Archive for March, 2007

The Four Agreements

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By Dean Whittaker

Would you like to change your life forever? Maybe, or maybe not, but if you follow the following four agreements it will certainly have an impact. In Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, he lays out four simple rules by which to live our lives that will reduce suffering and enhance the joy we feel in all that we do. Hooked yet?

The Four Agreements are:

  • Be impeccable with your words. Choose your words carefully because they are magical in that they can create and destroy. How many times have you wished you had an “un-do” button regarding something you said without thinking through the consequences of your remarks? Hurt feelings and missed opportunities abound as a result of a careless word spoken. On the other hand, a few well chosen words spoken at the right moment can lift up and brighten someone’s day.
  • Don’t take it personally. In reality, it is not about us although we often think it is. Although we would like to think the world revolves around our priorities, it doesn’t. When we take anything personally, we give our power away and allow others to determine our sense of self. It is seldom, if ever, about us.
  • Don’t make assumptions. How many misunderstandings have started when we made an assumption about what another person said or did? Later, when we find out the truth behind the action, we are ashamed of our response. This grief occurs because we didn’t take time to ask or understand. We just made an assumption. How many wars have been fought over assumptions? How many people have died because of assumptions?
  • Always do your best. If we always do our best, there is no guilt and no blame. When we have done all that we can do to the best of our ability, what else can we ask of ourselves? By always striving to do our best, we can be positive that we have done all that we could.

Following these four simple agreements will propel you and your organization to a new level of performance and give you a sense of peace in your life that we all wish to achieve.

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Who’s Your Best Local Partner?

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By Jim Edmonson

Who endorses more investment in research and development?

Who favors the expansion of alternative fuels?

Who advocates for a 21st Century transportation network?

Who embraces innovation?

Who wants to reduce urban congestion?

Who wants to sell more globally?

Who endorses wellness and prevention?

Who wants to ensure every student earns an education or certified workforce skill?

Who provides the greatest economic activity to a community?

Who constitutes 61% of all U. S. exports?

Who provides the highest paying jobs?

Ok, enough. Have you figured it out? American manufacturers. This information and more is available from The Manufacturing Institute .

Don’t we all scramble to get appointments who are natural advocates for these issues on our Boards? That’s why partnerships with industry are so beneficial for community and economic development organizations. If you don’t have some form of a Manufacturers Council, get one. Find your industry leaders and enlist their help.

If you have been thinking that manufacturing is dead, you’re dead wrong. You may have some local industries that are failing, but those are likely a result of poor management or casualties to the normal life cycle of business. As industry is getting leaner, it is becoming meaner. Productivity gains have allowed American companies to compete globally. Plus, U.S. manufacturers are still the mothers of invention and innovation. Most manufacturers will gladly give up commodity mass-production items to China and keep the cutting-edge, high-value-added products in their production cycle. As new products cycle in, the old most likely move off-shore.

Mark Whitehouse, in his recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Keeping Production at Home,” states, “what ever is going abroad, has.” In Mark’s opinion, “what will stay is the production of high-end goods, home building materials, services, medical testing facilities, electronic components, chemicals and metal fabrication.” The reasons are many, but primarily because they are transportation-, skill-, or market-sensitive. If you think about it, you can add more to the list. Defense industries, homeland security devices, medical care facilities, educational facilities–I don’t think these are going overseas anytime soon. And there are many more. So don’t give up on manufacturing so quickly. Many of our most successful communities across the country attribute some of their success to a strong manufacturing sector.

Any meaningful relationship should be two-way, so as you recruit manufacturing leaders as volunteers, here is a list of what is important to them, so you can lend them a hand, too.

The National Association of Manufacturing’s Agenda for Jobs and Economic Growth: Investing in America ( www.nam.org ) is:

•  Energy Security

•  Revitalized Infrastructure

•  A Level International Playing Field

•  Legal and Regulatory Fairness

•  Fair and Competitive Tax Policy

•  High-Performance Workforce

•  Consumer-Based Health Care

If you haven’t done so already, partner up with your local manufacturers–you have many common interests. Place key manufacturers on your Boards, make your retention calls to local industry, and prepare an industry-attraction strategy that strengthens your existing clusters and doesn’t threaten your key players.

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Beer, Barley, & Biofuel

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By Joel Burgess

Jean-François van Boxmeer, the Dutch brewer and chief executive of Heineken, warned last week that the expansion of the biofuel sector was beginning to cause a “structural shift” in European and U.S. agricultural markets.

So, how may this affect you? Beer drinkers take notice.

