will consider this exercise a matter of playing defense –building preparedness to prevent risks to have a negative impact on the business. But this is often missing an important point, where companies may turn risks into opportunities. The obvious ones are when companies concerned about reducing the carbon footprint find creative ways to reduce the use of energy and thereby save costs. Or when AMBEV reduces the consumption of water in the production and saves costs by putting this out as a goal for the beer production. Similarly, large shipping companies have been able to cut down billions of dollars of fuel costs and reduced the carbon footprint just by reducing the speed of the large container ships. Other companies think out of the box and start producing clean energy from the waste products in their production or build partnerships in the supply chain of electronics in order to reduce the amount of packaging, which will reduce costs at the supplier side and reduce amount of waste materials for retail and consumers. These ideas will not very often come out of risk assessment processes or board committees on sustainability, but rather pop up like mushrooms, when ordinary employees become engaged in thinking sustainability.
Talking about and embracing risks will also make employees less risk aversive and more dynamic in finding new, innovative ways of building sustainable business. Companies can effectively build sustainability into the business strategy
Risk is an essential part of doing business. If you are not taking risks, you probably don’t have a very good business. Pushing limits and driving people and a company into the unknown is what it means to create advantages.
learned over the years that when you have really good people, you don’t
and turn risks into opportunity by following a systematic process:
1. Perform an integrated risk assessment of the business taking both financial as well as non-financial factors into account. Consult all stakeholders for their view on what risks the company needs to address.
2. Use internationally recognized standards, like the UN Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative, as a framework for the overall policy structure with regards to environmental, so-
cial and governance issues. Make sure to have corporate policies on all key elements of the framework.
3. Identify the material environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities and use the Global Reporting Initiative for inspiration in finding relevant and comparable key performance indicators on all risks and opportunities.
4. Engage employees and management in developing innovative programs or changes to address material risks and
turn opportunities into competitive advantages. Use relevant key performance indicators for integrating sustainability in variable pay or bonus systems.
5. Report consistently about performance and involve all stakeholders on a regular basis.
The opportunities emerge, when a company consistently and proactively starts addressing risks. But the starting point is to understand both financial and non-financial risks.•
It is not surprising that in many countries legal steps have been taken in the last decade to protect the rights of individuals and the confidentiality of health information, and regulations affecting the workplace figure prominently in this. In 2007 the EU issued a report setting out a strong framework of safeguards regulating the use of electronic medical records. The US also has several national laws that relate to discrimination against the disabled (the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990), the handling of medical records (the Health Care Information and Patient Protection Act of 1995; the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009), and genetic information (the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008).
The approach in both Europe and the US has been to impose duties and liabilities on health professionals and organizations rather than on employers. And here the key rule is the requirement of patient informed consent. However, medical conditions that are considered disabilities and genetic conditions are given special protections not only in the clinic but also in the workplace. Such conditions may not be taken into consideration in hiring decisions. For ongoing employment, when companies collect and maintain employee health information for insurance or other HR programs, steps (such as restricted access) must be taken to ensure that such information will not adversely affect the supervision, evaluation, and opportunities of the employee.
By ELAINE ZACHARAKIS LOUMBAS
With the explosion of technological advances in the mapping of the human genome, our DNA is not just the code for identifying us and giving us our known hereditary traits, but the predictor for our predisposition to a number of health conditions and perhaps even behaviors. Having an employer access such information would make many very uncomfortable. To address these growing privacy concerns, in 2008, the United States Congress passed the Genetic Information Non-Disclosure Act (“GINA”). GINA makes it “an unlawful employment practice for an employer to request, require or purchase genetic information with respect to an employee or family member.” There are exceptions to this general rule. One important exception is where “the employee provides prior, knowing, voluntary and written authorization.” Why would anyone freely give such an authorization to his or her employer?
By BRUCE JENNINGS
In the workplace emerging today, greater confidentiality in the handling of health information is a part of a whole new paradigm in the relationship between employers and employees. Chronic health impairments do not necessarily negate skill, experience, and productivity. Disabilities should no longer be a basis for simply excluding of the individual from normal employment; instead, workplace accommodations should be made to mitigate that individual’s special needs. Employee health challenges should be creatively overcome, not stigmatized. This new attitude makes good ethical and business sense.•
Watching Our Health
Information is power, perhaps more so today than in the past. Should we be alarmed because someone is watching us, or comforted because someone is watching over us? Confidentiality is about your ability to control who has access to information about you and how it is used.
Twentieth century American philosopher, John Rawls, challenged us to assume this “original position” in his seminal work A Theory of Justice. He asked us to place ourselves behind “the veil of ignorance” and to imagine not knowing what your lot in life would be. Up until the second half of the twentieth century, we have for the most part, not needed to place ourselves behind a veil of ignorance when considering our genetic fates. When Rawls published this work in 1971 it would not have made sense to add, for example, one’s genetic disposition for developing breast cancer to the list of things that should be placed behind the veil. We did not know of any genetic mutations that corresponded to the disease. We were fairly ignorant about the genetic dimensions of
our lives. Today, in the era of personal genomics, we have new tools at hand to both probe our selves and try to manage the uncertainty of disease. With such technological change comes the expansion of ethical and political negotiations about how we ought to live. Genetic tests for a range of health conditions from one’s susceptibility to developing heart disease to whether one will develop Huntington’s disease are available, and until recently, have only been at the discretion of clinicians. Beginning in 2007, private companies like the US based 23andMe and Navigenics created a new business model for genetic testing through the Internet. For a relatively small fee, consumers could purchase predictive probabilistic genetic tests online that are based on public-
ly available genome-wide associations studies. These genetic tests communicate whether you are at increased or decreased risk of developing certain conditions relative to the average person in the population. As consumers, we now have new degrees of freedom with which to flirt with our personal genetic ignorance. Consumer and labor advocates have worried about what implications these technologies might have for privacy, self-understanding, social welfare, and the medical profession. With genetic information flowing through non-traditional, non-clinical channels, employers and insurers could potentially access and use such information. In 2008 the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) became federal law in the United States (see article below) •
One reason might be when a potential employer is screening potential job applicants to see if they might be predisposed to adverse reactions to certain hazardous materials. An applicant, in order to get the job, may agree to such disclosure and also such testing is potentially beneficial to the applicant. Some provisions in GINA also allow an employer to conduct genetic monitoring of toxic substances in the workplace without the employee’s written authorization if the “genetic monitoring is required by federal or state law.” In such circumstances, GINA conditions such use only if: (a) the employer provides written notice of the genetic monitoring to the employee (b) the monitoring is in compliance with any federal or state genetic monitoring regulations, and
(c) the employer, excluding any licensed health professional or board certified genetic counselor that is involved in the genetic monitoring program, receives the results of the monitoring only in aggregate terms that do not disclose the identity of specific employees; or where the employer conducts DNA analysis for law enforcement purposes as a forensic laboratory or for purposes of human remains identification and requests or requires genetic information is used for analysis or DNA identification markers for quality control to detect sample contamination.
Even under these circumstances, GINA prohibits discrimination by employers for who fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any employee or otherwise discriminate against any employee because of genetic information
with respect to the employee. Thus, the law is very protective of employees. The difficulty in practice is for the employee to be able to prove that he or she was fired because of discrimination and not due to a documented performance issue. Also, employees who are terminated may not want to sue and may decide to just find a position elsewhere. Having a protective anti-discrimination law is good public policy, but enforcement and compliance are equally important. Also, just the fact that employers can have access to such information creates issues from a privacy and security perspective. GINA contains requirements as to how employers must maintain such genetic health information records. Furthermore, HIPAA (as amended by the HITECH Act) governs how employers must treat employee health records in the group health plan context.
Imagine that you know nothing about your abilities, tastes, gender or social position. You don’t know what benefits and burdens you will confront in life. Indulge this thought experiment a bit more and ask yourself—if you were able to design a society from the ground up—what kinds of social arrangements would you want?
According to the US Census Bureau, 55% of Americans obtain health insurance through their employer. In addition, more than 160 million Americans receive health insurance through an employer-sponsored insurance plan.
This article will discuss the rising costs of health insurance for employers and employees based upon recent legislation in the US, and what employers and employees should expect with respect to the new health care legislation in the US.
On June 28, 2012 the US Supreme Court released its ruling on the 2010 health care law, upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The law expands health care access to millions of Americans. While the altruistic theory that all Americans should be afforded some form of health care should be commended, the Act fails to address the ever-rising costs associated with such a law where employers and employees are required to purchase health insurance that serves to subsidize the health insurance expenses of fellow Americans.
Employers with fifty or more employees are now required to provide health insurance or pay sizeable penalties. In addition, employers are also required to provide summaries of the Act to their “covered employees” and to report the value of its health plan on their covered employees’ W-2 form. Form W-2 is a United States federal tax form issued by employers to employees which states how much an employee was paid by their employer in the previous year. The health insurance coverage offered by employers must provide certain essential benefits that include emergency care, inpatient care, prescription drugs, lab testing, maternity and newborn care, and pediatric care.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, the leading not-for-profit, privately operated foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the US, reports that as a result of the Act, the cost of employer sponsored health insurance plans have increased by approximately 9% in 2011. It is also projected that this cost will increase again by approximately 8.5%. Faced with rising health insurance costs, employers are planning to use a wider variety of cost-sharing measures with their employees. They include increasing:
• the percentage that employees contribute to their insurance premiums,
• in-network deductibles;
• out of network deductibles; and
• out of pocket maximum payments. “In-network” and “out-of-network” refers to doctor or hospitals that are part of an insurance company’s network of providers. Insured employees ordinarily pay less when using an “in-network” doctor or hospital, because those networks provide services at lower cost to the insurance companies with which they have contracts. With respect to the individual employee, the Supreme Court upheld the much debated “individual mandate” which requires most Americans to maintain “minimum es-
Today, the percentage of US citizens with health insurance is under 84%, as approximately 49 million Americans are without any form of health insurance.
sential” health insurance coverage. Individuals who are not exempt, and who do not receive health insurance through an employer or government program, must purchase insurance or pay a fine. “Beginning in 2014, those who do not comply with the mandate must make a ‘shared responsibility payment’ to the Federal Government.” The Supreme Court ruled that the “individual mandate” could reasonably be interpreted as imposing a tax and was therefore constitutional under Congress’s power to “lay and collect taxes.”
Exemptions from the individual mandate are for those individuals: • whose income is below the poverty line, or • the cheapest insurance policy the individual can purchase would cost more than 8% of the individual’s income. The fees of the “individual mandate” are as follows: as of 2014, Americans without health insurance coverage must pay a fee of $95. In 2015, the fee is increased to $325, and in 2016 the fee is $695. After 2016, the fee will be tied to the Consumer Price Index.
Employees can also expect to see higher costs for their dependents as the Act requires insurance companies to allow adult children to remain on their parents’ health insurance plan until age 26.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 2.3 million young adults have been added to employee plans since the law was enacted. Additionally, some employers are instituting surcharges for employees who have covered spouses on their employer’s plan and some employers are even instituting wellness programs to incentivize healthy living and lower premiums for its employees.
•
Today organzations need to be coherent and promote coherence in their actions. Coherence is moved by fact – it’s about doing what you say you will do.
Facts are suggested by the opinions of the market and if they are disregarded they often change the whole intent of an initiative or organization.
We need to understand that opinions are led by the market and not the brand. Because of this reason we have to communicate with the market in order to understand what is asked from our brand by opinion leaders, who are the most critical part of the market. In other words, if you want to create a powerful brand that can answer the market’s needs and can generate global opinion, a brand must listen to what the market has to say. What’s the global opinion? This can be translated simply in the rigor with which a brand is managed. A global opinion is important because it can be translated into large revenues for an important brand, as recent studies show that effective campaigns of great events can widely increase brand awareness better than traditional advertising campaigns. “These initiatives can move market share by 2% or 5%, when you're dealing with billions of dollars in these categories, the value is significant,” says Rob Prazmark, Founder and CEO of 21 Sports & Entertainment Marketing Group Inc.
The Expo, for example, is an universal fair that since its foundation has always had the purpose of promoting innovation, creativity and social issues. The Expo is a community-purpose brand, and it is managed as any other brand; for this reason it has to have some rules, for example:
a) it must have a specific aim that doesn’t change;
b) it has to prove to be valid before showing the evidence; and c) it’s a symbol available to the community to be recognized. The Expo that is to be hosted in Milan
in 2015, won’t differ. The event is still a long way off, but those involved in the project are working to make it just not an universal fair, but a real opportunity to change the world; a starting point rather than a finishing line. The event will focus on food and all the aspects related to it. Food is a very critical issue that needs to be resolved as soon as possible, so what should a platform like Expo do to be, first and foremost, credible and to become a real active movement that is influential and has strong foundations?
Distinguished expert Cary Fowler, Executive Director Global Crop Diversity Trust, affirms “it is easy to chase the most visible, attention-grabbing issues, regardless of whether they are the truly important ones. Some knowledge and thoughtfulness is therefore required.”
Many experts in the field agree that the event should involve all stakeholders as Curt Ellis, co-founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit organization FoodCorp, explains, “the gathering should include all stakeholders in the
Pio De Rose is a photographer currently studying an MA Photojournalism at the University of Westminster, in London. His current projects include Aquaria, The Blue Glass Landscape, a visual journey of some of the biggest aquariums in the world.
The intent of the photo is to characterize and shape each visitor’s experience.
01. The feeling of being part of something and of making a difference
global food conversation: investors, corporate leaders, top NGOs, farmers, health leaders, environmental leaders, government officials, labor leaders. The gathering should look broadly at food, incorporating the ways in which food relates to health, environment, justice and equity, and labor.” The ideas of Dan Desmond’s, Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension, are aligned with Ellis’ as he says “any informative conversation about food must include all of the players in the food system or food cycle. And that conversation must provide adequate time for each of the players to speak, listen, reflect and respond. Their must be authentic dialogue between all parties and a plan to record the findings in a meaningful way.” Other market opinion leaders have very firm and radical ideas “whatever it does, to be credible it must have no food industry, as credibility depends on independence,” says Marion Nestle, of the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. •
By TEZLARU RAZVAN
Much experimentation and research has been done on the topic of incentives, both in the academic and business worlds, and most researchers have aligned themselves around two main schools of thought: Skeptics and Supporters.
Skeptics argue that performance based pay schemes consistently fail to produce lasting changes in attitude and behavior; instead, they only temporarily change the way we behave. One of the primary arguments of the skeptics is that extrinsic motivators (pay, bonus, vacation, perks) cannot substitute or drive intrinsic motivation. Basically, if you hate your job, your pay check won’t make up for that. Moreover, the skeptics argue, while it is obvious that cutting pay is de-motivating, there is no reason to believe doubling someone’s pay would result in better work, once above a certain threshold. Also, the skeptics point out that there are studies which show no correlation between executive incentive plans and increased returns to shareholders, with one potential explanation being that reward systems discourage exploration and risk-taking. The argument is that if the reward is significant, people will do exactly what they are asked to do, and choose not to explore riskier but potentially more lucrative ideas, lest the reward be withdrawn. Reward systems
are also regarded by skeptics as a primary cause of communication disruptions and failing morale. This problem, the skeptics argue, is even more exacerbated when there is a limited pool of employee benefits; in those types of situations, one person’s gain is another one’s loss, and it is only a matter of time before employees start regarding each other as competitors rather than colleagues.
On the other hand, the camp of the supporters argues that reward systems not only work, but are also fairer to employees, managers and shareholders alike. According to the supporters, the core of the issue stems from the nature of the principal/agent relationship. This kind of relationship, or the agency relationship, as the economists call it, occurs whenever one party (the principal) hires another party (the agent) to take actions or make decisions that affect the payoff to the principal. This type of relationship is widely applicable in the business world. An agency relationship occurs when shareholders of a company select the management
team who will take decisions that will impact their wealth; likewise, whenever a manager hires an employee to take actions or decisions, the same type of relationship occurs, since the poor performance of an employee will directly and negatively reflect impact the manager’s performance. A non-obvious side effect of the agency relationship is favoritism; a study by Bandiera, Barankay and Rasul, conducted on a fruit farm in England, found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that some supervisors tended to help favored workers more, who in turn earned higher wages as a result. Interestingly, favoritism stopped, and overall efficiency increased, when the farm started paying the supervisors themselves according to the productivity of the workers. Performance based bay systems, supporters argue, simply align the interests of the parties in a way that fixed-pay systems cannot do. The agent earns more when the principal earns more, and less when the principal earns less, and so is more willing to take actions that benefit the principal.
While there is no definitive answer, there are three key guidelines which a manager can use to think about reward systems in practical terms.
• First, one should consider the factors underlying the agency relationship;
Some research suggests that there are not any long-term benefits. But when firms use different types of incentives, including material-based or non-material-based incentives, the effect on employee motivation and productivity is dependent on various personal and organizational factors. In fact, numerous studies show that engaged employees are 25% to
33% more productive for their companies than disengaged individuals. A Real Program. Kent State used an Employee Incentive Program that provided incentive compensation for employees that exceeded their four assigned goals. The Kent State employees’ goals were the same for all employees, and included “calls to new prospects, visits to donors and prospective donors, solicitations, and gift closures.”
The implementation of the program did increase employee performance; of the twenty-two employees, three hit their goal in
The photographer Nikolai Ishchuk was born in Moscow in 1982. Money has been a fecund subject for the arts. In the wake of the financial meltdown, a contemporary interpretation is all the more pertinent. The prints are derived from actual banknotes, whose value is exposed as fictitious and undermined through enlargement, color shifts and layering.
what affects the payoff to the principal? What decisions do employees take which affect the company’s bottom line? The answer to that question may not be immediately obvious, as some decisions are neither formal, nor visible.
• Second, one should also consider what exactly is under the employees’ control. How do the actions of other parties influence the ability of the employee to control the outcome? Does someone else control the flow of raw material to my work station? It is important to carefully assess the effect of such decision spillover effects, in order to avoid building a system which can be perceived as unfair.
• Third, one should consider the nature of the rewards themselves. Some organizational cultures may value status or recognition over money; it is important to recognize this fact in order to design appropriate rewards. Providing monetary rewards when public recognition is expected means not only wasted money, but may even be perceived as insulting in some cases. Ultimately, while it may be perfectly possible to run a successful organization without a performance based system, a wise manager should carefully consider whether such an organization is as successful as it could have been otherwise.•
01 (CHF 10, 2009) — 02 (USD 1,2010).
From the series Big Bucks. Lightjet print, 40x40in / 72x72in.
© Nikolai Ishchuk courtesy of Diemar/Noble Photography, London
01 02
Founded by Laura Noble and Michael Diemar, in 2009 Diemar/Noble Photography gallery has been established one of London’s key art venues, displaying photography in all its forms. The gallery maintains an education department and conducts courses for collectors and photographers as well as portfolio reviews for professionals and students. [W diemarnoble.com]
all four categories; eleven met their goal in at least two categories, and nineteen in at least one category. The example set by Kent State with a 15% increase in performance demonstrates that Employee Incentive Programs can be an effective technique to increase employee performance with properly aligned goals.
Communication
Twitter By LUCA BRUNONI
Twitter is often described as the quintessential real-time social network: for everything of note that goes on in the world, there is a corresponding Twitter discussion, and everybody is free to jump in.
A basic approach would be to set up a company account, gather followers, and bombard them with advertising. But brands who have been experimenting with Twitter have found out that a successful campaign begins with understanding the peculiarities of the platform, and respecting the expectations of its users. This is not to say that advertising does not play a big role on Twitter - simply that it requires a different mindset.
A perfect Twitter ad is, first and foremost, buzz-worthy, so that it will be retweeted by users and go viral quickly. Exclusive offers, cultural and humanitarian initiatives, and event sponsoring remain all-time favorites, but Twitter really pushes brands to get their creative juices flowing. Mobile communication giant O2 has transformed a series of ads into an interactive game that could be played right on Twitter. “Advertising is about telling stories and Twitter allowed us to do that in a way that’s never been done before,” says James Paterson, "Social Media Campaigns Manager at O2. “Twitter allowed us to do that in a way that’sight platform can create an experience that’s more than just an ad.” Brands can get a head start by upgrading their tweets to "promoted" status (for a fee), making sure that they will reach even users who are not their followers, but share similar interests. Promoted "trends," moreover, allow brands to have their content featured in the daily list of hot topics that are being discussed. “A Promoted Trend is so impactful because consumers recognize something special is happening” says Mary Beugelsdijk of Omnicom Me-
dia Group (the media agency for Porsche Cars North America). “merica). m Media Group (the media agency for Porsche Cars North d" status (for a fee), making sure that they will reach even users who are not their followers, but share
WE ARE HUMAN TOO Brands have learned that clients who use Twitter appreciate the opportunity to have a direct line with them right on their beloved platform. For Frank Eliason of Comcast, it is all about "meeting customers where they are." Many brands felt that extending their customer service to Twitter was a natural step: "Twitter is a great way to talk to many, but even better for listening" says Morgan Johnston, manager of corporate communications with Jet Blue. "Our goal would be to make ourselves available, help whenever possible, and to show that our brand is built by real people who care about our customers."
Scott Monty, tweeter and Head of Social Media at Ford Motor Company, says that Twitter is in fact "part of a larger social media strategy to humanize the Ford brand and put consumers in touch with Ford employees."
