WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION: SOME GOOD

By Corinne Asturias , VP, Consumer Strategist, Boomers and Sustainable Living

Ah, summer. The time of year you either start counting down the days to a vacation or start realizing that you've blown it by not planning one. And while the do-nothing allure of lollygagging on a chaise endures, we're finding that a hot ticket for growing numbers of travelers is going somewhere to do some good. We're not talking hard labor at the ends of the earth.

Today's giving adventures strike a happy balance between work and play. Volunteer vacations by the Sierra Club reward those who restore Native American ruins with chef-prepared meals and "secret" hikes. CharityGuide.org links volunteers to beautiful places: saving Manatees in Honduras, caring for elephants in Thailand or building a school in Tanzania. The appeal is native for gap-year Millennials and high schoolers looking for service credit. But don't underestimate the draw for seasoned Xer, Boomer and Mature travelers: They've glimpsed reality before boarding their planes home, and they want to preserve the specialness of the places they've loved.

How much lounging by a pool does a person really need, anyway?So if you're going snorkeling in Belize, why not spend a few days helping to count bottlenose dolphins? If Africa has always beckoned, why not work on a black rhino conservancy in Zimbabwe? Trip costs aren't cheap, but they usually include lodging, meals and guides, not to mention a cushion of safety and structure. But the real value for Gross National HappinessSM seekers? They take home a souvenir for their soul, instead of for the shelf, and how can you put a price on that?

What's Wrong with America?

What's wrong with America? It's a pretty loaded question with an equally set of loaded answers.

In my book, "Zentrepreneurism", I talk about the fact that America's drugs are "Celebrities", and the "Relentless Pursuit of Success". If success is equated with the pursuit of the American Dream, whatever that is, the subsequent rewards follow. However, it should not be surprising to know that to fail in one's pursuit has an equally harmful effect. There are more Americans today failing in their pursuit of the American dream than ever before. If, the message given to all new arrivals, is that America is a country where everything is possible, and nothing is impossible. To fail then in business or in life, is the ultimate loss of all dignity and self respect.

Whether it's the killer at Virginia Tech or the killers at Columbine, they all weave a common thread, and that thread is one of perceiving to fail at life, especially life in America. Their profiles have an eery similarity, and it's one of absolute anger towards the rich and successful.

So how does one change a belief system that has been ingrained in the minds of it's citizens since the first immigrants came to Ellis Island. Well, you can't , you can only hope that this new generation, the ones that are not accepting the way things used to be and are, but are believing in a new set of values, where it's more important to climb the "consciousness ladder" rather than the corporate ladder. Where wealth of an individual is not measured by money, success and power, but what they contribute to the good of mankind.

Compassion and "telling the truth" have become more important than pay cheques to employees. Holding employers, government, your loved ones, and the people you do business with accountable is quickly becoming the only way to survive. Americans are hungry for the truth, they are hungry for answers, and they are hungry for hope. Whether they know it or not, the killers have become the "wake up" call for America to look at it's ugly underbelly and the failure of an entire system that has gone terribly wrong. Drugs, Violence, Gangs, Guns and Crime is the guaranteed hangover of anger, frustration, depression, and rejection.

So what can you do, well start by believing in something else. First of all know that it is government that should be afraid of us, not us afraid of the government . Start by not accepting that lying everyday is okay, whether it's the President or your spouse. Start believing in something other than celebrities and sports figures. Start believing in just YOU.

Stop comparing yourself to everyone on television or magazines, including Jenny Craig, Donald Trump or Martha Stewart. They are only people who have gotten you to believe that without them you can't quite measure up to losing weight, making money or even cooking. Stop "feeding" their dream. By fulfilling their dreams and ego driven motives, you actually "short change" yourself, because you will never quite be like them. But hey, why would you want to be any way.

Just be YOU for a while, hang out with yourself, turn off Dr. Phil and Oprah, meditate, start a movement , the YOU movement, BE YOU , and just so you know.. there is only YOU, God had a reason for making us each the way we are. Stop listening to other people's success stories, they either make you feel awful because you have'nt made it , or you feel so motivated that you will do anything to be just like them, and after all if they made it why can't you. Here's a clue, you can't be like them, because they are THEM, and YOU ARE YOU. Have you got it...good.. now go out and tell everyone you meet that you accept them for exactly who they are . Let's try that for a while and see if it works, if not it simply means that America hasn't learned it's lesson yet. God knows what's next! Well actually, he or she does!

A blatant plug: Zentrepreneurism can be purchased at www.zentrepreneurism.com

Virginia Tech- A Different Perspective

FROM THE EDITORS
SOMOS HOKIES

By Abelardo de la Peña, VP, Consumer Strategist, Latino Markets

The effects of last week's Virginia Tech massacre continue to reverberate, with issues of school security, mental health, videogame violence and more being discussed and debated. It's become an international tragedy, not only because of the sheer magnitude of the atrocity, but also because of the diverse range of nationalities of the victims — Americans, Indonesians, Romanians, Canadians, Vietnamese and Indians.

Spanish-language media — Univisión, Telemundo, daily newspapers and websites — are extensively following the calamity and ongoing developments, with special emphasis on the victims of Latin American ancestry. Their coverage also brings focus to the many manifestations of fear, safety, compassion, spirituality, empowerment and community, universal values brought to a fever pitch by the terrible event.

Although Virginia Tech's Latino student population is relatively small — 503 undergraduates out of 21,937 (VT.edu 4.07) — campus organizations including Circulo Hispano , Latino Link and Lambda Sigma Upsilon provide Latino students opportunities to socialize, network, and make the most of the school’s academic excellence, lively campus life and diverse but close-knit student body.

It's impossible to know whether the gunman drew any distinction between the victim's cultural backgrounds. It's doubtful he did. Paradoxically, neither have the grieving students, families, residents of Blackburg, VA, or global sympathizers. In their sorrow and struggle for normalcy, they are all Hokies.

Taking Care of Business

Taking Care of Business

A five-step plan to building a customer driven company:

1. Identify and study lead customers. Harness the creativity and inventiveness of your smartest customers--the ones who are the most knowlegeable and passionate about your field.

2. Provide customers with tools to help them design the products and services they'd like to see. Be part of the customer's creative processes. Watch closely what they do.

3. Nurture customer communities. Make sure executives and employees hang out with customers in these communities, both on-line and face-to-face.

4. Empower customers to strut their stuff. Reward customers for contributing ideas and designs, providing tips and techniques, spotting new products and trends.

5. Open up your products and engage customers in peer production. Invite customers to roll up their sleeves and "mess" with your product, modifying and customizing it. Set up a good governance structure. Be authoritative.

Adapted from Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future (Harper Collins., ISBN 9780061135903) by Patricia Seybold

Can the White House be bought?

Okay where do I start. It's been a week or longer, since I've sat at the keyboard to punch out my latest musings. Well, it's given me a chance to reflect on not just my world , but everybody elses world. Well, the jury is back and the conclusion is we need to really get our act together and soon. The concern I have is the sense of powerlesness people are feeling. I don't know if we have just become immune, shell shocked, bored, apathetic, or just plain comotose. I mean here's some of the stuff that's been in the news lately, and I think it's just passing over everyone like a cumulus nimbus cloud.,

It was announced last week that between all of the candidates running for the office of President a total of $130 million dollars will have been raised for their respective campaigns. With great pride Barak Obama announced that he has raised $25 milllion, which put him into second place behind Hillary at 26 milllion. What's more shocking than that is that some Washington political pundits on CNN said that Obama was now a serious contender. Just because he has almost as much money as Hillary.

This speaks volumes about the continuing American disease of equating money to success and power. It's not enough that the media has saturated the airwaves with shows like; The Great American Dream Vote Off, Deal or no Deal or "Greed or no Greed". Let's see how greedy people are who are not happy with having $10,000 given to them gratis . Instead of taking the money they never had in the first place, they are encouraged to go for a higher amount and risk losing it all depending on the opening of a suitcase.

