Ideas

While I was dining with several girlfriends, one of them asked, "Hey, do you ever wonder where your brain goes when you hit middle age?"

One sure way to get a unanimous non-show of hands from a group of salespeople is to ask this question: "Let's see a show of hands. How many of you, when you set your objectives for a customer meeting, have at the top of the list: 'I want to come across to the customer like every other salesperson that customer met with in the last week?'

Remember the scene in Young Frankenstein when the villagers were running through the streets of a village in Bavaria with pitchforks and torches looking for the monster?

In my last column, I discussed 12 key characteristics of systems thinking. I described how systems thinking (i.e. holistic thinking) is different than analytic thinking (i.e., parts-based thinking). I made the case that there is great power in looking for interdependencies and connections – between tasks, employees, work areas, stakeholders, etc.

In today's world, there is pressure from all sides for leaders to have the right answers. There is internal pressure to be right, as well as the expectation of others for leaders to have the answers when there are issues to be resolved.

Carroll University will open the Carroll University Center for Graduate Studies this fall. The center will host classes for the graduate phase of the physical therapy program, masters of business administration (MBA) and masters of software engineering. The center also will host some graduate classes in education.

Chancellor Deborah Ford is taking steps to help the University of Wisconsin-Parkside become a business resource for the entire Milwaukee 7 region.

The Northwestern Mutual Foundation is providing $30,000 for a study to explore arts education in the Milwaukee 7 (M7) region.

Marquette University's Center for Supply Chain Management, part of its College of Business Administration, has created a new series of courses designed for manufacturing industry executives in need of continuing education – the first such program from an institute of higher education in Wisconsin.

In the July 10 issue of The Economist, I read an article about the expansion of company wellness programs written by the noted Austrian Joseph Schumpeter. He described organizations with wellness programs ranging from those that only have an exercise room, then various firms somewhere in the middle (maybe a fitness center, smoking cessation classes) all the way to companies with more comprehensive programs emerging from simultaneous developments in health care and management theory.