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thesymmratsyndicate · 6 years

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Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Hey, @amethysia ! Introducing...Your Secret Santa! SURPRISE!!!! <3

I hope you enjoy this! Merry Christmas! @symmratsecretsanta

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It was late on Christmas Eve. The forecast had called for snow.

Winston received word from the mayor of London that a bomb threat was made against the Hyde Park Christmas Festival - a huge celebration where thousands of excited festival-goers would be in attendance.

Symmetra and Junkrat were assigned to check the surrounding area for signs of suspicious activity. They agreed to meet under the bridge of Vanderbilt Mansion.

A light, white dust of snow had already settled against the pavement. Soft, delicate flakes continued to fall around her. On her way to their meeting place, she noticed how much Hyde Park had truly transformed - thousands of lights littered the 350 acre land. Circus tents were raised, filled with performers and exotic animals. There were also amusement rides and markets filled with crafts, puddings, colored pastries, and hand-stitched clothing. She also noted a massive skating rink where an incredibly ornate Christmas Tree stood proudly at its center.

The park was only open until 10pm, but Winston received special permission, given the circumstances, to allow for Junkrat and Symmetra to scout the area after-hours.

She was getting closer to the bridge and finally saw him.

Six months ago, she would have told you she found the man to be utterly despicable - a dirty, foul-mouthed junker who only brought forth destruction and endangered the entire team. Six months ago, she would have told you she found the man to be quite physically repulsive - lack of cleanliness, clumps of bare scalp surrounded by wild, singed hair, an asymmetrical face with an especially prominent nose, fingers constantly twitching, as if itching to get that next kill...

When had that perception changed?

As she learned more about him, she found herself strangely drawn to him. She came to realize that his upbringing was very similar to hers, except there was no big break and no opportunity to seize. There was no sympathy given to his people and no family to provide support.

He was born to be an engineer, like her. Yet, he taught himself how to survive and escape an incredibly devastating situation. She found herself understanding his depth as a human being and started to wonder why she judged him so harshly in the first place.

She gazed at him across the way. She didn't want him to notice her yet.

He casually leaned against the stone wall with his head tilted back. He breathed through his mouth - his breath whistling out like puffs of smoke.

It was obvious he had showered thoroughly today. The tips of his ears and nose contained a tint of pink, freckles littered the flushed cheeks that peaked above a haphazardly wrapped scarf, faux black leather jacket that displayed obvious tears and burn marks, left hand casually flicking the cap of a bomb detonator up and down...

He looked ridiculous.

Yet...there was something about him, standing there like that, that made her stomach twist and her heart beat slightly faster...

No. She reprimanded herself.

Satya Vaswani absolutely did not have a crush on Junkrat. Ridiculous. Preposterous. Unfathomable.

Feeling some snow inch it's way into her boots, she decided to finally approach him. "I do hope that's not a live detonator you're tossing about so casually?" Satya asked, right eyebrow raised disapprovingly.

Junkrat flipped the cap once more, with a dramatic flair, before placing it firmly into his pocket. He gave her a wide grin. "Cheers, mate! Ready to team up - scout the scene - save the day - have a little fun?"

"I don't think this assignment is something I would consider fun, but I'm at least glad to see you're passionate about ensuring it's a success."

Junkrat burst into one of his notorious laughs - sudden and high-pitched - that shook his entire body as it cascaded from that high down into his normal tone. "I will say this - if I catch some terrorist fuck, it will be the start of a bright Christmas for me!"

Ah, yes, there was that thirst for violence.

They were silent for some time as they searched every nook and cranny for anything out of place - behind dumpsters, around the carousel, beneath the circus tents - nothing seemed to be out of place.

As the time passed, the temperature continued to drop, snow continued to build on the ground, and every new snowflake that landed seemed to bring a colder, wetter presence along with it.

They continued walking together and found themselves the perimeter of the skating rink.

Junkrat was visibly vibrating to keep himself warm.

"I member ya saying something about likin' ta skate?" Junkrat said suddenly, teeth chattering.

Satya turned to face him, eyes wide. "I'm...surprised you remember that."

Junkrat let out a quick puff of air. "Tell me about yer skatin - it's cold as balls out here...I need a distraction..."

Satya pondered for a moment. "Well, yes, I do enjoy it, immensely. Unfortunately, I often don't have the luxury of participating in it."

"I'd bet ya look real nice - skating and glidin' around like -" He turned slightly away from her, as if suddenly shy.

Symmetra felt her face warm. "Like what?"

Junkrat gave a soft giggle. "Stupid, really...those Sugar Plum Fairies came ta mind."

"Sugar Plum Fairies?" Satya asked, clueless.

"Yeah! Don't ya know of that shit...with the little wooden toys that march around and the ballet dancers all prancin' like?"

Satya shook her head, smile forming.

"Ah, I saw it when I was a kid, real young. But I remember thinking the ballerina dancers were pretty and that's what they were called, Fairies. Don' know why sugar plum tho...come ta think of it."

Junkrat spun on his heel to face her, eyes blazing, as if he suddenly remembered something.

"Say, why not take a break and see ya have a go at the ice? We've been goin' round for hours. Everythin's checked out right. Whaddya say?"

"Absolutely not! That would be completely irresponsible!" Satya's voice was stern, but there was a part of her that became giddy at the idea of skating again. Maybe it was Junkrat's influence, but, for whatever reason, she was starting to feel ever so slightly mischievous...

"Ah, don't be such a spoil sport!" Junkrat exclaimed. "Ya said so yerself...it's been awhile since ya did it...we did our duty goin round, makin' sure everythin's right... Christmas lights are out, holiday cheer's in the air and all that. Why not partake in a little...treat?"

Satya stopped walking then, a small smirk forming on her face.

"Well...maybe I would consider...if you agreed to skate with me."

Junkrat enthusiastically shook his head side to side. "Ah...nah - I don't think - how would I...I mean-"

She glanced at his face curiously. "Well, why not? We are supposed to be partners in this mission, are we not? Or...is it...you've never been ice skating before?"

"Tch, 'course I have! I'm an expert! Jus wonderin...how would I even wear skates? Got the peg now, ya know?"

Satya's smile only grew with that. "That's not a problem. I'll craft some for us."

Symmetra readied her hands, right hand over left - bright blue light swirling beneath deft fingers. "Excellent. It's decided, then."

Within moments, two skates were formed - one to fit a human foot and one to fit beneath a small peg.

Junkrat sheepishly took the shoes from her. "Well, color me surprised...guess I can't argue with that."

Junkrat's hands' shook as he tied the skates into place.

He seemed so...nervous.

Satya quickly crafted her own blades for her feet and walked around to the entrance of the rink.

As her blades hit the ice, Satya felt right at home. Stretching her muscles and gliding around allowed for some of the building anxiety of the night to fade.

Junkrat remained at the small, wooden entrance gate. She skated over to him.

"Come on, Junkrat! Don't be such a spoilsport. You did agree to come with me, did you not?" Satya teased.

Junkrat furrowed his brow, determination evident in his features, as he pushed the gate open and flung himself out.

Right shoe going left, arms wiggling, hips desperately trying to compensate and keep himself balanced...he didn't make it three steps before falling firmly on his backside.

Satya tried desperately to keep her giggles contained.

"Are you alright? I thought you said you were an 'expert' on this matter?"

"Ah, yeah...jus' getting warmed up is all. Think I broke my ass tho..." Junkrat struggled to crawl back on his feet - his metal hand continuously slipping. In turn, he gave up on using his hands and started propelling himself with his elbows instead. He slid himself, slowly, to the edge of the wall to haul himself up.

Satya could no longer contain her laughter. "This is your punishment for lying to your partner! Are you ready to admit that this is your first time?" Junkrat laid back fully against the ice in utter defeat. "Alright, Symm. I ain't never skated before. Just quit laughin' at me and get me off this bloody popsicle."

Satya couldn't resist any longer and came over to him, hands outstretched. "Here, why don't we try again. This time, however, hold onto me. I promise not to laugh anymore."

Junkrat looked at her with wide eyes before taking her hands. He then said, "Sorry...hands are probably freezin'".

She didn't move and, instead, focused on his face for a moment. His back was arched to meet her height, legs set apart wide, eyes drawn to his feet, brows furrowed in concentration...

This mad bomber, this crazy junker really was a neglected child reaching out for someone to hold onto. She didn't mind that it was her.

"You really need to improve your winter wardrobe, Junkrat." Satya said. "And what's with this awful posture?"

Satya tapped his chin up to look at her. "Straighten your back, keep your eyes on me, and stop looking at your feet!"

Pupils dilated, amber irises reduced to a ring around the black. In his full height, he towered over her.

The lights around them became hazy colored globes as they moved and twirled around the ice. Jamison's hands began to warm in her own and his lips began to erupt in smiles as they picked up some speed together.

Had her heart been pounding in her chest this whole time?

"Do you enjoy Christmas, Junkrat?" Satya asked suddenly.

"Yeah, I reckon. Back in the day, Rhoadie and me, we always looked forward to Christmas 'cause it was easy to nick shit - everyone out shoppin' and all. We would get some booze, grab some Santa garb, and just...dunno...do shit. We even stole a cop car once and the cops were sayin' on the radio about two Santa's on the loose."

Satya then shared, "My family celebrated Diwali, which contains quite a few similarities to Christmas as far as how we celebrate. We were so poor that my father would sometimes steal to ensure that we had enough food for the holiday. He figured that we struggled enough day to day and, at the very least, deserved to all eat well during the holiday."

A silent understanding resonated between them. Despite the numerous differences between them, at their core, they were so similar.

The only thing that existed, then, was the sound of blades carving through ice, the rush of wind whipping at their faces, the crisp scent of snow, the warming sensations of flesh hands to metal, and the mixing of frosted breaths.

"Satya." She finally said. "My name is Satya Vaswani by the way. You don't need to call me 'Symm' anymore, if you wish."

Junkrat softly nodded before saying back, "Names are a big deal in the outback, ya know. Don't give 'em to just anyone. Only to friends, people who can be trusted. Are you one of 'em, Satya?"

Her heart pounded gloriously at the sound of her name on his lips. Friends? Was that what they were?

"If you'd like." She replied, eyes still connected, not backing down.

"Jamison Fawkes." He said, breaking eye contact. "Don't kno why my folks gave me that cuz it sure don't suit me none. Too proper. Too formal-like. Junkrat fits the man better, yeah?"

She wanted to tell him that it didn't fit the man. No, not at all. She wanted to tell him that there's a rich depth that she had missed, somehow, when they first met. Despite so many things that are exhibited in his behavior, he was vulnerable, he was aching, and he had been reaching out to others for a long time. Like a feral animal, he needed patience, care, reassurance, support...

The fact that she so desperately wanted to say these things came as a surprise to her - that such a man as he, someone she despised a mere six months ago, had managed to tear down her perfectly constructed walls.

"Jamison..." She began, realizing only too late that she had made an error. Her left blade had deviated in its designated path and hit an icy bump that was just ever-so-slightly too prominent.

She started to fall, hands still connected with his. It was only a few seconds before Jamison landed on top of her - face in the crook of her neck, right knee lodged between her legs, hands clasped above her head. Jamison had her securely pinned against the ice.

He released their hands, shifting his weight to his forearms, and raised himself to look at her.

She realized she must have been a sight - flushed cheeks, wide eyes, black hair sprawled out behind her, snowflakes littering her face.

Jamison's eyes bore into her own and his face lingered inches above hers. The globes of light and the night sky framed his face. It was getting so unbearably cold and his body heat felt so nice pressed so close against her.

"You alright?" Jamison whispered as he wiped the snow delicately from her face.

The act was small, but touched her deeply.

She didn't want to get up just yet.

"It's cold." Satya whispered back, hands clasping above his head.

Satya saw his gaze travel to her lips, where it lingered before closing the gap between them and meshing his lips with hers.

He wasted no time parting her lips with his tongue and allowing his good hand to roam through her hair. His hot mouth was pressed so securely against hers, breathing warmth and life into her through his tongue. His kiss was greedy. His lips were chapped. His taste was sweet. She couldn't get enough.

Satya Vaswani kissing Jamison Fawkes? Ridiculous. Preposterous. Unfathomable.

Oh dear.

#symmratsecretsanta #symmrat #junkmetra #my work #one shot #iceskating #this was so much fun

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perfectirishgifts · 3 years

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How Workvivo Is Helping To Keep Virtual Workforces Engaged

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/how-workvivo-is-helping-to-keep-virtual-workforces-engaged/

How Workvivo Is Helping To Keep Virtual Workforces Engaged

Bottom Line: Recognizing remote employees need more freedom in how they collaborate, communicate and work, Workvivo chose to create a collaboration platform that is responsive and respects each person’s identity & contributions.

2020 is the year everyone discovered a new work style for themselves. Teams and organizations followed. Today, those new work styles are thriving thanks to real-time data sharing, instant messaging across work platforms and user experiences modeled after Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Twitter, Zoom and other social media & collaboration platforms. ResearchandMarkets predicts the enterprise collaboration market will be worth $53.8 billion by 2023, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.5% between 2018 and 2023. Enterprise social networks are the fastest-growing and most challenging segment to get right from a product and services standpoint.

Innovating New Platforms That Engage First

Recognizing the nuances of what keeps every employee engaged needs to be the foundation of any enterprise collaboration platform or app. Over the last year, many research studies have been conducted to track employee engagement, work effectiveness and well-being. While research results differ widely in their assessment of engagement, the simple truth that remote employees need apps that provide greater personalization and freedom to work is clear. The most accurate, balanced study of remote worker’s engagementis from McKinsey, Covid-19, and the employee experience: How leaders can seize the moment. The study finds that remote workers (50.9%) are more engaged during the pandemic than non-remote workers (40.9%) by 10.5%. The study concludes that “while all workers are experiencing some degree of disruption, the range of experiences is wide, from the very positive to the very negative.” It’s table stakes to have any collaboration platform or employee social network reflect the nuanced nature of engagement. That’s what makes Workvivo noteworthy; it’s been designed very much around intrinsic motivators to serve virtual employees at whatever level of engagement they are and help them stay connected, included and most important of all, respected for their work.

