The Failure of a Freshman Dictator
According to the Least Preferred Coworker [LPC] scale, relationships motivate me [a score of 75]. As I discussed last week, I feel there is variability in these types of assessments and if I re-took the assessment a week, a month [etc.] from now, I would score differently. Nevertheless, at this point in time the results […]
You Can Change the World, But Do You Know How to?
Changes in social paradigms start small and build until the changes become obvious to nearly all participants and observers. When these changes provoke a shift in society, most individuals understand the new status quo is better, but are often ignorant of its roots. Behind these intuitive societal shifts, one can usually find an individual with […]
Want to Change the World?
Is today’s world perfect? If you’re like most people, you’re realistic and can easily say our modern world is imperfect. What’s wrong with it? Is there one part of our global environment that severely impacts our lives in a negative manner? Surely you can list a number of issues that need our immediate attention, such […]
Today is the 111th Day of the Year
Today is the 111th day of the year, and as such marks the year being 1/3 over in my calendar. As the day of the birth of myself occurs in the last 32/33 days of the year, I write off the totality of those days as one massive holiday. So, what have I gotten accomplished […]
Sales and Tech Carnivals
I’m participating in two carnivals this week and wanted to share them with you. Over at Technology Matter, the First Carnival of Tech is happening. In addition to my post from last week about the Redzee search engine, there were several other sites with great content. Check out the carnival when you get a chance. […]
I’m Back!
Hello there everyone! I’m just posting a quick note that I’m still here and will begin posting regularly again soon. To my RSS feed subscribers and anyone else who stumbles upon this page, I want to wish you all a belated Happy New Year! I didn’t intend to take this long of a break from […]
The Artistic Scientific Leader (Personal Reflection)
When I saw the textbook title for this course, The Art and Science of Leadership, I chuckled a little bit. My assumptions before this course was that leadership was a field difficult to research, in terms of what makes a leader successful and what styles of leadership lead to that success. In my mind, it […]
The Streak is Over: Graduate Summer 2007 Grades – Umass Amherst
Four courses into my collegiate career at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, my Grade Point Average was a perfect 4.0! The grades for my graduate course, Perspectives on Leadership,were released a few days ago and, unfortunately, the dream of graduating with a 4.0 is officially over. It was a long and hard fought battle […]
Ray Anderson: Personal, Corporate, Societal Leader
As Interface Carpets’ mission focuses on environmental sustainability, Ray Anderson’s leadership style shows evidence of both ethical and servant strategies. Since the environment is a resource shared by and endowed to all humans and life on earth, any company which disproportionately uses environmental resources for its own benefit, especially in a harmful manner, is acting […]
This Space for Sale
It’s surprising how many of the marketing methods utilized by advertisers from the Industrial Era and later are still used today. For instance, the concept of maintaining integrity of the medium at craigslist.org leads to a huge range of categories which contain and restrict the listings to defined spaces, similar to the column and type […]
Industrial Revolution Era Spammers
In the beginning stages of marketing in America, the media distributors were entities completely dissociated from advertising and worked to institute journalistic standards, which in turn limited the range of advertising and forced advertisers to focus on the content, not the delivery. Newspapers were the primary media of the time and worked to ensure each […]
The Rise of Corporate Fascism in America
A successful American corporation relies on mutually beneficial relationships between multiple parties with a vested interest in the success of the corporation. These parties’ interests lie in three domains, capital, profit, and the public. A board of directors and one or more managers of the company perceive a right to manipulate the invested capital of […]
Modern Globalization: The Perversion of the Word Free
Although Wayne Ellwood considers the transatlantic journey of Christopher Columbus the initiation of globalization, it’s true origins may lie even deeper in human history, dating all the way back to the origins of humanity in Africa, and their subsequent journeys to other continents. Though technology at the time prevented these early humans from creating vast […]
JSL: Just Substitute for Leaders
The Toyota corporate strategy is one of the most studied models in the business environment; this is the fourth (that I can remember) time I’ve studied Just In Time and the Toyota Production System in a business class. Before reading the articles, I knew Toyota was extremely efficient at producing quality products with a minimum […]
The Modern Charismatic Military
War, the business of a military, requires an immense commitment from a leader’s followers in order to result in success. To obtain such a strong commitment, military leaders should and are charismatic. They build trust among their followers to the point of followers trusting their leaders with their very lives. One of my first thoughts […]
Undergraduate Summer 2007 Grades – University of Massachusetts at Amherst
The final grade for the Business and Its Environment undergraduate course at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was published to the SPIRE web-site last week. My A grade continues the trend from my classes during the Spring and Winter sessions, a trend that will hopefully continue through the graduate class, Perspectives on Leadership, I’m […]
State Street Tears Up Wall Street
Normally, I try to avoid talking about my employer on this site to avoid getting “dooced“, but today marked a great day for State Street. We announced our earnings for the past quarter and reported a 61% increase in profits from a year ago, up to $366 million! We also reported record revenue of $1.921 […]
This Is MONDRAGON!
Umass – Amherst – SCH-MGMT – 365 Business and Its Environment Summer 2007 Discussion #10 1) What are the characteristics of the Mondragon cooperatives that you find most different from businesses with more familiar organizational forms? 2) What assumptions seem to underlie the Mondragon? 3) What do you think about these characteristics and assumptions? Democracy […]
How Much Leadership Can $1 Buy?
