Wanted: Carbon Productivity Revolution

Via
Cleantech blog

by Richard T. Stuebi

The think-tank arm of the management consulting firm McKinsey &Co., the McKinsey
Global Institute (MGI), has been releasing some pretty darn interesting analyses to frame the overall energy and environmental situation the world faces.

The breakthrough was MGI's February 2007 work to develop a "cost-curve" for GHG reductions , showing the quantities and relative costs associated with various emission reduction technologies and approaches that could be pursued. Since its release, the cost curve framework has been an incredibly valuable and widely-used analytic and communication tool for policy-makers worldwide, and it has been used to good effect by MGI's researchers.

In February of this year, MGI issued a report on energy productivity , which showed the compelling financial returns offered to society by massive investments in energy efficiency. This summer, MGI issued a subsequent report on carbon productivity, which presents a simple but stunning challenge to the human race:

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After a Downsizing, How to Motivate?

Via
NY Times

Under New Management
After a Downsizing, How to Motivate?

By KELLEY HOLLAND

DOWNSIZING. Restructuring. Headcount reduction. Whatever they are called, layoffs instill dread, guilt or both in managers. The loss of a job is among life’s most traumatic events, and even many hard-nosed managers hate to force that experience on their colleagues.

Because of this, managers can become so consumed by the prospect of firing people that they fail to adequately reassure and remotivate the employees who remain.

But they make this mistake at their peril. Study after study has found that employers who eliminate jobs may not bolster productivity over the long run. Too often, their anxious and overworked remaining employees become risk-averse and unproductive, or leave for other jobs. As companies hire new workers or turn to outside vendors to compensate, the short-term savings from layoffs can evaporate.

The wobbly economy is producing a steady stream of layoff announcements — the number of extended mass layoffs rose 8 percent in the second quarter, based on preliminary numbers, versus the period a year earlier. So it’s more important than ever for managers to understand how best to handle these downsizings, not just for those who lose their jobs, but also for those who are still working.

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9 Ways Gen Y Provides Leadership, and Productivity to Business while eliminating difficult behavior

Via
American Chronicle

Are you ready to turn your thinking from Generation Y as difficult people to great corporate citizens? Generation X and the Baby Boomers have not had this kind of press because they remained within a "norm" of others expectations. Gen Y do not consider themselves to be difficult or toxic people. So you may want to stop making fun of them!

The good news is that Generation Y learned the importance of balancing work and life from watching their overworked parents. So here are some ideas of what they bring to an overworked, entitlement driven work force.

1. Hold Only Productive Meetings

Email will be the medium for information that just needs to be shared. Thirty minute meetings will pull everyone to the same page while motivating them to get the work done. They bring to the table efficiency, focus and definitive expected outcomes.

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Military and aerospace companies ensure electronic systems with test and measurement tools

Via
Military & Aerospace Electronics

By Courtney E. Howard

The test and measurement of electronics is an important part of any development and production process, yet testing for military and aerospace applications is especially critical because failures might put lives and missions at risk, recognizes John Barfuss, aerospace &defense program manager at test giant Agilent Technologies Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif.

"If a business person's phone stops working it is an inconvenience but if a soldier's radio quits working, it could leave him in grave danger," continues Barfuss. "If a cellular base station breaks it may cost the provider thousands of dollars. If a satellite payload breaks it could cost millions."

With military and civilian lives and billions of taxpayer's dollars potentially on the line, test and measurement is at the forefront in the minds of systems designers, systems integrators, and end users in the military and aerospace market. Makers of test and measurement solutions serving the mil-aero community continue to advance the technology, keeping pace with electronics technologies and the standards and deadlines to which they must adhere.

Time is of the essence

Much has been written about warfighters in the field waiting for armaments. In an effort to deliver ample electronics systems and supplies rapidly that are safe and reliable, industry organizations are partnering to speed and perfect test and measurement processes and procedures -- and they are accomplishing these goals through automation.

