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Driving Change: An Interview with Ford Motor Company's Jacques Nasser
How do you shift strategy into overdrive at a company with 340,000 employees in more than 200 countries? The answer, says Ford's iconoclastic new leader, is teaching as you've never seen it before.
Suzy Wetlaufer
From the Magazine (March–April 1999)
Jacques Nasser, the newly appointed CEO of Ford Motor Company, joined Ford Australia in 1968 as a financial analyst. Nasser's family, originally from Lebanon, had long lived in Melbourne, where Nasser spent his teenage years starting businesses, including a bicycle-making operation and a discotheque. His father, an independent businessman himself, watched approvingly as Jacques thrived as an entrepreneur. Little wonder, then, that he greeted his son's decision to join a huge, hierarchical manufacturer with consternation. "Why would you ever want to work for anyone but yourself?" he asked. To him, the excitement of business came from running the works—from being the owner.
Today, 31 years after joining Ford, Nasser is asking his employees to see business as his father did—to understand that excitement and success come when employees think and act as if they own the company. (In fact, they do, to the extent of 20% of the outstanding stock.) Nasser is asking them to adopt, in other words, the capital markets' view of Ford—to look at the company in its entirety, as shareholders do. As Nasser explains in this interview, that's a radically different mentality for Ford. The company has long operated as a collection of fiercely independent fiefdoms united under the flag of their functional or regional expertise. "Ford's fiefdoms don't always war with one another, although that can happen," Nasser says, "but they don't exactly care either about what happens to the domain that contains them all." He recalls a meeting two years ago with 200 of Ford's senior executives. "They all knew everything there was to know about their own divisions," Nasser says. But none could say what the company's assets were. Nor could anyone identify Ford's price-earnings ratio or its economic value added.
Because Bill Ford is leading the board as the company's chairman, Nasser can commit his full attention to leading the company itself. His singular goal as CEO is to replace Ford's fiefdom mind-set with a mentality that will satisfy, if not delight, consumers in the twenty-first century and, in turn, the capital markets. But how do you exact such a transformation—particularly in a company with 340,000 employees across 200 countries? The answer, according to Nasser, is through teaching. As a member of Ford's leadership team, over the past three years he has overseen an intensive, cascading education program that has involved every one of Ford's 55,000 salaried employees. The initiative was launched when the company's most senior leaders were charged with bringing the business case for Ford's transformation to their direct reports. In turn, those direct reports were charged with becoming teachers and leaders of change by spreading the strategic how and why of Ford's transformation to their direct reports.
Ford's change program is based on teaching, but it eschews the traditional classroom setting. Teaching at Ford is achieved through a multifaceted initiative, including small group discussions of strategy and competition, stints of community service, and 360-degree feedback. At the initiative's center is a hands-on, three-day workshop that culminates in an assignment designed to let "students" demonstrate that they understand Ford's new mind-set: within 100 days, they must deliver a significant new cost saving or revenue source to Ford's bottom line.
The teaching initiative at Ford has been so effective, Nasser says, that he intends to roll it out to the company's hourly workers this year. "You can't reinvent a company like Ford overnight; we have too much tradition," he explains. "But there is no question that we have to change our fundamental approach to work—we have to change our DNA. And teaching does that better than any other way I know."
Ford has been making cars for nearly a century. Why change the company's mind-set now?
If we don't, Ford as we know it won't be around in five years. That's the primary answer, and I would say it's pretty compelling.
No company can survive in a world driven by rapidly changing consumer needs and tastes without having leaders at every level capable of fast decision making. If leaders think and move slowly or operate inefficiently—basically, if they don't keep up with consumers and competitors—then they won't be able to satisfy the capital markets' demand for both profitable growth and unassailable asset utilization. The capital markets are ruthless. They don't care about the stellar performance of one design team, or the financial results of a particular geographic region, or the amazing productivity of one molding plant. The capital markets value the health of a company as a whole. Is the company positioned to meet consumers' needs now and in the future? And can it meet those needs while bringing home great returns on the capital employed?
Another point comes into play here, too. Increasingly, the markets value a global approach to business—an approach in which a company's units, divisions, teams, functions, and regions are all tightly integrated and synchronized across borders. The markets reward the kinds of companies in which, for instance, a manager at an assembly plant in Cologne says, "It would definitely lower my costs to change such-and-such supplier, but it would damage our global strategy for raw material sourcing. I won't do it." When you have a whole company of people thinking like that, you know you're going to see the benefits in overall productivity. And even more important, you're going to see the benefits in innovation, because people will be asking themselves, What can I do to make this whole company work better and smarter and faster? What creative ideas do I have that will really make us grow, not just in my area, but over there, in that division or that one?
Does that kind of questioning happen at Ford today?
More and more. But we still have way too much of the fiefdom perspective. I should note, by the way, that I myself used to have that view of our business. When I ran Ford Europe from 1992 to 1994, it was a fiefdom. Every three months or so, we'd get visitors from headquarters who would suggest new ways of thinking about and doing things. And we would wine and dine them and nod at everything they said. Finally, we'd get them on the plane home, and we wouldn't think about a word that they'd said until they came back again. We figured nobody knew more about how to run Ford Europe than we did. We were the experts. We can't do that anymore.
The transformation effort at Ford, then, is undergirded by two concepts: employees should think like shareholders, and the company as a whole must be able to respond swiftly to—if not anticipate—consumers' needs. Those ideas aren't new. But is this the first time they've been introduced to Ford people?
We haven't had to introduce these concepts to our people until now. First let me make this clear: the last thing I want to imply is that the new executive team at Ford is a bunch of heroes on white horses, galloping in to save a company in distress. Ford has been in business for 95 years, and you can quibble with its degree of success, but the fact that a company is still around after 95 years is an accomplishment in itself. And when it comes to a global mind-set, Ford is actually ahead of most of its competitors.
But consider the fact that there are legitimate historical reasons Ford evolved into a collection of fiefdoms. Think about Ford's history in three chunks: from its founding in 1905 to the early 1920s, the late 1920s through the 1950s, and the 1960s through the 1980s. The first period was one of colonization for most large U.S. companies—they would send a son off to the U.K., Canada, or Argentina to run a company just like the one back home. The first Henry Ford was an internationalist at heart, I think, because within a very few years of establishing the company here in the United States, he was quickly opening assembly plants all over the world that were essentially smaller versions of the original company in Detroit. Not surprisingly, all the cars looked the same, too; they were all Model T's or Model A's. The competition in this period was basically nonexistent, it was so disorganized.
The next period was one of intense nationalism. All around the world, there was a real sense of national pride. We saw the ugly side with what happened in Germany, but nationalism was on the rise everywhere. Suddenly, there were automotive companies in the U.K., in France, Germany, Australia, and guess what? They were all making their own vehicles. Government policies tended toward nationalist objectives—import quotas, mandatory investments, and the like. Nations wanted to exert their independence and saw the automotive industry as a means of investing in their economies and creating technical skills and employment. The competition during this period tended to be very much national—even the most international competitors operated in large part out of their own regions. The Europeans exported, the Americans exported, and that's how the competitive game was being played.
In the third period, you had the rise of regionalism, with the emergence of the European common market and NAFTA. Countries kept their own political system and social values, but economic trading blocks were being formed. Ford Europe was established in this period. In fact, this was when most of our regional and functional fiefdoms became firmly entrenched. And the system worked very well, given the times and the environment. I would even say the fiefdoms were excellent at what they did: they squeezed every last ounce of efficiency out of the regional model. For instance, back in the period of nationalism, Ford had multiple accounting activities around the world—there were 15 in Europe alone. The regional model got it down to 4–1 in Europe, 1 in the United States, 1 in Asia-Pacific, and 1 in South America. But even with that efficiency, the model doesn't work anymore.
Because of the globalization of the economy?
Right. Today we're moving to a fourth stage of economic evolution with the globalization of capital, communications, economic policy, trade policy, human resources, marketing, advertising, brands—you name it. You've got Germans and Japanese producing cars in the United States, and Koreans producing cars in Eastern Europe, and you've got Malaysia exporting cars and parts. Add to that the fact that the automotive industry is now becoming not just a hardware-driven industry but an electronics-driven industry. It's becoming more and more a business that requires huge investments in technology and intellectual capital.