Starting With The Network Effect To Improve Engagement

The CEOs and their senior management teams succeeding in navigating the ongoing pandemic and, before that, turbulent market conditions, rely on network effects to add value and drive change. They’re decisive in consolidating all communication channels with a single simple message: your health and welfare as an employee are most important. CEOs and the management teams supporting them have an innate instinct to know which message is best for which channel. And the same holds for ongoing employee engagement today. The following analysis is based on the report, How Companies Are Engaging Employees During Covid-19 by Peppercom in collaboration with the Institute for Public Relations. The channels with the most significant opportunities for personalizing communications at scale aren’t delivering their full potential. These include company intranets, social media, video updates, live streams, feedback-seeking platforms and mobile apps.

A key takeaway from the above analysis is that relying on technology-based channels alone isn’t going to cut it to achieve and strengthen employee engagement. Orchestrating the many channel workplace technologies together will. And just like those CEOs and their teams who have an innate sense of which channel is best for which message and how critical it is to show empathy to employees in times of crisis, an effective collaboration platform must allow for every unique voice to be heard – from the front line worker to the CEO. Excelling at that creates a network effect that drives greater engagement than any other technique.

Why Workvivo Succeeds In Getting Their Customers’ Employees Engaged

Workvivo sidestepped the trap that gets so many enterprise collaboration platforms by putting the nuanced needs of remote workers who all need intrinsic motivation to excel at their work. To their credit, the Workvivo founders realized that gamifying carrot-and-stick approaches to motivation – like all their competitors have done – would not help their prospects and customers keep remote employees engaged and motivated. Workvivo’s customers include AE Networks, NetGear, Telus International, HERE Technologies, Laya healthcare and many more. All of these customers have remote employees engaged in complex, often conceptual work and tasks. Previous intranets and collaboration platforms their customers were using treated information exchanges as transactions and weren’t designed for the nuanced needs of engagement. Dan Pink’s 2009 TED Talk, The Puzzle of Motivation, shown below, is prescient in how accurately he describes how employees doing more conceptual, complex work need to be intrinsically motivated. Giving employees greater autonomy is key to creating more engagement and enabling them to accomplish more.

Workvivo chose to design for intrinsic motivators and provide remote employees with greater autonomy, mastery and purpose in interacting with the platform. That is why their platform sets a new standard in enterprise collaboration today; they’ve designed in the motivators, real-time interaction, sense of belonging opportunities and empathy that remote workers doing complex tasks need. The pandemic has accelerated how urgent it is for remote workers doing complex, conceptual work to be more engaged faster than the best business case could ever do.

Workvivo’s prioritizing and respecting every remote contributor’s identity is shown in how extensively each employee’s profile is customizable down to the information and interaction channels they choose to subscribe to. The platform is cloud-based and relies on a responsive web design; assuring mobile apps deliver a comparable user experience. By respecting employees’ identities and nuanced needs, often doing complex, challenging conceptual work, Workvivo breaks down the barriers holding employees back from engaging more. The platform has succeeded in making it fun to collaborate, communicate and share ideas across the personal and professional lives, alleviating the need for employees to use shadow IT apps including WhatsApp, iMessage, or Facebook Messenger to communicate in real-time.

Where Workvivo Is Delivering Results

Lessons Learned at Laya Healthcare

Laya Healthcare is the second-largest private health insurance provider in Ireland, with 600,000 members, representing a 26% market share. With a dedicated and passionate team of over 520 people based in Cork and Dublin. In 2015, Laya Healthcare became a proud part of AIG, one of the world’s leading global insurance organizations. Building on 100 years of experience, AIG now serves customers in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. The following is the company’s headquarters in Cork, Ireland.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Dónal Clancy, Managing Director, Laya Healthcare. Dónal says that Laya had been studying and beginning to implement a pilot so employees could work from home when the pandemic escalated in March. One must appreciate and respect a leader so committed to the welfare of his employees as Dónal told me, “Laya means looking after you always, which is for our customer, but we genuinely have to look after the team as well. If we don’t look after the team, we won’t look after our customers. We have to put them first.” Well said and a role model for all leaders to consider following the example of.

“Historically, we were based on culture and the attitude of walking around the office and being very open. One of the things that we have in the office is that you can walk around and ask. Anybody will talk to you,” Dónal said. He and the management team wanted to keep that aspect of their culture in place even after transitioning to a virtual environment. Keeping the culture open and cheerful is a high priority for Dónal and the management team. They quickly realized that any collaboration platform or solution they chose would need to be intuitive to ensure high adoption levels. Dónal says that the interactivity and the intuitiveness of Workvivo have fit right in very well with him and the rest of the team. “I think that’s one of the beauties of it,” Dónal commented. “It’s easy to create a community by providing everyone the freedom to ask questions online and share what they’re doing, “he continued.

The cornerstone of Laya Healthcare’s success in serving its many customers is continually focusing on creating a trust and transparency culture with its employees. When the pandemic reached a national crisis level in Ireland, private hospitals were closing down for three months and there were no elective surgeries for treatments. People questioned the value of holding health cover and needed to reassure the team that their business would remain strong and focused. Dónal says the first thing the leadership team did was step up and say, “No, actually, your job’s secure. We’re very confident about what we’re doing and we’re going to, yes, have to revise our current strategy to accommodate,” he said. Employees’ gratitude continues to be amazing and Workvivo plays a vital role in strengthening the trust and transparency that is the foundation of Laya Healthcare’s business by fostering two-way communication and sharing regular updates from across the business.

Laya Healthcare accomplished the following with Workvivo following launch:

Dónal says Laya Healthcare had one of the highest engagement rates at launch in their company’s history. 93% of their team of 520 people registered and logged in on Day 1.

Sustained high adoption with 96% on average, continuing to engage every week over the past year.

Since adopting Workvivo, intranet use increased by 28%.

Within six months of launch, Communications was the ‘most improved’ result in Willis Towers Watson survey in 2019

Lessons Learned at TELUS International

TELUS International designs, builds and delivers next-generation digital solutions to enhance the customer experience (CX) for global and disruptive brands. TELUS International’s integrated solutions and capabilities span digital strategy, innovation, consulting and design, digital transformation and IT lifecycle solutions and omnichannel CX solutions that include content moderation, trust and safety solutions and other managed solutions. The following is the company’s headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Leading the corporate culture and strategic growth initiatives to enhance service excellence for TELUS International, Marilyn Tyfting, Chief Corporate Officer, is actively involved in every aspect of how technologies can further strengthen employee engagement. “Being an organization in 20 countries with almost 50,000 team members deploying digitally-enabled CX solutions, we need the best team and we need them to be engaged. We need them to choose to join our organization and stay with us,” Marilyn said. “We think that means we have to have the best culture and that’s difficult in the best of times and it’s even more difficult during Covid when people are working remotely, people aren’t seeing each other every day. We’ve really worked hard to try and bring virtualization to what we do every day.”

Marilyn and her team heard of Workvivo via TELUS International’sacquisition of Voxpro, a small CX specialty firm based in Ireland that was using the platform. Marilyn said Workvivo differentiated themselves from many other SaaS vendors TELUS International had been evaluating for employee engagement for how willing they were to take feedback.” What we found with Workvivo was a real willingness to take our feedback and say, “If those are the five or six things you need, if this is the new language you need, if this is new country you want to be in, if compliance and privacy issues need a special solution in some geographies, we’re willing to work with you, come to the table and be creative.” So for us, that was very valuable,” Marilyn said.

TELUS International is also passionately committed to listening to employees and periodically doing pulse surveys. Workvivo proved to be an excellent match for this initiative as well. Marilyn appreciates how Workvivo can scale their surveys from individual teams, individual departments, individual groups and smaller parts of countries to check the pulse of a particular work team and get feedback on things that are. “Their surveys give us insightful data that’s immediately relevant. We’re enjoying the opportunity to do more feedback more regularly and then pivoting and making some data-driven changes,” Marilyn explained. TELUS International calls its Workvivo implementation Cosmos internally.

It’s impressive to see how well-known Cosmos is across TELUS International. Marilyn’s department uses pulse surveys to ask team members questions that include, “How well informed do you feel through Cosmos?” and 71% say they feel well informed. 74% of team members agree the content on Cosmos is relevant for them to use every day. 81% of team members feel connected to others when using Cosmos. “I believe that 81% feeling connected to others is really relevant, because that’s the point of this system, right? It is to deploy information, it’s to ensure people have access to the appropriate information, it’s to ensure people can feel updated and gain insight into what’s going on in our organizations, but it’s also to build connectedness, “Marilyn explained. “People need to feel connected and if that’s what this tool allows us to do, informally and formally, then it’s really helping us to achieve our goals,” she said.

Marilyn and her team are impressed with how Workvivo has designed empathy and genuine care for remote workers’ needs into their platform. She says the company decided to accelerate their Workvivo deployment based on how well the platform reflects their cultural priorities, values and goals and how quickly the pandemic was escalating earlier in the year. “We were taking 92% of our team members in 20 countries around the globe and moving them to an at-home environment. That was a really, really big lift and it went exceptionally well, “Marilyn explained.

In conclusion, Marilyn says TELUS International could have stayed with the tools they had in place. She believed that being bold and taking a risk to achieve a more unique and personalized human connection was a risk worth taking. Workvivo is now part of the culture at TELUS International, earning their role as a partner there by being flexible, able to change and shift direction to deliver greater functionality along the way. Marilyn concluded our interview by saying that “it’s important to find partners that are willing to meet your unique needs and to date, Workvivo has done that for us.”

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xeford2020 · 5 years

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How Ann Arbor, Michigan Became a Living Lab for City Mobility

By Brett Wheatley, Vice President, Mobility Marketing and Growth, Ford Motor Company

A bustling city’s transportation system can often seem chaotic, especially with more than half of the world’s population moving to urban areas and new mobility services jockeying for space. But as Ford CEO Jim Hackett outlined at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, our vehicles and other forms of mobility don’t exist independently of each other. In fact, they have broad impact on our communities, cities and the world.

That’s why our team here at Ford is working with cities to help transform people’s lives in profound ways. This includes exploring how autonomous technology can be part of an urban transportation network and weaving together different transit operations to create a better system for all. But it also means developing tools that help cities easily visualize and understand their entire transportation system so they can make better decisions for their communities.

This was the intention behind our collaboration with the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan to pilot our Ford City Insights Platform. This suite of advanced software tools allows cities to explore and help solve a variety of mobility issues in a dynamic way not offered before. Today, following successful tests with Ann Arbor, we are expanding the use of these tools to six more U.S. cities, including Austin, Texas; Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Detroit.

By leveraging parking, transit, traffic, safety and census data, our City Insights Platform allows city planners to visualize their entire mobility ecosystem and helps them explore various solutions before implementing them in the real world.

Weaving together all the data that’s needed to make a platform like this possible isn’t easy, which is why collaboration is so important. We teamed up with the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority, the Downtown Development Authority and Ann Arbor SPARK, as well as the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute to help determine the best way to not only synchronize the data, but also ensure privacy is maintained every step of the way.

One of the first things Ann Arbor wanted to analyze was its parking infrastructure. Home to a large hospital system, a prominent university, and a bustling downtown that city data shows is growing by 11 percent every year, Ann Arbor officials naturally wanted to know if there were enough parking spots to accommodate all the traffic flowing through the city.

With the Ford City Insights Platform, Ann Arbor planners were able to get a comprehensive view of all city parking — data that previously was not available in one place — including city- and university-owned parking structures, as well as street-side parking spaces. They were able to visualize traffic flow during an average 24-hour period and easily see how parking was utilized — whether people were interested in street parking, hunting for spots in various garages, or simply passing through downtown.

Initially, it was thought the city needed more parking, but the analysis showed it would be better to find ways to inform drivers of openings and make access to parking easier — still a challenge to be solved, but a less expensive one to be sure. You can just imagine how cities considering these types of big-budget questions can improve their decision-making with this kind of analysis.

“Ann Arbor SPARK is pleased to have had the opportunity to bring together these partners to accomplish an incredible collaboration that broke down silos, set the foundation for future partnerships, and ultimately works to improve access and mobility in the city,” said Komal Doshi, director, mobility programs, Ann Arbor Spark. “This initiative provides us with a systems-based approach to accessing data driven insights, simulating and deploying mobility initiatives that will improve access in our community.

“We believe that Ann Arbor’s living lab environment presents a real and exciting opportunity for startups and established brands alike to collaborate to advance the connected, autonomous, shared and electric vehicles industry,” he added. “It opens new markets to Ann Arbor companies and attracts new companies and talented individuals to our region.”

And our work together went beyond parking. Safety is also a top priority for Ann Arbor and many other cities, especially as crashes with pedestrians increase even though city infrastructure and vehicles get safer. Using the Safety Insights tool in the Ford City Insights Platform, cities can combine crash data from police reports and other sources with our connected vehicle data to help identify locations with a high likelihood of accidents. And since not every dangerous encounter or near-miss is documented by a police report, our platform helps give planners the ability to see a more complete picture of road safety.

The unique addition of connected vehicle data gives planners insight into driver behavior (aggregated and anonymized) such as where people are hitting the brakes harshly or accelerating unexpectedly — that could mark dangerous intersections or roads. Planners can use this additional insight to decide where to focus their efforts as they work to improve safety.

“This collaborative project highlights the significant opportunities that public-private partnerships bring to our communities,” said Trevor Pawl, senior vice president of business development, Michigan Economic Development Corporation. “By coming together with our partners, we’re able to more effectively identify and create innovative mobility solutions that address today’s most pressing transportation challenges helping to improve the quality of life of citizens here in Ann Arbor, across our state and around the nation.”

The City Insights Platform also can be used to help improve the efficiency of city services. Ann Arbor officials tested this functionality by asking us to study their alleys, those secret pathways whose travelers can cause unintended consequences for the city. With delivery trucks, residents and pedestrians sharing the alleys with vehicles that provide city services, such as garbage trucks, it’s easy to imagine accessibility becoming a problem. If a garbage truck can’t enter an alley as part of its normal route, that doesn’t just create traffic. It costs the city money and negatively impacts the quality of life for residents and businesses.

This is clearly an important issue to Ann Arbor. So, in addition to the Ford City Insights Platform, our internal research experts jumped in to equip some alleyways with sensors that identify how people and vehicles enter, and at what times. Access to this type of data can help planners decide how best to regulate traffic, save money, and keep people safe. After an initial test, we’re now expanding this research to study more alleyways and understand how they can be better integrated in the city’s transportation network.

