Workforce Important Quotes

The most common theory points to the fact that men are stronger than women and that they have used their greater physical power to force women into submission. A more subtle version of this claim argues that their strength allows men to monopolize tasks that demand hard manual labor, such as plowing and harvesting. This gives them control of food production, which in turn translates into political clout. There are two problems with this emphasis on muscle power. First, the statement that men are stronger is true only on average and only with regard to certain types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease, and fatigue than men. There are also many women who can run faster and lift heavier weights than many men. Furthermore, and most problematically for this theory, women have, throughout history, mainly been excluded from jobs that required little physical effort, such as the priesthood, law, and politics, while engaging in hard manual labor in the fields....and in the household. If social power were divided in direct relation to physical strength or stamina, women should have got far more of it. Even more importantly, there simply is no direct relation between physical strength and social power among humans. People in their sixties usually exercise power over people in their twenties, even though twenty-somethings are much stronger than their elders. ...Boxing matches were not used to select Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the most developed musculature. In fact, human history shows that there is often an inverse relation between physical prowess and social power. In most societies, it’s the lower classes who do the manual labor. Another theory explains that masculine dominance results not from strength but from aggression. Millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent than women. Women can match men as far as hatred, greed, and abuse are concern, but when push comes to shove…men are more willing to engage in raw physical violence. This is why, throughout history, warfare has been a masculine prerogative. In times of war, men’s control of the armed forces has made them the masters of civilian society too. They then use their control of civilian society to fight more and more wars. …Recent studies of the hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women strengthen the assumption that men indeed have more aggressive and violent tendencies and are…on average, better suited to serve as common soldiers. Yet, granted that the common soldiers are all men, does it follow that the ones managing the war and enjoying its fruits must also be men? That makes no sense. It’s like assuming that because all the slaves cultivating cotton fields are all Black, plantation owners will be Black as well. Just as an all-Black workforce might be controlled by an all-White management, why couldn’t an all-male soldiery be controlled by an all-female government?

If you’re a manager, remember that one third to one half of your workforce is probably introverted, whether they appear that way or not. Think twice about how you design your organization’s office space. Don’t expect introverts to get jazzed up about open office plans or, for that matter, lunchtime birthday parties or team-building retreats. Make the most of introverts’ strengths—these are the people who can help you think deeply, strategize, solve complex problems, and spot canaries in your coal mine. Also, remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it’s creativity you’re after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can’t see each other’s ideas until everyone’s had a chance to contribute. Face-to-face contact is important because it builds trust, but group dynamics contain unavoidable impediments to creative thinking. Arrange for people to interact one-on-one and in small, casual groups. Don’t mistake assertiveness or eloquence for good ideas. If you have a proactive work force (and I hope you do), remember that they may perform better under an introverted leader than under an extroverted or charismatic one.

As I have earlier noted, the most important things in life and in business can’t be measured. The trite bromide 'If you can measure it, you can manage it' has been a hindrance in the building a great real-world organization, just as it has been a hindrance in evaluating the real-world economy. It is character, not numbers, that make the world go ‘round. How can we possibly measure the qualities of human existence that give our lives and careers meaning? How about grace, kindness, and integrity? What value do we put on passion, devotion, and trust? How much do cheerfulness, the lilt of a human voice, and a touch of pride add to our lives? Tell me, please, if you can, how to value friendship, cooperation, dedication, and spirit. Categorically, the firm that ignores the intangible qualities that the human beings who are our colleagues bring to their careers will never build a great workforce or a great organization.

We face labor shortages in two of the largest and most important sectors of our economy—health care and education. But we are trying to solve them with only half the workforce.

I think a lot of women will be in your situation. They’re an important part of the workforce now, and they won’t want to give that up when the men come home. They’ve gotten some independence, even if they’re not paid as well as men. That’s not fair, but at least they’ve gotten out of the kitchen, and into offices and factories. It’s a big step for women.

It is equally important to know if we have a happy and engaged workforce as it is to have a profitable bottom line.

workforce, discipline is about focusing on what’s most important, learning to let go of minutiae, and being okay with delaying the less important tasks to an appropriate time

The United States cannot at once be isolationist—build a wall, kill the trade deals—and global, selectively reaping the benefits of an international economy, like lower-cost imports, cut-rate outsourced workforce, and cheap labor in our fields here at home. We have played a major part in creating the problem of what has become of Central America, and we must play a major part in solving it.

It is more important to look holistically at the root of why anyone would want to avoid work so badly that they’d game the system and leave the workforce altogether. When work is fulfilling, dignifying, respects our skills and nourishes our talents and souls, it becomes a pleasure not a burden; something we would look for not run away from. [From “On the Great Resignation” published on CounterPunch on February 24, 2023]

In their otherwise depressing review of the efficacy of diversity training programs, Frank Dobbin and colleagues found accountability to be one of the most important mechanisms related to the diversity of the labor force. Assigning responsibility for managing diversity to taskforces, diversity officers, or some similar committee was strongly associated with an increase in workforce diversity, including in the fraction of women.

Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience." Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is. Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others. The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success. Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all. Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace. Loyalty is not demanded; it is created. Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message. The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel. The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way. People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes. Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk. The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.

Perhaps the most common device for giving people focus and direction is goal setting, but goals, as often as they are used, have their pros and cons. Sure, if you can convince everybody that profits must increase 20% next quarter or we’re going out of business, people will hurry around looking for ways to hype profits by 20%. When discussing “mission” I assigned Susan a goal of 25% improvement in sales, based on what I calculated was needed to avoid closing the factory and on what I felt her district could reasonably provide. It was not a number pulled from the ether, and I went to some length to explain this to her. Short of any such basis in reality, people will often do the easiest things, such as firing 20% of the workforce, canceling vital R&D programs, or simply not making any payments to suppliers. In other words, they will take achieving the goal as seriously as they feel you were in setting it; they will sense whether you have positioned yourself at the Schwerpunkt. Goals, as we all know, can be motivators. Cypress Semiconductor, a communications-oriented company founded in 1982, used to have a computer that tracked the thousands of self-imposed goals that its people fed into the system. Cypress founder T. J. Rodgers identified this automated goal tending system as the heart of his management style and a big factor in the company’s early success.136 Frankly, I find this philosophy depressing, not to mention a temptation to focus inward: If the boss places great importance on entering and tracking goals, as he obviously does, then that is what the other employees are going to consider important.137 In any case, what’s the big deal about meeting or missing a goal? A goal is an intention at a point in time. It is, to a large extent, an arbitrary target, whether you set it or someone above you assigns it. And we all know that numerical goals can be gamed, like banking (delaying) sales that we could have made this quarter to help us make quota next quarter. Unlike a Schwerpunkt, which gives focus and direction for chaotic and uncertain situations, what does a goal tell you? Just keep your head down and continue plugging away?

