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Deming - there are so many great quotes out there by Deming, that I had a hard time choosing one. He believed that the customer decides if the quality of your product is up to par and that you should always try to improve and impress the customer.

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I found this video of Steve Jobs discussing Six Sigma here. He talks about how marketing does not prove quality to the customer. He also talks about processes without reason and how important it is to question why things are done.

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Steve Jobs Talks Lean Six Sigma core principles

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In this module our discussion was on Toyota and its problems in recent years with recalls and other issues. I have done some research on this and it seems that Toyota is on the mend and improving. The NHTSA study of the Toyota acceleration issues is attached here.

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NHTSA-NASA Study of Unintended Acceleration in Toyota Vehicles | National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

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National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

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I have really enjoyed this course and I have learned things about myself that I did not know. I am hoping to take all that I have learned here and to use it as I go forward in taking more courses and then finally in becoming a leader in the future. I thank you for everything.

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HP and Apotheker
Another mistake that was made by this CEO was his push to get HP out of the tablet business. Many failed to understand why he would have believed this is a good idea.

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It was former Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Opotheker in the library with the candlestick who killed off Palm.

In a recent interview with fellow author Rick Mathieson to promote his new book, Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation, former HP Chief Technology Officer Phil McKinney divulged some interesting tidbits about who was responsible for pulling the plug on Palm's WebOS.

He said that it was Leo Apotheker, HP's then CEO, who made the decision to kill Palm's WebOS mobile operating system. HP had only owned the struggling handset maker for about 16 months before it announced it was pulling the plug.

McKinney said in the interview that the cancellation of WebOS came as a surprise to him since HP had decided that it would give the Palm team three years to develop the software and revive the products.

News of the interview was first reported by the blog WebOS Nation.

"Palm had been struggling and HP was stepping in, doing the acquisition, and we were basically going to take three years hands-off. Palm was basically going to get a cash infusion, resources, and expertise. But Palm was going to be given three years to basically get itself positioned to be a market leader in its space. Now, fast forward to July of 2011 and, one, you had a swap out of the CEOs--Leo comes in as the new CEO--and HP, for whatever reason--I was not a part of this decision--made the decision to kill it one year into the three year program. This is an example of not committing long term to the resources and not having patience for innovation, and I'm disappointed that HP made that decision."

Apotheker, a former SAP exec, became CEO of HP in November 2010, after former HP chief executive Mark Hurd stepped down. But he was in the position for less than a year before the board replaced him. In the short time he was in charge, Apotheker took the company down a different path, focusing efforts on "cloud services" and software. He discontinued the newly launched TouchPad tablet and even considered spinning off the PC business.

Apotheker took over as CEO only seven months after HP had acquired Palm. And when the company announced it was killing the software and all products associated it with it August 2011, Apotheker said that the software had not met certain sell-through milestones.

The TouchPad tablet, which used the webOS software, was only on the market for about two months before HP killed the product line. McKinney's comments suggest that Apotheker had already made up his mind about what to do with the Palm operating system before ever giving the former handset maker a chance to succeed.

Fans of Palm and the webOS software were disappointed to see it disappear, but few believed it could catch the momentum of competing operating system Google Android. Still, prominent executives, like Verizon's CTO Tony Melone, were hopeful that HP could get the software back on track to make it a viable third alternative in the mobile OS market.

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HP's former CEO Leo Apotheker killed WebOS

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It was former Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Opotheker in the library with the candlestick who killed off Palm. In a recent interview with fellow author Rick Mathieson to promote his new book, Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation, former HP Chief Technology Officer Phil McKinney divulged some interesting tidbits about who was responsible for pulling the plug on Palm's WebOS.

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Our discussion this week was on fired HP CEO Apotheker. We learned how he failed but also that others had failed and although he was not servant leader nor did he fit into the mold of other good leaders, he may have run up against a board that was unwilling to see things his way. This article from CBS News seems to think that he was not treated fairly.

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Commentary
(MoneyWatch) Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ) has been blaming one thing after another for its poor performance. It hired director Meg Whitman as a CEO replacement for fired Leo Apotheker, a main scapegoat originally hired to replace fired Mark Hurd who was hired to replace fired Carly Fiorina. Corporate politics can be so complicated.

Apotheker, in particular, was tagged as a ruinous influence responsible for things like wanting to break HP up into multiple parts. And now, ironically, the company's board is apparently studying whether to break up the company into parts, reports news outlet Quartz.

According to the report, a possible break-up is one option HP's board is considering as a way to "obtain maximum value for shareholders," which is generally corporate-speak for "our stock is in the dumps and we need investors to think we're worth owning again." Supposedly, if the company's fortunes can revive in the near term, the break-up will be put on ice.

HP alluded to the possible break-up in the company's annual report, filed with the SEC on December 27, 2012, citing it as a risk factor: "We also continue to evaluate the potential disposition of assets and businesses that may no longer help us meet our objectives."
A feeling of deja vu
Such declarations are not uncommon in the corporate world. But in this case it comes after HP's previous announcement that it would spin off the PC division -- a decision that was made by Apotheker and the board -- more than a year ago. The idea was to emulate IBM ( IBM), which in the 1990s famously moved into services and software and then rid itself of its PC division, which was weighing down Big Blue's profits as the price of computers plunged.

