 |  | HP Global citizenship Business ethicsguided by enduring values |
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President George W. Bush tours the control room at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant Thursday, June 21, 2007, in Athens, Ala. White House photo by Chris Greenberg
"By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To help develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce most greenhouse gas emissions, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China. In addition to this long-term global goal, each country would establish midterm national targets and programs that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs."
-- President George W. Bush
 |  | Marcelo Justo BBC Mundo |
Siempre se dice que los británicos son idiosincrásicos, que manejan del otro lado, tienen el volante del auto también cambiado y se caracterizan por su excentricidad, sea por la manera de vestir o por el modo en que miden las cosas.
La verdad es que algunas leyes vigentes del Reino Unido parecen probar el estereotipo.
Una ley de 1887 prohíbe específicamente que alguien se muera en el Parlamento.
De modo que si uno tiene la desgracia de sufrir un infarto en la Cámara de los Comunes o en la de los Lores, más le vale que lo saquen pronto del recinto, no sea cosa que además de morirse lo lleven preso.
Según la ley británica es un acto de traición poner una estampilla con la silueta de la reina Isabel II cabeza abajo en una carta.
En una reciente encuesta realizada por la cadena UKTV Gold, los británicos eligieron a estas dos leyes como las más absurdas del reino.
Los encuestados tuvieron un amplio material a su disposición porque lo cierto es que los legisladores británicos han competido con ahínco en este terreno a lo largo de la historia.
El discreto encanto de las leyes
En Liverpool es ilegal que las mujeres muestren los pechos en la vía pública, salvo cuando venden pescado tropical, en cuyo caso pueden enseñar con toda felicidad sus senos danzarines.
¿Qué pasa con una mujer embarazada que está en la calle, quiere ir al baño y no encuentra uno?
La ley británica dice que puede orinar en cualquier lado y aclara: incluso en el casco de un policía.
En cuanto a los escoceses lo tienen muy difícil en la ciudad norteña de York, Inglaterra.
La ley autoriza el asesinato de escoceses que lleven arco y flecha en la parte antigua de la ciudad.
El mundo está loco, loco, loco
Los británicos no monopolizan el absurdo en materia legal.
En Ohio, Estados Unidos, está prohibido emborrachar a un pez.
También en Estados Unidos, en el estado de Vermont, las mujeres tienen que pedir permiso a sus maridos para usar dentadura postiza.
En Indonesia la pena por la masturbación es la decapitación.
En Milán hay que sonreírse siempre, salvo en funerales o visitas a un hospital.
Y en Alabama, EE.UU., es ilegal vendar los ojos de alguien cuando está conduciendo un vehículo.
| CHILE Our Country |  |  |  |
| We are pleased to welcome you on your visit to view our country both as friends and in a professional capacity. We say as friends because you accepted our invitation to look at us closely, to become acquainted with the variety offered by our geography and to seek the eye-catching points that make us attractive to the rest of the world. And in a professional capacity because you come to Chile backed by your experience and a profound knowledge of an industry that has turned into an engine of devolpment in today's economy. We are building a global world in which tourism faces major challenges. Chile wishes to grow by enhancing its presence in the international arena. Having our tourism industry grow is also part of this project and your visit will help us make headway toward this aim. We welcome you warmly and wish you a happy and fruitful sojourn in Chile.
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CHILE TAMBIEN TIENE UN TREMENDO POTENCIAL EN BIOCOMBUSTIBLES
Biodiesel and Ethanol
SAGE is active in assessing environmental impacts of energy use, and exploring new opportunities to meet global energy demand. These activities build on ongoing research in air quality, climate change, land use, agriculture, and public health to help inform energy decision-making at the state, national, and international level.
For more information on energy research at UW-Madison, please visit the Energy Institute's web site.
| Liquid biofuels, renewable fuels derived from biomass, are one of the best positioned fuels to transition away from petroleum in the near-term and have made a recent resurgence in response to rising oil prices. However, while the technical details of biofuels have been thoroughly studied, there has been less focus on what constitutes a strategic deployment. Further, with an increasing number of countries and regions declaring support for rapid biofuel development, it is crucial to understand the full affects of these petroleum reduction policies. |  soybean agriculture |
| At SAGE, we are working to determine how much biofuel can be produced today, which countries are most likely to achieve their potential, and to detail the likely impacts from increasing production to achieve the gap between existing potential and policy goals. |  |
Matt Johnston and Tracey Holloway
Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment
Submitted to Environmental Science & Technology, October 2006; Revised, June 2007, in press Oct 2007
Supplemental Materials for this article
Complete Country Results
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Reference Document
A New Tier of Law Firm Jobs?