To really bring all this data to life for our partners, we developed the City Insights Studio — a digital model concept of Ann Arbor built across six LCD screens and complete with miniature, 3D-printed buildings. This interactive tabletop offers a dynamic way to visualize information that may not jump out at you from a spreadsheet, such as transit accessibility by neighborhood. But it can also display analytical insights and run simulations from all the various tools we’ve discussed so far. By bringing all this data into a single physical space, we can offer local officials across departments a new way of looking at how their city moves.

“Bringing together our teams for people’s shared travel information has potential to lead to greater innovations in mobility community-wide,” said Julia Roberts, regional planner for TheRide, which operates the public transit system in Ann Arbor.

At Ford, we’ve been working hard to make cars safe and enjoyable for more than a century. But just as no person can truly isolate themselves from the world, we are now seizing the opportunity to help harmonize city transportation systems threatened by gridlock. We are collaborating closely with cities to find a better way forward — a way that brings all stakeholders together in an easy-to-use, data-driven environment that can help make our cities safe, more livable and accessible, as well as drive new opportunities for multiple generations to come.

How Ann Arbor, Michigan Became a Living Lab for City Mobility was originally published in City of Tomorrow on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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dailyhealthynews · 3 years

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These 3 Airlines Are Going to Take Off in the Next 5 Years

June is here and most schools are now on summer vacation. The success of the vaccine rollout and an economy in full swing is great news for hard-hit industries like airlines making hay during the summer travel season.

We asked some of our employees which airline stocks they think have the best chance of success over the next five years. they chose JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU), Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV), and Allegiant trips (NASDAQ: ALGT).

Image source: Getty Images.

Let’s go into the wild blue over there

Scott Levine (JetBlue): Like so many airlines, JetBlue has experienced tremendous headwinds due to COVID-19. Realizing the inevitable turmoil the pandemic would bring, investors sent the stock into a nosedive; In 2020, stocks plunged more than 68% from mid-February to late March. However, with passengers soaring again, the stock has since rebounded and is up more than 173% since late March 2020. And there is reason to believe that the increase will continue to rise.

For one, management is taking significant steps to ensure the company returns to profitability. For 2021, management is forecasting capital expenditures of around $ 1 billion, mainly used for the acceptance of new aircraft. For example, in the first quarter, JetBlue has three airbus A321neos and expects the delivery of six more aircraft in the second quarter: two A220, two A321neos and two A321LR. By modernizing its fleet – especially with the A220s and A321neos – the company expects an improvement in fuel efficiency and thus a higher margin.

Reaching new shores is another opportunity the company is seizing for future growth. Last month, JetBlue announced it would start flights to London with round-trip fares below $ 600. Flights between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport will begin this August, while flights from Boston are scheduled to begin in the summer of 2022.

JetBlue goes beyond its core competency and has other initiatives geared towards increasing revenue, such as the highly customized travel planning website Paisly. Launched in the first quarter of 2021, Paisly uses a customer’s flight information to provide specific recommendations for other travel needs such as hotel stays and rental cars. While it’s still in its early stages of deployment, if Paisly is a success, it can provide customers with a more consistent experience that increasingly associates them with JetBlue.

While it will certainly take JetBlue some time to recover from the effects of the pandemic, management sounded encouraging on the company’s recent conference call in the first quarter of 2021. According to Robin Hayes, the company’s CEO, the company “achieved positive cash flow from operations in March and this milestone is our first step towards achieving positive EBITDA and returning to profitability.” Later in the conversation, JetBlue CFO Steve Priest predicted that the company would “break even in the third quarter and stay in positive territory through year-end” on EBITDA.

The safest bet

Daniel Foelber (Southwest Airlines): According to the latest CDC data, around 41% of the US population is fully vaccinated as COVID-19 cases continue to decline. The launch of the vaccine is great news for airlines, which have seen an impressive surge in traffic. TSA data suggests travel volume was only a third lower in May 2021 compared to May 2019, a huge improvement from the 90% decline in May 2020.

Southwest was one of the few airlines to make a profit in the first quarter. The summer forecast is just as encouraging. In its Investor Update (posted Tuesday), Southwest said it expects balanced core cash flow in June as a sign business is returning to its old form. Southwest is doing all it can to reduce its cash use, which averaged $ 16 million a day in June 2020.

Investors should keep an eye on Southwest’s ability to capitalize on the anticipated summer travel boom. Related to that, Southwest delivered record sales and diluted earnings per share of $ 5.9 billion and $ 1.37, respectively, in the second quarter of 2019 – which shows how well business did before the pandemic.

Southwest’s fame has long been the strength of its record. The ratio of debt to equity and financial debt to equity is understandably higher today than it was a year ago. But to his credit, Southwest has the best record of any major US carrier.

LUV Financial Debt to Equity (quarterly) data from YCharts

Given its cost reductions, optimistic forecasts and leading financial position, Southwest is the safest airline right now. The only downside is that the share price of around $ 58.50 is only 13% below its all-time high of $ 66.99. In other words, much of Southwest’s anticipated turnaround could already be pouring into its stock price.

Allegiant offers investors something different

Lee Samaha (Allegiant Travel): Investing in airlines is about analyzing the numbers and also investing in the issues and trends that ultimately make up the numbers. This consideration comes to mind when looking at the current state of the aviation industry and the issues surrounding it.

Is business travelers (a lucrative source of income for many airlines) coming back sharply or has the pandemic changed the need for business travel? What will be the timing of the recovery in international travel? Show travelers any resistance to flying on one Boeing 737 MAX aircraft?

If you are overly concerned about these issues aside from aerospace suppliers or aircraft leasing companies, investing in Allegiant Travel stock might be the place for you.

In short, Allegiant is a US recreational airline that operates an Airbus-only fleet serving consumers in small to medium-sized cities. As such, it is playing with the willingness and desire of US consumers to enjoy recreational travel following the travel restrictions imposed by lockdowns.

CEO Maury Gallagher certainly believes Allegiant is gearing up for a strong summer. Speaking on the last conference call in early May, he said, “We believe our income levels will match or exceed our final full year of ’19 for the remainder of 2021 and ’22 and beyond.” He also praised the company’s average operating margin of 15% over the past 20 years as evidence of Allegiant’s strong position in a relatively niche market.

Allegiant trades only 13.5 times its 2022 earnings estimates and is a great way to invest in the aviation sector.

This article represents the opinion of the author who may disagree with the “official” referral position of a premium advisory service from the Motley Fool. We are colorful! Questioning an investment thesis – even one of our own – helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that will help us get smarter, happier, and richer.

source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/these-3-airlines-are-going-to-take-off-in-the-next-5-years/

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talabib · 4 years

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How To Find Your Calling And Your Legacy

How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Do you struggle to get out of bed and dread yet another unhappy day at work? If so, don’t worry! Many of us feel this way, because many of us haven’t yet found our calling.

Your calling is the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you strive to achieve. When you find yours, you’ll be bounding out of bed everyday, ready to make a difference in the world. This post lay out the benefits of finding your calling, and give clear guidelines on how to find it.

Your calling gives your life meaning.

Do you dislike your job? Well, you’re not alone. Only 13 percent of the world’s population actually enjoy their work. So how can we go about changing that statistic? Perhaps by searching for work that makes you happy and refusing to do anything else?

Not exactly. The best way to achieve happiness in the workplace is to find your calling – a force larger than yourself that drives your every action. And to do that, you can’t think only in terms of happiness and pain.

Humans shouldn't be mere pleasure seekers or discomfort avoiders; instead, they should strive to imbue their lives with meaning.

If you’re busy steering clear of pain and failure, you'll never find your calling. Inevitably, you'll face challenges along the way to achieving your dreams, and accepting these difficulties as a natural part of discovering what you really love is part of maintaining forward movement.

Viktor Frankl, the renowned psychologist and Holocaust survivor, knew this well. He wrote that everyone needs a reason to keep living, a cause to push them forward. But how do you find this cause? That's where awareness comes in. Awareness helps you recognize your calling when you come across it.

People discover their callings when some event or feeling triggers their awareness of it. For instance, Luke Skywalker knew he wanted to be a Jedi after Obi-Wan Kenobi introduced him to the art.

So, though it can be difficult, you need to keep an eye out for this event. Awareness is being ready for the moment so you can seize it when it comes.

Another good way to find your calling is to make a list of all the major events in your life, even the ones that might not seem like the most important. When did you feel the most fulfilled, happy or accomplished? Look for similarities between these moments – your calling might be something that ties them all together.

Find good mentors and never stop practicing.

Finding and following your calling is a personal journey, but that doesn't mean you should do it alone. Getting support from others is a very important part of it!

It's tempting to view successful people as self-made; in reality, however, almost no one achieves success alone. In fact, the most successful people are those who know how to find good coaches and mentors. Mentors guide them as they get closer to their calling.

Every person you meet and every experience you have is a chance to learn something about yourself. Life is your school. Just think about Steve Jobs: He left college to pursue his dream and sneaked into college classes he found interesting or valuable. The rest he learned by working with people in the outside world.

Once you've found the people who can help you move toward your goal, it's time to get to work. You can only master your calling by practicing it.

And the best way to practice is to never stop striving toward knowledge and self-improvement. That means you have to accustom yourself to failure.

Practice isn't about doing the same simple task over and over again. It's about pushing yourself into new frontiers – making mistakes and learning from them.

Think of practicing as muscle building. Muscles grow when you regularly push them a little too far, which causes them to tear and then rebuild themselves.

It’s important to note, though, that you can't will yourself to achieve everything. There are some things that some of us just can't do, and that's all right. So if you find you can't make any progress, maybe you haven't found the right calling yet.

Don't stop moving toward your goal and always learn from your mistakes.

So what do you do once you know where you're headed? Sit back and see where things take you? Far from it. Your journey is a flight of stairs – not an escalator. Keep taking steps until you reach the top.

Say your calling is teaching, for instance. You shouldn’t stop working toward your goal: keep teaching classes, watch other teachers work and study techniques in the library. If you stop for even a short period, it might be difficult to start again. Always keep improving yourself!

Don’t worry about making a few missteps. Failure doesn't take you away from success – it leads you there!

Everyone who pursues their dream experiences setbacks at some point. Accept these hardships as opportunities to learn and better yourself.

This is exactly what happened to Steve Jobs when he was kicked out of Apple, his very own company. Instead of dwelling on his misfortune, he got involved with Pixar. He learned from his mistakes at Apple and turned Pixar into a highly profitable business; eventually, he returned to Apple and turned it into one of the biggest companies in the world.

A good way to think about your mistakes is to use the pivot foot. In basketball, when you take two steps without dribbling, the foot you land on becomes your pivot foot, meaning you can't take it off the floor. But you can move your body around it, looking for chances to pass or shoot.

In other words, you can still act even when you think you've come to a stopping point. No roadblock is the end. You've got to be the one to take yourself where you want to go.

Live a portfolio life that's filled with interesting challenges and variety.

Have you ever heard the term portfolio life? Probably not. But you might already be living one! In a portfolio life, your identity is based on a wide range of things, not just one. Jeff, for example, isn't only a writer – he's a father and husband, too.

There are four main areas in a portfolio life: work, home, play and purpose.

Work doesn't have to refer only to your main job; it can include other projects you work on as well. Home is all about your family and friends – that's where much of the meaning in your life comes from. When you do things just for the joy of it, that's your play. Finally, your purpose is the main goal of your life – what you're prepared to take risks for.

The growing number of freelancers illustrates the popularity of the portfolio life. By 2020, between 40 and 50 percent of the American workforce will be freelancers, and by 2030, they'll comprise the majority.

Why do people like freelancing so much? Because humans aren't robots programed to do a single thing. Our interests are myriad and we feel better when we can allot time to them all. Variety is part of a meaningful life.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a psychologist, argues that we should all aim for a mental state called flow. Your flow lies at the intersection of what you're good at and what challenges you. A task isn't interesting if it's too easy, and if it's too difficult, you'll get anxious. Flow is about finding that spot in the middle.

So seek out different sorts of challenges that will bring variety to your portfolio life, because living a portfolio life means living for your calling.

Your calling is your legacy – and you'll never stop living for it.

Your calling is a lot bigger than doing something like writing a novel, because it isn't just about you!

Your calling is more than a personal goal – it’s your legacy, the work that will continue to inspire others long after you're finished with it.

If you're doing something for yourself alone, that's not your calling. So don't aim to produce one masterpiece – your calling is more like a magnum opus. It's your entire body of work.

When you think of Mozart, for example, you might think of The Magic Flute or some particular sonata. But naming one piece of music doesn’t capture Mozart's artistry; it’s his life's work that has influenced people and inspired them for centuries.

To understand your calling you must acknowledge death, because a calling is also a legacy. You'll never finish with your calling, no matter how hard you try. And a fear of death can in fact be useful – it drives many to keep creating until the end. While on his deathbed, Einstein even asked for his glasses because he was so desperate to finish his work in time.

Unfortunately, you can't stop death. You have to accept that you'll probably never finish everything. But even after you're gone, your legacy will live on through your work.

Albert Uderzo, the creator of the comic Asterix, understood this well. He was the only person who made Asterix, and yet he wanted his comic to outlive him, so he passed the series to a new author, Jean-Yves Ferri. That was difficult for him, but it ensured his legacy would live on.

Living for your calling isn't just about mastering the art of work. It's also about the art of living and dying in peace.

Everyone has a calling – an idea that imbues their life with meaning and pushes them forward. So develop the awareness to find yours and strive to live a portfolio life that will give you the happiness and balance you need. When you live for your calling, you won't just produce work you'll be proud of – you'll feel more fulfilled and leave behind a legacy that will continue to inspire others even after you've passed on.

#How to Find your calling and your legacy.

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superghostlysublimecollecto-blog · 6 years

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Managing Outsourcing Relationships

While virtually every business now relies on information technology (IT) to help provide services or deliver products to the marketplace, things have rarely been more precarious for in-house IT professionals. This is so, despite the conventional wisdom that IT is acknowledged to be more strategic than ever.

Increased market competition, more demanding customers, tighter margins and shorter product life cycles have caused businesses to examine where they may be able to focus better on core competencies, reduce risk and costs, and become more agile and competitive. For many companies and small businesses across all industry segments, outsourcing IT is the only answer.

Outsourcing lowers operating costs, eliminates backlogs, improving data input quality, production and document availability. And, in the end, outsourcing adds profits to the bottom-line.

