Staff Engagement Quotes

I would tell my staff about the “dinosaur’s tail”: As a leader grows more senior, his bulk and tail become huge, but like the brontosaurus, his brain remains modestly small. When plans are changed and the huge beast turns, its tail often thoughtlessly knocks over people and things. That the destruction was unintentional doesn’t make it any better.

Entitlement manifests across so many situations and scenarios, but it is often most visible when a person is dealing with service professionals (wait staff, flight attendants, hotel clerks, sales clerks, attendants in any situation where there are lines or waiting periods). Narcissistic people measure themselves on the basis of how they are treated by the outside world and expect special treatment.

Appreciation and recognition are qualities that most leaders forget, but desperately need, to build a positive, passionate and engaged workplace.

A Culture of clear consistent communication and connection is the foundation of a high performance team that thrives and flourishes.

High Performance Teams create cultures of caring, connection, commitment, collaboration and clear consistent communication

Your UNconscious mind has more power, influence and control over your thoughts, feelings, decisions, and choices, than your conscious mind.

Most people are interested in success, but not COMMITTED to success, which is why 85%+ of people seldom achieve their desired level of success.

Limitless Leadership is the secret ingredient that helps common people, create high performance teams, that achieve outstanding and uncommon results.

Hope is the spotlight that shines on the mine fields of possibility

A High Performance team requires people with High Performance Mindsets, with relevant competence, committed and balanced communication, to a meaningful and challenging goal.

If people are engaged, eventually the political system responds, despite the money, despite the lobbyists, it still responds. ~ President Obama

In a Consciously Conscious Revolutionary Workplace, people are promoted based upon skillset, AND more importantly MINDSET

A Consciously Conscious Revolutionary Workplace mindset, is People Firsts, to ensure that it's not a prostitute of our children's future.

Much of what it takes to succeed in school, at work, and in one’s community consists of cultural habits acquired by adaptation to the social environment. Such cultural adaptations are known as “cultural capital.” Segregation leads social groups to form different codes of conduct and communication. Some habits that help individuals in intensely segregated, disadvantaged environments undermine their ability to succeed in integrated, more advantaged environments. At Strive, a job training organization, Gyasi Headen teaches young black and Latino men how to drop their “game face” at work. The “game face” is the angry, menacing demeanor these men adopt to ward off attacks in their crime-ridden, segregated neighborhoods. As one trainee described it, it is the face you wear “at 12 o’clock at night, you’re in the ‘hood and they’re going to try to get you.”102 But the habit may freeze it into place, frightening people from outside the ghetto, who mistake the defensive posture for an aggressive one. It may be so entrenched that black men may be unaware that they are glowering at others. This reduces their chance of getting hired. The “game face” is a form of cultural capital that circulates in segregated underclass communities, helping its members survive. Outside these communities, it burdens its possessors with severe disadvantages. Urban ethnographer Elijah Anderson highlights the cruel dilemma this poses for ghetto residents who aspire to mainstream values and seek responsible positions in mainstream society.103 If they manifest their “decent” values in their neighborhoods, they become targets for merciless harassment by those committed to “street” values, who win esteem from their peers by demonstrating their ability and willingness to insult and physically intimidate others with impunity. To protect themselves against their tormentors, and to gain esteem among their peers, they adopt the game face, wear “gangster” clothing, and engage in the posturing style that signals that they are “bad.” This survival strategy makes them pariahs in the wider community. Police target them for questioning, searches, and arrests.104 Store owners refuse to serve them, or serve them brusquely, while shadowing them to make sure they are not shoplifting. Employers refuse to employ them.105 Or they employ them in inferior, segregated jobs. A restaurant owner may hire blacks as dishwashers, but not as wait staff, where they could earn tips.

He was a large, austere man, and I judge difficult of approach to his subordinates. To be extolled by the entire press of the South after every engagement, and by a portion of the press North with equal vehemence, was calculated to give him the entire confidence of his troops and to make him feared by his antagonists. It was not an uncommon thing for my staff-officers to hear from Eastern officers, “Well, Grant has never met Bobby Lee yet.” There were good and true officers who believe now that the Army of Northern Virginia was superior to the Army of the Potomac man to man. I do not believe so, except as the advantages spoken of above made them so. Before the end I believe the difference was the other way. The Army of Northern Virginia became despondent and saw the end. It did not please them. The National army saw the same thing, and were encouraged by

Surprisingly, once she started working with professional counselors and advocates, Natasha’s opinion about the desirability of reporting rapes to the police changed. Her colleagues pointed out that for some victims of sexual assault, engaging with the criminal justice system could traumatize them severely all over again, so the staff at SFTS didn’t necessarily recommend it. Her colleagues definitely urged every victim to get counseling, however.

In reality, Kabila was no more than a petty tyrant propelled to prominence by accident. Secretive and paranoid, he had no political programme, no strategic vision and no experience of running a government. He refused to engage with established opposition groups or with civic organisations and banned political parties. Lacking a political organisation of his own, he surrounded himself with friends and family members and relied heavily for support and protection on Rwanda and Banyamulenge. Two key ministries were awarded to cousins; the new chief of staff of the army, James Kabarebe, was a Rwandan Tutsi who had grown up in Uganda; the deputy chief of staff and commander of land forces was his 26-year-old son, Joseph; the national police chief was a brother-in-law. Whereas Mobutu had packed his administration with supporters from his home province of Équateur, Kabila handed out key positions in government, the armed forces, security services and public companies to fellow Swahili-speaking Katangese, notably members of the Lubakat group of northern Katanga, his father’s tribe.

great. This is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the “instant” success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide. Most businesses require a complex network of relationships to function, and these relationships take time to build. In many instances you have to be around for a few years to receive consistent recognition. It takes time to develop connections with investors, suppliers, and vendors. And it takes time for staff and founders to gain effectiveness in their roles and become a strong team.* So, yes, the bar is high when you want to start a company. You’ll have the chance to work on something you own and care about from day to day. You’ll be 100 percent engaged and motivated, and doing something you believe in. You can lead an integrated life, as opposed to a compartmentalized one in which you play a role in an office and then try to forget about it when you get home. You can define an organization, not the other way around. But even if you quit your job, hunker down for years, work hard for uncertain reward, and ask everyone you know for help, there’s still a great chance that your new business will not succeed. Over 50 percent of companies fail within their first three years.2 There’s a quote I like from an unknown source: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

An unexpected but important additional advantage of living in Kampung Jawa in this respect was the presence nearby, established as recently as 1955, of the Muslim College, Malaya’s first national tertiary institution of Islamic higher education. I was able to use its small library, and came to know well Dr Muhammad Abdul Ra’uf and Dr Muhammad Zaki Badawi, Egyptians engaged to lead the college who also taught at the University of Malaya and later became prominent Muslim intellectuals in the United States and Britain respectively. Along with other members of staff, including the charismatic Pan-Malayan Islamic Party politician Dr Zulkifli Muhammad, they did much to extend my knowledge of Islamic education and wider Muslim issues.

Writing down Tasks serves a dual purpose. First, having a record of an open task makes it easier to remember even when you’re away from your journal, partly due to a phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect. Russian psychiatrist and psychologist Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik observed that the staff at her local restaurant was able to remember complex unfilled orders until they were filled, at which point they forgot the details. The friction of an unfinished Task actively engages your mind. Second, by logging Tasks and their state, you’ll also automatically create an archive of your actions. This becomes immensely valuable during Reflection (this page), or when you review your notebook days, months, or years from now. You’ll always know what you were working toward.

its lack of natural resources. In that same month, the British general staff came up with a war plan that anticipated a deep crisis in Germany beginning in late 1941, followed by that country’s collapse. The British, therefore, did not need to prepare for a war fought in huge battles like those of 1914–18. From 1942 onwards they would be primarily engaged in terminal care for a Nazi empire disintegrating of its own accord. In the end, Churchill succeeded in winning over all twenty-five members of his government. ‘I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon

Everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process. As long as there is one unsaved person on my campus or in my city, then my church is not big enough. One of the underlying principles of our discipleship strategy is that every believer can and should make disciples. When a discipleship process fails, many times the fatal flaw is that the definition of discipleship is either unclear, unbiblical, or not commonly shared by the leadership team. Write down what you love to do most, and then go do it with unbelievers. Whatever you love to do, turn it into an outreach. You have to formulate a system that is appropriate for your cultural setting. Writing your own program for making disciples takes time, prayer, and some trial and error—just as it did with us. Learn and incorporate ideas from other churches around the world, but only after modification to make sure the strategies make sense in our culture and community. Culture is changing so quickly that staying relevant requires our constant attention. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by focusing on the mechanics of our own efforts rather than our culture, we will become irrelevant almost overnight. The easiest and most common way to fail at discipleship is to import a model or copy a method that worked somewhere else without first understanding the values that create a healthy discipleship culture. Principles and process are much more important than material, models, and methods. The church is an organization that exists for its nonmembers. Christianity does not promise a storm-free life. However, if we build our lives on biblical foundations, the storms of life will not destroy us. We cannot have lives that are storm-free, but we can become storm-proof. Just as we have to figure out the most effective way to engage our community for Christ, we also have to figure out the most effective way to establish spiritual foundations in each unique context. There is really only one biblical foundation we can build our lives on, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastors, teachers, and church staff believe their primary role is to serve as mentors. Their task is to equip every believer for the work of the ministry. It is not to do all the ministry, but to equip all the people to do it. Their top priority is to equip disciples to do ministry and to make disciples. Do you spend more time ministering to people or preparing people to minister? No matter what your church responsibilities are, you can prepare others for the same ministry. Insecurity in leadership is a deadly thing that will destroy any organization. It drives pastors and presidents to defensive positions, protecting their authority or exercising it simply to show who is the boss. Disciple-making is a process that systematically moves people toward Christ and spiritual maturity; it is not a bunch of randomly disconnected church activities. In the context of church leadership, one of the greatest and most important applications of faith is to trust the Holy Spirit to work in and through those you are leading. Without confidence that the Holy Spirit is in control, there is no empowering, no shared leadership, and, as a consequence, no multiplication.

I believe all churches and ministries can grow if only they master a discipleship process that is simple, biblical, and transferable. I know of churches that are missing many seemingly important things such as nice buildings, good music equipment, support staff, big givers, and dynamic preachers. Yet they are still growing because they are making disciples. Churches can be blessed with all those seemingly important things and become completely consumed with activities that have nothing to do with making disciples. Our goal is to make our small groups and everything else we do support our discipleship process. Unfortunately, crowded church calendars often compete with discipleship. No activity is neutral. We recognize that everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process. STRATEGY

Likewise, we “trusted the process,” but the process didn’t save Toy Story 2 either. “Trust the Process” had morphed into “Assume that the Process Will Fix Things for Us.” It gave us solace, which we felt we needed. But it also coaxed us into letting down our guard and, in the end, made us passive. Even worse, it made us sloppy. Once this became clear to me, I began telling people that the phrase was meaningless. I told our staff that it had become a crutch that was distracting us from engaging, in a meaningful way, with our problems. We should trust in people, I told them, not processes. The error we’d made was forgetting that “the process” has no agenda and doesn’t have taste. It is just a tool—a framework. We needed to take more responsibility and ownership of our own work, our need for self-discipline, and our goals. Imagine an old, heavy suitcase whose well-worn handles are hanging by a few threads. The handle is “Trust the Process” or “Story Is King”—a pithy statement that seems, on the face of it, to stand for so much more. The suitcase represents all that has gone into the formation of the phrase: the experience, the deep wisdom, the truths that emerge from struggle. Too often, we grab the handle and—without realizing it—walk off without the suitcase. What’s more, we don’t even think about what we’ve left behind. After all, the handle is so much easier to carry around than the suitcase. Once you’re aware of the suitcase/handle problem, you’ll see it everywhere. People glom onto words and stories that are often just stand-ins for real action and meaning. Advertisers look for words that imply a product’s value and use that as a substitute for value itself. Companies constantly tell us about their commitment to excellence, implying that this means they will make only top-shelf products. Words like quality and excellence are misapplied so relentlessly that they border on meaningless. Managers scour books and magazines looking for greater understanding but settle instead for adopting a new terminology, thinking that using fresh words will bring them closer to their goals. When someone comes up with a phrase that sticks, it becomes a meme, which migrates around even as it disconnects from its original meaning. To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. It is the responsibility of good leaders to make sure that words remain attached to the meanings and ideals they represent.

When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla. They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement. Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.

He was, indeed, a sublimely bad dancer - bungling and unsure with no conversation. Arsenic did her best to make him comfortable and engage in the requisite pleasantries, searching for any topic that might relax the poor lad. Nothing helped and they parted awkwardly. Arsenic remained under the impression that he either was terrified of her, which was patently absurd, or had taken her in great disdain. She'd seen him talking with the matrons at the tea table, perhaps they had told him horrible things about her mother. That would do it. She hoped she might have an opportunity to prove herself to her new shipmate as a worthy member of staff, then perhaps he'd not dislike her so. He seemed secretly quite kind, ceding to his sister's demands, placing glasses of water near Rue whenever she took a breather, and interceding on Virgil's behalf when the laddie caught Lord Ambrose's eye.

If congestion occurs on the free-market transportation network, the response is likely to resemble what accompanies “excess demand” for any other good or service: the businessman does not rest day or night until he provides the extra services the market is clamoring for. (We again abstract from the possibility of price increases.) The ice cream shop with long lines of people waiting for admission hires additional workers as soon as possible; the economist who “suffers” from the “congestion” of large numbers of people clamoring to engage him as a consultant hires more staff or expands output in whatever way seems appropriate to him. Throughout the private economy “congestion” is looked upon as a golden opportunity for expansion of output, sales, and profits. It is only in the public sector that the customer clamoring for additional service is looked at askance,33 blamed, excoriated, and told to desist in his efforts.

In any case, it is not as if the ‘light’ inspection is in any sense preferable for staff than the heavy one. The inspectors are in the college for the same amount of time as they were under the old system. The fact that there are fewer of them does nothing to alleviate the stress of the inspection, which has far more to do with the extra bureaucratic window-dressing one has to do in anticipation of a possible observation than it has to do with any actual observation itself. The inspection, that is to say, corresponds precisely to Foucault’s account of the virtual nature of surveillance in Discipline And Punish. Foucault famously observes there that there is no need for the place of surveillance to actually be occupied. The effect of not knowing whether you will be observed or not produces an introjection of the surveillance apparatus. You constantly act as if you are always about to be observed. Yet, in the case of school and university inspections, what you will be graded on is not primarily your abilities as a teacher so much as your diligence as a bureaucrat. There are other bizarre effects. Since OFSTED is now observing the college’s self-assessment systems, there is an implicit incentive for the college to grade itself and its teaching lower than it actually deserves. The result is a kind of postmodern capitalist version of Maoist confessionalism, in which workers are required to engage in constant symbolic self-denigration. At one point, when our line manager was extolling the virtues of the new, light inspection system, he told us that the problem with our departmental log-books was that they were not sufficiently self-critical. But don’t worry, he urged, any self-criticisms we make are purely symbolic, and will never be acted upon; as if performing self-flagellation as part of a purely formal exercise in cynical bureaucratic compliance were any less demoralizing.

The medium of engagement between staff engaged in competitive and cooperative interaction to achieve things together is embodied communication. By talking, discussing, taking turns, gesturing and responding to each other, recognising and misrecognising each other, staff in organisations are structuring what they do as themes and narratives of organising arise between them. Staff make sense together in both abstract and particular ways and contribute to organisational narratives about what is going on. They take up more abstract themes of organising, the organisation’s vision, mission and strategy, but can only do so locally, in particular situations with particular others. Organisational activity, then, is always local, no matter how senior are the staff who are working, and it always involves communication. But it is from the many, many local communicative interactions that the global organisational patterning arises, which in turn constrains and informs the local interactions.

A grown woman tasting a spoonful of Georgia's Mousse au Citron at a late afternoon lunch, then suddenly standing and announcing that she needed to reconcile with her estranged sister before it was too late. She'd hastened away, leaving her coat, one hundred euros to pay the bill, and the mostly uneaten mousse at the table. After devouring Georgia's beet and goat cheese tart one bitter winter evening, an American man with an engagement ring nestled on top of a slice of Georgia's cherry clafoutis looked across the table at his girlfriend and said later that he could suddenly see clearly that she was not the love of his life. He'd hastened back to the kitchen to remove the ring from the dessert where it was waiting to be served at the right moment. They left the restaurant with the ring in his pocket and his girlfriend in tears. There had been others. Many others, now that she thought of it. It had been a bit of a joke among the kitchen staff, that Georgia's dishes could cause more breakups and engagements and family feuds and reconciliations than the restaurant had ever seen. She'd never really put it all together before, but now that she thought of it... "I think my cooking might give people clarity somehow," Georgia said in surprise.