Class: School of Management 697PP: Perspectives on Leadership. Discussion #5B Is [John] Mackey a visionary, charismatic, or transformational leader? Is he a leader at all? What has made his business so successful—leadership or something else? John Mackey is undoubtedly a leader, one of the finest examples of an exemplary leader we can study. His mission […]
Leadership Tests < Leadership Adaptability [Part 2]
Today’s post is the conclusion to the Leadership Tests < Leadership Adaptability [Part 1] post. Having given my opinion on why these assessments are not as reliable as observing a leader in action, and that some of the questions can be justified, at least personally, on both sides, I did lean to one side or […]
Leadership Tests < Leadership Adaptability [Part 1]
Umass Amherst – School of Management 697PP: Perspectives on Leadership Discussion #3 The subject of our discussion this week will be individual traits and qualities as they affect organizational leadership. Please read and carefully consider the two short cases, “The Caring Dictator,” about Jack Hartnett of Sonic rollerskating franchises (p. 59 ), and “Pernille Spiers-Lopez […]
Robot Wanted, Human Will Do
Class: Management 365: Business and Its Environment. Discussion #5 …write an imaginary job description for a Wal-Mart clerk…based on [Barbara] Ehrenreich’s experience. Refer to the skills and attitudes required, as well as the organizational and social role that is played. Pretend you are a De Tocquville-type observer/ethnographer, not your typical HR person. You’re not trying […]
Following Footprints: How Sriram Ayer and Small Dog Create Paths for their Followers
Umass Amherst – School of Management 697PP: Perspectives on Leadership Summer 2007 Discussion #2 Read the short case on Small Dog Electronics on page 7 of your textbook [Adam’s Edit: Art and Science of Leadership (4th Edition) by Afsaneh Nahavandi].Also read the very short [Adam’s Edit: Fast Company] article in the module folder about an […]
Umass Amherst – School of Management 697PP: Perspectives on Leadership
Those of who read the post about my undergraduate summer class, Management 365: Business and Its Environment, are probably wondering two things right now, This post will tell us whether you Umass-Amherst allowed you to enroll in the graduate class you were referring to, right? Why was that post titled “…Management…” yet this one is […]
Bits & Pieces on Management and Our Environment
Below is the first discussion and my first response for the Management 365 – Business and Its Environment class I’m currently taking: The Allegory of the Cave by Plato After you have read the excerpt from Plato think about the following: What point is Plato trying to make? What do the shadows and the objects […]
Umass Amherst – Management 365: Business and Its Environment
I’m attempting to take two classes during the first summer session the University of Massachusetts at Amherst offers, however, I need to seek approval from the MBA program at Umass as the second class is a graduate level class, which has a restriction in place of requiring a bachelor’s degree to take, even though I […]
WaMu: The Right People for the Right Job
Washington Mutual doesn’t look at a person’s skill set or previous accomplishments when they’re looking for a new hire, instead WaMu looks for certain attitudes. They believe they can teach any necessary skills to people, but they cannot train people to have a good and positive attitude. A big part of making sure employees have […]
The Strategy of No Strategy
Professor Stookey [Principles of Management – Umass Amherst] made a very good comment in the description for this post that Robbins and Coulter rely on "rationality, logic, and order" to describe strategy and how to implement it. In my mind the word strategy implies a logical and ordered plan of action. I feel that growing […]
Welcome to the human resource.
It was sweltering hot in Boston today, but I enjoyed it. Living in Southern California and North Carolina, I’ve gotten used to hot temperatures and actually quite like the very hot days now. Anyway, small rant aside, I’m posting another discussion post from my Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst, as it is still too […]
Centralization vs. Decentralization
The title says a lot for tonight’s post, which is pulled from the Principles of Management class I took at Umass-Amherst during the winter 2007 semester. The advantages and disadvantages of centralized versus decentralized organizational structures lies greatly in the inherent qualities and effects of the structures themselves. Robbins and Coulter describe this very well, […]
Planning at the Lend Lease Corporation
The majority of my finals will be over tomorrow night, so you’ll start seeing some fresh content soon. For tonight, I’ll be publishing one more discussion post from the Principles of Management class I took at Umass-Amherst in the Winter 20007 semester. To anyone who has the textbook, Management by Stephen Robbins and Mary Coulter, […]
Severance Contracts: What About the Rest of Us?
Today’s post is another from my discussion assignments for the Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst. I’m still in finals week right now for the Marketing and Stats classes I’m currently taking so I won’t have much time to post anything else. Today’s post is relevant to an event that occurred a few days ago […]
Fair Trade vs. Global Business
The material in this post is another discussion assignment from my Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst. The two classes I’m currently taking are in finals week right now, so I likely won’t have much time to post new original content here this week but will try to write a post or two unrelated to […]
Intuit: The Small Business Helpers
Another day, another discussion post from my Principles of Management class at Umass Amherst. This assignment involved describing why a company on Forbes’ 25 best managed list was so well managed. I chose Intuit, the makers of Turbo Tax and other accounting software. If there are any Intuit employees out there reading this, I would […]
Au Bon Pain, Richard Thibeault, and the Controls that “Guide” Them
This discussion post, for a Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst, was in response to an article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “In Name Only: For Richard Thibeault, Being a `Manager’ Is a Blue-Collar Life — Grueling Hours, No Respect Make Low-Tier Bosses Feel Tired and Troubled — `Factory Work Was Easier‘”, written by […]
Timbuk2 Case Analysis
The below post was an assignment for the Principles of Management class at Umass-Amherst. The question posed was whether Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management would be beneficial for Rob Honeycutt, the owner of Timbuk2 Designs. Part of this assignment was also to post a response to my classmate’s responses; I have not included this […]
Javaprenuers: Corporate Managers Tackle Small Business Ownership
The below essay was written as a mid-term assignment for a Principles of Management class at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The very summarized case background involves two people, Jose and Gladys, who rose to upper management positions at Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney (respectively), yet were not content with their professional lives. The two […]