THE UN-COMFORT ZONE With Robert Wilson: New Column For APS Blog

What's Pushing Your Buttons?

By ROBERT WILSON

What motivates you? That's the question I'd like to ask in this inaugural column on motivation. Are you motivated by fame, fortune or fear. Or is it something deeper that fans the flames inside of you. Perhaps you are like Jeanne Louise Calment whose burning desire enabled her to do something that no other human being has done before. A feat so spectacular that it generated headlines around the globe, got her a role in a motion picture, and landed her in the Guinness Book of World Records. A record that has yet to be beaten.

Jeanne Louise, however, did not initially motivate herself. It was someone else who drew the line in the sand. But, it became a line she was determined to cross.

In motivation we talk about getting outside of one's comfort zone. It is only when we are uncomfortable that we begin to get motivated. Usually to get back into our comfort zone as quickly as possible.

Born into the family of a middle-class store owner, Calment was firmly entrenched in her comfort zone. At age 21 she married a wealthy store owner and lived a life of leisure. She pursued her hobbies of tennis, the opera, and sampling France's famous wines. Over the years she met Impressionist painter Van Gogh; watched the
erection of the Eiffel Tower; and attended the funeral of Hunchback of Notre Dame, author, Victor Hugo.

Twenty years after her husband passed away, she had reached a stage in life where she had pretty much achieved everything that she was Going to achieve. Then along came a lawyer. The lawyer made Jeanne Louise a proposition. She accepted it. He thought he was simply Making a smart business deal. Inadvertently he gave her a goal. It
took her 30 years to achieve it, but achieve it she did.

Are you willing to keep your goals alive for 30 years? At what point do you give up? Thomas Edison never gave up, instead he said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Winston Churchill during the bleakest hours of World War II kept an entire country motivated with this die-hard conviction: "We shall defend our
Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches... in the fields and in the streets... we shall never surrender."

Many of us give up too soon because we set limits on our goals. Achieving a goal begins with determination. Then it's just a matter of our giving them attention and energy.

When Jeanne Louise was 92 years old, attorney François Raffray, age 47, offered to pay her $500 per month (a fortune in 1967) for the rest of her life, if she would leave her house to him in her will. According to the actuarial tables it was a great deal. Here was an heir-less woman who had survived her husband, children, and grandchildren. A woman who was just biding her time with nothing to live for. That is until Raffray came along and offered up the "sucker-bet" that she would soon die. It was motivation enough for Jeanne, who was determined to beat the lawyer. Thirty years later, Raffray became the "sucker" when he passed away first at age 77.

When asked about this by the press, Calment simply said, "In life, one sometimes make bad deals." Having met her goal, Jeanne passed away five months later. But on her way to this end, she achieved something else: at 122 years old, she became the oldest person to have ever lived.

In future articles we'll examine further the ways in which motivation works. How to motivate ourselves, our employees, customers, volunteers, friends, loved ones and children. I would like to get your feedback on which of these areas of motivation are of most interest to you. I'd also like to hear your stories of how you may have overcome adversity and what pushed you to go the distance. Please email me with your suggestions and stories.


Robert Evans Wilson, Jr. is a motivational speaker and humorist. He works with companies that want to be more competitive and with people who want to think like innovators. For more information on Robert's programs please visit www.jumpstartyourmeeting.com.

www.jumpstartyourmeeting.com (Speeches & Seminars)
www.graffitiguy.net (Comedy Roasts)
404-255-4924
robert@jumpstartyourmeeting.com

Finding Good Reasons to Work With Time

Via
NY Times

By PAUL B. BROWN

Just about all entrepreneurs grapple with the issue of having people work untraditional hours at some point in their company’s life.

And with all the talk about shifting to a four-day work week, to reduce the amount of gasoline used by employees in commuting, it is a good time to review the basics.

As the National Workplace Flexibility Project, developed by the federal Department of Labor points out, there are several good reasons to move to flex time.

“When done right,” the project said in a report, “flexible work arrangements can result in enhanced ability to attract and retain talented people; greater employee satisfaction, morale, and engagement; increased effectiveness and productivity” and “better coverage of the operation and availability to customers.”