Today Ramon defended the garbage bin by Plumpy’s back door, and I defended a shiny silver Mercedes because, according to Ramon, it represented the privileged white aristocracy of America trying to keep the Latino man down. “Our duel,” Ramon said, spinning his broom like a bo staff, “will represent the struggle our nation’s currently engaged in.” “Please, we both know you’re just going for home team advantage.” “You wound me, Sam. I can’t help it if your crackerlike oppression gives me the better playing field.” He did a quick hamstring stretch. “Suck it up.” “Fine,” I said, “then I get the handicap.” “Sam, you’re Texas. Texas always gets the handicap.” “I’m Team Texas again?” He grinned, rolled his shoulders, and wiggled his arms, loosening them. I gave up and nodded at the Mercedes. It looked old and expensive, especially in our parking lot. “Shiny.” Ramon snorted. “Classic. Check out the gullwing doors.” “Fine. Classic Shiny.” Ramon tossed an empty Plumpy’s cup into the Dumpster. “Sometimes, Sammy, I question your manhood.” “A car is to get you from place to place. That’s it.” Ramon shook his head at my ignorance. “Whatever. Just try not to dent the car, Team Mexico.” “It’s Team South America,” he said. “You do know that Mexico is in North America, right?” “Yeah, but I have the whole continent behind me.” He held up his fist dramatically. “They support their cousin to the north.” I laughed and he dropped his hand back down. “And it’s that guy’s own fault for parking in our lot so he could sneak over to Eddie Bauer or Starbucks or whatever.

In the end, Putin won with the aid of Americans who had turned on their own values. The news media assisted greatly by elevating stolen innocuous emails from an insecure party server to a national crisis in which the victims were treated suspiciously. To Trump supporters it validated everything they ever suspected about Hillary Clinton—she hid emails, which meant she was a liar. No matter that Trump voters elected a man who openly embraced white supremacy, rejected diversity, abhorred global engagement, ignored his own corruption, and enlisted his own family and staff as royalty to be worshipped. Trump voters saw these traits as perks. They viewed nepotism, largess, and excess as virtues of a business and political shark. If he vocally stood against virtually all gains America had made in equality and global economic expansion since 1964 and it got him elected, then all the better that he hold those positions. By all means necessary was Trump’s apparent motto for the 2016 election. Russian intelligence lived by that motto too. The spies of the Red Square were shameless enough but the real scandal was that Team Trump saw nothing wrong with it. Trump voters had blindly elected him despite knowing that Russia had intervened in the electoral process. They cared not that Trump’s own surprising level of slavish devotion to Putin was suspicious. It. Did. Not. Matter. Trump had created a cult of personality in the white lower class so that they worshipped his every word and challenged the veracity of anything negative said against him. This worked out well for Putin. For the

When the commander of one of the brigades Gilbert had sent to reinforce McCook approached an imposing-looking officer to ask for instructions as to the posting of his troops—“I have come to your assistance with my brigade!” the Federal shouted above the uproar—the gentleman calmly sitting his horse in the midst of carnage turned out to be Polk, who was wearing a dark-gray uniform. Polk asked the designation of the newly arrived command, and upon being told raised his eyebrows in surprise. For all his churchly faith in miracles, he could scarcely believe his ears. “There must be some mistake about this,” he said. “You are my prisoner.” Fighting without its commander, the brigade gave an excellent account of itself. Joined presently by the other brigade sent over from the center, it did much to stiffen the resistance being offered by the remnants of McCook’s two divisions. Sundown came before the rebels could complete the rout begun four hours ago, and now in the dusk it was Polk’s turn to play a befuddled role in another comic incident of confused identity. He saw in the fading light a body of men whom he took to be Confederates firing obliquely into the flank of one of his engaged brigades. “Dear me,” he said to himself. “This is very sad and must be stopped.” None of his staff being with him at the time, he rode over to attend to the matter in person. When he came up to the erring commander and demanded in angry tones what he meant by shooting his own friends, the colonel replied with surprise: “I don’t think there can be any mistake about it. I am sure they are the enemy.” “Enemy!” Polk exclaimed, taken aback by this apparent insubordination. “Why, I have only just left them myself. Cease firing, sir! What is your name, sir?” “Colonel Shryock, of the 87th Indiana,” the Federal said. “And pray, sir, who are you?” The bishop-general, learning thus for the first time that the man was a Yankee and that he was in rear of a whole regiment of Yankees, determined to brazen out the situation by taking further advantage of the fact that his dark-gray blouse looked blue-black in the twilight. He rode closer and shook his fist in the colonel’s face, shouting angrily: “I’ll soon show you who I am, sir! Cease firing, sir, at once!” Then he turned his horse and, calling in an authoritative manner for the bluecoats to cease firing, slowly rode back toward his own lines. He was afraid to ride fast, he later explained, because haste might give his identity away; yet “at the same time I experienced a disagreeable sensation, like screwing up my back, and calculated how many bullets would be between my shoulders every moment.

What are these substances? Medicines or drugs or sacramental foods? It is easier to say what they are not. They are not narcotics, nor intoxicants, nor energizers, nor anaesthetics, nor tranquilizers. They are, rather, biochemical keys which unlock experiences shatteringly new to most Westerners. For the last two years, staff members of the Center for Research in Personality at Harvard University have engaged in systematic experiments with these substances. Our first inquiry into the biochemical expansion of consciousness has been a study of the reactions of Americans in a supportive, comfortable naturalistic setting. We have had the opportunity of participating in over one thousand individual administrations. From our observations, from interviews and reports, from analysis of questionnaire data, and from pre- and postexperimental differences in personality test results, certain conclusions have emerged. (1) These substances do alter consciousness. There is no dispute on this score. (2) It is meaningless to talk more specifically about the “effect of the drug.” Set and setting, expectation, and atmosphere account for all specificity of reaction. There is no “drug reaction” but always setting-plus-drug. (3) In talking about potentialities it is useful to consider not just the setting-plus-drug but rather the potentialities of the human cortex to create images and experiences far beyond the narrow limitations of words and concepts. Those of us on this research project spend a good share of our working hours listening to people talk about the effect and use of consciousness-altering drugs. If we substitute the words human cortex for drug we can then agree with any statement made about the potentialities—for good or evil, for helping or hurting, for loving or fearing. Potentialities of the cortex, not of the drug. The drug is just an instrument. In analyzing and interpreting the results of our studies we looked first to the conventional models of modern psychology—psychoanalytic, behavioristic—and found these concepts quite inadequate to map the richness and breadth of expanded consciousness. To understand our findings we have finally been forced back on a language and point of view quite alien to us who are trained in the traditions of mechanistic objective psychology. We have had to return again and again to the nondualistic conceptions of Eastern philosophy, a theory of mind made more explicit and familiar in our Western world by Bergson, Aldous Huxley, and Alan Watts. In the first part of this book Mr. Watts presents with beautiful clarity this theory of consciousness, which we have seen confirmed in the accounts of our research subjects—philosophers, unlettered convicts, housewives, intellectuals, alcoholics. The leap across entangling thickets of the verbal, to identify with the totality of the experienced, is a phenomenon reported over and over by these persons.

Once this became clear to me, I began telling people that the phrase was meaningless. I told our staff that it had become a crutch that was distracting us from engaging, in a meaningful way, with our problems. We should trust in people, I told them, not processes. The error we’d made was forgetting that “the process” has no agenda and doesn’t have taste. It is just a tool—a framework. We needed to take more responsibility and ownership of our own work, our need for self-discipline, and our goals.

and through secular media outlets. 7. Recruit and train a sufficient number of staff and volunteers for the event to help make personal connections with participants and learn of their needs and interests. 8. Collaborate with other institutions in the community to develop a more effective program. This also allows you to extend the geographic reach of the program and multiply the number of events you can sponsor. 9. Invite participants to follow-up events that are consistent with their needs and interests and with the event they are attending. The path to deeper engagement requires a charted course. 10. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Make sure that the event is appealing. Moreover, every experience, even introductory ones such as Public Space Judaism events, should have value and meaning.

We know and believe in our hearts that children become more engaged, motivated, and successful when they have choice over what they read, what they write, and the order in which they schedule their days. Nevertheless we have found it hard to give up being in control of their literacy choices. Then we think about our own need for choice. We realize we have much in common with our children. There are days when we come to school ready to settle in and get right down to business. Other days, working alone doesn't seem as enticing, so we collaborate with our teaching partners. Our needs tend to dictate how we organize our time and activities. If a quiet morning of preparation is interrupted by a staff meeting, our minds and bodies resist. We are motivated, engaged, and productive when we are in control of our schedules. We know the expectations of our jobs and want to be trusted to choose the order of our daily schedules and the approaches we take to meeting them. Why should our children feel any differently?

this must surely be one of the most astounding documents ever presented to an Ally when engaged in a life and death struggle. For it imposed what was really a veto on the best opportunity of cutting the common enemy’s life-line and of protecting our own.” By acquiescing to such an outrage, Liddell Hart contended, the British General Staff were essentially “accessories to the crime,” that crime being that the British in Egypt had now been given no alternative but to await another assault on the Suez Canal, and to then launch their own attack against the very strongest point of the Turkish line—the narrow front of southern Palestine—an approach that was to ultimately cost them fifty thousand more casualties.

