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Showing posts with label 2017 at 07:52PM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2017 at 07:52PM. Show all posts
Monday, July 17, 2017
Sunday, June 11, 2017
In ‘Beatriz At Dinner,’ An Immigrant Walks Into A Room Of Trump-Minded Hedonists
Salma Hayek didn’t want me to leave before should could invoke Donald Trump.
We were chatting early last week at the New York junket for her new movie “Beatriz at Dinner.” As is standard in the world of Hollywood promotion, I’d been granted a criminally brief 10 minutes with Hayek. She waxed poetic about the melancholic film, and before we knew it, our time together ended.
I was well aware of the Trumpian undertones in “Beatriz at Dinner,” a dark comedy about a Los Angeles massage therapist slash spiritual healer exhausted by life. Beatriz is an immigrant with an abundance of love that the world often doesn’t reciprocate. When her car breaks down at the home of a wealthy client (Connie Britton), she’s invited to stay for a meal in honor of a billionaire real-estate tycoon (John Lithgow) whose luxury hotels are causing environmental mayhem in developing countries.
“Please help it,” she said, referring to the movie, as I stood up to leave. “Help us. We’re very small. It’s so strange, also ― we’re going to encounter a lot of pushback from the other side.”
I needn’t ask what she was referring to. Without using the president’s name or referencing real-life politics, “Beatriz at Dinner” indicts Trump’s values. As more guests arrive for the feast, Beatriz feels alone in a sea of money-hungry white faces, some of whom mistake her for the help. The women later mock a female reality star’s body. And in a moment evoking the Minnesota dentist who, in 2015, killed Cecil the lion, the aforementioned tycoon brags about having hunted and killed a rhinoceros for sport. He passes around a photo of the dead animal like it’s a trophy.
“My character, when the movie begins, she’s in despair about how human beings behave and in frustration about where the world is going and the fact that there’s nothing she can do about it, as hard as she has tried all her life,” Hayek said. “Some of the things we have learned to make ourselves interesting and popular socially are kind of sad. Going after another woman collectively like that and enjoying it ― it’s very sad.”
Written by Mike White and directed by Miguel Arteta, who are collaborating again after their extraordinary work on “The Good Girl” and HBO’s “Enlightened,” “Beatriz at Dinner” features a career-best performance from Hayek. In subtle ways, she telegraphs the complexity of feeling drained amid a clique that not only looks and thinks differently, but seems largely uninterested in her perspective. What starts as a comedy of manners becomes an aching drama about humanity’s segregation, and one of the finest roles of Hayek’s 29-year career.
Despite Hayek’s worries, “Beatriz at Dinner” isn’t likely to receive much Trumpian fuss ― it’s too small of a movie for any real controversy. And anyway, it’s too delicate to piss people off. But it should, at least, spark conversations about the way we treat one another and how to find hope in a world that doesn’t often prioritize equality. As a Mexican actress who has been outspoken about her distaste for the Trump phenomenon, it’s also a personal story.
“I related to this, but I think she’s not even that uncomfortable about being in a room looking different,” she said. “I think this deeper type of loneliness is being alone in a room with people that all think different than her, to the point that she can barely follow what they’re talking about. She’s like, ‘Wait, am I understanding? Is this really what they’re saying?’ And I think so many of us have experienced that.”
“Beatriz at Dinner” is now playing in limited release.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
June 11, 2017 at 07:46PM
from Matthew Jacobs
11 Of The Most Powerful Blogs Written In The Wake Of The Pulse Massacre
It’s been one year since 49 LGBTQ people, most of them people of color, and their allies were killed in the worst mass shooting in modern American history at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
In the weeks and months that followed, Orlando ― and the LGBTQ community around the world ― searched for ways to deal with the unimaginable grief that came with the unspeakably violent nature of the attack and the massive loss of lives that resulted from it.
For many people, part of coping and beginning the healing process involved writing about their thoughts, feelings and the reactions they saw both within and outside of the community.