Complete Article

Technology Must Be Coordinated With The Skill Level Of Labor

Via
AgWeb.com

Technology Kills

By Vance Ehmke

While I’m a firm believer in technology and rapid adoption of it, after this wheat harvest I became aware of technology’s dark side. Instead of increasing productivity and efficiency, it can kill it.

At one point during harvest, I was sitting in one of four new high capacity, high tech John Deere combines with 40-foot draper heads as the operator finished a field. In the olden days all we had to do was drive the machines across the road and start on the next field. That should have taken just one minute.

However, because we were changing fields, a new field ID had to be entered in the combine’s computer system. But since only one of the four operators knew how to key in the new codes, all four combines sat there probably a half hour while the one skilled operator went from combine to combine making the adjustment.

This is the equivalent of one very expensive combine sitting idle for 2 solid hours during the peak of harvest. What a drag on productivity!

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Reform Talk In Cuba Touches On Economic Efficiency

Via
Latin Business Chronicle


Is Raul Castro preparing the ground for more substantive, pro-market economic reforms in Cuba?

BY LATIN AMERICA ADVISOR
Inter-American Dialogue

Cuban President Raul Castro said [recently] that "socialism means social justice and equality, but equality of rights, of opportunities, not of income" and that "equality is not egalitarianism." What is the significance of Castro's comments? Is he preparing the ground for more substantive, pro-market economic reforms? What possible reforms do you see in the offing?

Dennis Hays, Vice President of Thorium Power and a former Coordinator for Cuban Affairs at the US Department of State: Raul will never be the public speaker his brother was, but that doesn't mean he has nothing to say. In an address full of anecdotes and faint attempts at humor, he managed to get across a number of interesting points, including an ad-libbed admission that 'sometimes in socialism two plus two equals three.' But after noting a number of ways in which the Cuban economy continues to be the most dysfunctional one this side of Zimbabwe, he finally got to the point—Cubans can expect to be taxed in the future for many of the things they take for granted now, and major discrepancies in income will become commonplace (starting, of course, to the advantage of the senior military).

Complete Article

Canada's Manufactuing Skid Hits Productivity

Via
The Windsor Star

Manufacturing losses a drag on productivity
Data no surprise, economist says

By Eric Beauchesne
Canwest News Service

OTTAWA - The hollowing out of Canada's manufacturing sector will worsen what a federal agency report shows is an already lagging overall productivity performance in this country, a labour economist is warning.

Statistics Canada on Monday said the broadest measure of economic productivity shows that Canada was only 87 per cent as productive as the U.S. in 2003, down from about 89 per cent a decade earlier.

Canadian Auto Workers' economist Jim Stanford said the findings aren't surprising.

Complete Article

Smart Offices And Productivity

Via
India Times

India Inc bets on smart offices to boost productivity

MUMBAI: Smart offices can do a lot in boosting productivity. Corporate India is convinced about this, and companies are going all-out to ensure that their offices are smarter, so that their employees work in a hassle-free environment.

The Smart Workplace Award, instituted by The Economic Times in association with IT majors Acer and Intel, recognises India Inc’s efforts in this direction.

This year, of 600 companies that vied for the top places in various categories, 20 emerged as winners. IndusInd Bank and Bajaj Capital won Smart Workplaces Awards in the financial services vertical, while IndianOil, Aditya Birla Management Corporation, Indian Farmers Fertiliser Co-operative, GE Global Research and Bharat Petroleum Corporation won awards in the industrial market space.

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Increased Presure To Cut Costs

No Time Like Now
For Productivity Improvement

Via
NY Times

From May to June, the cost of residential energy use in the New York metropolitan region shot up by 10.8 percent, the biggest increase in any month on record, according to the latest report on inflation from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics . The price of electricity, which rose more than 15 percent in that period, was the main driver of the overall cost of household energy.

Power bills have been rising fast in the region as utilities have passed on the surging cost of fuel. Locally, the price of fuel oil was more than 75 percent higher than in June 2007. Con Edison said last week that residential customers would be charged about 22 percent more this summer than last.

Over the past year, the cost of household energy has risen more than 18 percent, according to the report. The escalation of energy prices easily eclipsed the fast rise in the cost of food. Prices of groceries and other food consumed at home rose 6.4 percent in the past year, which was the largest change in any 12-month period since June 2004.