But outsourcing is far from a panacea. How an outsourcing relationship is managed - internally and externally - is as important to its ultimate success as the execution of the outsourced tasks themselves. Given that industry analyst Gartner recently reported that outsourcing can trigger an employee backlash, what do organizations need to know to make outsourcing a win-win for all concerned? How can a company best manage the firm that it has just retained? What project management issues does outsourcing solve and what challenges does it entail?

Outsourcing on Paper: Cost-Effective, Valuable, Efficient

Outsourcing IT isn't only (or even primarily) about costs. In terms of hard dollars, outsourcing isn't always a decisive win over the in-house approach, although it usually is. The real advantages can be seen in the "soft gains" that accrue -- the opportunity costs of not having to reinvent the wheel, and the efficiencies that arise when enlisting a company that specializes in doing the heavy lifting of IT.

Quality is an issue as well. In the hosting market, for instance, a company could hire five system administrators to run their network in-house, and find the collective wisdom limited to the specific experiences of that small team. When a third party assumes control of servers and infrastructure, that firm brings real world experience, gleaned from facing an array of problems across a diverse customer base. Dynamic learning occurs more rapidly because the outsourcing firm is simply in a better position to benefit from -- and propagate -- "best of breed" practices.

Managing and retaining IT staff is challenging enough in prosperous times; in a down economy, the challenges intensify - and the management responsibilities in outsourcing likewise increase. Keeping IT staff motivated, focused and incentivized is perhaps the most formidable challenge. If an organization's IT returns on investment is on the order of 20-30 percent, reinvention and retraining are apt to be continuous. Accordingly, whether the market is up or down, the case for outsourcing persists. By contrast, if the organization has kept IT entirely in-house, it becomes considerably harder to double, triple or even cut staff, should the need arise. An outsourcing relationship ensures a constant pool of talent.

Outsourcers are occasionally brought in to "clean up" unfinished business left by in-house teams that, for whatever reason, didn't see a project through to completion. It is always difficult for organizations to have to cut staff or downsize IT operations, especially for professionals who are accustomed to bigger budgets year after year. And when the mandate comes down from the CEO or whomever that IT budgets aren't going up -- and the only way the company is going to make its numbers is to let go of some of its people -- doubt looms large. That is the environment in which the quality of the management of outsourced relationships makes all the difference.

Outsourcing tends to occur in waves. Even during those periods when outsourcing is relatively less in vogue, many organizations still elect to outsource non-core functions. The hot topic right now is offshore vs. onshore outsourcing, but overall, the ebb and flow is modest. Outsourcing isn't trendy; indeed, when factoring in the earnings of public companies engaged in IT sourcing, outsourced IT, represents a highly stable segment of the economy. Against this backdrop - and with an eye toward making the relationship between the outsourcing firm and its client organization productive for all concerned - it's necessary to lay down a few rules.

Rule #1: Get Internal Buy-In

Let's face facts: effective IT outsourcing usually means layoffs -- and it can change the jobs of some of those who remain. If an outsourcing firm is brought in to displace existing IT staff, internal buy-in must occur well before the decision is made to bring in that third party. Management must know (and intelligently communicate) that headcount will be reduced by so many and that a plan of action exists to ensure that these cuts, however painful to those involved, ultimately boost the organization.

The best route to obtaining internal buy-in is to move incrementally. Outsource those projects linked to marginal products, rather than to strategic ones. Create an environment where the third party complements existing staff rather than replacing them outright. Doing so, can help promote in a sense, over time that, internal staff can be deployed somewhere else -- or even let go. The more strategic the project is, of course, the greater the political heat; the less strategic, the easier it is to get that buy-in for outsourcing.

Rule #2: Go Beyond Buy-in to General Consensus

"Buy-in" suggests a passive kind of acceptance. Effective management of outsourced relationships strives to go a step or two beyond. When the outsourcer arrives on the scene, a residue of resentment or lack of understanding frequently follows. The key to defusing that resentment is transparency on the outsourcer's part, in terms of both its operations and the organization's goals. When all parties can view how the outsourcer works -- through a portal product or some other mechanism -- it immediately becomes less likely that signals will get crossed and consensus may be within reach.

While it's helpful for the outsourcer to embrace a new assignment with enthusiasm, that energy isn't always enough to counter the feeling among some that this new third party poses a threat. If management is savvy enough to know that some resentment is inevitable, gentle prodding of recalcitrant IT staff members toward a positive outcome can be decisive.

Rule #3: Counter Backlash with Education

Employee backlash is often manifested in passive-aggressive ways -- not sharing immediate deadlines or the full scope of the assignment with the outsourcer, for example, thereby triggering talk that the outsourcer isn't delivering on the promise. Education is an effective antidote to situations where the ground hasn't been cleared as well as it should have been in advance, and can reverse uncertainty, ambivalence and even downright hostility.

Situations occasionally occur when those new to outsourcing approach the outsourcer with assumptions that don't turn out to be well-grounded. This pattern was chronic during the dot.com era, where companies were built overnight and needed to tap a huge skill base at a moment's notice. In some cases, managers themselves were new to the outsourcing process. Demands for instant response were complicated by requirements that armies of internal IT staff also be involved in the process - hardly a recipe for mutual success.

Education should begin during the sales cycle. Determine how educated the organization is on the outsourcing process and see if they've done it before. It always helps make our lives a bit easier in terms of fulfillment of the service later on. The more knowledgeable they are on how to manage this relationship the more successful it is going to be.

Rule #4: Communicate -- To Avoid Asserting Control

Companies win with complete communication. In outsourcing, communication's twin is control - and the perception of control. It is vital that the outsourcer never seizes control from the customer (or appear to do so) because that is when complications arise. Maintaining open lines of communication so that the customer feels he or she is still in control -- and having a portal-type product that provides a complete window into the operation -- is vital to securing a strong, stable relationship. At the end of the day, a client who feels in the dark may well assume the outsourcer isn't fully on the case.

Rules #5: Clarify Roles, and Stick to Them

In today's market, most organizations have tried various outsourcers, with varying degrees of success. Because not every encounter is a positive one, companies often have their defenses up, and it's not unusual for hurdles to exist at the outset -- even in a fresh relationship that isn't immediately leading to job loss. In that environment, the very best way to overcome these hurdles is to emphasize the (non-threatening) partner role: that the outsourcer is more of an offshoot of the IT department than an adversary or replacement. The consistent goal is to make it easier for IT managers and IT staff to do what they must do to meet the business's needs. The outsourcer's key function is not just to affect head count; it's to help the organization improve upon the services it could obtain internally at a given budget level.

Rule #6: Learn and Apply Patience

It takes typically about three months before both sides in a relationship are fully comfortable with one another and truly understand mutual expectations. Even for outsourcers with well-defined processes, writing that custom playbook takes a bit of time. Patience invariably fosters teamwork, and avoids common laments (e.g., "I'm opening a trouble ticket with so and so, and who knows when they're going get to it?") that can afflict outsourcing relationships. Once the mutual discovery phase is over, it's time to for everyone to get comfortable with how things are going. At that point, however, if the comfort level isn't there, for any reason, it's an optimum time for management on both sides to examine why.

Rule #7: Impose and Enforce Structure

In order to have a successful outsourcing engagement, companies need, clear, concrete goals. A goal shouldn't be something vague (like, "we want to get our IT outsourced"), it should be as concrete as, "we offered our exchange server hosting to this company and we will make sure that service availability is 99.9 percent or greater." To hit that goal, organize formal, frequent meetings (even twice a week) until everyone knows what the milestones and the deadlines are. After the first few months, once a decent product or service is up and running, it's less important to adhere to a rigid structure around deliverables. Weekly meetings, with an overview of outstanding items, new items, upcoming items, etc., should suffice.

Management has a major role to play here. Prior to bringing in an outsourcer, some organizations find that IT staff has been sitting around doing very little, if anything. That isn't because there is nothing to do -- it's because management hasn't said, "Here's the IT project, here are the goals we have, here's what we have to do, here's what will help us strategically." Because these edicts are not handed down, no one has been clear on the mandate. In an outsourcing relationship, by contrast, there tends to be a great deal more specificity because hard dollars are leaving the company. The best discovery meetings address budget issues head on; the charge then becomes to determine exactly what the organization wants from its investment. What is the goal? What is the value to the organization? What's to come out of this? These are the kinds of questions that make for smoother relationships.

Rule#8: Keep the Humanity in the Equation (then, re-read Rules #1-#7)

In the end, outsourcing is a human-centered business. Emotions do come into play, since jobs are ultimately at stake. Keeping that big picture in mind, have a clear-cut goal for what the relationship is going to be. Identify and maintain a single, designated point of contact as to who is tasked with managing the outsourcer; don't have six contact people, and don't let management responsibilities stray from the IT realm to other departments. Have weekly review meetings with the outsourcer to make sure that goals are being hit; don't assume that the outsourcer is doing its job.

Ask for feedback from the outsourcer; use this seasoned third party as a live, informal auditing arm. Ask for ideas about recommended internal improvements. (Side benefit: if the outsourcer doesn't offer input, that in itself may be a red flag.) Good outsourcers will always find issues, because the nature of the business is to gain an intricate look into internal operations. If the outsourcing relationship is on a solid footing and the outsourcer is on its game, the firm's best practices will come into play. That, in turn, should provide ample comfort to everyone involved -- and retire the backlash in the process.

#outsourcing traning center #training center #rajshahi freelancing center

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esprit-de-corps-magazine · 6 years

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GOVERNMENT FAILS TO MEET VETERANS’ EXPECTATIONS REGARDING THE REESTABLISHMENT OF “LIFELONG PENSIONS” UNDER NEW VETERANS CHARTER

The National Council of Veteran Associations (NCVA) and The War Amps of Canada contend that Minister O’Regan’s announcement regarding the long-awaited “lifelong pension” has failed to live up to the Liberal government’s election commitment to address the inequities in the New Veterans Charter, and continues to ignore “the elephant in the room” which has overshadowed this discussion.

Minister O’Regan’s announcement suggested that the “pension for life” would include the following three “pillars”:

1. The present lump sum Disability Award would be replaced by a new Pain and Suffering Compensation Benefit representing a monthly payment in the maximum amount of $1,150 per month for life or, alternatively, be provided in a lump sum payment as is currently the case. For those veterans currently in receipt of a Disability Award, retroactive assessment would potentially apply to produce a reduced monthly payment for life for such veterans.

2. A new Additional Pain and Suffering Benefit would be created to essentially replace the Career Impact Allowance (Permanent Impairment Allowance) under the current Charter, with similar grade levels and monthly payments which would reflect a non-taxable non-economic benefit but limited in its application to those veterans suffering a “…permanent and severe impairment which is creating a barrier to re-establishment in life after service.”

3. A new, consolidated Income Replacement Benefit (IRB), which is taxable, would combine four pre-existing benefits (Earnings Loss Benefit, Extended Earnings Loss Benefit, Supplementary Retirement Benefit, and Retirement Income Security Benefit) with a proviso that the IRB would be increased by one percent every year until the veteran reaches what would have been 20 years of service or age 60, and that any veteran who wishes to join the work force may also earn up to $20,000 from employment before any reduction will be made to their IRB payment. It is not without financial significance that the current Career Impact Allowance and Career Impact Allowance Supplement have been eliminated from the Income Replacement Benefit package.

Brian Forbes, Executive Chairman of The War Amps and Chairman of NCVA, stated that: “Although, as per usual, the devil remains in the details as to the applicability of these new provisions to individual veterans, it is relatively clear that certain seriously disabled veterans and their survivors will benefit from the Minister’s announcement in that they may qualify for enhanced levels of compensation pursuant to the new benefits proposed for the New Veterans Charter. However, the greater majority of disabled veterans will not be materially impacted by the Minister’s announcement in that the new benefits under the proposed legislative amendments will have limited applicability – thus the financial disparity between the Pension Act and the New Veterans Charter will continue for this significant cohort of disabled veterans in Canada.”

“Unfortunately, the Minister’s announcement perpetuates a result where the greater majority of veterans under the New Veterans Charter receive far less lifelong compensation than a veteran pursuant to the Pension Act with the same disability,” stated Forbes.

It was fundamentally essential that the Minister recognize that much more is required to improve the New Veterans Charter so as to address the self-evident ’elephant in the room’ in that his announcement failed to satisfy the priority concerns of the veterans’ community in relation to:

1. Resolving the significant disparity between the financial compensation available under the Pension Act and the New Veterans Charter;

2. Ensuring that no veteran under the New Veterans Charter receives less compensation than a veteran under the Pension Act with the same disability or incapacity, in accordance with the “one veteran – one standard” principle.

“It is totally unacceptable that we continue to have veterans’ legislation in Canada which provides a significantly higher level of compensation to a veteran who was injured prior to 2006 (date of the enactment of the New Veterans Charter) when compared to a veteran who was injured post-2006. If applied to the Afghan conflict, we have veterans in the same war with totally different pension benefit results,” said Mr. Forbes.

The 2017 Federal Budget clearly stressed wellness and rehabilitation principles with the government effectively “kicking the can down the road” in its promise of action on re-establishing a lifelong pension for veterans under the Charter by the end of the year. In this context NCVA/WAC recognizes the value and importance of wellness and rehabilitation policies, however, takes the position that financial security remains a fundamental necessity to the successful implementation of any wellness or rehabilitation program. It is readily apparent that this is not a choice between “wellness” and financial compensation as advanced by Veterans Affairs Canada but a combined requirement to any optimal reestablishment approach to medically released veterans.

During the course of discussions following Budget 2017 leading up to the Minister’s

announcement, there was considerable concern in the veterans’ community that the government would simply establish an option wherein the lump sum payment (Disability Award) would be apportioned or reworked over the life of the veteran for the purposes of creating a “lifetime pension” as ostensibly required under the Mandate Letter. NCVA and other veteran stakeholders strongly criticized this proposition as being totally inadequate and not providing the lifetime financial security which was envisaged by the veterans’ community.

Forbes stated that “…it is fair to say that the reasonable expectation of veteran stakeholders was that some form of substantive benefit stream needed to be established which would address the financial disparity between the benefits received under the Pension Act and the NVC for all individually disabled veterans.”

“It has been our recommendation to the Minister and the department that Veterans Affairs Canada should pivot completely from this lump sum payment evaluation for delivering the so-called lifetime pension option and instead look to the major conclusions of the NCVA Legislative Program and the Ministerial Policy Advisory Group report – both of these reports proposed that the combination of the best provisions of the Pension Act and the best provisions of the NVC would produce this form of lifetime pension in a much more realistic manner in order to ensure the financial security for those veterans who need this form of monetary support through their lifetime.”