Turns out Apotheker was right. But while margins have continued to drop on HP's PC business, partly because desktops and laptops became bargaining chips for salespeople who wanted ways to sweeten deals for servers and services, the company has yet to cut ties with the unit. Meanwhile, the server market has continued to be highly competitive, with Dell (which is about to go private in a bid to get strategic decisions out of the public eye) coming on strong and IBM still a powerhouse.
Writedowns for big mistakes
And that service business? HP had to write down much of what it paid for the former EDS, with the 2008 acquisition failing to spark growth in its own consulting business. And the attempt to get deeper into business of selling software to big companies ended badly with the acquisition of U.K. software vendor Autonomy -- an acquisition that Whitman would eventually say she was sorry she voted for, even though the company should have had all the resources necessary to do a reasonably valuation and fiscal analysis.

HP, which bought Autonomy for $10 billion in 2011, last year had to take an $8.8 billion charge on the company, with roughly $5 billion of that related to what HP says was improper accounting at the unit.

HP's board claimed to turn from a spin-off of a division because it was sure Whitman could pull things together into a common strategy to harness and leverage the company's resources ... or whatever "in" wording a corporate communications department might use. The real reason for the about-face was the scathing reaction of investors who could only see all those revenue dollars sail out the door and customers and business partners who didn't want to be left high and dry.

Now there's an about-about-face because reality has set in. There was no magical solution -- no apparently " rebirth" that Whitman and the board promised. And this after Whitman won bonuses and options worth $15.4 million even while the company missed its financial targets, according to Bloomberg.

The world has not changed that much in the last year, and HP has not done anything so extraordinary on the product, innovation or marketing front that it changed the rules of the game. The sad thing is that what seemed to be a desperate but necessary move then is likely still needed.

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Why HP may owe an apology to ex-CEO Leo Apotheker

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Commentary (MoneyWatch) Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ) has been blaming one thing after another for its poor performance. It hired director Meg Whitman as a CEO replacement for fired Leo Apotheker, a main scapegoat originally hired to replace fired Mark Hurd who was hired to replace fired Carly Fiorina. Corporate politics can be so complicated.

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Becoming a Leader

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Leadership and Management

Are they the same thing?  I have long understood that they are not.  Any manager can make sure that procedure is followed but a great leader knows how to motivate the team and how to communicate the expectations and finally how to reward the successes.

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A great video for analyzing your aptitude for human resources.

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Is Human Resource Management the right career for you?

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When you look at things like the drawing attached, it is easy to forget that there are many difficult aspects to human resources as well. You will not always be hiring and promoting, sometimes you will be making difficult decisions and firing or demoting. You will find yourself at times in between staff and upper management, trying to please both.

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The subject of this module, Human Resources and Communications, speaks to me. I am most interested in human resources as a career and so I am drawn to it as a subject. I appreciate all that I have learned to make me a better manager/leader in the future. I know how important people are in this business.

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In our discussion this week, we talked about executive headhunters and the value of using one versus not using one to find executives. The article here is what our discussions were based upon. I think I was on the fence on this but really most companies likely do and should use the headhunter simply for the time-saving and their expertise.

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A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek is creating quite a buzz around the human capital industry. The piece, "Executive Headhunters Squeezed by In-House Recruiters," uses a patchwork of anecdotes and piecemeal data to make the case that retained search firms are facing new difficulties.

With all due respect to Bloomberg, the realities they outline are neither new, nor are they really difficulties in providing value added retained executive search services.

First, let's briefly discuss the problems with their data, which the Association of Executive Search Consultants already questioned. Businessweek appears to have chosen arbitrary data points which happen to paint a picture that retained executive search firms are suffering. Sure, a 33 percent decline in industry revenue in 2009 looks ominous; if you omit that the decline was from an all-time high; and if you omit that revenue is already re-approaching that all-time high. (There was also a minor world-wide economic event in 2008 that Businessweek may recall.)

As the AESC states:
"Although in-house search is inevitably eating into the lower end of the market by taking work that previously might have gone to some executive search firms, nevertheless, the overall market for executive search services is holding firm. Once global economic conditions stabilize, we expect to see even greater demand in response to the worldwide talent shortage-a shortage being driven by underlying demographic shifts in the developed economies and huge potential demand for executive talent from the emerging markets."
Or, in summary, "The impression given in the article that the retained executive search profession is in decline is not substantiated by the facts."

Businessweek seems mostly concerned with the impact of in-housing on the short-term bottom lines of both hiring companies and retained search firms. To evaluate the merits of retained search services, and not just the costs, one would have to complete a true return on investment calculation, which includes critical factors such as the impact on bringing the best talent in the market to the organization in the shortest time period possible, while minimizing the time and energy of key existing client executives. In addition, the extent by which true executive recruiting is done in-house is not put into context. There has been and always will be organizations which maintain and build internal executive recruiting teams. However, most of these limited numbers of organizations also continue to use some level of external support.

If they had contacted us and asked the right questions - or had done the same with any of our brethren in the retained search industry - they would have heard a polite and convincing case for hiring an executive search firm and not diverting internal resources.

A key point of added value we bring to executive search over in-house recruiters is, simply, that we're not in-house. We're impartial and data-driven. We come to the hiring process with fresh eyes and perspective.