I have gone through Let’s Talk, Mukta Mahajani’s book on negotiations and communications at the workplace, with curiosity. Although the book essentially aims at equipping young executives with techniques and skills to deal with difficult workplace situations, it is an interesting and useful read for public servants like me, who have been groomed in an era when negotiation and communication skills were considered an art and one either had the skills or did not have them. We never believed that these skills could be acquired and then honed with right training. Of course, I firmly believe that negotiations have to be built on the foundation of trust and ethics. They should not lead to lose–lose or win– lose situations but should culminate in win–win situations. The modern-day workplace is a highly complex, multidimensional and multi-layered system manned by a diverse workforce. Human behaviour is the most important factor that makes the workplace complex and dynamic. Hundreds of Ankitas, Ketans, Rams and Vidyas struggle to achieve their desired goals at the workplace. I am certain that Mukta’s book will be of great value to them. Congratulations Mukta! Mr Sharad Pawar

A marriage is hard work and sometimes it's a bit of a bore. It's like housework. It's never finished. You've just got to grit your teeth and keep working away at it, day after day. Of course, the men don't work as hard at it as we do, but that's men for you, isn't it? They're not much good at housework either. Well, they weren't in my day. Of course, these days they cook, vacuum, change nappies — the lot! Still don't get equal pay in the workforce, though, do you? You've got a long way to go, you girls. Not doing much about it, though, are you?' 'Yes, OK, Aunt Connie, but the thing is I'm not interested in marriage in general. I'm interested in Alice and Jack's marriage. How would you describe it? Ordinary? Extraordinary? Cast your mind back! Even the tiniest detail would be helpful. Did they love each other, do you think?' 'Love! Pfff! I'll tell you something, something important. Write this down. You ready?' 'Yes, yes, I'm ready.' 'Love is a decision.' 'Love is a decision?' 'That's right. A decision. Not a feeling. That's what you young people don't realise. That's why you're always off divorcing each other. No offence, dear. Now, turn that silly tape-recorder off and I'll make you some cinnamon toast.

These “undocumented workers” from south of the border may have come here illegally, but they have long ago integrated themselves into their communities. Once here, they obey the laws. They pay taxes. Many of their sons and daughters serve in the military. They make up the majority of the workforce in several key industries: agricultural workers, child care, kitchen help in restaurants, housecleaning, maid service in hotels, and more. I’ve seen the great contribution they’ve made to their communities in California. Like generations of immigrants before them, they have become American citizens by choice, not by birth. They are, in effect, already citizens in every respect but one. It’s now important to make it official, as Ronald Reagan did, and grant them citizenship—or at least a path to citizenship—in order to save families from the fear of being torn apart by federal agents. Of

Confidence spark If you’re feeling shaky about taking an action that could prove risky, use this exercise to determine if the action is what I call a best bet, a smart risk worth taking. First, analyze the pros and cons. Say you’re offered a job working for a start-up company. How many pluses and minuses can you list? Which do you have more of? Second, consider the timing and your other priorities. Are you just starting out or have you been in the workforce for a long time? Are you single or married; do you have children? All of these factors go into determining whether taking the risk is worth it. Third and most importantly, listen to your inner voice. What is it advising? If everything points to go, then it’s time to make a move. Or maybe you find that the timing is not right. Don’t discard your plans—just put them aside for now. Reevaluate the opportunity, or another one just like it, at a later time. Letting

Whiles much of the Victorian Era's education prepared young people for the workforce, school looked different for children of wealthy families. A governess would offer the upper class children lessons in music and art and languages that in turn benefited the child's education and understanding of the world. Meanwhile, the children in the lower classes received only the minimal basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. An important premise of the born person approach is that people of every background and status should have access to a wide curriculum and the freedom to search for knowledge. Each child is worthy of a liberal education for all.

Talking about diversity and inclusion in the workplace is one of the most important conversations you will ever have with your employees.

An alternative conception of full citizenship that also doesn’t regard work as a civic requirement holds that citizens are entitled to a guaranteed, unconditional basic income or initial capital stake. On this view, each individual has a right to his or her fair share of society’s assets, which have been built up over many generations; and each should be free to use this fair share as he or she sees it. Those who want to work, either for greater income or intrinsic satisfaction, are free and perhaps encouraged to do so. But those who choose not to work and instead live off their basic income or capital stake (at least for a time) are not acting unfairly toward their fellow citizens who choose to work. The goods and services that we all take advantage of are the product of, not only contributions from contemporary workers, but also work from past generations and, just as important, technological advance and nature’s bounty. On this view, there should be an all-volunteer workforce, where no one is compelled to work under threat of penalty or out of economic need. Fiscal policy would focus on growing the economy and spurring technological advance, while tax policy would distribute the gains of increased productivity equitably to all citizens and not just to those who work or own capital.

There was a reason, I told Valerie, why Republicans tended to do the opposite—why Ronald Reagan could preside over huge increases in the federal budget, federal deficit, and federal workforce and still be lionized by the GOP faithful as the guy who successfully shrank the federal government. They understood that in politics, the stories told were often as important as the substance achieved.