So I don't think there's a choice about globalization anymore. That is, I don't think you can say, "Well, we're just going to remain a national company or a regional company." Some of our competitors are still saying that: "We're quite happy. We're Europeans and we're going to do well in Europe. And yeah, we'll do a little bit in Asia, we'll do a little in South America." That might not be a bad strategy for a short time or for a certain type of company, but for a company of Ford's background and size, I don't think that is a viable alternative.
The days of looking across town and seeing our major competitors are gone. Now auto companies around the world have ambitions, and some of them are world-class players—Toyota and Honda, for example. And we are also going to face competitors with whom we have no experience. So put it all together and you see we are facing an incredible challenge today: more markets open for business, more competitors fighting for dominance, more need for very smart people and fresh ideas. And at the same time, we have to grow. You don't make money by downsizing or shutting plants or reducing your product line. You make money by building the company.
"The days of looking across town and seeing our major competitors are gone. Now auto companies around the world have ambitions."
Ford can't build the company if it holds on to a mind-set that doesn't respond swiftly to consumers' needs or pay attention to the capital markets. So that's why we're in the process of reinventing Ford as a global organization with a single strategic focus on consumers and shareholder value. That's not to say you wipe out national cultures or eliminate the idea that it makes sense to have people with expertise in one function or another, but it does mean you strive for some sort of Ford-wide corporate DNA that drives how we do things everywhere. That DNA has a couple of key components: a global mind-set, as I've said, an intuitive knowledge of Ford's customers, a relentless focus on growth, and the strong belief that leaders are teachers.
Does having a single strategic focus necessarily mean that Ford intends to sell the same products across every market?
Just the opposite. As a matter of fact, it means that we can actually have products that are tailored to an individual market because we are able to leverage technology and efficiencies around the world. If our cars have common systems that consumers riding in the car don't see or experience—like the front-end crash pulse—then we can put the money and time saved by those common features toward things that consumers do care about in their individual markets. And we can do it faster and cheaper than ever before.
Say we're selling a car in Brazil. It might have the same basic engineering as other Ford cars, but its suspension system will be customized for that country's road conditions, which can be pretty treacherous. At the end of the day, we're capitalizing on our scale, but we're right out front with satisfying our customers.
Some aspects of Ford, however, will be common across markets. For instance, we will have best practices in marketing and employee development. And all major decisions about brand positioning and technology will be made by a central group. Execution, however, will be local, with enough flexibility to ensure that local differences are accounted for. Let me give you an example. In order to have consistent Ford DNA around the world, we need to have consistent policies and practices on compensation. That said, different cultures come at compensation differently—in particular, they have different attitudes about the balance between fixed and variable compensation.
Generally speaking, our long-term goal is to increase the emphasis on variable compensation. In fact, we recently began to roll out a worldwide employee-stock-purchase program to support our drive to have employees think and act as shareholders. But we've gotten some pushback from Ford Australia, mainly because of the tax implications of our program. Given those special circumstances, we agreed that Ford Australia should develop its own stock purchase program. To do otherwise would have been counterproductive—you can't force the world to be the same everywhere.
At this moment, how close is Ford to being a global company?
Let me put it this way: we have a strong international presence. We operate in 200 countries. But having assembly plants in Brazil, product development teams in Germany, and dealerships in Mexico doesn't make us a global company. Look at what happened when we introduced the Ford Escort in Europe in the 1980s. That car, which was intended to be our first global product, was engineered on two continents—North America and Europe. Obviously, that made it impossible for us to capitalize on global sourcing for components. And it was launched individually in every country. Not only did every country come up with its own positioning for the car, but each devised its own advertising message and hired its own advertising agency to get that message across. So you had one car and a substantial number of value propositions. One market was saying, "Yeah, this car's a limousine," and another market was saying it was a sports vehicle. That made it impossible for us to get customers' input into the product after it was out there. Everyone was reacting to a different positioning.
Compare that with the rollout we just had of the Focus, our new compact. It's a great example of where we're headed with our new mind-set. First, the Focus was engineered by one team of engineers. Its concept was launched at one show, in Geneva, and the vehicle itself was launched at one show, in Paris. We brought in journalists from all over the world—1,500 of them. They all drove the Focus on the same roads and in the same conditions. They got the same technological presentation from the same people, and they got the same brand and product positioning delivered to them from the same marketing people. The Focus is a vehicle with a lot of design flair, tremendous spaciousness, great fuel efficiency, and engineering for safety, and we're going to offer it to consumers at an enormous value. That's the way we talk about the car whether it's in Britain, or Canada, or elsewhere. And by the way, we have one advertising agency handling the rollout—one.
Getting from the Escort to the Focus must have required a major cultural shift. How were you able to make that change?
We realized that the change had to be understood on the individual level. Every manager, every designer, every engineer, every person in the plants had to change his or her way of thinking. And the only way to change at the individual level, I believe, is through teaching. Teaching, we've found, is an amazingly effective way to change an organization. With the teaching programs we've used over the past three years, our people have delivered $2 billion to our bottom line, either as increased revenues or decreased costs. And they've delivered them because their mind-sets have changed.
"With the teaching programs we've used over the past three years, our people have delivered $2 billion to our bottom line."
Now, many executives intuitively lead by teaching. In both formal and informal settings, they share their perspectives on strategy and competition, for instance, or they coach individuals to build their skills. I myself taught for years, but I didn't even realize I was teaching. I was talking about the history of Ford, which was the history I grew up with. I told stories about my experiences in different parts of Ford, good and bad. I used those stories as a way of capturing what worked and of describing the pitfalls and opportunities I'd experienced.
This is what's changed: we've systematized teaching as our means of change, made our message consistent, and taken it to a larger audience than ever before. The programs we use are many and varied—Capstone, the Business Leadership Initiative, and Executive Partnering, to name just three. (For an overview of Ford's teaching initiatives, see the chart "The New Curriculum at Ford.") But they all come down to the same thing: people teaching people about the why and how of Ford's new direction. And we create leaders of change in the process.
The New Curriculum at Ford Ford's teaching initiative comprises approximately a dozen programs. The chart below summarizes four of the most widespread.
Is teaching the same thing as spreading knowledge?
Spreading knowledge is part of it. In fact, there is no better, faster way to distribute knowledge around a company than through teaching. In the past 30 years, I have worked for Ford in ten countries. I've faced a military junta in Argentina and a financial meltdown in the Philippines. I've faced hyperinflation, closed markets, open markets, Japanese competition—you name it. I've probably packed 100 years of experience into those 30 years. I could keep all that inside my head, or I could share it with people in the company to help them learn.
Beyond "redistributing the wealth" around Ford, what makes teaching an effective tool for change?
Consider what usually happens in change programs in large companies. A slew of consultants comes in with overheads and Powerpoint presentations. They lecture people about why change is important and how it needs to happen. And when they leave, the people who have sat through the show say, "What do they know? They don't work here." And nothing happens.
But once you start to teach in-house with your own people leading the effort, the teachers themselves have no choice but to behave differently. You've gotten up in front of your people, and you've said, "This is what I believe. This is how we should run the business." After that, it's very hard to disown yourself from the change process. You have to live it and breathe it every day. Teaching enforces the discipline of change.
But I'll tell you something about the discipline of teaching: it is not an easy thing to do. You have to be absolutely committed to it. You can't say, "I'm going to open up the dialogue," and then not really open it up. You have to be genuine in what you are doing. I mean, when you get stopped at the newsstand on a Saturday morning and a factory worker comes up to you and says, "I was thinking about that comment you made in your speech the other week," you can't say, "Well, sorry, it's my free time now. Just send me a note next week." When you open up change—when you bring its case to your people—you have to stay front and center for their questions.
Wouldn't it be more efficient and just as effective to change the Ford mind-set by moving its people around between fiefdoms?
It's not enough. People may get a more global point of view with international assignments, but teaching adds something critical. It demystifies why we need to change, why we actually need a global point of view. It demystifies what we're all thinking here at headquarters. You know, you go down a step or two in some parts of this company, and there's a mythology about why we do things the way we do, and the stories don't always match reality. As a result, a wall builds up between senior management and the people who execute the strategy. The people on the front lines end up saying, "They want change up there," and they don't know why, and they don't care.
