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亲们，亲们~~ 又是周三了哦，这是周四的作业~ 我来监督大家~~ 哇咔咔
大家一起加油吧！！！【Speed】
Time 1: Innovative companies don’t feel failure
[attachimg=214,178]109582[/attachimg] The world's most innovative companies welcome and harness failure to help them devise more successful ideas. That's according to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit examining what it is that characterises the most innovative companies.
Cultivating business-led innovation found that innovative companies actively gather feedback and ideas from everywhere they can. Fifty-four percent of the top innovators we surveyed said they pour over customer comments – be they positive or negative - and scrutinise customer data for clues to effective future innovations. They recognise that collecting many ideas is the first step to identifying the great ones.
Yet almost half the respondents to the survey said that their companies have no system in place that helps them learn from failures. Moreover, many companies are not effectively capitalising on internal resources that might foster innovation.
One reason for this, the report argues, is that creating openness is a major challenge for many companies, especially larger firms, which are more likely to silo their innovation than smaller firms.
IT departments, in particular, tend to be underutilised, the EIU found. Half of survey respondents said the primary responsibility of their IT department is to implement innovations. Yet the as the report points out, IT has the potential to generate innovations of its own, educate staff about key new technologies and scout for innovators inside the company.
This is particularly important because the areas which appear to offer the greatest opportunity for innovation are of disruptive new technologies, big data and social media. But executives said that a lack of knowledge of how best to leverage these technologies, plus security concerns, remain challenges – so much so that just 15 per cent of the executives surveyed said that they are given free rein to explore and embrace these technology trends.
(301words)
Time 2:
Highly Educated Have Biggest Debt Problems
It’s widely accepted that unscrupulous bankers tricked unknowing consumers into loans they could not afford, leading to the financial crisis. No doubt, plenty of that occurred—underscored Wednesday with a $1 billion federal suit against Bank of America’s mortgage arm Countrywide Financial.
But it turns out the “victoms” were not, by and large, unsophisticated rubes. A new study finds that highly educated Americans were most likely to take on unmanageable debt in the pre-crisis years. What’s more, gross personal financial mismanagement occurred across the population and not just in the mortgage market and not just among the unsophisticated.
The study draws a line at the point where monthly payment on household debt equals 40% of income. That’s where default or bankruptcy becomes most likely should the household experience a decline in income, say researchers led by Sherman Hanna, professor of consumer sciences at Ohio State University.
Overall, the percentage of Americans exceeding this 40% threshold jumped to 27% in 2008, from 17% in 1992. College graduates were more likely to be in this group than those without a degree, according to the study. Those describing themselves as optimistic about the future also were among the most likely to have unmanageable debts, the study found.
Says Hanna:
“People who piled on debt may have been too optimistic about their economic future, but you can’t blame that on a lack of education. People with college educations may have thought they were immune to any economic problems.”
(250words)
Time 3:
Meanwhile, folly in the mortgage markets was only part of the problem. One in three renters had unmanageable debts, versus just one in five homeowners, the study found. The percentage of homeowners who had heavy debt burdens increased to 22% in 2007 from 15% in 1992. But the increase was even more dramatic for renters, going to 35% from 20%.
Says Hanna:
“The percentage of renters who piled on debt really surprised me. It shows that the financial crisis wasn’t all about housing speculation. There was too much debt in all parts of the economy.”
None of this minimizes the foul play of bankers as detailed so masterfully in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short. Indeed, the suit against Bank of America charges that the bank’s home loan program, known as “the hustle,” was designed to churn out mortgages without proper checks. The bank would collect fees and sell the mortgages into the secondary market.
The government alleges the program was “intentionally designed to process loans at high speed and without quality checkpoints, and generated thousands of fraudulent and otherwise defective residential mortgage loans.”
Clearly, lots of homeowners were duped. But many signed the loan papers without reading them and bear some culpability, as surely as renters who ran up their credit cards. It’s time to stop pretending that people with resources or a good education necessarily know what they are doing with their money. Financial ignorance afflicts all classes and leaves us vulnerable to another financial crisis at any time.
(250words)
Time 4:
Conflict presses Syrian Economy
[attachimg=330,218]109583[/attachimg]
Eighteen months of conflict in Syria have hurt the country's economy. But in the capital, Damascus, a certain level of normalcy exists. Prices are higher. But goods are still available.
VOA reporter Elizabeth Arrott recently visited Damascus. Her visit took place under the guidance of a Syrian government official.
She says the Spice Market of Old Damascus is an unusual sight in a country affected by civil war. Syrian military forces are striking nearby towns were rebels have support. But in the center of Damascus, business is good.
