Sustainability is something we often read and hear about, especially lately. More to the point, many are concerned about, if not interested in acting to reduce and/or remove the factors that diminish the sustainability of a healthful environment. If you aren’t among the concerned many, then likely you are among the willfully blind or willfully ignorant. Continue reading
Learning
Presence of Fear Requires Courage
Fear is an emotion, a type of energy we all have available to us to help protect us against threats and danger. Thus the emotion of fear can be quite useful, unless of course it is the only or predominate energy that animates us. A fearful person—one largely motivated by it—will likely see danger and threats to him/her self everywhere and in most every other person. Moreover, when every other person is a potential threat to ones’ success toward fulfilling one’s goal in life, then fear of others—especially those not like oneself—inevitably emerges. Continue reading
Potential Psychopaths Us All
In the article Three Things to Know to Hold Wells Fargo Accountable the author Lynn Parramore (Senior Research Analyst at Institute of New Economic Thinking) relays what William Lazonick (Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Lowell) identified as the three things we need to know: 1) American businesses have become stock manipulation machines; 2) focusing on short-term stock prices leads to corruption; and 3) punishment means little until executive pay is understood. The first essentially speaks to the profit maximizing intent of business and its executives and the second to the importance of it happening now if not sooner while the third is that the entire scheme is ultimately profitable because of the enormous size of the gains. So now that we know these things, what are we to do about it? Continue reading
A Theory for Leadership for a Human World
Leadership, according to Peter Northouse (2010, p 3), is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. So then is evidence of leadership the achievement of a goal by a group? Does the goal matter? Do the means matter? Continue reading
Is that all there is?
According to the mission of our materialist egoistic system of economics (aka capitalism) we are to accumulate, without limit, as much material wealth as we can and (individually) we are to do this by maximizing the satisfaction of our individual material self-interest. In other words one leads a successful life to the extent that one has realized material gain and amassed wealth—the greater the material gain, the more worthy and the more successful one is. Accordingly this is to be one’s goal in life, it is all there is to life itself! Necessarily, it follows that the pinnacle of self-interest behavior, of getting as much as possible for one’s self, having it all for one’s self, is greed—there is little doubt in this philosophy of life greed is good! Continue reading
Leadership Untainted
When most people talk of leadership what they are really speaking to is the highest levels in the management hierarchy. They are talking about the legitimate authority positions in an organization. They speak of leadership as if it was a noun, a name we attribute to a person or position. Continue reading
In The Larger Scheme of Things
What happens when the larger-scheme-of-things is ignored and denied out of existence? Continue reading
When It’s Everything
Let’s imagine that we surveyed people asking them whether they are in favor of quality. What would we likely find? There is little doubt that overwhelmingly their response would be yes. What does this mean, what does this imply? Continue reading
Managing Performance
Management gets rewarded for delivering results, and those (employees) who perform in their work get results. Hence (quite understandably) management must identify and embrace performers. The more performers there are the better (and easier) it is, especially for management.
Accordingly those who have been categorized as ‘a performer’—those who are above average—are often held up as exemplars: They are models of success, the standard bearers of what hard work and dedication to the job, to the organization and the economy can mean for each individual.
Who wouldn’t want to be labeled a performer? What manager, what organization wouldn’t want all to be above average? Clearly we must all aspire to be above average. If only every individual would just pick him or herself up by his or her own bootstraps! Continue reading
Work-Life Balance
The balance of work and life is something many of us are concerned about and struggle with. That is we are concerned about the amount of time (and attention) that work demands from us in our life. Though several tactics have been offered these tend to make the conflict between work and life tolerable they don’t dissolve the conflict.
So let’s give this—the whole idea of work and life being in balance—a bit more critical thought. Continue reading
Gregory Gull 