Staff attorneys -- lawyers who handle discovery matters or supervise contract attorneys -- aren't a new phenomenon at large firms; as far as I can recall, they've been around for at least a decade. However, as this post from Above the Law suggests, staff attorney positions have ordinarily been reserved for those attorneys who don't have the credentials demanded by a top job at Biglaw. (For the record, I'm not saying that staff attorneys are less intelligent or capable, it's just that they don't have the kinds of stats required to play on the Biglaw A Team.) What seems to be different about staff attorney positions now, if I'm understanding this story (11/2/07) correctly is that firms are now touting the positions not as a consolation prize for the less qualified, but rather, as a desirable slot for lawyers who want to achieve work/life balance.
As the article reports, McDermott, Will & Emory recently decided to create a new tier of attorneys -- analogous to permanent contract associates -- who will handle lower-end tasks like discovery at lower billing rates. The new class of full-timers is intended to allow the firm to keep costs low for litigation clients, without resorting to transient measures such as offshoring or continued use of contract attorneys where firms may have difficulty in ensuring quality control.
But what's most interesting is that the firm isn't interested in new grads to fill the staff attorney positions. Instead, MWE's ideal candidates are:
lawyers "with good pedigrees" who have practiced for a few years but don't want to deal with big-firm hours...Instead, they'll put in more like 30-40 hours, and be paid something like 25 percent less, though an exact pay range hasn't been decided.
With so many lawyers, particularly women, avid for reentry, MWE's re-packaging of these once maligned staff attorney positions into something desirable is utterly ingenious.
But will the MWE model work better than the traditional outsourcing or offshoring approach that other firms are examining? According to this post at the Legal Pad, at companies like New York-based Global Solutions, the Indian attorneys who are employed for document review are "hand picked, cream of the crop," often with LLMs and MBAs. However, Susan Cartier Liebel wonders if it's necessary to go overseas for qualified lawyers to handle outsourcing or document review, when many new solos in the U.S. are not only highly capable, but also willing to take on this work to generate cash as they get their practices off the ground.
Which business model do you think works best?
Posted by Carolyn Elefant
Los empresarios de la historia estadounidense
Posted: 29 Oct 2007 11:44 AM CDT
Business Week nos da una lista interesante de los empresarios de la historia aunque, viendo la lista, han tomado la historia empresarial vista desde el punto de vista estadounidense.
Una lista que incluye a Martha Stewart, Ralph Loren y algún otro, con todos mis respetos, y que excluye Ferdinand Porsche, Axel Springer, Dr. Reinhard Mohn, y Li Ka-shing, entre muchos otros, demuestra que los no anglo-sajones no tienen mucho hueco para ellos.
No obstante, es interesante ver los nombres en su lista, especialmente los muy antiguos.
Vía | Business Week (en inglés)
| Happy Anniversary, In Search of Excellence!  Tom called from the road to tell us this story. He's celebrating an anniversary. On the 15th of October, 1982, he received a small package from New York at his Palo Alto office. When he returned from a meeting in mid-afternoon and opened the package - there it was - two copies of his first book, from an initial print run of 5,000. Beside himself with delight, Tom fondled the book - and headed off to Cupertino with the second copy to give it to a senior executive at Apple, a little computer company with about 200 employees. And now, exactly 25 years later, Tom is still out on the road, "spreading the word" about "MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around," "A Bias for Action," and other more or less eternal truths. On this 25th anniversary to the day, Tom is making the 10,000-plus-mile trip to Seoul, where he will present, along with General Powell and the President of Korea, among others, at a major event aimed at vaulting Korea's innovation skills to another level. Happy Anniversary! to Tom and In Search of Excellence. - Posted at our blog on October 15, 2007, by Cathy Mosca |
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| Brand You Road Trip  FYI - The Brand You public workshop that was scheduled for October 9, 2007, at SMU in Dallas was postponed until the spring. The new date is TBD. We will keep you posted. Additionally, the next installment of the Brand You tour will be on November 1, 2007, in Burlington, MA, presented in partnership with Northeastern University. For registration information, click here. For more information on bringing Brand You to your area, contact Shannon Sullivan at 617-242-5522 or shannonsullivan@tompeters.com. |
