This is the 450th blog post with job articles.
Dec. 16, 2016 "Why you should ask your staff to dream on the job": Today I found this article by Brian Scudamore in the Globe and Mail. I found it inspiring:
Feb. 3, 2017 "We need leaders with uncommon sense": Today I found this article by Roy Osing in the Globe and Mail:
Dec. 16, 2016 "Why you should ask your staff to dream on the job": Today I found this article by Brian Scudamore in the Globe and Mail. I found it inspiring:
Recently, I found a picture I drew as a four-year-old. It’s just a simple drawing of me cleaning up junk, complete with a little push broom. At the time, there was obviously no way I could have known I’d grow up to start 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. Looking at this little scrap of paper proves one thing to me: the simple act of writing things down has magic.
Okay, maybe not magic, but it’s more than coincidence. Studies have shown people are 42 per cent more likely to achieve something if it’s written down.
That’s why we ask our team at O2E Brands, “Can you imagine?” Then we write down their big, hairy, audacious goals on the wall at our headquarters to ensure they stay top-of-mind.
Empowering our people to complete passion projects that align with the company’s broader vision has a huge impact on momentum and engagement. It’s also resulted in some of our biggest achievements, from appearing on Oprah, to expanding to Australia, to being the subject of a Harvard Business Review case study.
Empowering our people to complete passion projects that align with the company’s broader vision has a huge impact on momentum and engagement. It’s also resulted in some of our biggest achievements, from appearing on Oprah, to expanding to Australia, to being the subject of a Harvard Business Review case study.
Here’s how you can create a “Can You Imagine?” wall for yourself, your company, or your employees, to keep everyone pushing towards achieving their wildest daydreams.
Get the creative juices flowing
The first step to successful brainstorming is to create a space where ideas can unfold, without self-censoring or limits. No matter how ridiculous something seems, jot it down. The goal is to get your team into what occupational psychologists call a flow-state, where you’re fully absorbed and enjoying the process.
It’s easy to get things started by asking pointed questions. Things like,
If this company could do anything, what would it be?
What market would be incredible to reach?
Then, dig a little deeper into the answers: If you want to expand to Australia, what does it look like out the window from your imaginary Aussie office?
Picturing a specific scene is key to turning fantasy into reality.
If this company could do anything, what would it be?
What market would be incredible to reach?
Then, dig a little deeper into the answers: If you want to expand to Australia, what does it look like out the window from your imaginary Aussie office?
Picturing a specific scene is key to turning fantasy into reality.
Use the whole wall
So you’ve got your key list of goals. The next step is so obvious that most people forget:
Write them down where you’ll see them, day after day. Visuals stick with us: only 10 per cent of verbal information gets retained, but we can recall 65 per cent of visual info we receive.
Write them down where you’ll see them, day after day. Visuals stick with us: only 10 per cent of verbal information gets retained, but we can recall 65 per cent of visual info we receive.
At our office, I’ve designated an entire wall for sharing our business dreams. In the center are the words “Can You Imagine?” Our ideas radiate out from there – no hierarchy or special order.
Anybody from our team can suggest goals for the wall at any point, and if they’re right for the brand, I’ll order up a special decal and add it to the wall. Paint or markers work, too – the point is to instill some sense of permanency.
Anybody from our team can suggest goals for the wall at any point, and if they’re right for the brand, I’ll order up a special decal and add it to the wall. Paint or markers work, too – the point is to instill some sense of permanency.
After several years, the wall becomes a fantastic mix of aspirations for the future and reminders of goals we’ve actually achieved: a testament to what dreaming can accomplish.
Throw out strategy
The “Can You Imagine” wall isn’t meant to be an obligation or a burden, with deadlines and deliverables.
It’s supposed to be quiet background motivation: subliminal but powerful.
Simply by posting these ideas, our brains start looking for connections and spotting opportunities when they arise.
It’s supposed to be quiet background motivation: subliminal but powerful.
Simply by posting these ideas, our brains start looking for connections and spotting opportunities when they arise.