According to the article, “Blow for Beer as Biofuels Clean out Barley,” the strong demand for biofuel feedstocks such as corn, soybeans, and rapeseed is encouraging farmers to plant these crops instead of grains like barley.

Barley is used for making beer, whiskey, and animal feed. Due to the high demand and diminishing supply of barley, prices have soared over the last 12 months. Therefore, the rapid expansion of biofuel production creates unintended and dire consequences for the world’s beer drinkers. Barley and hops account for about 7-8 percent of brewing costs. Thus, a continual shift upwards in the price of beer is definitely brewing.

However, other factors have attributed to an increase in price, such as: future prices of malting barley (85% increase); barley feed futures (risen by a third); U.S. barley production (lowest level since 1936); world production (10% decrease); the value of the crop (lowest since 1970); land devoted to its production ( lowest since 1866); an Australian drought (cut the country’s crop by two-thirds); and heavy rains in Europe.

At the same time, global demand for barley has risen 2%, the fourth year in the last five in which demand has exceeded supply. As a result, global stockpiles have shrunk by a third in the past two years and left the barley trade vulnerable to further supply problems this year.

“In the U.S., land that was cultivated for growing barley has been given over to corn because of the ethanol demand,” said Levin Flake, a grains trade analyst at the U.S. department of agriculture.

The U.S., which in the 1980s was a leading exporter of barley, is now a net importer as barley acreage has shrunk, said Mr. Flake, and the USDA expects U.S. barley acreage over the next 10 years to follow the same trend.

Not good news for the prices of frosty brews.

Morrison, Kevin. “Blow for Beer as Biofuels Clean Out Barley.” Financial Times. 25 February 2007 .

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The Whittaker Report Streaming as RSS

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By Stephanie Poll

A couple of months ago I wrote an article about RSS, Really Simple Syndication–what it is and how it can be used and implemented. Whittaker Associates has now added this feature for The Whittaker Report . Instead of receiving The Whittaker Report through a regular e-mail that we send out, you can now automatically receive up-to-date reports from our website, as long as you have some sort of RSS Reader.

So how can you take advantage of this feature? This first thing you need is a news reader, if you don’t already have one. There are many news readers (aggregators) to choose from.  If you are someone who is constantly on an e-mail program such as Outlook, RSS popper is a free downloadable reader that will incorporate right into Outlook.  If you are looking for something with more options, NewsGator is also available for Outlook for a small fee.  If you don’t have Outlook or are looking for more options, check out this website: http://www.hebig.org/blogs/archives/main/000877.php .

The next step is to add the link for the RSS feed into your news reader. This is done differently depending on the reader that you have, but here is the necessary link: http://www.whittakerassociates.com/newsletter/new/feedRSS.xml . Once you add this feed, you should get the stories from the current newsletter coming through. As these stories are changed and updated every month on our website, you will now automatically receive these new stories! The next step for us is creating an RSS button on our newsletter page, so that new clients or subscribers can click on that button to get the link for the feed.

If you are currently subscribed to our newsletter and get the RSS feed working, you might like to be taken off the e-mail distribution list. If so, please e-mail newsletter@whittakerassociates.com with the subject line ‘Unsubscribe’. Also, if you have any other questions regarding the set up of a news reader or the link to the feed, please feel free to contact me! Enjoy!

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Broken Barriers Equals Unparalleled Advancement

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By AJ Musial

Though limitations experienced on the Internet have steadily been resolved over the past thirty years, more barriers have been broken in the past few years than ever before. Data storage and portability limitations will soon be a problem of the past; the average consumer is only months away from being barrier-free in this regard. And the phrase “Take it to the streets” has new meaning these days, to me at least. What once meant physical interaction with the end-consumer now means engulfing and engaging the chosen market on the virtual highways of the Internet. As the success of my fellow GenYers increases exponentially, the uninformed prior generations, fearing obsolescence, are frantically trying to catch the curve-setters. Internet is the new T.V., for some people are spending hours trying to learn about the media possibilities and others have already begun using them. For companies to thrive they must embrace the future that is the Internet, and there are numerous websites to help companies do just that.

Google, a force to be reckoned with, has revolutionized the web. With a free version of online applications available, Google quickly puts Microsoft’s stake as the app leader in jeopardy. E-mail, a word processor and a spreadsheet application can be used from any web-connected computer, negating the need to purchase applications for PCs. Employees who find themselves continually on the move may enjoy the portable nature of Google Apps.

Another online application solution is Thinkfree. Though quite similar to Google Apps, many users claim that Thinkfree is not only faster, but also offers a broader variety of application possibilities. These include the ability to save documents as PDFs and graph spreadsheet data. As of December 2006, Google was amidst negotiations to acquire the seemingly superior online application website.