Teaching allows you to replace the old mythology with a new and better one. When I first came to Dearborn, I decided to invite people to take a look around my office and answer any questions they had. We had thousands of people through. And you know what they asked? "Where's the Jacuzzi?" A story had started—I don't know where, and I don't know how—that when I came to Dearborn, I had an elaborate office designed for myself with a health club and a Jacuzzi in it. So people came, and they saw that there was no Jacuzzi. That was part of breaking the old mythology, which was that the senior executives were so disconnected from the real work of this company that they were spending their afternoons in Jacuzzis.
With teaching, we've been able to introduce new stories, to create a different folklore about what's possible at Ford. That's how you build a new culture—through stories. I tell a lot of stories that have the same moral—that working at Ford does not have to be about working in a single area. It can be about working and caring for the whole company.
One of my favorite stories involves our consumer research department here in Dearborn. A while back, they got it in their heads that maybe we should change the look of the front grille on the Explorer. They asked me about it, and I said no, but they were bound and determined. So one weekend, they got 100 paid people in here—probably provided by some focus-group company—and they had them walk around and look at 15 different grilles, each person holding a little clipboard, jotting down impressions. I don't know exactly what it cost, but it was too much. And I'll tell you why. If we don't know intuitively the look that Ford customers want and expect from us, then we're dead. When it was all over, the focus group participants picked the Explorer grille. Of course they did—that grille is the Ford look at its essence and we can't go wasting time and money messing with that. There are bigger and more important battles out there. I tell this story because it demonstrates the absolute need to understand the essence of brand and consumers.
Have you changed your stories since you started the teaching initiative at Ford?
Definitely, because you learn what works. You learn what your people know. For instance, a few years ago, I started meeting with small groups of senior executives to talk about shareholder value and what that means in the daily approach to our jobs. The first few times, I spent hours talking about financial ratios. But it wasn't until someone was brave enough to come up to me afterward and say, "What's a P/E ratio?" that I realized why so few people in the company were thinking about shareholder value. They didn't understand it as a concept. The same with growth. No one understood why we had to grow. The topic was talked about only by a few guys up in finance. Even senior executives, most of whom had grown up within a single function, had little understanding of what drove shareholder value and how to measure and track our total company performance in the manner of the capital markets.
Let's talk about some of the components of the teaching initiative at Ford. Which one would you say is the most effective?
You can't deconstruct the components. No single component is more powerful than another—they reinforce one another. And they all build off the same foundation: the teachable point of view, which is a document written by people to explain their theories about competition and success, and also has the powerful effect of turning everyone in the organization into a leader and teacher of change. (For a discussion of the teachable point of view, see the sidebar "The Teachable Point of View: A Primer.")
Our first teaching program was called Capstone. It was launched in 1996 as a means for both Alex Trotman, then CEO and chairman, and his senior team to share their teachable points of view and to develop leaders from the top several hundred executives in the company. Capstone continues today.
The Teachable Point of View: A Primer
by Noel Tichy
Three things can be said about change in today's intense competitive environment: it's hard, it's necessary, and most people are bound to resist it. The question for leaders, then, is, what actually makes change happen? As Jacques Nasser has found at Ford, the answer is teaching. Or more specifically, teaching based on a mechanism I call the teachable point of view, which turns leaders into teachers and their students into teachers and leaders, and so on. I did not invent the teachable point of view. I recognized it and gave it a name. Great leaders—be they of corporations, churches, or armies—have probably been using it forever. Today, in fact, it is galvanizing change programs not only at Ford but also at General Electric, AlliedSignal, PepsiCo, and hundreds of other organizations large and small.
The teachable point of view, simply put, is a written explanation of what a person knows and believes about what it takes to succeed in his or her own business as well as in business generally. What do consumers really value? What would it take to knock out the competition? What dynamics—from on-line buying to demographic changes—will drive the markets in five years? What kind of people should the company hire in order to reach its goals? How does a leader know when to dive into a new technology? How does he or she know when to abandon a sinking ship?
The teachable point of view is not, however, just a how-to manual. It is a why manual as well. (I'm using the word "manual" loosely here—most teachable points of view can fit on two pages.) It identifies why a person approaches work as he or she does; it opens up his or her assumptions, beliefs, and experiences to colleagues, bosses, and subordinates. I often think of the teachable point of view as the antidote to the "black box" in people's heads—the box that conceals the origins of good ideas and important insights.
Sometimes I'm asked who should create a teachable point of view within a company, even a small one. The short answer is everyone. But the sequence in which these documents are written is important. First, the leaders need to get theirs done, and those documents need to be discussed, debated, and ultimately aligned. This process takes time and intensive work; at Ford, Nasser and his team created their teachable points of view during four off-site meetings over a four-month period.
Then the teaching begins. The leaders should share their teachable points of view with the next level of executives, and after debate and discussion, those people should write their own teachable points of view. Next, that group—now leader-teachers themselves—should share their teachable points of view with their reports. And the teaching goes on and on.
All teachable points of view look a bit different; some are long and filled with charts and graphs. Others are handwritten letters. But they all, in my experience, include four basic building blocks: ideas, values, emotional energy, and edge.
The ideas section lays out a person's theory about organizational success in terms of products or services, distribution channels, customer segments, and the like. It states the set of assumptions and beliefs the person holds about what will make a company profitable in the marketplace. At GE, for example, Jack Welch's teachable point of view uses the idea section to describe a world driven by deflationary pressures. In such an environment, GE cannot only "love to make great things in factories and send them out the door in a box." Going forward, the company will thrive only if it operates as a service company that also makes high-quality products. GE is on its way to realizing that vision; today it derives at least two-thirds of its revenue from services worldwide.
The values section of the teachable point of view can encompass an individual's personal ideology—such as a strong belief in honesty and integrity—but it must also explain the values he or she endorses in supporting business goals. Take Jack Welch again. His vision for GE requires that the company reach its markets quickly (how else does a service company succeed?) and that its people share best practices across divisions. For those reasons, he coined the value of "boundarylessness," which means, in his words, "behavior that is open, where people act without regard to status or functional loyalty and also look for ideas from anywhere."
Third, the teachable point of view contains a person's thinking about how to motivate other people. Some leaders believe that face-to-face coaching works best; others favor formal development programs, task forces, and the day-to-day mechanisms of strategy formulation, budgeting, and performance reviews. The action-learning programs Nasser describes in the interview, such as Capstone, BLI, and Executive Partnering, demonstrate his theory about motivation: People are energized when they understand the competitive context of their work. And they are further motivated when they are expected to deliver results. Nasser believes in the power of scale and speed: Energy is contagious. The faster and wider you roll out an initiative, the more the electricity spreads.
Edge refers to a person's individual thought process for making difficult decisions—the yes or no decisions. How do you make the tough calls? If an emergency room triage nurse were to explain her edge, for instance, she would describe what factors help her prioritize patient care: her medical knowledge, experience, and values. Everyone "knows" that a person with a gunshot wound must be treated before a person with a toothache. Similarly, everyone "knows" that an unethical employee should be fired. The discussion of edge in a teachable point of view, however, makes the why and how of these decisions clear.
There are three main reasons the teachable point of view works so well in change situations. First, the very act of creating and testing a teachable point of view makes people better leaders. As they step back from the day-to-day ferment of business and reflect on what they know, leaders come to understand why they lead as they do—why they make certain decisions about competitive threats, for instance, or why they act in certain ways in crisis situations. In the process, leaders penetrate their underlying assumptions about themselves, their organizations, and business in general. Implicit knowledge becomes explicit and can then be questioned, refined, and honed to both the leader's and the organization's benefit.
Second, the power of the teachable point of view is in its multiplier effect and its speed. Once Nasser had articulated his teachable point of view, he taught it to 200 other leaders, who taught it to 1,200 more, who taught it to 55,000 more—all within a year. The same phenomenon could be seen at PepsiCo, as CEO Roger Enrico passed on his teachable point of view to 110 executives, who in turn passed it along to 20,000 people in 18 months. At AlliedSignal, CEO Larry Bossidy used the teachable point of view to reach all 86,000 of the company's employees in one year.
Third and finally, the teachable point of view also expedites one of the leader's most difficult and mission-critical tasks: developing people. Typically, leaders develop other leaders by example. That can take a long time and leaves many insights unarticulated. The power of the teachable point of view is that it gives leaders an explicit body of knowledge to impart. It helps them construct a framework for their own ideas, which helps others build knowledge as well.
How does Capstone work?
First, my leadership team and I select four strategic challenges facing Ford. For instance, one challenge was to figure out what our distribution channels should look like given the rise of the Internet and the emergence of large retail outlets—these superstores for cars that are popping up. Each one of these challenges is then assigned to a team of six senior executives from around the world. They've got six months to tackle it, with one member of the leadership team along for the ride as a sponsor, guide, and coach.
The teams begin the six-month process with an intensive five-day workshop. A lot goes on. My team and I share our teachable points of view. We have team-building exercises, community service projects, 360-degree feedback, coaching, and plenty of conversation and debate about the projects that lie ahead.
The workshop concludes with a long dialogue between me and the participants, along with their spouses or partners. And I mean it when I say long; these conversations can last up to three or four hours. Spouses and partners are included because I don't think you can effect change in a company without acknowledging that the kind of transformation we're talking about is going to influence people at home as well as on the job. I don't give a speech. We talk about how global careers affect families; we share ideas about ways to fix the company; we talk about the exciting new business opportunities that exist for Ford. Sometimes these sessions get pretty intense, which is great. That intensity is energizing. And when it's all over, the Capstone participants are asked to create their own teachable points of view.
Following the workshop, the senior executives go back to their day jobs. Their Capstone projects will take up about 30% of their time over the next six months. The teams are global, so working together can be pretty challenging. They have to figure out ways to meet face-to-face, how best to use e-mail, and when to use videoconferencing and teleconferencing. Halfway through the project, all the participants meet for a coaching and check-in workshop. The teachers are members of my top team or previous Capstone participants. There's the whole idea of leaders teaching and leaders developing leaders.
The final session of Capstone lasts several days, and again it's all about teaching. My top team and I review recommendations from each team and decide what to implement. Every participant receives extensive feedback on his or her performance from fellow participants as well as from the top team.
Capstone is about learning, but its results have been anything but academic. Take that matter of distribution channels that I mentioned. In their six-month block, the team members studying it got out in the field, benchmarked Ford against other consumer companies, and spent time with our dealers. Based on their analysis, they decided we should adopt a whole new strategy—basically, they recommended we start acquiring dealerships in different regions and create our own superstores with our dealers as business partners. They developed a business model for their plan, came up with an implementation process, presented the idea to the board, and sold it to senior management—all with incredible speed. Within weeks of their presentation, we launched their approach, and today it is a critical part of our long-term strategy.
Let's talk about Ford's Business Leadership Initiative.
BLI brings teaching to a larger audience. It began when the top 200 executives at Ford were trained as teachers in a three-day workshop so that they could take their own teams off for three days and teach them about Ford's new approach to business. These teachers were also shown how to design 100-day projects for teams of BLI participants—projects that tackle cost problems or discover new sources of revenue in their own areas. By the end of 1997, we had completed 200 BLI workshop series involving about 20,000 of our salaried people. Today BLI has spread throughout the organization to the extent that our company now has more than 1,500 leader-teachers worldwide who have reached a total of 55,000 salaried employees.
"Our company now has more than 1,500 leader-teachers worldwide who have reached a total of 55,000 salaried employees."
Again, like Capstone, the BLI projects are an incredibly important part of the learning process. And even though they're smaller than the strategic challenges taken on by the Capstone participants, they certainly aren't little, make-work assignments. Teams have to show they have made a positive impact on shareholder value, be it through cutting costs or enhancing growth or improving customer satisfaction. For instance, one team had the objective of increasing sales of accessories that are offered on light trucks, such as the Expedition and the Navigator. The project had a revenue target of $18 million and a profit target of $4.9 million. In another BLI session, eight teams got together and decided to establish a center within Ford to double the productivity and halve the time of IT systems development. Their target for profit effect was $40 million. It looks as if both of those projects will achieve their goals by the end of 1999.
In Capstone, the concept of shareholder value is central to the curriculum. Is the same true for BLI?
Definitely. At the outset, a lot of our people didn't know Ford's market capitalization, or its price-earnings ratio, or why either of those things mattered. We basically had to introduce the concept of capital markets. We had to talk to people about where Ford really sat competitively: how we looked compared to General Motors—and compared to Microsoft, General Electric, and Wal-Mart. People are thrilled to learn this information, believe it or not. They want to put their daily work into a bigger economic context.
Every BLI participant spends at least half a day in a community service project. Why?
There are a couple of objectives. First, one of Ford's strategies is to be a world-class corporate citizen. That means far more than contributing dollars to society; it means we must actively contribute our time and energy to the communities in which we operate. Second, working in a community is a very powerful leadership-development experience. Ford people have built schools in Mexico, worked with the homeless in New York, and cared for the elderly in Hong Kong. Our people have worked side by side with community activists who have shown what it takes to get things done under the most daunting circumstances.
One organization that teaches our people a lot is Focus: HOPE in Detroit. It distributes food to about 80,000 people a month and trains thousands of young people in all sorts of life and job skills. It has trained almost 1,500 machinists, for example. The experiences at Focus: HOPE have fundamentally changed many of our people. One Ford executive who worked there told me he would never complain again about the limits of his budget. He said the experience showed him what we meant when we talked about working against the odds.
After the community service portion of BLI is over, we bus everyone back to the training center and we talk about leadership. We also talk about the emotions of change. Those emotions can be brutal—we get them out, we let people air them. And then we give them a final assignment. We say, "Here's a video camera. You have 45 minutes to plan, script, and shoot a five-minute movie that compares the new and old way of doing things at Ford. By the way, the best movie—which you will judge yourselves—will be shown on the third day of the workshop when Jac or one person from the senior team will be with you."
Can you describe some of the winners?
There was a hilarious one not too long ago. For the old Ford way, they showed a bunch of people standing around a swimming pool. They were all wearing suits. And then one of them falls in, and he clearly can't swim. He's screaming and flailing all over the place. All the people on the side of the pool start to wring their hands—you know, they're fretting. They're saying, "God, we've got a problem. We've got to call McKinsey. Maybe we should put a committee together." And the guy in the pool, of course, drowns.
In the video depicting the new Ford, the guy falls into the pool, and everyone jumps in to save him. It was funny, but underneath there are some deep themes about the great stuff that happens when you get rid of bureaucratic behavior.
Do people ever complain that the video exercise is silly? That is, are people cynical about the Capstone or BLI programs? After all, it's something of a forced march.
Not really. People are energized by the learning process. I'm not saying Capstone and BLI are easy, and I'm certainly not going to tell you that change is easy. People are out of their comfort zone. In fact, for many in the BLI program, the workshop is the hardest three days they've ever had on the job. But there's something exhilarating about accepting change—especially about understanding that you can be a positive part of it. Change doesn't have to push you along; you can ride along with it.
Executive Partnering is another component of the teaching initiative at Ford. What does it involve?
Executive Partnering targets young managers with leadership potential. We assign these people to seven top executives over eight weeks. In that period, the young managers basically shadow their partners. They travel with them and attend dinners, teaching sessions, meetings with clients and customers. They are exposed to the full range of business challenges that leaders grapple with every day—the inevitable paradoxes of leadership, resource allocation issues, the conflict between urgent matters and long-term goals.
We arrange the program so that three young managers are partnering at the same time. In addition to their individual experiences, they are also asked to work together on an immediate business problem. That builds their collaborative skills and gives them some cross-functional experience in a compressed time frame.
Executive Partnering has been one of our most effective development activities ever, based on the feedback from both sides of the equation. In fact, it has been so well received that we're extending it to other levels of the company.
Another part of the teaching initiative is your "Let's Chat About the Business" e-mails. How often do you send those out, and who receives them?
They go out every Friday at 5 p.m. to about 100,000 employees—basically everyone who receives e-mail in the company. They're just another way to share as much information—unfiltered—as broadly as possible throughout the company and to encourage dialogue at all levels. They're also a chance for me to describe what's happening in the company from the capital markets' perspective. I talk very explicitly about our stock price and shareholder value. I quote what Wall Street auto analysts are saying about Ford stock—buy, sell, or hold. I talk about what our competitors are doing. For instance, I gave my opinions about the meaning of the merger between Chrysler and Daimler-Benz. I also describe what's happening in the global economy. Last year, for instance, I used a "Let's Chat" e-mail to state my case for the changing paradigm in the automotive battleground.
