• EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN BUSINESS SUCCESS. A McKinsey survey of nearly 190 thousand workers in 80 diverse organizations found that four core leadership behaviors explained nearly 90% of the variance between strong and weak companies. They are: (1) A consistent process for gathering & analyzing information that precedes effective decision-making; (2) Emphasizing the importance of efficiency, productivity, and prioritizing the highest-value work; (3) Encouraging employee ideas & perspectives to improve performance and to differentiate between important vs unimportant issues; (4) Showing authenticity and sincere interest in understanding & sensing how employees feel. Another critical element in optimal leadership is awareness that employees are most effectively motivated when feeling that their leaders care – evidenced by asking thoughtful questions, listening to worker’s response, demonstrating genuine interest (even empathy), and implementing action steps when relevant. Along with bolstering employee morale and commitment, these steps can serve as catalysts for challenging and improving the efficiency of work procedures, productivity & profitability. DCG offers courtesy consultation in this arena of human resource management.
  •  COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY DECISIONS TO BUY THE WOKE ACTIVIST ARGUMENT for dropping standardized SAT and ACT test scores as admission criteria “will go down as one of the greatest follies in the history of higher education.” Major institutions have now recognized that the practice of test-optional admissions has led to “students who were not prepared to attend a university that required a certain degree of academic ability, that SAT and ACT are a useful sorting tool for determining whether or not students will succeed in college, and that they’ve placed themselves in a difficult position of having a higher dropout rate… College is not for everyone. By restoring the test requirement, they are eschewing the bigotry undergirding the woke movement and ensuring that all students follow the path most likely to maximize their individual talents and find lifelong success.”  [WASHINGTON EXAMINER – 4/23/24]
  • “HUMAN PERCEPTION OF TIME IS INTRINSICALLY LINKED TO OUR SENSES, heavily influenced by what we’re looking at and actually skewed by what we see. So basic features of an image such as colors & contrast can alter perceptions of actual time spent viewing, and studies find that with larger or cluttered scenes we are more likely to experience time-expansion, since visual clutter is perceived as harder to navigate and impairing ability to recognize and mentally encode the information. The suggestion is that when viewing something ‘more important,’ our sense of time is expanded to get more information, which links to increased brain processing. So, scientists are studying whether brains could be stimulated artificially to influence processing of time and Memory.  [NATURE HUMAN BEHAVIOR – 4/22/24]
  • THE CURRENT SPATE OF ‘TRUMP APOCALYPSE’ HYSTERIA IS PATHETIC, with “tabloid-jealous writers seeking the most clicks and dopamine hits, trying to outdo one another trying to whip up fear of Trump. It’s good for business, and very easy to do, freed from old-school journalism restraints of having to muster facts to support opinions, with anything – including imagining a civil war – possible. As an extreme edge of a broader Democratic strategy, scare votes have long been a popular strategy, from the racist propaganda in post-bellum south, to Willie Horton, and of course to 2016’s ‘Trump is a Russian spy.’  Political ads framing opponents as dangerous or unfit for office, playing on fears of what might happen if they were to gain power are a desperate move, given how they contribute to a climate of distrust and polarization within society.” Pathetic and shameful.  [AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE – 4/18/24]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK   Technology’s sense of humor: computers have begun asking humans to prove they aren’t a robot.

The Wife Diet:  https://biggeekdad.com/2020/04/the-wifes-diet/    The Wife Code:  https://biggeekdad.com/2019/02/the-wifes-code/ 

 According to Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research,  adult men & women flush over 132 gallons (13.2 pounds) of urine down the drain yearly, contaminating drinking water and polluting oceans in many parts of the world. Now, innovative toilets in Ethiopia can separate urine & faeces, with urine then dried and turned into pellets which rejuvenate its nitrogen and work in soil to provide ‘superfood’ for grain & tomato crops as well as household plants. [SCIENCE NORWAY]