Secondly, this is what we do. This is all we do and we're focused on it. We have in-depth research capabilities and access to a wealth of human capital across dozens of industries. We have a broader view of the marketplace and a wide reach. The Businessweek article says that Coca-Cola does 95 percent of their searches in-house. We're willing to bet the other 5 percent are their high-level and/or most specific searches. They're not going to try to find their own CEO for the same reason we don't try to make our own Diet Coke - the result would leave a bad taste.

After all, when it comes to something vital, you want to hire an expert.

In a similar vein, the article also states that GE's in-house executive search team was able to beat the retained search industry standard of 170 days to staff positions in 73 days. That's impressive. That's also about our average here at Morgan Samuels.

And conceptually, the article seems to argue against itself. It's difficult to make the case that the services provided by firms like Morgan Samuels are superfluous in an article that outlines how major corporations are hiring away our very-talented professionals in an effort to improve their performance and bottom line. That is, after all, our specialty. It's the whole idea. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Lastly, a firm such as Morgan Samuels that truly provides highly differentiated services within the retained search category is facing a robust market. There will always be a market for a firm that can be a strategic partner to clients, without being an insider, appropriately assesses leadership acumen and cultural fit, all the while scouring the marketplace for the best talent to meet our client's key business objectives. All of this is done with an average cycle time of 76 days, a 34% diversity placement ratio, and an average candidate review before offer of four. Oh, and by the way, of the 4, 20% of our clients will try to hire two of the four. So value like this is hard to duplicate and, frankly, from an economic standpoint, why would you?

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Retained Executive Search vs. In-House Recruiting

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A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek is creating quite a buzz around the human capital industry. The piece, "Executive Headhunters Squeezed by In-House Recruiters," uses a patchwork of anecdotes and piecemeal data to make the case that retained search firms are facing new difficulties.

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Organization is so much more than what is broken down to a chart like this. It is about people and putting them where they will thrive and be the most productive.

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More Zappos information....it really is amazing that this company operates as well as it does. It is critical that your staff is content.

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Zappos is a weird company -- and it's happy that way

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Zappos

I loved hearing about this quirky company. I have never dealt with them in any way but their organizational model is good for employees, management and customers.

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On responsibility, authority and delegation, I learned about effective structure and how a change in structure can affect a team.  I very much enjoyed learning about motivating others and rewards.

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I enjoyed learning about In-N-Out Burger and seeing how they have operated over the years. I love the way they have continued to provide a quality product that their customers enjoy while consistently growing. I really wish we had them in Florida!

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SWOT Analysis

I have done this in other classes before but typically used the type of figure seen here, which we were instructed not to use in our SWOT analysis for this class. I can see the benefit of both ways.

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Planning and Decision Making
I would just like to say I enjoyed this particular module and the chapters. I do actually feel that this is one of my strengths and I realize how important these qualities are for a a leader.

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This article was included in our module 4 from the Mindtools website and is a good read for learning the art of decision making.

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Communicate your decision, and take action.

Let's look at each of these steps in detail. Each step features a list of related Mind Tools resources to help you further.

Step 1: Investigate the Situation in Detail

Decisions often fail because key factors are missed or ignored from the outset. So, before you can begin to make a decision, you need to fully understand your situation.

Start by considering the decision in the context of the problem it is intended to address. You need to determine whether the stated problem is the real issue, or just a symptom of something deeper.

Look beyond the obvious. It may be that your objective can be approached in isolation, but it's more likely that there are a number of interrelated factors to consider. Changes made in one department, for example, could have knock-on effects elsewhere, making the change counterproductive.

Step 2: Create a Constructive Environment for Your Decision

Can you give your decision the attention it needs? Spend some time preparing yourself before diving in to the facts and figures.

Remember that most decisions will affect other people too, so it helps to create a constructive environment in which to explore the situation together and gain support.

This is especially true when you have to rely on other people to implement a decision that you're responsible for. You'll need to identify who to include in the process and who will be part of any final decision-making group, which will ideally comprise just five to seven people.

Enable people to contribute to the discussions without any fear of the other participants rejecting them and their ideas. Make sure that everyone recognizes that the objective is to make the best decision possible in the circumstances, without blame.

Step 3: Generate Good Alternatives to Decide Between

The wider the options you explore, the better your final decision is likely to be. Generating a number of different options may seem to make your decision more complicated at first, but the act of coming up with alternatives forces you to dig deeper and to look at the problem from different angles.

This is when it can be helpful to employ a variety of creative thinking techniques. These can help you to step outside your normal patterns of thinking and come up with some truly innovative solutions.

Brainstorming is probably the most popular method of generating ideas, but for more tips on how to examine your situation from new perspectives, and how to organize ideas into manageable themes and groups, see the Mind Tools resources in the box, below.

Step 4: Explore Your Options

When you're satisfied that you have a good selection of realistic alternatives, it's time to evaluate the feasibility, risks and implications of each one.

Almost every decision involves some degree of risk. You'll need a structured approach for assessing threats and evaluating the probability of adverse events occurring - and what they might cost to manage. You'll also want to examine the ethical impact of each option, and how that might sit with your personal and organizational values.

The resources highlighted below offer tried-and-true models to help you.

Step 5: Select the Best Solution

Once you've evaluated the alternatives, the next step is to make your decision!

If you have various criteria to consider, use Decision Matrix Analysis to compare them reliably and rigorously. Or, if you want to determine which ones should carry most weight in your decision, conduct a Paired Comparison Analysis.

