The student answered the test question with a curse.
What was the result? An expulsion? A suspension?
Oh, no. The examiners were too enlightened for such coarse methods.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Great Moments in HR
Beyond words: The application for a British air traffic controller job - a position that requires 20/20 vision - is in Braille.
The Schools
Writing in Slate, Ray Fisman explores the question of why public schools are so bad at hiring good teachers. An excerpt:
Lombardi suggests replacing this system with an apprenticeship program. Rather than requiring teaching degrees (which don't seem to improve value-added all that much), new recruits would have a couple of years of in-school training. There would then come a day of reckoning, when teachers-to-be would face a serious evaluation before securing union membership and a job for life.
Lombardi suggests replacing this system with an apprenticeship program. Rather than requiring teaching degrees (which don't seem to improve value-added all that much), new recruits would have a couple of years of in-school training. There would then come a day of reckoning, when teachers-to-be would face a serious evaluation before securing union membership and a job for life.
Covey: Balancing Your Life
Q: But I’m worried that if I make time for personal things, like my health or relationships, that I’ll lose chances to be promoted in the workplace.
A: I suggest the opposite will happen. Reaching a level of life balance where you are learning to say “no” to the urgent and unimportant gives you time for things such as professional development activities. You are enabled to go the second mile in your efforts to help solve problems; you carve out time to mentor and be mentored, to look for other opportunities; you are able to anticipate needs long before they come up because you are not so urgency-addicted. Therefore, you are really promoting your promotability and increasing your options by choosing to spend time working on things that are most important. Of course, there will be some employers that won’t see things this way. They will look at you as a workhorse that should be given as much work as possible until your back breaks. My question to you would be, if this is the case, and you can’t focus on what is truly important to you, then why are you working there? You are worth more than that.
Read the rest of Stephen R. Covey on achieving a work/life balance.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Marketing 101
Far be it from me to boost traffic by posting links to cute kittens or puppies.
On the other hand, if Wired can show three baby raccoons eating cherries....then that's entirely acceptable.
On the other hand, if Wired can show three baby raccoons eating cherries....then that's entirely acceptable.
Trivia Update: Hub Kapp and the Wheels
As a teenager in Phoenix, I was more than aware of the Hub Kapp and the Wheels story. The act was clearly a spoof but it was difficult to ignore a group singing about work being the dirtiest word:
"Mom and Dad won't you hear my plea? Don't say that dirty word to me."
"Mom and Dad won't you hear my plea? Don't say that dirty word to me."
Hubris and Complexity
Martha Lagace, in HBS Working Knowledge, interviews Malcolm S. Salter about his new book, Innovation Corrupted: The Origins and Legacy of Enron's Collapse. An excerpt:
Q: As you note in your book, there is much that we still do not know—and may never know—about Enron's failure. Having studied the company intensively for years, what would you most like to know?
A: There is still much that we do not know about the perceptions, intentions, thought processes, and apparent failings of Enron's leaders and its board of directors. For example, why didn't Skilling and Lay see more clearly the risks and increasingly adverse effects of the extreme, performance-oriented management system that they had created? How could Skilling—a very public proponent of earning more money with less assets (the so-called asset light strategy)—rationalize Enron spending so heavily, and so beyond established capital budgets, on capital projects with highly speculative returns?
Q: As you note in your book, there is much that we still do not know—and may never know—about Enron's failure. Having studied the company intensively for years, what would you most like to know?
A: There is still much that we do not know about the perceptions, intentions, thought processes, and apparent failings of Enron's leaders and its board of directors. For example, why didn't Skilling and Lay see more clearly the risks and increasingly adverse effects of the extreme, performance-oriented management system that they had created? How could Skilling—a very public proponent of earning more money with less assets (the so-called asset light strategy)—rationalize Enron spending so heavily, and so beyond established capital budgets, on capital projects with highly speculative returns?
Wall Street Journal Interview: Marka Hansen
WSJ: Who is the Gap's core customer now, and how has that changed, if at all?
Ms. Hansen: Our stake in the ground is ages 25 to 35, and that's the customer we want. Twenty-five to 35 covers you from kind of postcollege to getting married to maybe having the first child. This puts you from the Gap itself into the babyGap and GapMaternity, but it's not trying to be everything to everyone.
When I got here, I think the team was more focused on 18 to 24 and really going after that kind of younger demographic that is where American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch play. I don't think that is right for us.
Read the rest of the interview with Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America. [I'm waiting for GapCodger.]
Two Year Law School
Northwestern University has announced an optional two-year, rather than the traditional three-year, law school program starting in 2009.
This may be a brilliant appeal to the hidden but sizable masochist market.
Same course work, just compressed; a change that sounds like a formula for increased stress. [And somewhere a plaintiff attorney, sniffing litigation, just moved closer to the computer.]
Northwestern deserves two cheers for trying something new. Some modest suggestions:
This may be a brilliant appeal to the hidden but sizable masochist market.
Same course work, just compressed; a change that sounds like a formula for increased stress. [And somewhere a plaintiff attorney, sniffing litigation, just moved closer to the computer.]
Northwestern deserves two cheers for trying something new. Some modest suggestions:
- Keep the three year program but alter the length of the courses so they fit the needs of the subject instead of an arbitrary schedule. That might reduce the formal coursework to two years.
- Reduce the theory and zoom instead to the material they'll really need.
- Devote the third year to an apprenticeship program with practicing attorneys.
Perhaps their compression program is a first step in that direction and they have more up their sleeves. This will be an interesting experiment to watch.
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