Engineers at Agilent Technologies, Raytheon Co. in Waltham, Mass., and the U.S. Navy have teamed to develop an automated test system for Raytheon's system missile business. The joint efforts of these three organizations culminated in the Presidio Automated Test Line, considered a breakthrough in testing automation and used in the production of Raytheon's Standard Missile 2.

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Moving Mountains on Your Desk

Via
NY Times

By PHYLLIS KORKKI

Q. Your desk is always a mess. How can this be, when you do most of your work on the computer?

A. Some people need to hold information in their hands and write things down to think and work, said Julie Morgenstern, a productivity consultant based in New York. That’s the way their brains work, she said. The computer hasn’t changed that; in fact, it has brought more paper than ever to many offices by allowing people to make printouts.

Add to those printouts an assortment of manuals, forms, handouts, notebooks, business cards, books, magazines, newspapers, financial statements and receipts — flung and stacked haphazardly across your work space — and you have the makings of a mess.

Q. What effect does a messy desk have?

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Beyond seed and soil: Farmers' high-tech tools increase productivity

Via
Daily Chronicle, Illinois

By DANA HERRA - dherra@daily-chronicle.com

Bert Hueber may use an ultrasound machine for his job, but he doesn't work for a hospital or a medical clinic.

Hueber is a partner in Beef Performance Technology, and takes the ultrasound machine and the “heavy-duty laptop” connected to it to cattle operations around the area.

He isn't looking for medical information: The ultrasounds let him “see” the quality of beef on a steer, and the computer analyzes the image to project how many more days the steer should be fed for the meat to reach its optimal grade.

“It's a marketing tool,” he said Wednesday as he passed the ultrasound wand over the rib-eye portion of a steer standing on a massive scale in the cattle confinement building on the J. Willrett farm in Malta. “It gives producers more information to use in their marketing.”

Ultrasounds are just one of a bevy of high-tech tools today's farmers use. With the high cost of input such as seed, feed and fertilizer, farmers have always been early adopters of tools to help them get the most out of every head of livestock and every acre of land, Clare farmer Tracy Jones said.

“We're great users of technology,” he said. “I'm basically farming three times the amount of ground as when I started farming with my dad in 1980, and I'm doing it with the same amount of labor. ... Over the last 20 years, we've been great adopters and great beneficiaries of technology.”

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Using Fear

THE UN-COMFORT ZONE
with Robert Wilson

The Most Powerful Motivator

I was abruptly awakened and told, "The house is on fire. Go outside!" As I ran out of my bedroom and into the hall my socks slipped on the polished oak floor. A guiding hand helped me keep my footing and a frantic voice urged, "Hurry! Hurry!"

As I got to the door I looked over my shoulder and saw flames leaping out of the heating grate on the floor. The door was thrown open and I was shoved outside into the carport. "Go stand in the driveway and wait for me. And, DO NOT come back inside. Do you hear me? DO NOT come back inside the house!"

The door shut and I began to cry. I stood and stared at the seafoam green door with the frosted jalousie windows. I waited and waited, but I did not go stand in the driveway. I couldn't move. I began to shiver as the cold concrete floor seeped through my socks, and the winter air penetrated my pajamas. It seemed to take forever, and with each passing minute, I cried harder. I could taste the salt of tears flowing down my face and into my mouth.

Finally the door reopened and my mother announced, "The fire is out." Relief flooded my body as I ran into her arms and she held me tight. I was two years old and the mental images of that day are as clear as if it happened yesterday. It is perhaps my oldest memory.

As an advertising and marketing consultant, I know there are many things that motivate us. During my presentations I frequently conduct straw polls, where I ask my audiences what motivates them. The first answers are usually about desires, but eventually someone remembers the most powerful motivator of all. FEAR.

Fear is a primal instinct that served us as cave dwellers and today. It keeps us alive, because if we survive a bad experience, we never forget how to avoid it in the future. Our most vivid memories are born in Fear. Adrenaline etches them into our brains.