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May We Have Your Attention, Please?

Via
Business Week

With the workplace ever more full of distractions,
researchers are developing tools to keep us on task

It's official: The average knowledge worker has the attention span of a sparrow. Roughly once every three minutes, typical cubicle dwellers set aside whatever they're doing and start something else—anything else. It could be answering the phone, checking e-mail, responding to an instant message, clicking over to YouTube (GOOG), or posting something amusing on Facebook. Constant interruptions are the Achilles' heel of the information economy in the U.S. These distractions consume as much as 28% of the average U.S. worker's day, including recovery time, and sap productivity to the tune of $650 billion a year, according to Basex, a business research company in New York City.

Soon, however, the same kinds of social networking software and communications technologies that make it deliciously easy to lose concentration may start steering us back to the tasks at hand. Scientists at U.S. research labs are developing tools to help people prioritize the flood of information they face and fend off irrelevant info-bytes. New modes of e-mail and phone messaging can wait patiently for an opportune time to interrupt. One program allows senders to "whisper" something urgent via a pop-up on a screen.

Innovations like these belong to a sub-branch of computer science that's geekily called "attentional user interfaces." The goal, says Scott E. Hudson, a professor in this discipline at Carnegie Mellon University, is finding a way to reap benefits from the data deluge "without having it destroy us on the attention side."

Complete Article

Who's An Energy Hog?

Via
Forbes.com

CIO Chat

By Ed Sperling

The adage that "you can't get fired for buying IBM" is about to change. While companies will still buy from IBM and its competitors, they will soon be asking detailed questions about the energy-efficiency ratings of computer servers.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to roll out a standard specification sheet for servers by year's end that will do for big iron what Energy Star ratings did for washing machines and air conditioners: It will make one-to-one comparisons possible for the first time.

In some cases, those ratings will be used as a negotiating tool on price. In others, they will be deal-breakers. Forbes.com caught up with Andrew Fanara, the EPA's team leader for Energy Star product specifications, to talk about the coming changes.

Complete Article

Now, ‘green’ report cards for U.S. colleges

Via
Christian Science Monitor

New rating systems help students
choose environmentally friendly colleges

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Students looking to narrow their college choices will soon have something new to consider alongside academics and campus life: A “Green Rating” makes its debut this summer in several of The Princeton Review’s popular college guides. Six-hundred college profiles will include a score reflecting factors such as building and transportation policies, food sources, recycling, and availability of environmental courses.

In response to students’ growing appetite for all things environmentally friendly, several groups have begun tracking schools’ commitment to going green. But such ratings might be productive only to the degree that they spur thoughtful initiatives, pushing schools to collaborate as much as compete, experts say. If it veers toward “keeping up with the Joneses,” some observers caution, it might only increase college costs at a time when affordability is a major concern.

“We’re definitely seeing schools that look at sustainability as a strategic priority and a way of distinguishing themselves, and there are many schools that are striving to be … the ‘greenest’ campus,” says Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in Lexington, Ky., which has been piloting a rating system in which schools can participate.

The College Sustainability Report Card, put out by the Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI) in Cambridge, Mass., gives letter grades to at least 200 public and private schools with the largest endowments. In addition to green campus factors, it grades how well a school uses its investment leverage to advocate for the environment. “When people are comparing schools that all say they are leaders on sustainability … [they can now] peek behind those statements,” says executive director Mark Orlowski.

Complete Article

Brazil announces massive support plan to increase crops

Via
Merco Press

Brazil has promised farmers 78 billion Reais, approximately 48 billion US dollars, in soft loans to promote agriculture production and help curb inflation announced on Wednesday the country’s development bank, BNDES.

The amount includes 65 billion Reais for commercial farmers in the crop year that began in July and is 12% higher than the previous crop said Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes during a meeting with farm organizations in the southern city of Curitiba. The rest is earmarked to family and subsistence farmers.

With prices of agriculture commodities soaring to record prices Brazil is seeking to increase output, productivity and inventories, said Stephanes.

“This farm plan is part of a strategic vision” added Stephanes who pointed out that “the future of agriculture depends on productivity and efficiency”.

Brazil has the potential to increase crops but faces serious infrastructure problems with an inefficient transport system, lack of storage capacity and insufficient port facilities.

Complete Article