It is of significant relevance that the key recommendations of the Ministerial Policy Advisory Group (as endorsed by NCVA) would effectively produce a form of lifetime financial security – this report was submitted to Minister Hehr in the fall of 2016 and formally presented to the Veterans Summit in Ottawa in October 2016.

The Policy Advisory Group report concluded that “…the enhancement of the Earnings Loss Benefit/Career Impact Allowance as a single stream of income for life, the addition of Exceptional Incapacity Allowance, Attendance Allowance, and a new monthly family benefit for life will ensure all veterans receive the care and support they deserve when they need it and through their lifetime.”

“It is noteworthy that the Policy Advisory Group report emphasized that an enhanced Career Impact Allowance would be a key ingredient to New Veterans Charter reform in that a newly structured Career Impact Allowance should reflect the following standard of compensation: ‘…what would the veteran have earned in his or her military career had the veteran not been injured?’ This form of progressive income model, which would be unique to the New Veterans Charter, would have bolstered the potential lifetime compensation of a disabled veteran as to his or her projected lost career earnings as opposed to the nominal 1% increase proposed by the Minister,” Forbes stated.

He added that “this overall proposal would effectively bridge the best parts of the Pension Act and the NVC and represents a good first step to addressing the self-evident disparity between the NVC and the PA insofar as compensation is concerned and provides a form of ‘lifelong pension’ for those veterans who qualified for the benefit proposed in the model.”

Upon the election of the Liberal government in 2015, it was the fundamental expectation of the veterans’ community that this inequity would be rectified based on specific promises made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the election campaign to re-establish a “lifelong pension” and in accordance with the formal commitment contained in the Mandate Letter from the Prime Minister to the former Minister of Veterans Affairs Kent Hehr in the Fall of 2015.

Following the Minister’s announcement, Forbes stated “veterans have lost faith that the government will fulfill its commitment and eliminate the two distinct classes of benefits available to disabled Canadian Armed Forces members.”

“There is no reason that the federal government could not have implemented the recommendations made by veteran stakeholders and Ministerial advisory groups who have been advocating specific proposals for a number of years to address self-evident gaps and inequities in the New Veterans Charter,” Mr. Forbes added.

“If the ‘one veteran – one standard’ philosophy advocated by Veterans Affairs Canada has any meaning, this glaring disparity between the Pension Act and New Veterans Charter benefits for the greater majority of disabled veterans required that the Minister seize the moment and satisfy the financial needs of Canadian veterans and their dependants,” Mr. Forbes said. “The Minister has missed an opportunity to recognize that the longstanding social covenant between the Canadian people and the veterans’ community demands nothing less.”

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energysolutions · 7 years

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Speech: Launch of the Clean Growth Strategy has been published on Energy Solutions News

New Post has been published on http://www.energybrokers.co.uk/news/beis/speech-launch-of-the-clean-growth-strategy

Speech: Launch of the Clean Growth Strategy

Good morning all.

It is such a pleasure to be here today to launch our new Clean Growth Strategy. Not only because I am required to, under the Climate Change Act.

But also because I am genuinely proud of what we have achieved so far in the United Kingdom and incredibly excited about the huge opportunities for us ahead.

You may wonder why we have asked you to come to this iconic venue, scene of so much national success, this morning.

Well there are two reasons.

The first is because we are benefiting in this building from one of the UK’s biggest low-carbon combined heating, cooling and power facilities – brilliant technology that we want to see deployed much more widely.

And the second reason is… well you will have to wait for that.

Before I begin to detail all the steps we are taking, I want to thank a few people.

First, I want to thank my Secretary of State Greg Clark for his longstanding commitment to action on climate change.

From his time as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change before the 2010 election, to his work across government, he has continued to champion the urgent need to cut emissions and seize the opportunity of clean growth and he deserves a huge amount of credit for this Strategy.

Second, I want to thank Nick Hurd, my predecessor in the department.

Nick put a massive effort into developing the policies in this plan, and I was really delighted I could take the baton from him [not just to steal all the glory] but because when I took on the Strategy, he had got it to a great place.

Thanks also to my amazing team at BEIS who have been working so hard for so long to put this Strategy together.

I also want to thank the Committee on Climate Change and their tireless chairman, Lord Deben.

You don’t realise until you sit in this ministerial chair, what a brilliant piece of legislation the Climate Change Act has proved to be, holding our feet to the fire as we consider every policy choice and empowering the Committee to keep us moving forward despite the short term political cycle.

Finally, I also want to thank all of you here today for your work cajoling, prodding, challenging, sometimes praising and, yes, criticising what we do.

We are not going to tackle the risks of climate change, nor grasp the opportunities of doing so unless we work together and I thank you for your commitment to this most important of issues.

You will know the gestation of our Clean Growth Strategy has been long, at times difficult and sometimes frustrating.

But we finally have a Strategy that is ambitious, broad and binding…

Sets out clear targets….

Harnesses the power of national innovation….

And re-affirms this government’s commitment to lead the way to a low carbon future.

So, today, in launching the Clean Growth Strategy I want to focus on three things:

First, to celebrate the extraordinary success the United Kingdom has achieved in delivering clean growth over the past two decades…

Second, as Greg said, to underline the enormous industrial opportunity for us that is emerging from the global transition to a low carbon economy – and how it will benefit us right across the UK.

And third to set out why this Clean Growth Strategy is distinctive and how it helps us meet the challenges we face.

As I said to start, the reason we are all here is the 2008 Climate Change Act, which had cross-party support and was a totemic piece of legislation. Because of that legislation we have to set out our strategy to meet the upcoming carbon budgets.

But we are also here because we want to be.

As the Prime Minister said in her foreword to our new strategy: “Clean growth is not an option, but a duty we owe to the next generation.”

And I think the UK should be very proud of our record in fulfilling that duty.

We were one of the first countries to recognise both the economic and security threats posed by rising sea levels and rising high temperatures.

And we have followed the guidance provided by that scientific understanding with action.

As Greg said, since 1990, we have cut emissions by more than 40 per cent while our economy has grown by two thirds over that time.

On a per person basis, this means that we have reduced emissions faster than any other G7 nation.

And not by sacrificing growth and competitiveness – we have led the G7 group in growth in national income over that period.

Let me just repeat that – we lead the G7 group of countries in cutting our emissions and growing our economy

Proving as false the view that we couldn’t protect the planet and raise prosperity at the same time.

Our world-first 2008 Climate Change Act set the pace for change, committing us to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least eighty per cent by 2050.

And I’m pleased to tell you we are on track.

We over-performed against our first carbon budget, and are on track to do the same for the second and third. This is a fantastic achievement.

Our action at home is matched by our ambition to see action across the world.

This saw us playing a leading role in securing the agreement of 195 countries to sign up to the now historic Paris Climate Agreement…

It commits us to being among the largest contributors of international climate finance.

And it means that from the Prime Minister, Theresa May, downwards we continue to work across the world to ensure the Paris agreement and climate action are delivered and at the forefront of international action – UK leadership that has never been more needed than now.

I know many of you in this room are responsible for this incredible success.

A success which I don’t think we celebrate enough.

Well I promise to keep talking about it and to champion it on your behalf at every opportunity, home and abroad.

The commitments made by 195 countries in Paris also present an unparalleled economic opportunity.

We are seeing the start of a global shift toward clean solutions…

Low carbon ways to get from A to B…

…power and heat produced in way that helps the planet and helps people struggling with their bills…

…and heavy industry going carbon-light.

This shift offers UK businesses and innovators huge potential to shape the future of clean growth.

Because part of the reason why the UK is considered a leader in tackling climate change, is that we don’t just see it as a problem to be solved…

We see it is an opportunity, too.

So, by focusing on clean growth, we are presented with a win-win situation…

We can cut the cost of energy…

Drive economic growth…

Create high value jobs right across the UK…

And improve our quality of life.

This is precisely what our Clean Growth Strategy is about.

You will see a list of 50 major policies and plans in the Strategy Document today, with many supporting ones in the text behind them, and when implemented there will be real change

To give you just a few examples:

For businesses, the largest pool of contributors to emissions, we will help them improve how they use their energy, aiming to increase their energy productivity by at least twenty per cent by 2030, saving businesses £6 billion…

…we will establish an industrial energy efficiency scheme to help large companies cut their bills…

…and we will demonstrate international leadership in carbon capture, usage and storage, that we need to decarbonise and improve how we do business, including substantial new investment in leading edge innovation.

Our strategy will make a positive change to how we live.

We will make it easier for homeowners to make home improvements that can reduce their energy use…

…we will invest around £3.6 billion to upgrade around a million homes through the Energy Company Obligation by 2020, and extend that support to 2028…

…we will continue to support RHI (Renewable Heat Incentive)…

… we will work towards our aspiration that every home in the country will be rated Energy Performance Certificate as Band C by 2035…

And we will aim to upgrade as many private rented homes as possible where practical and affordable – helping many of those living in severe fuel poverty.

And, our Clean Growth Strategy will change the way we travel and make our air cleaner.

We have already said and reconfirm today we will end the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040…

…it will invest £1 billion supporting the take-up of ultra-low emission vehicles, including helping consumers to overcome the upfront cost of an electric car…

…and we will make sure that those cars are powered by developing one of the best electric vehicle charging networks in the world.

Indeed you may have seen the hydrogen bus outside and we will continue to support different types of low carbon transport.

I get asked all the time – so what’s the magic bullet today?

And my answer is – we don’t have one. There is no one lever we can pull.

Instead we go through every major part of our economy and every part of government to set out ways to cut the emissions and drive innovation

Whether that’s investing in research and innovation for energy efficiency…

Or building new heat networks across the country to drive down the cost of keeping homes warm…

Whatever it takes, we are determined to make a difference.

And any set of actions that hopes to combat climate change has to cover all parts of the economy

And be focused on the next few decades, not the next few years, that is why the Clean Growth Strategy is a Strategy.

It has far-reaching goals and priorities, and sets the scene for other long-term plans government will be bringing forward like the upcoming 25 year plan from my colleagues at DEFRA, the DfT’s Road to Zero and our Industrial Strategy and its Sector Deals.

Our message is clear: this needs to be a priority for our government and the country for the years ahead, for future generations and not just us today.

And now is the right time to make these decisions because the benefits are huge.

The most recent research shows that the UK’s low carbon economy could grow over 10 to 12 per cent per year up to 2030 – four times faster than the growth of the UK economy as a whole.

By that estimate that would mean – in just 13 years – the UK’s low carbon economy would support up to 2 million more jobs and export up to £170bn low carbon goods and services each year.

And I’m not just talking about jobs in London and the South East…

This impact will be felt all over the country. We’ve already seen this happen, whether it’s the Siemens wind turbine blade factory in Hull or Nissan confirming that their Leaf electric car will be produced in Sunderland.

Like I said: a win-win situation right across the country, one that we are exploiting.

You may ask: what is different about this plan?

Well, it focuses areas of action where we get clear joint benefits:

cleaner air from low emissions vehicles…

…lower energy bills from improved energy efficiency…

… reducing waste and using resources efficiently…

…and creating a more biodiverse, resilient natural environment.

It is also a true cross-government approach – with real actions from buildings to transport, and from the natural environment to power generation.

And at the heart of our Strategy is a targeted focus on innovation.

Because I fundamentally believe that it is only through innovation that we can bring down the costs of low carbon technologies.

We want low carbon to mean low cost.

Because we need low cost to protect our businesses and households from high costs, including energy costs.

But – just as important – if we can develop the low cost, low carbon technologies here, we can capture the industrial and economic advantage from the global transition we are starting to see.

Finally, if we want to see other countries, particularly developing countries, follow our lead, we need low carbon technologies to be cheap.

So we have a new triple test to help us decide how to support new technologies:

First, does this deliver maximum carbon emission reduction?

Second, can we see a clear cost reduction pathway for this technology, so we can deliver low cost solutions?

And third, can the UK develop world-leading technology in a sizeable global market?

Of course, we can’t predict every technological breakthrough – if we’d have done that a few years ago, we would have been wrong – and not all of the choices we make will be the right ones.

That is the nature of working with such fast moving technologies.

But we are determined to create the best possible ecosystem for the private sector to invest and innovate.

If we get it right, we can see the benefits, just as we have on offshore wind, and the remarkable cost reduction we have seen where the costs have plummeted 50 percent in just two years.

And we have installed the biggest offshore wind base in the world.

To achieve these sorts of wins going forward and deliver the clean growth we need, it will require everyone to play their part.

This is not a job for central government alone.

It is a job for our devolved nations, local authorities, businesses and civil society working together; ambition and drive from every part of society and government is as important as diktats from Whitehall.

That is why we are delighted to celebrate in our document some of the amazing work that is taking place across the country.

And it is why we are setting up an annual ‘Green Great Britain’ Week, to celebrate the progress we have made, showcase UK technology and leadership, and inspire and motivate us to keep going, no matter the challenges, to deliver low carbon technology.

To meet our goals, we are going to need the full ingenuity, enterprise and determination of the British people working together.

So that answers the second question as to why we are here today.

Because we want to capture the spirit of cooperation and enterprise that gave us such an amazing performance at the 2012 Olympics from Team GB…

And use it to deliver a Green GB…

There won’t be medals on offer…

But the prize for all of us will be driving and capturing the benefits and opportunities for Britain and the world of our low carbon future.

I think that’s a race we all want to win.

Thank you.

#BEIS

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itsnelkabelka · 7 years

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Speech: Prime Minister's speech to UK Japan Business Forum

Thank you. And I am delighted to be here today, together with so many leading Japanese and British businesses whose trade and investment is fundamental to the jobs and growth that underpin our shared prosperity. And I want to thank the Japan External Trade Organization for co-hosting this event, and Prime Minister Abe for his speech and for the deep and continued commitment that he is showing to the partnership between our two countries.

This is a formative period in shaping the future of my country and as we leave the European Union, so I am determined that we will seize the opportunity to become an ever more outward-looking Global Britain, deepening our trade relations with old friends and new allies around the world. And there are few places where the opportunities of doing so are greater than Japan, the third-largest economy in the world.