One man operates a business once owned by his father and grandfather. He sells cumin, dried peppers, pine nuts and almonds.
He says work is about the same, but prices have gone up. This has affected both his customers and business. He is thankful that supplies are still arriving at his shop. But he says people are cutting back, and mainly buying only essential goods.
Another shopkeeper says business has fallen.
"You know we live in a very difficult atmosphere, the atmosphere of crisis."
Afif Dala is with the Syrian Ministry of Economy and Trade. He says Western restrictions on Syria for its violent reaction to government opponents have caused problems. But the government has worked to keep business in the capital normal.
"But the Syrian economy actually depends on itself. There is a self-sufficiency in the Syrian economy because the Syrian economy is very diverse."
Syria, however, also seeks help from outside the country. Russia, China and Venezuela are major trade partners of Syria.
"There are a lot of countries, actually, because finally the interests, the economic interests between countries are talk, not anything else. It is not a moral thing, the Syrian economy, only; also its interests.
(291words)
剩余：
But conditions in Syria are important to other countries. This is especially true when many thousands of people have been killed in violence across Syria. This has forced tens of thousands of people to cross the border to escape the conflict.
This week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized Syria at a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul. He said actions of Turkey's neighbor are "hurting the heart of humanity and the whole Islamic world."
Mr. Erdogan said there are almost one hundred thousand Syrian refugees in Turkey. And he expects more will enter as they flee fighting between Syrian government and rebel forces.
(108 words)
Time 5:
Women view 'corporate game' with disdain
Fat salaries, fast cars and "playing the corporate game" are of little or no interest to ambitious senior business women. What they look for are companies with "culture".
So says the Women Leaders Speak Out survey based on interviews with more than 650 women above director and senior management level.
The research, by diversity training company Eve-olution, found that women want a corporate environment that recognises that their strengths and skills are different from male colleagues but equally intrinsic to the organisation's success.
Rather than a brash, aggressive culture they are attracted to a "cultured" environment and companies that embrace men and women as equal but different in the boardroom, the survey suggests.
Such companies need to be highly sophisticated in their training and development of staff, positively reward effort and achievement and place a value on communication, team building and relationships, it added.
But many women polled said they feel firms often only pay lip service to equality and diversity - despite having high-profile employment policies in place - and they would rather leave than accept the status quo.
More than two thirds believed they had were not recognised or promoted on an equal basis to men, and eight out of 10 agreed that companies did not place a high enough value on skills such as communication, team building and relationships.
More than eight out of 10 also believed that not enough time and money was invested in training men and women to work more effectively together, while a similar proportion said that having a female role model was important for career success.
Tracey Carr, chief executive of Eve-olution, said: "Women want the debate to move away from family and childcare issues to the more challenging areas of stereotypes, perceptions and prejudices.
"It is vital that companies recognise and acknowledge gender differences and encourage open discussion around the issues," she added.
Clare Logie, director, women in business at Bank of Scotland, said organisations needed to "work to understand and appreciate the subtleties around challenges for today's female leaders".
And Jan Babiak, managing partner information systems assurance and advisory services at Ernst & Young, said the issue was not positive discrimination, as many men thought, but "creating a people and service proposition that delivers very real competitive advantage".
(384 words)
【Obstacle】:
A road map for employee engagement
[attachimg=590,418]109584[/attachimg]
Now that we have identified the key drivers of employee engagement, we can start to create – and implement - a road map for achieving outstanding organisational performance through the Service-Profit Chain.
Enhance leadership. Business journals are brim full with articles about leadership. Ignore them – they are all far too complicated. Effective organisational leadership is simple:
have a vision of where you want to get to,
clearly and persuasively communicate that vision to employees, and
be consistent in your behaviours as strive to achieve that vision. Do this and your employees will follow. Fail and you will be out there on you own.
Involve your people and value their input. Business journals are also brim full with articles about change. Ignore these too because they typically start from the Machiavellian premise that "people hate change".
This is nonsense of course. People LOVE change – in fact they can hardly get enough of it.
Through the 1990s the UK DIY retail multiples experienced growth of over 185 per cent and in 2004 the sector was estimated to be enjoying a turnover of just over £7.3 billion. People hate change? And when the paint brushes and electric drills are put away for the night, these same people are tuning-in to makeover shows and gardening programmes.
People hate change? No, if people are involved in change (Do It YOURSELF) and their input to the process is valued they will readily engage with it.
Look after your reputation. If the world believes that your organisation is a poor "corporate citizen" they will tell your people. If your employees believe what they hear they will increasingly distance themselves from the business. And if they don't, they will get increasingly frustrated if they see that you are doing nothing to correct these misperceptions.