Emerging operating models also mean that talent and culture have to be rethought in light of new skill requirements and the need to attract and retain the right sort of human capital. As data become central to both decision-making and operating models across industries, workforces require new skills, while processes need to be upgraded (for example, to take advantage of the availability of real-time information) and cultures need to evolve. As I mentioned, companies need to adapt to the concept of “talentism”. This is one of the most important, emerging drivers of competitiveness. In a world where talent is the dominant form of strategic advantage, the nature of organizational structures will have to be rethought. Flexible hierarchies, new ways of measuring and rewarding performance, new strategies for attracting and retaining skilled talent will all become key for organizational success. A capacity for agility will be as much about employee motivation and communication as it will be about setting business priorities and managing physical assets. My

On January 21, 2021, the day after inauguration, Biden reversed the order. It was one of his first actions as president. No wonder, because, as The Hill reported, this executive order would have been “the biggest change to federal workforce protections in a century, converting many federal workers to ‘at will’ employment.” How many federal workers in agencies would have been newly classified at Schedule F? We do not know because only one completed the review before their jobs were saved by the election result. The one that did was the Congressional Budget Office. Its conclusion: fully 88% of employees would have been newly classified as Schedule F, thus allowing the president to terminate their employment. This would have been a revolutionary change, a complete remake of Washington, DC, and all politics as usual. If the HHS Administrative State is to be dismantled, so that it will become possible to manage the various Executive Branch agencies once again, Schedule F provides an excellent strategy and template to achieve the objective. If this most important of all tasks is not achieved, then we will remain at risk that HHS will once again attempt to trade our national sovereignty for additional power by aligning with the WHO, as was recently attempted in the case of the surreptitious January 28, 2022, proposed modifications to the International Health Regulations [434]. These actions, which were not made public until April 12, 2022, clearly demonstrate that the HHS Administrative State represents a clear and present danger to the US Constitution and national sovereignty and must be dismantled as soon as possible.

The extreme demands of sugar production and a work force that was composed disproportionately of young, unmarried men made the renegotiation of slave labor particularly contentious, and the violence that accompanied it especially savage. Few southern slaves were accustomed to working at the murderous pace sugar production demanded. In lower Louisiana, they learned at the end of the lash. 'At the season's end, when cane is cut,' noted one visitor to Louisiana in the 1830s, 'nothing but the severest application of the lash can stimulate the human frame to endure it.' 'From the time of the commencement of sugar making to the close, the grinding and boiling does not cease day or night,' recalled Northup. 'The whip was given to me with directions to us it upon anyone who was caught idling.' The demands on slaves were felt in the quarter as well as in the field. While the slave population of the cotton South grew through natural increase, deaths in the sugar parishes outnumbered births. At mid-century, the fertility ate of slave women in St. Barnard and St. James parishes were only 60 percent of that of slave women in the cotton South. This demographic profile was more akin to the sugar islands of the Caribbean than to the mainland. With high mortality and low fertility, sugar planters sustained their workforce only by importation.

Through all of these steps, communicating clearly serves to synchronize the workforce from top to bottom. So, whether you are setting the vision, building the strategy, developing the plan, or inspecting the factory, always ensure you are communicating your goals, your expectations, and most importantly, your appreciation. The employees may or may not like the direction you have set for the organization, but they will always be grateful for knowing what you are thinking and where you are headed as a leader.

Gen Z, I commend you. You have more entrepreneurs than any other generation, and you’re making more money than the generation before you, the millennials. You understand the importance of a diverse workforce and making that an intention. Long gone are the days when we had to work for companies that just didn’t care about us.

Through suicide, infanticide, abortion, starvation, neglect, overwork, and murder, the black slaves of Saint Domingue died off at a much faster rate than they could replace themselves by new births. It was necessary for the proprietors to import twenty thousand fresh slaves from Africa annually in order to maintain the workforce at a constant level.

Do you know an executive leader in your industry who you can call on to help you navigae a problem? Someone at the midlevel who can tell you about job openings? Someone at the junior level who can help you take the temperature of employees just starting out, or teach you what the newer members of the workforce are prioritizing in the office? Someone at the junior just starting out, or teach you what the newer members of the workforce are prioritizing in the office? I always say it's important for me to know someone in every decade of life. Eventually the 60 somethings will retire and the 20 something contacts will move up, before you know it, that junior level employee you knew back in the day is running her own company and thanks to years of building a relationship, you have in.

Their conclusion: while gender discrimination may be a minor contributor to the male-female wage differential, it is desire—or the lack thereof—that accounts for most of the wage gap. The economists identified three main factors: Women have slightly lower GPAs than men and, perhaps more important, they take fewer finance courses. All else being equal, there is a strong correlation between a finance background and career earnings. Over the first fifteen years of their careers, women work fewer hours than men, 52 per week versus 58. Over fifteen years, that six-hour difference adds up to six months’ less experience. Women take more career interruptions than men. After ten years in the workforce, only 10 percent of male MBAs went for six months or more without working, compared with 40 percent of female MBAs.

But perhaps the single most important factor in the improvement of the human condition over the past century has been the reproductive, political, and social empowerment of women, especially in developing countries. Now that women have increasing government over their own bodies—and more of a say in human affairs—humanity has doubled its workforce, improved its overall energetic efficiency, and cut its population growth.

Think of each employee as an individual scout picking up data from the outside world—from articles, books, and classes, but most important, from other friends inside and outside the industry. Each employee can receive and decipher intelligence from the outside world that helps the company adapt. For example, what’s a competitor doing? What are key tech trends? It’s the manager’s job to recognize and encourage the power of each of these scouts. A more networked workforce generates more valuable intelligence, and when your employees share what they learn from their networks back into your company, they help solve its key business challenges

By the middle of the war, Germany had become dependent on forced labor in almost every important sector of its economy. Some 19.7 percent of the entire workforce in Germany was made up of forced laborers, later studies found. Most of them were concentrated in industry, where they made up almost a third of the workforce. Almost 40 percent of IG Farben’s workers were forced laborers, including tens of thousands of inmates from Auschwitz and other concentration camps. At the Reich’s vast holding company for aircraft and arms production, the Reichswerke Hermann Goering, no less than 58 percent of the employees were forced laborers.

Everyone has a need to feel a sense of self-worth and self-actualization – that he or she believes his or her existence is meaningful. Unfortunately, the Industrial Revolution wrongfully instilled a social norm that self-worth should primarily come from work ethic – if you work hard, you will be rewarded. But because of AI, jobs based on repetitive tasks will soon be gone forever. We need to redefine the idea of work ethic for the new workforce paradigm. The importance of a job should not be solely dependent on its economic value but should also be measured by what it adds to society. We should also reassess our notion that longer work hours are the best way to achieve success and should remove the stigma associated with service professions.

millennials are a median age of twenty-seven. There’s seventy-five to eighty million of us. We are now the biggest group of employees in the workforce. There’s more of us than boomers or gen X. We’re also approaching peak spending years. And so as a foundational part of the economy, millennials are by far the most important group for the next forty years. And so, as a business, that’s the group you want to build your audience around.