Zoho, a third contender to revolutionize business, is similar to Thinkfree and Google Apps. Zoho fails to contend with these two companies in the word-processing and spreadsheet sector, but makes up for these shortcomings with a long list of other applications. Among these are a wiki creator and a project management tool that allows the user to create to-do lists, assign tasks and even track client billing.

37signals, the fourth online business solution, focuses not on processing applications, but on collaboration. Offered at 37signals are the tools Basecamp, Backpackit and Campfire. Basecamp is a project management and scheduling tool, Backpackit is a similar program targeted more toward individuals than companies, and Campfire allows users to talk and type in real-time while sharing photos and documents with seamless ease. These applications will allow users to see and hear what is being discussed in real-time.

The next online application, Salesforce, is targeted directly to companies. Created by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, it is a CRM company which prides itself on software independence. The Sales Force Automation application allows representatives to access sales and marketing figures online, which is a first in the industry. This data can be tracked and analyzed from any web-connected computer around the world. What’s more, a company can manage finances, facilities and human resources with the new AppExchange program, all inside of a web browser. With this ability to not only track, but manage and edit company numbers, company leaders can be more mobile than ever before.

Wikipedia’s software, MediaWiki, offers companies a free and easy way to edit and add company content to the web to be viewed by the masses. Though there are more supportive, for-profit wiki programs, MediaWiki gives smaller companies a fighting chance in a big-budget market.

Information’s Golden Age is no better exemplified than by MySpace. One no longer has to socialize physically to learn everything they need to know about someone or something. With this in mind, it’s a no-brainer for companies to create a MySpace profile. With free access to an audience of over 100 million, it’s hard to pass up the chance to create discussion groups about one’s company and do targeted searches for individuals to gain publicity and generate interest amongst consumers.

The final web utility to focus on is Shycast. While very similar to MySpace, Shycast differs in that it is much smaller and more focused on being a resource for branding. Members of the Shycast community are encouraged to discuss their favorite products and companies. IKEA has taken advantage of the site’s potential for its “Break the Rules Bed-Making Contest.” IKEA fans can upload bed-making videos in an attempt to win a $5,000 prize. This site is the ultimate feedback machine for brands. Everyone wins, because customers will make suggestions, changes will ensue and the world will be a more efficient place.

As one can see, new products and career-changing opportunities sprout up on the web that weren’t there nine months prior. Since people are inherently quick to adapt but slow to change completely, I see these advances as being an evolutionary process in the way we live, not a revolutionary one. There are still other ways to accomplish the same aforementioned tasks. Whether they are better or worse is for each individual to decide, but one thing is undeniable: the Internet eliminates boundaries each and every day.

http://www.forbes.com/managing/2007/03/08/youtube-marketing-web-leadership-managing-cx_ag_0308fiveways.html

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Beam Me Up…Taxi

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By Rebecca Rooy

It’s time to embrace the third dimension. Convenient sky travel has always been tantalizing. Dreams of whirling hovercrafts have lingered in our minds for decades: on-demand, point-to-point air travel specifically designed for one’s personal travel plans. It is now becoming a reality: an increasingly affordable, convenient, and high-speed way to travel for short-term trips.

Introducing . . . air taxis.

The United States has grown frighteningly comfortable on a teetering foothold in our use of transportation. We are on the verge: it’s either travel breakdown or travel revitalization. Our national airports are oversaturated with people and complicated flight regulations. The roads are breaking down due to the amount of commuter traffic and truck travel. We are frustrated by traffic gridlocks, airport customs gridlocks, and railway gridlocks, which leads to our sanity gridlocking as well. In short, our transportation demand has exhausted our transportation supply.

Due to NASA’s access and provisions of emerging technology, this Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) program materialized. With the turning point in transportation looming, NASA created the SATS program since the United States is in the ideal innovative position to launch this program in air transportation. The ultimate goal is to fully incorporate SATS into the mass transportation system. This new method of transportation will not only affect our traveling needs, but product delivery and service options as well. These new services hold promise for many industries. For example, there is the possibility of great economic benefit to the corporate realm because SATS provides increased access to rural or remote areas. The program developed 5,000 landing sites for public use throughout the country, to include areas in both the urban and rural communities.

NASA’s research has also led to the creation of the “very light jet” (VLJ), specifically designed for the SATS program. VLJs are designed to create safe, fast, and reliable travel, providing four to six seats on each plane. These new aircrafts are ideal for a ready-by-call taxi service. The technologies within each aircraft are custom created to make them compatible with small airports. Although the technology is cutting edge, these planes are being produced at increasingly lower costs in order to make the air taxi affordability a reality.