HuffPost received a massive outpouring of incredible blogs in the wake of the Pulse massacre and as we pause and reflect on the year since these 49 lives were taken, we wanted to look back at some of the most powerful and formative pieces from HuffPost editors and bloggers in reaction to the tragic event.
It’s 2016 And Two Men Kissing Is Still A Stunning, Terrifying Site
Following the massacre, the shooter’s father was quoted as saying that the sight of two men kissing months prior to the shooting contributed to his actions on June 12. This blog examines how the nature of homophobia is still so pervasive in 2016 ― and how painful this reality was in the aftermath of Pulse.
The Orlando Massacre: A Reminder Of The Dangers LGBT People Live With Every Day
A reality check when it comes to the every day violence that LGBTQ people ― especially LGBTQ people of color ― experience in different forms, and the way Pulse serves as a reminder of this facet of queer experience.
Can We Please Stop Pretending This Massacre Wasn’t About Homophobia?
In the wake of Pulse, some media outlets tried to either deny or erase the idea that the massacre was a homophobic attack. This piece unpacks the absurdity of that idea, and also the pain that this erasure elicited for the queer community as they were beginning to mourn.
Queer People Deserve To Feel Safe
This piece addresses the idea of safe spaces ― what makes a space safe for queer people? It also discusses how venues and bars often represent a physical safe space for LGBTQ people, not just an emotional one.
An Open Letter To Straight People On The Pulse Massacre
A call to action for straight allies of the LGBTQ community to broaden their scope and realize that the battle for LGBTQ rights didn’t end with marriage equality ― and that LGBTQ people still face violence on a daily basis.
My Open Letter To Mr. Omar Saddiqui Mateen
A gut-wrenching open letter from a Palestinian-American Muslim woman disavowing the actions of Mateen and unpacking how his actions do not represent the thoughts, desires or worldview of the Muslim community.
What Do We Do If The Orlando Shooter Really Was Gay?
Dissecting the hard-to-swallow idea that Mateen was gay and internalized homophobia informed his actions at Pulse, this piece addresses this harrowing and painful thought and further emphasizes the importance of the culture surrounding coming out.
What This Trans Woman Wants You To Remember In The Wake Of The Orlando Shooting
A trans woman shares her own reaction to the horror of the Pulse massacre and tells readers that it is OK to create space for fear and sadness ― which can actually be part of the healing process.
102 LGBT People Were Maimed Or Killed ― And I Still Can’t Donate Blood
A look at the absurdity of the FDA’s restrictions on men who have sex with men donating blood, particlaruly when so many of the people who needed blood in the wake of the Pulse Massacre were men who have sex with men.
Hey Queers: It’s Time For Us To Act Up Again
This personal essay looks back on the history of political action group ACT UP and the tactics these individuals used during the AIDS crisis. It also argues that the lessons of this organization and this period of queer history could be used for political organizing and mobilization after Pulse.
We Won’t Let Donald Trump Use Queer Latinx Bodies To Fuel Islamophobia
This piece challenged Donald Trump, then still a candidate running for president, and his Islamophobic response to the massacre and ultimately asserts, “scare tactics won’t work on us… we’ve already seen you what you are.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=593575cee4b075bff0f5610c,59397f13e4b00610548090da,590dc1a5e4b0d5d9049cd3d1
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
June 11, 2017 at 07:46PM
from JamesMichael Nichols
Protestors Disrupt D.C. Pride Parade, Seek A ‘Different Vision’ For The Event
The Capital Pride Parade was interrupted Saturday evening in Washington by a group of activists demanding organizers address issues of social justice, police brutality and the increasingly corporate nature and sponsorship of the annual event.
A wave of protestors from the group No Justice No Pride attempted to shut down the parade three times, the first near 15th and P streets at about 5:30 p.m., The Washington Post reported. The protestors, shouting chants and holding banners, at one point formed a “human chain in front of the Lockheed Martin float,” according to Zack Ford, a reporter from Think Progress, who documented the event on his Facebook page.