If your decision is being made within a group, techniques such as multi-voting and the Modified Borda Count can help your team reach an agreement.

When anonymity is important, decision-makers dislike one another, or there is a tendency for certain individuals to dominate the process, use the Delphi Technique to reach a fair and impartial decision. This uses cycles of anonymous, written discussion and argument, managed by a facilitator. Participants do not meet, and sometimes they don't even know who else is involved.

If you're working with an established team, Hartnett's Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making Model is useful for encouraging everyone to participate in making the decision. Or, if you're working with several different teams, or a particularly large group, assign responsibility for each stage of the decision-making process with Bain's RAPID Framework, so that everyone understands their responsibilities and any potential in-fighting can be avoided.

Step 6: Evaluate Your Plan

After all the effort and hard work you've invested in evaluating and selecting alternatives, it can be tempting to forge ahead at this stage. But now, more than ever, is the time to "sense check" your decision. After all, hindsight is great for identifying why things have gone wrong, but it's far better to prevent mistakes from happening in the first place!

Before you start to implement your decision, take a long, dispassionate look at it to be sure that you have been thorough, and that common errors haven't crept into the process.

Your final decision is only as good as the facts and research you used to make it. Make sure that your information is trustworthy, and that you've done your best not to "cherry pick" data. This will help you avoid confirmation bias, a common psychological bias in decision making.

Discuss your preliminary conclusions with important stakeholders to enable them to spot flaws, make recommendations, and support your conclusions. Listen to your own intuition, too, and quietly and methodically test assumptions and decisions against your own experience. BRAIN BRAN BRAND is a useful tool for this. If you have any doubts, examine them thoroughly to work out what's troubling you.

Use Blindspot Analysis to review whether you've fallen prey to problems like over-confidence, escalating commitment, or groupthink. And consider checking the logical structure of your process with the Ladder of Inference, to make sure that a well-founded and consistent decision emerges at the end.

Step 7: Communicate Your Decision, and Take Action

Once you've made your decision, you need to communicate it to everyone affected by it in an engaging, informative and inspiring way.

Get them involved in implementing the solution by discussing how and why you arrived at your decision. The more information you provide about risks and projected benefits, the more likely people will be to support it.

If people point out a flaw in your process as a result, have the humility to welcome their input and review your plans appropriately - it's much better to do this now, cheaply, than having to do it expensively (and embarrassingly) if your plans have failed.

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How to Make Decisions - A Model for Making the Best Possible Choices

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Communicate your decision, and take action. Let's look at each of these steps in detail. Each step features a list of related Mind Tools resources to help you further. Decisions often fail because key factors are missed or ignored from the outset. So, before you can begin to make a decision, you need to fully understand your situation.

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I found the "Hamburger University" article contained in this module in connection with globalization and was fascinated that this exists. I am not a fan of McDonald's but their business model works.

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McDonald's Hamburger University is no joke.

With a selection rate of 1% at its Shanghai campus, the intense, weeklong training program is more exclusive than Harvard, reports Bloomberg.

Students at the American campus can earn up to 23 credits toward their Hamburgerology degree, according to CNN, or toward an associate or bachelor's degree at 1,600 US colleges and universities, the American Council on Education reports.

The program currently has seven campuses worldwide in Oak Brook, Illinois; Tokyo, London, Sydney, Munich, São Paulo, and Shanghai, with an eighth campus scheduled to open in Moscow later this year.

Founded in 1961, Hamburger University now has more than 275,000 graduates and will celebrate its 55th anniversary next year. Here's a look at how it started and how it's evolved.
Vivian Giang contributed to a previous version of this article.

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McDonald's Hamburger University can be harder to get into than Harvard and is even cooler than you'd imagine

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McDonald's Hamburger University is no joke. With a selection rate of 1% at its Shanghai campus, the intense, weeklong training program is more exclusive than Harvard, reports Bloomberg. Students at the American campus can earn up to 23 credits toward their Hamburgerology degree, according to CNN, or toward an associate or bachelor's degree at 1,600 US colleges and universities, the American Council on Education reports.

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This man is working to get some of the Starwood advantages back from Marriott.

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As the constantly traveling head of a San Diego investment fund, Shubhayan Mukherjee looked forward to the free breakfasts, room upgrades and late checkout that came with his elite status in the Starwood Hotels & Resorts loyalty reward program.

That all ended last summer, he said, when Starwood's perks were folded into a new loyalty program by Marriott International, which acquired Starwood in 2016 to form the world's largest hotel company. Called Bonvoy, the combined reward program has 125 million members, more than any other hotel loyalty operation.

"Suddenly, everything went downhill," Mukherjee said.

Marriott International Inc. representatives acknowledged via email that the new combined reward program has been plagued with problems, including members who haven't been able to get room upgrades or free nights they'd earned.

Marriott is investing in technology fixes and increased hiring and extra training for call-center workers to fix the program, the representatives said.

But Bonvoy members, who book some of the world's most luxurious hotels, are not waiting patiently. Many are protesting online.

Mukherjee, who joined the Starwood program in 2000, was so incensed about Bonvoy's failures that he helped create a website, Bonvoyed.com, where members can air their gripes. The site, created last month, already has more than 600 entries.

