Just in Case it Matters to You
Weekly Report 13-23
- BEHAVIORAL AND COMMUNICATION STYLE IMPACTS HOW A PERSON FILTERS INFORMATION and the degree to which they can (or not) be guided by professional or personal advice. This applies to all persons: customers, clients, employees, children, friends & relatives. One profile system defines styles by four categories: (1) Driver/Director – highly assertive and generally more confident in their own decision-making based on previously achieved results, low on emotion; (2) Amiable/Supportive – the opposite, highly emotional and minimally assertive, therefore more focused & trusting based on the relationship rather than the details; (3) Analytic – low in both assertiveness and emotion with a “pressing need” for details; (4) Expressive – a combination of the other styles, “high in both assertiveness & emotion but often apt to tone down.” DCG experience in communications and consulting with each type can facilitate the best chance for optimally effective strategies to meet underlying goals & objectives. [RESEARCH MAGAZINE – June 13]
- “STRUCTURAL CHANGES AFOOT IN THE ECONOMY ARE MAKING ‘HUMAN LABOR’ INCIDENTAL.” Growing use of computers & robots in surgery, assembly, warfare, stock-trading, banking, travel, research, journalism and the like continue to improve business operating efficiencies without needing to add many, if any, live bodies. Education in STEM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) is touted as the key to future employment, but even today only half those degreed workers are employed, and just over 20% of all American jobs require any kind of college degree. Even teaching – always considered a fallback occupation – is no longer a reliable option, as “cash-strapped governments demand wage & job concessions… and Massive Open Online Courses, which are already making free education a reality for most of the planet …are reaching a sophisticated level of curricular, pedagogical and adaptive depth which will torpedo the demand for cosseted brick & mortar educators… Every single field formerly considered ‘technology proof’ is being radically altered… as in-demand skills become superfluous (like website designers, lawyers and researchers)… and the demand for human capital decreases as technological commoditization continues its march through one ‘industry of the future’ after another.” [FORBES.Com – May 21, 13]
“TWO THINGS ARE CLEAR: First, that smart machines are evolving at breakneck speed… leaping from desktops into people’s pockets, with smart sensors in all sorts of products; second, that intelligent machines have reached a new social frontier – knowledge workers are now in the eye of the storm… The rate of progress is set to increase dramatically thanks to a combination of Moore’s Law (that computing power available for a given price doubles every 18 months) and the melding of three technologies: machine learning, voice recognition and nanotechnology. Tiny computers will soon be able to perform jobs once regarded as the peculiar preserve of humans – including electronic personal assistants and wearable personal physicians… Innovation will disrupt many areas of skilled work that have so far had it easy, especially the cherished practices of knowledge-intensive industries – in an age in which info and processing power are ubiquitous, they will have to become less like guilds, whose reflexes are to regulate supply and restrict competition, and more like mass-market businesses, with instinct to maximize the customer base.” [THE ECONOMIST – May 25, 13]
- AND MORE: EXPECT AMERICAN WORKPLACE ISSUES TO MULTIPLY as progressive government continues to push our society further toward the European model: A French study just found that “half the staff managers at companies in urban areas report increasing problems arising from religious demands by employees… including men refusing to shake hands or take orders from a woman boss, handle alcohol or pork products, wanting to pray or wear religious garb at work… and to prevent ‘non-observant’ Muslims from eating at work during Ramadan.” Three cheers for political correctness. [LEVINE BREAKING NEWS – May 28,13] And with religious demands, comes persecution. For a brilliant analysis on today’s lunatic anti-Semites: http://www.therightscoop.com/pat-condell-lets-blame-the-jews/
- THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: “Continuing and inevitable CHANGE is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.” – Isaac Asimov
LA Unified School District, already noted for retarded teaching strategies, now has a sex education program to educate middle & high school students on “how to obtain and share their HIV and STD status with friends via cell phone text message.”