We recently read an article about Baby Boomers that contained the following sentence:

“People turning 50 today have more than half of their life ahead of them.”

This far surpasses the current life expectancy estimate of 78 years and has a number of ramifications for society and for business. Here’s just a few off the top of our head:

• How will you manage people who want (and demand) to be employed into their eighties?
• Will people choose to go back to school in their forties and fifties knowing they still have 30 to 40 years of their career ahead of them?
• How will you manage a workforce with six decades of employees?
• Is life expectancy a competitive advantage or competitive disadvantage for your business?

The questions are endless as are the opportunities for companies that get ahead of this tidal wave.

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The scandal involving former U.S. Congressman Mark Foley has been a highly public, highly negative situation that may have been prevented.

As is often in these cases, the public crisis, which ultimately resulted in Foley’s resignation, was the result of poor issues management behind the scenes.

In September, ABC broke the news of Foley’s inappropriate relationships with House pages. It turns out that five years earlier Republic Party staff members had been warning House pages to avoid Foley.

The lack of action resulted in a public scandal that has resulted in investigations – including the House Ethics Committee, the FBI, and now the State of Florida – that promise to keep story in the public eye for months to come.

What lessons can we take from this scandal?

1. Be accepting of bad news. Most people would rather have plausible deniability than accept that something bad is happening inside their organization.
2. Get an early accurate assessment. Most crises result from a poor early assessment that creates a laissez faire attitude toward the issue.
3. Take the appropriate next step. Sometimes, the next step is simply to monitor the situation. Sometimes, the next step may be to correct or stop the offending behavior.
4. Follow through. Issues rarely if ever die on their own; they simply hibernate. And, they tend to come out of hibernation at the most inappropriate time in the future.

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Next time you need to keep your Christmas tree fresh, try using Dr. Sowinski’s magic tree solution.

In a gallon jug, mix the following ingredients until they fizz:

• ½ gallon of Sprite, 7-Up, or ginger ale
• ½ gallon of warm water
• Five aspirin

We hope you enjoyed this departure from our typical management advice. Happy Holidays from Atkinson Public Relations!

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In September, Warren Buffet wrote a memo to his company’s senior leaders in which he lamented some of the scandals facing Corporate America today.

The opening line from that memo – "The five most dangerous words in business may be 'Everybody else is doing it.'” – has found its way into a number of media stories and onto a number of blogs.

The entire memo should become compulsory reading for executives everywhere.

Buffet’s genius is his obsession with a culture that emphasizes doing the right thing. With 200,000 employees at Berkshire Hathaway nationwide, Buffet recognizes that some employees will err in their ways. At the same time, he fully expects the culture to realize the error, fix the error quickly, and then find ways to prevent a similar error in the future.

The final sentence of the memo says it all.

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www.buzzwhack.com

The business world is full of buzzwords; some real and some just plain funny. BuzzWhack will make sure you are current on all of them. Here are just a few examples:

• CCYA: The act of CCing (carbon copying) an e-mail message to anyone even remotely involved in a decision or action in order to protect yourself
• Adminisphere: The upper levels of management where big, impractical, and counterproductive decisions are made.
• Thinko: A cognitive error or mistake. Unlike a "typo," a thinko occurs solely in the brain and doesn't necessarily transfer to your fingers.

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Smart Choices by John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa

Smart Choices centers on the belief that every business is the sum of its decisions. The better the decisions, the better the business.

The authors present a detailed yet approachable system that makes the decision-making process creative, thorough, and precise.

The authors’ process for making smart choices includes:

• Work on the right "decision problem"
• Define your objectives
• Create imaginative alternatives
• Understand the consequences
• Grapple with tradeoffs
• Clarify your uncertainties
• Think hard about your risk tolerances

The authors say most important step is creating imaginative alternatives because the final choice will only be as good as the alternatives considered.

In addition to the process, the authors share valuable insights about the psychological challenges and traps of making and committing to a decision.

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