• ‘SWOT’ ANALYSIS RELATES TO AN ORGANIZATION’S INTERNAL STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES, AND ITS EXTERNAL OPPORTUNITIES & THREATS, which synthesize into a reality-based Strategic Plan. In today’s business climate, looking at the Strengths & Weakness of competitors and potential competitors has also become a critical factor in such planning, since a Company’s “current Strengths may actually pose a Threat, while Weaknesses may present realistic Opportunities.” One tool for checking assumptions involves separate management teams listing their perception of SWOT components, then switching lists to debate. “Good strategists allow for the possibility that thins may be what they seem, or may be the opposite, depending on the situation.” DCG can help facilitate this reality-check exercise. [HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW – 8/22/19]
  • ONE OF AMERICA’S FASTEST GROWING INDUSTRIES IS ‘WEALTH WORK’, “low-skill and low-pay jobs which cater to the whims of the wealthy,” in neighborhoods with soaring disposable income – a new underclass of urban servants, 20% of whom are not citizens. Retail and service jobs (cleaning or at spas & salons) predominantly employ foreign born women who earn minimum wage levels (often ‘off the books’}. “Another category is the ‘Uber for X’ economy – a nebulous network of people contracted through online marketplaces for driving, delivery and other on-demand services… most without regulated wage or other employee protections… Workers of this new servant economy endure long commutes from lower-cost neighborhoods to provide impersonal simple, seamless transactions in jobs offering autonomy for workers and convenience for consumers… in an age of persistently high inequality.” [THE ATLANTIC – 8/12/19]
  • ‘JOURNALISM’ HAS MOST LIKELY BEEN PERMANENTLY DEGRADED from opinion bias and by reporting of fake-news, but even more-so by “stories of great importance to a free society being dropped or lost (since censorship works as well by omission as commission), in lieu of trivial accounts about sports figures, celebrities, and inconsequential political blathering… all designed to push just the right emotional buttons on social & cultural issues to manipulate both working and middle class people… Combined with low-quality public education in math/logic/systems-design/economics/humanities, while providing unrelenting emotional trauma through stories of self-indulgence, exploitative sex and gratuitous violence, these mass media distractions lead the public away from serious consideration of personal needs to inconsequential outside priorities… including the public often voting against their own economic interests.” [OUR OCCULTED HISTORY – Jim Marrs]
  • THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:

      One in five California lawmakers were mistaken for convicted criminals in an experiment testing the reliability of facial-recognition software in identifying potentially dangerous suspects.