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Ace Your Accounting Classes: 12 Hints to Maximize Your Potential « The Summa
2 years ago
I follow a blog called The Summa in Google Reader. The Summa is written by an accounting professor named David Albrecht at Concordia College in Moorhead. I’ve only recently been reading the new posts that come across the RSS feed, but happened to stumble upon a link to an older entry that contains excellent advice for every accounting student.
It echoes much of what I’ve thought about but have been unable to express myself so I’m happy to be able to share with you the link in the hopes that this reinforces some things I’ve said to you in class such as:
- “be a scholar, not a student”
- “don’t memorize facts, learn how to think”
- “know your learning style and take advantage of the tools I provide to design your own learning plan”
- “leverage your classmates by studying with them — you will learn more from them than you will ever learn from me”
To read the post, visit this link:
Ace Your Accounting Classes: 12 Hints to Maximize Your Potential « The Summa.
Relying on Empowerment
2 years ago
Chapter 19 touched on the idea of “empowerment” being a measure for quality in the Learning & Growth perspective of the Balanced Scorecard. Fittingly, I came across a post made by the head of Royal Caribbean discussing empowerment and quality in the cruise industry.
http://www.nationofwhynot.com/blog/?p=227
Having experienced the empowerment of Royal Caribbean employees on several past cruises I can certainly say that Royal Caribbean is 2nd to none when it comes to empowering employees throughout the organization to do right by the customer. Everyone from the cruise director to the guest relations staff to the assistant waiter in the dining room is allowed and encouraged to make every effort to please the customers. This is evident in everything they do and it is what makes a Royal Caribbean cruise vacation so special and enjoyable, in my opinion. Usually after a cruise the thing that I share with everyone is not the sights or the weather, but rather the staff and high level of service I experienced onboard the ship.
As to the question posted by about if empowerment is something that is granted vs. is it something you feel, my sense is that both need to be present for an organization and its people to excel. Someone can “feel empowered” but not for very long if they aren’t granted the permission to act upon that feeling. Spirits are crushed easily and employees that desire empowerment/responsibility will leave a company that does not allow them to act upon that desire.
Also, someone can be granted permission to be empowered but if they don’t feel empowered (perhaps a clash of unwritten vs. written policy or just their nature) then they will not exhibit empowered behavior.
Great people and a supportive culture need to come together for empowered behavior to be the norm and for a company, such as Royal Caribbean, to gain a reputation for empowerment. Companies that do so can trade on that reputation of high-quality service and have to guard against anything negative from destroying all that they have built-up.
Succeed by Free, Die by Free
2 years ago
A thought-provoking piece by Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks was brought to my attention via Twitter today. Cuban’s take on things is that companies that basically give away their product will only be competitive in the short-term until someone else with a better widget or at least better marketing comes along and knocks them from their pedestal.
For Google, who lives and dies by free, we don’t know who their BlackSwan company will be. But we all know it will happen don’t we? The only question is when. Of course, Google knows it as well. Which is exactly why they invest in everything and anything they possibly can that they believe can create another business they can depend on in the future. They are spending incredible amounts of money in search of the “next big Google thing.” When their BlackSwan competitor appears, they won’t be in a position to compete with the newly presented model, particularly if it’s free based because their ecosystem has bloated to the point where they can no longer create anything for free.
Mark Cuban: Succeed By Free, Die By Free. Mark Cuban. July 5, 2009. paidContent.org.
“Cash for Clunkers”
3 years ago
Some details on the proposals currently being made to offer consumers large credits toward the purchase of new vehicles if they scrap their old ones:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-auto-clunkers2-2009apr02,0,7130899.story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/global/01refunds.html?ref=global
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7979208.stm
In my opinion, this will obviously create demand…by destroying some cars that work and by offering people more than market value for them (I’m assuming here because if it is less than market value people would rather trade them in, right?) it obviously affects the demand curve…but I’m doubtful that this is the cheapest way to go about saving the auto industry (if that is even worth saving which is another debate entirely). It seems to me that whenever the government gets involved things tend to become more expensive…
WSJ Environmental Blog
3 years ago
The environment has become such a big issue in the business-world that the Wall Street Journal has a blog dedicated to it. If you are frustrated by the lack of current information in the MMEC module, check out this site for more current issues:
