Just in Case it Matters to You
Weekly Report 23-27
- EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CRITICAL FACTOR in managing efficiency, productivity, and profitability. These days, it also materially impacts employee motivation and retention. Maintaining open and diverse communication channels is an absolute necessity for good leadership, for objectives including: (1) Ensuring coordination of team members, especially with modern arrangements such as remote work; (2) Avoiding vagueness and absence of clarity which creates miscommunication more often than not; (3) Avoiding misunderstanding which creates confusion, harms teamwork, prompts rumor mills which waste worktime, slows productivity, creates stress and damages employee morale; (4) Best ensure better worker engagement, job satisfaction and retention. DCG provides management strategy and coaching programs; call us for support.
- AMERICA’S ELECTION PROCESS HAS BEEN OVERRUN BY BOTH PRIVATELY AND PUBLICALLY FUNDED GROUPS, to a point where ‘fairness’ of elections has become a moot principle. “(1) In our propaganda-laden news environment, the ‘disinformation industrial complex’ – an unsavory hellbroth of deep state agencies/ media elites/ NGOs/ Big Tech executives/ and academics, working together to suppress inconvenient news and powerful voices objecting to the corrupt status quo – is literally an existential threat; (2) Election season has morphed over a period of months during which TV ‘journalists’ make empty judgments about the health of American democracy based on how much the results will further advance the policies of their own corporate paymasters, while homes are flooded with tens of millions of mail-in Ballots (regardless of citizenry or address legitimacy), then many rounded up in entirely selective ways and delivered via sophisticated partisan turnout operations funded by activist billionaires… With events that defined the 2020 election – nationwide riots, social media censorship, partisan co-opting of local election offices, and wholesale rewriting of election laws on the fly – the fate of America rests on ability to win over voters on issues far larger than a personality contest between candidates.” [AMERICAN MIND.ORG – 5/3/23]
- WITHIN THE NEXT 2½ YEARS, A.I. VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCES will become so immersive and realistic that they will “blur the distinction between the virtual and physical world we know, leading to widespread debates on the nature of reality… A host of ethical questions and concerns will need to address the consequences of its addiction and our reliance on virtual connection – impacting (1) mental health & well-being, (2) moral & legal application to virtual violence, theft or other potentially harmful behaviors, and (3) effects on simple human relationships (like face-to-face communication and genuine human connections)… Within the next couple decades, A.I. will have become an integral part of human decision-making at all levels, from personal choices to global policies, and we’ll be witnessing a transformation that will reshape our understanding of reality, creativity, work, and even our sense of free will.” [THOMAS FREY – 5/4/23]
- DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW how super-intelligent AI is likely to change our world? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVjq53TKKUU With every new technology, there are risks. It’s important for even small business owners & managers to remember that “changing demographics are making the best and brightest young employees the dearest resource for any business. As AI removes much of the early career drudgery for them, be mindful that you don’t accidentally cut training that builds strong foundations for long-term careers. Cold-calling customers, crunching though spreadsheets and writing taglines for an ad campaign may all be easily replaced by AI,” but the skills they build will likely become critical factors in their life balance and company retention, as well as likely future business survivability. [CORPORATE BOARD MEMBER – 5/12/23]
- THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” – George Carlin
“We now live in a very strange time when counterintuitive thinking is considered the height of enlightenment. According to mainstream culture, men and women are interchangeable despite there being absolutely no scientific data to back that up; Socialism and Communism are good despite a myriad of examples of these systems failing the societies that adopted them; We even have a growing number of leftists who believe that parents have no business deciding how their children should be raised and that it should be left up to the ‘state’ (i.e., them) instead. One of the more asinine ideas being paraded around by the permanently delusional is the idea that promoting health, activity & exercise is ‘fat shaming’ and wrong – despite the fact that being overweight leads to a myriad of issues including diabetes and heart disease, the number one killer in America.”
‘Critical thinking’ by teens and young adults is fast losing ground. An extensive survey done by Reboot Foundation reports that younger social media users are ready to “give up the right to vote for the right to post.” Among 13 – 24-year-olds, six in ten would trade voting for a year to stay on Tik-Tok and other sites; nearly a quarter are watching or posting four hours daily, with over half viewing 2 – 3 hours; 17% of teens are not sold on the Earth being round, and those viewing an hour or more believe astrology is a science. [WASHINGTON POST]