Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A must share in this age, from my PR mentor: How a man should relate to a strong woman - by Ed Tamayo | Inquirer
How a man should relate to a strong woman
By: Ed Tamayo
Philippine Daily Inquirer1:19 am | Sunday, October 16th, 2011 Posted by ryanl-->2 share
All my life I’ve dealt with strong women, starting with my late Nanay, who imposed her will over my bad-boy inclinations, and now with my 2-year-old grandniece Moshi, a mischievous beauty who can command me to play “no pass” anytime.
I write as a lifelong student of women (although I can’t vouch for the quality of my studies on the subject). And I will always be a student who continues to learn, never an expert, since there is too much to learn.
But I must say that a strong woman is one with a mind of her own, gifted with smarts and common sense. Otherwise, she would simply be stubborn and obstinate, a shrew, a termagant.
A strong woman sees life for what it is, and will deal with it on the terms she has chosen. She respects her own person and understands her worth, and looks out for herself and the people she cares about.
Oh yes, she tends to be successful, because she sets goals and works to achieve them. A strong woman will control her desires and feelings, especially if she knows that there’s a dead end ahead.
They have different personalities, strong women, from outspoken and in-your-face to quiet but steely of resolve, to permutations in between. One characteristic that I’ve noticed strong women share is the understanding that knowledge and wisdom are important tools. So they take education seriously, because it represents independence, the ability to earn their own keep, and it opens up different options in their lives.
So how does today’s man relate meaningfully with strong women? It’s a question worth asking, because more and more, the worldwide trend toward the empowerment of women is enabling them to recognize and develop their potentials, making them stronger. Gender norms, parameters and roles are ever evolving.
No rocket science
There’s no rocket science behind it, but first, a man has to understand himself, who and what he is, and be comfortable in his own skin. He needs to define his masculinity and feel secure within his own self, before he can deal with the nature of a woman.
A man insecure about himself can view a woman as a threat and competitor, and cut her down in an attempt to deal with his internal issues. And that’s exactly what a strong woman has no time for. Not uncommonly, men, when they realize the strength of a woman, can feel intimidated, or shy away, or probe her for weaknesses in order to inflict hurt on her.
It’s no wonder that strong women aren’t too trusting, because they know only too well about human frailty and betrayal. So they tend to listen to words with a grain of salt. Men need to earn their respect and trust with their actions. And in every woman, as in every man, lies the wish to be loved truly.
In my inexpert opinion, but one evolved through trial and error, good old-fashioned respect is indispensable in a positive relationship with a woman, whether personal or professional, romantic or platonic, whatever it may be.
As you would wish to be respected, then should you extend respect. Especially to a strong woman. Why? Well, because she is strong, so you don’t want to face the consequences. That, of course, is tongue-in-cheek.
I’ve never believed that men are stronger than women or vice versa, because each gender is made and wired differently. There is just no apples-to-apples comparison. That’s why we partner with and support each other. It’s the best arrangement. And if a woman is strong, why then, celebrate and rejoice in her strength.
In my heart of hearts, I believe that true beauty can never be external. Thus, every woman is beautiful, especially if she is a strong woman. Like my grandniece Moshi, who rocks and rules.
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Tags: Relationships , Strong woman
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
(This applies to marketing too.) From Ere.net: Recruiting’s Blunder of Epic Proportions: Ignoring Mobile
Recruiting’s Blunder of Epic Proportions: Ignoring Mobile
by Dr. John Sullivan Oct 10, 2011, 5:51 am ET
by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett
It’s 5:30 a.m., and Joe McHenry, a 36-year-old international tax manager who works in New York City, wakes up, checks his e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter activity from his smartphone all before getting out of bed. By 6:45 a.m. he’s dressed and walking to the train station for his 40-minute commute into the city. From the moment he grabs a seat to the moment he steps off the train, his eyes are glued to the four-inch screen of his personal onramp to his digital life and the information superhighway. Throughout the day, he’ll spend another 4.25 hours engaging with the world through it.