In a press release sent to HuffPost by No Pride No Justice, the group said that “DC’s queer and trans community is no longer willing to accept that Pride isn’t possible without support from deeply problematic corporate sponsors.”
The statement said that the Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes the annual parade, “has consistently demonstrated that it is more interested in accommodating the interests of Metropolitan police and of corporate sponsors than it is in supporting the very communities it supposedly represents.”
A list of demands posted on No Pride No Justice’s website calls on Capital Pride to “bar corporate entities that inflict harm on historically marginalized LGBTQ2S people from participation in Pride events” and to “take a strong position against state violence and end its endorsement of MPD and other law enforcement agencies,” among other requests.
The group also posted a petition on its site pushing Capital Pride to “break ties” with “police, prisons and pipelines.”
“We deserve to celebrate Pride without being forced alongside the Police who kill us,” Angela Peoples, one of the protest participants, said in the press release sent to HuffPost. “Pride should be a haven for the entire LGBTQ community. The Capital Pride Board has shown who it’s prioritizing. No Justice No Pride is for everyone who has previously been excluded and for a different vision of what this event could and should be.”
Another protest participant, Emmelia Talarico, said in the press release, “Corporations that desecrate Native land, manufacture weapons and support private prisons ― and law enforcement agencies that proportionately harass, kill, and arrest queer and trans people of color ― cannot be considered LGBT ‘allies’ unless you believe that Black, Latinx, Muslim, and indigenous queer, trans and two spirit individuals aren’t actually part of the LGBT community.”
The parade was quickly rerouted and no arrests were made, according to Washington’s Metropolitan Police Chief Peter Newsham.
“We anticipated this. We knew there would be counterprotests,” Newsham told The Washington Post. “We had planned for an alternative route, and that’s what we used.”
The Capital Pride Alliance sent the following statement to HuffPost on Sunday morning:
“Capital Pride always has and will continue to respect the wide range of diversity – of people and viewpoints – within the LGBTQ+ community. Following the disruption of the parade by protesters, we were able to divert the parade from its scheduled route, thus ensuring that as many people as possible could watch the parade in its entirety. We are troubled by reports that some onlookers responded to the protesters with verbal and physical harassment. We encourage a robust, civil, and healthy conversation within the community about all of the issues that impact us and look forward to having a mutually respectful conversation in the days, weeks, and months ahead. The issues raised are of importance to our entire community, across organizations and to our entire movement. In these challenging times for LGBTQ+ people Capital Pride will continue to focus on how we can all move forward as a community striving for equal treatment and respect for all.”
In the wake of Saturday’s parade, the National Equality March is scheduled for Sunday in Washington. The event is meant to “support, uplift, and bring attention to those in our communities who are targeted due to immigration status, ethnicity, religion, skin color, gender, and disability,” according to its website, and is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of participants.
Sister marches in over 60 other cities around the country are also set to take place.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
June 11, 2017 at 07:46PM
from Noah Michelson
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Fort Smith Board of Directors will vote on new hiring rules for the police department – 4029tv
4029tv |
Fort Smith Board of Directors will vote on new hiring rules for the police department
4029tv However, nothing technically has to change, even if the board does vote in favor of the request. This vote could simply indicate where the board stands on this matter. “What we can do is show our support for the chief and continue to press forward … |
June 06, 2017 at 07:42PM
from
Quantifi collects over $2 mln seed
Quantifi, a marketing R&D platform for digital ads, has raised over $2 million in seed funding. The backers included High Alpha Capital and Router Ventures.
Source: Press Release
June 06, 2017 at 07:41PM
from Iris Dorbian
Monday, June 5, 2017
Dominion Energy To Receive License for Third Reactor at North Anna
http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
However, Dominion has not yet indicated when or if it will build the reactor.
June 05, 2017 at 07:51PM
from
Apex Clean Energy Delivers Wind and Solar to U.S. Army
The combination is the first hybrid renewable project to serve the U.S. Army.