Getting to fifty-fifty is incredibly complex and nuanced, requiring many detailed solutions that will take decades to fully play out. To accelerate the process, change needs to start at the top. Like Stewart Butterfield, CEOs need to make hiring and retaining women an explicit priority. In addition, here is the bare minimum of what we can do at an individual and a systemic level: First of all, people, be nice to each other. Treat one another with respect and dignity, including those of the opposite sex.That should be pretty simple. Don’t enable assholes. Stop making excuses for bad behavior, or ignoring it. CEOs must embrace and champion the need to reach a fair representation of gender within their companies, and develop a comprehensive plan to get there. Be long-term focused, not short-term. It may take three weeks to find a white man for the job, but three months to find a woman. Those three months could save three years of playing catch-up in the future. Invest in not just diversity but inclusion. Even if your company is small, everything counts. And take the time to educate your employees about why this is important. Companies need to appoint more women to their boards. And boards need to hold company leadership to account to get to fifty-fifty in their employee ranks, starting with company executives. Venture capital firms need to hire more women partners, and limited partners should pressure them to do so and, at the very least, ask them what their plans around diversity are. Investors, both men and women, need to start funding more women and diverse teams, period. LPs need to fund more women VCs, who can establish new firms with new cultural norms. Stop funding partnerships that look and act the same. Most important, stop blaming everybody else for the problem or pretending that it is too hard for us to solve. It’s time to look in the mirror. This is an industry, after all, that prides itself on disruption and revolutionary new ways of thinking. Let’s put that spirit of innovation and embrace of radical change to good use. Seeing a more inclusive workforce in Silicon Valley will encourage more girls and women studying computer science now.

Correlations made by big data are likely to reinforce negative bias. Because big data often relies on historical data or at least the status quo, it can easily reproduce discrimination against disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities. The propensity models used in many algorithms can bake in a bias against someone who lived in the zip code of a low-income neighborhood at any point in his or her life. If an algorithm used by human resources companies queries your social graph and positively weighs candidates with the most existing connections to a workforce, it makes it more difficult to break in in the first place. In effect, these algorithms can hide bias behind a curtain of code. Big data is, by its nature, soulless and uncreative. It nudges us this way and that for reasons we are not meant to understand. It strips us of our privacy and puts our mistakes, secrets, and scandals on public display. It reinforces stereotypes and historical bias. And it is largely unregulated because we need it for economic growth and because efforts to try to regulate it have tended not to work; the technologies are too far-reaching and are not built to recognize the national boundaries of our world’s 196 sovereign nation-states. Yet would it be best to try to shut down these technologies entirely if we could? No. Big data simultaneously helps solve global challenges while creating an entirely new set of challenges. It’s our best chance at feeding 9 billion people, and it will help solve the problem of linguistic division that is so old its explanation dates back to the Old Testament and the Tower of Babel. Big data technologies will enable us to discover cancerous cells at 1 percent the size of what can be detected using today’s technologies, saving tens of millions of lives. The best approach to big data might be one put forward by the Obama campaign’s chief technology officer, Michael Slaby, who said, “There’s going to be a constant mix between your qualitative experience and your quantitative experience. And at times, they’re going to be at odds with each other, and at times they’re going to be in line. And I think it’s all about the blend. It’s kind of like you have a mixing board, and you have to turn one up sometimes, and turn down the other. And you never want to be just one or the other, because if it’s just one, then you lose some of the soul.” Slaby has made an impressive career out of developing big data tools, but even he recognizes that these tools work best when governed by human judgment. The choices we make about how we manage data will be as important as the decisions about managing land during the agricultural age and managing industry during the industrial age. We have a short window of time—just a few years, I think—before a set of norms set in that will be nearly impossible to reverse. Let’s hope humans accept the responsibility for making these decisions and don’t leave it to the machines.

CFR’s Renewing America initiative—from which this book arose—has focused on those areas of economic policy that are the most important for reinforcing America’s competitive strengths. Education, corporate tax policy, and infrastructure, for example, are issues that historically have been considered largely matters of domestic policy. Yet in a highly competitive global economy, an educated workforce, a competitive tax structure, and an efficient transportation network are all crucial to attracting investment and delivering goods and services that can succeed in global markets. The line between domestic economic policy and foreign economic policy is in many cases now almost invisible. Building a more competitive economy for the future requires that our political leaders—not just in Congress and the White House but also in state and local governments—understand how their policy choices can affect the choices of companies that can now invest almost anywhere in the world.

millennials are a median age of twenty-seven. There’s seventy-five to eighty million of us. We are now the biggest group of employees in the workforce. There’s more of us than boomers or gen X. We’re also approaching peak spending years. And so as a foundational part of the economy, millennials are by far the most important group for the next forty years. And so, as a business, that’s the group you want to build your audience around. When you look at Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, all of those—all of those great news companies have a median viewer above sixty years old. That’s median. That means half of them are even older than that. “We plan on growing up with our audience,” Alcheck continued. “The biggest innovation is actually improving the storytelling, improving the journalism. Our audience is maturing, is approaching a new life stage where it’s about getting married and having kids and thinking about the world differently than they’ve been thinking about it for the last decade. And so for us, a big part of what we’re doing is continuing—is a relentless focus on making our journalism better. And I think that’s what’s going to ultimately either keep people or people will leave.