Televison has become the Great American Escape. The war in Iraq, the threat of a confrontation in Iran, the continuing sruggle in Afganhistan the downturn of the economy, cities like Detroit facing huge layoffs and unemployment, poverty, floods, plagues, locust, global warming, no health care, a $65 billion drug trade, homelessness, and urban violence, oh well there's always American Idol and baseball. Win fame and glory...fulfill the American dream that all things are possible, just don't tell anyone that your chances are about the same as winning the lottery,

Okay that's enough bashing of our neighbours to the south, how about some solutions. By the way, here's a nice one to think about over your double latte, if you live in Canada or in Vancouver for example. NBC is reported to have paid $820 million for the rights to televise the 2010 Winter Games. and CTV/TSN $90 million., now they are expecting 3.8 billion in revenue for that. So where is this money going? Well, just by coincidence, the only people who can afford to advertise on these telecasts are the large mega corps.,

In order to sell the Olympics to tax weary Vancouverites CEO John Furlong of VANOC , told the general public that everyone would benefit including small business..hmmm. can you say; "We gottcha". Pan handling in Vancouver is epidemic, but we are told that we'll have extra police on the streets for two weeks. during the Olympics so we'll look good and so turistas are'nt hassled. We'll hide the problems till after the Olympics, and then let them come back after so they can continue to hassle the local residents.



And so the insanity continues, $17 million dollars for a snow machine at Whistler, just in case it doesn't snow. In what can only be called the most bizarre court cases in BC's history, the organising committee for the 2010 Olympics has taken a Prince George based Eco Toursim company to court over the use of the number "2010".

The Eco Tourism 2010 Society [claimant] and VANOC met in court on January 28 in Prince George to contest the use of the number 2010. The claimant had been unable to register the name of his company with the provincial registrar due an order by VANOC. VANOC had ordered the registrar not to allow any non-profits to register any name that included the number "2010".

A construction boom in western Canada has sharply pushed up the cost of preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, forcing organisers to ask for a 23 per cent increase in financial support from federal and provincial governments.

The organising committee said that it now estimated the construction budget at C$580m ($505m), up from its 2002 estimate of C$470m. Some of the Olympic venues are located in Vancouver and others in the ski resort of Whistler, a two-and-a-half hour drive to the north.

Can the White House be bought- you bet, can the Olympics be sold to the highest bidder..you bet. I am a huge fan of the Commonwealth Games, because it brings countries together for comaradrie, goodwill and the fun of sport. The Olympics, with all of it's bribes, financial discrepancies, and drugs has become like big business, the NFL or the NBA of amateur sport. The Olympics does nothing to stop wars, prevent famine, erradicate poverty, stop global warming, educate poor people, find homes for orphaned children, provide water anf food for starving nations. Nor does it offer it's profits to the cities or countries that host , as a legacy of goodwill and compassion. The Olympic mandate is not about compassion, nor is it pure of intention, it's about corporate greed, elitism and medals, pure and simple. How many gold, how many silver and how many bronze will your country bring home.

Now it's time to end with a ray of hope, of a billionaires' story of compassion and "pay it forward:. A Japanese real estate mogul inn Hawaii handed over eight of his multi million dollar homes to low-income native Hawaiin families. Now that's compassion!!

Buddha says; A wrong action may not bring it's reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once: like a smoldering fire concealed under ashes it consumes the wrong doer, the fool.

Life's Harder in Seattle

Life's Harder in Seattle

Book Review by Crawford Kilian in the on-line e-magazine TheTyee.ca

February 13, 2007

We like to pay lip service to our healthcare and social programs, without really knowing much about them. They distinguish us from our American cousins, and give us something to argue about.

But how much difference do those programs actually make in our lives? Middle-class American life looks a lot like ours. Our right wing tends to scorn our social safety net and the long wait times for medical care. Our left tends to defend them -- but in emotional and nationalist terms, not in the bottom-line terms that the right understands.

Now Dan Zuberi, a UBC sociology professor, has made a meticulous comparison of social policies in two similar cities -- Vancouver and Seattle. He's published his findings as Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada. Those findings are astonishing: for the working poor, and for others, Vancouver is a far, far better place than its sister city.and they share a region. The hospitality industry is typical of the new service economy that's replaced manufacturing in the past 30 or 40 years. So he studied workers in four hotels run by the same two multi-national corporations in both countries. One hotel in each city has unionized workers; one does not.Similar cities, different conditions.

By interviewing management and staff in the four hotels, Zuberi learned a great deal about working and living conditions for the people who change the sheets and wipe the hairs off the toilets. If you think those conditions are pretty much the same everywhere in the global economy, you're wrong.

Unionization was surprisingly different. While union memberships in Canada and the U.S. were roughly the same in the 1970s, membership has fallen sharply in the U.S. while holding its own here in Canada. Zuberi traces that to Reagan's destruction of the air traffic controllers in the early '80s. American unions never recovered. Canadian unions, however, continued to flourish.
So relatively few hotel workers in Seattle work under collective agreements. The union there has to hammer out individual contracts with each hotel, in a long and awkward process. In Vancouver, most hotels operate under a single collective agreement. Choosing to unionize is much easier here.

This doesn't mean non-union hotel workers earn less. Zuberi found that non-union hotels must match union pay scales just to stay competitive. But unionized hotels hold on to their workers, while the non-unionized endure rapid employee turnover.

Vancouver hotels therefore have more experienced and professional employees, needing little training and inspection. Whether their workers are locals or recent immigrants, they settle in quickly and are rarely off the job. In the winter they can take their legally mandated paid vacation time instead of being laid off. If they do lose their jobs, they can get training while out of work. They like the neighbourhoods they live in, which have little crime, good access to transit, and plenty of amenities like parks and community centres.

A host of problems:

In Seattle, by contrast, hotel workers struggle with a host of problems. Public transit isn't as good, so they have to cluster in high-crime neighbourhoods that at least have some kind of bus service to their downtown workplaces. In the slow winter season they scramble for alternative jobs, or borrow from relatives. Seattle has far fewer community resources to help workers to ride out a spell of unemployment.

Health care is critical. Zuberi's Vancouver interviewees reported plenty of ailments, but routinely saw their doctors without worrying about financial consequences—even when they were laid off.

In Seattle, hotels offer health insurance plans once workers complete their probationary period. With so much turnover, many workers never get the insurance. Those who do may still face disaster: one worker kept changing credit cards to cover $2,500 in monthly medical payments on a $2,600 monthly wage. Few workers see their doctors until they absolutely have to, which may be too late for timely intervention.

In Vancouver, 100 per cent of the workers' children had regular doctors; in Seattle, only 56 per cent did. Workers' compensation scarcely exists in Seattle, while it saves injured Vancouver workers from disaster.

So life for the working poor in Seattle is strikingly harder and more stressful than for their neighbours here in Vancouver. It's not because folks in Seattle are lazier or dumber than folks in Vancouver. It's because laws have created wildly different environments in the two cities and the two nations.

Taken for granted?

Zuberi's well-written book offers plenty of food for thought. As one who rarely travels to the U.S., I take Vancouver for granted. Of course we've got parks and community centres and medicare. Of course our schools are good on both sides of town. Of course you go to your doctor, or a walk-in clinic, as soon as you feel bad. Doesn't everyone in the industrial world?

Evidently not. And having read Zuberi's account, I feel unexpected gratitude to our politicians. The NDP made unionization easy. Bill Bennett's Socreds equalized school funding. If Campbell's Liberals have made life tougher for the working poor, at least they haven't dragged us down to Seattle's level.


Differences That Matter deserves careful reading by everyone in the province. Business managers will realize how costly it would be to follow the American model. Young people will be grateful that their entry-level jobs aren't as crappy as those in the U.S. Even those who damn and blast government on general principles will see that political decisions really do make a difference, and a big one.

Zuberi teaches us that we've made a lot of good decisions. This is no time to start making bad ones just because the Americans have.and they share a region. The hospitality industry is typical of the new service economy that's replaced manufacturing in the past 30 or 40 years. So he studied workers in four hotels run by the same two multi-national corporations in both countries. One hotel in each city has unionized workers; one does not.

Similar cities, different conditions

By interviewing management and staff in the four hotels, Zuberi learned a great deal about working and living conditions for the people who change the sheets and wipe the hairs off the toilets. If you think those conditions are pretty much the same everywhere in the global economy, you're wrong.

Unionization was surprisingly different. While union memberships in Canada and the U.S. were roughly the same in the 1970s, membership has fallen sharply in the U.S. while holding its own here in Canada. Zuberi traces that to Reagan's destruction of the air traffic controllers in the early '80s. American unions never recovered. Canadian unions, however, continued to flourish.
So relatively few hotel workers in Seattle work under collective agreements. The union there has to hammer out individual contracts with each hotel, in a long and awkward process. In Vancouver, most hotels operate under a single collective agreement. Choosing to unionize is much easier here.

This doesn't mean non-union hotel workers earn less. Zuberi found that non-union hotels must match union pay scales just to stay competitive. But unionized hotels hold on to their workers, while the non-unionized endure rapid employee turnover.

Vancouver hotels therefore have more experienced and professional employees, needing little training and inspection. Whether their workers are locals or recent immigrants, they settle in quickly and are rarely off the job. In the winter they can take their legally mandated paid vacation time instead of being laid off. If they do lose their jobs, they can get training while out of work. They like the neighbourhoods they live in, which have little crime, good access to transit, and plenty of amenities like parks and community centres.


A host of problems

In Seattle, by contrast, hotel workers struggle with a host of problems. Public transit isn't as good, so they have to cluster in high-crime neighbourhoods that at least have some kind of bus service to their downtown workplaces. In the slow winter season they scramble for alternative jobs, or borrow from relatives. Seattle has far fewer community resources to help workers to ride out a spell of unemployment.

Health care is critical. Zuberi's Vancouver interviewees reported plenty of ailments, but routinely saw their doctors without worrying about financial consequences—even when they were laid off.

In Seattle, hotels offer health insurance plans once workers complete their probationary period. With so much turnover, many workers never get the insurance. Those who do may still face disaster: one worker kept changing credit cards to cover $2,500 in monthly medical payments on a $2,600 monthly wage. Few workers see their doctors until they absolutely have to, which may be too late for timely intervention.

In Vancouver, 100 per cent of the workers' children had regular doctors; in Seattle, only 56 per cent did. Workers' compensation scarcely exists in Seattle, while it saves injured Vancouver workers from disaster.

So life for the working poor in Seattle is strikingly harder and more stressful than for their neighbours here in Vancouver. It's not because folks in Seattle are lazier or dumber than folks in Vancouver. It's because laws have created wildly different environments in the two cities and the two nations.

Taken for granted?

Zuberi's well-written book offers plenty of food for thought. As one who rarely travels to the U.S., I take Vancouver for granted. Of course we've got parks and community centres and medicare. Of course our schools are good on both sides of town. Of course you go to your doctor, or a walk-in clinic, as soon as you feel bad. Doesn't everyone in the industrial world?
Evidently not. And having read Zuberi's account, I feel unexpected gratitude to our politicians. The NDP made unionization easy. Bill Bennett's Socreds equalized school funding. If Campbell's Liberals have made life tougher for the working poor, at least they haven't dragged us down to Seattle's level.

Differences That Matter deserves careful reading by everyone in the province. Business managers will realize how costly it would be to follow the American model. Young people will be grateful that their entry-level jobs aren't as crappy as those in the U.S. Even those who damn and blast government on general principles will see that political decisions really do make a difference, and a big one.

Zuberi teaches us that we've made a lot of good decisions. This is no time to start making bad ones just because the Americans have.

Gen X Will Change Work Culture

Baby Boomers will leave major gaps in job market.

RAY WILLIAMS, Financial Post

Published: Wednesday, February 21, 2007


A massive number of managers and executives, members of the Baby Boom generation, will retire in the next five years. This promises to leave a huge vacuum in leadership, particularly for companies without succession plans. Generation Xers are poised to take their place. A key question for senior executives to consider is whether the leadership style and values of Generation Xers are the same as those of the Baby Boomers.


Baby Boomers, born between 1945 and l960, grew up watching the Ed Sullivan show, ate TV dinners and gave the peace sign. The Baby Boom generation has dominated the economy, our lifestyles and leadership styles. Leadership for them has been characterized by workaholic tendencies and materialism. Baby Boomers have had a minimum number of careers or a single career path, are impressed by authority, are optimistic and are driven to achieve.


Generation X, born between l960 and l980, grew up with pet rocks, platform shoes and watched The Simpsons. They question authority, seek bigger meaning in life and work, are technologically savvy, live in the present, are skeptical, see career as a key to happiness, are open to multi-careers, consider challenge and variety as being more important than job security and constantly aim to achieve work-life balance.

Obamarama & the Regular folks.

by David Sirota

Obama asks regular folks to buy into his campaign; D.C. calls it a scandal.


The Hotline, the uber-insider journal of Beltway conventional thought, claims today to have a scandalous scoop of "opposition" research on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D). Are you ready for this? There's a YouTube video of Obama asking a working class crowd in Cleveland for - gasp! - small campaign contributions. Obama, the Hotline breathlessly recounts, dares to ask "everybody here to pony up five dollars, ten dollars for this campaign. I don't care how poor you are, you've got five dollars."

The real scandal, of course, is the shock that emanates from the Beltway when a major political candidate has the audacity to ask regular people to be a big part of a presidential campaign. Washington would like us to believe that there is only one way to run campaigns these days: by getting a bunch of corporate lobbyists from D.C. and a few super-rich people from New York and Hollywood into a few ballrooms to bundle tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

It's government of, by and for Big Money - a Smokybackroom-ocracy - and any other model is seen as a big scandal. If you are wondering why so many politicians sound like Halliburton press flacks or ExxonMobil PR representatives, and why the entire political debate could be dominated by the comments of a Hollywood billionaire to the New York Times' glorified gossip columnist, look no further: it's because of this innately corrupt model, and the media's glorification of it.

But there is another model that very few people talk about - the one where lots of working people give lots of small dollar contributions. People like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) have been doing this for years. Howard Dean did it in his presidential primary run. It's a much harder path, of course, because it's much harder to organize lots of people than it is to organize a few wealthy fat cats. But in the absence of public financing of elections, campaigns that try to rely on lots of little contributions are the next closest thing to a small-d democratic election system.

Let me excerpt from the end of my book Hostile Takeover to expand on this point:

"After getting through a book that details and decries the financial pressures ordinary Americans are under, you may be wondering: 'How am I now reading a call for ordinary Americans to shell out money to politicians?' The answer is pretty simple: until we get publicly financed elections, money will play a big role in politics, and that means ordinary Americans have one of two choices: we can continue to not contribute anything to political candidates, essentially walking off the field and forefeiting. Or, we can hold our nose and play in an albeit unfair game. The latter is clearly the better choice – at least then we have a chance to win a victory here and there, and make our presence felt, especially if we are smart about where we spend limited resources. There is no rule that says politics, even in our corrupt system, has to be so thoroughly dominated by a few very large contributors (though those large contributors will always be somewhat powerful). Groups like Moveon.org are flipping this smoky backroom model on its head, gathering a very large group of contributors who each give just a little bit. Such a model doesn't require regular folks to cough up hundreds of dollars. On the contrary, if millions of people kicked in $5 or $10 we might have a whole different country. Getting more people to contribute small sums of money to political causes will require a change in mindset. As political fundraiser Chris Gruwell says, we need to look at political giving in the same way we look at the basket that comes around at our place of worship. We chip in what we can, no matter how modest, because we believe in the charity work that our money funds. That is the way we need to think about supporting good people running for office, because government can have as big if not bigger effects on society than almost any other institution."

Let's be clear - big donors and philanthropists will always play a role in politics - and some of them play an extremely constructive role (personal example: the Progressive States Network could never have gotten off the ground without generous support from some visionary philanthropists). But the idea that its somehow scandalous for candidates or organizations to ask regular working stiffs to ALSO financially buy into a movement is a false construct designed to rationalize plutocracy.

Though Obama certainly has his share of Big Money interests funneling money to his operation, I'm thrilled to see that he's drawing on his community organizing roots to - at least in public appeals - try to bring working people into the part of presidential campaigns too often left exclusively to the fat cats. That folks in the Beltway see this as "controversial" is only a commentary on how many in the nation's capital truly believe politics should be the exclusive gated community of the rich and famous.

News from Zentropolis (c)

News from Zentropolis (c)


This column is reserved for a make believe, but yet real place. A place where all things are possible. And contrary to the movie Sin City, where everything bad happens, this is Zentropolis where everything good happens.

This city has its own free speech television network, and rather than Sin City's version of CNN, where all reports are focused on lying, cheating, fraud, embezzlement, killing , wars, environmental crimes, and man'­s inhumanity towards man, GNN has it'­s has it's own reports of truth, integrity, honesty, peace, harmony, compassion , nurturing , and caring for all on GNN (The Good News Network).

I make reference a lot in my book, Zentrepreneurism www.zentrepreneurism.com to the good citizens of Zentropolis, and their good deeds. Here are some of the stories we are covering this month in Zentropolis.