June 05, 2017 at 07:51PM
from
Reputation as a governance mechanism? Evidence from payout policy of insider-controlled firms in Taiwan
Abstract
This study examines the effect of entrenched insiders’ reputational concerns on corporate payout policy in Taiwan, a market in which typical public firms are controlled by a single dominant shareholder who is subject to weak takeover threats and has incentives and abilities to extract private benefits by oppressing minority equity holders. The reputation-building hypothesis predicts that firms with higher expropriation risk by a controlling shareholder make more payouts to credibly commit not to expropriate minority shareholders, thereby establishing reputation in the capital market for risk diversification and low-cost external financing. I show that corporate payout intensity is significantly and positively correlated with measures related to the moral hazard of dominant owners. The reputation effect manifests in firms that most value it; the interaction analyses indicate that younger, smaller, or growth firms with higher controlling shareholder expropriation risk pay more cash dividends. Moreover, firms are less likely to omit dividends and more likely to resume dividends when their controlling shareholders are more entrenched. Finally, I show that the value of cash dividends is higher for firms with higher controlling shareholder expropriation risk and that expected dividend increases in these firms are value enhancing.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
June 05, 2017 at 07:46PM
from Liang-wei Kuo
Alibaba Pictures Group acquires majority stake in TicketNew
http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
Alibaba to invest over Rs 120 crore in Chennai-based Orbgen Technologies Private Limited
June 05, 2017 at 07:46PM
from K. T. Jagannathan
Ashley Graham Reveals She Was Sexually Harassed At Work At 17
Ashley Graham recently revealed that she was sexually harassed on a modeling set when she was just 17 years old.
The model recently sat down with Glamour for the magazine’s July issue to discuss her rise to fame as a plus-size supermodel and her passion for body-positive activism. During the interview, the 29-year-old opened up about a disturbing experience when she was a young model on set.
“There was an incident on set of a campaign job when I was 17 years old ― I haven’t told this story ― and there was a photo assistant who was into me,” Graham told the magazine. “He was like, ‘Hey, come here,’ and he led me into a closet. And I was like, ‘What?’ I thought he was going to show me something. And he pulled me in, and he pulled his penis out. And he was like, ‘Grab it.’ And I was like, ‘No! That’s disgusting.’ I freaked out. And thank God I was closer to the door, and I just bolted out.”
Graham said she never told anyone about the incident because she had hoped the man had changed. Now, however, she uses the experience as a reminder to herself to always be in control of her work and her workspace.
“I’ve seen him at jobs since. I even knew a girl he dated,” she said. “I didn’t tell her because there was a voice in me that said, ‘Maybe he’s changed.’ It was my young mentality. But I told myself, ever since that incident, that I wasn’t going to allow someone at work to manipulate what I wanted to do on set. So any image that you see out there is one that I wanted to take.”
Head over to Glamour to read Graham’s full July cover story.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
June 05, 2017 at 07:49PM
from Alanna Vagianos
Raw Photos Capture First Two Years Of Motherhood
Photographer Anna Ogier-Bloomer has enjoyed documenting her family, especially her mother, for almost 15 years, so when she became a parent herself in 2013, she naturally decided to capture that experience as well.
Her photo series “Letdown” shows the first two years of motherhood ― from the exhaustion and pain to the joy and peace.
“The first two years of motherhood were a complete shock to the system ― unfathomable love for another person and completely unexpected challenges,” Ogier-Bloomer told HuffPost. “A wise friend, and lactation consultant, told me that when it comes to babies, the only constant is change. She was absolutely right. Any time we thought we’d finally adjusted to a challenge, our daughter changed into a whole new person overnight, with new needs, new interests and new tendencies.”
During those two years, the photographer’s daughter, Violet, wouldn’t sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time and constantly needed to be held. Ogier-Bloomer said she and her husband were in “survival mode.” Focusing on her photography felt impossible, especially after she went back to her full-time job as an art professor when the baby was 3.5 months old.
