The Green Can

The Green Can

People are always complaining how we are not helping the environment enough and disposing waste that can be recycled. This is why I think this green can is a good idea.  It gives people an opportunity, or a choice to recycle instead of no choice. How are people suppose to recycle all the time if there is no option to recycle? The only option you have to recycle is if you want to pay for it. This is also why the green can is a good idea. Its free of charge. I know for a fact if I had the option, I would always recycle. Its effortless, and does some good for the environment. I am no environmentalist by any means, but I would have no problems using this easy system. I think they need to make the cans in a way that they do not make the area look trashy. I also think they should put a lot of thought into where they are going to have these cans. Overall I strongly feel people anywhere would participate in this system. People might not only be giving clothes for recycling, they may also be wanting to clean out their closet, and this is an easy way of doing it. 

Making money from the Maasai

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business-week

Making money from the Maasai

This article shows the importance of not using what doesn’t belong to you. Should a company use the Maasai for their gain if the Maasai is not gaining from it as well? They are expecting food and electricity from the gain in profit in which they have not personally seen. If you are going to make a profit from something or someone then the other party should know. I would hate to find out that I was donating to a charity in which exploited cancer patients, but kept the money for themselves and never gave any money to the patients or hospital. It would be a nice thought that charity and “good cause” promotions were always using good intentions, but I know that is not always the case. People are a lot of times, surprisingly, out for their own good. They could care less a lot of the time. It may be sad that people are not as good as they pretend to be, but that is just the world we live in.

Fit To Be Tied

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business-week

Fit To Be Tied

This may not be exactly what this article is poking at, but what came to my attention while reading this is how attention to detail can make or break a possible future business. Being in the military will force you to pay attention to detail. The military will always look sharp, takes care of their uniform, be clean shaven, have shined shoes, have a lined-up gig line, and all other things well maintained. This is a huge reason that the military has such a dominant presence. People respect the military for how well they keep themselves. It is the same in the business world. It is hard for anyone to get anywhere if they have gross facial hair, rugged clothing, etc… Appearance is everything when trying to make a positive impression. These people who pay attention to these little details will go farther whether they are more qualified than others or not. You may be an extremely intelligent person, but if you look sloppy, than someone who may not be as qualified as you but looks well-maintained will be promoted or acknowledged over you. In the military, if your uniform appears flawless, but the guy next to you has his shoes more shined than yours, he will get a better review because he spent the extra time to make his shoes look good. There are many ways to make yourself stand out beyond the social norm that you are competing against. Depending on the situation, put in the extra effort and good things will come.

Don’t let your …

Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.
~Colin Powell

No one should ever get a big head in their work. Once a person has become too cocky, they lose the respect of those who are below them. Not many people want to work for someone who thinks they are way above the system. A good leader should be able to relate to his or her subordinates. They should be able to relate with that person while keeping a professional status. It should be clear that they are not buddy buddy with each other, just giving a generous gesture showing that he or she cares for their subordinates. Let your actions speak more than your words. A good boss will not talk himself up ever, or he shouldn’t anyways. People should be able to see how hard of a worker one is by their activity in the job sight. Unless you are Tom Cruise and have an ego writing checks, I wouldn’t want the reputation of having a big ego.

“If one does no…

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

~Lucius Annaeus Seneca

This quote represents the indecisive world we live in. The future is never a for sure thing, but there has to at least be a plan to cope with possible future events and to have an idea of what direction to head in. If someone does not know what they are doing, they need to stop and think before they continue to go down the wrong path. This reminds me more literally of the movie Dumb and Dumber when they drive “half way around the country in the wrong direction.” Its like if your job was to haul bales of hay. If you lose focus and misunderstand what your boss said, and work on making sure that hay gets to a ranch out in west Texas then find out it should have been taken to a ranch in central Texas, you have wasted a lot of time and money. This can relate to the more structured business world too. If a company starts off with a lot of business but the customer service starts to get bad, then your company has not planned on the future and what would happen if they did not focus more on their customer service. Its the little things that can mislead a company. Its the things as small as customer service that, if one does not know what they are trying to accomplish, they are going to run themselves into the ground. Every mistake will cost someone time and money.