His Bonvoy problems began, Mukherjee said, when he traveled to Russia last summer to see World Cup games and found he couldn't get his usual free breakfast, among other perks.

"They still don't fix anything," he said. "Nothing has changed."

After the $13-billion acquisition of Starwood, Marriott replaced three loyalty reward programs - Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest - with one program.

The Bonvoy program lets members of all three programs collect points under a single points currency when they stay at any of 6,500 hotels under 30 different brands in 127 countries and territories.

The new program's name seems to be a play on the French expression bon voyage but online critics have turned it into a disgruntled verb and hashtag: #bonvoyed.

"I just spent 21 minutes on the phone trying to transfer points because I couldn't figure out your website, then the agent hung up before finalizing," one Bonvoy member tweeted. "What more could I do? #Bonvoyed."

@MBonvoyAssist I just spent 21 minutes on the phone trying to transfer points because I couldn't figure out your website, then the agent hung up before finalizing. What more could I do? #Bonvoyed
- Bal (@Bal77607803) March 31, 2019

Another Bonvoy member, who described himself on Twitter as a "marketer and beer writer," tweeted his frustration about requesting records of a hotel stay and getting a reply 24 days later instead of the three to five business days promised by Bonvoy.

Marriott representatives say they are taking member complaints seriously.

"We are actively fixing the issues and we are committed to getting it right for our members," Marriott spokesman John Wolf said in an email.

In October, Marriott Chief Executive Arne Sorenson described the problems with Bonvoy during a media event as "noise around the edges." But as months passed without improvement, he acknowledged that the problems were frustrating members but promised the glitches would be ironed out quickly.

Sorenson last month boasted that the "cost of our loyalty program is the lowest among our competitors in the hotel business, while delivering the highest value to guests."

"No longer will customers have to go through the step of having to transfer points from one program to another in order to redeem," Sorenson told analysts during a conference call about earnings. "No longer will they have to think about whether they're meeting their elite night requirements by getting enough nights concentrated in one program or another. It's now much simpler."

But it hasn't been so simple.

When asked about the cause of Bonvoy's difficulties, Wolf said, "The integration of our legacy loyalty programs was complex."

He added that glitches are expected "when any company introduces a new product or service."

The problems are the result of a rush to merge the Marriott and SPG programs together without investing in a necessary software program and providing call-center associates only a few hours of training, according to Mukherjee, who said he received an email from a woman who described herself as a former Marriott employee.

The woman told Mukherjee that each time a loyalty reward member contacted the call center with a problem, the associates were instructed to create a "case" that must be resolved in three to five days. When she quit the company, the woman said in the email, there were cases that were unresolved after four months.

Not everyone is upset about the Bonvoy rollout.

Joe Brancatelli, who writes an online column on business travel and is an elite Bonvoy member, said the program has worked well for him. He also dismissed the 600 complaints on Mukherjee's website, saying they represent a fraction of the millions of members who use the program.

"The complaints ... do unquestionably point to some systemic issues," Brancatelli said, "but, man, the numbers are tiny compared to the member base."

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An unhappy Marriott rewards points customer is leading a revolt

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As the constantly traveling head of a San Diego investment fund, Shubhayan Mukherjee looked forward to the free breakfasts, room upgrades and late checkout that came with his elite status in the Starwood Hotels & Resorts loyalty reward program.

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I was very interested to read about the Marriott-Starwood merger which I did not know much about. It sounds like Starwood members had a much better points-earning system than did the Marriott members. It also sounds like the Starwood members are going to lose out somewhat.

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Marriott merger

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One Step Closer to More Choices for Marriott Rewards Members

A LETTER FROM ARNE SORENSON

We're excited to announce that we've secured shareholder approval for Marriott International to join together with Starwood Hotels & Resorts-a significant milestone towards creating the world's largest lodging company and strongest loyalty program in the industry. Since we announced our plans to merge with Starwood, you've raised questions about the impact of the merger on your membership and the Marriott Rewards® program. I want to take this opportunity to provide an update on where we stand.

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Marriott Rewards | Marriott - Starwood Merger

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A LETTER FROM ARNE SORENSON We're excited to announce that we've secured shareholder approval for Marriott International to join together with Starwood Hotels & Resorts-a significant milestone towards creating the world's largest lodging company and strongest loyalty program in the industry.

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Some thoughts on this module and fairness and equality in the workplace in general.  I believe in hard work and equal treatment for everyone.  There is a place for everyone at work.

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In this article, the discussion is that the Supreme Court may be turning its back on older workers as well.

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Age discrimination is widespread, well documented and, sadly, deeply entrenched in the American workplace. It's also illegal, thanks to the 50-year-old Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which is aimed at protecting people 40 and older from discrimination in hiring, promotion and retention at firms with 20 or more employees. Unfortunately, federal courts have also increasingly made age discrimination claims difficult to prove.
Ideal Candidate: '2-3 Years Out of College'
The most recent example: The Supreme Court's June 26 th decision to let stand a lower court ruling known as Villarreal v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. In that case, Richard Villarreal applied online for a territory sales manager job at the tobacco company in 2007 when he was 49 and got no response. Several years later, he learned about the company's internal guidelines stating that the ideal candidate would be "2-3 years out of college." Job reviewers were told to "stay away from" applicants whose resumés showed they had been "in sales for 8-10 years." The courts dismissed Villarreal's suit saying the ADEA claim he brought only protected existing employees, not job applicants. The courts also agreed with Reynolds that Villarreal hadn't "diligently" pursued why he didn't hear back about his application.