Although pundits and politicians, usually male, often claim that motherhood is the most important and difficult work of all, women who take time out of the workforce pay a big career penalty. Only 74 percent of professional women will rejoin the workforce in any capacity, and only 40 percent will return to full-time jobs.14 Those who do rejoin will often see their earnings decrease dramatically. Controlling for education and hours worked, women’s average annual earnings decrease by 20 percent if they are out of the workforce for just one year.15 Average annual earnings decline by 30 percent after two to three years,16 which is the average amount of time that professional women off-ramp from the workforce.17 If society truly valued the work of caring for children, companies and institutions would find ways to reduce these steep penalties and help parents combine career and family responsibilities. All too often rigid work schedules, lack of paid family leave, and expensive or undependable child care derail women’s best efforts. Governmental and company policies such as paid personal time off, affordable high-quality child care, and flexible work practices would serve families, and society, well.

suggested to the entire workforce that they read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” one of the most important things I ever read. Inspired in part by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, King’s letter is about seeking justice in a deeply flawed world. I have reread it several times since first encountering it in college. Because I knew that the FBI’s interaction with the civil rights movement, and Dr. King in particular, was a dark chapter in the Bureau’s history, I wanted to do something more. I ordered the creation of a curriculum at the FBI’s Quantico training academy. I wanted all agent and analyst trainees to learn the history of the FBI’s interaction with King, how the legitimate counterintelligence mission against Communist infiltration of our government had morphed into an unchecked, vicious campaign of harassment and extralegal attack on the civil rights leader and others. I wanted them to remember that well-meaning people lost their way. I wanted them to know that the FBI sent King a letter blackmailing him and suggesting he commit suicide. I wanted them to stare at that history, visit the inspiring King Memorial in Washington, D.C., with its long arcs of stone bearing King’s words, and reflect on the FBI’s values and our responsibility to always do better. The FBI Training Division created a curriculum that does just that. All FBI trainees study that painful history and complete the course by visiting the memorial. There, they choose one of Dr. King’s quotations from the wall—maybe “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” or “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”—and then write an essay about the intersection of that quotation and the FBI’s values. The course doesn’t tell the trainees what to think. It only tells them they must think, about history and institutional values. Last I checked, the course remains one of the highest-rated portions of their many weeks at Quantico.

One company that did wake up to the importance of employee health was Safeway. The supermarket chain’s former CEO Steve Burd recounts that in 2005 Safeway’s health care bill hit $1 billion and was going up by $100 million a year. “What we discovered was that 70 percent of health care costs are driven by people’s behaviors,” he says. “Now as a business guy, I thought if we could influence the behavior of our 200,000-person workforce, we could have a material effect on health care costs.

The essence of business consulting Business consulting is becoming a well-liked hit everywhere in the world. Consultation providers are important to business folks since they help them in making informative choices. That is solely potential after serving to them understand the workforce within the enterprise world. Managers who analyze the functionality of their businesses are bound to make higher earnings than those that don’t consult an expert for surveillance. They should perceive the risks concerned, weaknesses and strengths in order for their businesses to survive competition. It is with enterprise consulting that companies are capable of analyze as well as improve upon their strategic operations. This turns into attainable because of the experience across assorted fields translating into a spectrum of new ideas. Any effective enterprise consulting will allow you to faucet into their varied sources, capabilities as well as services. Your online business will take pleasure in proven approaches, ideas and even methods. Because of this you would not have to reinvent the wheel again. You make use of confirmed strategies and construct upon them. In spite of everything, this can ultimately translate into increased productiveness in addition to more sales for your online business. As a Richmond Business Help way to grow to be more productive in addition to worthwhile, the companies of a enterprise consulting cannot be ignored. Simply just remember to are on the same page as them. It's highly vital for a business to be on the identical wavelength as their enterprise consulting team. The enterprise states its wishes whereas the enterprise consultants rework it into an achievable aim. The business states its desires and the enterprise consultants define whether or not it's practical and the simplest method to turn dreams into reality. Involving a professional guide will information you in making crucial choices. They usually present you with different scenarios that are more likely to happen in the market in the present day. Additionally they explain how your decisions are prone to impression on what you are promoting in the future. In addition they present strategies on find out how to diversify the product line rather than relying on a single product. They are going to guide you to ensure that there's utmost progress and competition is at per. Enterprise consultants enhance the information stage of a business. Their data is effective. They've been involved in varied tasks earlier than and understand all of the facets involved in the planning process. Additionally they have a clear understanding of the dangers concerned in each enterprise growth step. You possibly can due to this fact depend upon them for the event of your enterprise.

The reformers define the purpose of education as preparation for global competitiveness, higher education, or the workforce. They view students as “human capital” or “assets.” One seldom sees any reference in their literature or public declarations to the importance of developing full persons to assume the responsibilities of citizenship.

Much ink has been spilled over whether fascism represented an emergency form of capitalism, a mechanism devised by capitalists by which the fascist state—their agent—disciplined the workforce in a way no traditional dictatorship could do. Today it is quite clear that businessmen often objected to specific aspects of fascist economic policies, sometimes with success. But fascist economic policy responded to political priorities, and not to economic rationale. Both Mussolini and Hitler tended to think that economics was amenable to a ruler’s will. Mussolini returned to the gold standard and revalued the lira at 90 to the British pound in December 1927 for reasons of national prestige, and over the objections of his own finance minister. Fascism was not the first choice of most businessmen, but most of them preferred it to the alternatives that seemed likely in the special conditions of 1922 and 1933—socialism or a dysfunctional market system. So they mostly acquiesced in the formation of a fascist regime and accommodated to its requirements of removing Jews from management and accepting onerous economic controls. In time, most German and Italian businessmen adapted well to working with fascist regimes, at least those gratified by the fruits of rearmament and labor discipline and the considerable role given to them in economic management. Mussolini’s famous corporatist economic organization, in particular, was run in practice by leading businessmen. Peter Hayes puts it succinctly: the Nazi regime and business had “converging but not identical interests.” Areas of agreement included disciplining workers, lucrative armaments contracts, and job-creation stimuli. Important areas of conflict involved government economic controls, limits on trade, and the high cost of autarky—the economic self-sufficiency by which the Nazis hoped to overcome the shortages that had lost Germany World War I. Autarky required costly substitutes—Ersatz— for such previously imported products as oil and rubber. Economic controls damaged smaller companies and those not involved in rearmament. Limits on trade created problems for companies that had formerly derived important profits from exports. The great chemical combine I. G. Farben is an excellent example: before 1933, Farben had prospered in international trade. After 1933, the company’s directors adapted to the regime’s autarky and learned to prosper mightily as the suppliers of German rearmament. The best example of the expense of import substitution was the Hermann Goering Werke, set up to make steel from the inferior ores and brown coal of Silesia. The steel manufacturers were forced to help finance this operation, to which they raised vigorous objections.