One of the best aspects of the "Let's Chat" e-mails is how many responses I get. People take me on. They ask questions. They make suggestions about how we can do better. They push my thinking. That's what teaching is all about.
You seem convinced that the teaching effort at Ford will be successful in changing the company's mind-set and its performance. Why?
I know some people are great actors, but I've seen a tremendous change in how people view the business. It's more subtle than a change in our culture, although that's happening. The shift involves the way people are thinking about their careers and contributions within the company and how they're thinking about the competition.
I've seen the company's mind-set change before. When I was in Australia, I saw people fundamentally change the way they work.
You were appointed president of Ford Australia in 1990, after 17 years of working for Ford in other parts of the world, but it wasn't much of a home-coming, was it?
It was a disaster. Ford Australia was basically the same as Ford worldwide, except that it had 15,000 people instead of 340,000. It was a very function-driven company, to the point where none of the divisions talked to one another. I mean, no one ever said, "Hey, let's get together for the good of the business." But Australia was a protected environment and so, even with the infighting, the company had fared pretty well. Then the market opened up, and all of a sudden you had competition from everywhere—Japan, Europe, Korea.
The first thing that happened was that market share tanked, and then it started to lose money, and then quality went bad, and things started to fall apart. The government didn't trust the company, and the unions didn't trust management, and the press turned against the brand. Employee morale was terrible. The situation was so serious that some people within Ford's higher levels thought there really was no solution and, even more than that, that saving Australia wasn't worth it.
I wasn't prepared to accept those ideas because I remembered Ford Australia as it had been. True, the environment had changed, but there was still a core of really dedicated, good people. They just had to start relating to one another.
Did you use teaching?
We didn't call it that then, but it was teaching—helping people understand the business case for collaboration. I was up in front of the people constantly saying, "This is where we are going, why we are going there, and how we're going to get there." For two or three years, all we did was teach.
People learned, and the company turned around. We became leaders in quality. With the unions, it went from a situation where their leadership wouldn't talk to us to what was a model relationship based on honesty and trust. And a feeling grew within the company that we were winners—and we were. We started launching vehicles on time and under budget, and we started making money.
Much of what I learned in Australia I'm now applying to Ford worldwide, and already I can see the same kind of transformation taking place. But I also have no doubt that there's no end. Three years from now, we still won't be there. But I'll tell you something: because of teaching, the Ford you see today has no resemblance to the Ford of five years ago. If you dissected us and inspected every blood vessel, we're different; our DNA has changed. I don't think we'll go back.
A version of this article appeared in the March–April 1999 issue of Harvard Business Review.
Read more on Leadership or related topics Organizational restructuring, Hiring and recruitment, Change management and Fabrication and manufacturing


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class CreateBooks < ActiveRecord::Migration[6.1]
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
WhatsApp's New Group Video Calling Feature is now LIVE, Check How ToUse It
0 0 Siva Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Whatsapp is currently the most popular messaging apps with a staggering user base of over 1.5 billion across the world. Whatsapp has become...
Whatsapp is currently the most popular messaging apps with a staggering user base of over 1.5 billion across the world. Whatsapp has become a crucial part of our day to day life. The Facebook-owned app attracted everyone and slowly turned to be an addiction to its users now. It has become very popular because of its attractive and striking features such as cross-platform messaging service, online media sharing, free messaging service, voice calling etc.
People wake up checking Whatsapp and go sleep by it. There are many features which made the app very popular. But the developers of Whatsapp are still not satisfied and keep on trying to reach new milestones. Once in a while, they update the app with more features to ensure that it remains No.1 messaging app in the world.
In May 2018, WhatsApp announced that it would be bringing group calling with both voice and video support very soon and the time has come. The feature is now live and available for users around the globe on iOS and Android. The company also said that it designed the feature to work under less-than-stellar network conditions so that users can video chat with their friends or family members from a far-flung locality. Calls are also end-to-end encrypted, like all chats on the platform.
How to use Video call/chat options in Groups on WhatsApp?
1. To avail this feature, you have to update your WhatsApp messenger.
2. Start a video call and add multiple participants whom you want to include in your call.
Currently, WhatsApp group call is limited to 4 people. If all goes well, we can hope that WhatsApp increases this capability.
All India Daily: WhatsApp's New Group Video Calling Feature is now LIVE, Check How ToUse It
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZCoiiOL8Rzs/XTLzGsl7bvI/AAAAAAAB5Co/_c0ji7DNV3Qr40lo5zAYxV_gGlZLcY1EgCLcBGAs/s640/Whatsapp-new-update.jpg
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZCoiiOL8Rzs/XTLzGsl7bvI/AAAAAAAB5Co/_c0ji7DNV3Qr40lo5zAYxV_gGlZLcY1EgCLcBGAs/s72-c/Whatsapp-new-update.jpg
https://www.allindiadaily.com/2018/07/whatsapps-new-group-video-calling.html

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Whether the semantics of the feedback widget is ignored when building the semantics tree.
This value should be set to false when the feedback widget is intended to be the same object as the child. Placing a GlobalKey on this widget will ensure semantic focus is kept on the element as it moves in and out of the feedback position.


National park grizzly bear attacks have become more frequent. After several incidents, regulations were enforced to ensure a peaceful coexistence.
Grizzly bears are a common sight in national parks.
"National Parks Beyond the Nation," edited by Adrian Howkins, Jared Orsi, and Mark Fiege, explores the historic interactions and influences of national parks across the globe.
National Parks Beyond the Nation (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), edited by Adrian Howkins, Jared Orsi, and Mark Fiege, explains that the idea of national parks is an American invention of historic consequences and tells us much about the multifarious and changing ideas of nature and culture coexisting. The following excerpt is from chapter 7, "Night of the Grizzlies" which it gives a great example of just how nature works and how we as humans, respond to it.
On August 12, 1967, Julie Helgeson and Michele Koons went separately into the backcountry of Glacier National Park. They were both young students working summer jobs at park concessions. It was Julie's weekend off, and she and a companion walked into a small campground near the Granite Park Chalet. Michele hiked with some friends to a good fishing spot at Trout Lake. Both groups slept in the open, spreading their sleeping bags on the ground.
Just after midnight, a grizzly bear knocked Julie Helgeson and her friend out of their sleeping bags. Guests at the Granite Park Chalet heard their screams. Miles away at Trout Lake, Michele and her friends were repeatedly harassed by a different grizzly bear. The small group built a campfire, but the bear returned later that night. Everyone fled for the trees except Michele, who was unable to free herself from her sleeping bag. The bear hauled Michele out of sight. Both Julie and Michele died of their wounds, leaving behind devastated friends and family. Rangers shot four grizzlies in the days that followed, including the two that had killed the young women.
North of the border in Waterton Lakes National Park, Canadian staff kept a close eye on the American reaction. The Superintendent of Waterton Lakes wrote that although his park had few problems with bears that summer, "the general public has become much more concerned over bears because of the two grizzly incidents." He requested more information from the U.S. park service on the maulings, and he reported to his superiors that out of the first 121 letters received at Glacier National Park, only 14 percent favored the extirpation of grizzlies from the area. Glacier was also careful to keep Waterton informed. When Glacier staff completed a report on the attacks the following spring, the superintendent of Waterton Lakes National Park was the first name listed as having received a copy.
Both pamphlets contained dire warnings for visitors, but also welcomed them. The first page of the American brochure ended with the statement, "We want you to enjoy the National Parks, too." The similar Canadian publication declared, "Obviously, man has a place in this wilderness too." Both national parks chose the same path: to balance the interests of recreational users with those of bears. It was in keeping with both systems' mandates. The Canadian and American National Parks Acts contained, and still contain, the almost identically worded sentiment that protected areas "shall be maintained and made use of so as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." Still, keeping people and grizzlies in peaceful coexistence has never been an easy task. Neither bears nor people could ever be fully controlled.
In large part, the "new" bear policy consisted of better implementing existing regulations. A few years before the Night of the Grizzlies, after some nonfatal but gruesome attacks, and amid questions about the legal responsibility of national parks, Glacier National Park had created a bear management plan. The plan included strategies for bear-proof garbage disposal and the education of concessionaire and hotel staff, as well as provisions for trail closures where bears were known to be behaving aggressively. Yet these regulations were not universally followed. The grizzly that killed Michele Koons had frightened other campers in weeks preceding her death. One woman who wrote a letter to the National Park Service in August 1967 included a postcard of begging black bears that she claimed was sold at concessions throughout many western national parks. She also pointed out correctly that Julie Helgeson had died minutes from the Glacier Park Chalet, where there was a table-scrap pile frequented by six grizzlies.
"The bear program [at Glacier] is based upon research, education and enforcement. They are going to be quite tough about laying charges for feeding animals, leaving dirty campsites, etc. They are going to close off trails or areas any time there seems to be justification because of bear incidents. I believe we should also be making a more positive effort ... While this effort is perhaps required in all our parks it is most important here because of our connection with Glacier."
After the deaths of Julie Helgeson and Michele Koons, Glacier National Park cleaned up most outstanding garbage problems and closed trails when bears were present. The new measures helped decrease aggressive encounters between bears and humans, but occasional maulings continued to occur. In 1976 a young woman was dragged from her tent in the Many Glacier Campground. The following year, a five-year-old girl was killed in Waterton Lakes. Both a black bear and a grizzly bear were destroyed following her death. It was the small park's first and (as of 2015) only bear-induced fatality, although there have been other attacks that resulted in very serious injuries.
The parks also struggled to create better reporting and tracking systems for bear-human encounters. In 1984 Waterton Lakes issued a bear management plan that contained an organizational chart listing who should be notified of bear incidents and in what order. Oddly, Glacier National Park appeared nowhere in the chart. However, the same document later noted, "All bear observations and recording will be done in collaboration with Glacier National Park, USA. It is important that we maintain good liaisons with Glacier National Park officials as our bear populations do not recognize man-made territorial boundaries." Canadian and American staff also kept records of bear sightings on a common computerized form that was in use across several American national parks. Effective management demanded cooperation, even if some of it happened outside the bounds of formal working agreements.
The gruesome nature of grizzly bear attacks understandably continued to hold a special terror for many potential visitors, most of whom did not encounter wild animals in their daily lives. In 1977 Glacier officials compiled a list of known deaths in their park to underscore the rarity of bear attacks. "You may be interested in a record of how grizzly fatalities compare to other fatal accidents in Glacier since 1913," wrote the chief park ranger to two concerned citizens. "Drownings 36; heart attack 19; vehicle 17, hiking falls 16, climbing falls 11, avalanches 7, falling rocks 6, exposure 4, grizzlies 3." When humans and grizzlies encountered each other in the Peace Park, bears were in far more danger of dying. Indeed, the letters that had poured in after the 1967 bear attacks had raised two related issues: the need to keep people safe from bears, and the need to keep bears safe from people. As park administrators and legislators wrestled with how to protect the grizzly bear population from humans, they realized how little they actually knew about these bears, their numbers, and their habits. Grizzly bears became both a social and scientific issue.
Reprinted with permission from National Parks Beyond the Nation: Global Perspectives on "America's Best Idea", edited by Adrian Howkins, Jared Orsi, and Mark Fiege, and published by the Oklahoma University Press, 2016.


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Home > Entertainment
When Is Katy Perry Going to Get Married? See the Timeline of Her Romance With Orlando Bloom
By Nakeisha Campbell
We imagine that Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom are knee-deep in wedding plans right now. It's been about a year since the Pirates of the Caribbean star popped the question and we can't help but wonder if a date has been set for them to finally be married. But, as of now, the lovebirds are taking things one step at a time.
Here's a look at their relationship history and everything we know about the upcoming nuptials.
When are Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom getting married?
The wedding was originally set for Dec. 2019, but the couple decided to postpone it. Contrary to what most fans thought, this didn't mean that there was trouble in paradise, but rather, they were holding out for a specific location to have their wedding.
In early February, one source confirmed that the wedding will definitely happen in spring 2020, but no specific date has been mentioned. They said, "Katy and Orlando's wedding is in April... They're going to have one local wedding party, and the other will be a destination wedding party."
Page Six has since reported that they are planning to have a wedding ceremony in June — and in Japan. (This could prove difficult to accomplish, considering the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.) So perhaps Katy and Orlando are getting married stateside in April, and then Japan will be their destination wedding?
Another insider said, "They are using a planner to finalize all the wedding details. Katy seems in charge, but Orlando is involved with the planning, too. They don't seem stressed about it though. It will be a fun celebration with family and friends."
But before they walk down the aisle, let's take a look at the love story that lead to this romantic engagement.
Katy and Orlando first met on Jan. 10, 2016.
After they both attended the 2016 Golden Globes, the singer and the actor got pretty cozy at Harvey Weinstein's afterparty. Several pics were taken of them hanging out at the event, and one source explained that they were "extremely flirty and whispering to each other."
"He would lean in to whisper into her ear and touch the small of her back as they chatted," the source said. "Katy was showing Orlando her phone. They were both smiling and laughing and then he took her phone and started typing on it." The observer also mentioned that they left the party together.
Katy made their relationship Instagram official in May 2016.
In April, the two were spotted vaping together and smooching at Coachella, which sparked dating rumors. But it wasn't until the following month that the Dark Horse singer took to Instagram and confirmed the rumors. She shared a hilarious photo of herself and Orlando lounging on the steps of a building in France and brilliantly captioned the photo: "we cannes't."
A source revealed that Orlando wants to "settle down" with Katy.
In August, the happy couple vacationed in Italy together and were spotted paddleboarding. Around that time, a source mentioned that Orlando and Katy were "not engaged yet, but seem to be heading that way." The insider also claimed that the Lord of the Rings actor wanted to start a family with the singer.
The source said, "[Orlando] always gushes about Katy and thinks she is amazing in a million ways. He would love to settle down with Katy and have more kids. He hasn't been this serious about a girl since Miranda [Kerr]."
That person was definitely on to something, because Perrybloom's trip to Italy was just the beginning. In November, the 43-year-old spent his Thanksgiving with Katy and her family and they even wore matching onesies. And in December, he spent Christmas with her family for a second time.
But perhaps the most heartwarming moment was in 2017, when Katy surprised Orlando for his 40th birthday with a visit from his mom.
It truly felt like these two were headed for an engagement in the near future, which is why the events of the following month came as such a shock to many fans.
The couple broke up in Feb. 2017.
After about a year of dating, they sadly called it quits. A joint statement by their reps said, "Before rumors or falsifications get out of hand, we can confirm that Orlando and Katy are taking respectful, loving space at this time."
Despite the sudden split, both of them made it clear that there were no hard feelings. Orlando told Elle, "We're friends, it's good. We're all grown up. She happens to be someone who is very visible, but I don't think anybody cares about what I'm up to. Nor should they. It's between us. It's better to set an example for kids and show that [breakups] don't have to be about hate."
Katy hinted that she and Orlando were back together in 2018.
Both were on good terms and stayed in touch after the news got out about their split. In fact, the 35-year-old was actually seen visiting Orlando while he was filming Carnival Row, and both of them visited the Vatican together, where they got to meet the Pope.
It was enough to spark new dating rumors, but Katy never addressed them directly. Or at least, not until she casually mentioned her relationship status on American Idol. In one of the show's episodes, she said, "I'm not single but I still like you." Which may as well have been code for "Perrybloom is back on."
The couple made their first red carpet appearance in 2018.
On Sept. 26, 2018, Katy and Orlando made their relationship red carpet official when they attended the Gala for the Global Ocean. To be honest, they looked like they never even broke up.
They got engaged in 2019.
On Valentine's Day, Orlando treated Katy to a special date night, but the singer suspected that something was up all along.
On Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp, she recalled, "I just remember meeting him at dinner at this place, this Italian restaurant.... I get there and, I mean, he's like clean-shaven. He's not wearing tennis shoes. I'm like, 'Ah s---, something is going down!' We were ordering everything and I was like, 'Who is this person?!'"
After their romantic dinner, Orlando took things up a notch. Katy continued, "I got on a helicopter and he asked me to marry him, and then we landed on this building and then went downstairs and my family and friends were there and the most flowers you've ever seen. It's like when Kanye does that for Kim, you're like, 'Oh my God!' And I was like, 'Oh my God!'"