Nothing makes us more uncomfortable than fear. And, we have so many: fear of pain, disease, injury, failure, not being accepted, missing an opportunity, and being scammed to name a few. Fear invokes the flight or fight syndrome; and our first reaction is always to flee back to our comfort zone. If we don't know the way back, we are likely to follow whoever shows us a path.

Marketers use fear as a motivator as often as they can. They present a scenario they hope will invoke our sense of fear. Then they show us a solution - a path back to our comfort zone - that entails using their product or service. Fear is used to sell virtually everything: cars, tires, and life insurance are classics. But, clever marketers also use it to sell breakfast cereal and deodorant. As a result we purchase all sorts of things that a generation ago were considered unnecessary: antibacterial soap, alarm systems, vitamins... the list goes on and on.

WARNING: Fear can be too powerful to use as a motivator because it can also paralyze - the classic deer in the headlights syndrome. Would you like to use fear to motivate your employees to perform better? "If you don't sell more widgets - you're FIRED!" It can work, but there are rules you must follow for it to be successful. To use fear successfully as a motivator, a solution must be offered with it. A new path to follow. You can tell an employee he or she must sell more, but unless you show them how, fear will cause flight or worse: paralysis.

Fear is a powerful motivator, but it is a negative one. I prefer to motivate someone by eliminating doubt. Doubt destroys motivation. If you can help a person get rid of it, you will motivate them positively. I will elaborate on this next time.

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)
USA PHONE: 404-255-4924
robert@jumpstartyourmeeting.com

Farmers Reinvesting In Equipment

Via
thonline.com


Deere earnings surge on farm boom

Sales in construction division, including Dubuque factory, continue to sag

By EILEEN MOZINSKI TH staff writer

A strong agricultural market continues to drive growth at Deere &Co., even as unstable economic conditions pound some of the heavy equipment maker's divisions.

Deere posted record third-quarter earnings Wednesday showing growth companywide but a slowdown in the construction and forestry division, which includes John Deere Dubuque Works.

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Productivity Is Easing the Pain

Via
Business Week

Profits are healthier and job losses fewer than in previous downturns.
The reason:
Businesses' swift response
to falling demand
is making productivity unusually strong

by James Cooper

The productivity revolution of the late 1990s changed forever the way U.S. businesses operate. Driven by technology and overseas competition, companies radically altered how they manage purchasing policies, inventories, production processes, and, perhaps most important, labor. The U.S. workforce has become much more flexible, allowing businesses to respond faster to changes in demand, to the benefit of businesses and workers. Even now, surprisingly strong gains in efficiency are playing a key role in helping the economy bear up under great stress.

Productivity, measured as output per hour worked in private nonfarm businesses, increased 2.8% through the second quarter from a year earlier. That's unusual on two counts. Efficiency typically slows when the economy weakens, but this time it has sped up, from 1.1% annually over the previous two years. Plus, given that hours worked have declined 1% over the past year, productivity gains have accounted for all of the 1.8% advance in economic growth (chart).

Greater use of part-time workers, especially in manufacturing and retailing, is a big part of the job market's new flexibility and recent gains in productivity. From 1990 to 2000, the share of temporary workers on payrolls doubled, to about 2%. During the 2001 recession, temps accounted for 20% of payroll losses. So far this year, temp jobs have accounted for 40% of all losses. Also, businesses are showing a greater tendency to cut hours rather than lay off workers. So far this year, employees working part-time have jumped by nearly a million, and the number saying they are doing so because of slack business conditions has soared to a record level.

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Making The Most Of Fertilizer

Via
CommodityOnline, India


Integrated nutrient management a key to productivity


By Dr Mangala Rai

Fertilizer is the mainstay of food production in the country; hence its judicious use is the need of the hour. The integrated nutrient management is a panacea for sound soil health, higher farm productivity and profitability.