Either way, organisations that proactively manage their reputations will also enjoy higher levels of employee engagement.
Could it be any simpler?
Well, actually, it could – because a common theme runs through all three stages of the process: COMMUNICATION.
And a major study by Watson Wyatt – Connecting Organisational Communication to Financial Performance – has given us the ultimate end-to-end measurement: from key driver of employee engagement (communication) to shareholder return on activity.
The research found that "a significant improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a 29.5 per cent increase in market value" and that "companies with the highest levels of effective communication experienced a 26 per cent total return to shareholders from 1998 to 2002, compared to a -15 per cent return experienced by firms that communicate least effectively".
Effective communications create engaged employees create loyal customers who in turn create bigger profits
Furthermore, they found that organisations that communicate effectively were "more likely to report employee turnover rates below or significantly below those of their industry peers."
In short: Effective Communications create Engaged Employees create Loyal Customers who in turn create Bigger Profits.
But we need to be clear about what is being said here. The report highlights the return on effective COMMUNICATION, not information. And communication is not just about telling people what you want them to do or are about to do to them – it is about genuine two-way dialogue with both employees and the outside world. And although this is simple it is not easy.
In fact it is going to be REALLY DIFFICULT to implement because there are four substantial barriers in place in most organisations:
Managers do not see communication as part of their day job. Most managers focus on "hard" measures, delivering the required outcomes on time, on budget, and on target. The "soft" stuff is all too often done on the side of the desk, as an extra-curricular activity, or abdicated to Personnel.
Giving people the information and instructions they need to achieve these outcomes is clearly part of the manager's role. Communication, however, is still seen as "soft" stuff, even though the reality is that it is the hardest driver of organisational performance managers have at their disposal.
Managers have not developed their communication skills. Human beings are, bar none, the most effective natural communicators in the animal kingdom. A change in inflection, the tilt of the head and a knowing look can convey the most subtle nuances and utterly transform the meaning of a sentence.
But this is NATURAL one-on-one or one-on-few communication using techniques our species has evolved over millennia and which we have practiced as individuals throughout our lives. ORGANISATIONAL communication operates on a totally different scale and uses thoroughly unnatural tools.
Mobile phones, email, PowerPoint, teleconferencing – all are immensely powerful tools for communicating with a large, widely spread audience but all have been blamed for our failure to communicate effectively.
Why? Because our natural communication skills are so good we take it for granted that we will be competent organisational communicators too.
We are therefore making the assumption that we can use unnatural tools to engage with an unnaturally large audience without acquiring any additional skills. Naturally we are wrong!
Communication channels are absent, inappropriate, or over-subscribed. Decades of failing to take organisational communications seriously means that in many businesses appropriate channels have not been created or effectively maintained.
As the head of internal communications for a major blue-chip corporation recently commented "a decade ago the 'internal communications department' was an ex-journalist who churned out the employee newsletter once a month".
Now things have moved on considerably, but even within progressive organisations there is still a legacy of poor channel infrastructure, usage and management to be tackled.
Communication around corporate citizenship is disjointed. Like internal communications, "community communications" is a new and developing discipline which is working through a host of legacy issues. Foremost amongst these are the need for organisations to enter into a true dialogue with the communities within which they operate and for all of the positive interactions within these communities to be "joined up".
Again much progress has been made, but although Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) teams have done great work in gathering and promoting a wide range of issues, few companies could claim a truly strategic approach. And even fewer could claim that CSR is owned by each and every employee, which is where it needs to be if employees are to feel personal ownership and pride in the organisation they work for.
A manifesto for outstanding organisational performance
It is clear, therefore, that employee engagement is a major driver of organisational performance. And effective organisational communication is a significant driver of employee engagement.
If, as I do, you find the argument persuasive and you want to begin the process of breaking down the barriers to successfully harnessing the Service-Profit Chain for your organisation, I believe that you should sign-up to the following four-point manifesto:
Education: Every manager in your organisation must understand how effective communication drives performance
Development: Every manager in your organisation must recognise the difference between natural and organisational communication and commit to developing the required skills
Infrastructure: The organisation must invest in the development and maintenance of appropriate channels of communication
Community: The organisation must actively mange its reputation as corporate citizen and positively engage employees and the wider community alike
This is a simple plan, but it is not a sequential plan – all four areas can, and should, be tackled simultaneously.
This means that it will not necessarily be an easy plan to deliver, but business leaders MUST deliver because with almost nine out of 10 employees currently being either "disengaged" or just "moderately engaged" at work, the opportunity to drive outstanding organisational performance is simply too enormous to ignore.
(1264 words)
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发表于 2012-11-7 17:42:48
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楼主
，是我方法不对么？