“Effort only fu…

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business-quotes

“Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.”

~Napoleon Hill

There are not many people in this world that would not want to become rich without doing any work. Most people want fame and fortune without putting in the effort. But when you have nothing, you try to achieve your goals no matter what it takes. Although this obviously is not the case for a lot of the people in our country, most people should not want to live off the welfare of others. Only when a person has truly shown his or her will to succeed in something is when he or she has put in effort. Everyone has put in effort toward something. Even drug addicts put in effort by making sure they do whatever it takes to get that drug. Most wealthy people are well off because they have put in the effort needed for them to get where they are. For the most part, getting rewarded in money or wealth is not by coincidence.

Opinion in Newsmagazines: A Do or Don’t?

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business-week

Many magazines convey opinion. Whether people agree with it or not, people are going to have complex views almost like a forum. I think magazines are just like a hard copy of a printed out forum of whatever subject you decide to observe. Some people may think that giving opinions and not facts in such magazines like Forbes. Some may also believe that opinions of people may give insight that one may have not ever thought of. People might think that the opinions give magazines personality. I know when I am reading a magazine I would not want the entire magazine being a bunch of opinions toward a subject because the magazine would lose complete credibility with me. On the other hand, I do like to hear peoples view points because perhaps I may have had the same experience and can relate to what that person is talking about. For example, I am interested in hunting newsmagazines. If a hunting magazine had nothing but facts, then each issue would be about half the size. It is nice to hear about what other people have experienced and I can listen to their input of what they might have thought was the reason, for example, of an animals reaction toward a certain scent they were wearing. Having opinions in the right quantities lets the reader think of things that he may not have thought about without reading about others thought processes.

Communication and HR: Why it Matters

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business-week

Communication is the most important aspect in the business world. Without the proper use of communication, people would not be efficient at their jobs. In this article, they made a survey about leadership. They found that “senior leadership failed on a variety of levels in effectively informing employees about the impact of the financial crisis.” This was due to their lack of technological skills. They have not been as educated on modern technology as younger managers have been. Communication is everything in business. You will always have to get in touch with your employees or else nobody will know what work they need to be doing. For example, the Naval Academy students used to meet everyday at a certain time to pass word. This was a huge inconvenience for those who needed that time to study, sleep or even practice for whatever team they played on. Well now they use email and text messages to pass word. Everyone is expected to have a phone that can text and have a computer that can send and receive emails. This way they are much more efficient and can get much more done without having to take time out of their day to meet. They turned an hour process into the short time it takes to receive a text message. It would make sense why senior managers may be a step behind in communication. They may be using their old methods of communicating that just are not getting the job done anymore. They will have to get with the times and become more modernized in their work.

Being right at the wrong time

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BusinessWeek

This article caught my attention because it pertains to nearly everyone I know. People are constantly predicting when certain technology is going to be used and how it is going to be used in the future. The “Chairman of Time Warner Gerald Lavin is quoted as saying he envisaged a future where when “I turn on my television, I’ll be able to switch to anything, anywhere”.  This was on the 12th of July back in 1993. I imagine, just like today where many of us think that the predictions people are making now seem a little far fetched, that back then people were probably thinking the same thing about Gerald Lavin’s predictions. We truly may not know what the next big thing will be in technology, but I will for sure take those seemingly far fetched claims serious. It gets me thinking that our country may be able to advance at a much higher rate if we prepare to advance with the technology we may not have yet. Because then when our technology does hit those critical points, we will be able to follow through with what our country is trying to improve on.

There are no se…

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business-2

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Colin Powell

I thought this quote was very significant in the business world. Success will never come to anyone by chance. There is a reason people are successful. In the business world, one must make intelligent assumptions based on the successes and failures from those in the past. Once one has put in the hard work needed to establish themselves as a serious competitor, they can take an educated risk. It is just like the saying it takes money to make money. Nobody will ever be successful unless they plan, work hard, and learn from their past and the past of others.