Now consider this: you’re trying to recruit Joe McHenry. He has blown off your e-mails, your voicemails, and even your InMails. This morning, however, his friend who used to work for your firm retweeted a link to the job you’re recruiting for, and it appeared on Joe’s Facebook wall. While on the train, Joe’s curiosity got the best of him and he clicked the link. The browser on his smartphone opened and started to load a page from your career site. He waited and waited, but the page just wasn’t loading. He figured, “I’ll try the parent domain instead.” He typed in yourcompany.com and up came your company’s WAP site, nicely formatted and clean. He looked for the link to jobs, but couldn’t find it. Frustrated, he abandoned his curiosity and went back to catching up with his friends on Facebook.
Sound like a poor experience? Only eight of the Fortune 100 have a career site that detects mobile browsers, and sadly, few of them optimize content for mobile visitors. Among those companies that have invested in building a mobile website, jobs content is more often than not missing. An infant-sized handful have done something for the mobile audience. They have built a careers app users can install on their phone or built out a mobile careers site. You can check out the progressive few: Raytheon, Starbucks, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Hyatt, and AT&T.
The New Normal
Joe McHenry’s lifestyle is the new normal.
As of September, 40% of U.S. cell phone users carried a smartphone, and predictions show that by year’s end a majority of thepopulation will have one. Around the world, smartphones are quickly becoming the primary means of engaging via the Internet, with the PC being downgraded to second place. Factor in the lack of IT controls on personal devices and you can see why everything that is personal online will soon be done via mobile. Whether or not your firm blocks Facebook doesn’t matter when you carry Facebook in your pocket. Today, a majority of the traffic to Facebook already comes from mobile devices. According to Richard Cho, Facebook recruiting manager, mobile users are two times more engaged than non-mobile users.
A new Global Mobile Workforce Report from iPass based on input from 3,100 global workers indicated that 91% of those with mobile access to the Internet check in with their digital lives during the unoccupied moments of the day. “Not only were they checking their email first thing in the morning, 38% worked before their commute, 25% during their commute, and 22% worked again on the way home — each and every day. And they didn’t stop when they got home either. For many, work is a never-ending cycle; 37% work each evening — 33% work again when they arrived home, 26% after dinner, and 19% said they work again after they put their children to bed at night.”
A Blunder of Epic Proportions
Think of it. Precisely during the time periods when individuals are the most likely to be free, they don’t have access to mobile-friendly career information. If they find out about an opening from a friend on a social network, in most cases the link provided will bring them back to your ATS, which does nothing to support the mobile user. If they want to watch videos or read blogs, their browser will encounter technical challenge after technical challenge. If they are on an iPhone or Android, they may see your site, but they will be pinching, flicking, scrolling, and getting irritated the entire time. It’s important to realize that mobile-capable candidates aren’t stupid; not providing mobile access is an employer-brand bruiser for most companies, but if you are a tech firm, it’s an employer-brand killer.
“HR’s dirty little secret – you can’t get there from here!”
How Bad Is Your Site?
Among the Fortune 100 mentioned earlier, only one allows you to actually apply from a mobile device. That one is Raytheon. Among tech companies, some of the worst performers include Microsoft, Apple, and RIM, all of whom make mobile operating systems and browsers!
Using the mobiReady testing tool that tests the suitability of site design for mobile devices, you can see just how poorly the recruiting professions effort has been to court the mobile audience. The tool performs numerous tests, but assigns a score of one (horrible) to five (excellent) based on the total experience. Among the Fortune 100 the highest score for the primary career site was achieved by McKesson (AT&T’s site did not redirect the tool to its mobile website or it would have received a 5.0.)
Among the top ten Fortune firms, the scores looked like this (click to enlarge):
Why You Must Embrace Mobile NOW
The dominance of the mobile device has been a trend barreling toward us with considerable speed for some time. I first wrote about it just over three years ago when I proclaimed the mobile phone “The Most Effective Recruiting Communications Platform.” The recruiting profession has had more than ample time to prepare, but the stat’ prove few took action. Some of the reasons you can’t wait any longer to embrace mobile include:
- Mobile communications receive response rates unheard of for other communication channels. Well-designed SMS campaigns can achieve 100%-plus response rates!
