Viewing by month: July 2009

Jul 29 2009

The Most Important Thing to Learn Before You Graduate

In a best-case scenario, we learn both career skills and money skills before leaving school, but most schools do not offer much in the way of financial education. The evidence is all around us in this recession: even people who excel in academics are at risk of life-long insecurity if they do not learn how to manage their money.

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Categories: Education | Management Skills | Finance | Economics | Optimism

8 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 4:44 PM

Jul 14 2009

The Healthcare Questions We're NOT Asking

From the White House to the Wall Street Journal to the table next to you at Starbuck's, everyone seems to be talking about healthcare. Except that they're not. What people are debating right now is how to pay for healthcare. That's a tough enough question, but society might be better served by asking some tougher questions first.

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Categories: Education | Nutrition | Finance | Leadership | Economics | Ethics | Environment

7 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 9:44 PM

Jul 8 2009

The Deficit Tightrope

This New York Times article does a great job explaining the very tricky path our government must navigate, incurring deficits big enough to stimulate a recovery without spending so much we scare off creditors or trigger massive inflation. 

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Categories: Finance | Leadership | Economics

1 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 1:28 PM

Jul 1 2009

Don't Overlook Democracy as a Management Model

An organization called WorldBlu was formed in 1997 to champion the growth of democratic organizations. Founder Traci Fenton identifies ten principles of organizational democracy, including transparency, accountability, decentralization, fairness, dignity, and choice.

Principle six on WorldBlu's list, Individual + Collective, was more or less enshrined in the Kinko's Philosophy, which stated, "...we encourage independent thinking and teamwork."  This presents one of the great challenges of a democratic workplace, and one of the greatest benefits. The advantage of balancing independent thinking and teamwork comes from the unleashing of individual creativity. The challenge is the balance itself - keeping that creativity directed toward advancement of the organization's goals.

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Categories: Corporate Culture | Customer Service | Management Skills | Leadership | Ethics | Competitive Advantage

4 comments - Posted by Paul Orfalea at 7:24 AM