"The high court's decision will make it harder for some people later in their work lives to prove they were victims of bias," wrote ProPublica's Peter Gosselin, who has been doing great reporting on workplace age discrimination for the investigative journalist organization. (You can read his ProPublica work here.)
'Reasonable Factors Other Than Age'
The Supreme Court and many lower courts increasingly defer to employers on hiring and employment decisions when it comes to what the ADEA calls "reasonable factors other than age." (For example, employers can justify as a reasonable business decision laying off their most expensive workers who happen to have seniority and are mostly older.)
Also on Forbes:
The most striking sign of the trend is the landmark 2009 Supreme Court ruling known as Gross v. FBL Financial Services. In the Gross case, which still holds today, the court said claimants must prove that age discrimination was the primary factor behind a bias claim. As you can imagine, proving this is extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Discouraged From Bringing Age Discrimination Cases
"There are reports that private attorneys and the workers who walk into their offices seeking representation have been discouraged from bringing ADEA cases," said Laurie McCann, senior attorney, AARP Foundation litigation in recent testimony before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission celebrating the 50 th anniversary of the signing of the law.

Outrageous, isn't it? Older Americans want to work and some combination of ageism and algorithms denies them that opportunity. What can be done? Quite a bit, actually.
What Congress Could Do
For starters, here are three things Congress could do:

Pass the bipartisan Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act. It would restore legal standards for age discrimination claims to the pre-Gross days.

Make it clear that so-called sex-plus-age claims are allowed. "We need to focus on older women because they are really working longer and they face more discrimination than men," says Patrick Button, assistant professor of economics at Tulane University.

Broaden the ADEA to include all firms. The employment rate for older workers is higher in states whose age discrimination statutes cover all firms.

Of course, these types of initiatives won't garner much enthusiasm on Capitol Hill or with the Trump administration. "You have to amend the statutes and that's not likely in the current political climate," says Michael Harper, law professor at Boston University School of Law.
What the EEOC Could Do
In the meantime, the EEOC could more vigorously enforce the federal age discrimination law. Age discrimination was alleged in 23% of all charges filed with the EEOC in fiscal year 2016, yet ADEA cases constituted only two percent of its merit resolutions (where outcomes were favorable to parties charging discrimination), according to the AARP.

That said, the EEOC did act aggressively in the Texas Roadhouse discrimination case it brought in 2011 against the steakhouse chain, the agency's largest age discrimination case brought to trial in over 30 years. Federal officials said the Kentucky-based company had "a history of labeling workers over 40 such things as 'Old 'N Chubby' and rejecting them for jobs where customers see them," wrote Gosselin. Texas Roadhouse denied the allegations. After a district court judge declared a mistrial in February due to deadlocked jurors, Texas Roadhouse settled with the EEOC by agreeing, among other things, to pay $12 million and to change its hiring and recruiting practices. Texas Roadhouse is a good model for the agency to follow.
'Safe Harbor' Hiring for Older Workers
Another intriguing idea is for the EEOC to create what is known as "safe harbor" hiring, says Samuel Estreicher, a law professor and faculty director of the Center for Labor and Employment Law at the New York University School of Law.

Safe harbor hiring could be especially useful for one group of people who often face severe difficulties finding employment: Laid-off individuals 50 and over who've worked for many years for their previous employer and now seek new employment. Frequently, employers snub them due to fears that the applicants will lack energy or skills. It's a way to "help employers take a chance on older people," says Estreicher.

Here's how it might work. Older workers would be hired over a two-or three-year probationary period and could be discharged without cause or consequence for the employer under the ADEA during that time. The bet is that management will learn they have underestimated the value of seasoned workers and a new, more favorable narrative will emerge.

"The benefit of the safe-harbor approach is that it directly addresses the concerns that materially influence the employer's nonhiring decision," wrote Estreicher in his June 2017 Journal of Law & Public Affairs article "Achieving Antidiscrimination Objectives Through 'Safe Harbor" Rules for Cases of Chronic Hiring Aversion."

I'd love to see the safe harbor approach supplemented with restoring and funding ADEA provisions for re-education and training programs to help older workers get hired. These programs "were never properly implemented or funded and were eventually abandoned," wrote Jessica Rothenberg and Daniel Gardner of New York University's Silver School of Social Work.

The timing may be propitious for an experiment combining safe-harbor hiring and well-funded training programs for older workers. After eight years of steady economic growth and an unemployment rate at 4.4%, employers are currently looking for workers. Yet management too often seems blind to the opportunities available from recruiting older applicants with skills, knowledge and experience. Maybe a public policy nudge will open managements' eyes.

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The Supreme Court Turns Its Back On Age Discrimination

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Age discrimination is widespread, well documented and, sadly, deeply entrenched in the American workplace. It's also illegal, thanks to the 50-year-old Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which is aimed at protecting people 40 and older from discrimination in hiring, promotion and retention at firms with 20 or more employees.

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Equal pay - This case scares me. It is a new and open case and has yet to be completed. It will most certainly be appealed either way, however, the basic idea is that this could change the law on equal pay to the detriment of women.