Ervin Laszlo in an article in Ode Magazine writes about what Zentropolis might look like;

Let me offer one example of how such a breakthrough might look: Faced with growing problems and shared threats, citizens across the planet pull together to form associations and networks to pursue their dreams of peace and environmental sustainability.Business leaders and entrepreneurs recognize the importance of these aspirations and respond with new goods and services that help make them a reality. Soon, global news and entertainment media commit themselves to chronicling emerging social and cultural innovations.

On the Internet and through other grassroots communication networks, people everywhere begin exploring new visions of the natural world, the global community and human existence itself.Out of all this comes a new culture of solidarity and social responsibility across the planet.

Public support mounts for government policies that institute social and ecological repairs. Money is diverted from the military and defence industries to the needs of people. New measures are implemented to develop sustainable energy, transportation, industrial, technological and agricultural systems. Huge numbers of people around the world get better access to food, jobs, and education.

As a result of these developments, international mistrust, ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic inequity, and gender inequality give way to new traditions of mutual respect. Rather than breaking down in conflict and war, humanity breaks through to a sustainable world of self-reliant butco-operating communities, enterprises, countries and regions.At this point in our history, human beings have accumulated unprecedented power hence responsibility to decide our destiny. Although the prospect of global breakdown stares us in the face, it is by no means inevitable.


We also have the unprecedented option of choosing a brighter tomorrow. Nothing prevents us from shifting our evolutionary path toward a peaceful and sustainable civilization, nothing except our own patterns of thinking and action. The leaders now in power and the mainstream society they represent have not yet glimpsed a different future for our civilization. Yet many other people are inspired by visions of a global breakthrough that are already emerging at the creative frontiers of our society.

Societies are seldom culturally monolithic in their thinking. This is especially true in eras of innovation and ferment. Those periods spawn a large number of subcultures, or alternative cultures, that spring up alongside the prevailing power structure.This is what we see happening today, with some of these alternative cultures devoting themselves to imaginatively rethinking the priorities, values, and behaviours of society, giving particular attention to how we can improve environmental sustainability and human ethics.

This sort of fundamental reassessment of how we live, even if overlooked or ignored by those in power, can spark rapid and revolutionary change. While barely visible in the major media, a number of grassroots movements, from global justice to holistic health to spiritual exploration, are already blazing the trail away from the usual assumptions of mainstream culture. Even the people involved with these movements underestimate their own numbers, in part because most of them go about their business without trying to convert others and because they lack social and political cohesion. Yet the more serious and sincere of these alternative cultures show promise as catalysts of a social breakthrough. Unlike many subcultures and sects, these people do not relish taking antisocial stances or want to hide away from everyone else. Rather, they are quietly but profoundly engaged in the world, as they challenge accepted beliefs and pursue new avenues of personal and social commitment.

This then is Zentropolis, the title of my new book.

The Fallout of Corporate Greed in America

US severe poverty reached 32-year high: 16 million people


The gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” in United States keeps widening and the percentage of US citizens who are living in deep or severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, 16 million, according to a report from McClatchy Newspapers.


A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, reached that conclusion, defining a family of four with two children and an annual income of less than 9.903 US dollars, half the US federal poverty line, as severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than 5.080 US dollars a year.The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26% from 2000 to 2005 which is 56% faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.

McClatchy’s review found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion.

US worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.These and other factors have helped push 43% of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty, the highest rate since at least 1975.

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown “more than any other segment of the population,” according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.“That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began” said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. “We’re not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we’re seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty.”

The growth, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren’t as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.According to census data, nearly two of three people in severe poverty are white (10.3 million) and 6.9 million are non-Hispanic whites. Severely poor blacks (4.3 million) are more than three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while extremely poor Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) are over twice as likely.


The McClatchy Newspapers underlines that severe poverty is most pronounced near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit as economic restructuring and foreign competition has forced numerous plant closings

I No Longer Want to Work for Money

An open letter from the Founder of Whole Foods

(From Fast Company Magazine, Feb, 2007)

Dear Team;

I want to announce a couple of significant changes regarding compensation at Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFMI).

First, as you know, we have a salary-cap policy, which limits the total cash compensation that can be paid to any team member. The board of directors has voted to raise the salary cap from 14 times the average pay to 19 times the average pay, effective immediately.... We are raising the salary cap for one reason only--to make the compensation to our executives more competitive in the marketplace.... Everyone on the Whole Foods leadership team (except for me) has been approached multiple times by "headhunters" with job offers to leave Whole Foods and go to work for our competitors. Raising the salary cap has become necessary to help ensure the retention of our key leadership.... This increase to 19 times the average pay remains far, far below what the typical Fortune 500 company pays its executives.... The average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while Whole Foods' CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation.

Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. The average corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives.... At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: The top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company.

The second part of today's announcement has to do with my own compensation.... The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness.... I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart. Beginning on January 1, 2007, my salary will be reduced to $1, and I will no longer take any other cash compensation.... The intention of the board of directors is for Whole Foods Market to donate all of the future stock options I would be eligible to receive to our two company foundations.

One other important item to communicate to you is, in light of my decision to forego any future [pay], our board of directors has decided that Whole Foods Market will contribute $100,000 annually to a new Global Team Member Emergency Fund. This money will be distributed to team members throughout the company based on need.... The first $100,000 will be deposited on January 1, 2007, and requests will be considered after that date.

With much love,

John Mackey

The Boss Who Breaks All the Rules

by Dominique Haijtema

This article appeared in Ode Magazine issue: 40

Ricardo Semler’s employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Meet the Brazilian businessman who does everything differently.

His favourite questions start with “why.” Why should employees feel compelled to read their emails on Sunday evening, but can’t go to the movies on Monday afternoon? Why should they take work home, but can’t bring their kids to the office? Why should they have to sit for hours in traffic getting to the head office? Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler loves to question everything. His guiding principle? If you want creative employees, don’t smother them with ridiculous rules.

For 25 years, Semler has been putting into practise what increasing numbers of modern management gurus are now preaching. He heads a democratic company, Semco, where employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Managers don’t have secretaries, reserved parking spaces or even desks. There is minimal bureaucracy. No IT or human-resources departments. No mission statement, no five-year plan. Meetings are voluntary and every employee has a say in everything.

Once, when Semler organized a meeting to discuss developing a speedier dishwasher for the consumer market, no one showed up. And the idea was shelved.Semco was a traditionally managed engineering company when the young Ricardo Semler took over from his father. He was just 22 and had brought philosophical conflicts with his father to a climax: The son demanded that Semco steer away from its activities as a shipbuilding supplier and abandon autocratic management in favour of decentralization. He threatened to leave the company, so his father gave him a free hand. On his first day as director, Ricardo Semler fired 60 percent of senior management and began laying the foundation for a democratic organization. Semco has long since abandoned its engineering activities. The company now develops software, is building a hotel and ecological resort and is involved with hospital and airport projects. Semler himself can’t even list all his company’s activities; he leaves that to his employees.

Semco now has 3,000 staffers (with very little turnover) and is growing 20 to 30 percent a year, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003. Semco’s radical policies do have a downside. Demand from outsiders wanting to visit its offices is so heavy that employees have complained of feeling like exotic attractions at a zoo. But that seems a small price to pay for such runaway success.

Semler has written two international bestsellers about his unusual management method and has taught at renowned business schools, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in the U.S. And he spends two months a year doing whatever he feels like doing. Last March, while vacationing with his family in Switzerland, he agreed to meet me in a hotel bar before hitting the slopes, to discuss his groundbreaking management ideas. For a corporate executive, he seemed unusually cheerful and relaxed. Semler told me he had all the time in the world—confessing that he hadn’t worn a watch in years, and that suited him just fine.
Why are so few companies in the world run like Semco?Ricardo Semler: “Because managers are afraid to lose power and control.”


What can managers do differently?“In order to do things differently, you have to relearn how to think and have the courage to let go. Managers can learn to have more faith in their employees. That’s difficult in an environment where nearly everything is based on mistrust and control. But it’s not human nature to question who you should send which email to and whose permission you should ask. Absurd! If people behave like animals in a cage, I don’t think it’s because of the people but the cage. This faulty conditioning starts at school. That’s the foundation of conformity and submission to silly rules. Small start-ups often begin in an atmosphere of excitement in someone’s garage, but as soon as they grow, all the pleasure disappears with organization. Anyone with a little talent who can think won’t work for that kind of company, right?”