Several years ago, I was getting frustrated looking for a second business for our company to invest in and had pretty much given up. But the goal was still up there on the wall. When I least expected it, I stumbled onto the opportunity to start WOW 1 DAY PAINTING and was able to move beyond the junk industry.
It may sound silly, but it’s amazing what happens when you just put something out there, let it marinate and wait.
It may sound silly, but it’s amazing what happens when you just put something out there, let it marinate and wait.
Right now, I’m working with my daughter’s school to put up a “Can You Imagine?” wall because dreaming big just isn’t encouraged enough in schools. In fact, the rules in educational institutions often do the opposite.
But if we start encouraging kids to think outside the box and create a space for them to stretch their imaginations, imagine what the next generation could accomplish in business – and beyond.
But if we start encouraging kids to think outside the box and create a space for them to stretch their imaginations, imagine what the next generation could accomplish in business – and beyond.
Brian Scudamore is the founder and CEO of O2E Brands, which includes home-service companies like 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. He’s a people-person and passionate entrepreneur who helps others take the lead in their small business.
Feb. 3, 2017 "We need leaders with uncommon sense": Today I found this article by Roy Osing in the Globe and Mail:
“Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by (common to) nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.”
If organizations are to successfully meet the economic and competitive challenges of contemporary markets, they need leaders who don’t rely on “common sense” to guide them.
Individuals who don’t “perceive, understand and judge things ...” like everyone else.
Leaders who don’t look through a lens shared with the crowd to problem solve and innovate; who don’t expect a shared solution to miraculously cure their specific ills and enable them to gain a strategic advantage over their competitors.
Application of the common sense in this way isn’t helpful.
How does applying what is commonly held as fact “... without any need for debate” stimulate innovation and creativity?
How does it help build a culture that challenges the status quo and is curious to try new ways of doing things?
An important issue in organizations today is the reliance on “best practices” to make strategic change.
Strategic success does not come from applying a cookie cutter approach where a best practice is transposed from one organizational context to another.
It might come close to improving work processes and operating systems of the copycat, but it does so for every other organization trying to make them their own.
Everyone clusters together; no operational advantage for any member of the herd is conferred.
And strategic advantage is gained by no one.
The common sense is herd mentality; it represents the lowest common denominator thinking.
It is a safe haven for those who believe there is safety in numbers; that to do what everyone else does offers a “comfort blanket” for protection.
After all, if 100 other organizations incorporated this system, it must be the best approach, right?
We don’t need copycat leaders.
We need leaders who observe the common sense, but are not compliant with it. Who view a best practice as a benchmark to deviate from by adding their own twist to it.
Leaders who are driven to discover uncommon sense to provide their organization with unique solutions that the crowd hasn’t discovered.
Who can see opportunity in differences rather than similarities.
Who change the conversation in their organizations from “Who is best in class and how can we copy them?” to “How can we be unique and go in a different direction?”
Who encourage debate over common principles and accepted dogma.
Who encourage their teams to cast off the common and look for a contrarian approach.
The common sense is a questionable leadership concept; it will not prepare organizations to be unique and special in our crazy competitive world.
It will continue to propagate sameness and mediocrity.
Roy Osing (@RoyOsing), former executive vice-president of Telus, is a blogger, educator, coach, adviser and the author of the book series, Be Different or Be Dead.
coolman
3 days ago
We are on the right track here. The leading nation of the free world has got one already.
2 Reactions
RSouthward
3 days ago
The amazing thing about common sense is that it is not that common. An organization does not need to be completely contrarian to succeed. What they need of their leaders is courage to believe in a vision. However, beyond a basic vision the enormous challenge of execution could and should rely on many proven methods and systems.
3 Reactions
Roger Lounsbury
3 days ago
Decision making tools that help overcome the trap of common sense have been around for more than 70 years. At the outset of the second would war Britain used operations research to allocate its fighter plane resources in a counter intuitive way.