On Twitter, brands can create awareness about their core values, and win over new fans by showing them that they share the same passions and concerns. Joshua Cherfoli, Online and Relationship Marketing Manager at Porsche, states that the brand "would want to talk about it and want to share it because it felt personally meaningful.”
Sometimes, Twitter users can turn an ad campaign upside its head. It happened
to McDonald's, which saw an attempt to highlight their ingredients' quality get buried under a mountain of negative and offensive comments. McDonald's pulled the campaign, and social media director Rick Wion went on record admitting the defeat, but stating that "as Twitter continues to evolve its platform and engagement opportunities, went. But on Twitter, we’re learning from our experiences.” "Brands that want to participate in Twitter" Paula Drum, VP of Marketing for H&R Block says, "need to be committed and be part of the community." Understanding Twitter's real-time nature is also crucial, "there is an expectation of immediacy." Best Buy’s community manager for Remix Keith Burtis says. "Being as timely as people would like with information can be a challenge."
What seems inevitable is the increase of competition between brands hoping to gain the follows, re-tweets, and sympathy of Twitter users, "the question for each one of these marketers" Twitter's Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain says, "is what is the interesting, compelling, provocative content that they can be putting out to a larger audience to keep that engagement high."
The days of a brand being able to score points just for being present on a social network are behind us. Internet users, at the same time, are more willing than ever to participate, discuss, and even help promote a product or brand that they identify with.•
Communication E-mailing
By NIGEL PHILLIPSI know some fairly intelligent people and when I asked some of them what 'cc' actually meant, only one in twelve knew the answer. It's something you probably use everyday, when you send an email, but in case you are not aware, it stands for 'carbon copy.’
Bcc means "blind carbon copy" and is used when messages are sent to multiple recipients, concealing the fact there may be additional addressees on the complete list. This term also applied to paper correspondence, but now is usually associated with email. Sometimes the writer needs to make sure multiple recipients do not see the names of other recipients. Essentially, the primary recipients and secondary recipients (cc) can't see the tertiary recipients (bcc). The bcc is commonly used when addressing a long list of recipients, for example, in mailing lists. People obviously have legal rights concerning the dissemination of their email details.
Rod Bailey, CEO of ExecutiveSurf, sees dual purposes for the use of cc; firstly “cc is used as a common courtesy. No request may be made, but the cc'd person is kept up to speed and is not required to do anything. The addressee is aware of this and feels looked after. It might be giving a client an update, or cc'ing a senior colleague shows assurance in the quality of one's work and a willingness to take criticism.”
Secondly, in what he terms "escalation," Bailey says, “this gets a response, when no cc doesn't. It can be subtle; 'I've asked you once, I've asked you twice, now you should act because I'm going public.’ Use sparingly.”
Bailey adds that sending cc to your complete address book should only be used in dire circumstances, perhaps asking your next of kin to use it were you to die. Otherwise, use bcc.
Right, that's the practicalities out of the way. What other ramifications can these
conventions have in our personal and business communications?
“Dude, the threesome's off... that last email cost me my job.”
It was in 2003 that a successful city lawyer, responding to a round robin email from a friend, inviting him to some leaving drinks, sent a sexually explicit email to 30 other people, by hitting the 'reply to all' button. 30 people received it, forwarded it to their friends and within hours it had traveled around the world.
It basically told everyone that a certain lady was up for a threesome.
It is by no means an isolated incident, particularly among city workers, it seems.
Peter Chung, a high-flyer with the Carlyle Group, was forced to resign after an email he sent to colleagues, pledging to
"make love to every hot chick in Korea," made its way around the world.
Technical ineptitude with the niceties of emails can lead to unintended consequences that would never have happened in the days of paper correspondence.
It is not just who you send the message to, it could just be the contents. One HR person sent an employee phone list to everyone in the company, but her spreadsheet had hidden (but easily discovered) columns, showing everyone's pay, bonuses and stock options.
There are plenty of examples of people sending emails, containing sensitive information (credit card details, payrolls, contract details), to entirely the wrong people and it can happen to anyone who doesn't take sufficient care when
sending an email. The email is now over 40-years old and has taken down some promising careers in its time. Lucy Gao, working for City Group, in London, invited 39 people to a party and gave them some ridiculous demands. She told her guests to contact her via her PA, only between 8.30 pm and 10 pm and to announce to hotel staff: “I am here for Lucy's birthday at the Rivoli Bar”, and to dress “upper class.” “I will be accepting cards and small gifts between 9 pm and 11 pm.” Unfortunately, Lucy was not Jennifer Lopez, just a junior employee at a bank and her email was sent to, and ridiculed by, millions of people.
SOME ADVICE IS ALWAYS WELCOME Instant communication can lead to in-
stant gaffes, with a career or reputation being instantly ruined. There are some obvious pitfalls to avoid when emailing.
• Always check the To field before you hit send
• There is an old carpenters' rule “measure twice, cut once.” Think twice before you send and never do it when drunk.
• Use draft folders with caution; it is easy to send an email in progress by mistake.
• If in doubt about the content of an email, find your inner editor and press cancel, rather than send.
• Do not make jokes or comments on email that you would not make in person. Emails can be a minefield of unintended insults. Humor rarely works in electronic communications.•
CC is to communicate explicitly, and BCC is to preserve the recipients' privacy, but also to communicate in confidence. For example, the "I'm gonna tell the boss, without telling you. "The world is connected and superimposed, communication is public (and sometimes generates gaffes), This is the fun side of our society, everything is shared. The identity mix generating "other things" that sometimes are understandable, some other times confused, or simply superimposed. Laura Fitzpatrick's photos tell scenes of London as, if they was an e-mail that keeps overlapping relaunch after relaunch. It is easy to lose the plot ( who's the writer? who is the reader? who is it for?): not so important: it is communication. The represantion of the photographer become in first person: "My name is Laura Fitzpatrick and I have Been taking photos for over ten years. These images come from an ongoing project called REFLECTIONS OF THE STREET (LONDON). They show how a average person or persons walking the street can become entwine with the everyday man-made objects which surround them. They are bold images in colour and form as this is how I see London as "a bright , strong and exciting city to live in."
01 Bus or bar
02 Real woman
03 Vintage Couple
04 Crazy Thoughts
She’s Carole Dumenil, French-born, citizen of the world and completely in love with the Andalusian sun. On the upper floor of her white and bright house, there’s a study where she practices acupuncture.
The taxi rides up the sloping hill in a residential area of Marbella, I haven’t got out of the car yet before I find her before me: she smiles and holds out her hand asking me if I have traveled well.
ws Carole, today you are an acupuncturist, but you started out working in finance, I would say that’s a good shift. Tell me all, what did you study?
cd I studied Economics at the University of Reims (France), until I couldn’t take the provincial narrow-mindedness and the small and oppressive university campus anymore. So I changed programs and moved to the United States to do an MBA in Boston at Northeastern University.
ws What did you do after you graduated with a degree in Business Administration?
cd As I had a US visa for a year, I looked for a job, because I felt good there. I started working for a Commodity City Advisor in New York City. I'd been with them for two years, earning quite well, over one hundred thousand dollars a year. Often it was hard for me to understand why they would pay me so much. However I was not fully satisfied: com-
puter, finance, mathematics, I was sitting in an office for many hours and I could not anymore. So I started several activities including flamenco and shiatsu.
ws How old were you at that time?
cd It was 1999 and I was twenty-five years old. I was not completely satisfied, being a financial analyst was not enough for me, I felt that my life had some deeper meanings and the hidden part of my essence was pushing to come out more and more insistently. I resigned and took a sabbatical year. I traveled the length and breadth of Latin America, went to England, rented an apartment in London and began to study acupuncture at the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine in Reading.
ws A twenty-five year-old with a great income: it’s good to live in the city with $10,000 a month. You had to be motivated to abandon that career.
cd Yes I did make good money and I felt free to do whatever I wanted, but it was just an illusion. The environment was too materialistic, relationships with friends and colleagues were mostly superficial, life was based on having rather than on being and that was no longer good for me. I wanted to change, leave. It’s in
London that I realized that I had found my way. I graduated as an acupuncturist three years later, in 2003. Of course while studying, I was supporting myself financially by working for Deutsche Bank until early 2004.
ws This seems to be your third life, after Reims and the Big Apple you landed in London. Have you had difficulties with colleagues, family, friends, boyfriend?
cd Difficulties exist in every choice we make, be it work or relationships. My family understood and accepted my decisions, after all I was financially independent, I worked, studied, and worked again. Some friends stay even if living on the the other side of the ocean. Every-
Three exciting new life stories.
• Lizzie Edward
• Jessica Coleman
• Craig Zabransky
Fear about my future and what I was going to do with my life was a big challenge.
Lizzie Edwards started out as a fashion model. After modeling she went to University and on leaving began working in advertising. She quickly realized it wasn’t for her, something had to change, and fast!
Some say that cats have 9 lives. As for Carole Dumenil, a financial analyst turned acupuncturist, we’ve counted 5 so far. She has moved around the world, working at high-paying but unsatisfying jobs until she decided to change and find happiness.
Carole runs and bikes to keep fit
thing else transforms naturally.
ws How did you start acupuncture?
cd I started working with great enthusiasm and energy at the Traditional Acupuncture Centre in London and also became voluntary at the Gateway Clinic, the first practice to adopt Chinese medicine in the United Kingdom. I was able to devote myself to my new life fully and in 2005 became the assistant to Master Gerad Kite. After that year he asked me to work full-time in his London clinic.
ws Looking at your past in New York, do you have any regrets?
cd As for my job, I don’t have any. I must say that I have always found open-minded people who allowed me to study and
work as an acupuncturist.
ws How much did you earn as an acupuncturist in the London clinic?
cd My salary didn’t match that of New York, and also London is a much more expensive city. My average pay was around 45,000£ per year, but I felt in my place, I felt I was doing good for people and this gave meaning to my life.
ws What made you change your life again?
cd London is a city I love, but I found it distracting. It is immense, covering distances takes a long time. Towards the end of 2008 I worked so hard and every encounter with friends, from going to the theater, the movies or to dinner required days, sometimes weeks, of plan-
ning. Moreover, the weather is often gray and rainy and the lack of sun for several months brought me an accumulation of stress and fatigue that all I wanted was to take a long vacation in the East. I traveled to India and Nepal for a few months promising myself that once I had got back I would have decided whether staying in London was an option or not.
ws You were about to start your fifth life, weren’t you?
cd Actually, yes. Once I got back to London I decided to move to Geneva or Marbella and open my own acupuncture clinic. I had a friend in Marbella, and also Spain has a lot more attention and respect for Chinese medicine, and there’s
What made you decide to change your career? I began working in commercials production. However I found it totally unfulfilling.
It combined my training in fashion design and experience in the industry, my love of shopping and my own personal experience of the impact of dressing and how it can affect how you feel. Today I cannot believe I am being paid to do what I do, helping people look and feel fantastic.
What sort of investment did you make for this shift?
I had very little money, but decided to invest it to hire a career coach: it turned out to be the best investment I have ever made. I also has to train firstly in Personal Color and Style and then in Corporate Image, and that cost me about £5,000. The other main costs were building a website, and Google Ads to drive business to my site, which was invaluable.
a lot of sun. That same light and warmth that I had missed for too many years. I moved to Marbella in the early summer of 2009 and for about a year I commuted between the Costa del Sol and Britain to help my patients and work in various clinics at the same time. The following summer I decided to settle here.
ws Hearing you say “settling” leaves me a little puzzled. You’ll be in Marbella until when?
Carole smiles, gets up from her chair and invites me to follow her on the terrace of her house. Silently she brings my atten-
tion to the garden. cd See? I think I'll stay here. I work well, I have good clients who often become friends, I get home to my studio and I work with two clinics, one in Gibraltar and in Cancelada. I have a partner and a cat named Fluff. I am made, do we say "happy?"
ws Yes, the positive state of mind of those who accomplished their dreams is what we call happiness. But Spain is an European country risking to go bankrupt. cd Yes, it is certainly a difficult time, many cities and towns in the country are
in great difficulty, as in many other European states. You can live with less and be happy, wealth lies in living the life that we choose.
ws It is said that cats have nine lives, we never know how many human beings possess. For you we counted five, what’s the sixth going to be?
cd At the moment I do not know. I'll send you an email so you can report it when it happens.•
My happiness made me decide to change careers. Jessica Coleman is a junior interior designer at Intu Interiors who used to be a cognitive-behavioral therapist where she worked with life-sentenced men in group therapy. The job was getting to her, that’s when she took a step back.
What made you decide to change your career?
I wasn't happy in my role as a trainee psychologist - I was stressed and overworked I knew that something had to change - I didn't want to be in a job that had the potential to make me feel so unhappy - life is too short to be unhappy in your work!
Why did you become an interior designer? Interior design is always something that I have really enjoyed ever since I was young. When deciding which subject to choose at University, it was between psychology and design - I chose psychology because I found it interesting and I believed that it would provide me with a more stable career than design would. Looking back I should’ve gone for design!
What sort of investment did you make for this shift? I invested a lot of money, time, dedication and effort into changing career. I had to re-train as an interior designer, which meant working part-time in various administration roles, finding the money to pay for a course, and taking time out to study full-time for a while as well.
Travel influenced each of my career moves. Craig Zabransky is a freelance travel photographer, writer and blogger who created and owns StayAdventurous. He aspired to work on Wall Street, and worked as a consultant for some time. However a memorable party might have opened his eyes.
What made you decide to change your career? I worked long hours in a stressful career for a decade and I needed a break. Then after one memorable birthday I decided I needed to see more of the world. But I wasn't sure when. Actually I was all set to resign, but my firm had a leave of absence policy and I applied. I left for 11 months and visited Central & South America and Europe. After my adventure, my views changed, my life changed. I needed to do something different.
Why Travel Writer? In Costa Rica, my first destination in my year off, I watched the most majestic sunset with my journal, and a local cerveza. I needed to inspire others to see the world and enjoy a sunset like that.
What sort of investment did you make for this shift? I made three main investments. The first was working with a career coach. A second investment was time with no income, I needed to establish myself, pitch my stories and eventually build a readership for my site. Third investment: social media. I spent hours and hours meeting fellow travel writers and learning from them and discussing destinations on Twitter.
70,000 individuals from different parts of the world have been coordinated and trained in only few months, to support one of the most remarkable events for Europe, from the beginning of the new millennium.
But who really are these volunteers?
Where do they come from? What do they need to do? And, most importantly, how is it possible to train and integrate 70,000 people in time for one event like the Olympics?
IT’S ALSO A MATTER OF PASSION Zaynah Moher, 22, for example, is training to be a lawyer, and comes from Hyderabad, Pakistan, about 200 km from Karachi. “I couldn't wait for this opportunity to come” – says Zaynah – “I have family and friends in London so I can easily find accommodation – which I know is a major issue for volunteers.”
“I love sport, and play basketball at home and I simply love anything that has something to do with sport. I know I will have maybe only a 1% chance to see a game” – continues Zaynah – “but still I love the idea of being involved in this at any level. For example, at the end of June about 50,000 of us had to simulate the public arriving with public transport and flooding into the Olympic stadium, just to test the system and the logistic. Everything worked perfectly –and it was very exciting!”
The Games Makers recruitment began in September 2010. More than 250,000 applications skimmed down to about 100,000 interviews at selection centers across the UK.
The selected applicants attended at least three training sessions (up to five sessions, for more demanding tasks).
Many volunteers, like Zeynah, took part also in the London Prepares test events, which are an invaluable opportunity to gain experience and a greater understanding of how a large sporting event is staged. “I have learnt more in those three days that in a full year at College!” – declares Shelley Walters, 20, a veterinary student from Duluth, MN, USA – “In total, we are “giving” more than 8 million hours as volunteers. To offer something for free is something we are not used to these days, especially when it is in the region of millions, and, call me mad, but I love the idea of that!” Shelley continues with an inspiring argument of “giving in order to receive,” that makes sense, and tells me how everyone is so kind and respectful with the volunteers.
But volunteering is not new to the UK. Indeed, volunteers have been fundamental for both Summer and Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games since they were recruited for the first time in 1948.“We want Games Makers to be
inspirational, open, respectful, teamfocused, distinctive and have a 'can do' attitude,” states the LOGOC. A lot to ask for, from a volunteer, but the Olympics organizers have developed incredible skills in recruiting, selecting and training volunteers in a very limited timeframe, and have also capitalized on that. The capitalization has been planned also for the Games, to ensure that the entire UK, and not only London, will benefit from it. Legacy Trust UK, for example, is a charity aimed to create a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from London 2012. “We are not directly involved with the recruitment or training of volunteers but, of course, having so many programs aimed at creating a legacy, we need volunteers – we need to participate, not just to watch” admitted Julie Morrow, Legacy Trust UK Director of Communication and Game Maker, and adds “we have seen so many people wanting to be involved in the Olympic spirit, especially those not living in London”. And Julie is also one of them. She applied to become a Game
Game Makers is the London 2012 Olympics volunteers’ official name. They have no office space to share, they have different skills and experiences, yet they will work perfectly in sync to face more than 8.8 million ticket-holders attending the games this year.
O1 Seb Coe and Eddie Izzard are joined by London 2012 volunteers for orientation training at Wembley Arena. The first orientation training event for 10,000 London 2012 Games Maker volunteers and Games Time employees. (Copyright Notice – LOCOG).
02 — 03 — 04 London 2012 unveils official uniforms for Games Makers and Technical Officials. They fulfil all the necessary practical criteria for a diverse range of Games Makers, LOCOG staff and Technical Officials to undertake the varied roles that will be required during the Games. (Copyright Notice –LOCOG/Adidas).
Maker in 2010. “I have been assigned to the Events Team, and I will be checking tickets for volleyball games.” When I asked Julie if she will get any perk, she said she doesn't know and doesn't care. She just wants to be there.
IT’S ALL IN THE SKILLS
Nikki, 35, was interviewed in December last year, and on the 4th of February she joined the other Games Makers gathered together for the first time at Wembley Arena, where London 2012 organizers' chairman Seb Coe thanked their effort and dedication, being convinced he recruited the right ones.
“This day is vital.” – he said – “the people here will determine how we are viewed by the rest of the world, and I have no doubt that we have the crème de la crème in here. I have seen their applications. They're all from very different backgrounds, different skill sets, and I want to thank them all for being here.”
Nikki, who has a management background in insurance and has a torch-
bearer daughter, explained to me how the selection process went and how she thinks everything worked so quickly and efficiently in terms of recruitment and training.
“They were looking for specific skills” – says Nikki – “there are certain skills which make you immediately appealing for this activity. Languages, driving, medical, including dope testing, IT, managerial, hospitality and customer care, for example, are very important skills for this – and also being confident, open to people and flexible”.
Nikki already possesses a few of these skills and she is also actively involved with STARS – a heart charity. “Once passed the initial interview” – continues Nikki – “you are assigned to a specific group, such as transport, accreditation or a specific group for each country. I have been assigned to the Technology group for the Paralympic, and I will work with the Scoring team which has been trained by Omega.”
I asked Nikki who are the volunteers and why they want to do this.
“There are all sorts of people among the volunteers. Ex-military, teachers, students, housewives, bus drivers, anyone. People who want to take this once-in-alifetime opportunity." I then asked provocatively – but why an opportunity? Why giving a lot of your time for free to a multi-billion event should be an opportunity?
“The media made the Olympics very appealing” – replies Nikki – “and some people may feel not confident enough with certain skills and this is the right context to nurture and develop them –something that can be later reflected in their personal life and maybe changes it for the better”.
In a world that seems fragmented and resettling, where ideals sound like an old song and the world of work is facing incredible challenges, it is very refreshing to see so many people aligned so naturally for the most ancient of human activities which sport represents – team-work, practice, excellence and success. •
The time between the selection of a new leader and his or her official first day is known as the “fuzzy front end.” This stretch of time is invaluable to both an organization and the new leader.
According to the Forbes.com’s New Leader’s Handbook: “The time between acceptance and start is a gift you can use to rest and relax or to get a head start on your new role or next 100-days. Our experience has shown that those who use this fuzzy front end to put a plan in place, complete their pre-start preparation, and jump-start learning and relationships are far more likely to deliver better results faster than those who choose to rest and relax.”
During the Fuzzy Front End and the early onset of a new job, a leader’s natural instinct may be to fill the airwaves with promises, enthusiasm, and brilliant ideas. While there is a time and place for this, it isn’t in the beginning. A leader would be best served by adopting a mindset of curiosity so he or she can best grok an organization’s culture, why it operates the way it does, and what is most important to the employees. MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga demonstrated this as he stepped in from leading CitiBank for 13 years. Just because he understood the bank-
ing business inside and out, didn’t mean he knew MasterCard. As he put it,“…at MasterCard, I’m the outsider. So the only way I could get up to speed on the culture, what’s working, what’s not working, our competitive strengths and the like was to invest in listening.”
Banga spent hours and hours at headquarters “flopping in a chair” (his words, not mine) and saying, “I’m Ajay. Tell me about yourself.” or “What can I do to help?” or “What should I not do.”