Accordingly, our Government has taken historical decisions on nutrient-based pricing and subsidy, meeting additional cost of fortification/ coating of fertilizers, payment of freight subsidy for all fertilizers on actual basis and revival of single super phosphate industry. Simultaneously, to ensure adequate supply of fertilizers, the fertilizer industry needs to be cajoled from the continued stagnation due to low level of investment.

To reduce dependence on import of fertilizers, the indigenously available nutrient sources like low grade rock phosphate, waste mica and phosphogypsum need to be promoted as a source of phosphorus, potassium and sulphur, respectively. At the same time, there should be adequate provision for setting up of compost and bio-fertilizer units in rural and urban areas. The soil testing service requires to be strengthened for precise and efficient fertilizer use.

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Worker Productivity, and Wages, Slowed in July

Via
NY Times

WASHINGTON (AP) — The efficiency of America’s workers grew at a slightly slower pace in the spring as companies sought to produce more with leaner work forces.

Workers’ compensation growth also slowed.

The Labor Department reported Friday that productivity — the amount an employee produces for every hour on the job — grew at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the quarter. That was down from a 2.6 percent growth rate in the first quarter.

Economists were forecasting productivity to pick up slightly to a 2.7 percent pace.

Meanwhile, growth in compensation — wages and benefits — also slowed as companies were less generous amid troubles in the economy and uncertainty about their own prospects.

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Boost Productivity in Tough Times By Getting Connected to Your People

By Dana Borowka, MA, CEO of Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC


“Watch your words: they become your thoughts.
Watch your thoughts: they become your actions.
Watch your actions: they become your habits.
Watch your habits: they become your destiny.”
- Frank Outlaw

Personality tests not only help when hiring, they just might be a manager’s best tool to connect with employees.

You can manage the hard way or the easy way, the choice is up to you. The hard way is to be the “my way or the highway” type of boss. You know the kind, always forcing workers to do things in a way that isn’t natural for them. Wouldn’t it be better to use your understanding of personality traits to tap into the natural flow so you can get the best out of your people? Of course, knowing your employees, understanding their concerns, and developing connected relationships with them should be the normal procedure for all managers.

What is the payoff to a manager for developing connected relationships with employees using personality assessments? Here are three good benefits. First, it enables the manager to better anticipate what roadblocks might occur with a worker, and what to try to reduce this resistance. Second, understanding where employees are coming from will help you plan out how much participation you need from them, and will give some clues as to how change should be communicated to them. Third, building connected relationships builds commitment and loyalty.

Take the Connected Leader Test

How connected are you as a manager? To find out, we asked our colleague, Dr. Bruce Heller, an industrial psychologist with 20 years experience, to help us design a quick connected leader self test.

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Clearing Up a Blurry Work Life

Via
NY Times

Shifting Careers
By MARCI ALBOHER

As the founding editor and lead blogger for Lifehacker, the popular site that offers “tech tricks, tips and downloads for getting things done,” Gina Trapani has become a go-to source for people who have become overwhelmed by the demands and complexities of modern technology. Ms. Trapani, who is also a computer programmer, is the author of "Upgrade Your Life" (Wiley, 2008), a wide-ranging reference on how everyday Joes and Janes can use the tools of a master geek to get things done smarter and faster on and off the job.

The following is an edited and condensed version of a series of interviews I did with Ms. Trapani, who works out of her home in San Diego, about ways we can be more productive at work:

Q. As a programmer, are there a few things you naturally do while sitting at a computer that make you more productive?

A. Keyboard shortcuts are popular among coders who spend their day typing. Moving your hand from keyboard to mouse, double clicking, moving the pointer, putting your hand back — that’s a lot of movement and it’s inefficient versus just hitting the keyboard combinations while your hands are on the keys. There are lots of ways to learn keyboard shortcuts. Most software comes with a quick reference you can print out and put near the keyboard. Use that instead of the mouse.

Q. What’s the secret to writing a successful to-do list, and must you do it the same way every day?

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