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| Succession Planning in a YouTube World On this 25th anniversary of In Search of Excellence, I'd like to pose this question: What do YOU believe is the most dramatic change in the business world since its publication? We believe, as Tom Peters charged back in 1982, that the most successful companies are those that have made long-term investments in their employees. By investing time and money in developing talent, when critical talent retires, organizations are able to seamlessly transition the new talent to take the reins. In today's highly competitive war for talent, attracting talent is the first step. The talent pool has matured in a virtually socialized YouTube kind of world. Talented people today require a different business model and play by different rules. If success cannot be found within traditional businesses, they will not sign on. One bright young woman reported, "If I don't fit into GE or Ford or IBM, that's not my problem ... that's their problem." This is 50% of the workforce. Who can afford that? Rather than fight corporate professional development systems, the next generations of talent are simply going to dismiss the system. And they are very open about the fact that if they cannot find what they want in an organization, they will simply build their own companies. This younger talent is liberated - not intimidated by precedent and not constrained by covention. This talent must feel the freedom to create the career they want. The strategic challenge facing leaders today is not only developing and retaining this talent, but also developing and implementing an effective succession planning process. Take a step back. For the first time in modern history, today's businesses are suffering from a dramatic loss of their most experienced and high powered intellectual capital members, while at the same time facing a huge deficit in hiring skilled employees. WOW! Is this the new "downsizing"? How will leaders keep the business engines whirling? We shout crisis!! Get a P&L leader's attention and give them these BOLD facts: 1. The convergence of various trends - changing workforce demographics, retiring baby boomers, and lack of skilled workers - will produce a job surplus in the next two years. 2. 168 million jobs will be created by the year 2010, but the labor force will reach only 158 million, resulting in 10 million unfilled positions. 3. Demand for quality workers is far outpacing supply, fueling a "talent crisis" that will directly affect organizations across a wide range of industries. Manufacturing, health care, and technical fields are already grappling with a scarcity of skilled, educated workers. High demand fields, including IT and engineering, as well as specialized industries such as utilities, energy, and transportation, are right behind them. When executed as part of an overall strategic initiative, succession planning enables organizations to identify their needs and align their talent accordingly. Here are some solutions that should be considered: By letting the talent discover how they can take ownership for their own development, leaders can create a distinctive culture that will have a positive impact on the availability of talent to meet future requirements. Do not waste time with a new web-based package. Leaders must take the time to talk to their employees, showing them that they do care about them. When the leader's corporate agenda is attending to talent development today, organizations are laying a solid foundation for smooth talent transitions in the future. For succession planning to truly succeed, however, leaders must empower their talent to own their career development. It is urgent! Move quickly or face a talent crisis. Juli Ann Reynolds President and CEO Tom Peters Company |
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| The Future Shape of the Winner  We're in the midst of what Tom Peters calls a White Collar Revolution, and there's every sign that organizations are struggling to handle the resulting sophistication and complexity. Tom Peters shorthands the solution to the crisis as PSF - the Professional Service Firm approach. Doubtless you'll have read about this, if you've ever picked up one of his recent books. In working with our clients to use the PSF thinking in their organizations, we've been able, in Tom Peters Company, to create a model that helps our clients to focus on what must be different for the future, and to create clarity around the various elements that will influence that change. We call it the Future Shape of the Winner, and you can read more about it on our NEW website: www.tompeters.co.uk. We are convinced that organizations in years to come will look very different form those that are showcased in Business Schools today. There is a new world of work being invented out there, and those who want to be players can have a field day. Take a look at our new website, and see what you think. What kind of shape is your organization in? Are you up for (even more) change? Madeleine McGrath Managing Director, International Tom Peters Company |
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| 5 Questions ... for Tom Peters On September 30, USA Today posted a short 5 question interview with Tom. It's a quick read. You can find it here. |
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| Cool Friend Alex Kjerulf  According to our new Cool Friend Alex Kjerulf, the Scandinavian languages have a word, arbejdsglæde, that means "work happiness" whereas the Japanese have the word karoshi, meaning "death by overwork" (We're hoping you feel particularly Scandinavian today). Alex is the author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5: How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life, and Kick Butt at Work and he spoke with Erik Hansen about why happy workers are better for a company's bottom line. He mentioned strategies for leaders who want to create a happier workplace as well as things we can all do to make ourselves happier. Read the Cool Friends interview or visit Alex's blog, PositiveSharing.com. |
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