A post shared by KATY PERRY (@katyperry) on Feb 15, 2019 at 2:07am PST
Only a day after it all happened, Katy shared the good news on Instagram and showed off her gorgeous ring, which reportedly has a value of up to $5 million.
Who will be at the wedding?
It's no secret that Katy and Orlando want to keep their wedding small and intimate, so it probably won't be as major as her first wedding with Russell Brand. However, we imagine that some famous faces will be in the midst, including their good friends Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner, whose wedding they attended in 2019.
Details have yet to surface about who's attending, but Katy wasn't shy about revealing who's not invited to the ceremony.
Source: ABC
When she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live with her American Idol costars, she awkwardly admitted that Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan were not invited to her wedding, saying that she "can't afford them."
When Jimmy continued to ask her about the subject, she said, "Look, they have a lot of work to do while I'm out getting married again." Then she added, "It's gonna be a small wedding!"
To be fair, it sounds like Katy wants to keep her wedding really small and intimate, which would probably be a challenge if she invited every person that she works with. Either way, we're excited about the big day and can't wait to hear more details!
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Katy Perry Made An Offensive Comment About President Obama, And Twitter Is Letting Her Have It
John Mayer Called Ex-Girlfriend Jessica Simpson "Sexual Napalm" — His Famous Exes Revealed
Katy Perry's Former Co-Star Accuses Her of Sexual Misconduct and Making Him Feel "Like a Prostitute"
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The books, designed primarily as textbooks, are written in a simple and lucid style. The books also contain abundant problems of graded difficulty to provide extensive practice to the students. Needless to mention, the illustrations and problems are in line with the latest trend of questions.
· Adequate necessary material to provide a sound conceptual base of theory.
· Supportive illustrations for easy understanding of the text.
· Formats and tabular representations to make the topic precise and easy to understand.
· Essay and short answer questions at the end of each chapter so that students may revise and test their understanding of the subject.
· Class-tested and well-graded presentation of the subject matter.
· Due weightage to each topic.


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Commander Kitsune
Community > People > Commander Kitsune
Commander Kitsune attends most of the major furry conventions and hosts panels on numerous topics including military and spirituality. He is a fursuiter and likes to make his own suits. He was the Panelist Guest of Honor at Rocket City FurMeet 2007. He is from Ohio, U.S.A.
Commander Kitsune has been a Navy officer, computer systems integrator, owner of his own multimedia company, writer, Christian, physicist, spiritualist, environmentalist, musician, furry and anime fan.
Commander Kitsune is a character in the comic Extinctioners as one of the Commanders of the Solar Strike Force, but has yet to make an appearance in an Extinctioners comic book. Commander Kitsune has also appeared in the webcomic Kevin & Kell in a few cameo appearances. He is also planned to appear in Suburban Jungle in the near future.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikifur.com/w/index.php?title=Commander_Kitsune&oldid=379770"
Rocket City FurMeet guests of honor
Fursuit makers
Milfurs
Kitsune characters
Last modified 23:31, 2 October 2012


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Daily Content Archive as of Saturday, February 10, 2018
(as of Saturday, February 10, 2018)
entresol
Definition: (noun) The floor just above the ground floor of a building.
Synonyms: mezzanine
Usage: While waiting for our room to be prepared, we sat down for a cup of coffee in the entresol of the hotel.
Pronouns are words that are used in place of nouns in a sentence. The noun being replaced is known as the antecedent of the pronoun. Pronouns can be the subject of a sentence or clause, the object of a verb, or they can follow linking verbs to rename or re-identify the subject, which is known as what?	More...
Whirlyball
A team sport that combines elements of basketball, jai alai, lacrosse, and bumper cars, whirlyball was first developed in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the early 1960s. Whirlyball players ride in small, crank-steered electric vehicles known as "Whirlybugs" and score points for their team by shooting a Wiffle Ball at the opposing team's target. Further complicating matters is the fact that players are not allowed to touch the ball with their hands and must pass, catch, and shoot using what?	More...
HMS Dreadnought Is Launched (1906)
The HMS Dreadnought of the Royal Navy was a battleship that revolutionized naval power when it entered service in 1906. Dreadnought represented such a marked advance in naval technology that its name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts," as well as the class of ships named for it, while the generation of ships it made obsolete became known as "pre-dreadnoughts." What features made the Dreadnought so advanced?	More...
Boris Pasternak (1890)
Pasternak was a Russian author whose novel Doctor Zhivago, an epic of wandering, spiritual isolation and love amid the harshness of the revolution and its aftermath, became a bestseller in the West but was circulated only in secrecy in the Soviet Union until 1987. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but he was forced to decline it because of Soviet opposition to his work. Why was Pasternak's name said to have been crossed off an execution list by Joseph Stalin?	More...
It is not the office of a man to receive gifts ... We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.
winning ways
— One's charming, endearing, or likeable personality or demeanor. More...
Namahage Sedo Festival (2018)
A namahage is a man dressed as a demon, wearing a grotesque mask and cape made of straw. Namahages traditionally appear on New Year's Eve at residents' homes to warn children not to be lazy. In 1964 the city of Oga adapted a community event that occurs in people's homes into a public festival that welcomes tourists. The Shinzan Shrine is the site for the festivities; in the dark, tens of people disguised as namahage parade down from the mountains and head to the shrine for music and dancing. Today a bonfire and rice cakes still await the arrival of the namahage.	More...
Today's topic: healing
balsam - First referred to an aromatic resinous substance with healing or soothing properties. More...
healing, curing - Healing is a process in which an organism's health is restored; curing is a method that promotes healing. More...
psychiatry - From Greek psykhe, "mind," and iatreia, "healing." More...
salve - The main semantic element is "healing," but the etymological meaning is "oily substance." More...


Sims Music is the proud home of Freeway Music's 5th location in Columbia! Freeway Music provides exceptional instruction on just about any instrument, as well as opportunities for students to perform and become a part of the local music scene.
Take private music lessons from the most qualified and versatile professional musicians in the area. We offer weekly private music lessons for guitar, piano, drums, voice, bass, brass, woodwinds, ukulele, banjo and strings.
Enjoy more opportunities to perform at Freeway Music than any other studio. Our students perform together in showcases, recitals, community events, and festivals.
Learn from music instructors that are passionate about music and sharing it with others. Freeway Music instructors genuinely value their roles as teacher, friend, and mentor.
Parents often say that we gave a "good vibe" at Freeway Music. Students benefit from positive reinforcement and feel comfortable to express themselves musically.
Ready to take your skills to the next level? Check out Freeway Music, and book your first lesson today!


At the risk of you all getting the impression that I only ever think of my stomach, I am reminded today of the way I used to eat biscuits when I was a child – still do in private, if I'm honest. I first revelled in the anticipation: just knowing they were there, a whole packet of bourbons or jammy dodgers hidden in my desk draw gave me secret smiles all day. When I ate one, I nibbled away at the sides, saving the creamy or jammy centre til last. I spent much of my childhood hidden under the covers with a torch, book in one hand, surreptitious biscuit in the other.
So I can't understand why some are so anxious to gobble the biscuit in one bite. Perhaps they do everything in a hurry; rushing through life, chasing the goal, forgetting the exquisite pleasure of licking the cream off the biscuit, one savoured slow sugary lick at a time.
I think my biscuit-eating skills have stood me in good stead as a doula. It might sound crazy, but I'm not particularly interested in the end result. Today I had lunch with a good friend who is also a doula. We were discussing what kind of doulas we are and we both remarked that we often actually forget that there is going to be a baby at the end of this process. At a labour, both of us are always bizarrely surprised that a baby comes out of the mother. I don't think I ever want to get used to that amazing, Russian-doll-like, breath-taking surprise.
No, what I enjoy is the nibbling round the edges. I love the taste of a woman getting informed, the sweet smell of a couple making choices that are right for them and the final pleasure of feeling that she is losing her fear and actually looking forward to labour. I rarely feel in a hurry, to inform, educate, to worry about the goal. What will be, will be – all I know for certain is that we'll get there, in the end.
I mostly enjoy being on call, for the same reason. Knowing that there is a baby brewing, that one day soon the phone will ring and I will have small part to play in a family's adventure is such a sweet feeling of anticipation – a secret knowing, just like the image of the secret stash in my desk draw. I also know that the longer I wait, the sweeter the final result, especially if the mother is supported to safely and healthily go into labour on her baby's timetable.