“Being a mother is the absolute hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I was surprised by what a physical toll it would take on me for the first two years,” Ogier-Bloomer recalled.
The physical elements of motherhood inspired the photographer to create “Letdown.” A big part of the project centered around breastfeeding.
“Breastfeeding is one of the greatest joys of my life, but it was very difficult at times, too,” she said. “I wanted to investigate the complexity of doing the most difficult yet most meaningful work I’d ever done. The physical act of motherhood begins at conception and continues to evolve through a child’s life.”
With help from her husband, sister and the camera’s self-timer, Ogier-Bloomer turned these experiences and feelings into art.
The photographer focused her camera on details like the engorgement of the breast, the pain on her skin from Violet’s pinching and scratching, moments of illness and the overall emotional outpouring of love.
“These things simultaneously bring excruciating physical pain and unparalleled emotional joy,” she explained. “Through images of my own mother, I attach a thread from one generation to the next. I confront the complexity of these seemingly contradictory states of being, and the ways in which women feel the pull of motherhood, their children, and their physical self and appearance in a way unlike anything or anyone else.”
Ultimately, Ogier-Bloomer hopes fellow mothers who see her photos feel less alone and know that she’s an advocate for parents. She also wants to help normalize breastfeeding.
“I want those for whom these images, this subject matter, the idea that toddlers want to nurse even while their mothers are using the toilet, are outside of their realm, to have a better understanding of what the complex and vital experience of mothering and breastfeeding is really like,” the photographer said.
Ogier-Bloomer said that becoming a parent changed how she viewed her own mother.
“I get it now. I understand the pain she feels when one of her three children, all grown, suffers, experiences heartbreak or disappointment or becomes estranged,” she explained. “I understand the desire she has to make it all go away, to come fix it for us even though she can’t ― the deep pain and sadness I feel when my daughter is hurt or sad is something that doesn’t disappear.”
She added, “My child is a part of me. And I hope viewers see their own mother, or all mothers, in a new light.”
H/T Refinery29
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
June 05, 2017 at 07:49PM
from Caroline Bologna
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith calls for healthier recipes
May 28, 2017 at 07:49PM
from Henry Bodkin
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Summers: OMB Director Mulvaney is being dishonest
May 27, 2017 at 07:44PM
from
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Thousands are flocking to a credit card that helps people repair their bad FICO scores and avoid payday loans
• Millions of Americans with subprime credit scores don’t have access to credit cards or any other reasonably priced way of borrowing money.
• Income volatility has doubled in the past 30 years, and as a result many of these people are unprepared to cover unexpected expenses that pop up, like medical bills or car repairs.
• Instead, when they’re cash crunched, they often turn to expensive options like payday loans, which commonly charge interest rates of 400%.
• Thousands are trying a new credit card that’s filling the void left by traditional banks. It uses analytics to target subprime borrowers who are on the upswing and offers an unsecured credit card with transparent terms and rates far below payday loans.
If you’ve got a credit score below 600, chances are you’ve messed up. Late payments. Foreclosure. Maybe you’ve been through a bankruptcy.
Getting a credit card in these situations can be pretty difficult, for obvious reasons: It’s not worth the risk to many lending institutions.
But Americans with bad credit are often the ones that need loans the most. In the absence of reasonably priced lending, many resort to alternatives with exorbitant interest rates to stay afloat, like payday loans — an industry that has grown massively over the past decade or so.
Sometimes this works as an expensive stop gap, but often people get sucked into a cycle of debt and struggle to come back up for air.
Marla Blow thinks she can help. A card industry veteran who spent nearly a decade at Capital One and helped run the credit card and payments division at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Blow recently helped launch a startup called FS Card, whose sole product at the moment is a credit card targeted toward those with tarnished credit histories.
The card, which is called “Build” and has MasterCard branding, enables customers to avoid the local payday lender’s sky-high rates and gradually mend their standing in the eyes of the almighty FICO.
