• KEEPING EMPLOYEES IS MORE THAN EVER DEPENDANT ON A WORKPLACE POLICY of flexibility for scheduling physical presence to balance out the needs of both workers and the organization. Research suggests that up to 25% of current employees are already planning to leave their jobs, and as high as 36% for millennials. Strategies to consider: (1) Every worker has different personal circumstances and it’s worth asking what accommodations they need. “Legislating mandatory ‘in office’ schedules as an absolute requirement is a characteristic of ‘old style’ management that is no longer effective”; (2) Thorough thinking about why & whether every person or team needs to be in-office, since typically required presence is about “connection and collaboration,” which the pandemic experience demonstrated isn’t always critical for creativity, efficiency or effectiveness; (3) ‘Stay Interviews’ should become a part of the ongoing relationship with employees, in order to understand their frustrations and anticipate their career expectations.  [SMARTBRIEF – 8/18/22]
  • INTUITION IS OFTEN A BETTER GUIDE IN DAILY DECISION MAKING THAN FORMAL PROCESSES, including the value that many managerial decisions get made at all. While deliberative thinking is textbook strategy for optimizing business results and stability, Managers often suffer from analytical overthinking (aka Analysis Paralysis), which turn a simple problem into a complex one, delaying decisions with adverse impact. Instinct has its place when decisions are more connected to emotional responses, and inherently less tractable to analysis.” (Examples are what to defer or delete in the backlog of texts & emails each morning, which workers need motivation at any point, what to prioritize, and some 200 daily choices which researchers say are about food alone).  DCG have decades of experience in Time Management and operational efficiency guidance to clients. Call us for courtesy consult. [ECONOMIST – 8/20/22]
  • THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU HAS JUST RELEASED FINAL VERIFIED ‘COUNT’ FROM THE 2020 CENSUS, impacting – meaningfully distorting – Congressional Representation, the Electoral College, and allocation of Federal Funds for the next 10 years, until 2030 Census.  Miscounts affected (Surprise!!) Overcount in 8 states (seven of which are Blue), and Undercount in 6 states (five Red).  Gross examples: Florida – undercount by over 750K while needing only 172K for another seat in Congress; Texas – similarly under by some  560K, needing only 189K for a seat; and Minnesota – which would have lost a seat if only 26K of its 217K overcount had been correct.  Who thinks that these ‘mistakes’ will be remedied by the Congress?  https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/pes-2020-undercount-overcount-by-state.html
  • THIS IS LATEST EXAMPLE OF WHY “GROWING SHARES OF BOTH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS now feel that members of the other Party are more dishonest, close-minded, immoral and unintelligent than other Americans. Latest Pew Research also found that negative sentiment – belief that the opposing Party’s policies are ‘harmful’ to the country – remains a particularly prominent fact in why they choose to affiliate with their Party, and same for why Independents lean one way or the other… Neither Party is very popular with the public (roughly four in ten Americans) and over a quarter have a negative view of both, with over half of younger adults saying they wish there were more Parties to choose from.”  [PEW RESEARCH CENTER – 8/9/22]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:    

“The Dunning–Kruger effect is cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of a task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their expertise, ability or knowledge.”  [WIKIPEDIA]   This overestimation occurs as as result of the fact that they don’t have enough knowledge to know they have enough knowledge.

Gorgeous and Incredibly high-definition video now transmittable to standard computers: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ThFCg0tBDck <http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ThFCg0tBDck>  

The U.S. Immigration ‘process’ is now seen by the vast majority of Americans (of both Parties) as a mockery and a free-for-all. Beyond humiliation in the eyes of other countries, the Biden administration’s failure to enforce existing law is making America a more dangerous country from non-law-abiding residents including Gangs, enriching criminal cartels such as drug & human traffickers, and betraying the country’s democratic Voting process – like NYC now allowing some 800K non-citizens to vote in municipal elections.