Deep Roots

In class we have discussed ways to improve our lives by design. One thing that has been on my mind is the thought that as we go about "designing" our lives, we have to be rooted in good ground, or good principles, if we want to grow and become stronger. Some of these principles that we need to sink our roots into are ethical behavior, treating those around us like people and not objects, and drawing upon the best of everything and everyone around us. When we try to plant ourselves in soil that is full of unethical rocks, or the fungus of thinking we are better than those around us, it doesn't matter how tall we grow, because our roots will rot and we will fall. The stronger and deeper our roots are in good ground, the taller we can grow, the more fruit we can produce, the more people we will be able to shade and the stronger we will be. - Jenny Phillips

Public Restrooms

I recently watched the Ellen Degeneres stand up comedy. She did a hilarious section about public restrooms that had me in tears and my stomach hurting. I found this clip on youtube, it may not be the actual part i saw but its still gives me a good laugh. check it out.

Entrepreneurial Skills

Lately in class we have been talking about how to use entrepreneurial skills in most areas of business. While I think this could be beneficial, I believe that entrepreneurial spirit is not only developing new ideas for individual business, but also already developed businesses. Our class was talking about taking ideas from an already developed business and making a new company. I think that this would be completely pointless, in the aspect that new businesses rarely make it in the long term of the market. However, if one would take entrepreneurial skills and implement them into an existing business, they could make that company better, instead of forming business after business on small ideas. Whenever I think of entrepreneurs, I tend to think of restless people who can't sit in an office, so they choose to make their own businesses, which usually fail. But if one took that spirit and injected that into a current business, I feel like that would be much more beneficial to the economy as a whole.

Hannah Heninger

What Truly Motivates Us?

This is probably the most interesting youtube video I have ever seen. It explains that for any type of straight forward task, the "If you do this, then you get that." type of motivators are oustanding. BUT! When a task gets more complicated and involves creative thinking, these kinds of motivators DON'T WORK! In other words, employees WILL NOT be motivated to do anything "OUTSTANDING" in their jobs with a simple raise in salary. If you want employees to be "engaged" in their work, then self direction, or "autonomy" is a much better motivator. "One day of autonomy produces things that never emerge!" People want to do things that are productive and praisworthy, but they want to do this of their own accord, not because someone said they'd "give them a raise." They are motivated to do these things when they feel they have reached autonomy.

To me this seems to be the perfect "win-win" situation for any company. If employers can trust in their employees' ability to do great things purely on their own, (without any ridiculous external motivators), then chances are they will independently do amazing things simply because they have that self-driven autonomy they strive for. The necessary work will get done, the creative ideas will flow, and the company will flourish.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is to stand aside and allow people to do incredible things on their own.

Cason Wortley

I thought it was interesting how globalization of capitalism was distributed throughout the world. Globalization describes the process in which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a global network of political ideas through communication, transportation, and trade. I thought that the trade part of globalization was relevant to what we had talked about April 8 in class. I think it is very important to have Global trade flowing throughout the world so richer nations can help out developing countries. Employees in the richer nations suffer as their jobs are outsourced to low wage economies. Capitalist corporations increase exploitation by paying less to workers in developing countries for the same work that was done by workers at home. From that discussion and other research I have don’t, I have now realized why Global Vision is a pillar of the Huntsman Business School.

THE GLOBAL MARKET

How Will the Japan Earthquake Affect the U.S. Economy?

"It's still too early to measure the entire effect of Japan's earthquake on the U.S. economy. A few things, however, are all but certain."

See full article from DailyFinance: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/japan-earthquake-u-s-economy/19878316/?icid=sphere_copyright

I found this article on the daily finance website. We have been talking about having a world vision in our class the past week and and was interested what the media was saying about how the destruction in Japan will effect on our economy and its effect on me personally. Talking about this subject in class and reading articles myself has really opened my eyes to really how connected the world has become. Even though I was not there in Japan when the earthquake happened and didn't suffer any personal losses the destruction the Japan faced will have an effect on me through the global economy. In the article is discussed the U.S. imported from a total of $96 billion in goods from Japan in 2009. There will be at least a short term slow of these imports from Japan. American stocks could also actually rise for a time because the article suggests "there will be a migration from Japanese equities and bonds" and "some of this capital may seek the safe haven of the U.S. equity markets and treasuries." Lastly in the article it discuesses one effect that I can see effecting me and and college students alike personally is the increase in prices for consumer electronics and disruptions in the supply of parts for devices like the Apple iPhone and iPad in which is in great demand and use around every college campus. These are just a couple of ways that we can see just how connected our world has become. Our economy has become and is even increasingly becoming a global market in which just one catastrophe in a single country can have a large effects on the rest of the world.