Challenging students threaten staff unity. They expose our differences, often cultural and familial, in the areas of discipline and respect for institutions and traditional authority. These challenging students become our fears of the future. They are representing us in our own dramas regarding parents, siblings, teachers, and judges. This is why a student may evoke compassion and engagement in some teachers, yet other teachers may find him irritating and disrespectful.

Creating a Brand Toolbox is an important first step in fostering a strong brand culture, but the managers of great brands know that simply producing brand content and tools is not enough. They stage Brand Engagement Sessions featuring hands-on exercises and immersive experiences to ensure that brand understanding is followed with appropriate actions and decision making by their staff.

Twice Gen. Karl Friedrich von Steinmetz marched his First Army in front of Prince Frederick Karl’s Second Army while attempting to find and engage the enemy. Before the Battle of Spicheren, Steinmetz’s forces actually marched between Second Army and its reconnoitering cavalry force. At other times, subordinate commanders seized the initiative in the absence of orders based on a perceived or real weakness of the French forces opposite them. The opening battles of Weissenburg and Spicheren in August 1870 demonstrate both initiative and the disregard of Moltke’s orders. The Prussians seized the initiative and attacked across the Saar River earlier than Moltke planned. Even in the first few weeks, Moltke seemed receptive to feedback from the subordinate commanders and their chiefs of staff. He had even delayed the initial assault into France from 31 July to 4 August to allow the Third Army more time receive troops and sort out the train loads of supplies. Moltke did this, knowing that the delay would result in the French attacking first.[46]

His name is C. J. Skender, and he is a living legend. Skender teaches accounting, but to call him an accounting professor doesn’t do him justice. He’s a unique character, known for his trademark bow ties and his ability to recite the words to thousands of songs and movies on command. He may well be the only fifty-eight-year-old man with fair skin and white hair who displays a poster of the rapper 50 Cent in his office. And while he’s a genuine numbers whiz, his impact in the classroom is impossible to quantify. Skender is one of a few professors for whom Duke University and the University of North Carolina look past their rivalry to cooperate: he is in such high demand that he has permission to teach simultaneously at both schools. He has earned more than two dozen major teaching awards, including fourteen at UNC, six at Duke, and five at North Carolina State. Across his career, he has now taught close to six hundred classes and evaluated more than thirty-five thousand students. Because of the time that he invests in his students, he has developed what may be his single most impressive skill: a remarkable eye for talent. In 2004, Reggie Love enrolled in C. J. Skender’s accounting class at Duke. It was a summer course that Love needed to graduate, and while many professors would have written him off as a jock, Skender recognized Love’s potential beyond athletics. “For some reason, Duke football players have never flocked to my class,” Skender explains, “but I knew Reggie had what it took to succeed.” Skender went out of his way to engage Love in class, and his intuition was right that it would pay dividends. “I knew nothing about accounting before I took C. J.’s class,” Love says, “and the fundamental base of knowledge from that course helped guide me down the road to the White House.” In Obama’s mailroom, Love used the knowledge of inventory that he learned in Skender’s class to develop a more efficient process for organizing and digitizing a huge backlog of mail. “It was the number-one thing I implemented,” Love says, and it impressed Obama’s chief of staff, putting Love on the radar. In 2011, Love left the White House to study at Wharton. He sent a note to Skender: “I’m on the train to Philly to start the executive MBA program and one of the first classes is financial accounting—and I just wanted to say thanks for sticking with me when I was in your class.

While Diana and her mother started planning guest lists, wardrobe requirements and the other details for the wedding of the year, the media vainly attempted to discover her hiding-place. The one man who did know was the Prince of Wales. As the days passed, Diana pined for her Prince and yet he never telephoned. She excused his silence as due to the pressure of his royal duties. Finally she called him only to find that he was not in his apartment at Buckingham Palace. It was only after she called him that he telephoned her. Soothed by that solitary telephone call, Diana’s ruffled pride was momentarily mollified when she returned to Coleherne Court. There was a knock on the door and a member of the Prince’s staff appeared with a large bouquet of flowers. However there was no note from her future husband and she concluded sadly that it was simply a tactful gesture by his office. These concerns were forgotten a few days later when Diana rose at dawn and travelled to the Lambourn home of Nick Gaselee, Charles’s trainer, to watch him ride his horse, Allibar. As she and his detective observed the Prince put the horse through its paces on the gallops Diana was seized by another premonition of disaster. She said that Allibar was going to have a heart attack and die. Within seconds of her uttering those words, 11-year-old Allibar reared its head back and collapsed to the ground with a massive coronary. Diana leapt out of the Land Rover and raced to Charles’s side. There was nothing anyone could do. The couple stayed with the horse until a vet officially certified its death and then, to avoid waiting photographers, Diana left the Gaselees in the back of the Land Rover with a coat over her head. It was a miserable moment but there was little time to reflect on the tragedy. The inexorable demands of royal duty took Prince Charles on to wales, leaving Diana to sympathize with his loss by telephone. Soon they would be together forever, the subterfuge and deceit ended. It was nearly time to let the world into their secret. The night before the engagement announcement, which took place on February 24, 1981, she packed a bag, hugged her loyal friends and left Coleherne Court forever. She had an armed Scotland Yard bodyguard for company, Chief Inspector Paul Officer, a philosophical policeman who is fascinated by runes, mysticism and the after-world. As she prepared to say goodbye to her private life, he told her: “I just want you to know that this is the last night of freedom in your life so make the most of it.” Those words stopped her in her tracks. “They felt like a sword through my heart.

It is common to hear staff talk with both passion and concern about the “crowded curriculum;” how there is never enough time to “fit everything in.” Often such comments result from a focus on the delivery of content rather than a focus on engaging students in active learning. An internationalized curriculum must focus on more than content. To make sense of and thrive in the world, students need to develop their ability to think critically, their intercultural competence, and their problem-solving skills as well as the ability to apply these skills and competencies in a rapidly changing, increasingly globalized and interconnected world.

In Stacey’s view what is common to both the radical implications of complex adaptive systems theory and the sociology of Norbert Elias is that they provide a coherent explanation of how global patterning arises out of local interaction without separating them out onto different ‘levels’. There is no need to think in terms of an organisation as a self-regulating metaphysical entity separate from the actions of individual members of staff or managers. An organisation arises purely out of the activities, intentions, idealisations and the attempts to make meaning of the many employees who join together with the intention of achieving something collectively. In what Elias would refer to as a figuration, or web of people engaged in fluctuating and asymmetric power relations cooperating in their undertaking and competing over meaning and ideology, the organisation becomes.

An obsession with “feature delivery” ignores the human-related and team-related dynamics inherent in modern software, leading to a lack of engagement from staff, especially when the cognitive load is exceeded.

identify your employee adjectives, (2) recruit through proper advertising, (3) identify winning personalities, and (4) select your winners. Step One: Identify Your Employee Adjectives When you think of your favorite employees in the past, what comes to mind? A procedural element such as an organized workstation, neat paperwork, or promptness? No. What makes an employee memorable is her attitude and smile, the way she takes the time to make sure a customer is happy, the extra mile she goes to ensure orders are fulfilled and problems are solved. Her intrinsic qualities—her energy, sense of humor, eagerness, and contributions to the team—are the qualities you remember. Rather than relying on job descriptions that simply quantify various positions’ duties and correlating them with matching experience as a tool for identifying and hiring great employees, I use a more holistic approach. The first step in the process is selecting eight adjectives that best define the personality ideal for each job or role in your business. This is a critical step: it gives you new visions and goals for your own management objectives, new ways to measure employee success, and new ways to assess the performance of your own business. Create a “Job Candidate Profile” for every job position in your business. Each Job Candidate Profile should contain eight single- and multiple-word phrases of defining adjectives that clearly describe the perfect employee for each job position. Consider employee-to-customer personality traits, colleague-to-colleague traits, and employee-to-manager traits when making up the list. For example, an accounting manager might be described with adjectives such as “accurate,” “patient,” “detailed,” and “consistent.” A cocktail server for a nightclub or casual restaurant would likely be described with adjectives like “energetic,” “fun,” “music-loving,” “sports-loving,” “good-humored,” “sociable conversationalist,” “adventurous,” and so on. Obviously, the adjectives for front-of-house staff and back-of-house staff (normally unseen by guests) will be quite different. Below is one generic example of a Job Candidate Profile. Your lists should be tailored for your particular bar concept, audience, location, and style of business (high-end, casual, neighborhood, tourist, and so on). BARTENDER Energetic Extroverted/Conversational Very Likable (first impression) Hospitable, demonstrates a Great Service Attitude Sports Loving Cooperative, Team Player Quality Orientated Attentive, Good Listening Skills SAMPLE ADJECTIVES Amazing Ambitious Appealing Ardent Astounding Avid Awesome Buoyant Committed Courageous Creative Dazzling Dedicated Delightful Distinctive Diverse Dynamic Eager Energetic Engaging Entertaining Enthusiastic Entrepreneurial Exceptional Exciting Fervent Flexible Friendly Genuine High-Energy Imaginative Impressive Independent Ingenious Keen Lively Magnificent Motivating Outstanding Passionate Positive Proactive Remarkable Resourceful Responsive Spirited Supportive Upbeat Vibrant Warm Zealous Step Two: Recruit through Proper Advertising The next step is to develop print or online advertising copy that will attract the personalities you’ve just defined.

If she doesn’t start talking, you might want to introduce yourself again, this time adding to the introduction the fact that you are an intern (or extern, or student, or whatever phrase your school or agency prefers). If you know you will be staying in the agency for only a limited time, ask your supervisor or your school what the policy is concerning when to inform your client of that fact. Some feel it is best to let the client know at the beginning that you are a student and will be leaving the agency on a given date. Others feel it is better to proceed as if you were just another member of the staff and to wait until the client is engaged to tell her about your departure. You will have to find a position on this issue that is comfortable for you, but it is best to clarify it before you start interviewing clients. Some clients may pursue this issue. They may want to know more about your credentials, or they may tell you they were “expecting to see a doctor.” You may need to explain something about how the agency works and who comprises the staff. Or this may lead to a discussion of the client’s previous experience with therapy. It is generally best, however, not to get into an extended discussion about who you are.

In some cases, the companies started out fine, and made the decisions to take ethical shortcuts, usually because of a lethal combination of market forces and unethical staff (including leadership). In Twitter’s case, we can almost pinpoint the exact second this happened: It’s when they measured a Donald Trump tweet that broke their guidelines against the engagement it was getting, decided to leave it, and started defending that decision.

How did the team accomplish so much, so quickly, and for so long? The answers require an appreciation of Johnson’s unsurpassed work ethic, the feeling among staff members that they were learning important skills, and the sense of shared engagement in a significant mission.

Barr neglected to mention that the investigation that was under way when Trump took office took place because the Russian government engaged in a systematic attempt to help Trump win the election, which Trump and his staff encouraged.

Kissinger observed, “Neither Churchill nor Lincoln nor Roosevelt was the product of a staff.” The modern bureaucracy simply rolled along according to its own predetermined rules, with no more head and no more heart than any other well-oiled machine. Kissinger called the ideal bureaucrat a “commissar,” and by that he didn’t mean only placeholders in the Soviet Union but bureaucrats in the United States as well. The commissar/bureaucrat was any administrator “whose world is defined by regulations, in whose making he had no part, and whose substance does not concern him, to whom reality is exhausted by the organization in which he finds himself.” The mentality of the commissar could result in the deaths of thousands, “without love and without hatred.” And even if the outcome was not murderous, the placeholder’s “impact on national policy is pernicious.” Standing against this entrenched bureaucracy was the autonomous intellectual. Some intellectuals insisted on preserving their freedom by remaining outside the governmental apparatus, but these people Kissinger criticized for “perfectionism,” or for engaging in protest that “has too often become an end in itself.” Kissinger preferred the collaborators who chose public service. Intellectuals, Kissinger insisted, should “not refuse to participate in policymaking, for to do so would confirm the administrative stagnation.” Still, those who did choose public service had their own problems to deal with.

When reporting behavioral problems in all staff to the upper management team, expect them to engage in a cover up at your expense.

An administrator at a middle school in New Haven, Connecticut, began a professional development activity by writing the reasons teachers gave for sending a student to the office on the blackboard. He then went down the list with the group and asked whether they felt the infractions listed were legitimate reasons for referring a student to the principal’s office for punishment. In a public setting with their colleagues present, no one would defend sending a student to the office for chewing gum, wearing a hat, or forgetting to bring a pencil. Yet, these and other minor infractions were the reasons given on the bulk of the referrals. He pointed out that Black and Latino boys received over 80 percent of these referrals; and he engaged the staff in a discussion of the implications of these practices. Holding educators accountable for racial imbalances in discipline need not result in finger-pointing or recriminations about racist intentions that cannot be proved. However, if educators are going to reduce the disproportionate discipline meted out to poor children of color, they must accept responsibility for racial disparities in discipline patterns. Analyzing their approaches to maintaining order can help educators to identify alternative methods for producing positive learning environments. Alternatives are essential if schools are to stop using discipline as a strategy for weeding out those they deem undesirable or difficult to teach and instead to use discipline to reconnect students to learning.

in a survey of high school graduates 17.7% of males and 82.2% of females reported sexual harassment by faculty or staff during their school careers. 13.5% of those surveyed said they had engaged in sexual intercourse with a teacher.

Etymologically, paroikia (a compound word from para and oikos) literally means “next to” or “alongside of the house” and, in a technical sense, meant a group of resident aliens. This sense of “parish” carried a theological context into the life of the Early Church and meant a “Christian society of strangers or aliens whose true state or citizenship is in heaven.” So whether one’s flock consists of fifty people in a church which can financially sustain a priest or if it is merely a few people in a living room whose priest must find secular employment, it is a parish. This original meaning of parish also implies the kind of evangelism that accompanies the call of a true parish priest. A parish is a geographical distinction rather than a member-oriented distinction. A priest’s duties do not pertain only to the people who fill the pews of his church on a Sunday morning. He is a priest to everyone who fills the houses in the “cure” where God as placed him. This ministry might not look like choir rehearsals, rector’s meetings, midweek “extreme” youth nights, or Saturday weddings. Instead, it looks like helping a battered wife find shelter from her abusive husband, discretely paying a poor neighbor’s heating oil bill when their tank runs empty in the middle of a bitter snow storm, providing an extra set of hands to a farmer who needs to get all of his freshly-baled hay in the barn before it rains that night, taking food from his own pantry or freezer to help feed a neighbor’s family, or offering his home for emergency foster care. This kind of “parochial” ministry was best modeled by the old Russian staretzi (holy men) who found every opportunity to incarnate the hands and feet of Christ to the communities where they lived. Perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer caught a glimpse of the true nature of parish life through his introduction of the “Parson” in the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. Note how the issues of sacrifice, humility, and community mentioned above characterize this Parson’s cure even when opportunities were available for “greater” things: "There was a good man of religion, a poor Parson, but rich in holy thought and deed. He was also a learned man, a clerk, and would faithfully preach Christ’s gospel and devoutly instruct his parishioners. He was benign, wonderfully diligent, and patient in adversity, as he was often tested. He was loath to excommunicate for unpaid tithes, but rather would give to his poor parishioners out of the church alms and also of his own substance; in little he found sufficiency. His parish was wide and the houses far apart, but not even for thunder or rain did he neglect to visit the farthest, great or small, in sickness or misfortune, going on foot, a staff in his hand… He would not farm out his benefice, nor leave his sheep stuck fast in the mire, while he ran to London to St. Paul’s, to get an easy appointment as a chantry-priest, or to be retained by some guild, but dwelled at home and guarded his fold well, so that the wolf would not make it miscarry… There was nowhere a better priest than he. He looked for no pomp and reverence, nor yet was his conscience too particular; but the teaching of Christ and his apostles he taught, and first he followed it himself." As we can see, the distinction between the work of worship and the work of ministry becomes clear. We worship God via the Eucharist. We serve God via our ministry to others. Large congregations make it possible for clergy and congregation to worship anonymously (even with strangers) while often omitting ministry altogether. No wonder Satan wants to discredit house churches and make them “odd things”! Thus, while the actual house church may only boast a membership in the single digits, the house church parish is much larger—perhaps into the hundreds as is the case with my own—and the overall ministry is more like that of Christ’s own—feeding, healing, forgiving, engaging in all the cycles of community life, whether the people attend

it also coaxed us into letting down our guard and, in the end, made us passive. Even worse, it made us sloppy. Once this became clear to me, I began telling people that the phrase was meaningless. I told our staff that it had become a crutch that was distracting us from engaging, in a meaningful way, with our problems. We should trust in people, I told them, not processes. The error we’d made was forgetting that “the process” has no agenda and doesn’t have taste. It is just a tool—a framework. We needed to take more responsibility and ownership of our own work, our need for self-discipline, and our goals.

a key part of their subsequent success was rooted in the insight that continuous improvement to the shopping experience rather than any one particular improvement had the potential to be a major competitive edge. Tesco’s improvements included their ‘One in front’ commitment to effectively abolish checkout line-ups, baby-changing and bottle-warming facilities, ATMs, escorted searches for product requests and priority parking for pregnant mums. It was not that one improvement was more successful than another; it was the relentless implementation of a never-ending stream of small improvements that steadily improved Tesco’s image relative to their competitors, who were left seemingly forever floundering in their wake. The scheme also got Tesco’s staff more engaged in service delivery and coming up with ideas for further improvements. ‘Every little helps’ helped Tesco attract over a million new shoppers in the period from 1990–1995.

Nurses must be ugly.” Dev closed his eyes. “Mistresses must be pretty. Housekeepers are not supposed to be pretty, but then we have your Mrs. Seaton.” “Hands off.” “My hands off?” Dev raised his head and eyed Westhaven. “My hands off your housekeeper?” “Yes, Dev. Hands off, and this is not a request.” “Getting into the ducal spirit, are you?” Dev closed his eyes again and folded his hands on his chest. “Well, no need to issue a decree. I’ll behave, as she is a female employed by a Windham household.” “Devlin St. Just.” Westhaven’s boots hit the floor with a thump. “Weren’t you swiving your housekeeper while she was engaged to some clueless simian in Windsor?” “Very likely.” Dev nodded peacefully, eyes closed. “And I put away that toy when honor required it.” “What sort of honor is this? I comprehend what is expected of a gentleman, generally, but must have missed the part about how we go on when swiving housekeepers.” “You were going on quite enthusiastically,” Dev said, opening one eye, “when I came down here last night to find a book.” “I see.” “On the sofa,” Dev added, “if that pinpoints my interruption of your orgy.” “It wasn’t an orgy.” “You were what?” Dev frowned. “Trying to keep her warm? Counting her teeth with your tongue? Teaching her how to sit the trot riding astride? Looked to me for all the world like you were rogering the daylights out of dear Mrs. Seaton.” “I wasn’t,” Westhaven spat, getting up and pacing to the hearth. “The next thing to it, but not quite the act itself.” “I believe you,” Dev said, “and that makes it all better. Even though it looked like rogering and sounded like rogering and probably tasted like it, too.” “Dev…” “Gayle…” Dev got up and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I am the last person to begrudge you your pleasures, but if I can walk in on you, and I’ve only been underfoot a day, then anybody else can, too.” Westhaven nodded, conceding the point. “I don’t care that you and Mrs. Seaton are providing each other some slap-and-tickle, but if you’re so far gone you forget to lock the door, then I am concerned.” “I didn’t…” Westhaven scrubbed a hand over his face. “I did forget to lock the door, and we haven’t made a habit out of what you saw. I don’t intend to make a habit of it, but if I do, I will lock the door.” “Good plan.” Dev nodded, grinning. “I have to approve of the woman on general principles, you know, if she has you spouting such inanities and dropping your pants for all the world to see.” “I thought in my own library at nigh midnight I could have privacy,” Westhaven groused. Dev’s expression became serious. “You cannot assume you have privacy anywhere. The duke owns half your staff and can buy the other half, for one thing. For another, you are considered a most eligible bachelor. If I were you, I would assume I had no privacy whatsoever, not even in your own home.” “You’re right.” Westhaven blew out a breath. “I know you’re right, but I don’t like it. We will be careful.

An organization with a staff that’s fully engaged is far more likely to succeed than one with a large portion of its workforce detached, cynical and uninspired.

The idea is to try to become as precise as possible; the clearer you are on what is and isn’t working for you, the better you can set your wayfinding direction. For instance…What you initially logged as “Staff Mtg—Enjoyed it for once today!” might, after you’ve looked at it again, be more accurately restated as “Staff Mtg—Felt great when I rephrased what Jon said and everyone went ‘Ooooh—exactly!’ ” This more precise version tells a much more useful story about what specific activity or behavior engages you. And it opens the door to developing even greater self-awareness. When your entries have that kind of detail in them, your reflections can be more insightful. When journaling your reflection on the log entry about that staff meeting, you might ask yourself, “Was I more engaged by artfully rephrasing Jon’s comment (getting the articulation dialed in just right) or by facilitating consensus among the staff (being the guy who made the group’s ‘Now we get it!’ unifying moment happen)?” If you conclude that artful articulation was the real sweet spot of that staff meeting moment for you, that important insight can help you be on the lookout for content-creation opportunities over group facilitation opportunities. Take this sort of observation and reflection as far as you find helpful (and no further—you don’t want to get stuck in your journal).

ministry, pastors use their congregations to validate a sense of identity and worth. The church becomes an extension of the narcissistic ego, and its ups and downs lead to seasons of ego inflation and ego deflation for the pastor. Today social media platforms add to this mix. Because his sense of identity is bound up in external realities, his sense of mission is wavering and unmoored, often manifesting in constantly shifting visions and programs, frequent dissatisfaction with the status quo, and anxious engagement with staff and members.

Similarly, Slack’s pricing allows users to upgrade for a number of collaborative features: better voice calling, searchable message history for all your coworkers, and more. Each of these features becomes more useful as organizations adopt Slack as the standard way to communicate, which in turn drives more conversions from free accounts into paid. Fareed Mosavat, who headed up the growth teams at Slack in the company’s early years, described why this happened: When there’s a premium feature that is useful for everyone using Slack, it means that anyone on the team—not just the IT staff—has a reason to upgrade. The more people in the company that use Slack, and the more engagement means it’s more likely someone might pull out their credit card and decide to unlock key features for everyone.

After comparing desired with available resources, it became crystal clear that the company was pursuing many more projects than it had people to staff. In particular, by trying to engage in many highly demanding platform launches at the same time, the company was unlikely to do justice to its portfolio of options. Nor was it likely to manage the enhancement launches (as opposed to platform launches) that current customers were demanding, because many of these were still on the drawing board and were competing for the same scarce design and engineering talent as the major platform launches. In short, the company was taking on too much. The results of this overcommitment meant that project deadlines perpetually slipped, promises to key customers were often broken, and people were beginning to feel burned out. This situation is not uncommon. The processes through which companies take on projects usually lead them to discover that they haven’t got the resources to do justice to everything on their plates. In particular, when managers have not clearly thought through which resources for projects will be needed to support their needs to either build new platforms or learn through options, the different types of projects compete with each other, creating confusion. This lack of coordination is also typical of companies that haven’t matched their strategy to available resources. A far wiser approach is to pursue a few well-run projects than to chase down a grab-bag of forever-behind-schedule and over-budget initiatives.

Story 8: Steve Jobs Steve Jobs strolls into the employee break room one day in 1994 and starts making himself a bagel. The staff chew warily. Suddenly, Jobs addresses everybody: “Who is the most powerful person in the world?” Silence. A few names are proposed. Bill Clinton? Nelson Mandela? Then, Jobs erupts: “NO! You are ALL wrong. The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come and Disney has a monopoly on the storyteller business.” He continues: “You know what? I am tired of that bullshit, I am going to be the next storyteller” And out he walks with his bagel. How to use this story I found this encounter in a thread on Quora.com. It’s a lovely scene that really engages an audience. You could use it get people hooked on storytelling. The fact that Steve Jobs held it in such regard helps people to recognise its importance.

Granted, employees are a very different type of customer, one that falls outside of the traditional definition. After all, instead of them paying you, you’re paying them. Yet regardless of the direction the money flows, one thing is clear: employees, just like other types of customers, want to derive value from their relationship with the organization. Not just monetary value, but experiential value, too: skill augmentation, career development, camaraderie, meaningful work, a sense of purpose, and so on. If a company or an individual leader fails to deliver the requisite value to an employee, then—just like a customer, they’ll defect. They’ll quit, driving up turnover, inflating recruiting/training expenses, undermining product/service quality, and creating a whole lot of unnecessary stress on the organization. So even though a company pays its employees, it should still provide them with a value-rich employment experience that cultivates loyalty. And that’s why it’s prudent to view both current and prospective employees as a type of customer. The argument goes beyond employee engagement, though. There’s a whole other reason why organizational leaders have a lot to gain by viewing their staff as a type of customer. That’s because, by doing so, they can personally model the customer-oriented behaviors that they seek to encourage among their workforce. How better to demonstrate what a great customer experience looks like than to deliver it to your own team? After all, how a leader serves their staff influences how the staff serves their customers. Want your team to be super-responsive to the people they serve? Show them what that looks like by being super-responsive to your team. Want them to communicate clearly with customers? Show them what that looks like by being crystal clear in your own written and verbal communications. There are innumerable ways for organizational leaders to model the customer experience behaviors they seek to promote among their staff. It has to start, however, by viewing those in your charge as a type of customer you’re trying to serve. Of course, viewing staff as customers doesn’t mean that leaders should cater to every employee whim or that they should consent to do whatever employees want. Leaders sometimes have to make tough decisions for the greater good. In those situations, effectively serving employees means showing respect for their concerns and interests, and thoughtfully explaining the rationale behind what might be an unpopular decision. The key point is simply this: with every interaction in the workplace, leaders have an opportunity to show their staff what a great customer experience looks like. Whether you’re a C-suite executive or a frontline supervisor, that opportunity must not be squandered.

