• “LEADING CHANGE IS DIFFERENT FROM MANAGING CHANGE.” It’s about effecting transformation by setting clear enough vision that participation is motivated. This necessitates “helping others see the need for change and importance of acting immediately and together with the team.” Unless this happens, the process of change management – “minimizing the distractions and impacts of change” – becomes much greater to control and often results in chaos (if not failure). Critical first steps in leading change involve communicating the vision, removing obstacles and/or structure which could undermine the vision, and planning: to (i) recognize and reward those responsible for visible achievements along the way, and (ii) “incorporate changes into the new behaviors and culture, with means to ensure leadership development and succession.” The DCG team have decades of experience in change leadership, management and transition; do not try this without guidance.  [GLOWAN CONSULTING NWSLTR – Mar 14]
  • “IN A NORMAL, HEALTHY ECONOMY, PEOPLE DON’T FOCUS ON MONTH-TO-MONTH CHANGES IN STATISTICS… which are often flawed or incomplete, not to mention easily manipulated (as government bureaucrats are susceptible to the same pressures to make their employer look good that workers face anywhere else).”  Moreover, the way statistics get calculated is often “adjusted” as leaders opt to present the best picture of results under their guidance. Today’s examples: (1) Inflation is measured by an index of consumer prices (CPI) presently reported just over 1%, but if calculated in the same manner as it was in 1990 would be 5% and, based on 1980 standards, at nearly 10%; (2) Services are also a key measure of inflation – representing some 90% of our economy in financial, healthcare, education, construction, etc.  The Producer Price Index (PPI) has ignored measuring this entire category until just this year, 2014; (3) Unemployment is now reported “down to 6.7%” as measured by “people collecting unemployment benefits as a percentage of the work force, but ignoring those forced to work in part-time jobs, work below their skill level, or who have just given up on finding work altogether. If included in today’s data, the unemployment rate would be closer to 17%, close to Great Depression levels.”   [FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT – Mar 14]
  • THE NAT’L SECURITY AGENCY (NSA) ALREADY HAS CAPACITY TO INFECT COMPUTERS with surveillance malware which can log keystrokes, copy data from removable storage devices, record nearby conversations, and take over the webcam. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, this capacity is being scaled to “millions of computers and networking devices around the world…deployable through email addresses, tracking cookies, browser tags, IP addresses, wireless MACs and other identifiers…targeting not only security threats but many relatively ‘innocent’ people…including telecom operators, system administrators, maybe even academic cryptographers… Even with so-called ‘data selectors,’ NSA could easily end up compromising random victims… and the potential for a snowball effect is worrying… with clearly detrimental impact on the state of internet security.”  [PC WORLD – Mar 12, 14]
  • THE WORLD IS A STRANGE PLACE. In Brazil, where felons can get limited furloughs, a soccer star presently serving a 22-yr sentence after admitting “having his girlfriend killed and fed to dogs to avoid paying child care…has signed with a professional team and will show up (under police escort) for practices & games, returning to prison at night.”  In Nigeria, a half-million people showed up to apply for 5,000 government jobs (ratio of 100 per position) and sixteen were killed in stampedes.  In Austin, Texas at a concert performance, Lady Gaga “shocked audiences to a new repulsive level by allowing a woman performance artist to vomit all over her, after eating BBQ sausages in a provocative manner while fishnet-clad Gaga sang her song Swine.”  In Los Angeles, three minutes after the recent earthquake, LA Times website reported the tremor – “written and posted directly by an automated bot program, whose algorithm collected seismic data from the US. Geological Survey.”  [THE WEEK – Mar 28, 14]
  • ONE IN EVERY FOUR PEOPLE ARE ALLERGIC TO CATS – suffering sneezes, runny noses and watery eye. Researchers at Univ. of Cambridge have recently (finally) developed an ‘inhibitor’ spray which will preclude allergic response. [DISCOVER – Jan/Feb 14]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: “A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory and hurts when all your other parts feel so good…”

            Do you really think MuslimShariastan is a pipe dream? Watch this: http://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1509282970001

DUITCH CONSULTING GROUP – UTILIZING GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE TO PROVIDE OPTIMAL STRATEGIC, FINANCIAL, OPERATIONS AND MANAGEMENT PLANNING & POSITIONING