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UPDATE, February 25, 10:30 a.m.: The Supreme Court on Monday issued a per curium order ruling the Ninth Circuit improperly considered the vote of Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who died before the opinion was issued. The Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit decision and sent the case back for further proceedings.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act (EPA) into law, which prohibits gender-based wage discrimination. More specifically, the EPA prohibits employers from paying men and women different wages or offering them different benefits for doing jobs that require the same skills and responsibilities. As one of the first pieces of federal legislation targeting gender-based inequality at the workplace, it was the product of political organizing following World War II, when women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. And on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider taking a case that could gut it.

At issue before the Court is the problem of employers using prior salary history when setting wages, which plaintiffs argue perpetuates the gendered wage gap.

In 2009, Aileen Rizo was offered a position as a math consultant with the Fresno County Office of Education. Rizo's starting salary was $62,133, based on a set salary formula the district applied to all new hires, regardless of gender. As outlined in court documents, the county "calculated new employees' wages by taking their most recent salaries, adding five percent, and then placing them on the nearest step in a ten-step salary scheme." Apart from additional stipends for master's degrees or PhDs, prior salary history was the only factor the office used to set starting salaries.

In 2012, Rizo learned men in the district were making as much as $10,000 more working in comparable positions. When Rizo brought this to the attention of human resources, they told her the pay discrepancy was justified because it was based on Rizo's prior salary history per office policy. Rizo disagreed and sued, arguing that the policy violated the EPA.

While the EPA mandates equal pay for equal work, it provide employers some flexibility in setting wages. Employers can justify wage differentials if those differentials are based on things like seniority, merit, or "any other factor other than sex." In this case, the county argued the formula used to set salaries was applied consistently among employees regardless of gender. Thus, it said, it was not a "sex-based" wage determination in violation of the EPA.

The federal district court disagreed and sided with Rizo, holding that the county's exclusive use of prior salaries violated the equal pay for equal work mandate of the statute. The county appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court's decision in April 2017. In April 2018, the en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court reversed that decision.

The Ninth Circuit's 2018 en banc decision is a beast of a legal opinion. Of the 11 judges who heard the case, five joined onto the majority opinion. The remaining five judges split across three concurring opinions. When read together, the judges agreed unanimously that the salary differentials generated by the office's policy violated the Equal Pay Act. That's about where the agreement in the decision ends. The court expressly declined to offer any answer for how employees and employers can use prior salary in individualized salary negotiations, instead insisting it was expressing a "general rule." According to the Ninth Circuit's majority opinion, "prior salary alone or in combination with other factors cannot justify a wage differential" because prior salary is not a "factor other than sex." The "factor other than sex," it continues, must be "job-related."

"Salaries speak louder than words," the opinion states. It found that "to accept the county's argument would perpetuate rather than eliminate the pervasive discrimination" that the EPA was designed to prevent.

"Women are told they are not worth as much as men," the decision states. "Allowing prior salary to justify a wage differential perpetuates this message, entrenching in salary systems an obvious means of discrimination."

In other words, the court determined that because of workplace sexism, women are less likely to make as much money than men from the get-go-so jobs that relied on previous salary alone to determine wages would just end up repeating that sexism.

In August 2018 the county filed its writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, arguing the Court should take the case because the Ninth Circuit's decision creates a split among the federal courts, specifically with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, as to whether prior salary is a "factor other than sex" for purposes of the EPA.

This case has a twist too. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who authored the Ninth Circuit's majority opinion, died just before the court published its decision. The opinion notes that Reinhardt "fully participated and authored the opinion" and that the voting on the case was "final and complete" prior to his death. Nonetheless, the county has asked the Roberts Court to rule that his vote can't count since Reinhardt died before the opinion was published.

Business interests have, not surprisingly, filed briefs in support of the county. And the case has flown relatively under the radar-despite what is at stake.

A 2018 report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a public policy think tank, compared men and women's earnings across a 15-year period and found the gendered pay gap is nearly twice as large as historically reported. According to IWPR, when averaged out over 15 years women make 49 cents for every dollar men make-with women of color, especially Black women, paid the least of all. The report notes that because women still account for a significant number of workers who take time away from work to care for family members, the pay difference is as much a " care penalty " or tax as it is a "wage gap."

Meanwhile, several cities and states have banned or are considering banning salary history inquiries by employers, including California, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and New York City. A decision by the Roberts Court to side with salary formulas like the one at issue in Rizo could throw those prohibitions into question while solidifying the gendered wage gap findings reported by groups like IWPR and others. If an arguably more liberal Roberts Court in 2013 found the country was "post-racial" enough to justify gutting the Voting Rights Act, it is not difficult to imagine a more conservative Court-thanks to the presence of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch-finding the workplace sufficiently gender-equal to justify gutting the Equal Pay Act.

The Court first conferenced on the county's petition in December, but has yet to decide whether or not to take it. It will do so again on Friday.

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The Supreme Court Considers a Case That Could Gut the Equal Pay Act (Updated) - Rewire.News

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UPDATE, February 25, 10:30 a.m.: The Supreme Court on Monday issued a per curium order ruling the Ninth Circuit improperly considered the vote of Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who died before the opinion was issued. The Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit decision and sent the case back for further proceedings.

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Ethics

I ran across the video and I thought it was a good one. Doing the right thing is not always easy but it is imperative.