Looks like 2008

This past week the national average gas price has hit $3.79 per gallon. California and Hawaii crossed the $4 mark weeks ago. All this is reminiscent of early 2008 as the coming election loomed and rising gas prices led to an influx of stolen gas and growing concern. Luckily, with the election of 2008, gas prices plummeted to under $2, a welcome ease to American wallets. What has caused this recent spike? According to an article by CNN reporter Ben Rooney, a major factor is the price of oil in general, which tends to rise around this time of year anyway, in correspondence with peak driving seasons. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted in their April short-term energy outlook that the national average gas price would reach $3.86 this summer. Though that sounds better than the looming $4 average being discussed, it's still a 40% increase from last summer. At this point, Utah comes in around the national average. Hopefully with the next election coming next year, we will see another drop in price. These recent developments raise the question of whether we should drill in Alaska. I say: yes. Let's cut our dependence on foreign oil and use our natural resources to boost our economy. Until then, Americans will have to rework their budget to fit in their rising expenses.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/12/news/economy/gas_prices/index.htm

by Marcus Lancaster

Mistakes

As I was going through an old note book I came across something I had written down at a leadership conference for Operation Smile. I don’t remember who was talking, but some of the things that they said I still remember. The point that resonated in me the most was that you can break down things that happen in your life into two groups. Good experiences or good lessons. Its ok to make mistakes, what important is learning from them. I'm not big on regret. I know I make mistakes, but there's nothing you can do about the past. I find it better to own that mistake and learn from it. This principle can be applied to not only your personal life, but work as well. If you take your life lessons and apply them in your future you will become more valuable as an employee. As I was writing this, this song came to mind. I thought it applied well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3oOGHwEQT4&feature=related

Inside Job True or False (GROUP 7)

Group 7 The movie Inside Job was certainly an interesting one and we would have to say that we really enjoyed it. We found the movie to portray many interesting facts about the government and the banking crisis. We know that everyone has there own personal opinions about the crisis and why it happened. We want to know what all of you thought about the movie. Here are some questions that might just stimulate the mind and make you even think twice about the movie or what side your on. For us the movie seemed to be very one sided and it seemed to only attack the banks and government. Now here is the first question was it only the banks fault that we fell into crisis? Why or why not? Usually documentaries try and investigate both sides of the argument but this argument was very one sided. In the movie/documentary it talked a lot about the CEO's of these big companies making millions of dollars. Now we believe that these CEO's made lots of money but is that selfish of them? You know that most of those CEO's made salaries which weren't extremely high. However they usually made their good money off of the bonuses they received from investing, financing, etc. So if you were getting paid according to your bonuses wouldn't you want to lend more. The banks were doing more investing, financing, etc. and that's why the CEO's wanted to do more and more. Making money is a business so were the banks CEO's wrong in trying to make money for themselves or their companies? Some of the things in this movie were true and really interesting, but I'm also afraid to inform you that not all of it was all the truth or the truth they had was blown out of proportion at times. If the crisis would have been completely avoidable we would have avoided it. The movie was great and gave lots of truthful insights to the economic crisis that happened, but we have to look at all the facts before we decide what really happened. This Blog post was to just get all of you thinking that there might be more about this crisis than what the movie really portrayed.

The Essence of Greatness

Michael Jordan is widely regarded as the best basketball player ever, and could arguably be the best athlete ever. However, it did not start that way. As a sophomore in high school, Michael Jordan was cut from the varsity. He could have just given up the sport of basketball right then, after all he was a very talented baseball player. But he didn't give up. He let his failure lead to his success. After an unbelievable worth ethic, he later succeeded in high school and got a basketball scholarship at North Carolina. During his freshman year, even though he was a freshman and had to play on a team led by future NBA star James Worthy, Michael still tried his best, making the game winning shot in the championship game. Even when he made it to the NBA, he still had many struggles. He was the third pick in the 1984 draft, where he was widely expected to be the top pick. His team failed to win the NBA championship the first five years in his NBA career, getting shut down by teams doubling and tripling him. Eventually, through an incredible desire to win, hard work every day of his life, pushing himself beyond what he even dreamed possible, he became a legend. He stayed true to his character, and built his life on true principles of hard work, integrity, teamwork (or symphony/synergy) and helping others. By living life on principles, and helping others, we can achieve the success we want. Just like it is shown in the book "Winners never cheat", helping people, staying true to our values, and hard work will bring you true succes and happiness in life. "There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." -Michael Jordan

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Who should we trust now?