He then traveled around the world to hear the perspectives of other employees up, down, and across the chain of command. Once he felt he had enough information to glean “ground truth” for the entire organization (not just what the board wanted him to know) then, and only then, did he set off to develop a plan.
It is one thing to be named a leader. It is another to be the kind of leader that employees commit to at a deep level. The key difference between the two is in one’s ability to build emotional capital with those around them.
A leader’s ability to understand how she or he is coming across to others,
the effects they are having on those relationships, and their ability to stay current with the needs of today’s employees are all essential traits of what it is to be a leader.
And as leaders communicate, they must keep in mind that honesty and transparency are HUGE. Gone are the days when employees explicitly trusted management to do the right thing. Corporate America burned that trust. And if a leader chooses to communicate half-truths or opts to protect employees by not divulging what is actually happening, employees will sniff it out (thanks to their BS detectors) or uncover it themselves (thanks to the Internet), so leaders shouldn’t embarrass themselves by doing either. Employees can handle the truth. And if they are given the truth, they can actually DO something meaningful for everyone. Overall it is essential to go slow early on, in order to move fast later. Going through a thoughtful process may take time. But doing anything less will take longer.•
How you welcome a new leader definitely shows how your culture is embedded in the organization’s decisions and actions. Edgar H. Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has made a notable mark on the field of organizational development in many areas,
and says that every organization’s culture basically springs from three sources:
1. The beliefs, values and assumptions of founders of organizations;
Anna was optimistic: She hired a superstar to lead a struggling business unit. Bob had been hand-picked from a larger industry player and had a track record of aggressive turnarounds. Bob had clear ideas about what needed to happen. So clear, in fact, that he didn’t engage his team. Two of his directors quit within a month. After two months, the business lost more customers it had in the last year. With a generous severance, Bob was on his way, and Anna was back at square one—or a few steps behind. Unfortunately, this is a common tale. The entry of even a successful new leader to an organization is usually disruptive. “Organizations have to adjust no matter how compatible a leader is,” says Elisa Speranza, Business Group President at CH2M HILL. “Many organizations send in a new person and assume things will change automatically, but that is rarely the case.”
THE NEW LEADER’S TOP 5 DANGERSWhat can organizations do to ensure they’re hiring the right leaders? “Many organizations use prehire assessments of personality or style,” says Kristen Kenton, Principal of Kenton Talent Management, a boutique executive search firm.
Chapman adds, “The best organizations leverage them throughout the integration process.” In other words, use pre-hire assessments and interview techniques to find the right people, then review their results against the expected behavior for the organization.
When they start, new leaders are asking, “Did I make the right decision to come work here?” The events of their first week can provide an intentional, or unintentional, answer. Unfortunately, many organizations sheepishly admit to a sink-or-swim mentality and fail to offer support
The new leader’s team may misinterpret her behavior without deeper insight into her personality and
approach. On her first day in her current role, Speranza placed a sign that said “Be Nice or Leave” outside her office. “People freaked out,” she said, “They wanted to know ‘what does she mean by that?’”
New leaders must create opportunities for their team to get to know them right away.
An effective supervisor will shape the leader’s goals in her first 100 days, outlining:
• Key knowledge: Organizational strategy, competitors, challenges, functional contribution.
• Key relationships: Stakeholders with whom to build a relationship.
• Key deliverables: 1-2 visible accomplishments in the first 30 days, and 2-3 longer-term deliverables.
• Key development: Skills that must be developed to successfully per-
form in the role and a plan to grow them.
Even the most adept leaders can make the mistake of moving too fast--either before they have a clear understanding of what must change, or before their relationships are strong enough to withstand resulting conflict. Sometimes this is more about ego than a real need for change. “You don’t have to prove how useful you are by changing things,” says Speranza, “Not everything you walk into will be broken.”
Managing these five risks does not require large amounts of money or effort – but managing them effectively can make a huge difference whether a new leader sinks or swims.
2. The learning experiences of group members as their organization evolves and;
3. New beliefs, values and assumptions brought in by new leaders The stories about new leaders regarding his/her recent work at another organization or some past experiences of the organization builds these stories. There are also expectations from the leaders on the part of the organization. These expectations are sometimes unspoken, known mostly
by the followers in the organization. All these stories, expectations and points of the company culture effects the process of welcoming a new leader. The organizations should be aware of their culture, both spoken and unspoken expectations, and the stories in the dialogues of the organization. This enables the company to take much more appropriate actions to embrace new leader.
They provide table, designs and instructions to all the fans of stitching and sewing. It is a passion that is often passed on from one’s mother or grandmother. This passion is just a hobby for many, but for others it becomes a full-time profession.
Sewing and stitching is often considered a tradition, that is passed through one’s family. There are courses in pattern drafting and fashion design as well as professional courses and workshops. However as far as formal training for embroidery goes, it exists only at a very high, haute-couture level, which is another discipline entirely. The birth of the web has certainly helped as there are many message boards or online communities where people can get ideas as well as learn the job, “luckily I started sewing after the internet was invented!” says Holly McGuire, a designer. Laura Johnson, of EllieInspired told “designing patterns has been an incredible blessing for my family and for me. It was not something that I sought to begin, rather opportunities kept presenting themselves to me until I found myself publishing my first pattern,” adding “I envy those who are just beginning and able to spend their college education learning about pattern drafting, marketing/advertising, and fashion design.
When I went to college, I had no idea that I would someday be doing this; so everything I have learned, I have studied on my own.”
If there’s no real education for this job, how can the tricks be learned? Johnson says she spent hours and hours reading and researching in libraries, she would study everything “she could get her hands on.”
The internet it is also a great source of information, but warns “there is a lot of drafting nonsense to be found as well, so make sure that you get information from someone who is credible.” Helen Stubbings of Pattern Press, who attended a two year post school employment based technical training college course on needlecraft skills explains “my skills are basically all self-taught, also my graphic and IT skills have all been self-taught or gained through short courses and just trial and error.”
Like any other the sewing patterns designer job has many advantages and disadvantage, after all nothing’s perfect. Working from home and in one’s own time seems to be the biggest advantage for everyone. This job can grant a certain flexibility, but also “I do only what I want to do” says designer Kate Henderson. The founder of Sublime Stitching, Jenny Hart thinks that another big advantage for her is the opportunity to live her creativity to the fullest. According to Carrie Bloomston of SUCH Designs, LLC the advantages are “meeting fellow designers who become friends and comrades as well as being asked to contribute to cool projects, books, and magazines.”
However the job has its inconveniences. One big problem is the Internet, because as much as it can be an advantage when at the beginning, on the long run it does more harm than good, as copyright infringement is a real issue in this field too. This is according to Ellen Maurer-Stroh, of EMS Design, she explains “what once started as a blessing
turned into a never-ending frustration,” and adds “nowadays the internet is a platform for illegal file sharing. Very often I can download an illegal copy of my new design from a site only hours after it has been published.”
Whoever approaches any kind of job certainly wants it to be worthwhile and rewarding, and this field of work is no different. Stubbings says that the most rewarding thing for her is the ability to meet women from around the world and to have an instant connection that makes it all worthwhile. Julie Jackson, of SubversiveCrossstich has a very special idea as the most rewarding thing in her opinion is “laughing to yourself as you utilize such a traditional handicraft to stitch a nontraditional message.” Maurer-Stroh sticks to the classic reward that she gets from the joy of turning crosses into a picture, but also giving the opportunity to others to create something from her designs. Hart agrees with Maurer-Stroh, as she gains great pleasure in seeing her work stitched up by others in what she defines as “a wonderful collaboration with strangers that happens over and over and over again.” Bloomston has a much more spiritual way to go about it as she confesses “the most rewarding thing is having the chance to express what lives in my heart and to have people respond in such a positive way,” and continues “I really like knowing that my designs allow people to listen to their guts and be creative in their thinking and decision making.”
doesn’t make things easy, as you have to follow every single aspect of the business, so a typical day for a sewing patterns designer involves answering emails, as well as taking care of the marketing and promotional aspect of the job. Stubbings, for example, does all the pr and marketing before getting her hands on some designing and preparation for stitching, as it is clear that who designs also sews and stitches.. Finally, of course there’s the bookwork and billing aspect of the job, some designer have employees to help them with that, but many others do everything themselves as well as printing and packing patterns, processing orders and chasing payments. Jonhson explains what’s her day like as she says “I usually devote one or two days to sewing, one day to photographing them and editing the pictures, and two days to marketing and advertising and paperwork. A good majority of every day is spent writing patterns and drafting the pattern pieces.” Being a sewing patterns designer requires certain skills and aptitudes, Stubbings firmly believes that a very good knowledge and experience in the field of design you are trying to sell is essential as “creditability goes a long way in gaining success and loyal customers.” People who want to undertake this profession should also have the ability to put this knowledge into writing , because “many people can
make a bag, that doesn’t mean they can tell another person how to make it using just words and diagrams on a piece of paper.” Last but not least determination and the ability to work hard are crucial.
Jackson would encourage anyone who wants to access this field of work “it's fun to see what each new designer brings to the mix, no two people interpret the craft in the same way,” she exclaims. McGuire thinks the same when she asserts “go for it! I think this is something anyone can do at any stage of their life, and you're only limited by your imagination.”
Being hard to make a living out of this job Maurer-Stroh advises “my recommendation is to start as a self-publisher and have a second job for secure income,” and adds “another idea might
be to work for a cross-stitch-magazine, however, those jobs are very rare.” “Dream big, but start small,” advises Bloomston, adding “start right now, even if you have no idea what you’re doing, it is better to get in the river and swim with the
current, fake it ‘til you make it, and make some mistakes, than to stand on the shore watching and waiting for who-knowswhat." This field is a very wide sea of possibilities, this is why Hart suggests “pinpoint what exactly it is that you want to do, and how you want to do it, at that point the answers for what path to follow will become clear.”•
Gender Analysis, a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in male and female candidates, can be a useful tool in making the right hiring choice.
The first reason why SWOT Analysis can be a useful tool is that it enables those who manage the selection process to obtain valuable information that can improve recruiting strategies and efforts, thereby improving the sourcing of candidates. Although “in today's economy, the business of executive search should rethink its approach to improve their results,” admits Andrea Lamanna, Partner at Glasford International Italy.
As Alejandro Bagnato, Managing Partner at Glasford International Argentina says “the issue is determined by the type of market, since there are companies that prefer men in key positions. The concept of leadership and capacity in the business world has been masculinized. So this has led women to concentrate their efforts on show to society their ability and skill, to be evaluated in many cases with increased demand.” Undoubtedly there is an imbalance between women and men in terms of their management. Lamanna confirms that “less than a third of managers are women, and boards of directors of the fifty biggest listed European companies count only one woman for every ten men.”
But things may change, as Himanshu Bansal, Managing Director at Right Advisors Pvt. Ltd. – Glasford International India points out. “HR department of several companies have clear mandates from the top management to improve the female to male ratio in the organization.” But speaking of skills and abilities, Hélène Peingnez, Managing Partner at ANTHOS - Glasford International France says that “there are many de-
tails, experiences, knowledge of a specific market, or a specific company, which are far more important than gender.” In fact, the analysis and assessment processes should take into account some other particular aspects such as the candidate motivation and expectations. “These two are both critical in order to make a reliable estimation on the success of future integration,” says Jesús Espinosa López, General Director at RH Asesores en Recursos Humanos S.A. –Glasford International Spain.
There are some cases in which this kind of analysis is not considered the best tool. Especially because, as Peingnez notes “gender is really a secondary argument nowadays for the level of position we are dealing with – managers and executives. People are usually well organized and aware for highly challenging situations, at this level. It may be different when family constraints are high and the salaries are low; in those conditions, equity between women and men is more difficult to apply.”
Maria Reggiani, Managing Partner at Reggiani Hunting – Glasford International Brazil, agrees, saying she never used the SWOT analysis with this goal, even if she believes it can be adapted to the purpose of selection as a complementary tool. “The traditional tools for assessing candidates, such as psychological tests, competency interview, interest inventories and other, lead us
to identify strengths and weaknesses (or points to be developed) in a candidate, confronted with the desired profile for the position which one is applying for. The external aspects related to threats and opportunities are more applicable to the 'coaching' or 'development' works than to the work of selection for hiring. In these two last contexts, the SWOT analysis may lead the candidate to reflect on their strengths and ways to develop his/her career, and to identify threats and opportunities for growth. Today, amongst the most modern and effective techniques of assessment to hiring is the Competency Interview (also referred to as a Situational, Behavioral or Competency Based Interview - CBI). In this technique, within the model CAR –CONTEXT, ACTION AND RESULT - the interviewer seeks to identify situations in candidate’s life when he/she had to use certain skills to achieve desired results and therefore assess whether these competencies are consolidated in his/her profile and available to be used in other situations.”
In addition to that, according to Santi Campanella, Director Smart Search Recruitment – Glasford International Thailand, more and more companies with sophisticated HR departments are becoming less and less reliant on a SWOT analysis tool for assessment, while more small to medium size companies with less sophisticated HR departments still tend to use it. “Depending on the role of a sought after candidate, a SWOT analysis can be a useful assessment tool but
Glasford International is a leading globally retained executive search group with a direct presence in 38 countries and 60 offices worldwide. Their 300 consultants span across Europe, Africa, North & South America and Asia Pacific.
normally it does not assess a candidate’s creative or technical knowledge.”
But what are the actual differences between men and women candidates at the same professional level that a SWOT Analysis can help to focus? Mr. Bagnato says that STRENGTHS found and required by most organizations are those that demonstrate interpersonal skills and teamwork, strategic vision, leadership and both interpersonal organizational and communication. “The female leadership style has contributed to the development of management skills to create working environments where information is shared to generate consensus, collaborative and collegial, with regard to decision making, in other words, women develop teams working under a leadership that promotes inclusion and reconciliation, rather than a directive management, autonomous and controlling. Moreover, for somebody, the advantages are on the side of women and while men choose a transactional style, based on traditional methods of command and control, women tend to transformational leadership, based on the motivation and support.”
According to Gail Burns, Managing Director at Target Search & Selection - Glasford International South Africa, women have the edge in collaborative environments (where listening skills, inclusive body language, and empathy are more highly valued), and men are seen to 'take charge' more readily (and viewed as more effective in environments where decisiveness is critical). It may be considered also that differences between men and women usually are more related to the “individual” rather than to “gender.” Successful professionals´ strengths are usually the same, “there are common ‘core competencies’ such as results´ orientation, tenacity, ability to predict the consequence of certain decisions and acts, capability to getting others involved, flexibility, etc,” Espinosa says, adding “however, there are some particular aspects which are more related to culture, education or gender that shape our personality and determine our own ‘way of acting’.” It’s
a matter of "focus on results" Reggiani adds. “The way that executives are successful in achieving their goals varies from person to person, regardless of gender. Each person chooses their own paths to reach the desired position.”
People who don’t influence, communicate, inspire or create teams are likely to be found quickly with a limit on their managerial career, no matter whether male or female. Bagnato explains, “opportunities are becoming fair as orga-
nizations begin to promote balance between work and personal life to set limits and priorities between the different roles without sacrificing one or the other, rather trying to balance them.” One of the biggest changes and actual opportunities nowadays is that jobs traditionally opened to women or men specifically, are now available for both, with a more and more respected equity. In Western countries for examples women are progressively accessing to higher roles within the management world. It is possible that they still have easier access to some industries (i.e., Services, IT, Banking and Insurance), and some roles (i.e., Marketing and Sales, Administration and Finances or Human Resources), as Mr. Espinosa says. “In Asia women are systematically more operationally minded but their male counterparts are generally more sales inclined and the traditional male dominance of senior positions in Asia is slowly decreasing. Female candidates are generally following the trend of their western counterparts but advancing in their careers and pursing a leadership role in the family where once was male dominated,” Mr. Campanella says. And what about threats? The most significant and visible one is currently the lack of job opportunities, both for men and women, which is due to the limited economic growth suffered by many countries. But we could consider also the “positive discrimination” in favor of women that leads in a real discrimination against men, or the lack of competency, which can be tackled with the continuous search for qualification in accordance with the candidates’ opportunities and interest in the activity.
According to Gail Burns, “There will always be opportunities as the world evolves. But with the ageing global population, women outnumbering men in many countries, ‘role reversal’, technology, work-life balance, social and economic, environmental pressures, critical global skills challenges and talent mobility, both men and women, must stay constantly attuned to these gender differences if they are to effectively manage across the gender divide.”•
The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) unveiled the winners of the 2012 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA®) program — a celebration of design excellence in products, sustainability, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts. Out of 660 finalists, 35 were honored with the Gold Award, 71 received the Silver Award and 123 merited the Bronze Award.
RICOH Unified Communication System P3000: The RICOH Unified Communication System P3000 is a portable, easy-to-use remote meeting system that doesn't need a computer and can be used in places that do not have remote meeting equipment.
Notchless: The Notchless is an adhesive tape dispenser for MagicTM Tape. It cuts adhesive tape in the same way as conventional tape dispensers but leaves a straight edge, not a zigzag one.
MAST™Monitor Support Arms & Accessories: MAST™ is a family of flat-screen-monitor support arms and accessories.
JumpSeat Auditorium Seating: The JumpSeat is a low-profile folding auditorium seat designed as an elegant, modern alternative to the typical movie theater or stadium seat.
“Geoff’s philosophy empowers employees and leaders alike. People want to be led. By that, people want to know what to do and that what they are doing is important. ”
Born in Timaru, New Zealand, design and consultancy firm
Fahrenheit 212 owner Geoff Vuleta (1961) grew up believing anything was possible. As a child, he wanted to become a chef, and his first job was on the auction floor of a produce market. With a career as an ad exec under his belt, Geoff next went to work at Saatchi & Saatchi. He says he owes a great deal to CEO Kevin Roberts: "He said, 'I want to be an idea company, you're an ideas guy; why don't we see if you're any good?’”
Yet he longed to focus more on ideas. Geoff left to create Fahrenheit 212, “an innovation firm and new type on consultancy that helps large companies innovate... Fahrenheit 212 actually creates the idea for companies and helps them take it to market.”
Geoff’s greatest strength is optimism: “Believing that anything is possible is liberating and intoxicating.”
“I had a one-way ticket to Madrid. But I had no job, no apartment, no Spanish and I knew no one. What I did know was that I was going to make this work, because I had faith in myself. ”
For native New Yorker Lisette Miranda (1984) a 2008 holiday turned into a wake-up call. Out with friends in Madrid one night, “the French and Italians were speaking in Spanish to communicate, and there was me with my English and my not-so-high, high school level of Spanish. Only a couple of the people spoke English, and in that moment I felt so naive and sheltered. But I was hypnotized by everyone's joy,” Lisette remembers. “I said ‘I can see myself living in Madrid.’”
Within three months, she left the US and an event planning career with a few suitcases. After completing a TEFL course with TtMadrid, an intensive certification course, she began teaching English. Today, Lisette is a marketing manager with TtMadrid. Language and culture have been intertwined with her career, and her passions, from day 1. Growing up in New York provided a hearty introduction to “Italian feasts, elaborate Russian weddings, Jewish Shabbat dinners, Latino dancing, Chinese New Year,” she says. “Working and living in Madrid has magnified this.” These days, her workday is split between helping students with CV revision, interviewing, residency issues, and launching marketing projects. “Each day brings new projects, different challenges and a roller coaster ride of emotions,” Lisette reflects on the adventure of the past four years. “But the kind that I will gladly buy a ticket for.”
"I want to be happy in life and happiness requires balance. Finding a balance between work and passions is a hallmark of my life: “I love what I do, but I also love being out of the office. I set expectations from the beginning with my office that I will always work as long as I need to get the job done.”
Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine, England, India, Korea, China, and all over the United States: These are just some of the places Brannon Lacey (1977), a senior investment manager at Samsung Venture Investment Co., Ltd., has lived and worked as a consultant. “Consulting brought me to all of those places... there's no better way to see the world than on the dime of a consultancy!” he says. “My favorite place is, naturally, Brazil. You won't find a cooler, more laid back city than Rio de Janeiro, anywhere in the world.”
Today, Brannon lives far from Rio, but in a city no less compelling: Seoul, South Korea. As a senior investment manager, his focus is on investing in startup companies in the mobile, software, and television sectors. He explains: “I source companies, negotiate deal terms, and then invest in them.”
His interests outside of work are as varied as his many moves: “I'm passionate about physical fitness. I've run three marathons, trained in martial arts, and I play baseball every weekend with a foreigner league here in Seoul.” Engaged to a ballet dancer, Brannon “loves to go to the Arts Center here in Seoul and watch ballet, jazz, and other enriching activities.”
From sitting back and relaxing on a SwissAir flight with destination: Paris to enjoying a glass of 1996 Krug Vintage, here are ideas chosen and tested by four passionate managers.
Movie Book Object Airline Hotel Dinner Gift* Vacation Wine
Love Actually01
The God of Small Things
I collect turtles wherever I travel. I think my favorite is glass and stone, from a Caribbean cruise.
Biutiful, Bella
Kite Runner, The Bell Jar
My Michael Kors watch gets me where I need to be on time!04
Wayne's World II (seriously)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet02
An early 1970s Rolex Submariner with plastic domed crystal, and a yellow, creamy patina to the dial and hands.
