• EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN COMPENSATION FOR EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION are ‘soft’ factors. Studies consistently find that today’s workers are looking for – and demanding: (1) Realistic career growth opportunity, including tools, training and responsibility; (2) Leadership from a management team that provides vision, direction, continuous feedback and support; (3) Work-life-balance and flexibility; (4) Company culture demonstrating values, relationships, behaviors, environment; and (5)  Challenge from interesting & diversified projects and responsibilities. Guidance in worker motivation and retention strategy, process & procedure is a core DCG service.  Let us help your business.  [OPEN VIEW PTRS LAB – July 17, 14]
  • ECONOMIC GROWTH IN AMERICA IS STILL IN DECLINE, and “the divergence between employment and output suggests the country faces not just deficient demand but also enfeebled supply, as more people working without more output means lower productivity… Evidence is mounting that the potential growth rate has plummeted… as the proportion of working-age Americans actually in the workforce has fallen below 63%…while over 3% of all jobs are vacant, suggesting lack of skills that employers are looking for… There is much the government could do to boost investment – including infrastructure spending, reducing the corporate tax rate which encourages moving abroad, and cutting the endless sprawl of job-destroying regulations… But the least-friendly Administration in decades and our polarized politics create rising odds that the economy will continue to lumber along at and underwhelming pace, as we have no one to blame but our leaders.”   [THE ECONOMIST – Jul 19, 14]
  • “MOST POLITICAL DEBATES BASED UPON ‘OFFICIAL ECONOMIC STATISTICS ARE LIKE AN EPISODE OF SEINFELD, a show about nothing… because new technology makes it hard to compare 21st century economy to anything that came before it… beyond the practical capability of official statistical agencies… For example, ‘official’ Census bureau data suggest that median income today is barely higher than the late 1970s.” Really?  When middle income families had only three network TV options, no cell or smart phones, internet or digital cameras? Does a smartphone expenditure really compare to cost for a landline or calculator or mailing a letter? According to a Yale University analysis, “America’s standard of living has increased about 1,000 times as much as official records indicate.”  [RASMUSSEN MEDIA REPT – July 18, 14] 
  • NEWEST HEADACHE FOR I.T. DEP’T CONTROL: BYOA. “Workers are increasingly using not just their own devices, but also their favorite applications.” Employees impatient with company server complexity in sending out large files are simply bypassing I.T. and using their own apps like Dropbox, creating a multitude of new security risks.   [THE FUTURIST – Jul/Aug 14]
  • “WE’RE IN THE MIDST OF A ‘BUSYNESS BUBBLE’… The asset being overvalued is the notion of doing, having and achieving it all – the undisciplined pursuit of more… This bubble is being enabled by an unholy alliance between three powerful trends: smart phones, social media and extreme consumerism. The result is not just information overload; we are more aware than at any time in history of what everyone else is doing, and therefore what we should be doing.  In the process, we’ve been sold a bill of goods: that success means being supermen & women who can get it all done… bragging about being busy as code for being successful and important… But when the Busyness Bubble bursts – and it will – we’ll be left feeling that our precious time on earth has been wasted doing things that had no value at all, having given up those few things that really matter for the sake of the many trivial things that don’t… A hundred years from now, when people look back at this period, they will marvel at the stupidity of it all: the stress, the motion sickness, and the self-neglect we put ourselves through.”  [HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW BLOG – Jun 6, 14]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:    “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”  – Lou Holtz

Technology advances productively: A $200 gadget called CUE will soon be available which swabs nose-fluid and delivers data over a Smartphone app, to a lab which analyzes for “fertility, influenza, inflammation, testosterone & vitamin D,” with quick health feedback directly to the sender. And sometimes not-so-productively: A $75 toaster now “allows narcissistic individuals to burn their selfies onto their morning slice of toast.”

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