• BUSINESS ‘CULTURE’ IS ABOUT AN ORGANIZATION’S VALUES AND BEHAVIORS which collectively define how things get done. Absence of a defined culture, at best, limits performance optimization; in merger or acquisition transactions, incompatible culture is often a principal cause for implosion. Boston Consulting Group recently assessed twenty M&A deals, including companies in the same industry, to find material differences in 100% of the combinations with, in most dimensions, senior managers showing three times greater difference than non-managers. This challenge is compounded when millennials are in management positions, since Gen Y hiring managers focus on “knowledge of current & emerging trends, abilities and willingness to earn new skills quickly,” with relatively little concern for past knowledge, degrees, long tenure in prior jobs or learned culture. At the operations level, younger managers also expect employees to demonstrate ‘initiative’ through questions and collaborative engagement while the culture of elder workers traditionally calls for “figuring it out on their own, without having to rely on or involve others,” especially their boss. It’s the ‘new normal’ workplace and DCG have decades of experience in this critical business arena Call us before your reality check bounces! [INTERCHANGE-GROUP.COM – Apr 27, 16]
  • A BIG STEP AGAINST CYBERCRIME, directed to widespread criminal activity utilizing the ‘dark’ computer networks like Tor, was taken by the U.S. Supreme Court last month: approving a ‘single search’ warrant (versus geographic-specific requirement) which can authorize the FBI and other crime-fighters to “infiltrate any computer device, anywhere in the world, including hacking into victims’ computers that have already been broken into by cyber criminals – to facilitate tracking down operators of botnets.” Congress has until the December 1 effective date to legislate otherwise, with civil libertarians & lobbyists certainly very vocal about “changing the rules as a Criminal Procedural measure…on complex issues involving privacy, digital security and 4th Amendment Rights which require thoughtful debate and public vetting, versus bureaucratic process… But this is an election year, and Congress seldom gets things done at the best of times.” [THE REGISTER.CO.UK – Apr 29,16] 
  • TECHNOLOGY-TRAINED WORKERS ARE CRITICAL TO U.S. GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS. But, while America spends more on public education than most other developed countries, we continue to fall way behind in student results and lack any cohesive plan for improvement. Hillary suggests an ‘Education Swat Team’ to rescue failing schools; Sanders suggests more spending on free college tuition; All Republican candidates rejected the current ‘No Child Left Behind’ principle that that the federal government has any “central role to play in holding States responsible for student achievement” in the first place. Reality is that Union leaders are against any ‘accountability’ for teacher performance, middle-class parents are resistant to higher standards, and the ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’ which Obama recently signed into law now “allows states that lower their standards to escape federal consequences.” Just another ‘writing on the wall’ factor for our future. [BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK – May 2, 16] 
  • ABOUT MAN & MACHINE: From Ray Kurzweil, Google Technology Director and “oracle to Silicon Valley: Humans are merging into non-biological technologies. The smartphone we carry is not yet inside our physical body, but that’s an arbitrary distinction. It’s part of who we are – not the phone itself, but connection to the Cloud and all the resources we can access there… computational and communication power of thousands of computers for complex search and many other types of transactions… We have limited capacity in our brain, at least a million times slower than computational electronics… But over the next couple of decades we’re going to make ourselves smarter by integrating with these tools… and computers will be indistinguishable from human intelligence in a conversation. Within 30 years, non-biological intelligence will reach a level that’s a billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.”  [PLAYBOY MAGAZINE – Apr 19, 16]
  • AMERICA HAS NEARLY 11 ROAD FATALITIES ANNUALLY PER 100,000 INHABITANTS, nearly triple the rate in Spain and double the rate in France. According to our Federal Highway Administration, a quarter of traffic deaths or serious injuries take place at intersections – which could be reduced by 80% if we copied those countries’ use of ‘roundabout’ road junctions, where vehicles flow into circular traffic, versus stop signs or traffic lights.
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:                                                                                                                                                                                                           Soon available: a $99 one-pound cordless 3D PRINTER, which is powered by your Smartphone, now being successfully crowd-funded — https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/olo3d/olo-the-first-ever-smartphone-3d-printer

        A 3-minute reality-based look at what life looked like in the 1930s:  https://vimeo.com/160024074

 DCG: UTILIZING GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE FOR OPTIMAL STRATEGIC & FINANCIAL DIRECTION, MANAGEMENT, NEGOTIATION & MEDIATION