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Titanic
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Virgin Airlines Tower 23 in San Diego, CA, right on Pacific Beach
Surf and turf at the Blue Moon Cafe at the Secret Harbor Beach Resort in St. Thomas03
Brandon is a sports fanatic so favorites, a Steelers playoff game in Pittsburgh.
When Brandon and I eloped to St. Thomas VI for our wedding and honeymoon.
Risata Moscato d'Asti
JetBlue The London
Nobu57, The Dutch, Tamarind
SwissAir Hotel Palafitte in Neuchâtel, Switzerland06
RedFarm on Hudson Street in New York
My mother's wedding ring Aer Lingus The Plaza, NYC
Capellini bolognese
Furniture for my new apartment
Costa Rica + Italy (Rome, Venice, Milan)
A black and white photo, of us, in a vintage frame.
Paris in the winter is extraordinary.
Malbec
1996 Krug Vintage05
Our lovely daughter Ireland Pinot grigio
By Francesca Tonegutti. A bright, young finance tycoon travels through NYC in his white limousine while the streets are overrun by angry protests against the prevailing economic crisis, also filled with a state of agitation that accompanies the visit of a Head of State. The young man, determined not to give up his weekly haircut, crosses the city in the luxury car to go to the barbershop. During the trip he picks up young hackers, finance experts, doctors and sly lovers, who become aware of his financial collapse. Arriving in the suburbs, he finds himself face to face with his assassin, a former employee, who is moved by ancient hatreds and enlightens him on the fall of his financial empire, the cause of which is silly reasons he had not taken into account. This pessimistic view of the contemporary world and the fall of capitalism is well communicated by the physical and economic decay of the protagonist and the heated disputes that invade the city. The movie is much too chatty, sometimes disturbing and incomprehensible, and almost obsessively reproduces the text of Delillo’s book which inspired it. But the idea of the "road movie" is great and the main characters’ acting is amazing, especially Paul Giamatti.
01 Anthony (George Touliatos) and Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) in a pivotal scene.
02 Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) is forced to make difficult decisions.
03 Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) and Elise Shiffrin (Sarah Gadon) share a moment.
04 Actress Juliette Binoche stars as Didi Fancher.
05 Movie poster for the film Cosmopolis.
Characters Robert Pattinson (Eric Packer), Jay Baruchel (Shiner), Paul Giamatti (Benno Levin), Juliette Binoche (Didi Fancher), Sarah Gadon (Elise Shifrin)
Written and directed by David Cronenberg and Don DeLillo. Directed by David Cronenberg. Produced by Renee Tab, Paulo Branco, David Cronenberg, Martin Katz [W cosmopolisthefilm.com]
Jumping a white limo to go to your regular barber to get a haircut can turn into chaos.
Review by Carasoo I understand that, in making a good movie, it is not necessary to make it chronological. In other words, it is not necessary to create an “A" to "Z" sequence. You can choose to tell a story by freely adding ingredients. My friend Gianni’s life seems to be build that way, his life is messed up, but nonetheless we understand that he does some things that have consequences for his life and in the lives of others.
37 Questions Everyone in Business Needs to Answer
[Headline Book, 212 pp., $22.95]
From the United Kingdom’s numberone business expert comes the latest guide to shaping up your business. With razor sharp advice and tell-it-like-itis style, author Duncan Bannatyne provides tried and true business lessons for leaders and employees alike.
The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent [McGraw Hill, 272 pp., $28.00]
It seems the job market is changing, and human resource departments are increasingly stretched to help workers plan their next move, much less their career. The lattice is replacing the ladder at workplaces all over the world. Learn how career lattices can help you achieve your employees’ goals – and perhaps your own.
Click Millionaires: Work Less, Live More with an Internet Business You Love
[AMACOM, 288 pp., $22]
With such a shaky market, and a growing dissatisfaction with the typical 9-to5 lifestyle, many people are searching for a way to achieve both work-life balance and financial sustainability. Scott Fox reveals how you can do both by capitalizing on your internet business idea and your own innate talents.
Competency-Based Interviews, Revised Edition: How to Master the Tough Interview Style Used by the Fortune 500s [Career Press, 224 pp., $14.99]
Understanding how HR pros approach interviewing and hiring can give candidates an advantage throughout the interview process. Knowing what the interviewer is looking for will provide an edge in any interview. CompetencyBased Interviews features the most current information about this challenging type of interview.
twsm Tell us about the book.
a&pk This is where geopolitics and technology come together to form geo-technology. We wrestle a lot with how to define the hybrid age: so many things go into it, political, sociological, technical. Many characteristics, but the more you look at it the more technology sets the conditions for each era.
twsm What are some of the most innovative countries in terms of what you call balance of innovation?
Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization
[TED Books, e-book, $3.37]
In their manifesto Hybrid Reality, husband-and-wife team Ayesha & Parag Khanna explores the frontier of the information revolution: The Hybrid Age. The Khannas explain how the “balance of innovation” has superseded the military “balance of power” as a measure of national potential, providing a global tour of how the smartest countries, cities, and companies harness new technologies.
a&pk Balance of innovation precedes the balance of power. You don’t get to the balance of power until you study the balance of innovation. Innovation is different from invention. America is inventive as well as innovative; that’s why Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM are all American. But if you look at other leading sectors like alternative energy or bio-technology and so forth, you see there is a lot of innovation and invention going on. Look at the Chinese capturing the solar market. They didn’t invent it but they innovated it.. Robotics in Korea, biotech in India, solar in China: these are examples of countries’ innovation.
twsm Why should we take a hopeful view of technology?
a&pk There are more people who have tech access to shape it in their own way than ever before. Mobile phones are an example: more people will soon have mobile phones than they’ll have toilets. A sad fact, but mobile phones have a demonstrable impact on GDP. Another reason is the move from hierarchy to network, people being able to participate in the generative system. Society is becoming more generative… meaning you can play by your own rules.•
Creating Effective Teams: A Guide for Members and Leaders, 4th Edition
[SAGE Publications, 160 pp., £25.99]
This is a practical guide for building and sustaining top performing teams. Based on the author’s many years of consulting experience with teams in the public and private sector, the most recent edition of Creating Effective Teams delves into why teams are important, how they function, and what makes them productive.
The Employee Engagement Mindset: The Six Drivers for Tapping into the Hidden Potential of Everyone in Your Company
[McGraw-Hill, 272 pp., $32.00]
When it comes to employee engagement, Timothy R. Clark goes where no one has gone before. One of today’s leading experts on the subject, Clark reveals that the business world has been focusing on only half the question—namely, the organization’s role in driving employee engagement. Clark points to the other interested party— the employee.
Linda Holbeche & Geoffrey Matthews
Engaged: Unleashing Your Organization's Potential Through Employee Engagement
[Jossey Bass, 334 pp., £24.99 ]
Research shows many workplaces suffer from a serious engagement deficit. In these turbulent times, businesses can no longer afford this. For all managers and business leaders who want to enhance performance – and professionals in Communications or HR– this easy-to-use guide offers real solutions for getting your organization engaged and increasing productivity.
twsm What inspired you to write this book?
[Jossey Bass, 227 pp., $24.95]
Chris Grivas, an organizational and leadership consultant, and Gerard J. Puccio, Ph.D., department chair and professor at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, teamed up to write this engaging business fable that offers leaders and team members a proven framework for promoting innovation and creativity.
Ron Zemke, Bob Filipczak & Claire Raines
Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Boomers, Gen Xers, and Gen Yers in the Workplace
[AMACAOM, 304 pp., $17.95]
This all-new edition of the seminal book takes a fresh look at a growing challenge. With their micromanaged childhoods and tech addictions, Gen Yers require constant feedback—frustrating for the Me Generation that can’t let go of the spotlight, and annoying for Gen Xers, sandwiched between the two. Learn how to lead this motley group with their often incompatible work ethics, values, and styles.
cg It occurred to me that a major resource was still untapped: 50 years of expert research conducted and/or collected by the International Center for Studies in Creativity. This research showed that humans have used the same creative process throughout history but that each person has distinct preferences. This gives us a map of how to solve problems efficiently and creatively. When used consistently with a group it increases the creative potential of that group significantly and decreases squabbling and wheel-spinning. Results are faster, more targeted, efficient and innovative. Although well regarded in academic and consulting circles, the practical applications of this research had yet to hit the mainstream.
twsm What challenges do you address?
cg I've met many people who have said "I'm not creative," which couldn’t be further from the truth. Creative problem solving is inborn and natural to every one of us. I hoped to begin to change the conversation from "How creative am I?" to "How am I creative?" and to explore the impact of different styles of creative thinking has on teams that are working together.
twsm How can HR pros learn from the lessons in this book?
cg The top-performing HR organizations are not merely legally minded; they recognize that how they help people work more effectively provides strategic advantages. Higher functioning teams bring greater rewards at significantly less expense. The book provides a clear, proven methodology which demystifies group process, identifies key leadership behaviors and illustrates how to manage team dynamics within that process. The examples and tools can be incorporated directly into the day-to-day work environment. The book also complements existing leadership training as it teaches skills necessary for a leader to harness the creative thinking of his/her team. It brings a new perspective to diversity initiatives, highlighting the power of cultivating diversity of thought. Just as appreciating differences of cultures, gender, etc. can increase flexibility and adaptability, appreciating differences in how people think can enable deeper, more effective working relationships.•
“
By ALEX DI MARTINOWhat? Films? In Europe? Now?” This is usually the amazed reaction I get every time I'm asked the inevitable, universal question “what do you do?" I boldly reply mentioning some recent successful films which may demonstrate that – actually –the film industry, although affected by the financial turmoil, is heroically enduring the storm. One reason is that private investors are seeking different investments
because traditional financial tools seems to be an endangered species. On the other hand, I personally think that struggles incite creativity and nurture persistence which leads to beautiful films – as the Independent scene is lucidly indicating. And our story is built just on this. A passion to tell and show the intensity of life, and a burning desire to win over adversities. Every day
David Ulrich, Jon Younger, Wayne Brockbank, Mike Ulrich
HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources
[McGraw-Hill, 272 pp., $32.00]
The authors’ collective experience as professors, PhD students, HR professionals, and partners inform their unique takes on the future of the HR field. With a six-competency backbone, HR from the Outside In is a comprehensive, and creative, guide to making the most f the future of the field.
Charles A. Coonradt & Lisa Ann Thomson
The Better People Leader
[Gibbs Smith, 128 pp., $18.95]
Better people leaders overcome the lazy manager mentality and embrace an active manager mentality. Find out how to motivate, inspire, empower, and lead your teams to greatness they didn’t know they had, greatness that even surpasses that of their better people leader!
Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success [Portfolio, 240 pp., $25.95 ]
Many people consider Apple the most powerful brand in the world. Companies around the world try to emulate Apple’s creative genius and superb marketing. But what’s the real secret to Apple’s success? According to Ken Segall, the man who put the “i” in iMac and served as a member of Steve Jobs’ creative inner circle for more than a decade, the answer is: simplicity.
The 11 Laws of Likability: Relationship Networking… Because People Do Business with People They Like [AMACOM, 240 pp., $16.95]
Everyone knows how important networking is, because at the base of every business relationship is a human one. But in practice, networking can often feel forced and robotic. Learn how to use this skill to build and maintain relationships in the most enjoyable and natural way possible.
Bob Vanourek and Gregg Vanourek
Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, And Enduring Organizations
[McGraw Hill, 272 pp., $28.00]
The Triple Crown of thoroughbred horseracing is known worldwide as the most elusive championship in all of sports. Bob and Gregg Vanourek draw on interviews with leaders at sixty-one organizations in eleven countries.
twsm Describe the 5 practices of triple crown leadership.
b&gv Triple crown leadership builds organizations that are excellent, ethical and enduring. This kind of leadership entails five practices. Head and Heart: Recruit for, develop, and reward personal character, emotional intelligence and cultural fit as well as skills and expertise. The Colors: Collaboratively set an inspiring purpose, values and vision for the organization and then bring them to life to build a culture of character. Steel and Velvet: Get beyond your natural leadership style, flexing between the hard and soft edges of leadership. Stewards: Empower people to act and lead by the shared values, encouraging them to step outside their traditional roles as stewards of the organization’s culture of character. Alignment: Collaboratively align the organization to achieve peak performance via ethical and sustainable practices.
twsm What is the Triple Crown analogy?
b&gv The Triple Crown (winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes horse races all in the same year) has been called “the most elusive championship in sports,” since only 11 horses have achieved it since 1875. And so it is with the three Es of leadership (excellent, ethical, and enduring): each one is challenging and achieving all three is exceedingly rare.
twsm What practices do you recommend for HR managers? b&gv HR managers have a big part to play in fostering triple crown leadership in their organizations. They should: Make sure that ethics training is mandatory for all staff and board members, coach employees on ethical and sustainable practices, make sure the organization publicly celebrates excellent, ethical, and enduring leadership, and ensure that there are confidential channels for employees to report concerns, and that there are follow-up systems for legitimate issues, among other responsibilities.•
Dennis Perkins
Leading at The Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition [AMACOM, 256 pp., $24.95]
From a group of 27 stranded polar explorers lost in the Antarctic comes a lesson about leaderhip. Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team survived obstacles – extreme temperaratures, scarce provisions, isolation, and natural hazards. But he and his group emerged from the experience not only alive but, miraculously, as a team.
we combine these two elements in order to complete our scripts, shoot our films, package our film proposals and look for finance and distribution. As any other enterprise, everything began with a dream, which eventually became a vision.
Lost Pictures is an independent London based film production company with a diverse and compelling film-slate. For investment opportunities or to know more contact: alex@lostpictures.co.uk
Esther Cameron & Mike Green
Making Sense of Change Management: A Complete Guide to the Models Tools and Techniques of Organizational Change
[Kogan Page, 502 pp., £29.99]
With a perspective geared towards professionals and students alike, Making Sense of Change Management examines managing and leading change in an organization. It covers key scenarios, including business restructure, mergers and acquisitions, cultural change and IT-based process change.
Alan Clardy, Ph.D.
The Management Training Tool Kit: 35 Exercises to Prepare Managers for the Challenges They Face Every Day [AMACOM, 240 pp., $34.95]
Equip yourself, or your managers, with all the tools your company needs with The Management Training Tool Kit. This guide supplies real-life case studies and analysis exercises for troubleshooting problems such as lowered morale, interpersonal conflict, decreased productivity, disruptive employees, sexual harassment claims, and others.
Ira G. Asherman
Negotiation at Work
[AMACOM, 353 pp., $34.92]
Every leader must negotiate in order to be effective, with staff and business partners alike. But learning how to do so is a process often fraught with questions. Asherman’s guide teaches negotation skills, developed a foundation of listening, conflict resolution and self-awareness.
In the Shadow of the Dragon:
The Global Expansion of Chinese Companies--and How It Will Change Business Forever
[AMACOM, 304 pp., $27.95]
Chinese companies have now entered higher-end markets, including technology, financial services, transportation, and energy, and are emerging as powerhouse multinationals. In the Shadow of the Dragon is a meticulously researched and fascinating exposé of the most competitive companies in China.
Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs:
The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It
[Wharton Digital Press, 128 pp., $12.99]
In Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs, Cappelli points to the latest research to debunk myths about why jobs are going unfilled, proving that employers often stand in the way of their own success by maintaining bad hiring methods and unrealistic expectations.
Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know [Center Street, 368 pp., $24.99]
Work Happy is a one-stop shop for leaders: it’s a workshop, training camp, and manual, all in one! Author Jill Geisler shows you how to improve your workplace with helpful tips on how to treat employees, communicate effectively, and gauge the health of your workplace.
Getting out of the crisis, improving organizational performance and increasing your success by linking science and business: in the last three talks we looked at degrowth, internal communication and corporate organization.
"Anyone who believes that exponential growth can continue indefinitely in a finite world is a fool or an economist."
These provocative words by Kenneth Boulding opened the third Creative Talk. From the beginning, Creative Talks aim to transfer the models of modern science, ecology and complexity, to the world of work, to see if they can work in companies and their increasingly complex management.
Biology teaches us that in nature (except for some rare cases) organisms grow continuously. Human beings grow in height and weight, only until the age of development, and then their body stops growing. The same thing happens to other animals and most plants. Nature, in short, can handle the stunting of “natural” growth. Serge Latouche in his Farewell to Growth says "in this situation, it is urgent to rediscover the wisdom of the snail. In fact the snail not only teaches us the virtue of slowness, but there is a lesson even more essential. The snail constructs the delicate architecture of its shell by adding ever increasing spirals one after the other, but then it abruptly stops and winds back in the reverse direction. In fact, just one additional larger spiral would make the
shell sixteen times bigger. Instead of being beneficial, it would overload the snail.” Growth must therefore have a limit. Finding the limit, for a company (organization) as well as in nature (organism), means finding a life balance. But balance is not enough; even during a growth phase, firm rules should be imposed, such as the speed of growth and the structure you want to grow. Some experiments have been proposed to allow participants to think about this topic. Between soap bubbles and expanding gas, the group discussed growth, the degrowth and states of balance. At the end of the day convergence was evident in the company as in biology, the healthy growth of an organism or organization should include all parts, cell by cell, tissue to tissue, organ by organ. This is perhaps the most important lesson we should learn from nature, when we think of the growth of our company.
LEARNING FROM ANTS Internal communication is a very complex issue, for which many companies are looking for a solution. According to employees and managers, it appears that information does not circulate: people
Physics boom. On 4 July, 2012, scientists at CERN succeeded in making some particles collide with tremendous energy. After causing this "incident," the researchers went to count the pieces left after the impact. Astonishingly, the collection seems to have led to the identification of an elementary particle (a boson), provided by the Standard Model and the physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, which would explain much of the stability of the universe, including the existence of matter and dark energy. This finding could be very important as the Higgs boson is responsible for mass transportation between the other elementary particles.
The results of their recent work include comprehensive reports on perceived attractiveness of companies and trends in recruitment channels in Finance, FMCG and IT Consulting. Some findings:
• Financial Health Deciding Factor Globally long-term job security is the single most important factor in choosing to work for a specific company, but in regard to Finance, FMCG and IT Consulting, respondents choose financial health as the most important driver.
• Attractiveness Per Geography Finance is viewed as more attractive in Italy, Spain and India compared to 2011. Finance is also popular in Singapore. In Japan however, Finance is the least attractive sector of all. Finance is considered reasonably attractive in Belgium, Germany, New Zealand and the UK.
dell.com gallup.com harrison-consultants.com/au ihrd.ac.in outotec.com randstad.com teamlease.com theubgroup.com
The theme: Technology for HRM Effectiveness, Asia’s financial capital Mumbai, India saw this gathering of nearly 27 eminent speakers representing various buckets of Human Resources corporations from India and MNCs.
Addressing difficult questions One of the first questions that have been troubling most HR personnel in the last few years is that several employees leaving organizations of all sizes. While technology has its own place in HR effectiveness, how does one deal with the current rate of attrition, which is a serious issue? Survo Raychaudhari from UB Group Bengalaru explains, “Technology plays a dominant role in its ability to plan manpower better, considering that attrition is a real business challenge and here to stay. Attrition is not something we can control through technology alone. There are organizational
cultural quotients and engagement effectiveness challenges requires to be focused on.” And to the same query, Surabhi Gandhi of Team Lease Mumbai offered another justification; “A cyclic churn of talent inflow and outflow keeps the organization healthy & dynamic. Technology provides an optimal platform to capture exiting employee feedback and provide a 360-degree mechanism to address the gaps." Surabhi Gandhi develops few strategies for her organization:
• A standard compensation structure compatible with the market.
• A better job design
• Job Customization, i.e. roles developed tailor-made that suit individual needs
• Social Ties - creating social ties with former employees
• International careers
• Job location
• Industry sponsored educations & training
• A better work life balance
Full article on the website, blog and newsletter of Work Style
Specific experiments conducted at the recent Creative Talks discussions illustrate how scientific principles can be applied to business relationships.
from different sectors (although close) are not informed on the activities done by other groups and often discover that other people in the companies are doing the exact same thing but fail to collaborate. In Creative Talk #4 we tried to address this issue from the standpoint of biological science.
Biology teaches us that man is a strange social animal, an unusual mix of individualism and altruism. However, despite its faults, the homo sapien is still a social animal (just like bees and ants), always focusing on building relationships and organizations, such as where to live with his fellows (cities, companies, associations, etc.) . Yet while in some social insects, like ants or bees, the method of internal communication in their organization (the nest or hive) is almost perfect and can perfectly support their activities, in an organization founded by man, communication is imperfect and often hostile to the functionality of the organization. Starting from the observation of such places as the anthill and the beehive we learned how you can communicate effectively in complex organizations.
Science (in particular, neural networks) is beginning to explore new forms of intelligence, where communication and
Simple demonstrations at the Creative Talks effectively show how different chemical reactions often mirror daily interactions between cultural changes, employees and employers.
The challenge for HR professionals is to figure out how to look deep into the organization to find talented, visionary people with a passion for the future. In short, they need to anticipate the skills they will need in the future.
“HR Audit” training course at the Novotel Mumbai Juhu Beach, India August 22-24, 2012
Registration: CatherineF@marcusevanskl.com or call on +603 2723 6757.