While the populist nationalists raise important questions, the world can ill afford their shortsighted solutions. Populist nationalism will undermine the liberal market democratic system that has brought developed countries the prosperity they enjoy. Within countries, it will anoint some as full citizens and true inheritors of the nation’s patrimony while the rest are relegated to an unequal, second-class status. It risks closing global markets down just when these countries are aging and need both international demand for their products and young skilled immigrants to fill out their declining workforces. It is dangerous because it offers blame and no real solutions, it needs a constant stream of villains to keep its base energized, and it moves the world closer to conflict rather than cooperation on global problems.

A dramatic ageing of the population. Its effects will start being felt in 2005 (from the retirement of numerous groups). Since the government did not foresee and reform the retirement system paid out of each year’s taxes, we know it is already too late. There will not be sufficient funds to furnish allocations and healthcare to seniors and ever higher taxes will be levied on those who are working. The result will necessarily be a generalised lowering of purchasing power and therefore of economic growth based on consumption. The ageing of the population will also rapidly lead — it is already happening — to another frightening effect: a loss of technological skills. There are not enough young minds. 2)  The massive immigration of new battalions from the Third World to palliate these gaps, so desired by the UN, is an imposture. These migrants are unskilled and need social services themselves. They are mouths to feed, not the brains needed in a post-industrial society. Germany wanted to import more than 30,000 engineers that it needs (already), but got only 9,000 Indians. The immigration-colonisation (of which the entire cost is already more than 122 billion euros a year), which will not stop growing, added to the steadily increasing birth rate of the foreigners — most of them, as everyone knows, are not able to earn a good education — will be one more brake on economic prosperity. The current masses of ‘youths’ from Africa and North Africa will for the most part have a choice only between unemployment supported by welfare payments or participation in the parallel and criminal economy. The professional value of the workforce is going to experience a dramatic decline as soon as 2010.

In recent decades, as the economy has shifted and large companies promising lifelong employment have given way to freelance jobs and migratory careers, understanding motivation has become increasingly important. In 1980, more than 90 percent of the American workforce reported to a boss. Today more than a third of working Americans are freelancers, contractors, or in otherwise transitory positions. The workers who have succeeded in this new economy are those who know how to decide for themselves how to spend their time and allocate their energy. They understand how to set goals, prioritize tasks, and make choices about which projects to pursue. People who know how to self-motivate, according to studies, earn more money than their peers, report higher levels of happiness, and say they are more satisfied with their families, jobs, and lives.

Unlike the Nazis, who made life uncertain for the wealthy and privileged while providing social programs for the working class and poor, inverted totalitarianism exploits the poor, reducing or weakening health programs and social services, regimenting mass education for an insecure workforce threatened by the importation of low-wage workers.

Quoting page 63: Business interests not surprisingly supported the [1965 immigration reform] bill as well, but were not a driving force behind it. Because the baby boom was pouring new workers into the economy, and the assault on racial discrimination promised to feed millions of underemployed blacks into the workforce as well, employers did not seem to be looking for workers overseas. Even the growers were quiet. Sponsors of the Bracero farm worker program that had imported hundreds of thousands of mostly Mexican contract workers since 1942—the program averaged 430,000 guestworkers a year from Mexico during its peak 1955-60 years—the growers had been attacked by organized labor, religious, and civil rights organization for exploiting foreign workers and depressing labor standards. The same liberal coalition that backed the civil rights and immigration reforms of 1964-65 had persuaded Congress to terminate the Bracero program in 1964. … The Wall Street Journal, commenting on the conservative nature of the immigration reform, noted on October 4, 1965, that the family preference priorities would ensure that “the new immigration system would not stray radically from the old one.” The historically restrictionist American Legion Magazine agreed, reassured by the promises of continuity. As Senator Edward Kennedy had pledged in the Senate hearings on immigration, first, “Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same,” and second, “the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.

Study Questions What is the legal definition of blindness? How does it differ from the IDEA definition? What does the Snellen chart assess? What does 20/200 mean? Describe how the eye functions. Define the terms myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. List five eye problems common to school-age children. Why is early detection of vision problems important? Describe the social and emotional characteristics of persons with visual impairments. What is functional vision, and how is it evaluated? Define the term learning media. Give three examples of different forms of learning media. In what two educational settings do the majority of students with a visual impairment receive a special education? What are some common educational accommodations that a student with a visual impairment may require? List five signs of possible vision problems in children. Identify three critical issues that must be addressed if an adolescent is to successfully transition to postsecondary education or enter the workforce. Besides cultural differences, what diversity issue must be addressed for parents who are also visually impaired? Identify five technology accommodations that can be provided in high school for a student who is legally blind. Discuss the shortage of orientation and mobility specialists and how a child’s educational plan is affected by a shortage of personnel.

Criticizing highly educated women who “opt out” ignores two realities: the first is that society reaps tremendous, tangible benefits from able women (and men) who have the time to cultivate their families, neighborhoods, schools, churches, and politics. If all the capable people are working eighty hours a week, who will tend to our children, communities, and culture? Second, some values are intangible. Not everything can be monetized. It is good, and even necessary, that women be represented in all walks of professional life, because it expands the world of possibility for all women. However, there are values that defy commodification, such as the well-being of our children and even ourselves. There is also the opportunity to perpetuate our values through generations to come. By raising children well, we leave an indelible mark on posterity. Surely this is a rational choice that is worth the cost. In learning to use our words, we believe what we say matters, that our opinions are as important as our encouraging words. What we think and say can summon the best in others; it can also be an important tool for achieving our dreams. For instance, were someone to question Elizabeth’s decision to leave the workforce, I’m confident that she would have at least five well-crafted talking points that articulate her reasons. We can have our talking points too. Said Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, “Once you have learned to trust your own voice . . . you have the basic tool to fulfill your dreams.