When I'm called, and I find myself sharing a birthing space, I revel in the way that her labour spirals her to the centre. Labours seem to go best when no-one there appears to want to gobble the whole experience in one bite. I feel happy when all around her are savouring the experience, supporting her to do the same, as each wave nibbles slowly away at her cervix.
I know that, for so many reasons, sometimes mothers and babies need help through this process. I've been around birthing women for enough years now to understand that sometimes we must focus on the goal (a healthy baby and mum) over the process. But I've also seen labours wrecked, thrown off course or misunderstood because those caring for the mother focus too much on eating those biscuits far too quickly. They rip open the packet, gobble and gulp like their life depends on it, believing, perhaps, that the faster they eat, the more satisfied they (and the mother) will be.
If we eat too fast we risk choking. If we force the rose to open, the petals will be bruised and crushed. It seems to me that the most healthy and human way to support birth is watchful waiting; honouring the journey, just as much as the destination. Once that baby is in her arms, this moment, this birth, is over, never to be re-experienced. Can't we just allow her to really savour each moment – that jammy moment is all the better for it!
Emma's positive birth story: Hands off my baby!


text:
Q: Upper limit to the temperature of a body I wonder if there is an upper limit to the temperature analogous to absolute zero due to the following:
$$K_{\mathrm{avg}} = \frac{3}{2}kT$$
where $K_{\mathrm{avg}}$ is average kinetic energy. Average kinetic energy is due to the average velcoity of the material particles in motion which cannot travel at the speed of light? So is there a temperature at which the molecules would achieve the speed of light on average and therefore cannot reach that temperature?
I know this must be wrong but I want to know what's wrong with it because I have never heard of an upper limit to temperature in principle.

A: That particular line of thought is wrong (as you suspect) because there is no upper limit to kinetic energy. ${1 \over 2} m v^2$ is only the low velocity approximation, the full form is $(\gamma-1) m c^2$ . As you give more energy to a particle travelling near the speed of light (as happens in the LHC) the KE increase manifests itself in an increase in $\gamma$ even though there is very little increase in $v$.
There was once an idea that there could be an ultimate maximum temperature, before we knew about quarks and thought that protons, neutrons, Sigmas, Deltas, pions and all that zoo were truly 'elementary'. There seemed to be more and more of these states with increasing energy. If the spectrum of such states got sufficiently dense sufficiently fast, then there would be a limiting temperature ($T_H$, the Hagedorn temperature): as you approached it then as you put energy into a system it would produce more and heavier particles, rather than increasing their individual energies so you could never exceed $T_H$. Nowadays we see it as a temperature (around 6 trillion degrees) at which ordinary elementary particles become the quark-gluon plasma.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


As society becomes increasingly more diverse and global, it has become more important than ever for businesses to look at their corporate governance models and ask why more women leaders are not sitting at the table.
In this session, Professor Mireia Las Heras will look at the role of the company as a vital part of society, the differences between men and women in the work environment and as leaders, the challenges for women in finding gender equality in the workplace, and the importance of leadership based on human values. Prof. Las Heras will draw from work produced by the International Center for Work and Family, the research center she directs at IESE Business School. OCBC Bank will also share examples of initiatives they have taken to support female leaders in their business.
The session will be followed by a networking cocktail reception. The venue has been generously sponsored by OCBC Bank.
Mireia Las Heras is Associate Professor at IESE, where she serves as the Research Director of the International Center for Work and Family. She obtained her degree in Industrial Engineering specializing in Industrial Organization at the Polytechnic School of Catalonia in Barcelona, and holds an MBA from IESE and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Boston University.
In 2009 she co-edited A Practical Guide for Implementing Effective Work Family Policies Across Countries, and has published several articles on work-family integration, career development, and leadership. She is currently involved in an international project on career management in addition to other projects that focus on career management, the dynamism of career success, and its interplay with work and family integration. She is an active consultant and coach in the area of work-family balance and career development at NCH & Partners.


My wife works at Starbucks, four days a week she gets up at 3:45 am to arrive on time for the opening shift. When she comes in each morning, she works through the same checklist of tasks that must be accomplished by the time they open. Once she completes her list, she then makes the same drinks from the same ingredients, following the same recipes to provide, often to the same individuals, the drinks they so look forward to each morning. My wife lives a liturgical life. And so do the customers who stroll in a 5:00 am with bloodshot eyes longing for their morning fix of caffeine. They demand their venti quad-shot flat-white breve lattes to be precisely the same in flavor, temperature, and frothiness as it was the morning before. They want consistency; they demand uniform, unchanging, undeviating, unfluctuating, dependable, predictable drinks. If something is different about the latte, the customer's liturgy is disturbed, and they become disgruntled. The morning liturgy at Starbucks is just a microcosm of what it is to be human. All of life is liturgy; rhythms and habits that form who we are. They form what we love, how we think, and the way we act.
Our habits form us, and we form our habits through repetition. Old habits are hard to break, and new habits are hard to establish because the behavioral patterns we repeat continuously become imprinted in neural pathways. In a very real way, our habits form who we are. As a husband, I am only a good husband as long as I have the liturgies of a good husband. I don't get the honor of being a good husband if I have made a habit of ignoring the needs of my wife so I can watch sports when I get home from work. An engineer can only be a good engineer as long as he has the liturgies of a good engineer. An engineer will quickly lose his job and reputation if he decides he can tweak the rules of calculus because he's tired of doing the math.
Every act, every word, every thought, every love forms who we are. I am who I am, and you are who you are, because of the liturgies in our lives. We cannot be separated from the rhythms and habits that form who we are. The real question is, in what ways are our liturgies forming us?
My wife is a faithful employee only as long as she has formed the right rhythms and habits for the liturgical life of a barista. For followers of Christ, the same truth applies; we are faithful Christians only so far as we have formed the correct rhythms and habits for the liturgical life of a disciple. We don't get to play around with the recipes of discipleship, and we don't have the liberty to add or take away ingredients trying to concoct a new version of being a Christian. The liturgies of the faith are ancient, and we would do well to learn the formula and savor the blissful fulfillment it provides.


Mr Matt's work is featured on the cover of the November 2009 premiere issue of the Queens publication, LIC Magazine, along with an article inside about his latest creative activity.
The artist is featured in the Spring 2008 issue of the Long Island City, NY art publication, Ins & Outs Magazine.
In the following article, 'Beyond Expectation', four images of the artist's work appear with a description of his creative process and inspiration for drawing on top of his 'newspaper' canvas.
In 2004, the artist was commissioned by the owner of Zoe Annabel furniture store, NYC, and CEO of The Wally Findlay Gallery, NYC, to create artwork featuring the facades of their businesses to be used for their advertising purposes.
The artist was commissioned by a Chair of NYU's College of Dentistry, Ralph Katz, to create a piece of art of the facade of the College. This framed original art was presented to the Dean of the College, Michael Alfano, by Mr Katz at the NYU Graduation Ceremony in The Theatre at Madison Square Garden, 2004.


72 Honda CB450 "lucky 13"
Hi, I just introduced myself in the member intro section so I guess it's time to start a build thread. I paid $400. for it last summer with 1,500 miles on the odometer as it was in a non running condition. I figured I would clean up a few things and add some paint, rebuild the engine, make a nice running bike. WELL, sometimes things can get a little out of hand (as you will see) when I build things and end up wanting to replace every little part because I'm nuts. My mission is to build something clean that I can take for short rides to work or to car / bike shows. I am probably going to have lots of questions for you experienced guys and I'm always open to opinions so don't hold back. As for lucky 13, that's just my lucky number so I want to display it on the tank somehow. I did a drawing in paint to show what the paint scheme will be. I did another drawing on paper showing my tank design.
Re: 72 Honda CB450 "lucky 13"
Nice start man. I love the 450! Keep it up! And $400 is a steal for that bike!
This is what an engine that sits for 25 or so years looks like.
head needs a visit to the machine shop also....got NOS intake and exhaust valves also.
Wow your making awesome progress! Nice looking bike to start with! Seems to be quite a few CB450 builds goin on around here! Cant wait to see it completed...keep up the good work.