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Creating ethical cultures in business: Brooke Deterline at TEDxPresidio

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I quoted this article in the paper that I wrote on leadership qualities in this module. It is an interesting article and it talks about the crisis that leaders are facing now in dealing with a changing workforce.

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Company leaders are facing a crisis. Nearly one-third of employees don't trust management. In addition to this, employers now have to cater to the needs of the millennial generation. On average, after graduating from college, a millennial will change jobs four times before they are 32. Most of them also don't feel empowered on their current jobs.

It's clear that many leaders are failing to foster a sense of trust and loyalty in their employees. Fortunately, that doesn't have to be the case. Managers who show great leadership qualities can inspire their teams to accomplish amazing things, according to Daniel Wang, the creator of Loopring Protocol and founder of the Loopring Foundation. Loopring is a decentralized automated execution system that trades across the crypto-token exchanges. The platform reduces the cost of trading and shields users from counterparty risk. I've distilled my conversation with Wang to eight of the most essential qualities that make a great leader.
1. Sincere enthusiasm
True enthusiasm for a business, its products, and its mission cannot be faked. Employees can recognize insincere cheerleading from a mile away. However, when leaders are sincerely enthusiastic and passionate, that's contagious. For instance, someone who worked with Elon Musk on the early stages of his SpaceX project said that the true driver behind the success of the project was Musk's enthusiasm for space travel.

Wang says being enthusiastic helps a leader identify existing key problems in his industry. "Any innovation starts from these problems and ends with products and services, with some of the key issues resolved," he said.
2. Integrity
Whether it's giving proper credit for accomplishments, acknowledging mistakes, or putting safety and quality first, great leaders exhibit integrity at all times. They do what's right, even if that isn't the best thing for the current project or even the bottom line.

"When people see evidence that leaders lack integrity, that can be nearly impossible to recover from," Wang said. "Trust lost is difficult to get back."
3. Great communication skills
Leaders must motivate, instruct and discipline the people they are in charge of. They can accomplish none of these things if they aren't very skilled communicators. Not only that, poor communication can lead to poor outcomes. Leaders who fail to develop these skills are often perceived as being weak and mealy-mouthed, according to Wang. It's also important to remember that listening is an integral part of communication.
4. Loyalty
The best leaders understand that true loyalty is reciprocal. Because of this, they express that loyalty in tangible ways that benefit the member of their teams. True loyalty is ensuring that all team members have the training and resources to do their jobs. It's standing up for team members in crisis and conflict.

"Great leaders see themselves as being in a position of service to their team members," Wang said. "Employees who believe leadership is loyal to them are much more likely to show their own loyalty when it matters."
5. Decisiveness
A good leader isn't simply empowered to make decisions due to their position. They are willing to take on the risk of decision making. They make these decisions and take risks knowing that if things don't work out, they'll need to hold themselves accountable first and foremost.

Further, bosses who aren't decisive are often ineffective. Too much effort working on consensus building can have a negative effect. Rather than simply making a decision, many leaders allow debate to continue, and then create a piecemeal decision that satisfies no one.
6. Managerial competence
Too many organizations try to create leaders from people who are simply good at their jobs. To be clear, those who emerge as being very good workers often have important qualities. They are the ones who have a strong understanding of the company's products and services. They understand company goals, processes, and procedures. All of these are important.

On the other hand, being good at one's job doesn't prove that someone possesses the other competencies they need. For example, can they inspire, motivate, mentor and direct? Wang illustrates with major league baseball. While nearly all coaches have backgrounds as major league players, the most winning players aren't necessarily the most successful coaches.
7. Empowerment
A good leader has faith in their ability to train and develop the employees under them. Because of this, they have the willingness to empower those they lead to act autonomously. Wang says this comes from trusting that their team members are fully up to any challenges they face. When employees are empowered, they are more likely to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company and the customer as well. This is true, even if it means allowing workers to go a bit off script.
8. Charisma
Simply put, people are more likely to follow the lead of those they like. The best leaders are well-spoken, approachable and friendly. They show sincere care for others.

"People at all levels of an organization find it easy to relate to them and follow their lead," Wang concluded.

Every one of these qualities is absolutely essential to great leadership. Without them, leaders cannot live up to their full potential. As a result, their employees will never perform as well as they can either. Because of this, organizations must learn the best ways to identify and also to develop these necessary traits in existing and emerging leaders.

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8 Essential Qualities That Define Great Leadership

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Company leaders are facing a crisis. Nearly one-third of employees don't trust management. In addition to this, employers now have to cater to the needs of the millennial generation. On average, after graduating from college, a millennial will change jobs four times before they are 32.

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Thinking about the qualities of a good leader and working to develop as many of them as possible is important to me. I have learned in this course what type of leader that I want to be and what type of leader that I don't want to be.

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What are my strengths as a leader?
Good Communication
Open-Minded
Fair
Committed

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The 4 Basic Management Functions:
1.  Planning
2. Organizing
3. Influencing
4. Controlling

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Hello all, my name is Leigh and I am pictured here with my mother.  I am a paralegal in Jacksonville, Florida but in my spare time I like to wander around in shady areas, sometimes out in the woods...it's up and down sometimes.  

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Hello all, my name is Leigh and I am pictured here with my mother.  I am a paralegal in Jacksonville, Florida but in my spare time I like to wander around in shady areas, sometimes out in the woods...it's up and down sometimes.  