• WHEN MERGER/ ACQISITION DEALS HAPPEN, ASSIMILATION AND INTERACTION OF PEOPLE who formerly thrived in different workplace cultures is a critical risk factor, often short-changed. The result can meaningfully lessen likelihood for effectively combining companies, stemming from two factors: (1) “individuals’ inability to manage uncertainty & embrace change”; and (2) difference in management styles of communication and expectations.” Either of these factors can lead to unwelcome employee resignations, adverse morale impact, and loss of transaction Value. DCG has conducted numerous ‘Cultural Congruity’ and ‘Management’ audits for merging entities in order to optimize “alignment between people strategy and the business strategy.” Call us to help effectuate the execution of a successful combination.  [CARRIER MANAGEMENT – Mar 13, 16]

• ANNUALLY, 750,000 AMERICANS HAVE A HEART ATTACK, and every 6½^th person dies… But, most often, “symptoms start slowly and persist for hours, days or weeks… until a blocked artery eventually prevents oxygen-rich blood from reaching a section of the heart… As long as a victim is still conscious & breathing, CPR isn’t necessary” but getting to a hospital quickly is! ‘CARDIAC ARREST’ strikes another 570,000 Americans annually, who lose pulse and consciousness immediately when an “electrical malfunction causes disruption in pumping action from a heartbeat irregularity (arrhythmia), and can die within minutes unless receiving immediate CPR or a jolt from an automated external defibrillator.” So, always calling 911 immediately for an ambulance with trained ER and paramedics should be the first step. [MENS HEALTH – Apr 16]

• ‘INVISIBILITY CLOAKS’ AREN’T FAR AWAY, as technology imitates magic. Engineers from Iowa State University have developed a “flexible, stretchable, tunable ‘metaskin’ that uses rows of small, liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from radar,” and engineers at UC-Berkeley have now developed “nano-antennas which manipulate and redirect phases of light in such a way so that it’s effectively invisible to our retinas from any angle.” [DIGITALTRENDS.COM – Mar 15, 16]

• “RURAL AMERICANS TEND TO BE HAPPIER THAN THEIR URBAN COUNTERPARTS, and people who socialize with friends more frequently are happier,” concludes new research from evolutionary psychologists who studied over 15,000 people. An exception were “more intelligent individuals” who, conversely, experienced “higher life satisfaction with lower frequency of contact with friends.” Authors theorize that the hunter/gatherer lifestyle of our ancient ancestors continue to be the foundation for how we perceive happiness and life satisfaction. [BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY – Feb 16]

• P.C. FOLLIES UPDATE: (1) Stanford University students (among the nation’s smartest?) are “demanding the removal” of St. Junipero Serra’s name from campus buildings since, although he founded nine missions in the 18^th century which laid the foundation for the state of California, his role involved the “assimilation & exploitation of Native Americans… and the school should instead re-appropriate those honors in the names of indigenous people”; (2) a Norwegian mass murderer of 77 people is suing the state “on grounds that his solitary confinement – in a 3-room suite with a PlayStation, TV and treadmill – violates his human rights.”

• “IT IS AN ENDURING UTOPIAN IDEAL THAT CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM can survive the importation of millions of people from radically different cultures that often possess hatreds towards the peoples & cultures of the west… Europeans are now being asked to participate in their own suicide in order to maintain their reputation as ‘moral, upstanding citizens’ and avoid being called ‘racist,’ with many shuddering at the thought of being ostracized and humiliated as pariahs simply for expressing a sense of identity. This is testimony to the ability of the Left, with its power in the media & educational system, to create morally defined in-groups… engaged in a top-down revolution, in which moral and intellectual high ground has been seized by people hostile to western culture… There was never a demand (by a majority, or even close to a majority) from any Western country for a complete transformation, to the point the White people will soon be minorities in societies they had dominated for hundreds and, in the case of Europe, many thousands of years… Instead, we have become inured to an arrangement in which major party political candidates are vetted by the media and the donor class before being put up for election; it’s a top-down system that now more resembles an oligarchy than a democracy.” [THE OCCIDENTAL OBSERVER – Mar 19, 16]

• THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: “Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarch. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”  -President John Adams