Doesn’t a major corporation with thousands of employees require a different style of management than a company with 10 staff members? “Why? We were a small company and now we have 3,000 employees. Nothing has changed in the way we work. “I often hear that my management style only works in small unlisted companies and probably only in Brazil. That’s a typical argument to rationalize not changing yourself. And it’s not easy. A democratic organization isn’t something you decide on and arrange from one day to the next. We’ve been doing this for a quarter century and are still learning every day. It’s a lengthy process because people’s conditioning is very strong.”


How can an organization become more democratic?“By questioning all kinds of things. For example, we examined how much time our employees spend sitting in traffic. We figured out that they spend a million hours a year getting to and from work. We wanted to cut that down, which means you have to take drastic measures. We decided to close down our head office and start working in small units. In the 21st century, it makes no sense to get people to come to your head office from all over the country—because even if they physically all get together, they’ll still send an email to a colleague sitting two metres away. “Added to this, if you wake up in a bad mood on Monday morning, you don’t have to come to work. We don’t even want you to come because you simply don’t feel like it and will therefore not make a contribution. We want employees who are ready and willing to work. If that means they only come twice a week, that’s okay. It’s about results.”


It’s striking that your books never mention the word “leader.”“Leadership is way overrated. In fact I don’t call the courses I teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “leadership courses.” I think the idea is outdated that leadership is only relegated to a few and that it can be planned, structured and developed.”


What’s wrong with cultivating leaders?“The whole idea of leaders implies that only a few are capable of pointing us in the right direction. I’m more interested in the structures or the architecture of organizations that enable the company to survive in the future, independent of the leaders.“An important facet of leadership is succession. Succession of managers is often arranged in a dramatic and hectic way.

Take Louis Gerstner, who was taken on as an outsider at IBM, where there are thousands of people with management or business-economics degrees. Was there truly no one in the company capable of taking the lead? That’s pretty weak.”


But an outsider could have a more objective view of the company?“Maybe. But in saying that you’re actually implying that a company can’t innovate or change without hiring outsiders. That’s a scary thought. I would consider it disappointing if an organization can’t produce any leadership talent capable of looking at the company objectively. Take [former General Electric CEO] Jack Welch. When someone puts such a strong mark on a company, as Welch did, it’s often difficult for his successor. Many strong leaders have left weak organizations in their wake. There’s a good reason why many companies—including General Electric—need major reorganizations right after those strong leaders leave.”


Have you arranged your own succession?“Oh, I’ve been working on it for some 15 years. Sixty percent of the business is now comprised of initiatives I have absolutely nothing to do with. The company is doing very well without me. That was also the case when I had a car accident last year and spent a couple of months in intensive care. And a couple of weeks each year I’m travelling and not reachable. Everything runs smoothly.”


How do you develop managers at Semco? Do you send them to business schools?“We never send anyone anywhere. Everyone is responsible for their own career and training. All the employees have a budget to do with as they see fit. We don’t say a word about the choice of courses. We’ve never had a shortage of people interested in taking on management duties, coordinating or guiding others. In our system, managers are anonymously evaluated every six months by their subordinates. If they don’t measure up, they’re no longer allowed to fulfill a leadership role. It’s as simple as that. At our company, you’re a manager as long as your staff approves.”


Do you see it as your mission to inspire entrepreneurs and managers?“Not at all. I don’t see my methods as a gift to humanity. I don’t do it to teach others; I do it for myself. I simply wanted to create an organization where I wanted to work myself. It’s actually quite egotistical.”



Taken with kind permission from the Dutch book De essentie van leiderschap (“The essence of leadership”) by Dominique Haijtema (Business-Contact, ISBN 9047001826), a collection of interviews with Madeleine Albright, Deepak Chopra, Jack Welch and Muhammad Yunus, among others. Most of the interviews were previously published in the Dutch business magazine Management Team. Haijtema is a journalist with the Dutch business daily Het Financieele Dagblad Entrepreneur of the year Ricardo Semler, born in 1959 in São Paulo, became the director of Semco—his father’s company—in 1982. He helped take it from an ailing industrial enterprise with annual sales of $4 million U.S. [2.3 million euros] to a dynamic, fast-growing company active in numerous sectors, from air coolers to consultancy, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003. Moreover, Semco is enjoys a reputation worldwide as the example of a “democratic organization” (http://www.semco.com.br/). In 1990 and 1992, Semler was named Brazilian businessman of the year. His first book, published in 1993, was Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace; ten years later, he published The Seven Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works. In 2003, he founded Lumiar, a democratic school in São Paulo, where children between the ages of 2 and 10 are encouraged to learn whatever they consider interesting (www.lumiar.org.br).



Ricardo Semler’s tips for democratic management• Do away with bureaucracy, which creates a sense of false security.• Let employees determine everything themselves: their salaries, their working hours, their managers. • Let go of control to stimulate creativity. • Strip away special treatment for managers—no parking space or secretary, not even their own desk. • Continually question whether what appears to be self-evident is actually good for the company. • Regularly take a break from work when you are unreachable for a period of time. • Read classic literature instead of management books. • Remember that leadership has nothing to do with hierarchy, because everyone can develop leadership skills.

Obama & Oprah- What a Ticket!

Obama & Oprah what a ticket--Entertainment Tonight would love it!


As an American living in a Canadian body, I have a slightly different perspective on the issues surrounding the election of a President in 2008, especially the election of Obama. I think he is the great "Black" hope America is looking for. Particularly the majority of Blacks who represent the 30 million US citizens who make a minimal wage of $5.15 an hour, America's working poor.

The "system" has and always will be controlled by white elitists who only recognize the achievement of blacks through sports and entertainment. White basketball and football owners are pre-disposed to dump millions of dollars on black pro athletes for the entertainment of wealthy whites who can afford seasons tickets. Oprah has been "playing white" since her show was launched. Look at her audience...primarily white middle class. Oprah loves Obama, not because he will save America, but because he is an attractive, charismatic man whom she can identify with that has the look and feel of a celebrity.

America has and always will be totally pre-occupied with celebrities as heroes. If you lose the Super Bowl by one point nobody calls the next day and asks you to be on their late night TV show. This pre-occupation with winning is resulting in the innocent death of young soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. George W. Bush, the troubled young son of a demanding father and controlling Mother, is possessed with "winning" the war in Iraq even if he takes another 22,000 troops into certain death. "I'll show Dad I can win at something". This is not the rhetoric of a rational human being , this is a "madman'. It is always said you generally hate the people who remind you most of yourself...hence Curious George and his father's hatred of Saddam Hussein.

There is a major crises in America, that goes beyond Barack Obama as the "hope". Democrats and Republicans are cut from the same cloth. Wall Street owns the White House and the way the American system is set up, you have Hillary raising $15 million dollars to buy votes, so she can have the same corporate sector, the Republicans have been beholding to if and when she gets elected. Over 98% of the money raised in the U.S. for political campaigns comes from the corporate sector. This is insane. We have a system in Canada that does not permit a politician to raise more than $1,000 for her or his campaign. We have a fundamental three party system, but with plenty of room for independants. We have a free and democratic society that allows for the free will of the people to speak with their votes.

I have studied and lived in the U.S. and I can tell you that the prevailing attitude of Americans I knew was that America has the most democratic and free society in the world. The envy of the free world. Not any more, the U.S., with homeland security, fear, paranoia , illegal wars and occupation of countries, corrupt corporate leaders ,and a "liar" in the White House, no longer is the envy of the free world, and in fact in many countries it has become the most hated. Electing a black Kennedy is not going to solve anything. And even Kennedy with all his charisma, that Americans so cherish, had his own connections with the Mafia, and sinister corporate magnets.

Until America shifts away from a culture that associates money with power and power with success, you will continue to elect public officials who honestly believe that most Americans are "stupid". "They need us...that without our governance and protection, the U.S. would be invaded by everybody from aliens to Celine Dion."The American Dream has become it's worst nightmare. Wake up, or just like global warming , it will be too late to do anything except build an arc and pray for Gore. If I had a vote that's where I'd put my X.

Your thoughts are welcome...please comment.

BoomerBiz

BoomerBiz

This is the ultimate resource center for 50 plus boomers who want to start their own business. In the weeks to come you can read about my own personal journey in meeting the challenges of continuing to grow and enrich my life at the age of 65 and beyond. As I enter the autumn of my life I feel the need to keep on expanding my horizons. I hope you will share your comments as well. In an effort to expand our mutual knowledge I will attempt to bring empowering stories to your attention that help you grow your business ethically and create profits with integrity. Till the next time, I remain ..