Japanese companies already invest over £40 billion in the United Kingdom, making the UK second only to America as Japan’s top investment destination, while over 1,000 Japanese companies already employ over 140,000 people in Britain. And, as Secretary of State Fox said, the last 12 months have seen our bilateral trade increase by more than 12% and I very much welcome the commitment from Japanese companies – such as Nissan, Toyota, SoftBank and Hitachi – whose investments over the last year represent a powerful vote of confidence in the long-term strength of the UK economy.

And on Hitachi, I’m very pleased that the Chairman, Mr Nakanishi, is delivering a speech here today. Hitachi’s relationship with the UK, in particular their investments into rail, nuclear and a range of other sectors, are truly impressive.

So, I am here together with a business delegation representing some of Britain’s biggest investors in Japan because we want to build on that momentum and because I believe that this is a good moment for like-minded partners such as Britain and Japan to be doing more together. For as we become a Global Britain – a European nation still, but one that is outside the European Union – so we will be free to engage more actively and independently, particularly in key Asian markets like Japan. And against the backdrop of a more uncertain world, it is dependable and like-minded partners such as the United Kingdom who will stand with Japan in defending the rules-based international system and the open markets on which so much of our business is based.

So, I come to this forum today seeking to lay the foundations to take our trade and investment relationship to a whole new level as we leave the European Union, and I’ve agreed with Prime Minister Abe that we will develop an ambitious programme of joint working to help achieve this.

So, we’re instructing our ministers responsible for trade, investment and business to develop a new framework, to realise our shared long-term vision, to deepen our bilateral prosperity relationship. This will be supported by business-to-government engagement to ensure it serves the needs of businesses like yours, and it will include a new Trade and Investment Working Group to deliver across our trade and innovation relationships.

Government dialogues will be established on a range of key industrial policies where we share great strengths, such as aviation, space, life sciences and advanced manufacturing. And the UK is also providing £700,000 of new funding to promote opportunities for UK businesses around Japan. And we will continue to collaborate on research and development, deepening our cooperation in this vital area and seeking to spread jobs and prosperity across all regions of our countries.

During the period before we leave the European Union, the UK will continue to champion the early signature and implementation of the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement. This will be our immediate priority, but as we leave the EU, so we will also work quickly to establish a new economic partnership between the UK and Japan based on the terms of this EU agreement.

We will also seek to ensure the freest and most frictionless trade possible between the UK and the EU, and this includes the imperative of a smooth and orderly transition for people and businesses in the UK and in Japan, in the remaining 27 Member States and for all our partners around the world.

Through all these steps, we will ensure the greatest possible confidence in our economy and we will build the closest, freest trading relationship between our two countries for when the UK leaves the European Union; that is the magnitude of our ambition and the scale of our commitment to it. And Prime Minister Abe and I look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead as we strive to achieve it, and with it to secure the jobs and investments that will bring prosperity to our peoples for generations to come.

Thank you.

Prime Minister Abe

Good afternoon. My name is Shinzō Abe. With Prime Minister May today we are able to make this address at this Business Forum between JETRO and DIT of UK who are to sign this memorandum of cooperation. We’re very happy to be able to witness this.

For Japan, the UK represents freedom, democracy, and human rights and rule of law. We share these universal values with the United Kingdom. We are global strategic partners. Security and economy are the two wheels supporting this relationship. Active trade and investment relationship between the two countries is the solid foundation of our relationship.

This time around, Prime Minister May, out of her very busy schedule, has come to Japan, and we are very, very pleased to receive her. Yesterday, we met in Kyoto. We had a chance to familiarise Prime Minister May with the tea ceremony, and we haddined in Kyoto, and we had a discussion on a number of issues in front of us.

Normally, we could have asked her to stay in Kyoto for one night, and I could have had more time – relaxing time in Kyoto, but Prime Minister May took a bullet train back to Tokyo, and this morning, a vessel – she went aboard Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force vessel, Izumo. The original Izumo was built in the United Kingdom, this vessel, so from the olden times, Japan and the UK had this bond in the area of security. This is something that I want to make mention of here.

For Japanese businesses, the UK, for manufacturing and sales and R&D in Europe, is a very important base, this country the United Kingdom. And currently in the UK, about one thousand Japanese companies have outlets, and more than 160,000 people are being employed. Through these activities by Japanese companies with leading-edge technology, innovation is being created, and through technological transfer, the domestic skill base is being enhanced and productivity and export capability is being strengthened. And with the vitalisation of local economies, Japanese businesses are making great contributions to the UK economy, supporting UK systems or society through provision of various systems, including, in the manufacturing sector, annual auto production units. There is 1.7 million and three Japanese companies’ share is about 50% of this total production.

175 years ago, Queen Victoria for the first time in the royal family took a train trip between Slough and Paddington. High-speed rail, new rolling stock was used for her travel, and that rolling stock was produced by a Japanese company. In 2014, when I visited the UK, Japanese companies manufactured high-speed rail, I took a ride on that high-speed rail, and I was able to appreciate that Japanese companies’ technology improves the daily lives of the British people. I witnessed that with great pleasure.

With the UK leaving the European Union, the UK is in the midst of change, great change. The UK’s departure from the EU has to be successful for the UK, the European Union and the global economy. It is going to be quite important that this exit is going to be a successful one. I have trust in the UK economy after Brexit. Many Japanese companies, even after the Brexit vote, have decided on new investments into the United Kingdom. This is testimony to Japanese companies’ expectations for the United Kingdom.

From the UK, in the EU exit negotiation, there has to be transparency and predictivity, to minimise any damage to businesses. We have received that commitment, and we value this greatly. Even after Brexit, the UK, for business people, it will continue to be an attractive place, a compelling place. I am convinced of that.

So today, in this Business Forum, there are many people attending both from Japan and the UK. This is a reflection of the high level of interest and expectation in each other. I do hope that this is going to be a great opportunity, under the participation and attendance of Secretary of State Fox. I do hope that there is going to be further development for trade and investment between the two countries, and I do hope that there’s going to be a lot of discussion today in this forum. There’s going to be a summit meeting with Prime Minister May this evening, and I do hope that there’s going to be a strengthened economic relationship between the two countries. We will talk about some concrete matters, about such cooperation between the two countries. I look forward to that meeting. Thank you very much.

Find out more about the PM’s visit to Japan.

from Announcements on GOV.UK http://ift.tt/2eYWoN7 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Announcements on GOV.UK

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jeremyau · 7 years

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Learning in the Thick of It

Imagine an organization that confronts constantly changing competitors. That is always smaller and less well-equipped than its opponents. That routinely cuts its manpower and resources. That turns over a third of its leaders every year. And that still manages to win competition after competition after competition.

The U.S. Army’s Opposing Force (commonly known as OPFOR), a 2,500-member brigade whose job is to help prepare soldiers for combat, is just such an organization. Created to be the meanest, toughest foe troops will ever face, OPFOR engages units-in-training in a variety of mock campaigns under a wide range of conditions. Every month, a fresh brigade of more than 4,000 soldiers takes on this standing enemy, which, depending on the scenario, may play the role of a hostile army or insurgents, paramilitary units, or terrorists. The two sides battle on foot, in tanks, and in helicopters dodging artillery, land mines, and chemical weapons.

Stationed on a vast, isolated stretch of California desert, OPFOR has the home-court advantage. But the force that’s being trained—called Blue Force, or BLUFOR, for the duration of the exercise—is numerically and technologically superior. It possesses more dedicated resources and better, more rapidly available data. It is made up of experienced soldiers. And it knows just what to expect, because OPFOR shares its methods from previous campaigns with BLUFOR’s commanders. In short, each of these very capable BLUFOR brigades is given practically every edge. Yet OPFOR almost always wins.

Underlying OPFOR’s consistent success is the way it uses the after-action review (AAR), a method for extracting lessons from one event or project and applying them to others. The AAR, which has evolved over the past two decades, originated at OPFOR’s parent organization, the National Training Center (NTC). AAR meetings became a popular business tool after Shell Oil began experimenting with them in 1998 at the suggestion of board member Gordon Sullivan, a retired general. Teams at such companies as Colgate-Palmolive, DTE Energy, Harley-Davidson, and J.M. Huber use these reviews to identify both best practices (which they want to spread) and mistakes (which they don’t want to repeat).

OPFOR treats every action as an opportunity for learning—about what to do but also, more important, about how to think.

Most corporate AARs, however, are faint echoes of the rigorous reviews OPFOR performs. It is simply too easy for companies to turn the process into a pro forma wrap-up. All too often, scrapped projects, poor investments, and failed safety measures end up repeating themselves. Efficient shortcuts, smart solutions, and sound strategies don’t.

Instead of producing static “knowledge assets” to file away in a management report or repository, OPFOR’s AARs generate raw material that the brigade feeds back into the execution cycle.

For companies that want to transform their AARs from postmortems of past failure into aids for future success, there is no better teacher than the technique’s master practitioner. OPFOR treats every action as an opportunity for learning—about what to do but also, more important, about how to think. Instead of producing static “knowledge assets” to file away in a management report or repository, OPFOR’s AARs generate raw material that the brigade feeds back into the execution cycle. And while OPFOR’s reviews extract numerous lessons, the group does not consider a lesson to be truly learned until it is successfully applied and validated.

Learning to Be OPFOR

The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR), which has played the Opposing Force (OPFOR) for more than a decade, is a brigade of regular U.S. Army soldiers. In the current environment, every Army unit that is deployable has been activated—including the 11th ACR, which is now overseas.

It will return. In the meantime, a National Guard unit that fought side by side with the 11th ACR for ten years has assumed the OPFOR mantle. This new OPFOR faces even greater challenges than the regular brigade did. It is smaller. It comprises not professional soldiers but weekend warriors from such companies as UPS and Nextel. And it recently gave up its home-court advantage and traveled to BLUFOR’s home base when that unit-in-training’s deployment date was moved up.

Nonetheless, the Army is satisfied that this new OPFOR—now one year into its role—is successfully preparing combat units for deployment to the Middle East. It has managed that, in large part, by leveraging the after-action review (AAR) regimen it learned from the 11th ACR. It is difficult to imagine a more dramatic change than the wholesale replacement of one team by another. That the new OPFOR has met this challenge is powerful evidence of the AAR’s efficacy to help an organization learn and adapt quickly.

The battlefield of troops, tanks, and tear gas is very different from the battlefield of products, prices, and profits. But companies that adapt OPFOR’s principles to their own practices will be able to integrate leadership, learning, and execution to gain rapid and sustained competitive advantage.

Why Companies Don’t Learn

An appreciation of what OPFOR does right begins with an understanding of what businesses do wrong. To see why even organizations that focus on learning often repeat mistakes, we analyzed the AAR and similar “lessons learned” processes at more than a dozen corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies. The fundamentals are essentially the same at each: Following a project or event, team members gather to share insights and identify mistakes and successes. Their conclusions are expected to flow—by formal or informal channels—to other teams and eventually coalesce into best practices and global standards.

Mostly though, that doesn’t happen. Although the companies we studied actively look for lessons, few learn them in a meaningful way. One leader at a large manufacturing company told us about an after-action review for a failed project that had already broken down twice before. Having read reports from the earlier attempts’ AARs—which consisted primarily of one-on-one interviews—she realized with horror after several grueling hours that the team was “discovering” the same mistakes all over again.

A somewhat different problem cropped up at a telecom company we visited. A team of project managers there conducted rigorous milestone reviews and wrap-up AAR meetings on each of its projects, identifying problems and creating technical fixes to avoid them in future initiatives. But it made no effort to apply what it was learning to actions and decisions taken on its current projects. After several months, the team had so overwhelmed the system with new steps and checks that the process itself began causing delays. Rather than improving learning and performance, the AARs were reducing the team’s ability to solve its problems.

We also studied a public agency that was running dozens of similar projects simultaneously. At the end of each project, team leaders were asked to complete a lessons-learned questionnaire about the methods they would or would not use again; what training the team had needed; how well members communicated; and whether the planning had been effective. But the projects ran for years, and memory is less reliable than observation. Consequently, the responses of the few leaders who bothered to fill out the forms were often sweepingly positive—and utterly useless.

Those failures and many more like them stem from three common misconceptions about the nature of an AAR: that it is a meeting, that it is a report, or that it is a postmortem. In fact, an AAR should be more verb than noun—a living, pervasive process that explicitly connects past experience with future action. That is the AAR as it was conceived back in 1981 to help Army leaders adapt quickly in the dynamic, unpredictable situations they were sure to face. And that is the AAR as OPFOR practices it every day.

More than a Meeting

Much of the civilian world’s confusion over AARs began because management writers focused only on the AAR meeting itself. OPFOR’s AARs, by contrast, are part of a cycle that starts before and continues throughout each campaign against BLUFOR. (BLUFOR units conduct AARs as well, but OPFOR has made a fine art of them.) OPFOR’s AAR regimen includes brief huddles, extended planning and review sessions, copious note taking by everyone, and the explicit linking of lessons to future actions.

The AAR cycle for each phase of the campaign begins when the senior commander drafts “operational orders.” This document consists of four parts: the task (what actions subordinate units must take); the purpose (why the task is important); the commander’s intent (what the senior leader is thinking, explained so that subordinates can pursue his goals even if events don’t unfold as expected); and the end state (what the desired result is). It might look like this:

Task:

“Seize key terrain in the vicinity of Tiefort City…

Purpose:

“…so that the main effort can safely pass to the north.”

Commander’s Intent:

“I want to find the enemy’s strength and place fixing forces there while our assault force maneuvers to his flank to complete the enemy’s defeat. The plan calls for that to happen here, but if it doesn’t, you leaders have to tell me where the enemy is and which flank is vulnerable.”

End State:

“In the end, I want our forces in control of the key terrain, with all enemy units defeated or cut off from their supplies.”

The commander shares these orders with his subordinate commanders—the leaders in charge of infantry, munitions, intelligence, logistics, artillery, air, engineers, and communications. He then asks each for a “brief back”—a verbal description of the unit’s understanding of its mission (to ensure everyone is on the same page) and its role. This step builds accountability: “You said it. I heard it.” The brief back subsequently guides these leaders as they work out execution plans with their subordinates.

