• 70% OF ‘CHANGE’ EFFORTS FAIL TO ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS, “largely due to employee resistance and lack of Management support. When people are truly invested in Change, it’s 30% more likely to stick.” Even when the Team is on-board, organizations no longer have the “luxury of time to test and rollout new initiatives…while competing with other existing (often incomplete) initiatives… So mastering the art of Changing quickly is now a critical competitive advantage… Organizational Change is like turning a ship: the people at the front can see it, but those at the back may not notice for a while.” DCG has decades of expertise in Transition Strategy and Change Management. Call us before your reality check bounces. [McKINSEY INSIGHTS – July 15]
  • THIS SUMMER, SO FAR, FOREST FIRES HAVE CONSUMED WELL OVER 7 MILLION ACRES across the country, despite the efforts over more than 32,000 firefighters including Nat’l Guard troops and volunteers from other countries. The Forest Service will spend 90% of its budget – over a billion dollars (as it has every year since 2000) – to protect property in communities with often a few hundred population, at a cost of up to $400,000 per home. Until a century ago, the 200 million acres of U.S. forests were actually shaped by fires which “burned infrequently and with great intensity.” But once the mission became property protection and fires were extinguished as quickly as possible, forests became thick. “In many California foothills there are now 1000 trees per acre, versus 150 a century ago… Combined with hotter temperatures, dense forests are drier and fires now more extreme. In California, each 1-degree increase is associated with 35% more acres burned; in Montana, it’s 50%… The nation must realize the societal and ecological time bomb we’re sitting on…and be realistic about what firefighters can now do… 100 million people in the west can no longer expect to just dial 911 and have a hotshot come and save them.” [BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK – Aug 31,15]
  • “POLITICS USED TO BE A SIMPLE, PREDICTABLE CON. Every four years, the money men in D.C. teamed up with party hacks to throw their weight behind whatever half-bright fraud of a candidate proved most adept at snowing the population into buying a warmed-over version of the same crappy policies they’ve always bought… Not anymore. Trump has blown up even the backroom version of the issues-driven campaign… The event known around the world as hashtagGOPClownCar is improbable, colossal, spectacular and shocking; epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It’s like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the queen of England. You can’t tear your eyes away from it. It will go down someday as the greatest reality show ever conceived…with a perverse gravitas – the Presidency – really at stake… This GOP race is not about policy or electability or even raising money. Instead, it’s about Nielsen ratings or trending. It’s a minute-to-minute contest for media heat and Internet hits, where positive and negative attention are almost equally valuable…simultaneously disgusting and entertaining.” [ROLLING STONE – Aug 27, 15]
  • SURPRISE ELEMENT OF THE OBAMA/KERRY IRAN DEAL: “The agreement obligates all parties, including the United States, to help Iran protect its nuclear facilities against an attack, whether physical or cyber.” So, should any of the countries currently threatened by Iran having nuclear capacity decide to attack those facilities – starting with Israel and including Saudi Arabia, Egypt & other Islamic countries diametrically opposed to this outcome – America is obligated to defend Iran, implying potential for war against Israel.  [DENNISPRAGER.COM – Aug 24, 15]
  • THE LEGAL PROFESSION ACROSS AMERICA APPEARS TO BE CURRENTLY OVERSTOCKED, outside of big firms in major cities. The industry has shed over 50,000 jobs since the 2008 downturn and this year “fewer people applied to law schools than at any point in the past 30 years… a natural rejection to a saturated job market… Some 200 law schools, however, have tried to keep their campuses alive by admitting students with worse credentials…which may force some law firms and consumers to rely on lawyers of a lower caliber, and certainly will be painful for the middling students who are promised a shot at a legal career but in reality face long odds of becoming lawyers – an underclass who are really keeping the lights on…but with false expectations” after investing four years with tuition loans for the Degree & Bar Exam cram courses. Whether an overstock will in fact exist after eventual recovery is dubious, but currently “there’s a shortage of lawyers in this country the same way that there’s a shortage of Mercedes-Benzes – there are many people who want them who don’t have them.” [BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK – Aug 24, 15]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – either way you’re right.”  – Henry Ford

               Do you ever wonder if clouds ever look down on us and say:   Hey look! That one is shaped like an idiot?