Key topics to be covered are:
• Innovative HR Audit performance
• Adaptive response to current market condition and change management
• Developing the parameters of competency gap analysis
• Audit scope that captures intangibles and the tangible measures
• Customizing HR audit process that generates value creation
• Driving a transformational HR audit process rather than informational
Spearhead the deployment of HR audit mechanism to elevate your current strategic HR practices
The 2nd Annual Pan-European HR Forum 2012 took place May 10 –11, 2012 in Brussels. Partecipants include: 150 EMEA Human Resource directors.
According to Sam Bodley – Scott, Principal and Global Director of Strategy at Kepner-Tregoe leaders are “simply those who have followers,” and argues “one aspect of leadership is certainly clear and involving
thinking.” Good leaders are not necessarily wedded to always getting the right answer, as he explains, “let’s say that you’re setting a strategy and it’s a 100% good strategy. A good leader would recognize that they would compromise on a 100% and take it down to a 90% good if they can build consensus around the board-room table, because an unsupported, although good, strategy fails.”
There is a recurring theme that surrounds motivation at work. Marc Burrows and Michael Rooney, Partner and Director of the Tax Division at KPMG, explain how money is often not the only driver for employees, but is certainly in the top 3 drivers. “Looking at how you motivate
cooperation between individuals within the system play a key role. Swarm intelligence is a term coined for the first time in 1988 by Gerardo Beni, which term takes into account the study of self-organizing systems, in which a complex action stems from a collective intelligence. According to the Beni’s definition, the swarm intelligence can be defined as "property of a system where the collective behavior of agents (not sophisticated), which interact locally with the environment, produces the emergence of functional patterns in the global system."
During the meeting we have discussed this subject, starting from simple experiments on concepts such as "sampling" of information, tuning, synchronization, and tags.
We found that in ant colonies the majority of information processing is based on simple chemicals: pheromones. To communicate with other individuals, ants secrete a small and finite number of chemicals. These chemical signals are just the key to understanding the logic of swarm. When compared with human language, the communication system and the protocols of the ants may seem rough, being composed of little more than ten or twenty signs, but this very simplicity,
linked to a goal shared by the anthill, the ants can do emergence of a higher intelligence that seems bigger than the sum of individual intelligence, allowing the survival and the achievement of unexpected objectives.
"We cannot expect things to change, if we keep doing the same things. The crisis is the greatest blessing to the people and nations, because crises bring progress. Creativity comes from anxiety as the day comes from the dark night. It’s in the crisis that inventiveness, discoveries, and big strategies arise. Those who overcome crises, overcome themselves, without being 'overtaken.’ "
With this brilliant Einstein’s analysis we began our Creative Talk #5, on Darwinism and corporate organization. This has highlighted the relationship between change and adaptation, process that in nature, as well as, perhaps, in corporations brings everything to take either the road to extinction or to survival. This is according to Darwin’s theory of evolution from the mid-19th century.
Today, in biology, evolution means the gradual and continuous accumulation of
Representatives from 200 companies gathered for Mercer’s Latin American and Caribbean HR Forum 2012 (Miami, USA, May 21-24) to discuss recent workplace changes and challenges, and to brainstorm and innovate solutions.
A key seminar was presented by Javier Tabakman, and Pete Foley, exploring the results of Mercer’s 2011 Inside Employees’ Minds survey, which was
completed by more than 30,000 employees in 17 countries, with an emphasis on the findings from the three Latin American countries that took part: Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. The Inside Employees’ Minds survey represents a host of interesting challenges. One particularly interesting finding concerns employees’ shifts in perception of value. Explains Pete Foley, “This is one of the burning questions – we clearly know the value proposition, what employees want out of an employer is shifting. The big question is has it shifted so much that it can’t come back? Its certainly not going back to the Old
[W belgacom.be google.com ie.edu iese.edu kepner-tregoe.com kpmg.com mercer.com mcdonalds.com regus.com taleo.com
your employees, it is really finding the right balance between the right awards strategy for them, as well as showing flexibility and that they’re cared for and their welfare is taken care of” says Rooney. According to Marc Burrows, another important driver is transparency, but also “the opportunities to do something enriching both on a personal and professional level,” asserts Burrows.
Employees are often seen as number or are “not allowed” to show emotions in the workplace, Juan Humberto Young, Academic Director at IE University, begs to differ. There are 2 more trends that we will most certainly see in the future: “one is towards supporting and helping
employees gain a better understanding of the emotional infrastructure of work says Young. A second trend is towards training for mental fitness, so any type of training that helps employees to become more resilient and stress-resistant.“
Change is driven by globalization, technology and consumer behavior, but in order to stimulate it, companies need to be able to localize and to empower leaders to own the change they need to make. According to Alison Esse, Marketing Director of The Storytellers, one way to embrace change is “to create one, single, unifying story on why there’s a need to change, and what is the rationale for it and the reasons why a change is necessary. ”
changes that, in a sufficiently large period of time, leads to significant changes in the characteristics of living organisms of a species.
This process is based on the transmission of the genome of an individual to his offspring and the interference interposed by random mutations (mistakes in the transmission of DNA).
Although changes between one generation and another are usually small, their accumulation over time (thousands or millions of years) can bring a significant change in the population, to the point that a new species can emerge (speciation). Change and natural-selection have only granted continuous adaptation to a habitat, which is also constantly changing.
The important thing we have highlighted and discussed during the meeting is that, in nature, evolution does not lead to either an improvement or a deterioration or a more complex organism, but only to the survival of organisms and to ever evolving species.
The link between biology and the corporate world the group discussed and on which we have carried out some experiments involved the following parallels:
1. The gene pool of the species (DNA) is comparable to knowledge and knowhow of a company (whose products are a result).
2. Interference (or random mutations), between one generation and the other (thus the changes in DNA) is comparable to the difference (even random) knowledge and intelligence within the company.
3. Natural-selection is transferred within the company and it is similar to the relationship established between the company (its knowledge and its products) and the market or environment (customers, other companies, finance, micro and macro economies, laws, governments, etc.).
4. The speciation, in other words the creation of new species from old ones, can be likened to a "spin-off" company. Based on these assumptions, we analyzed how participants’ experiences could be linked to this metaphor. The discussion has given us many great suggestions and ideas, that make us believe that organizations and organisms, companies and biology are, after all, not that different.•
Deal, but the question is, can we fashion a new deal by making some changes better in line with what Millenials want? Or, are we just going to permanently see lower loyalty now because the paradigm’s shifted? There are several potential answers, he argues. “One of the hypotheses out there, and there are many, is that younger workers have seen what’s happened to their parents, the older generations, and they look at the workforce differently. Another hypothesis, related, is that they’re looking for something truly unique. It’s not that they’re seeing their parents treated differently, it’s just
that they want something different out of the employment relationship. They want to be institution for two or three years, and they want to move on and they want to have that rotation and movement across their career.”
Another key highlight of the seminar was, given the changing healthcare landscape in many countries, the development of healthcare and wellness programs.
Valparaiso, or “Valpo” for short, is a city that lies on the Chilean central coast and which has always been in a strategic location. As a port on the Pacific coast, the city played an important role in the second half of the 19th century, when it served as a major stopover for ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by crossing the Straits of Magellan. This role transformed the city into a real melting pot, with immigrants coming from all Europe and beyond bringing their cultural diversity. Today Valparaiso is still a multicultural city, and its port is an important hub for shipping of container freight: the city’s economy is in fact mainly based on exports. Valparaiso has a plains area near the coast, but its major surface spreads over the hills, in a jumble of multicolored clapboard homes and weathered Victorian buildings that create a maze of narrow passageways and streets. This architecture has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003 and this title contributed to Valparaiso's rebirth: the city now offers a vibrant cultural life and is fast improving its third sector.
A city that has been able to radically change itself by adapting to historical developments: this is Manchester. One of the most productive centers of cotton processing and leading city of the Industrial Revolution, the city suffered the changes in the industrial market and the Second World War bombings; thanks to several investments in renovation projects, today Manchester has an international services-based growing economy and is considered one of the best Europeans Cities in which locate a business (European Cities Monitor 2011) for its services, networks of transportation, educational system (especially its universities) and city council policies of improvement. The city commitment above environment, culture and leisure, held to the development of several cultural institutions, festivals, sporting events and various facilities that attract every year people from all around the world, not only for tourism but also for studying or working there.
Mariupol is a Ukrainian city close to Russian borders, which historical events from the Greek Diaspora to the Second World War brought people of many nationalities, but especially Russians, Greeks, Belarusians, Armenians, Jews and Ukrainians, together. Its location on the coast of the Azov Sea helped give rise the city, under the Russian Empire before (and under the Russian Federation later) as a transportation hub for rail and shipping. This fact, with the benefits of being an important place of iron and steel production, kept Mariupol as one of the driving cities of the Ukrainian economy, even today. But the city has also been able to open itself to other important fields for continuing its de velopment: nowadays it is home to prestigious higher education institu tions, important cultural and sporting events as well as to a growing tour ism industry.
The top 100 cities for workers over the next decade are profiled in a project put together by Work Style Company.
Illustration by Eelco Van den Berg Text by Maria C. CattoniAsk for our previous guides: Turin, São Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Denver, Ekaterinburg, Marseille, Lagos, Thessaloniki, Bergen, Kyoto, Albuquerque, Oporto and Blantyre.
Fraseburgh Petershead Inverness Elgin
The UK seems to have rediscovered its position in the world in 2012. But it has also gone through an awakening, where a series of financial and ethical scandals have shaken its once solid reputation for trust and integrity.
Montrose Arbroath St.Andrews Perth Glenrothes Kirkcaldy Dunfermline
Country area 661.9/sq
It is a Unitary Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy Reigned by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II II Population 62,262,000 inhabitants
Berwick-upon-Tweed East Kilbride Kilmamock
Greenock Ayr Dumfries Blynt Durham Hartepool Workington
Haverfordwest Milford Haven
Stockton-on-Tees
Official language English Regional languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Scots and UlsterScots, Welsh, Cornish
Whitehaven Southport
Glasgow Edinburgh Liverpool
Blackpool
Holyhead Bangor Caemarfon
Aberdeen Dundee Newscastle upon Tyne Middlesbrough Leeds Preston BoltonHuddersfield Manchester Sheffield Stocker-on-Trent Birmingham
York Hull Grimsby
Derby Nottingham
Aberystwyth
Camarthen Lianelli
Cardiff
Norwich Petersborough Cambridge Ipswich Colchester Chelmsford St Albans
Lowestoft Coventry Gloucester Oxford Swindon Reading Slough
Barnstaple Taunton Penzance Fallmouth
Northampton
Gillingham Southend-on-Sea
Exeter
Bodmin Torquay Exmouth
Bournemouth Portsmouth Southampton
Weymouth
Isle of Man London Bristol Plymouth
Leicester Brigton Eastbourne
Bath Beckenham Hastings Newquay Truro St. Ives
Crawley
John Stevens is a Londoner. It is how he defines himself and it is probably how is father, working nights as a butcher in the city’s main meat market, Smithfield, also once defined himself. As a student, he turned down the opportunity of studying mathematics at Durham University, because he couldn’t stand being far from his mom and his beloved Arsenal Football Club, the place he calls home. Now in his 50s, he symbolically chose to locate his accountancy firm a literal stone’s throw from Smithfield Market. You get the feeling he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.
“
It means opportunity,” he says without a moment’s hesitation when asked to describe what London means to him.
“
You can cut out whatever you need here. Whether that be your business life, your personality… your sexuality. There are no restrictions.”
All too often, he points out, London –and England at large – is depicted in financial terms through the example of the still vibrant city or perhaps the inflated property prices that delight owners and leave most first-time buyers excluded. Easily forgotten is that the country still a hub for trade and higher education. And its political system, archaic and rigid in so many ways, is also among the most stable in the world. But it is the diversity of its residents, he says, which makes the place. England has evolved through the austere 70s, the yuppie 80s and the financially turbulent 90s. As for the start of the 21st century, the country is best described as a exhibiting a duality: as the euro zone burns financially, the English proudly wave their pounds to the rest of the world. At the same time, however, Britain’s economy is more indebted than
By THRASY PETROPOULOSany in the world other than Japan’s (see below). “There’s a starvation of cash at the moment. People aren’t spending as prolifically as they once did and Londoners, in general, are tighter with their money,” says John. “There’s still middle class money for things like food but there is less spending on clothes and the like. Banks aren’t lending to businesses. If you see money as energy, then there’s a lack of energy.”
But a lack of energy should not be confused with a lack of buzz. Because London is buzzing. The endearing British mix of the lovably quaint and the frigidly pompous was nowhere better seen than during Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations of 60 years on the throne. And after that, of course, comes the spirit of the London Olympics. Brits love to talk about the difficul-
Art critics now analyze the stencil-based techniques of canvas originals that began life as rain-splattered graffiti on random inner city buildings. It could only be Banksy, the (largely) anonymous English street artist who has done more than anyone to turn a subversive movement into an international art form. A product of the now iconic 1990s underground scene in Bristol, west England, Banksy is famous for guerilla art that is appreciated as much for its political and social commentary as it is for its originality.
Where stenciled graffiti is commonly seen as coming a distant second to hand-painted street art, Banksy has developed a style that allows him to master cardboard stencil cut-outs in a workshop and then reproduce the product with great detail and speed on an unsuspecting wall. His latest high-profile work was inspired by the Queen's Silver Jubilee, featuring a boy hunched over a sewing machine stitching Union Jack bunting. Produced on the outside of a Poundland store in the lessthan-salubrious district of Haringey, in north London, the message is a clear one: the exploited workers of the developing world fashioning the luxury items of the west, and all at a time of so-called national celebration.
[W banksy.co.uk]
01 Lenin on Rollerblades (Who Put the Revolution on Ice?) by Banksy. Courtesy of Bonhams
ties and thrills brought about by staging the Olympics in equal measure, just as they love to talk about their famously inclement weather. Local media recently reported that the Olympics – the bid for which was unexpectedly won back in 2005 thanks to the sustainability and regeneration plans for East London – could be worth 16.5bn pounds for London alone, driven mostly by construction projects. Where other host countries struggled to offload over-expensive tickets, London sold more than 90 percent of its tickets with just a fortnight to go before the Games.
“The Olympics of today are far-removed from the state-sponsored vanity projects of the 1970s and 1980s,” wrote Patrick Foley, chief economist at Lloyds Banking Group, in the Daily Telegraph. “They are now as much about redefining their host cities and providing a catalyst for regeneration.” The “happiness affect,” he added, would boost consumer spending.
And yet consider this assessment of a senior Morgan Stanley analyst, asked to
provide an overview of the UK economy for this article, and appearing here on condition of anonymity: “Like many other economies, the UK economy has too much debt. In fact, the UK economy is more indebted than all others except Japan’s, according to a McKinsey’s analysis, with debt running at 507% of GDP, well ahead of its European neighbors –Spain’s is 363% and Germany’s 278%.
The UK’s debt position deteriorated significantly during the period of the last Labor government in office, ballooning from 310% in 2000. The figures are inflated by the UK’s relatively large banking sector but consumer debt is still relatively high verses peers. Government debt is actually less troubling, at 81% of GDP, although it rose under Labor with little tangible benefit.”
He continued: “As a result of this and the government’s action to bring down the public sector debt over time, the bond market has remained relatively relaxed about lending to the UK, and the 10-year-gilts yield is at a record low of 1.55%.” Mixed signals, in other words.
But there is also a clear warning: “Cutting the deficit may, however, prove dif-
ficult given the addiction to welfare that has built up in the last 20 years. Difficult decisions lay ahead with social unrest a risk.” The student riots of 2010 are, of course, still an unsavory memory for all Londoners.
But the soul-searching that followed the looting and violence of the extreme end of those protests against state spending cuts in higher education couldn’t be further from the enthusiasm and confidence of Thilini de Silva, the marketing coordinator of London Vision Clinic, which specializes in corrective surgery. Thilini, born in Sri Lanka and raised in Australia, represents the international, multicultural and dynamic workforce to be found in the British capital. She talks with a smile and wide eyes about the experience of the daily commute on the London underground (“It’s like the United Nations”) and about the ability to fit in, whatever your character (“You can have purple hair and people won’t even give you a second glance”).
“I came to England two years ago, straight from Melbourne, as the reces-
The manager's photo were taken by Jonni TM. He is an Icelandic born, award winning graphic designer, turned photographer, based in London, England and Oslo, Norway. Has has 20 odd years of experience from identity and packaging design for both large and small agencies. In 2005 Jonni turned his full attention to photography, shooting predominantly for advertising, mostly automotive and product photography. Jonni is well known for his intricate composite photography, portraiture and fashion projects. He's a partner and photographic director for Katachi Magazine. His work has been feature in numerous magazines and books worldwide.
Wilson Stevens is an approachable firm, offering a wide range of first class services which are not only technically excellent but also delivered in a personal and friendly way. The firm’s partners and staff are as diverse as their clients. As a strong team, they possess the skill base required to help clients become “the best they can”. At Wilson Stevens they take the boredom out of accountancy, whilst at the same time being professional, compliant and intelligent.
01 Office details
02 John Stevens, owner of Wilson Stevens Accountants [W wilsonstevens.co.uk
sion here was ending. When you graduate in Australia they teach you not to make any rash decisions, not to leave the country because they typically have graduate jobs lined up for you. I got a bachelor’s degree in commerce, majoring in accounting. The view from Australia was that everywhere else was in recession and London was the worst place to go. But I came and it worked out. I love it here.”
Crucially, she is working for a successful company, set up ten years ago by school friends Craig Engelfried (managing director) and Dan Reinstein (head surgeon and medical director), London Vision Clinic entered the yearly awards for the first time last year. Thilini explains how the staff was thrilled to simply be included in the top 25 and was left speechless when they ranked second. “There is so much love at this office space,” she says. “It is like a family. There is attention to your wellbeing. The management is accommodating. When one person’s down, the others work extra hard to fill the gap.” A staff of 20 two years ago has now swelled to 45. “We just had our tenth anniversary party at
London Zoo, where we asked patients to bring along anyone they felt might need eye surgery… To meet our surgeons and optometrists in a different environment, not clinical… To make sure they feel comfortable,” says Thilini. And confident, she might have added. It is not for no reason that the clinic –which mostly performs PRK (photorefractive keratectomy) and Lazik (laserassisted sub-epithelial keratectomy) surgeries and can see upwards of 100 patients a day – is located on Harley Street, a prestigious central London street associated with high-end medical care. They are selling reputation and trust as much as medical talent.
That is not to gloss over the fact that unemployment in the country is on the rise. The Guardian recently wrote that Britain is on course for returning to the days of 3 million people out of work, last seen in the early 90s. In May, joblessness reached 2.61 million, a rate of 8.2%. Almost 1 million of those have apparently been without work for more than a year.
The consequence – if your line of work supports it – is to be self-employed. And here, at least, there is more on offer than in other countries, with National Insurance (healthcare and pension contributions) relatively low and clear tax incentives.
Cecilie Barstad and her partner in both life and work, Gilles Jourdan, have never had it any other way, having set up a graphic design business shortly after graduating from London’s Central St Martins, one of the premier arts and design colleges in the world. Working from their second-floor central London studio, Cecilie – a Norwegian – gives the impression of loving England and all that it has to offer.
The MoneyGram brand is recognized throughout the world as a leading global payment services company. The diverse array of products and services offered enable consumers and businesses to make payments and transfer money around the world. From New York to Russia or London to India - in more than 194 countries
- MoneyGram's money transfer service moves money quickly and easily around the world.
[W moneygram.com]
01 Mark Perryman is the Senior Regional Director of MoneyGram
02 MoneyGram’s London office reception
Gilles & Cecilie Studio is a French/Norwegian partnership based in London providing illustration based design and art direction for various clients in a wide range of sectors. Their signature largescale murals have been commissioned by private persons and corporate clients as Paul Smith, Pepsico and HÀG. We have produced work for clients in the UK, USA, Japan, Italy, Norway, France and Brazil.
[W gillesandcecilie.com]
03 Cecilie Barstad’s artwork
04 Cecilie Barstad’s inspiration
05 Cecilie Barstad’s inspiration
06 Cecilie Barstad, mirror reflection
07 Cecilie Barstad just outside her studio in the Shoreditch district in London
08 Cecilie Barstad takes a break
“We began working here after graduating and liked the network we started to build up,” she says. “London for us was neutral ground – we didn’t need to decide whether to move to Norway or France, where Gilles is from. Also, England is quite an easy place in which to set up a business. You don’t need much paperwork and you can start with just one pound in the bank. In Norway you have to think how much you will earn in the first year, maybe submit a business plan, and then prepay the taxes. Here, you don’t have to register for VAT until you earn more than 60,000 pounds which gives you a few years before you reach that limit – obviously depending on the earning potential of what you do.” Cecilie & Gilles (the way they brand themselves) now have a solid client base, around 70 percent of it abroad where, Cecilie explains, the prestige of being able to cut it in as competitive an environment as London counts.
Also, she explains, there is inspiration everywhere in London, especially for graphic designers who prefer to carve out a name for themselves based around a unique style rather than conforming to market norms.
