Training

The organizations that need training the least do it the most. They feel an obligation to develop their employees and understand that the expense of many training sessions is small compared to the cost of a lawsuit or a major managerial blunder.

The places that don't train often cite money as the reason but I don't think that is the case. They don't train when times are flush. Instead of worry over finances, you can sense a feeling of inferiority on their part; a fear that if the employees gain knowledge - especially from an outsider - then management will somehow lose control.

You can show the value of the finished product. You can describe the process used to get there. You can point to similar groups that benefited. But it is still hard to remove the fear that drives groups that regard knowledge as an adversary of control.

Heroism

Take some time today and read Jim Stroup's essay on unsung heroes:

And so, we miss it – real, breathtaking heroism – when it is displayed. We often don’t notice it when we, ourselves, are its inspiration, its origin, or its beneficiary. It is not observed, it doesn’t rise above the background noise of our daily lives. It is not singled out for attention. It is just repeated.

Surely, there is no need to belittle those who have justly earned renown for their actions. But the stories untold are the most powerful. They are all the more so for their anonymity, and their ubiquity.

In Praise of Baseball

If you've not been to a little league ball game recently and see a game being played as you drive by, stop and watch. You will see baseball in its pure form. I understand the criticism (parents being hard on their kids, coaches shouting, and the pressures of competition). It mostly comes from those outside of the arena. Sure there are problems as there are with any institution. But the do-gooders and complainers miss the kids' perspective.


Read the rest at Cultural Offering.

Quote of the Day

The world bats last.

- Anonymous

Well Written: Mark Helprin

From "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin:

The main door of the French Mill opened, let in some glassy snow, and shut. At first, Peter Lake thought that the wind had done this, but then he looked down and saw two small men walking to a table on the opposite side of the room. Not only were they no more than five feet tall, but they both wore bowler hats, and ragged jackets that, before they were trimmed in the back, had once been tails. Their eyes were sunken, their faces had a leathery look, and they had bony cheeks and mouths that would have been large and toothy on men twice their size. Their hands were fat little balls of flesh with flat infantile thumbs, as delicate and strange as the paws of a tree frog. Their voices matched the rest of them in that they were small and sounded like the supplicating chirp of men who are married to female lumberjacks or prison matrons.

Different Definitions

There is a reason why many regulatory documents include definitions near the beginning.

Operate with different definitions of standards and compliance and you'll wind up with very different results.

Definitions are a form of navigation. Rush past them and you may find yourself on the way to the administrative equivalent of Turkey instead of Tahiti.

The need to define stems from the fact that we may ascribe widely varying meanings to the same terms. Consider how some organizations lump those who resigned and those who were fired under the label of "terminations." Similar confusion may arise when defining "applicant" or "test."

Years ago, when conducting investigations, I followed the Columbo approach of asking dumb questions and striving to get a verbal picture of what had taken place. What I learned was that the dumb questions were far from stupid because of the spins and assumptions that are so easily attached. When we conceive of items, we draw from our experience and that may lead us astray.

Mention a locker to one person and visions of high school may emerge while another may think of a gym. Still others may be picturing foot or tool lockers. A rose is not always a rose.

Guy Got Hacked

Sorry I'm late in reporting this. CSO has the story on the incident involving the hacked Twitter page of Guy Kawasaki:

It's not clear how hackers managed to gain access to Kawasaki's account -- security experts say that he and others may have fallen victim to earlier Twitter phishing attacks, where attackers tried to trick victims into logging into fake Twitter sits in hopes of stealing their login credentials.

Warm-Mongering

I always enjoy it when the masks slip and the warm-mongers explicitly demand we adopt a massive Poverty Expansion Program to save the planet. “I don’t think a lot of electricity is a good thing,” said Gar Smith of San Francisco’s Earth Island Institute a few years back. “I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity,” he continued, regretting that African peasants “who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing for their neighbors on foot-pedal powered sewing machines” are now slumped in front of Desperate Housewives reruns all day long.

One assumes Gar Smith is sincere in his fetishization of bucolic African poverty, with its vibrantly rampant disease and charmingly unspoilt life expectancy in the mid-forties. But when a hereditary prince starts attacking capitalism and pining for the days when a benign sovereign knew what was best for the masses, he gives the real game away. Capitalism is liberating: You’re born a peasant but you don’t have to die one.

Read the rest of Mark Steyn here.

Book Recommendation: George Washington

Paul Johnson's short biography of George Washington is a bargain both in price and quality.

There's only one negative: At the end you'll be hungry for more.

Quote of the Day

Right now, we're in the cool phase of American politics - we like our leaders robotically programmed and unflappably empty.

- Rob Long