Your humble Biz Boomer

War Games

Today I opened my newspaper to find an awards ceremony taking place that I had never heard of before; "The Interactive Achievement Awards", administered by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a non-profit group made up of some 9,000 members of the entertainment software industry. Take a look at the titles and descriptions of some of the nominees; Gears of War, a dark futuristic action-horror video game. Gears is the brainchild of creative director Cliff Bleszinski, but the Epic team from Cary, North Carolina, had plenty of Canadian content. Epic VP Mark Rein is from Toronto and four other Canadians worked on the project. How wonderful, a hands across the border project totally consumed with violence and war.

Then there's Scarface, a violent mobster interactive game from Radical Entertainment in Vancouver, Bully from Rockstar Games also from Vancouver, sending another message of violent retribution. Relic , the video game company from Canada contributing the most to world peace with titles like; Impossible Creatures, Warhammer 40,000, and Dawn of War released this statement; "So far we've been nominated for over 60 awards that I'm aware of,: producer John Johnson said proudly from Vancouver, "We've pulled in (won) over 40 of those". Johnson said Relic knew the Second World War field was getting a little stale, but was confident it could take the genre forward to the next step. "Key features included creating a "living battlefield," where gamers could interact with their environment. "For me that's the biggest feature, because the game play suddenly becomes different every time you play it," said Johnson. Wow what a concept, how to kill people in different ways, based on your "killing mood".,and what a genius creative business mind to recognize that this "second world war" stuff was getting stale. A final footnote, the awards take place at the HardRock Casino and Club in Las Vegas (Sin City), how appropriate.

It's been surmised that none of the above companies have been nominated for a Corporate Ethics, Sustainabliity, or "Zentrepreneur of the Year Award.

Okay here goes my rant and disbelief at the same time. The fact that we have reached a point in our society that we are permitting legalized war games to infiltrate the very people that we will be entrusting our world to, the younger generation, is beyond belief. Have we become so immune to the world outside that the very mention of war to someone today is treated much like the daily weather forecast. You want to hear about it , but you are powerless to change it. Where is the fine line between madness and civility.

Zentrepreneurism is about creating purpose and profits with integrity. The inconvenient truth about global warming has finally reached the ears of government and now the general public. It took Al Gore years to get peoples attention. What will it take to get the business world to "wake up" to it's own Inconvenient Truth.

Whether its pollution of the atmosphere or pollution of the mind., the two are equal culprits and each has it's own responsibility to act in a way that strenghtens our moral and ethical fibre. The cigarette companies are now targetting the most vulnerable of our ciitzens, our youth, becasue they know that they are the ones most confused and feeling disenfranchised. Too young to make clear descisions on what's good or bad and too old to be turned away at the corner grocery store. These same vulnerable, disenfranchised, and misguided youth are walking into Best Buy and laying down their last few dollars to have an opportunity to "play war". Killing people off is no big deal, heck you can watch CNN every night and get your dose of war and casualty counts much like to the ticker tape from Wall Street.

These same kids are in a fog, they have become immune to the graphics and they do not place a high value on themselves or the world around them. The next step is the local gun store and then it's off to the nearest high school or college to blow away people who looked funny at them, ignored them, bullied them, or talked about them. And then you can "waste yourself", the ulitmate suicide, no "guts no glory". You see the pattern here. It's a pattern repeated thousands of times a day in virtually every city in North America. At one point does business and the corporate world step up to the plate and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We will no longer sacrifice integrity for profits. We will do the right thing to stop glorifying violence and war.

We will make a commitment to promote peace and wellness in our community. And if this inconvenient truth is too much for them to handle and they refuse to act responsibly, then you have no other choice, just say "Hell No we won't Buy" . The quiet revolution of the conscious consumer has already begun with the oil companies, the cigarette companies, the drug companies, the anti-war movement and now it's time for us to meet head on the irresponsible antics of the video game industry. War ,poverty, pollution, hunger and polluted profits have no place in a peaceful compassionate world. It may not appear in your daily newspaper, but the people have spoken, even if they are under ground.

Lose or Die Tryin

Lose or Die Tryin


Three guesses on which nation shows the way forward to a happy global future. China, for its booming economy? The U.S. for its high standard of living? Italy for its great food? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Vanuatu, a string of islands in the Pacific, leads the world in promoting satisfaction, according to the Happy Planet Index, a new measure of human progress created by Friends of the Earth and the New Economics Foundation. This nation of 250,000 people scored well in all three categories upon which the index was based: life satisfaction, life expectancy and ecological sustainability. Here’s the reality check,, Canada placed 111th and the U.S. 150th. So much for the “American Dream”. http://www.eur.nl/fsw/research/happiness

And on that happy note, the beginning of my blog entry for this week. If America is so concerned about protecting its borders from the evil doers; terrorists, illegal aliens, drug smugglers, suspicious Muslims, suspicious Iranians, suspicious North Koreans, Afghanistans, Cubans, and Canadians who look like the “enemy”, why don’t they take a look at the enemy within; poverty, racism, a shrinking middle class, congressman who routinely wind up in sexual misadventures, Christian evangelists who wave the flag while having sex with men, prostitutes, and little boys. a Christian right wing that is convinced that all non believers will perish when Armageddon strikes us all down , an era of discontent unprecedented, and led by a President, “Curious George”, who has the worst ratings of any President since Nixon, and we know what he was up to…can you spell “impeachment”.

It appears that the only thing they are not afraid of is American Idol contestants who lose. As a matter of fact for the first time in history, America is actually rewarding losers…the American people are embracing these losers. If you lose on any of the so called reality shows, you can actually become a hero. Lose 200 pounds and you are a hero. get kicked off the Apprentice and you are still a somebody for standing up to the Trumpster, the poster boy for narcissism …get kicked off the Island and people want to interview you on national television the next morning, lose on American Idol and heck you can even get a record contract and make a million bucks with no talent, and no singing ability, and no idea of what actually happened to you. Exhibit A…. William Hung, hit stardom with a bombastic hit “She Bangs”. He appeared last night on Larry King along with three other losers who have made it big. He’s so surprised and amazed at his fame, he remains speechless. However he did get it together long enough to sing something for his new country album. The two other losers applauded him and Larry just pulled back his suspenders and had a senile moment, forgot to breathe and then threw it over to Anderson Cooper who just winced , plugged his ears, and said “Is it over’.

Okay here is my theory of what’s going on in America, and why Canadians are just as nuts for watching. George Bush and his axis of evil twins Dick and Condy have put the country into such a high state of paranoia , that even the simple people believe that everyone in the world wants to invade America so that they can all have a piece of the American Dream. Ah yes America where all things are possible. Make an idiot of yourself and you can become a winner just by being a loser. As a matter of fact if you are ugly enough you can win a Golden Globe award for the funniest show on television. Ugly Betty, the story of how bad and mean people can be to ugly people. Truth becomes reality. Or how about the other big show…”Beauty and the Geek”. Let’s see if the nerdy guys who look like they spent their entire lives in their bedrooms, are used as props for the new reality show, where a beautiful blonde bombshell is fooled into believing she will be meeting the star Adonis quarterback form the Notre Dame Football team. Instead she gets to choose between not one but 15 Napolean Dynamite look alikes. And then there is FIRE ME…PLEASE a new four-episode, one-hour reality series that follows two people starting new jobs on the same day, with the goal of intentionally being fired as close to 3:00 PM as possible.

Television has become a stage for revealing how bad things are in the land of “anything is possible”. Nowadays, most of the shows either make fun of people, kill people, find people who kill others, look for terrorists who want to kill us, look for people who have raped others, look for people who have molested children, Even Oprah offers $100,000 for people who find criminals, Jerry Springer has a hit show by exposing people as they humiliate everyone and the people in the audience holler for more blood, with battle cries of “Jerry.. Jerry”. Does this remind you of the Roman times when the crowd gave the head honcho permission to do a thumbs up or down, .resulting in the poor gladiator either going back in his cage or being fed to the lions. Sounds a lot like Simon on American Idol. But hey it’s whatever the traffic will bear baby. Even Maury realized he could do far better by being more foolish than serious…and he looked over at Springer and thought hey I can do that too. Just parade all the social misfits I can into exposing their miserable lives on television.