After that letter, I became a victim of the secret agencies in March 2013. I am not going into details, but it is enough information related to my letter written on 20 November 2012 to retired Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Kayani; the details are in my biography, The Prisoner Of The Hague, on Google Books.com. I hope that information will enlighten Pakistani authorities to realize the facts that foreign secret agencies' engagement to damage the Pakistani state through hired ones since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the shameful behavior of our agencies and media figures who stay ignoring and do not take it seriously. Please do not wear the mask if you love Pakistan and its people; there should be clarity between you and the enemy.

Writing to Gov. Nicholas Cooke on October 12, 1776, he explained, The Advantages arising from a judicious appointment of Officers, and the fatal consequences that result from the want of them, are too obvious to require Arguments to prove them; I shall, therefore, beg leave to add only, that as the well doing, nay the very existence of every Army, to any profitable purposes, depend upon it, that too much regard cannot be had to the choosing of Men of Merit and such as are, not only under the influence of a warm attachment to their Country, but who also possess sentiments of principles of the strictest honor. Men of this Character, are fit for Office, and will use their best endeavours to introduce that discipline and subordination, which are essential to good order, and inspire that Confidence in the Men, which alone can give success to the interesting and important contest in which we are engaged. 50 Washington consistently underscored his view of the “immense consequence” of having “men of the most respectable characters” as the officers surrounding the commanderin chief. He wrote years later to Secretary of War, James McHenry as a new army was being contemplated to address the post-French Revolutionary government: To remark to a Military Man how all important the General Staff of an Army is to its well being, and how essential consequently to the Commander in Chief, seems to be unnecessary; and yet a good choice is of such immense consequence, that I must be allowed to explain myself. The Inspector General, Quartermaster General, Adjutant General, and Officer commanding the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers, ought to be men of the most respectable characters, and of first rate abilities; because, from the nature of their respective Offices, and from their being always about the Commander in Chief who is obliged to entrust many things to them confidentially, scarcely any movement can take place without their knowledge. It follows then, that besides possessing the qualifications just mentioned, they ought to have those of Integrity and prudence in

magical. With the still snow-capped mountains in the distance, it was picture perfect. The palace staff had lined the stairs to welcome me home and Lorraine led me through the lower level to my mother’s sanctuary. It had always been her favourite place in the whole of the palace and she said being surrounded by the exotic plants she bred gave her serenity. There was a breakfast table set and my mother sat in a chair with a cup of tea in her hand. She looked thinner and dark circles marred her still beautiful face. Queen Margot had been a French actress when she had captured my father’s heart. She had given up her life to marry him and I had never questioned just what that had cost her until now. She stood

We assign a buddy or a mentor to help them with questions. We’ll schedule time with our executive director for the first day. We’ll schedule welcome lunches with their team and various other people.” But it starts on the first day. “We make certain the manager welcomes the new hire at the front door.” New hires are introduced at staff devotions, and their new coworkers pray for them and thank God that they are an answer to prayer. The whole experience is designed to give the new employees total confidence that they made the right decision and have truly taken the right next step in God’s pathway for their calling. The third stage is true onboarding, which takes place over the first ninety days. It revolves around not only role-centered training but also organizational mission, vision, values, and history, delivered in dialogue with multiple voices in the organization

But when the character traits of innovation and creativity collide with established ideas, it doesn’t always work out well. A few years after Deep Blue, I was selected to a fourth star and headed to US Southern Command with a particular vision for the command that had evolved from a series of conversations I had had with then secretary of defense Don Rumsfeld and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Both felt that the old paradigm for a combatant command—a massive, cumbersome organization organized strictly to conduct combat operations—was lacking in relevance in the twenty-first century. Both believed that for both Latin America and Africa, it was highly unlikely that we would be engaged in state-on-state combat operations. So the idea was to push the two combatant commands responsible for those regions to try to adapt with a vision that included combat readiness but with a very heavy dose of “soft power” capability—humanitarian operations, medical diplomacy, rule of law, personnel exchanges, counternarcotics, strategic communications, interagency cooperation, and so forth. Given this mandate, I plunged in with enthusiasm—perhaps too much enthusiasm. I underestimated the strong desire of many within the massive command to continue on its current, traditional war-fighting trajectory. When I completely reorganized the staff, getting rid of the Napoleonic traditional military staff system, it created real confusion and resentment. While most of the team went along, cooperation was grudging and halfhearted in many cases. While I continue to believe we had outlined the right mission for the command, I pushed too hard, creating antibodies, and the project crumbled after my departure—effectively negating three years of demanding work. The lesson I took away is that innovation matters deeply, but even if you have the right answer, you must be capable of bringing along the nonbelievers.

The only sounds at the late hour were the faint jingle of a phone ringing in the nurses’ station, the ping of an elevator, the faraway sound of the wheels of a cart, and the gentle beep of Brandon’s vital signs monitor. They wouldn’t allow any flowers or personal items in the ICU, but Sloan had snuck in an engagement photo. It sat on the table next to the bed. Her and Brandon on the beach, the surf crashing around their feet, her tattooed arm over his shoulder, them looking at each other. Both of them laughing. I looked back at him and sighed. “You’re going to have some gnarly scars, buddy.” They’d started the skin grafts for the road rash on his arm. “But you’ll get to do everything you planned to do with your life. One of us is going to get the girl. I’ll help you any way I can. Even if I have to wheel your ass to the altar.” I could picture his smile. With any luck I’d see it in a few hours. A knock on the door frame turned me around in my chair. “Hey, cutie.” Valerie came into the room for her vitals check. She turned the lights up, and I stood and stretched. As if sleeping in a chair wasn’t hard enough, the activity every two hours was the final kicker. I wouldn’t call anything I did on these overnight shifts sleeping. Maybe napping, but not sleeping. Every two hours Brandon was moved. They checked his airways, changed out bags, looked at his vitals. I don’t know how Sloan was handling doing this almost nightly for the last three weeks. Sloan was a good woman. I’d always liked her, but now she’d earned my respect, and I was grateful Brandon and Kristen had her. “Did you decide what day you want to bring the kids to the station?” I asked Valerie, yawning. She cycled the blood pressure cuff on Brandon’s arm and smiled. “I’m thinking Tuesday. You on shift Tuesday?” “Yup.” She wrote down some notes on Brandon’s chart and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “Any updates with your lady friend?” I laughed a little. “No.” The whole nursing staff knew about my depressing love life. I’d gotten hit on a few too many times by some of the younger nurses. I couldn’t claim to have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t married, so it was either “I’m gay” or “I’m in love with that girl over there.” I’d gone with the latter, and now I wished I’d said I was gay. They didn’t know why Kristen wouldn’t date me, just that she wouldn’t. It had turned into the favorite topic of the ICU. A real-life episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I rarely got through a Brandon visit without it coming up. The drama escalated when Kristen had been hit on by the nurses’ favorite single orthopedic surgeon. According to the nurses’ gossip circuit, Kristen told him to go fuck himself. And apparently she’d actually said, “Go fuck yourself.” After that everyone was sure she was holding out for me. Only I knew better.

As a team gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up at an accelerating, almost exponential rate.” In his handbook Leading Teams, Hackman reminds us of “Brook’s Law”: the adage that adding staff to speed up a behind-schedule project “has no better chance of working … than would a scheme to produce a baby quickly by assigning nine women to be pregnant for one month each … adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Kitchen people understood that food didn't have to be gourmet to taste good, and that sometimes gourmet food didn't taste good at all. "Kiwis are a soulless fruit," my mother once said when she saw them in a fruit tart on the Ritz's dessert tray. "Don't ever use sun-dried tomatoes," my father told his staff. "They'll take your magic powers." Even junk food could be better. Once, for Jake's birthday, the staff laid out his favorite foods--- frozen meatballs and Twinkies--- on brass serving plates in the dining room. When they sliced the Twinkies horizontally to expose the cream, even my mother admitted they made an attractive dessert. At staff Christmas parties we served junk food, too: sour-cream-and-onion potato chips, chicken wings, and hot dogs, and for dessert more Twinkies. The rest of the year I never ate food like that, and by the holidays Cotswold tarts and melon wrapped in prosciutto bored me. In my black velvet dresses, I gnawed on fried drumsticks, with a napkin stuffed into my lace collars to catch the crumbs. "I'm not whipping up any foie gras for you tonight, kiddo," said Carla, who, in her olive-green T-shirt and holding a beer, looked the same as she did behind the line. "Fend for yourself.