Just about the only serious argument anyone tries to make in favor of diversity echoes Jonathan Alger, a lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court in favor of racial preferences: “Corporations have to compete internationally,” he says, and “cross-cultural competency is a key skill in the work force.” This argument assumes that people get along best with people like themselves, that Koreans, for example, can do business most effectively with other Koreans. Presumably, if the United States has a large population of Koreans they will be a bridge between Korea and the United States. For that to work, however, Korean-Americans should not fully assimilate because if they do, they will lose the qualities that make them an asset. America should give up the ideal of Americanization that, in a few generations, made Englishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, Swedes, the Irish, and all other Europeans essentially indistinguishable. Do we really want to give up the idea of assimilation? Or should only racial minorities give up on assimilation? More to the point, is a diverse population really an advantage in trade or international affairs? Japan is one of the most racially homogeneous nations. It would be hard to find a country that so clearly practices the opposite of American-style diversity, but it is one of the most successful trading nations on earth. If diversity were a key advantage, Brazil, Indonesia, Sudan, Malaysia, and Lebanon would be world leaders in trade. Other great trading nations—Taiwan, Korea and China—are, if anything, even more closed and exclusionist than Japan. Germany is likewise a successful trading nation, but its trade surpluses cannot be attributed to cultural or racial diversity. Only since the 1960s has it had a large non-German minority of Turks who came as guest workers, and there is no evidence that Turks have helped Germany become more of a world presence or even a better trade partner with Turkey. The world’s consumers care about price and quality, not the race or nationality of the factory worker. American corporations boast about workforces that “look like America,” but they are often beaten in their own market by companies whose workforces look like Yokohama or Shanghai. If we really took seriously the idea that “cross-cultural competence” was crucially important, we would adjust the mix of immigrants accordingly. We might question the wisdom of Haitian immigration, for example, since Haiti is a small, poor country that is never likely to be an important trade partner. And do 32 million Mexican-Americans help our trade relations with the world—or even with Mexico? Canada is our number-one trading partner. Should we therefore encourage immigration from Canada? No one ever talks about immigration in these terms because at some level everyone understands that diversity has nothing to do with trade or influence in the world. The “cross-cultural competence” argument is artificial.

Diversity, Equal Opportunity, and Success are Core Principals Driving the Mission of the Green Card Organization of the United States of America The Green Card Organization is a reputable institution that provides a service for individuals who have a desire to immigrate by implementing a wide variety of services from basic to the most complex. The Green Card Organization can ensure error-free applications by assisting any individual who requires additional aid to simplify the process and guarantee a complete and accurate submission. Plenty of legal procedures are made easier, and by working with the Green Card Organization, their specialized services can fit the need of any client. The Green Card Organization provides expertise on the Diversity Visa (DV) lottery program. This program can be difficult to complete without error, as over 40% of applicants that are self-handled are disqualified due to inaccurate information. This lottery allows only one submission per year, and the Green Card Organization believes their assistance will guarantee qualification and the possibility of obtaining a Green card. “For everyone the process of receiving a Green card is different, however when that amazing moment comes that you will receive confirmation, we will be here to help. Time is of the essence when it comes to the process of a successful Green card applicant, it is important to go through the immigration process according to the timeline and correctly. Delays in the process can result in termination. Here at our organization, we will make sure that everything happens quickly and correctly for you. Our team of immigration experts will keep everything on track and assist you with all the necessary procedures. We provide personalized services and will make sure that no opportunity is missed to help each and every one of our clients achieve their goal. Your success is our success!” The Green Card Organization website provides important immigration information, such as different ways to obtain a Green card. The Green Card Organization explains that one of the most common ways to receive a Green card is through the sponsorship of a family member. The family member must be a U.S. citizen, or a Green card holder themselves. Additional details describe instances on who is permitted to apply for a Green card so the client is able to make certain they are eligible. Another way the Green Card Organization explains how to obtain a Green card is through a job, meaning their professional background and/or business dealings. An employer can petition for an employee to get a Green card, but they first must obtain a labor certification and file Form I-140, known as the Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker. Other individuals who deal in American Investments may apply for the Green card if they have sizeable assets in the United States. Any individual can self-petition and apply for a Green card without a labor certification as long as they are able to prove that they considerably contribute to the American workforce. The Green Card Organization provides a list of special jobs regarding professionals who are permitted to apply for a Green card with Form I-360, known as the Petition of Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant.

Part of their approach involved making structure change to group competitive work more tightly together and separate it from noncompetitive work. The mind-set required by the two workforces is different—one to strive toward differentiation and excellence, one to aim for extraordinary efficiency. Non-competitive work is not necessarily less important—many non-strategic tasks, such as payroll, sales administration, and network operations, are absolutely crucial for running the business. But non-competitive work tends to be more transactional in nature. It often feels more urgent as well. And herein lies the problem. If the same product expert who answers demanding administrative questions and labors to fill out complicated compliance paperwork is also responsible for helping to craft unique, integrated solutions for clients, the whole client experience—the competitive work—could easily fall apart. Prying apart these two different types of activities so different teams can perform them ensures that vital competitive work is not engulfed by less competitive tasks.

Unions are important. They might not be revolutionary organizations, but they are labor’s primary vehicle in the battle with capital over the spoils of production. Today, despite organizing just 11 percent of the US workforce, unions are still the only institutions capable of exerting political pressure at the scale required to push back against national elites.

It’s particularly important in this vein to note the extent to which economic expectations can be self-fulfilling. If people (and companies) believe the future will be good, they’ll spend more and invest more . . . and the future will be good, and vice versa. It’s my belief that most companies concluded that the Crisis of 2008 wouldn’t be followed by a V-shaped recovery, as had been the rule in the last few recessions. Thus they declined to expand factories or workforces, and the resulting recovery was modest and gradual in the U.S. (and even more anemic elsewhere).