I have been spending some time this week reading over the influx of articles detailing the potential shutdown of our government and I can't help but draw connections to some themes we saw in this movie in class. I am certainly not the first person to make a comparison between our government and a large corporation and right now I am feeling like we need new management. We stand on the precipice of having a severely hindered government and I can't think of a time we would be more vulnerable. The entire issue that is causing us to face this possibility is... you guessed it, money. We have both of our parties blaming eachother that their spending habits are irresponsible and in the end the people that suffer from this most is us. As I read about this whole situation I start to get a bit frustrated with each of these parties we have elected to avoid this type of situation and then I remember that I, just like everyone else in the country of voting age, can't get mad at these people. We really can only blame ourselves for putting these representatives in a place where they can make the act of creating a budget for our government a political spectacle. All the while as I read about all the name-calling and political maneuvering, I find myself reminded of the management of the companies we saw in the movie like Lehman Bros. I really worry about the future of the nation and certainly the shape of our economy when we would allow our government to pull a stunt like this when we are just barely starting to pull out of this recession we have been in for so long. It seems similar to me like we are basically being kicked while we are down. We have the potential to lose billions of dollars both in national deficit and as lost wages for all the government workers that may find themselves on an unwanted furlough. And of course lost wages translate to lost money in our economy. We have got to start electing more fiscally responsible representatives or I fear this recession has only just begun.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Huntsman for President?

I have seen a few people drawing connections between our current economic situation and the political leadership that allowed such things to happen. This is further echoed by the movie that we watched in class. When I read about these things I can't help but think about how hopeless the whole situation feels. We simply need to find a way to dig ourselves out of this slump. I think it's great that a lot of the people that are responsible for the crisis have been identified and hopefully in some due time they will be held accountable for the damage they have caused this country. At the same time I was reading about some of these people online I found yet another article about Jon Huntsman Jr's presidential ambitions. This article athttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/22/huntsmans_enviable_record_makes_him_competitive_109309.html, makes mention of how admirably Huntsman was able to manage the economy of this state. Making Utah one of the three most fiscally sound states in the union seems a pretty amazing accomplishment to me. The overall attitude of the population of this country right now seems bent on finding some way make ourselves financially competitve with other countries in the near future and I can't help but fear that, when people are allowed to create a situation where they are basically stealing from the masses in America, we are in real trouble of losing our place as the richest nation on earth. It's interesting that Huntsman seems to already be garnering so much support as a potential candidate in 2012, because it seems that people are realizing that there is real need for a leader who understands the need for financial responsibility as a nation. It seems to me like it would really be a step in the right direction to allow someone who has lead this state with such an impecible record to take a stab at doing so on a national level. So much of our cultural identity seems to hinge on our perception that we are always going to be the richest nation that I think we really need to start identifying ways we are going to retain that status.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Response to Post Three attributes we must develop on our own/ sharing our skills the correct way.

 Thank you for bringing this video into our forums. As I was listening to this video I also found myself thinking back on our classroom discussion. Particularly I was intrigued by the message that several of these characteristics seem like they would be innate qualities in most candidates for a particular position at a company. The real key, as was discussed in class is bringing these traits to light in a meaningful and positive way. I also really liked the combination of passion, initiative, and resourcefulness. It stuck out to me that these qualities really seem to be strengthened by each other. For example one could demonstrate resourcefulness to a boss at work by combining passion and initiative by going out of their way to help solve a problem a coworker is having without any obligation to do so. These traits seem like they would help you to stand out from others as well if you are able to find a way demonstrate these qualities

Capturing innovation

The books A Whole New Mind and Business by Design both focus on finding objective ways to bring innovation to the workplace. What struck me is that there is a very strong, common theme - This innovation is by its nature something that can not be easily captured. Some businesses like Ideo may be experienced veterans of the design process, but their expertise is more of a guiding light than a blueprint. Others like the designers of the Aeron chair have similar success, but lack a rigid process for achieving it. This of course begs the question, how can we students bring innovation to the jobs we will have, or have now? Will the perspective we gain be enough to bring about a real change in the world, or will we depend partially on luck or talent? Can we capture innovation? - Chris Valdes

Study Abroad - Lauren Bagley

In class we have been talking about what a great opportunity it would be to go on a study abroad to get a better understanding of other peoples culture. Last semester i actually signed up to do a study abroad for Art in Germany. We are planning on leaving this summer in June and spending a month there coming back in July learning about the history of Germany as well as the art and culture. Now it inst a business study abroad, but i know that i will be able to learn a lot about the culture, and what it is like to live a college student in Germany. Talking about this in class and seeing all of the pictures got me really excited and i can not wait to leave and get out there!  (:

Global Vision

In class, we've been talking a lot about global vision. Buying and selling items across the globe. I've never realized how big of an impact something can have on the world, that is happening elsewhere. If the Unites States starts having financial problems, then the jobs that have been outsourced will be the ones to be laid off first. The rioting and revolutions going on over in the Middle East have been affecting oil prices. This causes all of the prices around the world to increase, and in turn causes everything else to increase in price. Business owners across the world have to learn how to have an edge on all of the events happening in the world. If they don't they will fall behind, and lose customers. I've never really thought about things like that until the past few days in class, and it's made me realize how important it is to have global vision in the current market.

Dylan Lewis