This set up the conditions for victory in the Battle of Britain and ultimately Britain's and our survival and victory in the war. After the war, the US and Britain adapted these methods into systems engineering approaches that are at the core of the West's current supremacy in military technology.
Unfortunately, only limited use of these methods have penetrated industrial and government policy circles. Culturally, managers and leaders just don't like to diminish discretionary decision making styles through greater reliance on modelling and analysis.
This set up the conditions for victory in the Battle of Britain and ultimately Britain's and our survival and victory in the war. After the war, the US and Britain adapted these methods into systems engineering approaches that are at the core of the West's current supremacy in military technology.
Unfortunately, only limited use of these methods have penetrated industrial and government policy circles. Culturally, managers and leaders just don't like to diminish discretionary decision making styles through greater reliance on modelling and analysis.
Intuitive decision making by those with authority seems to be central to the human condition. Business schools and other leadership for a don't seemed to have made much of a dent in this bias
2 Reactions
Disgusted with The Globe
3 days ago
Unfortunately, to be a politician you must be clearly certified to be lacking in the traits outlined in this great article!
My week:
Sun. May 31, 2020 A old woman buys college kid's textbooks: I found this on Facebook:
A bookstore worker recently wrote this Facebook post describing an encounter with a “little old lady” who shocked everyone at the register. The post has since gone viral, and for good reason. Read it below.
Posted by Christine Turel
I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Anywho, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car ‘OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!’
She piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (‘Wooooosh’ she says, making a wave gesture with her hand.
Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favourite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.
Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favourite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.
Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.
He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, boldly takes them out of his hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with an intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says ‘you need chocolate.’ She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolate and putting them in her pile.
‘It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.’
The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: ‘My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.’
https://onlineenewz.today/bookstore-employee-writes-this-on-facebook-after-little-old-lady-shocks-everyone-at-the-register/?fbclid=IwAR1CLZIoeNEbc-bXcAwQL90pneQkqHf2W7qGLaKW7oJWShdAAtqMPJL-BrU
May 30, 2020 2 dogs reunite from same litter: I saw this on Facebook. The 2 dogs were separated for 10 months when they were each adopted into different families. They bump into each other when their owners were walking them. It's so cute with 2 dogs hugging each other. I like it when animals act like humans.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?cid=sm%3Atrueanthem%3Actvnews%3Apost&clipId=1965376&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0rXWW_0TQ-vSZZ_32Jh-BPXTYse_FtW3NVJseXcwVTP-f2BS0P7tT9s1A
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/viral-tweet-two-dogs-same-litter-reunite-hug-twitter-a4448441.html
Evolve your brain by Joe Dispenza: I was looking at my dad's books and he bought this at a thrift store. I have heard of the author's name through those self-development videos I listened to. This was on Amazon:
Take Your First Step Toward True Evolution
Ever wonder why you repeat the same negative thoughts in your head? Why you keep coming back for more from hurtful family members, friends, or significant others? Why you keep falling into the same detrimental habits or limiting attitudes―even when you know that they are going to make you feel bad?
Dr. Joe Dispenza has spent decades studying the human mind―how it works, how it stores information, and why it perpetuates the same behavioral patterns over and over. In the acclaimed film What the Bleep Do We Know!? he began to explain how the brain evolves―by learning new skills, developing the ability to concentrate in the midst of chaos, and even healing the body and the psyche.
Evolve Your Brain presents this information in depth, while helping you take control of your mind, explaining how thoughts can create chemical reactions that keep you addicted to patterns and feelings―including ones that make you unhappy. And when you know how these bad habits are created, it's possible to not only break these patterns, but also reprogram and evolve your brain, so that new, positive, and beneficial habits can take over.
This is something you can start to do right now. You and only you have the power to change your mind and evolve your brain for a better life―for good.
https://www.amazon.ca/Evolve-Your-Brain-Science-Changing/dp/0757307655
My opinion: I have a few emails/ blog posts saved into my drafts about the brain and neuroplasticity because I'm interested in psychology. However, I don't know if I'm going to be able to read 400- something pages about this topic.