Although NASA began the program, it has now been handed off to individual organizations around the country. Unfortunately, the transfer of responsibility did not fully include the transfer of funding. NASA’s role in the program has ended, and many of these new SATS organizations are struggling to meet funding needs. At this point, funding for the SATS program is the biggest obstacle to overcome.

Throughout our transportation history, we have embraced the natural progress of innovation. The SATS program is an example of continuing our inventive and progressive history. Our current two-dimensional transportation infrastructures are over-extended and exhausted, and, therefore, it is not only logical, but natural, to turn to third-dimensional transportation. Get ready to hail the newest taxi.

NASA. <http://sats.nasa.gov>.

“New Class of Jets will Fly High with Help of NASA Research.” PR Newswire US . Lexis Nexis. 13 October 2006.

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Trading Securities: Homeland Security at the Cost of Economic Security

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By Jami Miedema

Every year, international travel to the United States brings in approximately $80 billion to our economy. Unfortunately, in the last five years the number of foreign travelers to the U.S. has dwindled by 17%. The September 11 attacks have much to do with these downward trends concerning travel to the United States , not because of travelers’ fear of terrorism in our country, but because of the hassle and anxiety that come along with increased security at our country’s ports.

America has been forced to choose between security and ease of entry into our country. With tighter security, visas can take up to three months to acquire. Also, the unfriendly welcome that visitors may get from stern officials makes other travel options seem more attractive. While we may feel safer with increased security, it is having adverse effects on our economy. Not only is the United States losing its competitiveness with other countries for foreign buyers, but its market share for world travel has been reduced as well. Further, billions of dollars in tax revenue and spending are being lost, causing thousands of people to be laid off.

Discover America Partnership, an organization whose efforts includes creating a more positive view of America to countries around the world, has come up with a three-fold solution to tackle the issues at hand:

•  Create a better visa system – with acquisition within 30 days

•  Modernize and secure ports of entry – hire more personnel and use newer technology to process visitors in 30 minutes or less

•  Change perceptions of America – implementing the first two strategies will provide an incentive for international travelers to come to America , and in turn they may lead to a more favorable image of America from “people-to-people” experiences

The proposed plan has a price tag of $300 million, which will hopefully be funded by government investment. Despite this expense, the rewards our country will see will be even greater! It should help our economy rake in billions of dollars annually from world travel and create thousands of new jobs on our turf. To take a look at the full plan, go to http://poweroftravel.org/pdf/DAP_blueprint.pdf

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Performance Consulting: Just What Your Firm May Need

Friday, March 30th, 2007

By Patrick McConahy

It’s no secret that the economy could be better. All across the country businesses and firms are experiencing losses and cutbacks, disheartening and disorienting employees, managers, and owners alike. Both long-time employees and new hires are at risk of distraction when changes occur in the workplace, and inefficiency can be the result. When employees get off track and inefficient for whatever reason, something must be done immediately. In harsh economic times, spending extra money for a performance consulting firm to work with your company may seem completely illogical. However, obtaining such services will ensure that individuals in your organization get motivated, back on track, and headed in the right direction.

Recently Whittaker Associates hired Performance Strategies Group, a performance consulting firm out of Holland , Michigan . Whittaker Associates has recently made a couple of new hires, including me. Going through the process of understanding how I intuitively operate was very enlightening; I learned the best ways I as an individual can best help the company. Dozens of different tests are designed to help people understand their morals, values, what they are all about, and how they operate, including the ever-popular Myers-Briggs Test. Performance Strategies Group had me take a test called the Kolbe A Index.

After the test was over they had one of their consultants come and personally explain to me the results. At first I was skeptical that someone who doesn’t know me could read some test results and understand who I was and what made me tick. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed with the incredible accuracy and insight with which the consultant was able to describe me. Furthermore, what was really incredible is that he was able to explain to me not only how I operate, but how I can perform my particular job with more efficiency and effectiveness.

It’s pretty amazing how helpful this entire experience has been for me. I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t know before, but the process of hearing someone you don’t know talk about what you are truly like is very enlightening. Since taking this test and having my results interpreted, I’ve felt a lot better about coming into work and about how I contribute to the team. It’s not that I had a hard time coming into work prior to this, but rather I just have a better understanding of how I fit into the collective organization. Bottom line, I’m just more excited to work now. And if that doesn’t make me a more effective employee, I don’t know what will.

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