I wonder what the Dalai Lama thinks when he visits North America and watches this crap on television. He must think there is less hope than he first realized. Even though Bill Mahr described most Americans as being “stupid”. I think there is hope, and the more people I meet who have now turned off their televisions and view it as an invasion of privacy. the more I think that America is simply looking for something to laugh at. You can only laugh at George Bush for so long. You can only watch so many football games, so many Super Bowls, and you can only hear about the war in Iraq, global warming, the threat of terrorism, and a nuclear bomb. Even food and beer can’t make the pain away. People in America are angry, paranoid, frustrated, poor, unhealthy, and confused. So is it no wonder that the most narcissistic country in the world, who believe they are the envy of the world, ranks as one of the least happiest countries on the planet. It reminds me of the joke about the narccistic person who says upon engaging in a long winded conversation. “Okay that’s enough about me, let’s talk about you, what do you think of me”? More reason for Canadians to take a harder look at how we view our neighbors to the South, because if it’s with envy and we’re not careful we will wind up 149th right behind our American cousins. When I was a kid all we had was the CBC and you know what, I thought it was pretty cool…time to bring back Wayne and Shuster!

The Corporate Squeeze

Just When You Thought the Squeeze Was Over


Written by David Batstone January 9, 2007

Just when you thought that the American worker could not get squeezed for any more juice, major retailers have come up with a new cost-savings innovation to apply more pressure on their workforce. Indeed, staffing is the latest area where big retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Payless hope to wring out a few pennies with new operational efficiencies.
Mind you, Wal-Mart and its kin already have been blasted for paying low wages, being miserly with health benefits, and reticent to pay their workers overtime. So how could matters get worse for their employees?

Major features in the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle this week reveal that new computerized scheduling systems will move many American workers from a predictable work shift to staffing based on the number of customers in a store at any given time. The system will allow managers to start the business day with a few employees on hand, then bring in "on call" workers when business picks up during the course of the day. Once commerce lags, the manager can send workers home until further notice. In short, it matches staffing to more closely match customer demand.

It's easy to see how this practice could increase productivity and, hence, operational profitability. But consider the plight of workers who no longer can budget their expenses for a week, or arrange for baby sitting for their kids if called into work, or hold a second job that might help them make ends meet. They are essentially at the beck and call of their boss on a daily basis. Rather than work, say, four 8-hour shifts per week, a worker might work two hours one day, six another, and three on a subsequent day. The practice will force a large slice of American workers into low-paid, part-time jobs.

"The whole point is workers were a fixed cost, now they're a variable cost," Kenneth Dalto, a management consultant told the Wall Street Journal. "Is it good for workers?" he added. "Probably not."

I don't know why Dalto had to throw the word "probably" into his assessment. It's clearly a nightmare scenario for workers who will be pressured to be available at the drop of a hat. It gives "flex time" a whole new meaning. It used to mean that workers could arrange their work to fit their personal demands. It now means that workers will arrange their lives to meet the demands of commerce.

Wal-Mart now asks its hourly employees to fill out a schedule of their availability, and encourages them to include a weekend window "if at all possible." This "personal availability form states: "Limiting your personal availability may restrict the number of hours you are scheduled." The obvious implication is that the less flexible you are, you may find yourself in the manager's dog house and fall to the bottom of his call list.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that some longtime workers, who have reached higher pay scales, fear that managers are using the system to pressure them to quit their jobs. After working 16 years at a Wal-Mart in Hastings, Minnesota, Karen Nelson says managers told her she had to be opening to working nights and weekends. When she refused, her manager told her, "[I can] get two two people for what I pay [you]." Her hours were cut, though restored again after she filed a complaint.

While retailers can defend the new staffing policies by hiding behind improved customer service - workers will be present when the customers most need them - the truth of the matter is that it places an unfair burden on workers. Just how far can we squeeze the worker? It looks like mammoth American retail chains are willing to test that proposition.

World Wide Launch

On November 24th the world wide launch of Zentrepreneurism took place in Vancouver B.C. Canada. The idea that became a book has now become a global movement. To catch the zenergy and excitement of this event go to www.zentrepreneurism.com .

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"- Gandhi

THE BIRTH OF ZENTREPRENEURISM

Well, I am happy to report that the baby has given birth. After 1.5 years of labour, my first attempt at literary genius has resulted in the birth of Zentreprenuerism- A Twenty-first Century Guide to the New World of Business. The official launch will be June 20th at which time we will have a VIP reception and book signing at Cecil Green Park on the campus of the University of British Columbia. In that very same building some 26 years ago I was the resident Director of Alumni Fund Raising, so it's a full circle return to where it all began.

Many friends, colleagues, and business associates have been confirmed to attend. The media have also been invited through my publicist who is arranging an Alberta book tour in early August and a Toronto junket in September. For those of you who have been regular readers of this blog, my apologies for not being current in my postings, however as you can see I have been otherwise pre-occupied. As you know the original title of the book was to have been called "Buddha in the Board Room", however as catchy as the title was, it didn't resonate for me, given my limited knowledge of buddhism. Being the voice and messenger for Zentrepreneruism had a better feel to it and indeed came from a truer place. The book will be available on-line at our new website currently being developed at www.zentrepreneurism.com. after June 20th. I will also post excerpts from the book here on this blog.

To give you some idea of the nature of the book, here are some highlights from the dust jacket book cover:


“We have a situation where we don’t trust our government or our capitalist system…the level of distrust right now is probably unparalleled since the 1930’s.

-Charles Lewis, Founder, Centre for Public Integrity.


People are expecting more from the companies they’re working for…more from the companies they’re doing business with and more from the companies they’re buying from”

-Sydney Finkelstein, professor of strategy and leadership, Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business


FOREWORD




Not every generation is privileged to see the start of a future. We are — and in Zentrepreneurism, Allan Holender has acted as its revelator, its prophet, if you will.

We are used to thinking of prophets as heralds of a far-off future. But prophets simply crystallize what is ready to be born. The world of social and natural capitalism, the world of full-life living, the world of service coupled with entrepreneurial behavior that this book describes has been building for the past thirty years. Only now is it ready to shine forth in the full light of day.

With this revelation, the business world — and our personal lives — are destined to change.

There is little question that many of us today are seeking something beyond what the world has offered us to date. Whether your life reflects great success in your endeavors, or whether each day is a personal or professional struggle, work alone isn't enough for many of us now. Instead, we are looking for a whole-life experience, one where all the pieces come together. Work becomes love, love becomes living, and living is work. A life where our partners, our families, our businesses and our efforts merge into a single, harmonious whole — and where we measure our success in more ways than just the balance in our bank accounts.

Harmony requires as much from us as it gives us. We live harmoniously when our efforts lead to a more harmonious environment. Unsurprisingly, the pioneers who brought us simple messages about work/life balance and integration into a single whole have also pioneered humane environments that take as much care with the environment, with the community, and with the groups of people privileged to work together with product quality, service quality, and prudent fiscal management. Daily meditations, time spent with family and friends, and personal growth feature as prominently as do strong values, an insistence on excellence in every endeavor, a true accounting of materials and their impacts on the world around us, and attention to realizing a real profit from ethical efforts. These are a new breed of entrepreneurs — and they are the vanguard of a new world.

As a philosopher and a futurist, I was at first skeptical of Allan's zentrepreneurs . Perhaps that is part of acknowledging that I, too, am part of this wave of the future. I was certain that this New Age approach was a fad — sure to be tested and discarded when times turned tougher.

I no longer believe that any longer. Yes, many who claim to be enlightened capitalists will revert to hard-nosed behavior when tested. But the transition oulined in this book has legs; it will stand up to adversity. We are moving beyond simple remedies to more complex ways of dealing with the world — yes, even the hard right of neoconservativism is adapting slowly — and we are beginning to understand the fundamental connectedness of all the parts of our lives, our activities, our world.

Many of the zentrepreneurs do not actually practice Zen. Nor are they Buddhists, although the ideas of Gautama the Buddha permeate their thinking even as they are unaware of the connection. Some are devoted and dedicated Jews, Christians, Muslims — the list of the worlds’ faiths is long, and includes those who deny all faith. But throughout each of these seemingly disporate faiths runs a common thread of ideas and actions, approaches and ideals that is well illustrated by Buddhism, regardless of its form, from the Hinayana through to Zen.

Similarly, the many and growing number of Westerners — in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe — who are adopting Buddhism and adapting in its forms to life in the West, are not necessarily Zentrepreneurs Those who find themselves walking this path need not apologize for such fellow travelers. But notions of a right livelihood are taking hold beyond both communities, for all of that.

Why are Eastern disciplines — Buddhism, Zen, Taoism — taking hold in the business world of the West?