Because, Staff Sergeant, this isn’t Hell, this is Heaven, '' answered Clark with a wink, “We’re on American soil, no Rules of Engagement, fighting things that we don’t have to worry about capturing or laws of war, AND most of our weapons are ineffective. So we are called upon to use all our ingenuity and wits to wage war to the fullest! It’s a soldier’s wet dream!

I also quickly came to appreciate the importance of watching what’s said around clients. When clients make unexpected requests for legal advice – as they often do – I learned that it was better to tell them I’d get back to them with an answer, and go away, research the question, and consult with a supervising attorney, rather than firing back an answer off-the-cuff. A friend of mine at another firm told me a story that illustrates the risks of saying too much. It seems an insurance company had engaged my friend’s California-based firm to help in defending against an environmental claim. This claim entailed reviewing huge volumes of documents in Arizona. So my friend’s firm sent teams of associates to Arizona, all expenses paid, on a weekly basis. Because the insurance company also sent its own lawyers and paralegals, as did other insurance companies who were also defendants in the lawsuit, the document review facility was often staffed with numerous attorneys and paralegals from different firms. Associates were instructed not to discuss the case with anyone unless they knew with whom they were speaking. After several months of document review, one associate from my friend’s firm abandoned his professionalism and discretion when he began describing to a young woman who had recently arrived at the facility what boondoggles the weekly trips were. He talked at length about the free airfare, expensive meals, the easy work, and the evening partying the trips involved. As fate would have it, the young woman was a paralegal working for the insurance company – the client who was paying for all of his “perks” – and she promptly informed her superiors about his comments. Not surprisingly, the associate was fired before the end of the month. My life as an associate would have been a lot easier if I had delegated work more freely. I’ve mentioned the stress associated with delegating work, but the flip side of that was appreciating the importance of asking others for help rather than doing everything myself. I found that by delegating to paralegals and other staff members some of my more tedious assignments, I was free to do more interesting work. I also wish I’d given myself greater latitude to make mistakes. As high achievers, law students often put enormous stress on themselves to be perfect, and I was no different. But as a new lawyer, I, of course, made mistakes; that’s the inevitable result of inexperience. Rather than expect perfection and be inevitably disappointed, I’d have been better off to let myself be tripped up by inexperience – and focus, instead, on reducing mistakes caused by carelessness. Finally, I tried to rely more on other associates within the firm for advice on assignments and office politics. When I learned to do this, I found that these insights gave me either the assurance that I was using the right approach, or guidance as to what the right approach might be. It didn’t take me long to realize that getting the “inside scoop” on firm politics was crucial to my own political survival. Once I figured this out, I made sure I not only exchanged information with other junior associates, but I also went out of my way to gather key insights from mid-level and senior associates, who typically knew more about the latest political maneuverings and happenings. Such information enabled me to better understand the various personal agendas directing work flow and office decisions and, in turn, to better position myself with respect to issues and cases circulating in the office.

The participants were twenty-six men engaged in a variety of professional occupations: sixteen engineers, one engineer-physicist, two mathematicians, two architects, one psychologist, one furniture designer, one commercial artist, one sales manager, and one personnel manager. At the time of the study, there were few women in senior scientific positions, and none was found who wished to participate. Nineteen of the subjects had no previous experience with psychedelics. They were selected on the basis of the following criteria: The participant’s occupation required problemsolving ability. The participant was psychologically stable, as determined by a psychiatric interview examination. The participant was motivated to discover, verify, and apply solutions within his current employment. Six groups of four and one group of three met in the evening several days before the session.a The sequence of events to be followed was explained in detail. In this initial meeting, we sought to allay any apprehension and establish rapport and trust among the participants and the staff.

In a Consciously Conscious Revolutionary Workplace, its People First, Planet Second and then Profits.

After the press conference I would return to an empty sixth floor to engage in battle with the world’s most powerful creditors without secretaries, staff or indeed a computer. Thankfully, I had my trusty laptop in my rucksack. But who would furnish me with the Wi-Fi password?

If the manager of a company can put the needs of their staff ahead of their own ego, then that business has a good chance of prospering.

You cannot fix the future by constantly focusing on the past. You can't make this NOW moment any better by focusing on whats broken?

It isn't enough merely to be open to ideas from others. Engaging the collective brainpower of the people you work with is an active, ongoing process. As a manager, you must coax ideas out of your staff and constantly push them to contribute.

By timbre, temperament, and sheer force of personality, Donald Trump is the ideal manifestation of Facebook culture. Trump himself uses Twitter habitually both as a bully pulpit and as an antenna for reaction to his expressions. Twitter has a limited reach among the American public, and his off-the-cuff, unpracticed, and untested expressions could do him more harm than good. But Facebook, with its deep penetration into American minds and lives, is Trump’s natural habitat. On Facebook his staff makes sure Trump expresses himself in short, strong bursts of indignation or approval. Trump has always been visually deft but close to illiterate. His attention span runs as quickly and frenetically as a Facebook News Feed. After a decade of deep and constant engagement with Facebook, Americans have been conditioned to experience the world Trump style. It’s almost as if Trump were designed for Facebook and Facebook were designed for him. Facebook helped make America ready for Trump.

means seeing how changes such as these fit into the big picture, too. Are all staff members and, indeed, students engaged in developing the vision and mission of the school? Do leaders constantly explain how specific changes or team tasks fit into this larger vision? Can teachers and students articulate that connection as well? When asked what kind of school they are involved with, will you get the same sort of answer from teachers, students, bus drivers, janitors, parents, and administrative assistants, as well as the principal?

In February 2018, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed an indictment in the United States versus the Internet Research Agency, Concorde Management and Consulting, LLC, and Concorde Catering. The indictment alleges that the internet research organization is a Russian organization engaged in operations to interfere with elections in political processes. According to the indictment, beginning in late 2013, the organization hired staff and planned to manipulate the US Presidential election by creating false personas of American citizens. They would set up social media websites, group Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds to attract US audiences. They name 13 Russians who are the key managers of the organization starting with Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

You don’t need to invest in more staff to make convenience happen. By leveraging technology, one fundraiser can perform like a thousand. Embrace it. Then use it to deliver prompt responses that provide convenience and reduce effort. Your supporters deserve it!

Providing clear communication and timely updates on admissions status is crucial to maintaining applicants' interest and engagement throughout the enrolment process.

Organizing school tours and open houses provides opportunities for admitted students to explore the campus first hand, creating excitement and engagement in the school community.

Shown capability. They must feel confident that your organization can do the job. Prove to them that your staff, equipment, and infrastructure are ready to make good on the organization’s promises.

An often-overlooked aspect of crafting vision and mission statements is understanding the school's unique identity, which requires extensive stakeholder engagement to capture diverse perspectives and values.

School administrators advocate for student success, engage parents, and provide support for staff development.

School administrators must engage with stakeholders, support student well-being, and mentor staff to promote a conducive learning environment.

By leveraging a variety of communication channels, schools can effectively engage parents in discussions about the fee structure, address concerns, and build a supportive community focused on the best interests of the students.

From creating policies to engaging parents, school administrators juggle various responsibilities to ensure the smooth functioning of educational institutions.

Diana was on a conference call with the chairman of the board of an international professional association. She listened as he listed problem after problem: staff members are critical of each other and of members; there is little collaboration among staff and board members; no one is willing to go the extra mile; everyone complains about the cost of membership; members seldom volunteer to serve on committees or to write articles for the newsletter. The list of problems went on and on. Diana gently interrupted the habitual tirade: Diana: May I share my reflections and ask a question? Peter: Yes. Diana: I hear that you are very frustrated and feeling somewhat overwhelmed with all the problems people bring to you. Peter: Yes. Diana: I wonder what it is that you really want. You have described in detail what you do not want—all the problems. I am curious, what do you want for the association, its members, and the board and the staff? Peter: That is quite easy. I would like more members who are actively engaged. Diana: That is a clear and exciting image for the future. I suggest that you begin an inquiry into “Engaged Membership.” Ask members of the board, the staff, and the association to share stories of when they have been highly engaged as members of the association and/or as members of another organization, team, or community. Ask them who or what led them to be so engaged. What did they do and contribute? How did leadership encourage and support their engagement? How did it feel? What were the benefits to them and to others? What ideas do they have to enhance engaged membership in the association? Peter: That is a very different approach. Diana: Yes, when you flip problems and ask about what you really want, two things happen. One, people learn what it is that you stand for as a leader. They learn what you expect of them. In your case it is “Engaged Membership.” And two, you get more of want you want. When people know what is wanted and expected for success, they do it.