“Just cycling around is inspiring – not taking the same road to work every day, going down different streets, being curious,” she says. “Cycling from Highbury to Shoreditch, past villas and parks and trees… There’s a little café on Highbury Corner called Maison d’Etre, a small and friendly business with great brioch-
es and jam. I go there in the morning from 7.30 to 9. I love the different parts of London – Soho, Shoreditch, Covent Garden, Notting Hill, Brixton for their specialities – London is really a city of mini villages. And I love spending time in some of the museums – the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern, but particularly the Tate Britain with the rooms upstairs with Bacon, Singer Sargent and other British painters.”
Being British is, of course, something that the country trades on: a reputation for honesty, integrity and quality. Or, at least, that’s the theory. The great British reputation has come in for a beating of late. First it was the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009, where MPs were found to be routinely misusing permitted allowances – some in excess of 100,000 pounds each. Then came the News of the World and wider phone-tapping scandal associated with the Murdoch newspaper empire, where the ethics of a large section of Britain’s journalism were laid bare for all judge.
And most recently there has been the Libor scandal, where interest rates were manipulated being in British financiers and beyond.
All three have been viewed as proof of an erosion of professional ethics, or perhaps an indication that the ethics in some fields that have long traded on their solid reputation were actually never what they claimed to be. This is nowhere more sensitive than in the services sector that has overtaken manufacturing as Britain’s core commercial edge, and particularly the financial services that are epitomized by London’s world famous Square Mile –otherwise known as the City.
There are, however, still those who are willing to vouch for England’s financial integrity and point out that – beyond the notable examples – its status still holds strong. Notably, all the above scandals were exposed in the press and have involved vigorous investigations, some of them criminal. In the case of the ongoing Leveson enquiry into media standards, former prime ministers were called in for cross examination. Added to that, many international financial institutions seek a City address as much now as during
the strutting 80s. “Financial services are still a very important part of the UK economy,” explains Mark Perryman, Senior Regional Director of MoneyGram for the UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries. “As Britain’s manufacturing heyday is well behind us, something had to take its place and that is the services industry, and financial services are very much a part of that.”
Explaining the location of the money transfer company’s regional headquarters, he said: “we are based in EC4 - the City of London. If you travel around the City from 8am to 7pm the energy and hubbub on the streets is amazing. You can see everyone going to work and engaged in all the various companies.”
He continued: “And of course we also have another commercial center that has emerged in the last 10 years or so in Canary Wharf, a previously run down area east of the City of London. Through a process of regeneration a mini financial city has emerged there and all the major players – not just UK names but also Japanese, American and other worldwide banks and trading companies –now have a presence there. Going back
The London Vision Clinic is a medical facility offering LASEK and LASIK surgery. They are the only clinic to offer Laser Blended Vision since 2005 - a treatment aimed at resolving the need for reading glasses.
[W londonvisionclinic.com]
01 A sunny day on the London Vision Clinic’s patio
02 Thilini De Silva, Marketing Coordinator of the London Vision Clinic
03 Dan Reinstein, Head Surgeon and Medical Director of the London Vision Clinic
04 Craig Englefried, Managing Director of the London Vision Clinic
05 Flight Centre office exterior
centuries, the UK has always had a trading history and if you have international trade, international finance tends to go along with that. I think the UK still has a strong reputation for honesty, transparency and lack of corruption, and the imposition of the rule of law. Geographically we are also well placed, with the US to the west and Asia to the east. Asia occupies the morning and the US the evening and night. Business is a truly 24-hour operation and that can only be to the UK’s advantage.”
It’s hardly surprising, then, that MoneyGram – which is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and operates in almost 200 countries and has a network of approximate 260,000 locations from which money can be transferred and received within 10 minutes – has developed into a 1 billion US dollar a year business.
That said, with video conferencing and the ease of electronic communication, it begs the question of whether it is still important to invest so deeply in a central London regional base rather than opt for a cheaper location on the city outskirts.
“It would be a very sad day when local communication and contact with people
Many of the UK's Best Workplaces are either headquartered in London or have an operation in London and may be headquartered elsewhere. Two key sectors are well represented - professional services sector and financial. This is our 12th successive year of awarding UK companies. The current work climate has obviously been impacted by the same economic factors affecting much of the western world.
But the UK economy is not all doom and gloom – in fact, the latest figures show that it is outperforming the Euro zone! According to the report, the British economy has weathered the global weakness rather well. And our own research shows that Best Workplaces are in a better position than non-Best Workplaces to withstand difficult economic conditions.
TOM O’BYRNEtax and National Insurance, cutting bureaucratic red tape, and providing more leadership/ management/entrepreneurial support to business to help them strategically plan their businesses growth
Great Place to Work UK 2012
Category: Large 01 Admiral 02 Capital One Europe Plc 03 McDonald's Restaurants 04 Quintiles Ltd. 05 Beaverbrooks the Jewellers 06 Microsoft Ltd 07 Bright Horizons Family Solutions 08 Telefonica UK Ltd 09 Flight Centre UK 10 Ernst & Young Ltd
Flight Centre Limited (FLT) is one of the world’s largest travel agency groups, with more than 2000 leisure, corporate and wholesale businesses in 11 countries. FLT’s rapidly expanding network now extends throughout Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Hong Kong, India, China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. After starting with one shop in the early 1980s, FLT has enjoyed remarkable ongoing growth. The company employs more than 13,000 people globally and has more than 30 brands, including the flagship Flight Centre leisure brand.
The economy depends on the companies in the private sector to create wealth and, in the context of large cuts in public spending, it is even more imperative the private sector is able to create jobs. This means new start-ups as well as existing businesses being able to grow. Whilst the government recognizes this, the support is not always there, can be difficult to find, is biased regionally (i.e. support more easily available in some parts of the country than others) or simply is insufficient. Companies, particularly SMEs, are affected by increased government red tape and lack of loans from banks which they need to help fund business expansion. They also face skills shortages. Apprenticeship schemes, which help give young people the support they need in finding meaningful jobs and a skill – and providing companies with the skilled workforce they need now and long term – are improving but the financial support offered is not always sufficient and/or can be difficult to obtain. Examples of how the government can help existing companies would include: reducing corporation
Category: Medium 01 Baringa Partners 02 Impact International 03 National Instruments Corp. (UK) Ltd. 04 Twinings UK & Ireland Ltd. 05 NetApp UK Ltd. 06 eBay 07 UKFast 08 Brand Learning Partners Ltd 09 Lansons Communcations 10 Softcat Ltd
Category: Small 01 Intuit 02 London Vision Clinic 03 Star 04 Virgo Health Ltd 05 Material Communications Group 06 Summer Isles Hotel 07 Timothy James Consulting 08 Amoria Bond 09 Seren Partners Ltd 10 Xoomworks
Great Place to Work® Institute UK Angel House 225 Marsh Wall London E14 9FW T + 44 870 608 8780 [W greatplacetowork.co.uk]
didn’t count for anything,” believes Perryman. “We’re dealing with stakeholders, the various regulatory bodies, the financial services authorities… Clearly there are huge advantages to being local and being able to meet and talk to people. I think there will always be that need for local operations wherever you’re headquartered.”
So when all is said and done, money still underpins much of what happens in England. And with money comes another industry for which England has become famous (or perhaps infamous): property.
And once again, we’re back to the country – and principally the capital – representing a duality that simultaneously rewards and excludes.
If you’re lucky enough to own a property in the UK, then odds are you’re sleeping on a hefty profit when it comes to capital gains. Where cash has dried up in other industries, property prices have maintained and often gained in value, even if sales have dipped. It can be explained by simple economics, says Chris Underhill, an established estate agent in north London who has lived through decades of steady – and sometimes steep – property price rises. Demand still outstrips supply, he explains. “I’m confident about the prime London market because the capital is short of approximately half a million homes. Demand has been consistently high and property values continue to show steady growth of between 3% to 4% per year right the way through the recession.”
He noted, however, that the property prices in his area of north London (Highgate and Muswell Hill, in particular) continue to exclude most first-time buyers, meaning that a generation of Londoners are still unable to get even a toe-hold on the market. “Property prices are so high in this part of London that you need about 250,000 pounds just to get onto the property ladder. Most local first- and second-time buyers are DINKYs –Double Income, No Kids Yet,” he says.
Describing himself as a local lad, born and bred, he has been selling property in
the area for 35 years, establishing Pricket Ellis & Underhill in 2000.
“
I’d find it impossible to move away from the vibrancy of the city and its incredible facilities, which I believe are second to none around the world, and its cosmopolitan feel,” he says.
The same is probably true of so many residents around the country. At the same time, however, the English have a singular motivation to leave their country as often as possible – even if only for a week at a time.
For all the talking up of the country, there is no getting away from the fact that England suffers for its climate. Famously miserable at the best of times, 2012 has been a particularly bad year. April was the wettest for a century and, just when locals thought it really couldn’t get any worse, this year’s June was the wettest since records began.
Flight Center UK – another company to make it on to the latest Best Place to Work UK listings – is testament to that, with Amy Lucas, the Group PR Manager explaining that it, too, has bucked the recessionary trend.
“We’ve just released our profit guidance for the 2011/2012 fiscal year and, despite the financial turmoil in Europe, the Flight Center Group UK is on track to deliver about 15 million pounds in earnings before interest and tax – 50% year on year growth.”
“People will make sacrifices elsewhere in order to go on holiday,” she explains.
“We’ve seen fewer people travelling to Australia but a rise in bookings to both the Indian Ocean and the USA. Thailand also remains a popular destination, with more of a sway towards last-minute European bookings. The weather in the UK has been particularly bad and people are looking for guaranteed sunshine with a favorable exchange rate.”
So a country that has a tendency to simultaneously reward and exclude is also one where in which many of its residents couldn’t imagine living anywhere else but are willing to (temporarily) leave at the drop of a hat.
Duality to the last. •
Behind a busy north London road, there is a small lane, not even one hundred meters long, with a few industrial lock-ups. These are home to a few local businesses including a car mechanic. Zuki is a 67 year old Turkish Cypriot, who when he first arrived in the UK, made his living as a fashion designer. He decided to change his profession however, after his love of speed and cars lead him to become a mechanic. He has recently re-located and now works alongside his friend Akin after losing his large garage little more than 500 meters away. He is a member of a skydiving and paragliding club and constantly seeking other thrills. His wife frequently asks him when he’s going to grow up, thinking he’s crazy. However whilst admitting he is an old man he says “speed and the sky are the limits for me.” Although the garage itself is a busy workplace, the atmosphere is more reminiscent of a Turkish coffee shop, friends and relatives will drop by to ask for advice, or just for an extended chat, with many staying for a whole morning, helping out with the various jobs if needed. Within all this, Zuki shows himself as a very astute shop floor philosopher, feeling that “anything and everything is possible in this world.”
Copyright © 2012 Alexander Walker is a documentary and reportage photographer based in London.
01 Cans of spray paint and lubricating oil.
02 Empty cans of lubricant and oils.
03 The office is open to anyone in the workshop.
04 Ibrahim Zuki has lived in north London since the early 1960’s.
05 Zuki and Ecevit ... at the end of a long, busy day.
06 Working underneath a classic Mini Cooper.
07 Akin, the workshop owner watches over Zuki, in a reflection.
08 Ecevit is one of the many assistants in the garage.
09 Zuki’s speciality is his coach work, taking great pride in being able to build and make anything “If I haven’t got it, I can create it, out of the blue”
10 A London minicab driver waits.
11 In a break from work on the underside of the car.
12 Occasionally there is no work. lubricating oil.
Work spaces mingle with the city to create a new visual dimension.
In the age of cognitive capitalism in a digital commonism the words industry and factory might seem unsuitable to describe current architecture.
Today the reference hypertext is the territory itself, or better the “landscape” intended as territory perceived with our cultural sensitivity with which we always interact generating a variety of relations. Industrial settlements, thanks to the evolution of means of transport, of energetic and symbolic building protocols, are not thought of a separated and insulated one, but becomes a piece of landscape, of the urban place, a display of multiple relations between production and city, and between the environmental context and the surrounding communities. This is just because industrial buildings are, above all, tools that must work the best way possible; and that also need tuning in with the external activities, the spatial and cultural contexts where it lies. Moreover the humanization of construction and of industry is one of the constant aims of architecture. In our opinion the most interesting latest-generation-examples seem to capture a need of architectural thematization, thanks to which buildings move away from the blind alley of mass-production warehouses brutal functionalism and from techno-stylistic aberrations.
The deep quality of Jean Nouvel intervention at “Kilometro Rosso” on the Milan-Venice highway (Technological Park Brembo), a huge metallic, 12 meters high and one kilometer long display, is evident. A primordial architectonic gesture, works like a reinterpretation of some similar late modern intuitions (even before the studies of Lynch and Virilio, see the Firestone
plants in Los Angeles by Pereira Luckman architects, 1958) that perfectly fit as reference to the typical careless and dynamic perception of the building along the road. Theme is, from the medieval walls of Monteriggioni to now, the construction of an artificial horizon, or better of an adaptation by assimilation of the qualities of the place. We find again, with a different declination, something similar in an Archea’s build-
01 Black cube, Kilometro Rosso, Kilometer 0, Greenfactories
02 Jean Nouvel, Kilometro Rosso, Tech-park Brembo Spa, Curno, 2007
03 Medieval Walls
ing for the Perfetti plant in Lainate, near Milan. Here the precinct becomes the screen, stretch metal wattle dotted with glass circles, who contains and at the same time shows both gardens, offices and stores, creating a sophisticated game of references between material features of products (the famous candies), and the nearby Villa Litta’s fountains. Architectonical condition is that of
[W archea.it batlleiroig.com carlosarroyo.net fabrica.it friem.com geza.it herault-arnod.fr kilometrorosso.com nestle.com novartis.com onsitestudio.it oos.com perfettivanmelle.it rojkindarquitectos.com rossignol.com salewa.it unesco.com zucchiarchitetti.com]
04 "The whole humanity wear or has worn masks. Entire civilizations haven't learned about the wheel, or worse, never used it eventhough they knew it. However all of them have has a familiarity with the mask." Roger Callois, The Mask of Medusa, 1964. 05—06 Onsitestudio, FRIEM warehouses and new offices, Segrate (MI), 2011. The architecture of middlesize industries: an appropriate and reasonable decoration.
05 06
the precinct, but by now an ambivalent precinct, both separating and unifying. In other examples the precinct and lattice themes subtly glide on the coating theme, always for the same aims.
The cases of Friem factories (inverters production) by Onsitestudio, again close to Milan, or in a minor version the Novartis Cube by OOS architects in Switzerland (Stein-Saeckingen), similarly use a folded and perforated stretch metal skin for their façades; finding, in the first case, a sophisticated balance between internal and external requirements, and unifying “grey areas” such as mechanical installations configured as vertical elements or towers. They are both cultured and popular architectures, they don’t show themselves, but rather they are able to veil and dissimulate the necessary effort hidden behind an apparent simplicity.
Paraphrasing Roger Callois and his book “Mask of Medusa,” architecture has to do much more with the mask rather than with the wheel, much more with a kind of rituality rather than with the machines that produce it. This mask does not obscure, but on the contrary highlights that all inhabitants, users, workers belong to a truly common identity, a place where they feel good.
The great contemporary theme, within the construction, of integration and assimilation of landscape features happen in various ways and in different intensities. The instances of Cino Zucchi Salewa’s headquarters (Bolzano), of the new Rossignol facility by Herault-Arnod (Jeans de Moirans) and of the waste treatment plant by Battle i Roig (Vacarisses), are three seminal variations on
the theme. In the first case the construction, with a very articulate program, appears as a minor scale version of the surrounding alpine scene, a great boulder deposited in the valley and close to the highway. Both chromatic aspects of natural elements (dolomite stones) and designed ones, succeed in understanding as part of a process of formation that is valid for both. The building is a landscape built in architectonical terms. Indeed the big rock-climbing wall is intended as a façade, a clear reference to the previous argument.
04 07 08 09 10
In the case of the Rossignol facility, again in alpine area, if something in the general shape sounds like the firm products (ski), there is also an evident respect for the internal program and for the peculiarities of the adjacent landscape, almost incorporated within interior spaces dominated by huge “boiserie.” Battle i Roig’s building, an enormous and slightly folded surface among green mountains, investigates the limits of architectonical gestures between camouflage and anti-camouflage.
It is an artificial nature, but precisely for this an nth power nature, a cultivated nature like in a futuristic greenhouse. This is again a transformation strategy, but in this case special effects are “do not see what is there,” or the underneath and damaged former plant, with which designers engage an amazing grapple. These are architectures that are able to be popular and cultured together, as in certain successful contemporary movies. Sometimes they made it with few means, like doing a portrait of a known face in the crowd. It is the case of the archetypical shed-and-office Pratic in Fagnana by Geza. The lack of makeup here is a mighty “trick,” a learned re-elaboration of the world as found. Obviously the previous list leaves out many things, for instance the fact that the designer’s formal achievements are in a close relation to inhabitants and actors who run through the scene. How much designer’s ethic and aesthetic approach implies constraints to these involved subjects? How much a building must stay in the backdrop? It’s difficult to give a univocal response and possibly we have to go case by case.
Take two interesting examples: the refurbishment by Carlos Arroyo of a former Coca-Cola factory in Oostcampus (Belgium) and the Nestle Research laboratories in Queretaro (Mexico) by Rojkind architects. Both buildings are involved with formal themes of spherical vaults, which play a prominent role though moving from very different technologies. Formal kinship between these two building arises from two very different representations of the realm
Mimetism. The factory blends with the city, ideologies with communication, politicians between them (they transmit content if overlapped). Contaminations exist in architecture just as in society
where they are inserted. While in the first case creation of forms serves to build an internal and heavy articulated landscape, the opposite of the boring external envelope, in the second case inside and outside spaces are continuously and reciprocally related. There is more: in the first case the formal elaboration arises as counterpoint to a general operation of recovery and renewal, in the second there is a reference to municipality rules that impose a reuse of vaults and arches as a dutiful tribute to the local tradition. The city of Queretaro is protected by Unesco. This is because of its famous arched aqueduct that makes it a kind of Latin American Segovia.
As it often happens, comparable results come from very distant paths and patterns. It’s clear that industrial architecture, which was so admired by early modern architects as an authentic symptom of the era we live in, and equally
Pascal Fellonneau is a French photographer exploring landscapes, from his hometown Bordeaux to Paris where he lives. An important part of his work questions the urban scene as we inhabit it. His pictures depict strange yet familiar landscapes often devoid of humanity.
All the images are from French presidential election 2012 posters.
11 Martine Aubry + Jean-Pierre Chevènement
12 François Bayrou
13 François Hollande
14 Nicolas Sarkozy
15 Nicolas Sarkozy
[W pascal.fellonneau.free.fr]
stigmatized among non-experts, today is something in deep transformation, something that is already a “palimpsest” for future and unpredictable developments.•
60% of Japanese consider corporate life equally important to personal life, and 13% consider corporate life the central concern of their life. As astonishing it might be for westerners to understand this different hierarchy of values, it’s a fundamental dimension linked to dependence and social obligation.
It is 8:30 am on the Yamanote Line, the circle line that for 20 hours a day and every 3 minutes takes Tokyo residents to destinations across the central part of the city. Two things captured my attention when I first moved to Tokyo: one is people not caring about their personal belongings as in other countries, where you always check if your wallet and phone are still where you put them, because Tokyo is probably the safest city in the world. And the second thing that struck me? The many passengers sleeping on the circle train.
I've always asked myself how the Japanese can fall asleep so easily, not only on trains but in restaurants, cafes, a bench in a park or in designated relaxing areas in the malls and libraries. This is the Japanese way of dealing with overwork and lack of sleep. It’s a way to quickly recover from the fatigue that affects many “salary men” and “office ladies” as they are called here. For many Japanese, the working hours are extremely long. To the contractual 8 or so hours in the office you need to add at least another 2 hours of overtime and another 2 to 3 of commuting time.
Often the day starts with an alarm clock at 6am in order to be in the office at 9am, and ends at midnight when many blue and white collars finally reach their homes. It seems like there has been zero contagion effect from western countries, where in the last 50 years people gradually choose more free time, even if sometimes detrimental to their income. There are many reasons for this behavioral pattern. And they all lead to the completely different type of society Japan is based on. If in western countries the most important entity is the individual, and the
celebration of the uniqueness of an individual life, Japan is the most collective society in the world -- more collective than other Asian countries. Therefore the goal of the country, the company or the community will be always predominant over personal goals.
CORPORATE LIFE VS. PERSONAL LIFE 60% of Japanese consider corporate life equally important to personal life, and 13% consider corporate life the central concern of their life. As astonishing it might be for westerners to understand this different hierarchy of values, it’s a fundamental dimension linked to “amae,” the concept of dependence, and “giri,” social obligation. Without decodifying these two culturally distinctive characters, it’s impossible to even scratch the surface of the Japanese mind. In a historically isolated country like Japan, surviving always meant helping each other and maintaining social harmony. The relationship between a traditional Japanese company and its employees is still close to a modern feudal style, where the company expects loyalty, endurance (“gambari") and gratitude from its employees. In exchange for many years, Japanese companies used to guarantee lifetime jobs, where seniority rather than performance would be praised with promotions, and higher salaries.