The ideas of the East, with the concepts of balance and harmony as their foundation, are appealing to a Western world, which has spent many centuries driving hard toward its goals. Many business executives, after decades of hard work, suddenly turn around and realize that, while working so hard to be financially successful they have been missing out on enjoying life’s full potential. Others, observing their own business leaders, wonder if the pressures they withstood at work mean they, too, are working for an Enron — a company where employees were sacrificed to the driving ambition of those at the top.

Few Western business leaders become adherents of one or another of the Eastern faiths, although most of them have grown up in the West, especially in America. Most are fellow travelers, picking up on the spirit of the times by osmosis. But the search for balance and an integration of personal and home life, work life, planetary stability, and survival continues for all of them. In this book, Allan Holender reveals the stories of a number of these people, and the impact their new found practices have had on their lives, and their enterprises.

What makes Allan’s personal journey, also recounted in this book, extraordinary?

In many ways, Allan’s own story is every person's story. We are all taught by society to succeed, and to push to do so. One look at the junk mail folder every day shows the ever-increasing number of inducements to join successful programs, ways to get rich more quickly, and promises of glory. These programs are legion, and in the desire to improve ourselves- usually financially many of us take part in one or another of them. Even if we resist the siren call of instant riches, however, we dream of them — look at the people packing casinos, buying lottery tickets, and jumping from job to job just to get a raise.

In the quest for success, the real values in our lives can often be lost. Mere existence takes over. Coming to realize that …. and to seek out another way — is Allan's story. As the same realization dawns for more and more people in Western society, Allan's story becomes a symbol for everyone's story. That is why it is extraordinary.

What about you, the reader? What should you hope to take away from this book?

In the stories of the Zentrepreneurs, I found inspiration and challenge. You can do well and do good at the same time. You can have a life and a business together. As an employee, management, or the owner of a large organization, you can have these at any corporate level. In other words, although many of the Zentrepreneurs whose stories are told here have built their own businesses, that is not what is important. You may feel, if you are walking this road yourself, that you can only reach your personal vision and mission through the vehicle of your own firm. Others will, like Buddha himself, stay where they are, and let their actions in their cubicle begin to change the world.
It is not too late to live the fullest, richest life you can live!

Bruce A. Stewart,
Speaker, Author, Research Advisor and Consultant



PREFACE


I thought about writing a book two years ago because someone suggested that the title I picked was catchy, “Buddha in the Board Room”. At first the idea had some merit, but as I began to research Buddhism, and read every book I could find at the library, I soon found that taking a crash course on Buddhism didn’t quite resonate for me. So I began to explore the eight fold path of Buddhism and begin my own journey towards enlightenment. I soon realized that I was not coming from a total place of integrity. I did believe that I was spiritual and I did believe that I was on some sort of path, but I really wasn’t sure what that path was. I knew I wanted my life to be different, and I wanted to write about how in a simplistic way we could apply the eight fold path of the Buddha to the world of business and as a result how different our business and our lives could be, like the ten commandments of Zentrepreneurism.

I also began to realize how different our lives would be, because after all our business does affect our lives. So I decided to try one more experiment- I visited a Buddhist temple and met with one of the program staff. I felt a great sense of peace in the temple, but still did not feel at home. I think my greatest spiritual moments have come at the top of the mountains in Sedona, Arizona, or at the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza near Cancun.

It was in that moment after leaving the Buddhist temple grounds, that I decided I could no longer live the illusion that I was going to be the Jew who became a Buddhist and instead I was going to write bout something I already believed in, a life I was already living and was passionate about. I also realized that being an expert on Zentrepreneurism did not fit either. Instead I did what I do best, gathered as much information as I could, read as many articles and books I could, interviewed as many people as I could, and then reported on these events in the book. I am a communicator, and so what better role to have as a first time author than to be the voice and messenger for Zentreprenuerism.

What's Your Mission Statement

Structure is liberating: A monastary in the lowlands of South Carolina has some truly inspired ideas about work, life -- and compost.

By: Chuck Salter of Fast Company

It's morning rush hour in the egg house, and cartons of fresh produce are sliding off the conveyor belt faster than Augie Turak can pack them into boxes. Any minute now, the holding table will overflow with the fragile cargo. It's not the sort of predicament in which you would expect to find a software executive such as Turak. But then again, how many executives regularly take time off to work on a monastery chicken farm?

Just in the nick of time, one of the abbey's brothers quietly steps in and helps get the egg pile-up under control. The gesture reminds Turak, 47, president of North American operations for Israel-based MuTek Solutions Inc., a software-development-tools firm, of why he keeps coming back to Mepkin Abbey. "The attitude here is 'How can I help the community?,' not 'How can the community help me?' " he says.

A monastery may be the last place you'd expect to learn about running a fast company. And, in fact, the egg-house commotion aside, there's really nothing fast about life at Mepkin. The pace here is deliberate, the schedule is predictable, and the setting is remote. Located 45 miles outside of Charleston, South Carolina, the monastery sits on more than 3,000 acres of peaceful Berkeley County lowlands, amid stately live oaks draped in Spanish moss.

But a closer look reveals an operation that most corporate managers would envy -- one with motivated workers, a strong organizational culture, and no backstabbing. And talk about a track record: Mepkin is part of the Cistercian order, which was founded in France more than 900 years ago. Work is an integral part of these monks' faith. "It refreshes the body and mind for more-intense periods of prayer and contemplation," says Father Francis Kline, 51, Mepkin's abbot.

The self-supporting monastery has also racked up some impressive sales numbers: Its chicken farm generates annual revenues of more than $500,000, producing about 9 million eggs and 270 tons of compost a year. The rest of the operation includes guest houses for 1,000 or so annual retreatants, a 2,200-acre timber business, a Web site and gift shop, and a recently expanded botanical garden (which will open to the public by early next year). Mepkin's proceeds support local disadvantaged residents, in addition to covering the abbey's operating costs.

Not bad for two dozen monks (average age: 70) whose prayer regimen allows for just six hours of work a day. How do so few accomplish so much? By working with hardly any distractions, little politicking, and no out-of-control egos, says Brother Stan Gumula, 58, the abbey's business manager. Since the monks' trust in one another is unfailing, they are not afraid to admit to mistakes. A rule for the reverent: The sooner you can pinpoint a problem, the sooner it can get solved.

That's exactly the sort of trust and personal accountability that more businesses need, says Turak, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and visits Mepkin several times a year. Fearful of the consequences of their errors, workers often try to hide their mistakes -- a practice that eventually comes back to haunt them. "The monks understand that things don't always work out," observes Turak. "As they say, 'It's in the nature of eggs to break.' " That's the type of open atmosphere that Turak encourages among his sales crew at MuTek. "You feel secure enough to tell me about your mistake," he says, "and that only reaffirms my trust in you."
Of course, profit isn't the primary motive at Mepkin Abbey; serving God is. That mission is reinforced daily by tasks and rituals that are both sacred and mundane: the 3:20 AM church service, the Grand Silence from 8 PM to 8:30 AM, even the shoveling of chicken manure into compost piles. Everything that the monks do demonstrates their divine service and strengthens their community.

If the mission provides clarity, compassion is the key to the monks' harmony. "Even the just man falls seven times a day," says Brother Callistus Crichlow, 51, a former Wall Street computer technician. "If you believe that, you forgive others for their failings."
Commitment to such humble verities is what binds this eclectic group -- which includes a former clinical psychologist, a chef, a stage manager, and a fisherman -- and binds them for life. "It shouldn't work," says Father Kline. "The fact that we're here and that we're united says a lot about God."

Mepkin's ethos is one that overworked, IPO-hungry entrepreneurs would surely find eye-opening. "I think they may get a very different perspective on life and values other than making money," says Brother Gumula. "The monastery has a lot to teach simply by showing people the way we live."

The way the monks live also says a lot about how they treat their customers. Just now, Brother Gumula is on the phone with a woman from Florida, carefully answering her many questions about the proper use of compost on houseplants. It's a long conversation -- especially for a $7 order. (Ensuring quality and providing top-notch customer service often requires the patience of, well, a monk.) But Brother Gumula considers it time well spent. "It's not just that we want people back for another sale -- we do. But they deserve to open a carton of eggs and not find crushed eggs or manure smears. What would that say about this place?"

Although a company and a monastery are fundamentally different, the monks' sense of fairness and loyalty is good business and good for business, says Turak. And their perspective on work is healthy: "It is designed to provide us with food, clothing, and security, so we can do other things with our lives," he says. "That's something that the monks never lose sight of."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Visit Mepkin Abbey on the Web (www.mepkinabbey.org).