Motivated Innovation

Last week, the healthcare IT blog HIStalk ("HIS" = health information systems, not a blog only for men) commented on a story from The Miami Herald   about missing inventory. Without clicking on these links, one may think that the missing inventory might have only been a few office supplies in a medical records office. On the contrary, the University of Miami experienced $14 million in medicine/drug inventory shrinkage. $14 million!!! Surely, tracking inventory can be very expensive financially and very costly timewise. Whether a system runs on manual data entry (written, typed), UPC barcodes, RFID, GPS, or other methods & technologies, the actions needed to keep an active, accurate count can be difficult and disruptive. Furthermore, both human errors and system errors occur, resulting in discrepancies--miscounts, mispicks, incorrect valuation, etc. Perfection is something to strive for, not something that is--inventory management is no exception. Still, the case of p

*formerly posted on "Welcome, International Students!" blog Hello everyone! How are you? I opened my Facebook inbox a few minutes ago and saw an article that Souvik had forwarded me from USNews.com. The article, "6 Tips for International Graduate Students Enrolling This Fall" , lists some general tips for helping new international students prepare for graduate school. This article immediately grabbed my attention because I remember Souvik and some of my other international graduate classmates discussing these matters throughout our MBA program--for themselves, for their peers, and for new incoming students. Obviously, moving to another country to attend school is a life-changing experience; the opportunity should not be taken lightly. By going to the campus community earlier, you are able to meet people sooner, learn about important resources and locations sooner, and start developing your daily & weekly routines before classes even begin. My international c

*formerly posted on "Welcome, International Students!" blog Looking at the calendar today, I realized that my grad school experience began 4 years ago. On June 26, 2008, my parents and I loaded my belongings into our vehicles and drove across the Ohio Turnpike to Bowling Green, Ohio. This was just 2 days after I had finished working at my job. While I enjoyed working with my co-workers and learning about business, law, and medicine while also watching Cleveland's major sports teams have strong years in 2007 and early 2008, I knew that the next step in my life was to head to b-school for my MBA degree. To advance in my career and my life, this was the next step. The next day was our MBA orientation day. What a blast that day was! It was amazing seeing everyone mark on the map where they were from in the United States and across the world. As we introduced ourselves, people made comments and asked questions. Some classmates who had attended our school or were from the B

*formerly posted on "Welcome, International Students!" blog A month and a half ago, we took a general look at U.S. university classes . One of the major points that came up was that U.S. students--and other international students--can be very curious and eager to learn about their international classmates. At times, this can lead to class discussion questions being directed to specific individual students. A few days ago, a friend and former classmate of mine brought up a great point that I wanted to share with all of you. Paraphrasing what he said, "It can be intimidating and overaggressive to direct numerous questions towards one student. It is better to talk with the individual student face-to-face/in private with these types of questions, such as after class." That is, even with the friendliest and most academic intentions, asking questions can get out of hand and students--whether born in the U.S. or elsewhere--can feel intimidated and/or embarrassed by a

"Time, why you punish me?" These may just be lyrics from a Hootie & The Blowfish song from the 1990s, but they are quite appropriate to descriptions of time in relation to creativity. That is, there tend to be 2 main approaches to time & creativity in business, education, and general life. The first main approach emphasizes that time serves as a hindrance to creativity. Artists do not just spend a set amount of time to come up with the idea for a masterpiece and create the masterpiece. Drawing, painting, music, etc.: innumerable masterpieces were created without a strict timeline in mind. Similarly, a large number of great brainstorming sessions do not require set time limits, defined schedules, or strictly defined actions & activities. Rather, brainstorming sessions (for marketing, management, event planning, etc.) flow due to a lack of rigidity and structure. On the other hand, the second main approach emphasizes that efficient and effective creativity flows

Every day, people submit resumes, apply for jobs, interview, and compete for jobs.  In the current economic recession, a higher unemployment level means that competition for job openings is at higher than average levels--with more people applying for the same jobs. This is not to say that every industry and every job classification are of the same status--lower unemployment in certain industries and technical expertise requirements do lead to fewer people applying for some jobs. Regardless, the combination of high levels of candidates & resumes and the power of mass communication via the internet have altered the nature of job searches such that the filter of candidates to choose from is almost always much wider.  In light of this, how can people stand out? Resume formatting and understanding of other print, electronic, phone, and face-to-face business communication--including networking--remain important to job search success.   Dr. Tom Clark  of  CommuniSkills  and  Xavier Univ

*formerly posted on "Welcome, International Students!" blog When enrolling in U.S. university classes, both international students and American students need to get familiar with different types of classroom environments. While students throughout the world are familiar with lecture-based classes--where the teacher leads the classroom and does most of the talking--several U.S. university classes are very interactive, with students discussing class lessons, world events, philosophy, ethics, and other academic and professional topics. In most cases, speaking during class discussions is optional; most professors still evaluate students through exams, essay papers, and in-class presentations. In some classes, professors award points and give better final course grades to students who speak more frequently during class discussions. This can be an adjustment for shy people as well as any students that have only experienced lecture-based classes--challenging both American and