Later that day, or the next morning, the commander’s executive officer (his second in command) plans and conducts a rehearsal, which includes every key participant. Most rehearsals take place on a scale model of the battlefield, complete with hills sculpted from sand, spray-painted roads, and placards denoting major landmarks. The rehearsal starts with a restatement of the mission and the senior commander’s intent, an intelligence update on enemy positions and strength, and a breakdown of the battle’s projected critical phases. Each time the executive officer calls out a phase, the unit leaders step out onto the terrain model to the position they expect to occupy during that part of the action. They state their groups’ tasks and purposes within the larger mission, the techniques they will apply in that phase, and the resources they expect to have available. After some discussion about what tactics the enemy might use and how units will communicate and coordinate in the thick of battle, the executive officer calls out the next phase and the process is repeated.

As a result of this disciplined preparation, the action that follows becomes a learning experiment. Each unit within OPFOR has established a clear understanding of what it intends to do and how it plans to do it and has shared that understanding with all other units. The units have individually and collectively made predictions about what will occur, identified challenges that may arise, and built into their plans ways to address those challenges. So when OPFOR acts, it will be executing a plan but also observing and testing that plan. The early meetings and rehearsals produce a testable hypothesis: “In this situation, given this mission, if we take this action, we will accomplish that outcome.” OPFOR is thus able to select the crucial lessons it wants to learn from each action and focus soldiers’ attention on them in advance.

Such before-action planning helps establish the agenda for after-action meetings. Conversely, the rigor of the AAR meetings improves the care and precision that go into the before-action planning. As one OPFOR leader explained to us: “We live in an environment where we know we will have an AAR, and we will have to say out loud what worked and what didn’t. That leads to asking tough questions during the planning phase or rehearsals so that you know you have it as right as you can get it. No subordinate will let the boss waffle on something for long before challenging him to say it clearly because it will only come out later in the AAR. As a consequence, AAR meetings create a very honest and critical environment well before they begin.”

The reference to AAR meetings—plural—is important. While a corporate team might conduct one AAR meeting at the end of a six-month project, OPFOR holds dozens of AARs at different levels in a single week. Each unit holds an AAR meeting immediately after each significant phase of an action. If time is short, such meetings may be no more than ten-minute huddles around the hood of a Humvee.

It is common for OPFOR’s AARs to be facilitated by the unit leader’s executive officer. Virtually all formal AAR meetings begin with a reiteration of the house rules, even if everyone present has already heard them a hundred times: Participate. No thin skins. Leave your stripes at the door. Take notes. Focus on our issues, not the issues of those above us. (The participants’ commanders hold their own AARs to address issues at their level.) Absolute candor is critical. To promote a sense of safety, senior leaders stay focused on improving performance, not on placing blame, and are the first to acknowledge their own mistakes.

The AAR leader next launches into a comparison of intended and actual results. She repeats the mission, intent, and expected end state; she then describes the actual end state, along with a brief review of events and any metrics relevant to the objective. For example, if the unit had anticipated that equipment maintenance or logistics would be a challenge, what resources (mines, wire, ammo, vehicles) were functioning and available?

The AAR meeting addresses four questions: What were our intended results? What were our actual results? What caused our results? And what will we sustain or improve? For example:

Sustain:

“Continual radio commo checks ensured we could talk with everyone. That became important when BLUFOR took a different route and we needed to reposition many of our forces.”

Sustain:

“We chose good battle positions. That made it easier to identify friends and foes in infantry.”

Improve:

“When fighting infantry units, we need to keep better track of the situation so we can attack the infantry before they dismount.”

Improve:

“How we track infantry. We look for trucks, but we need to look for dismounted soldiers and understand how they’ll try to deceive us.”

One objective of the AAR, of course, is to determine what worked and what didn’t, to help OPFOR refine its ability to predict what will work and what won’t in the future. How well did the unit assess its challenges? Were there difficulties it hadn’t foreseen? Problems that never materialized? Yes, it is important to correct things; but it is more important to correct thinking. (OPFOR has determined that flawed assumptions are the most common cause of flawed execution.) Technical corrections affect only the problem that is fixed. A thought-process correction—that is to say, learning—affects the unit’s ability to plan, adapt, and succeed in future battles.

More than a Report

At most civilian organizations we studied, teams view the AAR chiefly as a tool for capturing lessons and disseminating them to other teams. Companies that treat AARs this way sometimes even translate the acronym as after-action report instead of after-action review, suggesting that the objective is to create a document intended for other audiences. Lacking a personal stake, team members may participate only because they’ve been told to or out of loyalty to the company. Members don’t expect to learn something useful themselves, so usually they don’t.

OPFOR’s AARs, by contrast, focus on improving a unit’s own learning and, as a result, its own performance. A unit may generate a lesson during the AAR process, but by OPFOR’s definition, it won’t have learned that lesson until its members have changed their behavior in response. Furthermore, soldiers need to see that it actually works. OPFOR’s leaders know most lessons that surface during the first go-round are incomplete or plain wrong, representing what the unit thinks should work and not what really does work. They understand that it takes multiple iterations to produce dynamic solutions that will stand up under any conditions.

Five Ways to Put AARs to Work at Work

The U.S. Army’s standing enemy brigade (referred to as OPFOR) applies the after-action review (AAR) process to everything it does, but that’s not realistic for most companies. Business leaders must act selectively, with an eye toward resources and potential payoffs. Don’t even think about creating an AAR regimen without determining who is likely to learn from it and how they will benefit. Build slowly, beginning with activities where the payoff is greatest and where leaders have committed to working through several AAR cycles. Focus on areas critical to a team’s mission so members have good reason to participate. And customize the process to fit each project and project phase. For example, during periods of intense activity, brief daily AAR meetings can help teams coordinate and improve the next day’s activities. At other times, meetings might occur monthly or quarterly and be used to identify exceptions in volumes of operational data and to understand the causes. The level of activity should always match the potential value of lessons learned. Here are some ways you can use AARs, based on examples from companies that have used them effectively.

For example, in one fight against a small, agile infantry unit, OPFOR had to protect a cave complex containing a large store of munitions. BLUFOR’s infantry chose the attack route least anticipated by OPFOR’s commanders. Because scouts were slow to observe and communicate the change in BLUFOR’s movements, OPFOR was unable to prevent an attack that broke through its defense perimeter. OPFOR was forced to hastily reposition its reserve and forward units. Much of its firepower didn’t reach the crucial battle or arrived too late to affect the outcome.

OPFOR’s unit leaders knew they could extract many different lessons from this situation. “To fight an agile infantry unit, we must locate and attack infantry before soldiers can leave their trucks” was the first and most basic. But they also knew that that insight was not enough to ensure future success. For example, scouts would have to figure out how to choose patrol routes and observation positions so as to quickly and accurately locate BLUFOR’s infantry before it breached the defense. Then staffers would need to determine how to use information from observation points to plan effective artillery missions—in the dark, against a moving target. The next challenge would be to test their assumptions to see first, if they could locate and target infantry sooner; and second, what difference that ability would make to them achieving their mission.

OPFOR’s need to test theories is another reason the brigade conducts frequent brief AARs instead of one large wrap-up. The sooner a unit identifies targeting infantry as a skill it must develop, the more opportunities it has to try out different assumptions and strategies during a rotation and the less likely those lessons are to grow stale. So units design numerous small experiments—short cycles of “plan, prepare, execute, AAR”—within longer campaigns. That allows them to validate lessons for their own use and to ensure that the lessons they share with other teams are “complete”—meaning they can be applied in a variety of future situations. More important, soldiers see their performance improve as they apply those lessons, which sustains the learning culture.

Not all OPFOR experiments involve correcting what went wrong. Many involve seeing if what went right will continue to go right under different circumstances. So, for example, if OPFOR has validated the techniques it used to complete a mission, it might try the same mission at night or against an enemy armed with cutting-edge surveillance technology. A consulting-firm ad displays Tiger Woods squinting through the rain to complete a shot and the headline: “Conditions change. Results shouldn’t.” That could be OPFOR’s motto.

In fact, rather than writing off extreme situations as onetime exceptions, OPFOR embraces them as learning opportunities. OPFOR’s leaders relish facing an unusual enemy or situation because it allows them to build their repertoire. “It’s a chance to measure just how good we are, as opposed to how good we think we are,” explained one OPFOR commander. Such an attitude might seem antithetical to companies that can’t imagine purposely handicapping themselves in any endeavor. But OPFOR knows that the more challenging the game, the stronger and more agile a competitor it will become.

More than a Postmortem

Corporate AARs are often convened around failed projects. The patient is pronounced dead, and everyone weighs in on the mistakes that contributed to his demise. The word “accountability” comes up a lot—generally it means “blame,” which participants expend considerable energy trying to avoid. There is a sense of finality to these sessions. The team is putting a bad experience behind it.

“Accountability” comes up a lot during OPFOR’s AARs as well, but in that context it is forward-looking rather than backward-looking. Units are accountable for learning their own lessons. And OPFOR’s leaders are accountable for taking lessons from one situation and applying them to others—for forging explicit links between past experience and future performance.

At the end of an AAR meeting, the senior commander stands and offers his own assessment of the day’s major lessons and how they relate to what was learned and validated during earlier actions. He also identifies the two or three lessons he expects will prove most relevant to the next battle or rotation. If the units focus on more than a few lessons at a time, they risk becoming overwhelmed. If they focus on lessons unlikely to be applied until far in the future, soldiers might forget.

At the meeting following the infantry battle described earlier, for example, the senior commander summed up this way: “To me, this set of battles was a good rehearsal for something we’ll see writ large in a few weeks. We really do need to take lessons from these fights, realizing that we’ll have a far more mobile attack unit. Deception will be an issue. Multiple routes will be an issue. Our job is to figure out common targets. We need to rethink how to track movement. How many scouts do we need in close to the objective area to see soldiers? They will be extremely well-equipped. So one thing I’m challenging everyone to do is to be prepared to discard your norms next month. It’s time to sit down and talk with your sergeants about how you fight a unit with a well-trained infantry.”

Immediately after the AAR meeting breaks up, commanders gather their units to conduct their own AARs. Each group applies lessons from these AAR meetings to plan its future actions—for example, repositioning scouts to better track infantry movements in the next battle.

OPFOR also makes its lessons available to BLUFOR: The groups’ commanders meet before rotations, and OPFOR’s commander allows himself to be “captured” by BLUFOR at the conclusion of battles in order to attend its AARs. At those meetings, the OPFOR commander explains his brigade’s planning assumptions and tactics and answers his opponents’ questions.

Beyond those conferences with BLUFOR, formally spreading lessons to other units for later application—the chief focus of many corporate AARs—is not in OPFOR’s job description. The U.S. Army uses formal knowledge systems to capture and disseminate important lessons to large, dispersed audiences, and the National Training Center contributes indirectly to those. (See the sidebar “Doctrine and Tactics.”) Informal knowledge sharing among peers, however, is very common. OPFOR’s leaders, for example, use e-mail and the Internet to stay in touch with leaders on combat duty. The OPFOR team shares freshly hatched insights and tactics with officers in Afghanistan and Iraq; those officers, in turn, describe new and unexpected situations cropping up in real battles. And, of course, OPFOR’s leaders don’t stay out in the Mojave Desert forever. Every year as part of the Army’s regular rotation, one-third move to other units, which they seed with OPFOR-spawned thinking. Departing leaders leave behind “continuity folders” full of lessons and AAR notes for their successors.

Doctrine and Tactics

The lessons produced and validated by the U.S. Army’s Opposing Force (OPFOR) and the units it trains at the National Training Center (NTC) in Fort Irwin, California, contribute to the Army’s two classes of organizational knowledge. One class, known as Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP), focuses on how to perform specific tasks under specific conditions. It is the responsibility of each unit leader to build her own library of TTP by learning from other leaders as well as by capturing good ideas from her subordinates. Two unit leaders in the same brigade may need to employ different TTP to address different conditions.

Sufficiently weighty, widely applicable, and rigorously tested TTP may ultimately inform the Army’s other class of organizational knowledge: doctrine. Doctrine—which rarely changes and is shared by the entire Army—establishes performance standards for the kinds of actions and conditions military units commonly face. For example, many of the steps in the doctrine for a brigade-level attack (such as planning for mobility, survivability, and air defense) began life as lessons from the NTC and other Army training centers.

The difference between doctrine and TTP is a useful one for businesses, some of which draw few distinctions among the types of knowledge employees generate and about how widely diverse lessons should be applied and disseminated.

In an environment where conditions change constantly, knowledge is always a work in progress. So creating, collecting, and sharing knowledge are the responsibility of the people who can apply it. Knowledge is not a staff function.

The Corporate Version

It would be impractical for companies to adopt OPFOR’s processes in their entirety. Still, many would benefit from making their own after-action reviews more like OPFOR’s. The business landscape, after all, is competitive, protean, and often dangerous. An organization that doesn’t merely extract lessons from experience but actually learns them can adapt more quickly and effectively than its rivals. And it is less likely to repeat the kinds of errors that gnaw away at stakeholder value.

Most of the practices we’ve described can be customized for corporate environments. Simpler forms of operational orders and brief backs, for example, can ensure that a project is seen the same way by everyone on the team and that each member understands his or her role in it. A corporate version, called a before-action review (BAR), requires teams to answer four questions before embarking on an important action: What are our intended results and measures? What challenges can we anticipate? What have we or others learned from similar situations? What will make us successful this time? The responses to those questions align the team’s objectives and set the stage for an effective AAR meeting following the action. In addition, breaking projects into smaller chunks, bookended by short BAR and AAR meetings conducted in task-focused groups, establishes feedback loops that can help a project team maximize performance and develop a learning culture over time.

Every organization, every team, and every project will likely require different levels of preparation, execution, and review. However, we have distilled some best practices from the few companies we studied that use AARs well. For example, leaders should phase in an AAR regimen, beginning with the most important and complex work their business units perform. Teams should commit to holding short BAR and AAR meetings as they go, keeping things simple at first and developing the process slowly—adding rehearsals, knowledge-sharing activities and systems, richer metrics, and other features dictated by the particular practice.

While companies will differ on the specifics they adopt, four fundamentals of the OPFOR process are mandatory. Lessons must first and foremost benefit the team that extracts them. The AAR process must start at the beginning of the activity. Lessons must link explicitly to future actions. And leaders must hold everyone, especially themselves, accountable for learning.

By creating tight feedback cycles between thinking and action, AARs build an organization’s ability to succeed in a variety of conditions. Former BLUFOR brigades that are now deploying to the Middle East take with them not just a set of lessons but also a refresher course on how to draw new lessons from situations for which they did not train—situations they may not even have imagined. In a fast-changing environment, the capacity to learn lessons is more valuable than any individual lesson learned. That capacity is what companies can gain by studying OPFOR.