FS Card’s strategy is to target “deep subprime customers” in the 550 to 600 credit score range, a group that’s largely been overlooked and forgotten by the big banks, according to Blow, the company’s CEO. By offering transparent rates and fees and low spending limits to start, Blow thinks she can carve out a profitable business that also helps people repair their financial bedrock.
It’s off to a good start: Some 50,000 people have signed on in about a year and a half.
“We’ve found really good traction,” Blow told Business Insider. “Access to mainstream, reasonably priced credit is still something the underserved market is very much seeking.”
Reduced access
“When the CARD Act prohibited credit card companies from doing many of the things that lay at the core of their business models, many pulled out of the market altogether,” writes Lisa Servon, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who’s studied low-income communities for decades, in her recently released book, “The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives.” “They’ve retreated to the safer prime and super-prime markets.”
There’s some evidence from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that lending is returning for subprime borrowers with credit scores below 660. But credit card issuers, like Chase with its Sapphire Reserve and Citi with its Prestige card, are far more preoccupied with competing over elite borrowers, falling over themselves to offer sweet travel enticements and eye-popping sign-up bonus points.
The millions of Americans with a checkered borrowing history typically aren’t chasing credit to secure free vacations, but simply to manage unforeseen costs and gaps in their monthly cash flow. Nearly half of Americans aren’t prepared to cover an unexpected $400 expense.
Without access to credit cards or traditional bank loans, these people have turned to alternative lending options instead. The payday loan industry — wherein people take out a two-week loan for several hundred dollars that comes with a fee that amounts to a 400% interest rate on average — now serves 19 million households out of some 20,600 locations across the country, according to industry group the Community Financial Services Association of America. That’s more than the number of McDonald’s locations in the US.
“It’s not just low-income people in poor neighborhoods who are using these services, but many, many middle class people,” Servon, who embedded as an employee at a check cashing company and a payday loan company for her research, told Business Insider. “Many, many of them owned their homes, they had college degrees, they had stable incomes of $50,000 to $75,000 per year. Yet they were still facing situations of chronic financial insecurity.”
Some people wind up in trouble because they don’t manage their money responsibly. But part of the explanation for this trend is that income volatility has doubled over the past 30 years, says Servon. If your income is unpredictable week to week, it can be difficult to budget, and even more difficult to absorb shocks like an untimely medical bill, car repair, or temporary job loss.
For someone facing financial uncertainty, it’s not hard to imagine needing to borrow $400 to get through a short-term cash crunch.
A solution — for some
Servon wrote optimistically about FS Card in her book, noting that response to the card has been strong, especially among those who had previously used payday loans.
And that’s by design. Blow, who earned her MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, took key features of payday loans — transparency and low borrowing limits — and married them with the benefits of traditional credit cards — lower interest rates, a longer repayment period, and instant access.
The Build card isn’t the first option for borrowers with no credit history. Usually, experts recommend these borrowers use a “secured” credit card — one where the borrower supplies funds upfront in a type of security deposit, often at least $200, that’s usually identical to the spending limit. Eventually you recoup the deposit if your creditworthiness grows, but it doesn’t really provide extra cash flow in the meantime.
The Build card, on the other hand, is unsecured and requires no deposit, providing a more flexible line of credit from the get-go.
But FS Card isn’t a charity. It’s a business, and it needs to turn a profit. So the card isn’t free, and it’s not for just anyone.
The Build card comes with a $75 annual fee and a starting credit limit of about $500 — not incidentally, the same as the maximum payday loan amount in many states — which grows as the borrower proves responsible over time. The interest rate percentage starts in the upper 20s, on the high end for most credit cards. All the terms are laid out plainly to avoid any surprises.
Not everyone earns approval, either. Because its client base is an inherently risky group, FS Card must carefully vet potential borrowers.
“We look for trends, we look for indicators that might be hidden on the surface,” Blow said. “We are very much in a lending business though, and if we don’t do that well, we won’t be there. We can’t make bad decisions on the credit side.”