I can read 400- something pages about jobs, careers, business, and how to be productive, etc. You can tell by reading my blog where I copy and paste all these job articles I read.
You don't know this, but I do have a few news articles about parenting. I saved them because they are well-written. I haven't posted them because I don't want to be a parent and I don't work with kids. I am posting news articles that I'm interested in.
Jun. 1, 2020 Rereading job articles: During the quarantine I was spending a lot of time on my Work from Home job search.
Now I am rereading job articles that I had read once when it was first published from 2017-2019. I am bolding the parts I like and making my comments on them.
Jun. 2, 2020 Reitman's close 2 brands:
The Montreal-based company, which filed for protection from its creditors on May 19, announced on Monday that it will permanently close 77 Addition Elle and 54 Thyme Maternity stores over the course of the summer. The retailer also said it will lay off 1,100 employees at its retail stores and 300 workers at its head office as it continues the restructuring process.
The decision leaves Reitmans with its namesake brand, Penningtons and RW&Co.
I was rereading those job articles yesterday and I found this:
Jul. 14, 2018 "Making short work: what to expect from the gig economy": Today I found this article by Sarah Kessler in the Globe and Mail:
Traditional jobs are not likely to disappear any faster than offline stores are (nearly 25 years after the launch of Amazon, e-commerce is, after all, still only 16 per cent of U.S. retail).
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-making-short-work-what-to-expect-from-the-gig-economy/
Jun. 4, 2020 Madeleine McCann believed to be dead:
German authorities investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are working on the basis that she is dead.
The McCanns have said the lead could be “very significant”.
Madeleine disappeared in May 2007 during a family holiday in the Algarve, Portugal, with parents Kate and Gerry McCann and her twin siblings Sean and Amelie. Her parents were eating with friends nearby when she went missing.
It happened shortly before her fourth birthday.
The man is said to be white, with short blonde hair and about six feet tall, and had a slim build when Madeleine went missing.
Christian Hoppe, from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, told the country’s ZDF television channel the 43-year-old is serving time for a sex crime and has two previous convictions for “sexual contact with girls”.
Jun. 5, 2020 "Edmonton police chief orders investigation of 'humiliating' photo of drug arrest": I read this in the Edmonton Journal first and now it's on Yahoo:
Edmonton police Chief Dale McFee has ordered a formal professional standards investigation into the posting of a photo of two officers posing with a shirtless and handcuffed man who was arrested while allegedly high on drugs.
McFee ordered the investigation on Monday, the same day CBC News first revealed that Const. Mike Roblin had posted the photo, which critics called humiliating, on his Instagram account.
"This matter was brought to the attention of Chief McFee on Monday, June 1, 2020, and he immediately determined it would be investigated by the Professional Standards Branch," the Edmonton Police Service said Tuesday in a statement to CBC News.
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/edmonton-police-chief-orders-investigation-213419828.html
My opinion: Where do I start?
Pros:
1. The guy who was arrested, his face is scratched out so you can't ID him.
Cons:
1. The cop Mike Roblin looked really unprofessional because he is posting his work on Instagram, he is a cop in uniform in this picture.
Not only does he look unprofessional and reflects badly on him, but it reflects badly on all of the Edmonton Police Service.
2. In the article:
Dr. Hakique Virani, a specialist in addiction and public health at the University of Alberta, told CBC News the photo would undermine attempts to get people who are struggling with addiction to seek help.
"This is not the type of thing that helps us earn their confidence and trust. And I worry that it will push those folks further out to the margins and not give us access to help," he said.
Virani, who also has an inner-city clinic, said it was "disappointing because I do know some police officers who are sincerely trying to understand and help people who are struggling with substances [abuse], poverty or homelessness."
I want to add: I didn't think about people with addiction not going to the police for help after this photo until I read Virani's comment.
3. Lesson: What you do on the internet, stays on the internet. There are times even when you delete it, someone takes a screenshot of this.
Please be careful on what you post.
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