- Smartphones provide ubiquitous access to digital communication/engagement tools. Global research by mobile advertisers found that 67% of smartphone users are never more than three feet from their device and NEVER turn it off!
- When people get bored or need a distraction, it’s what they turn to!
- The smartphone does what no other device on your desk can do: it unifies all communications, including voice calls, video calls, text messages, recorded videos, pod asts, social media messaging, email, instant chat/messenger, and Internet content. This range of message options allows you to cater to your prospects’ lifestyle versus forcing them to engage in your administration-centric process.
- The current generation is so hooked on them that messages not accessible from a mobile device may never be seen.
- If you’re targeting innovators and first adopters (both of which prefer Android), and the technology savvy, you have no choice.
- If you’re recruiting for a temporary or contract job, the rapid response rate of mobile makes the mobile platform the ideal choice.
- Personal phones are not subject to idiotic IT policies. The employees of your competitors can engage with while on the job without fear of being snooped on!
- Referral conversations happen in the field. It’s only logical the process should start there!
- As QR codes (quick response) become commonplace, the mobile phone will become critical in driving people to your information.
- If you are successfully messaging or posting jobs on Twitter, you are already aware that your audience is hooked on the mobile platform.
- Nothing shows the candidate quicker that your firm isn’t an innovator or a technology leader than ignoring the mobile phone platform.
- Google has already started to improve the ranking of sites that support mobile in search results over those that do not. Other engines will follow.
- The application capabilities afforded by the smartphone enable a perverse world of opportunity to make the recruiting process personal, local, engagement-centric, media rich, real-time, etc.
A Grander Opportunity
While the vast majority of recruiting professionals are primarily concerned with closing requisitions as quickly as possible, there are a significant portion who also consider the impact of their efforts on the greater productivity of the workforce. If you embrace mobile for no other reason, do it for this one: workers capable of work-shifting — i.e. working while mobile — are more productive, so stuffing your pipeline with candidates who have proven their mobile adeptness will positively impact your firm’s long-term productivity. Don’t take our word for it. Read the iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report and learn that among mobile workers:
- 75 percent worked more hours because of the increased flexibility in when and where they could work
- 55 percent worked at least 10 or more hours each week
- 64 percent felt they were better able to balance their workload with personal commitments
- 54 percent felt their productivity was substantially improved
Final Thoughts
Kat Drum was working as the global employment brand manager at Starbucks (she is now with RIM) when it launched its first mobile e-commerce application which had a tab for Jobs at Starbucks included. While presenting at mRecruitingCamp in September, she indicated that “Starbucks produced hires within a few weeks of launching the app.” While PepsiCo’s efforts are just a few months old, Chris Hoyt, who leads talent Engagement & marketing, presented evidence of mobile’s value at the same conference, juxtaposing PepsiCo’s mobile efforts against more traditional sourcing channels. Hoyt elaborated, saying that the early evidence justifies the initial investment and that mobile will be a considerable part of PepsiCo’s strategy for sometime.
While a few leading-edge firms (check out Verizon, Fidelity, HCA, and the U.S. Army in addition to those already referenced) have tried the mobile platform, most recruiting leaders have delayed the decision to “go mobile.” The lack of action can be attributed to ignorance about what going mobile would require, lack of funding and lack of desire to find it, general apathy, and lack of support from the ATS community. But the time to realize the cost of not going mobile far exceeds the cost of doing so is upon us. The mobile workforce is the future, and the future is what most firms try to dominate!
tags: mobileSubscribe to the ERE Daily for all the latest recruiting news.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to offer specific legal advice. You should consult your legal counsel regarding any threatened or pending litigation.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Text of Steve Jobs' Commencement Address (Stanford, 2005)
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
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