I have three questions for you: 1. Have you ever had an "Oh yeah!" moment? 2. Have you ever had an "Oh yeah?" moment? 3. Have you ever had an "Oh yeah..." moment? Wait a minute... Did I just ask you the same question three times? Let us consider: "Oh yeah!" = celebration "Oh yeah?" = I didn't know that "Oh yeah..." = I forgot about that but just had an 'a-ha!' moment In typing these questions and having you read them, you may have already thought of them as three different questions. However, had I just asked you one of these questions out loud in person, over the phone, or via web chat, would you have caught the difference? Would it have been clear to which "Oh yeah" moment (!,?,...) I was referring? Throughout daily business and personal communication, we say many words, phrases, and sentences. Yet, the way we say these words, phrases, and sentences help define their meanings. In the

A few minutes ago, I did a quick browse of my Facebook home page, clicking "Like" on some status updates that I liked and providing positive encouragement for someone who was having a rough day.  "Dislike" button? Nope, not present. Conducting a quick Google search, I learned from Paul Sawers'  article  from The Next Web that Firefox actually does have a "Dislike" button add-on, but Facebook itself certainly does not.  In acknowledging this, Sawers makes a key observation about why Facebook has no reason to add a dislike button: social media is deeply rooted in building up network relationships and spreading positive spirit . In creating a positive, accepting atmosphere, Facebook gives companies, charities, and other causes room to promote themselves and their works, of which people can show support by clicking the "Like" button. In turn, Facebook can sell the surrounding ad space to make revenue. The power of positive thinking

***Note: This is a re-post of a blog post I originally shared elsewhere on 9/18/2009. Thank you to those who granted me permission to re-share the content of this post.*** Good afternoon all!  How are you???  Things have been pretty hectic on my end.  Unfortunately, I had to leave early from an HR/Marketing internship I had at Aflac.  It was a great place to work at with awesome people, but I just did not have the time and energy to balance the job with my studies and my assistantship. In the past, I had done a pretty good job with balancing my time amongst numerous activities, commitments, and other opportunities.  However, in this instance I found that I might be trying to take on too much.  As such, I sat down and made a spreadsheet with time estimates for my weekly and semester commitments.  In doing so, I realized that there literally was not enough time in my weekly schedule to honor all of my commitments.  Had I not taken the time to analyze the situation, I would have contin

*formerly posted on "Welcome, International Students!" blog Hello to everyone around the world! How are you doing today? I have been thinking about what to write about in this post for our new blog and decided to talk about searching for a job. In American slang, we sometimes call this "the job search". For example: "How is the job search going?" I will provide you with some background information and two stories of my experiences in searching for a job. One is a bad experience, while the other is a good experience. Background: Current Economic Struggles Currently, the United States is one of many countries having economic struggles. This means that companies' financial statuses are not as good as they were several years ago. This also means that career and job opportunities are not as easy to get as they were several years ago. Both domestic and international job candidates are having a harder time getting invited for interviews and pre-employ

Hours ago, a friend of mine posted a thought-provoking blog post about happiness and success . In his blog post, he commented on Shawn Achor's TED video "The happy secret to better work" . (As I learned today, TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, and Design.") He also notes that further explanation of Achor's video can be found in Jessica Stillman's article on  Inc.com . In his video, Achor addresses the philosophy that success leads to happiness. This philosophy is embedded in our education system and our workplace. (It is even embedded in the culturally inspiring concept of the 'American dream'.) Day in and day out, we reiterate that happiness comes from success. As Achor notes, the flaw in this logic is that we lock our ourselves (and, in turn, our peers and others) in what becomes an endless cycle of chasing after moving targets, or worse yet, unobtainable goals. Happiness becomes perpetually out of reach. Although we are trying to

In the simplest of terms, companies hire employees during periods of economic growth and let go of employees during recessions. While this is fundamentally accepted, do companies get carried away with hiring and firing decisions? Is laying off employees shortsighted? Over the past 10-12 years, advanced knowledge of supply chain logistics and the successes of top retail companies--some of which have gone on to fail--have led a number of companies to focus on maximizing efficiency to maximize profit. These companies have looked to meet optimal employment levels to cut costs, avoiding money spent on idle resources. This makes sense to an extent, but a number of companies have reduced employment levels to the bare minimum, running daily business with "skeleton crews"--i.e. the minimum number of employees needed. Efficiency is important, but an overemphasis on efficiency can be detrimental to a company's long-term health. When company management reduces its staff to the ab

From elementary education to collegiate education, teachers and students review a number of subjects and fields individually and separately from each other. This helps students build fundamental understanding of each individual subject for future use in career and life endeavors. While studying subjects separately remains critical to the education process, students need to understand that learning material separately does not necessarily mean the material should be or will be applied separately in real-life situations. In business and in life, actions have reactions, results, and consequences. When considering different subjects, a decision from one specialty/one department can have an impact on other specialties/departments. For example, the development of new software programs by an IT department can help a sales team improve customer relationship management (CRM), help a medical staff better diagnose medical conditions, help a library staff more easily track the movement of books

Recruiting firms. Executive search firms. Headhunters. Staffing agencies. Temp agencies. Human resources.   Despite 2 recessions in the past 10 years and continuously high unemployment rates across the U.S., human resource departments always seem to have more work to do than time to complete the work. Sure, HR has been downsized as much as any other department, but from where is all this work coming?   Furthermore, how can there be any hiring if there are no jobs? Who is interviewing these days? No one seems to be getting interviews. Contrary to popular belief, companies--at least the successful ones--are always looking to hire new employees, whether or not public job listings or ads say so.  Companies always need to stay competitive and solve problems for themselves and their clients and customers. To solve these problems, employers need people--someone needs to analyze, critically think, and take action.  As HR sees reductions in numbers of employees or ceases to exist