v.18 n. 32 – Released August 11, 2014
This Week’s Headlines:
Events of Interest
Does the battle over the minimum wage pit employees against small-business owners? That was the notion put forth on the Real Clear Politics website recently. In an essay titled “Living the Wage? Try Living the Small Business,” Tom Bevan, a co-founder of the site, ridiculed Democratic politicians who had embarked on an effort to understand how people subsist on minimum wage.
Several officials, including Jan Schakowsky, a congresswoman from Illinois, signed up for a week-long challenge called Live the Wage. For that week, they attempted to spend just $77, which is the effective take-home pay for someone making minimum wage, according to the advocates who want to raise it. Mr. Bevan called this effort “a gimmick cooked up by the progressives at Americans United for Change.”
The scarcity mindset revolves around the idea that there simply isn’t enough to go around. There can be only one raise at work and if one person gets it, everyone else can’t have it. My paycheck only has a certain amount of money in it and if I don’t spend it now, it will “go away” – the “man” will take it. If I don’t party now when I’m young, I will never have the chance to party later.
Thus, the scarcity mindset always focuses on the extreme short term of every decision. What is the most fun option right now? What uses up the resources I have right now so that they can’t be taken away later?
It ignores the long term of every choice, too. The most fun choice in the short term often has long term consequences. If you spend all of your paycheck this week, how will you have anything for the future?
For every success, there is an epic failure. Those leaders who achieved greatness did so not because of their success stories, but because the lessons in failure that they learned and applied to create those success stories. In other words, leaders find “right” only after navigating through a storm cloud of “wrong.”
Before assuming the reins of your next venture, run through the following checklist of no-no’s from mistakes made by others — so you don’t have to:
1. Setting a tense tone. Stress and tension are no fun, and how a leader chooses to show up everyday is everything. Positive or negative, cordial or rude, your people will embrace and spread “you,” intentionally or not.
It’s proven that the caffeine in coffee stimulates the brain, but there’s something in a cup of joe that can also jump-start the other end of the body.That’s right: Coffee can make you poop. And though a number of studies have attempted to explain the effect of a cup of java on the bowels, scientists have yet to determine what it is about the beverage that sends some imbibers running to the restroom.
It’s official, Windows 8 is a write-off . Sales for the operating system have been poor and now it is even starting to lose market share to Windows 7. To Microsoft’s credit it has bravely persisted addressing issue after issue. Most notable was the major Windows 8.1 Update 1 patch released in April which makes the OS a genuinely credible platform. Still it remains far from perfect and now Microsoft is prematurely pulling the plug.
In a blog post by Microsoft Senior Marketing Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc, he explains that there will be no more major updates for Windows 8: “despite rumors and speculation, we are not planning to deliver a Windows 8.1 ‘Update 2’.”
Apple’s new ad for the iPhone 5S is called “Dreams,” though it might have been called “In Your Dreams.
“Like other recent iPhone spots and iPad spots, for that matter, it shows people using the device in pretty amazing ways—to measure wind speed, to plot the course of an airplane, to place a diamond in the setting of a ring. At the 37-second mark, a woman places her iPhone against the rib cage of a horse they don’t even bother to explain it, really—all you need to know is the iPhone is horse compatible, and it hits you. You’ll never use your iPhone for any of this stuff well, OK, the audio translation app looks pretty rad.
Is an advertisement aspirational when you don’t necessarily aspire to many of the behaviors it depicts? It’s a key question for Apple, which is riding that line between rarefied and relatable in its marketing.
Looking for a way to quit smoking? Eating fruits and vegetables may help you quit smoking. A new study published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research observed that smokers who ate the most fruit and vegetables were three times more likely to be tobacco-free as compared to those people who ate fewer amounts of fruits and veggies.
Also, people who consumed more fruits and vegetables smoked fewer cigarettes per day. Another observation is that they also waited longer to smoke their first cigarette of the day. These people scored lower on a commonly-used test of nicotine dependence.
Well, what could be the reason for this? Even the researchers have not zeroed into on any particular reason regarding this. They have in fact come up with several explanations.
Still wondering if people still care? I was then I saw this video from Perth, Australia.
As I left our home and drove around the mountain, fog enveloped me quickly. Unexpectedly.
There was no sign of fog when I pulled out of our garage.
The business environment changes that quickly, also, particularly with what influences our customers’ and clients’ lives.
For example, the shooting down of the Malaysia airliner over the Ukraine suddenly dominates our conversations, news media, buying habits, and prayers. It fogs our perception.
So how do you do business when tragedy fogs over your business? Here are 3 Strategies to Work Positive in a Tragedy.