On the technical side, this entails behavior modeling analytics and machine learning to target the right customers. In practical terms, this means sorting out subprime borrowers who’ve turned the corner from those who remain mired with bad habits and lingering money problems.
“Our goal is to enable customers to ‘Build’ and rebuild credit with our product, so we are looking for consumers to have issues in the rearview mirror,” Blow said. “Fresh issues, newly troubled credit, and/or growing indebtedness, those are red flags because it suggests the individual is not yet on the way up.”
In a year and a half on the market, the Build card has extended $25 million in credit to nearly 50,000 customers, according to Blow.
It’s a drop in the bucket, at this point, given the millions of Americans living with damaged credit scores. But the card’s portfolio is growing about 10% each month, and it could prove an indispensable tool in the future to help many of those people get their financial house in order.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: 4 lottery winners who lost it all
May 21, 2017 at 07:46PM
from Alex Morrell
7 Key Strategies Will Assure Company Sustainability
The challenge is to retain the same sense of urgency, energy, commitment, and readiness in a mature company that you felt during the startup stage. The importance and reality of this need has been detailed well in a new book I just finished, “State of Readiness,” by Joseph F. Paris, Jr. He is a recognized thought leader on the subject of operational excellence and strategy.
He and I are both are strong believers that the keys to sustainable success start with building a solid business platform initially, with a strong support structure for scalability, sustainability, and long-term leadership. The proper support structure can only be built if you commit to and implement his following strategy elements:
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Learn from the past, build for the future. New and existing companies today need to press beyond what was, through what is, to what will be. Most importantly, this is not just in the products and services you offer, but in the way your company operates. You must proactively improve your business processes, even if they seem to be working today.
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Create and cultivate a leadership culture. Leaders in business these days are leaders because people are willing to follow. You can tell the capability of a leader by the caliber of their followers. The best leaders are mentors to their team, and they are stewards of a company’s assets and vision. They build trust, integrity, and respect from everyone.
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Communicate the vision, then execute. People will follow only if they know where they are going. Connect the dots to the vision to gain alignment and commitment. Set a course for the destination, but also establish intermediate checkpoints to assess progress along the way. Adjust as prudent and necessary, communicating all the way.
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Set-up for success and don’t set-up for failure. Delegate with accountability and responsibility, and keep your focus on the future. Let those to whom you delegate do their job, without micromanaging. Your task is follow-up in support, mentoring, and setting goals. Establish processes, incent innovation, and monitor progress along the way.
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Make innovation the requisite for long-term viability. Maintaining the velocity and flexibility to keep up with the market and competitors is a requirement for survival. Your team culture needs to expect failed attempts, but never a fear of failure, only of not trying. Fail quick, fail small, learn, and move on. Change should be expected as the norm.
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Construct a program for rebuilding capability. Continually redefine what success looks like into the future. Then you need to identify the talent, skills, and resources your company will need to succeed, as well as when and where they will be needed. Work hard at finding and filling the gaps. Hire and retain the best, and build the rest.
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Prepare for sustainability in the long haul. The journey will be long and difficult, so prepare accordingly. Build rock-solid processes first, then increase the through-put and accuracy by introducing the right technologies where it makes sense. Capture your own best practices and replicate them across your company. Constantly strengthen the team.
We can all name companies that started strong, but didn’t scale well, or let complacency drive them off the map. Examples include Webvan, Research in Motion (Blackberry), and Tandy (Radio Shack). To this list, we can add the countless family-owned businesses that could not survive the transition to the next generation. Beware of any sense of entitlement to continuing success.
For scaling and long-term success, every company today needs these strategies for operational excellence, to follow an innovative new startup effort, driven by a passionate and committed entrepreneur. It’s never too late to get started, but it gets harder the longer you wait. Don’t wait until your company is spinning out of control.
Marty Zwilling
*** First published on Huffington Post on 05/20/2017 ***
May 21, 2017 at 07:05PM
from MartinZwilling
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