Therefore overtime “Zangyo” is not an exception, it is the standard. And it’s usually unpaid, though now many companies compensate financially, which again encourages many young employees to stay longer in the office, because the salaries are extremely low – especially after graduation. Also, subordinates won’t leave their desks until their supervisor or
Satoshi Tomiyama is a photographer specializes in black&white, but also urban, architectural and transportation photography. His series Industrial Overdose portrays images of industrial impact in his city (02 — 03 — 04). All photos are by Satoshi Tomiyama from the series Industrial Overdose, with the exception of the "shot of color" by Peter Conrad (01).
boss has left. It would be showing lack of respect. It has nothing to do with real work. Even if done with your daily work, you can’t just leave before your manager. And often, especially male workers have to go for drinks with the team to reinforce the sense of group belonging. Nowadays, after 20 years of economic stagnation, some companies started to break this silent agreement, though mainly through offering compensation packages to encourage people to voluntarily leave the company. This also helps to save face, which is another fundamental need to keep the harmony in the society. Japanese unemployment is just around 4% which is the lowest among highly developed countries, though if Japanese companies would adopt the same productivity and cost efficiency
measures like in other countries, unemployment would be much higher… maybe in the double digits.
But keeping people employed helps to avoid a number of social problems, usually those visible in western countries. That is surely one of the reasons why Japan has such low crime and why teenagers are just peaceful young people, usually never aggressive. There are no riots in the streets. But overtime has also generated the famous “karoshi” (death from overtime) effect, reported from early70s and legally recognized from the 80s. If a death is judged a karoshi death, the family will receive an allowance of $20,000. Every year there are estimates of 10,000 deaths linked to karoshi in Japan, though the large majority of cases won't be filed by the family. From the late 80s the government has started to encourage companies to consider more the work-life balance of its employees. And some companies have undertaken some mea-
sures, but again, it goes back to the collective. How can you leave office earlier if your coworkers are still there? Almost every Japanese person would feel guilty doing so.
Free time doesn't have the same meaning in Japan. When you ask the ritual question, “Ogenki desuka?” (How are you?), the common answer is “genki” (I am okay), and also “isogashii” (busy). Being busy means something very positive: you have a lot of work; you are contributing to the success of the company, of society. But when talking to foreigners people are more open to admit they would like to have more free time and more holidays.
Phil Stilwell, 51, single, university professor of economics and philosophy at Gakkushuin University is a good example of an alternative lifestyle in Tokyo. Phil came to Japan 13 years ago from the US. Though Japan is an expensive country, academic salaries are also high enough to give the option between work
and free time and he finds the density of activities and adventures of Tokyo are probably second to none. Phil currently consciously chooses to limit his working time to 15 hours a week, exchanging time for money. “Many of my friends don’t have satisfactory lives because of way too many working hours,” Phil says. “People would look at me like I am lazy, though I spend rich days, between enriching my life with knowledge, and doing a lot of sports.”
Japanese working life is outrageous, though young people would like to change. But a lot of pressure is coming from the older generations, who helped build the highly industrialized country. Many of Phil’s students, for example, wish to find a job in a foreign company, expecting a better work-life balance. Japan is also reinventing itself as a country of culture from a country of pure business like it was from the 50s to the 90s.
The paradox is quite striking: A stressful work life imbalance in a harmonious society.•
The country comes from a history of continuous conflicts that tore it apart. People are learning the concept of work, as they were never forced to work. It is not always easy, but things are improving.
Foreigners in Uganda often complain about the slow pace at which people work. Ugandan employers feel the same way. “Here, people were never really forced to work, and therefore they are not used to it,” explains hotel owner Bill Wandera
Bill Wandera, the owner of the Royal Impala hotel in the Ugandan capital Kampala, apologizes profusely for being late for our meeting, explaining why he was delayed at the bank: “Opening up an account is a real hassle here. The bank wants to see a ridiculous amount of documents,” he says. We sit down in the lush garden that accompanies his 40-room hotel in the posh suburb of Munyonyo.
Wandera employs 22 people at the Royal Impala. “Now, 21, actually,” he realizes. “I just fired one of them.” Wandera worked long hours in construction in the UK, as well as with the United Nations in Somalia. After returning from abroad, he built the Royal Impala, which has a variety of rooms and two furnished apartments. “Ugandans have a different work ethic,” Wandera explains. “Studies show that people in neighboring Kenya work twice as hard as Ugandans.”
Oscar Ssemawere, manager of African Express Airways’ Uganda office, confirms: “I have to admit that Ugandans are slow workers. It is rooted deep in our culture. We are not shrewd. Certain tribes in Kenya are rougher than us, and work faster as a result of that.”
“In Uganda,” says Wandera, “you can stay without working and still eat. This country is so fertile that whatever you throw behind your house grows. Especially in the villages, people can easily live off their land. So workers don’t care if they get fired. They will go back
to their village and eat.” Kenya, for example, is much dryer, forcing people to work hard to grow enough food.
“When I told my mother that I had 24 Ugandan staff members, she told me that I could expect a lot of worries,” says Robert-Jan Nieuwpoort, a Dutch businessman in Uganda. “It turned out she was right. Not only do they work at snail’s pace, they are also very good at making up excuses to come late or skip work,” he says. “Most people lie about where they live, so they can try to claim high commuting allowances.”
According to Wandera, it has become difficult to lay people off. “We now have workers’ rights, but they do not yet know their duties well. One day I fired somebody who took money from a client and used it as his own. Then he took me to court. This is costing me money as well, so next time I have to think twice before laying someone off. People here know that.” Nieuwpoort has had experiences with underperforming staff.
“One day I fired a woman and she then stole crucial company equipment from the office. She started blackmailing: ‘If you want your things back, you have to pay me money.’ Luckily I had hired her because I know her uncle, and he managed to get my things back the next day.”
Ssemawere says he has never employed a friend or a relative: “I only look at qualifications.” For Nieuwpoort, hiring through your network of friends and relatives, which is quite common in Africa, seems smart. “If you don’t know somebody’s family or background, it is much easier for that person to cheat you,” he says.
Sue Macpherson is a Dorset -based photographer born in Tanzania. Three years ago an opportunity arose that enabled her to fulfill her ambition to work as a volunteer in Africa with a newly formed charity. The Henry van Straubenzee Memorial Fund is a charity committed to lifting Ugandan children out of poverty through education. The charity was started by Claire and Alex van Straubenzee whose son, Henry, was tragically killed in a car accident shortly before he was due to go to Uganda to teach in a rural school. In loving memory of their son, Claire and Alex have dedicated themselves to improving education in a large number of schools in the Jinja area of Uganda
[W suemacpherson.co.uk]
01 Ugandan children sneak a peek at a better future. Photo by Sue Macpherson
Wandera’s hotel had been managed by a 48-year Ugandan mother of seven. But days before our interview he replaced her with a Mzungu (the local name for a white person). It is the first time since the hotel was built seven years ago that it is being managed by a foreigner. “People were shocked,” Wandera says. “Nobody had expected me to hire a Mzungu. They thought I could never afford that.” “Of course he is taking a higher paycheck,” Wandera continues. “But you know what he did? He started by checking all the rooms. He fixed small leakages for which normally a plumber would be called in by simply tightening the taps. What I brought in with this young man is organization, a man who can follow a plan. And communication. We sell smiles and comfort; customers have to know what is going on.”
Wandera’s hotel is not the only one managed by a foreigner. Most large hotels in Uganda hire expatriates. Sometimes they’re from the Indian community, which has a history in East Africa dating back almost a century. Many Indians carry Ugandan nationality as well. Kenyans can also frequently be found in top positions at hotels.
Despite the slow pace, Uganda’s economy has been growing by 6-7% annually for a few years.
In October, Uganda will be celebrating its 50th year of independence from the British Empire. Influential Ugandans are already analyzing the state of their nation. The fact that after 50 years most leading positions are still held by foreigners is painful to some. But Wandera doesn’t see it that way: “What you bring to the table is what defines you. It is not about color or origin. If Ugandans are not yet ready to take certain jobs, then others will step in.”
Wandera points out another reason for the low work ethic: “Only in the last 25 years have we enjoyed a peaceful country. Before that we had a chaotic period with a lot of wars and violence,” he explains, referring to, among others, Idi Amin’s dictatorship. “It is just recently that Uganda has started opening up.
Ugandans are lazier than others because of the environment here. But as soon as you see Ugandans working abroad, in another environment, they will learn how to be quick.”
Nieuwpoort’s company, which dealt secondhand computers, was pushed out of business by a law banning the import of most secondhand electronics. Now married to a Ugandan woman, he still enjoys Uganda and doesn’t want to leave. The slow pace that sometimes makes work frustrating is usually perceived as very pleasant by foreigners and tourists. “In my new company I have only four staff members,” Nieuwpoort says. “That is not so stressful.”
Ssemawere learned how to deal with difficult staff. “I became a manager at 23, when I was still a student. I was accurate and organized, due to the years I have lived with my aunt, a successful business woman in Uganda.” Ssemawere’s airline has seven employees in Uganda, while in his previous job he led a team of 24. He advises his colleagues to work with allowances and benefits. “If there is a financial motive to do certain things, it is easier to get the staff going,” he says. Nieuwpoort complains that computer parts were often stolen from his last company. “Many Ugandans think it is okay to steal from a white boss. They assume he is so rich that he can handle it.”
But Ssemawere argues theft can occur anywhere. “One day we sent an airplane to South Africa for repair. The bill was over $300,000. When I went back with a list and serial numbers of all the aircraft parts, I figured out the bill should have been only $170.000. Those were South Africans doing that to us. In fact, they were white South Africans.”
Ssemawere is optimistic about the future. “Skills like working hard can be obtained through training. I did some psychology and linked up with the correct people.” Wandera agrees, “I used to work on construction sites in Uganda alongside with European advisors. When I saw the way they worked I adopted their mentality. I hope my hotel staff will do the same and learn from the Mzungu manager.”•
Founder of telecommunications giant Celtel, Ibrahim has revolutionized technology and development in Africa.
As a Sudanese-born academic and businessman, Ibrahim has played a leading role in advocacy regarding African development and governance through a range of global initiatives.
In 1998, Ibrahim established Celtel International to build and operate mobile networks in Africa.
Celtel became one of Africa’s most successful companies with operations covering more than a third of the continent’s population.
In 2006, Dr. Ibrahim established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to support good governance and leadership in Africa. The Foundation provides frameworks for citizens and governments to assess and measure progress in governance, and works to recognize excellence in African leadership.
The Foundation also awards the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, which is awarded to a former Executive Head of State or Government.
Critics have highlighted the fact that in offering such a prize to political leaders, Ibrahim’s work could be perceived as a form of bribery. Conversely, many believe the prize to be too small to deter corruption on any large scale.
“
By SAM NALLEN COPLEY
Last month, Senegal hosted its 10th annual fashion week in Dakar with twenty designers gathered from all over the African continent.
It’s very difficult to be involved in fashion in, say, Egypt...… A lot of people are very conservative and religious issues can arise too,” Adama Ndiaye told the BBC. With much of North and Central Africa falling subject to the Sharia, a body of Islamic law drawn from the Qur’an, the Hadith and additional rulings by Muslim scholars, scantily dressed models taking to the catwalk is a risky business in a region well-known for violence and tension. The emergence of new groups in West Africa within the last ten years suggests this is not just a struggle confined to The Maghreb and the Arab world. Nigeria’s Boko Haram, literally, ‘Western Education is Sinful’, has increasingly demonstrated a tendency to attack individuals and events deemed evil by the Salafist Jihadist understanding of the Sharia, and Senegal’s neighbor Mauritania is home to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group known for its kidnapping and beheading of British tourist Edwin Dyer in 2009. In a piece entitled, Fashion in a Time of Hardline Islam, published in the New York Daily News on June 22, several days before militants completely destroyed the Djingareyber mosque in Mali’s Timbuktu, Alphadi, one of Dakar
Fashion Week’s most well-known designers, explains his take on the political situation.
“It shocks me,” he stated, “Timbuktu has always been a secular town, everyone living together, sharing, blacks and whites, very cosmopolitan. A mysterious town!” Fellow Malian designer Mariah Bocoum echoed Alphadi’s remarks, adding a thought on how fashion might be able to help with the current political and religious tension. Showcasing a collection comprised of five pieces in an array of shades. “It is an invitation to get rid of this hate we have for each other. Green beret against red beret, some Tuareg against the southerners and vice versa. My dream is to see these people hand-in-hand so we can save our country from the Islamists.” Islam has been prevalent in Senegal for around a thousand years, and with ninety four percent of its population estimated to be adherents, Adama Ndiaye’s undertakings may seem even more impressive in light of recent events in neighboring countries. Alexander Thurston, a specialist in the region from Georgetown University, offers an explanation, “Senegal’s lack of widespread radical Islamic political activity is often attributed to cultural
“The image of Africa is still that of cheap products, badly made that people won’t spend money on. Things are changing but there is still this mentality.
(To many), Africa means safari or jungle. But the creativity you see here has nothing to do with this. It is modern, it is international,” said Marie-Jeanne SerbinThomas, editor of Brune an African fashion magazine.
Senegal is a country of immense diversity – ethnically, theologically and culturally. For many years it was considered the center of French West Africa, the city of St Louis – now only sixth largest in Senegal – serving as the federation’s capital until 1902, when Dakar, the western most city on the African mainland, assumed this role. In 1960 the nation was granted independence from France, largely thanks to the efforts of Leopold Sedar Senghor, a Paris educated politician regarded by some as the most influential
African intellectual of the 20th century. At a state level, the country is historically tied to France, Lebanon, Morocco and the Ghana, all of which have contributed to the plurality of languages (of which there are about thirtysix) and lifestyles visible on the streets of Dakar. Among the twenty-or-so ethnic groups, the key players are the Wolof, representing about 41% of the country’s population, the Fula, around 26% and the Serer, about 15%.
factors – the supposed ‘peaceful’ character of Senegalese Islam and the influence of the Sufi brotherhoods.” Despite the lack of hardcore Salifism in Dakar, Adama’s efforts have nonetheless been praised as bold and brave by fashionistas and political analysts alike.
JUSTIFIED HYPE?
Courage aside, how successful has Adama’s project been aesthetically? Through layman eyes, two things immediately distinguish Dakar Fashion Week from its developed world counterparts. Firstly, the models look healthy, attractive and happy. The pouting morose size zero archetype – skeletal frame, androgynous features, not an inch of femininity – is nowhere to be seen, and consequently, unlike the malnourished zombies of Milan Fashion Week, Dakar’s beauties are indeed beautiful. Perhaps the irony of Africa’s models flaunting voluptuous curves while Italy’s finest, for the most
part, resemble poverty-stricken war veterans, should be greater emphasized by the fashion press? Certainly, as explored in the previous paragraph, this event should help promote a fresh perspective on the region. Secondly, and not entirely separately, the clothes on show in Dakar are colorful, joyful and, most unusually, wearable. The trend for avant-garde art fashion, by which models act as art galleries and/or freak shows, as exemplified by Issey Miyake’s unusual line at this year’s Paris Fashion Week, is similarly absent in Dakar. Moroccan designer Jamila’s latest piece on French model Prudence Leroy, for instance, is a head-turner for the right reason, and would look similarly fitting on the high street as the catwalk. Whether justified or otherwise, Dakar Fashion Week has placed Africa under the international spotlight, and, unusually for a continent so plagued by political and ethnic discontent, this hype is not simply born out of pity. For a region
so rich in cultural diversity, its traditional synonymy with genocide, child warfare and malaria in the western press has often overshadowed the numerous cultural gems it has to offer.
“Africa has always been a stylistic influence. But it is only recently that designers are being recognized on their own merit. For the first time, it is not just about a pat on the back but partnerships,” claimed Helen Jennings, editor of Arise magazine, last month. Her optimism is encouraging, but whether Dakar becomes a major player or fades into obscurity will largely be determined on whether these so-called partnerships will be based on charity and exoticism, or genuine aesthetic appreciation. In a continent so worn down by colonial misbehavior, the onus lies on western eyes to view Dakar Fashion Week not merely as charming African mimicry, but rather as a genuine threat to a sphere in desperate need of innovation.•
“The beauty of Senegal lies in this mix,” Iamine, a tourist liason officer from Saly told me. “We have something for everyone here – a rich history, wildlife parks, beautiful beaches for those who like to swim or fish, and a mild climate.” Music fans also revere Senegal as the birthplace of Mbalax, a blend of indigenous Serer folk styles with contemporary Western jazz, rock and pop. Beating the traditional talking drum (Tama) while synth-keyboard licks and electric guitar ditties provide the melody, the captivating sounds of Youssou N’Dour and Coumba Gawlo are starting to be appreciated on the world stage.
01 Dress designed by ELIE KUAME (Ivory Coast).Model: CODOU DIENG.
02 Dress designed by ADAMA PARIS (Senegal). Model: SACHA DIENG.
03 Dress designed by MAMATA LOPY (Guinea). Model: DIARRA THIAM.
04 Dress Designed by ELIE KUAME (Ivory Coast). Model: MAGUY NIANG.
05 Dress designed by ALPHADI (Niger). Model: CHANTAL NDIAYE.
06 Dress designed by PATRICK ASSO (Ivory Coast). Model: CYNTHIAS OYINI.
Photos by Finbar O'Reilly at the Dakar Fashion Week 2012
Transportation scholars use the term "derived demand" to explain how most traveling is derived from the need to conduct activities at different locations.
The 2011 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) report How’s Life? MEASURING WELLBEING measured wellbeing of OECD countries based on multiple indicators for quality of life and material living conditions. According to the report, workers in OECD countries spend, on average, 38 minutes commuting daily, an additional 8% for eight hours of working time. Workers in the UK, Spain, Italy, Japan, Turkey, Korea and South Africa have longer commutes: an average of 40 minutes and up. Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, the US and Finland, however, have relatively shorter average times: less than 30 minutes.
Assuming people work 222 days, OECD workers spent 8,436 minutes or 140 hours 36 minutes per year for commuting. This figure is likely to grow by 30% for commuters in large metro areas -e.g., commuters in the Tokyo metro area spent 51 minutes on one-way commuting in 2005, 31% higher than the national average of 39 minutes. Commuters in the Washington, DC area spent 33.4 minutes in 2009, 33% higher than the national average of 25.1 minutes. In addition, transit commuters tend to have longer commutes, compared to those traveling by car, bike and foot.
A variety of burdens associated with traveling—such as monetary cost, travel
time, a concern for being late, a fear for crime, fatigue from carrying luggage, and frustration with way-finding is described by another term generalized costs of travel. People dislike commuting and are happier with shorter commutes, as found in a US economic study in which the authors, including prize-winning Daniel Kahneman, state “experienced happiness… is influenced by the individual’s allocation of time: a longer lunch and a shorter commute make for a better day.”
How can we optimize this time? Commuting is influenced by many factors: locations of home and workplaces, environment and transportation systems, means (driving, carpooling, transit, biking, walking) and other constraints (schedule, need to transport kids, etc.).
If commuting by car, the main focus of your attention should be on safety. Many people turn on the radio; listening to favorite music may refresh your mind or energize you to prepare for your day. Some play audio books or podcasts. If you carpool with a friend or colleague, you can catch up or follow up on a meeting. If you do so regularly, you may have a net utility gain in your commute, even after taking into account efforts to organize the carpool.
One significant factor in increasing generalized costs of commuting by car is uncertainty. While a commuter may have
By HIROYUKI ISEKI
222 working days/y 140h for commuting
Tokyo 51 min. per day
Washington 33,4 min. per day
a smooth 30-minute ride one day, s/he may spend 60 minutes on another due to congestion and/or an accident. Some studies suggest that people value an increase in reliability over a reduction in total time. Transportation authorities are increasingly adapting new technologies and schemes to provide information and pricing incentives so that travelers become more judicious about their choices of travel, which leads to the overall reduction in traffic congestion.
An advantage of transit commuting is that a train commuter can focus on something else to make in-vehicle time productive. Japanese workers often discuss how they can make use of a long train ride. Most read newspapers and magazines to keep up with current affairs and trends; some study for exams, licenses and certificates. Many Japanese train commuters take an earlier or local train to get a seat for comfortable reading. TV monitors, text displays and Wi-Fi internet on interurban express services (such as French TGV, German ICE and Japanese Shinkansen) substantially increase productivity and have been adapted or are under consideration by intra-transit service providers in many countries.
Another way to optimize time is to minimize out-of-vehicle time: waiting for a bus or train, walking to, from and within a transit facility and making a transfer. Many studies have shown out-of-vehicle time is generally perceived as more
onerous than in-vehicle time. Waiting time with being uncertain about the next bus or train, under severe weather, with a fear of crime, with poor health conditions, etc., feels much longer.
Technological advancements allow travelers to obtain real time transit information and plan well, minimizing actual waiting time at bus stops and train stations and also reducing the gap between perceived time and actual time.
In addition, under certain environment conditions, transit commuters can easily combine a commuting trip with other purposes. In Europe and Japan, many rail stations host a variety of stores. Department stores at stations in Japan have a specific selection and layout targeting commuters. Combining grocery shopping, for example, with your commute increases overall utility, as does finding nearby restaurants, cafes and bars and combining social events with your commuting.
BIKES ARE THE NEW CARS
Biking or walking to work provide substantial health benefits. Experts recommend taking at least 10,000 steps (8km of walking) a day to maintain good health but most people in developed countries don’t reach this number; e.g., western Australia: 9,695 steps; Switzerland: 9,650; Japan: 7,168; the US: 5,117.