A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review.

#entrepreneurship #startup #founders #entrepreneur

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martechadvisor-blog · 7 years

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How Airlines Can Ride Off into the Sunset with Satisfied Customers

Dave O’Flanagan, CEO of Boxever says that although some airlines are successfully adopting customer personalization strategies, there is still a significant gap in personalization the travel sector. He further explains why cross-channel personalization is vital to weave together customer touchpoints and build a more customized experience

Traveling can be a stressful event for many, from booking flights to experiencing last minute delays and cancellations. These stressors are exacerbated during holiday seasons, which see a massive increase in travelers on the road and in the air. According to the Bureau of Transportation, long-distance travel during the 6-day Thanksgiving holiday increases by 54 percent. And with the school year ending soon, many families will be packing their bags for the summer vacation season, hoping for a seamless travel experience.

Though the need for personalization is not limited to one season a year, stressful holiday travel highlights consumers’ desire for experiences that show how airlines are equipped to cater to their specific wants and needs. Some airlines are catching on, relying upon machine learning to make better decisions stemming from customer data.

Not only can data improve the customer journey by eliminating areas of friction where airline communication may conflict with real-time experiences, but it can also improve inventory management. For example, Ryanair added extra flights to and from Dublin around the St. Patrick’s Day holiday due to record demand, analyzing and acting upon data to satisfy a broader group of travelers. Either way, data serves as the strongest asset for brand building while also increasing revenue opportunities – and getting closer to consumers as they map out travel plans.

Although some airlines are executing successful personalization strategies, there is still a gap in the travel market begging to be addressed. Cross-channel personalization is still needed to weave together interactions that happen across space and time. Consumers are interacting with brands via web, phone, social media and beyond. There is a surplus of available data and limitless opportunities to provide a customer with exactly what they want when they least expect it. With the world of marketing automation continuing to evolve and grow, marketers have a unique opportunity to use these new tools to their advantage, so that any action taken at the channel level is informed by the bigger picture of an individual customer’s collective behaviors and preferences with the brand.

For airlines who have yet to dive in with both feet, here are some tips to tackle the onslaught of customer data and create more personalized touchpoints with the consumer:

Prepare for what’s ahead with a solid foundation: Particularly during high-volume holiday travel seasons, it is imperative that airlines are combing through the reams of customer data they are accumulating, and acting upon it in a timely manner. Utilizing a centralized platform that pools together data from different channels ensures that nothing slips through the cracks. Rather than having to manually merge different datasets, marketers can see things more clearly – and begin to make informed decisions based on what a customer really wants, knowing the context of all they’ve experienced with a brand in one setting.

Seize opportunities to engage in the moment with real time response: A disgruntled customer whose flight has been unexpectedly cancelled during their summer vacation trip with their family Thanksgiving travel week will expect the airline to right their wrong, and to do so quickly. With a consolidated database view of the customer, airlines can better understand all activity to isolate next steps when something changes along the way. Time is of the essence to make things right. Having access to cross-channel data allows airlines to build a broader picture of the customer for more rapid response, rather than expecting manual updates or relying upon automated decisioning that may not account for activity on other channels – face-to-face at the airport, in particular. By understanding the customer journey, decisioning tools are less prone to sloppy errors that can be brand damaging (like sending a “How was your flight?” email to that frazzled passenger right after it has been cancelled).

Use artificial intelligence as a tool to create meaningful moments with the customer: With AI’s help, brands can become better acquainted with their customers, providing them with information they are certain will be valuable to them. This allows them to go the extra mile (pun intended) to deliver not only what the customer expects, but proving a deeper understanding of customer preferences and surprise them with new offers that show superior care. By sorting through, processing, and evaluating the best communication given the context of each individual interaction, customers can receive 1:1 service and attention while allowing brands to still grow and scale to reach new audiences.

The rise of machine learning – and its many unknowns – can prove overwhelming to many, yet there’s no need to let high-volume travel days become high-stress situations, whether you are a consumer or an airline marketer. With the right technology, you can navigate the unknowns and find new ways to reach your customer, no matter where they are headed – or how they get there. Allowing personalization to lead the way enables the customer to focus on enjoying the trip, feeling more connected to your brand in the process.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

#martech #marketing #technology #business #cmo

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commonalgorithm-blog1 · 7 years

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Wholesaling In The Real Estate Market

Residential financial investment buildings do not just work as an area to reside in but also an area that could offer a continual circulation of revenue as soon as you turn it right into a rental home. After that, when the surge comes and everybody else is rushing to obtain licensed, you're already well on your method to an effective career as well as will not throw away as much time or run the risk of attempting to learn how to offer in a market that is as well busy to stay on par with. Ask them if they mind if you offer them a call occasionally with a question or two. Scott Yancey is the very best resource of details since he is one of the best people in the real estate world. Second, you are needed making a huge down payment after the bidding. Focus on just what has to be improved A lot of run-down properties have inadequate air flow, damaged electrical wiring, and poor pipes. Flipping and buy as well as hold are both common investing approaches. In the real estate company, you have the flexibility to pick exactly what building to buy and also how you desire to do it. Keep in mind, all leading developers in our nation grew at this scorching rate on evaluations, utilizing land as the growth engine. A good real estate education program or course will also help below. If you attend his course, you will have the ability to understand real estate right from the pro. As well as certainly, you can always offer the seized quantity at a greater value, that ought to be in the residential property's value. Utilize these four steps to examine the evidence whenever you experience anxiety. He employed a person to trim the bushes and also yard as well as make the location look a lot better. Ensure to select quite skilled and very experienced drivers (like myself), as experience is the # 1 aspect that will identify chance of success.

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What Can You Do To Generate A Significant Earnings In The Real Estate Company?

Learn the abilities they utilize to obtain the bargains as well as shut them. You should have it renovated first prior to you can use it. Besides, you desire the residential property to be flipped the proper way.

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deniseyallen · 7 years

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Rob's Rundown: Week of February 27 - March 3, 2017

Monday, February 27

Portman Invites Teamsters Local 416 President Nick “Sonny” Nardi to Attend Joint Session of Congress

On Monday, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) announced that Nicky “Sonny” Nardi, President of Teamsters Local 416, will accompany him as his guest to President Trump’s Joint Session of Congress:

“Sonny is a good friend and a terrific ambassador for Ohio workers, and I’m pleased that he will be joining me for the Joint Session of Congress,” said Portman. “As a Teamster for the past 35 years, Sonny exemplifies the kind of hard work and dedication that Ohio workers are known for. I’ve been proud to partner with him and the Teamsters on our efforts to protect Ohio jobs and stop retirees from facing pension cuts as large as 70 percent through no fault of their own. I look forward to continuing to work closely together with him on behalf of the tens of thousands of Ohio Teamsters he represents.”

“I look forward to attending the speech tomorrow night, and I want to thank Rob for the invitation. The Teamsters of Ohio will continue to work with Senator Portman and other members of Congress on jobs, pensions, and the issues our members care about,” said Sonny Nardi, President of Teamsters Local 416, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Ohio D.R.I.V.E., and Recording Secretary of Teamsters Joint Council 41.

NOTE: Portman praised the Treasury’s decision last year rejecting the application from the Central States Pension Fund to reduce benefits for its workers by up to 70 percent. Portman, who is the author of the Pension Accountability Act, was vocal in urging the Department of the Treasury to reject Central States’ plan, calling instead on all involved parties to seek out a better solution

Fraternal Order of Police Endorses Bipartisan STOP Act

Support for Senator Portman’s bipartisan Synthetics Trafficking & Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act continues to build in Ohio and across the country. On Monday, the Fraternal Order of Police urged support for the bill, saying:

“The legislation will close the loophole and allow CBP to effectively enforce customs laws that will stop the flow of deadly synthetic drugs into our communities from China. Law enforcement is always the first on the scene of an overdose and our members have seen far too many lives destroyed by this terrible epidemic. This bill will help prevent more synthetic drugs being trafficked into our communities.”

Portman introduced the bipartisan bill with Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to help stop dangerous synthetic drugs like fentanyl and carfentanil from being shipped through our borders to drug traffickers here in the United States. Bipartisan companion legislation has also been introduced in the House. As he did in the fight to get his bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) signed into law, Portman is working to pass the STOP Act through Congress so the president can sign it into law. As he raises awareness on the national stage and continues to tour Ohio meeting with those on the front lines of the addiction epidemic, support for this critically important legislation continues to grow.

The Ohio Fraternal Order of Police has also endorsed the bill. See the full letter of endorsement from the National Fraternal Order of Police here.

Tuesday, February 28

Portman Statement on President Trump’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress

Portman released the following statement ahead of President Trump’s address to the Joint Session of Congress:

“Tonight President Trump has the chance to bring a divided nation together and I hope he seizes that opportunity. I hope he’ll focus on a common-sense agenda to create more jobs and higher wages, help the most vulnerable among us, and restore America’s leadership in the world.

“I am optimistic that by working together we can make progress for the country, especially when it comes to creating more jobs and economic growth. We have a real opportunity to reform our broken tax code to help create more jobs with better wages, give small businesses regulatory relief, and bring down the cost of living—especially the cost of health care—for middle-class families. President Trump has expressed support for these measures, as well as for priorities of mine like stopping human trafficking and turning the tide of the drug addiction epidemic. I’m ready to work with him, his administration, and anyone else, Republican or Democrat, toward solutions that address these issues.”

Portman reacted to the speech in a video posted on social media.

Wednesday, March 1

Portman Introduces the Pension Accountability Act to Protect Ohio Retirees in Troubled Multi-Employer Pension Plans

Portman introduced the Pension Accountability Act to help protect Ohioans from having their hard-earned pensions cut with no say in the process. Portman’s bill aims to give workers and retirees a seat at the table when a looming multi-employer pension bankruptcy may require major pension cuts.

“Ohio retirees facing potential pension cuts deserve to have a voice in the process, and this bill fixes that,” Senator Portman stated. “Ohio workers have worked long hours for years, played by the rules, and paid into their pensions for decades. As a matter of basic fairness, they deserve a role in determining how to bring these pensions to solvency.”

“We, as active and retired participants in troubled multiemployer pension funds, appreciate Senator Portman and his staff’s commitment to give us a fair vote on any application for pension cuts,” said Mike Walden, Ohio teamster and Chairman of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, speaking on behalf of all retirees in troubled multiemployer plans. “Since the MPRA 2014 was enacted in December 2014, Senator Portman has fought for the participants in these funds to ensure they have a voice and seat at the table, which will help lead to a more fair and equitable solution to all.”

“I’m pleased Senator Rob Portman is reintroducing the Pension Accountability Act,” said Steven Sprague, a 44-year member of the Southwest Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters Pension Plan. “The MPRA’s treatment of unreturned ballots as automatic ‘yes’ votes for any cuts is unacceptable, and this important bill will allow pension participants of multiemployer pensions a fair vote on their earned pensions.”

NOTE: The Pension Accountability Act has no taxpayer cost. Original cosponsors include Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and Deb Fischer (R-NE). The bill improves the Multi-employer Pension Reform Act (MPRA) in two ways:

First, for struggling pension plans seeking cuts, it will make the participant vote binding in all situations. This will give the workers and retirees a seat at the table to influence the solvency reforms. Their majority vote will be required for any pension cuts to occur.

Second, it will make this vote fair by counting only the ballots that are returned. Unreturned ballots will no longer be counted as a “yes” vote.

Portman praised the Department of the Treasury’s decision last year to reject the application from the Central States Pension Fund to reduce benefits by up to 70 percent. He was vocal in urging the Treasury to reject Central States’ plan, calling instead on all involved parties to seek a better solution.

Portman, Udall Introduce Bill to Fund Conservation Programs

On Wednesday, Portman and Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced the Multinational Species Conservation Funds Semipostal Stamp Reauthorization Act, legislation to extend a special postage stamp that funds conservation programs. This legislation is being introduced in advance of World Wildlife Day on Friday, which celebrates and raises awareness about wildlife.

“We owe it to our kids and to our grandkids to preserve our planet’s rich wildlife and natural resources for them and for future generations to enjoy,” said Portman. “Reauthorizing this stamp program to help fund conservation—at no cost to the taxpayer—is a step that can raise millions of dollars toward that, and I am hopeful my Senate colleagues will join me and continue this successful program for four more years.”

For more information about the bill, go here.

Thursday, March 2

Senators Portman, Markey, Cornyn and Bennet Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Make Innovative Home-based Primary Care Medicare Program Permanent

Senators Portman, Edward J. Markey (D-MA), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) reintroduced legislation (S.464) to convert the Independence at Home (IAH) demonstration into a permanent, national Medicare program. Independence at Home is an innovative, team-based model that is bringing measurable, high-quality care to patients suffering from multiple debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, congestive heart failure, diabetes and Parkinson’s, while significantly lowering costs for the Medicare program.

Independence at Home empowers teams of doctors, care givers and other health care professionals to coordinate and provide primary care services in the comfort of patients’ own homes, reducing unnecessary emergency room visits and avoidable hospitalizations and readmissions, as well as the costs associated with them. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Independence at Home payment model saved more than $25 million in its first performance year alone, an average of $3,070 per participating beneficiary.

“The Independence at Home program works, and I've seen that firsthand in Northeast Ohio,” said Senator Portman. “It has made a difference by reducing hospital readmissions, preventing costly hospital and nursing home admissions, and, most importantly, keeping our seniors healthy and in their preferred care setting. Our bipartisan legislation would make the program permanent so that it can continue to help, and make it accessible to Medicare beneficiaries in Ohio and across the nation so that it can help more of our seniors.”

For more information about the bill, go here.

Friday, March 3

Portman Visits Jewish Community Center of Greater Columbus and Meet Ohio Jewish Leaders

On Friday, Portman visited the Jewish Community Center of Greater Columbus and met with Ohio Jewish leaders to discuss the recent threats to Ohio communities. Portman’s visit came as Jewish Community Centers around the country, including in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, have become the target of bomb threats. Portman has been outspoken against these hateful acts.

from Rob Portman http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/rob-s-rundown?ContentRecord_id=B2AD3DBA-7BB8-4F8B-8FF5-59BF21D8DBDE

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talabib · 6 years

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How To Find Your Calling And Your Legacy.