value judgment raises important ethical questions. For example, children and the elderly who are not working will not be valued the same as people in the workforce; women may not be valued equally to men. Inclusion of productivity and consumption may result in resource allocations that some observers may consider discriminatory. These are important limitations that analysts and decision makers need to consider carefully. More generally, as an analysis moves from the narrower healthcare sector perspective to the broader societal perspective, more social value judgments of this sort will need to be made. To summarize our Reference Case recommendations in somewhat greater detail, we suggest that analysts include Reference Case analyses from both the healthcare sector perspective and the societal perspective (see Chapter 3 and Recommendations 2–5). Table 4.1 summarizes the cost components included in these two perspectives. The healthcare sector Reference Case includes formal healthcare sector (medical) costs borne by third-party payers plus patients’ out-of-pocket medical costs. Both types of medical expenditures include current and future costs that are related and unrelated to the condition under consideration. We recommend that the results of the healthcare sector Reference Case analysis be summarized in the conventional form, as an ICER. The net monetary benefit (NMB) or net health benefit (NHB) may also be reported, and a range of cost-effectiveness thresholds should be considered. We also recommend that analysts include a Reference Case analysis from a societal perspective (Recommendation 4). A societal perspective is particularly important when interventions are likely to have important effects on sectors of the economy outside of the formal healthcare sector, and when there is a need or desire to understand the wide range of costs and effects. A societal perspective includes medical costs (current and future,

This is where going home comes in. Go home! And stop emailing people at all hours of the night and all hours of the weekend! Forcing yourself to disengage is essential for your mental health, believe me. Burnout is a real problem in the American workforce these days, and almost everyone I know who has worked sustained excess hours has experienced it to some degree. It’s terrible for individuals, terrible for their families, and terrible for teams. But this isn’t just about preventing your own burnout — it’s about preventing your team’s burnout. When you work later than everyone else, when you send those emails at all hours, even if you don’t expect your team to respond to those emails or work those hours, they see you doing it and think it’s important. And that overwork makes them less effective, especially at the detailed knowledge work that engineers need to perform. When

The intermediate objectives for achieving U.S. defeat may be enumerated as follows: Make the Americans stupid – Disorient the people of the United States and other Western countries. Establish a set of myths useful from the standpoint of the long-range strategy. Examples of such myths: Josef Stalin is our “Uncle Joe,” a man we can trust; the Cold War was triggered by paranoid anti-Communists; Senator McCarthy blacklisted innocent people; President Kennedy was killed by Big Business and the CIA; the Vietnam War was fought on account of corporate greed; Russia and China are irreconcilable enemies who will not be able to combine their forces against the United States; the Soviet Union collapsed for economic reasons; Russia is America’s ally in the War on Terror. Infiltrate the U.S. financial system – Financial control through organized crime and drug trafficking. To this end the Eastern Bloc began infiltrating organized crime in the 1950s and, in 1960, began a narcotics offensive against the West which would generate billions of dollars in illicit money which banks could not resist laundering. In this way, a portal was opened into the heart of the capitalist financial structures in order to facilitate future economic and financial sabotage. Promote bankruptcy and economic breakdown – The promotion of a cradle-to-grave welfare state as a means to bankrupt the United States Treasury (i.e., the Cloward-Piven Strategy). Welfare simultaneously demoralizes the workforce as it bankrupts the government. Elect a stealth Communist president – As an organizer for the Communist Party explained during a meeting I attended more than thirty years ago, the stealth Communist president will one day exploit a future financial collapse to effect a transition from “the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” to the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Exploit the counter-revolution – Some strategists believe that a counter-revolutionary or right wing reaction is unavoidable. It is therefore necessary, from the standpoint of sound strategy, to send infiltrators into the right wing. Having a finger in every pie and an agent network in every organization, the Communists are not afraid of encouraging counter-revolution, secession, or civil war in the wake of financial collapse. After all, the reactionaries and right wing elements must be drawn out so that they can be purged or, if necessary, turned into puppet allies. Already Putin is posturing as a Christian who opposes feminism and homosexuality. This has fooled many “conservatives” in the West, and is an intentional ploy which further serves to disorient the West. Take away the nuclear button – The strategists in Moscow do not forget that the neutralization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent is the most important of all intermediate objectives. This can be achieved in one of four ways: (1) cutting off nuclear forces funding by Congress; (2) administratively unplugging the weapons through executive orders issued by Obama, (3) it may be accomplished through a general financial collapse, or (4) a first strike.

CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY: BEST WAYS 71–80 71. When it comes to ensuring your family’s financial well-being, and securing a meaningful and rewarding job, you need to create a written action plan or a MAP (Meticulous Action Plan). 72. When you create a MAP, you are actually programming your own “employment GPS” so you can go from where you are to where you want to be. 73. When you’re done developing your action plan, you’ll have a highly structured schedule of activities for each day of the week. This includes your job transition campaign as well as your personal, social, and fitness activities. 74. If you are unemployed, you should invest 50, 60, or 70 hours a week on your job campaign. If you have a full-time job, you need to set aside a defined number of hours every week as your investment in your future. 75. Whether you are employed and looking for a better job or out of work seeking a new one, you must hold yourself fully accountable for putting in as many hours as possible and getting the most out of every hour you put in. 76. The first question you will need to address is, how many hours a week will you commit to your job transition campaign? Then, based on the number of weekly hours you’ll invest in getting a new job, your next step is to break weekly hours down into daily hours. 77. There are 13 primary job transition strategies for landing a job in troubled economic times. Your job is to determine which 4 to 6 strategies will be most effective for you. a. Networking and contact development b. Target marketing (identifying companies you want to work for) c. Internet searches and postings d. Federal jobs e. Search firms and employment agencies f. Blogs with job listings g. Classified advertisements in newspapers and trade journals h. Job fairs i. College placement departments and alumni associations j. Workforce System and One-Stops k. Volunteer work l. Job transition strategists m. Creative self-marketing 78. Once you have identified which job transition strategies will work best for your campaign, determine when, during the week, you will work on each. You want to create a structured weekly schedule. When you create a structured weekly schedule, you will have a detailed plan with specific daily tasks both for your job campaign and for personal and social activities. 79. Once you have a structured weekly schedule, you must set goals that you want to achieve from your weekly activities. A MAP without specific goals is not an effective plan. You will want to set specific goals for each strategy so you can track your success or modify the MAP if you are not achieving your weekly goals. 80. Prepare for the worst-case scenario. It is vitally important to remain in a positive, optimistic, and enthusiastic state of mind. But sometimes your plan won’t come to fruition as quickly as you’d like. So expect the best, but plan for the worst. This would include looking at your long- and short-term finances and health and other issues that need to be addressed to free you up to concentrate on getting your next job.