Long-distance auto commuting substantially reduces daily exercise and increas-
es health risks. A recent study published in American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that people who commute longer than 24km by car tend to have little time to sufficiently exercise and are more likely to be overweight, have high blood pressure and a high prevalence of cardiovascular disease. Sustainable transportation will return health benefits, lower monetary costs and reduce energy consumption, air pollution and greenhouse gases.
Governments and companies are responding to the demands of new generations of workers who have different lifestyles than previous generations. Several studies suggest that younger generations are more environmentally aware, less auto-dependent, more savvy in information and communication technologies, and prefer an urban lifestyle. Many US cities provide transit and non-motorized transportation infrastructure, coordinating with land use/built environments better than a few decades ago, in order to increase non-auto travel and reduce vehicle traffic. Following the success in Paris and Lyon, Minneapolis, New York and Washington, DC have started bike share programs. Transit-oriented development (TOD) has been promoted to provide a balance of housing and commercial establishments and a high level of accessibility in close proximity of major rail stations and bus terminals. The financial, insurance, real estate, professional, sci-
entific and technical service sectors are found to more likely locate their offices and facilities in TOD areas. These developments, in turn, provide housing stock and job opportunities to professionals who prefer living in urban settings and shorter commutes.
Take a holistic view of your commuting as part of your lifestyle. Carefully evaluate burdens and utility in your travel options and find your optimal strategy to minimize costs and maximize benefits during your commute.•
Photos by Thomas Leuthard
01 Leaving Riga (Riga, Latvia)
02 Hitchcock (Hamburg, Germany)
03 Leaving Yerevan (Yerevan, Armenia)
Photos by Harald Wagener
04 Clockwatching
Organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claiming that indoor levels of pollutants may be 2 to 5 times – and occasionally more than 100 times – higher than outdoor pollutant levels.
Newer buildings built using today’s green standards, using low VOC-emitting materials, where smoking is prohibited, and where a good filtration system exists, such as hospitals, are often more susceptible to outdoor contaminants than indoor air pollution.
Today’s green standards such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® program encourages above average filtration (MERV 13 minimum) in addition to energy efficient and sustainable practices. LEED and similar programs around the world are making a difference. But the indoor air quality found in the vast majority of commercial buildings is still primarily driven by economics. The majority of filters manufactured and installed today are disposable filters that do little to remove fine particles. The heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) system and lighting are the two areas that have the greatest impact on energy savings.
As the founding partner and CEO of Bark Communications, Ray Majoran has been dabbling in photography for over 15 years. He enjoys shooting in a photojournalistic style which enables him to capture authentic stories about real life. Primary tools: Canon 5D Mark III, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8. Postprocessing is kept to a minimum using the basic elements of Adobe Lightroom.
01 BURN (Trujillo, Peru)
02 HOME (Trujillo, Peru)
03 SEA OF GARBAGE (Trujillo, Peru)
04 FLIES (Trujillo, Peru)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found measurable results in recent studies:
• Temperature: The performance of office work tasks has been shown to be maximized when the air temperature is approximately 71°F (22°C). As indoor air temperatures rise above or fall below 71 °F (22°C), performance decreases.
• Ventilation Rates: Performance of typical office tasks improves with increased ventilation rate. For ventilation rates between 14 and 30 cfm per person, the average performance has been shown to increases by approximately 0.8% per 10 cfm per person increase in ventilation rate.
• Indoor Pollutant Sources: Studies have measured approximately 4% to 16% increases in the performance (speed or accuracy) of office work tasks such as typing and speed of call center work, when indoor pollutant sources were removed.
Humidity aside, the three basic approaches to improving indoor air quality are:
• controlling or eliminating the source of the pollutants,
• diluting the contaminants, usually through ventilation, and
• removing the contaminants from the air.
Germicidal UVC lamps sterilize surfaces inside the HVAC system, such as evaporator coils, to prevent the formation of mold and other living organisms. Polarized-media air cleaners represent a third major group of air filtration devices. This technology is able to capture ultrafine particles and mold spores.
• It’s the invisible airborne particles, less than 2.5 micron in diameter, that our natural defense systems have a tough time eliminating. These particulates can trigger allergic reactions and asthma attacks and can even pose more severe health risks.
• Some of the things that we associate with smell are actually fine particulates. Tobacco smoke consists mostly of water vapor and particulates in the .3 to 1 micron size range.
• There are often many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and chemicals present in the workplace and in our homes. These include cleaning chemicals, pesticides, the Ozone produced from copy machines and other electronics, and those compounds that “off-gas” over time from furniture, carpets, and building materials. One of the most common is formaldehyde which is used in a wide variety of resins and plastics.
• Damp environments can breed molds and mildews. Some molds such as those found in plant soil have little effect on humans, although others like stachybotrys chartarum can be toxic. Humidity also affects comfort. The common dust mite, which lives on the dead skin that is shed by people and pets, thrives in humid conditions. Dust mite waste is one of the leading triggers for allergies, it is important to keep humidity below 50%.
• Good ventilation removes contaminated air and excesses of carbon dioxide which can accumulate in crowded areas and tends to make occupants sleepy. Chemicals, gases, and fine particles are mixed together into a toxic “soup” that gets re-circulated in the air stream again and again. It is no small wonder that allergy medications comprise a multi-billion dollar industry.
Most people take the air they breathe for granted. But problems with indoor air quality (IAQ) go well beyond just physical comfort.
Be aware. Understand the causes and effects of the air we breathe. There is a plethora of information available on the internet that speaks to indoor air quality. Promote change within your organization. Promote the advantages of improved IAQ to the leaders in your organization. And promote the financial advantages to building owners. Once people are able to embrace the idea there are benefits to having improved IAQ, visa vie better employee health and improved productivity, then there are easy ways to determine the financial return on investment when upgrading an HVAC system. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, adopting energy-efficient design and technologies in HVAC and other areas in new buildings can cut energy costs by as much as 50 percent. In existing buildings, renovations that replace older systems with more efficient technology can yield savings of up to 30 percent. And according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, large paybacks can be expected from many changes in building design, operation, and maintenance that improve worker performance because worker salaries and benefits greatly exceed the costs of providing and operating buildings. Cost-benefit analyses show that benefits can often exceed costs by a factor of 10 or more. •
By RICCARDO MASSETTI
The functionalist tries to adapt to the more specific form. The rationalist seeks a general solution that contends a change and a generality. The man alone in nature does not need shapes, the rationalist can understand the shape, not as a pure algorithm, nor as a mere outcome of a program of functions.
I consider myself a functionalist, in a very practical sense, but I think there is a more complex relationship between needs and shapes, where the latter are also socially suitable. For example, some of our needs are the spaces that we have seen and/or lived. This is a post-functionalist model where functionalism argues that shapes do not exist, except as a result of a process – not accepting the existence of a culture of the shape.
On the one hand, we as architects have to be innocent with respect to the subject, that from a logic standpoint, is logically contained in a given data. The fact that a response to a competition has different outcomes, however, means that there is a mix and match between shapes and things.
When designing, I mix a direct connection (typical of the Anglo-Saxon modus operandi), and the ability to understand that there is a inclination towards shapes. The problem can’t be completely erased: we live by associations, the point is not to use them so blatantly.
Another key point is desktop customization and non-localization. The more companies de-localize the more operational aspects of the business, the more space they’ll need for meetings. This is where a Taylorization of processes, rather than
places begins.
Today I see a dual approach, one that looks at efficiency (mainly for economic reasons) with the reduction of square meters per person, and also at the domestication or enrichment of all places for informal relationships.
The challenge for the next few years will be not to see the scientific, functionalist and humanist themes as polar opposites, but rather as integrated entities. I believe in a culture of projects that is constantly interacting. There is a return to common-sense with an atechnical naturalization (once one has a specific technique, it becomes almost subconscious). Therefore, the effect of extreme naturalness of the work is not given by the naturalness of the soul, but from the extreme control of the technique purposes. Common sense is back, and it is a common sense that knows how to use technique in a critical way.
LOOKING IN FROM ABOVE Companies are beginning to understand that it is not enough to create buildings that simply accommodate people for their 8 hours working days, but they have to focus on extras. Large multinationals wanting to settle in a certain area, will also be interested in what’s there and what is done in that specific zone, such as cultural or sporting events. Today workplaces are equipped with relaxation areas and gyms, the workspace becomes a sort of small universe, providing social aspects to the city. Our example of well-being has both a natural and an urban theme – two complementary tendencies. One has the allure of the city, the pleasure of walking and the other has an issue of environmental quality. •
Rather than a Zucchi style, I would say that there is an attempt to find the character of the theme. I'm not happy when the building looks like me, but when I give life to an appropriate form to that specific issue. The Salewa building, for example, which cannot be seen as the mere organization of office spaces, but is linked on one level to be a part of the landscape, and on the other, borders between the industrial area and agricultural fields. We, as architects, can solve all problems, however, not everything we solve is represented. In some cases the place becomes the subject, in others a particular functional data, or an element of the relationship.
Cino Zucchi (Milan, 1955); he graduated from M.I.T. in 1978 and at the Politecnico di Milano in 1979, where he is currently Chair Professor of Architectural and Urban Design. He has taught architecture at many international seminars and has been visiting professor at Syracuse University and at ETH in Zürich. Together with CZA, of which he is the principal architect, he designed and realized many industrial, commercial, residential and public buildings, a number of projects for public spaces, master plans and renewals of industrial and historical areas.
Functionalism saw primary needs as independent value, and the project as a timely response based on the need.
01 Cino Zucchi in his studio. 02 Detail at CZA.
Photos by Paolo Mazzo. 03 CZA: inside out. Photo by Cino Zucchi. 04 Office dynamics at CZA. Photo by Ivan Sarfatti., 05 Central Pasila, detailed plan of the Towers area, Helsinki, 2009.
06 — 07 Invitation only International Tender for the new ENI Headquarters, San Donato Milanese, Milan, 2011. 08 New Lavazza Headquarters, Turin, 2010 - present. 09 Windows, offices building, Milanofiori Assago, 2007-2011.
10 Salewa Headquarters, invitation only tender, Bolzano, 2007-2011. 11 Office building U15, invitation only consultation, selected project.
12 Invitation only tender for the new Lavazza bulding, 3D model
08
Increasingly, companies are looking to build innovative spaces where their workers can mix, mingle, and -- the hope is -- innovate. Meet the new break room.
In the past, break rooms offered an enclosed area where people were encouraged to take their lunch or breaks. The main break room for an office is now an opportunity to create a very special and highly flexible space. For our clients, it is an opportunity to offer their employees an area distinctively different from their office space.
While a good number of employees can be and are connected to their offices remotely at all times, a main room for lunches and break amenities is still important to many of our clients’ staff. But there is no reason to consider these areas as solely break rooms. We term these spaces “Multi Purpose Rooms,” or “MPR’s.” Dual function space is very important to office design - as most clients are scrutinizing their future footprints and the square footage allotted to each employee. MPR’s offer a unique opportunity for dual use within an office and demonstrate the potential to decrease the num-
ber of conference and training rooms in the rest of the space.
Most offices today include a variety of generations, work styles and work schedules. MPR’s that are well designed to support a company’s distinct culture offer employees a welcome environment for meeting, eating, collaborating and socializing. When we start the dialogue regarding the many functions and activities this room can host, our clients are receptive. We review case histories and show them how these ideas can work for their offices and benefit their employees. We discuss the culture of our client’s company and form focus groups to listen and evaluate the needs of the employees, as this is a critical element in designing spaces that support the functional objectives. An MPR differs by planning and design. Several key factors contribute to its success within an office.
Scott Brownrigg Interior Design has created a new 40,000 sq ft office for Google at 123 Buckingham Palace Road, London to accommodate over 300 staff. The new office is designed to create a dynamic and collaborative work environment that supports the growing number of Google staff in London. Joe Borrett and Jane Preston from Google, working with the Scott Brownrigg Interior Design team chose a theme of London-Brighton and as a result many iconic elements of both are incorporated into the office design. For example, brightly coloured timber
For Redbull’s offices we designed a multipurpose room that is not really a room at all. A large, round concrete top bar complete with drink storage on one side and built in stools on the other is situated in the center of their space and open to their meeting and work areas. It is used as a break area and meeting surface and is perfect for serving energetic concoctions at their many social events. A variety of lounge seating options are adjacent to the bar. Staff uses this area to eat lunch, hold early or late brainstorm meetings (with and without food) work on their tablets, bounce ideas and just hang out. It reinforces the clients’ brand.
We designed a multipurpose room for SunTx, a private equity firm, which was internal to their office space but constructed of glass walls. The transparency allows for staff to see what is going on both inside and outside the space and allows it to share in the day lighting from the glass front offices beyond. The room has a large island with stone surface for gathering and food service. The furniture groupings include a large dining/ meeting table, bistro height tables for sit/stand meetings and lounge furniture for reading or more informal meetings. SunTx named all of the conference rooms in their space after favorite baseball stadiums. Their MPR was aptly dubbed the “Clubhouse.”
The MPR must allow for flexibility. Positioning of the plumbing, food prep and food storage areas should not inhibit the flexibility of the room. Many times we incorporate built-in islands that are counter or bar height so they
beach huts are meeting rooms and giant colourful dice accommodate individual video conference booths, original dodgem cars and traditional red telephone booths are all work spaces available to staff and visitors. Open plan workstations for all staff are mixed with a few offices, meeting rooms and open break out seating areas and support spaces for printing and IT technical support. Google look after the health and welfare of their staff in an exceptional way and Scott Brownrigg Interior Design has designed a fully fitted out gym/ shower facility, massage and spa treatment centre, and an Asian Fusion/Sushi restaurant that is free for all staff. 01 — 02 — 03 —04: Scott Brownrigg Interior Design at Google.
act as food service and meeting/gathering spots. We plan for seating and tables that are easily reconfigured to allow for large or small groups, training, lectures and presentations. These rooms are frequently planned at the exterior wall of a floor plate to allow for ample natural light and increase the desirability for staff to use the space. It is key, however, that the MPR be in a central location and as close to the work areas as possible so staff will not only go there for breaks, but will utilize the space for collaboration with coworkers.
I cannot recall a good house party that did not end up with everyone in the kitchen. Keeping that point in mind, many times we do not hide the cabinetry, sink and equipment but integrate it into the overall design of the room. We tend to celebrate the fact you are in a space where you can have food or get a drink but also can chat or hold a meeting. I prefer to keep the hard sur-
face flooring only at the sink area and use carpet tile in the main space so the noise of footfall and chair movement is reduced. Flexible lighting solutions are also very important. Fixtures that allow for general meeting illumination as well as presentations and informal gatherings are critical. We carefully study what functional aspects of an MPR will best serve our clients. Storage and furnishings are major elements that contribute to its success. More often than not, if you go into an existing break room and open the cabinet doors you will find many are empty or filled with things the client did not even know were there. We recommend fewer upper cabinets within the MPR and emphasize the utilization of adjacent store rooms with open shelving for supplies. These store rooms also allow for a convenient location to store fliptop tables and stackable chairs when the room is reconfigured for different meetings and events.•
For our own MPR at STAFFELBACH we designed a room along the building exterior to take advantage of ample natural light. The entire front wall is clear glass allowing for anyone walking by to see what is going on in the room. Entry doors are located near the food service side of the room to allow staff to get coffee while other meetings are taking place. A large marble top island is a popular spot for impromptu meetings, presentations as well as food service. Wide screen television, ceiling-mounted drop down projection screen and fabric clad tackable wall surfaces allow for various meetings.
A popular trend is to include banquette seating. Banquettes can be inviting, but their placement must be carefully evaluated so as not to inhibit the many uses of the room. Generally, I am very wary of trends because trends do not endure. We are designing spaces to remain viable throughout the term of their lease and beyond – particularly if they expand in that location.
Today working is a synonym of fun. These fantastic places allow organizations to “do” things sustainably, and in respect of the people inhabiting them. It seems that doing things in a beautiful place is a way for companies to respect the personalities of their employees that in such places can perform at their best. Beautiful, can also mean, effective, when people, performing at their best, do that in response to the place.
In these spaces we have often published articles that put the employees’ personal identities in comparison with the employees’ corporate identity stating that the two dimensions don’t always find a continuous correlation. The person when working is, or behaves, differently from that same person in their free time or with their family. Companies subvert the personality of workers asking them to be different from themselves when at work. The workplace plays an important role in this case. The less branded it is, the bet-
ter the employees can make those places their own and to behave in a certain way as a consequence. When observing the workplaces here presented, the first word that comes to mind is “relaxation.”
Relax is the key to the organizational reading of these spaces. These are places where people can relax while working, as if every “background noise” given by an imposing architecture becomes an “explicit sound,” let out by an architecture that includes, in every possible way, the personality of the person at work.
On the right, we present our usual metaphor: workplaces are like castles. Places that were functional to the big landowner, and iconic at the same time. Datum points, architectures that live their time. On the latter, the contemporary state of the project presented in the next pages corresponds to the castles. These are places of today.•
A volume of simple and emphatic architecture, which reinterprets the anonymous architecture of the coastal valleys in the center of Chile. It poses itself above the soft tree-lined areas, peeking gently with its facades of wood and tones that highlight the luminosity of the place. The body melts down as one with the geography and projects the lines of trees upon his facades. Employs sustainable technologies, creating a favorable mood for work and
By KATHY NELSONis a big late eleventh century castle, built by Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, immediately after the Conquest in an admirable tactical position. Its plan was a familiar one: a big motte and two baileys N and E of the motte. It has been the seat of the Duke of Norfolk for more than 850 years. The building as it is now owes much to Henry, 15th Duke of Norfolk (1847-1917) and restoration was completed in 1900. It was one of the first English country houses to be fitted with electric light, integral fire fighting equipment, service lifts and central heating.
Photos are courtesy of Arundel Castle
Working
Workplaces and headquarters the are closer and closer to our “family” environments, where the employee branding replaces the concept of “work force.”
the production of quality olive oil. Geothermic instead of central heating and air conditioning for the production areas and the oil barrels area, ventilated façades system in the building, passive energies to allow air to come into and go out the different areas of the offices and services (cross ventilation in the ceiling). Evaporation from the water mirror located in the front of the office building and cone studies of shade and sun direction to determine the eaves necessary for the different seasons. The main building uses natural light instead of artificial lighting. Architect GH+A Arquitectos, Owner Olisur SA, Location Fundo San José de Marchigüe, comuna La Estrella
01—02 Oil factory landscape view. 03 A view of the factory by night. 04 Entrance facility. 05 A view from the entrance. 06 Portion of the factory. 07 Facility equipment. 08 Working parts of the factory external view.
Photo courtesy of Cristobal Palma
The Shard is the latest landmark addition to London’s skyline. The Shard will be a vertical city containing offices, an exclusive collection of residences - the highest homes in Europe - a 5-star Shangri-La Hotel and spa, restaurants and the capital’s highest viewing galleries - The View from The Shard. Architect Renzo Piano, Owner LBQ Limited, Location London, UK. 01 Landscape — 02 View from the interior —03 View of the building from outside Photos are courtesy of The Shard
The ebullient atmosphere and the exultant colors are a direct translation of Skype graphics. The contemporary interior generates not only an eye-pleasing environment but also a vibrant working place. A playful atmosphere that starts brilliant ideas. Architect PS Arkitektur, Owner Skype, Location Stockholm, Sweden. 04 Colorful relaxation area — 05 Black and white minimalism — 06-08 Meeting room — 07 Break corner — 09 Pink corridors —10 Break time area. Photos are courtesy of PS Arkitektur
3M Italia Headquarters With its geometric composition, spaces and structural lines, embodies principles such as eco sustainability and innovation.
Architect Mario Cucinella Architects, Owner 3M Italia S.p.A., Location Pioltello, Milan, Italy. 01 Infrastructure frontal view — 02 Hall from above
— 03 logo detail — 04 Farçade detail 05 Internal view of the offices from courtyard. All photos by Daniele Domenicali.
Microsoft Vienna. The interiors are decorated with colorful motifs which lead you throughout the space to the personalized meeting rooms and client areas. Hints of playful tones capture the youthful spirit of the employees with an indoor slide and plant wall. Architect Innocad, Owner Microsoft, Location Wien, Austria. 06 Wooden meeting room — 07 Dynamics in the office, Photos 6, 7, by Paul Ott, courtesy of Innocad
— 08 Blue meeting room. Photo by Christian Dusek, courtesy of Innocad.
Roche Thanks to their architectural features, edifices are clearly identifiable as part of the Roche style. Two special features that give the office building its own identity and «face».
Architect Christ & Gantenbein, Owner F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Location Grenzach, Germany. 01 B10 office building – 02 Loggia on the 2nd floor — 03 View of the loggia (1st floor) from inside —04 Open-plan office space. All photos are by Walter Mair.
The building in the rear of the lot is more private. The rendered effect is a tremendous origami and the view of this delicate folded marble can be enjoyed both from exterior and interior of the building. Architect Manuelle Gautrand Architecture, Owner Private Investor, Location Paris, France. 05 Board of directors meeting room — 06 Conference room —07 View from interior — 08 Origami details — 09 Façade lighting by night. Photos are courtesy of Manuelle Gautrand Architecture.
