Archive for May, 2009:
Jean Jerome Baudry: The Push for Paperless
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
Most are not surprised when told that approximately 30% of a business’s waste is paper. When asked how much is spent per annum on paper, toner and ink, the most common answer is “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
As companies are cutting costs and freezing spending, the push towards paperless is more prevalent than ever.
On May 5th I attended the Greener IT event which touched on the different strategies companies can use to cut costs in their printer/paper department.
The first step is say to good-bye to personalized printers. It’s just too easy to press the print button, and they are more difficult to monitor how much they are actually costing your business. By using one main multi-purpose printer per department, it makes it easier to track who is printing, how much toner/ink they use and it simply cuts down on your business power consumption.
The next step is to move to electronic filing systems. Instead of using the traditional filing cabinets, move towards using your electronic filing system. Beware! We all know technology fails so don’t forget to use a backup system for important files. A USB key or an external hard drive is a perfect alternative to our paper predecessors.
The easiest step of all is having your IT guy set the default on all printers to print double sided. This should immediately cut down your paper waste by at least 30%, if not more.
Suggestions and new ideas are great when discussed in the board room, but the difficult challenge that most business face is implementation. Your staff will be less than impressed when their printers are moved from within their office to the 3rd floor, and potentially annoyed when their documents are printed on two sides and are difficult to organize. It’s a known fact that people don’t always deal with change as simply as we’d like. Your staff may complain at first because large documents may become more difficult to organize. Be understanding with their concerns but reinforce how these simple acts positively affect your business and the environment and they should come around.
With any green project or initiative, before you implement anything do your research. Find out how much it’s going to cost, how much it’s going to affect your day to day operations and think about the back drops. If you don’t do the proper due diligence, your project will cause more strife than anything else and will hinder any future green initiatives that might actually benefit your business.
If your company doesn’t currently have a sustainability officer I suggest consulting with a specialist before implementing any initiative. A consultant will clearly outline the appropriate steps for your business and provide you with everything you need in order to make an informed decision.
For more information on how you can green your IT usage and Green IT consulting please visit http://www.cybernomics.net.
Revenue-Hungry States Are Raising Taxes on Their Wealthiest Residents
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
Forbes 400 member B. Thomas Golisano built his fortune in New York and has run for governor there three times. In May he changed his official residency to Naples, Fla. Why? In April New York socked millionaires with a 31% tax hike–raising the tax rate on income over $500,000 from 6.85% to 8.97%. (It also added a 7.85% rate for income over $300,000 for a couple.) Florida has no state income tax.
Critics Call Delaware A Tax Haven
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
Critics of the arrangement in Delaware say it cheats state governments out of money. Delaware, these people say, has created its own onshore Cayman Islands. Even the Swiss are complaining, claiming that the United States is letting this homegrown haven flourish even as the I.R.S. pursues offshore shelters.
GM To Build Small, Fuel-Efficient Car In U.S.
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
General Motors announced this morning that it will build a new, fuel-efficient small car in the United States in the next few years, bucking a longtime industry trend to manufacture such vehicles overseas.
U.S. Hopes To Recoup GM Investment In 5 Years
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
The United States would recover most of its planned $50 billion investment in General Motors within five years, according to a preliminary Treasury Department estimate that foresees the company, now on the brink of bankruptcy, rebounding over that time to become a strapping global competitor.
Christiana Wyly: Is Whole Foods Market Just Another Evil Corporation?
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
I just finished reading Sharon Smith’s article by the same name online at AlterNet.com. I am writing this blog in direct response to the question she posed in the title of her article.
Whole Foods Market is, like any human endeavor, hardly perfect. In my mind, however, they are exemplary corporate activists, striving to not only be a sustainable company in a currently unsustainable sector, but also to define sustainability and uplift their entire industry along with them. Likewise, no journalist is perfect — but Smith’s attack on a fellow advocate for positive change only serves to hurt the larger cause of creating a safe, clean, and just world that we all share.
For the sake of sustaining and improving the life, peace and prosperity of future generations on this great green Earth, I am an advocate for sustainable businesses like Whole Foods. I cannot stand idly by and watch members of the movement naively gnaw off one of the legs on which we stand.
My answer to Ms. Smith is NO. Whole Foods Market is NOT “just another evil corporation.” Evil — as defined by our collective intelligence at Wikipedia.com — describes “intentional negative moral acts or thoughts that are cruel, unjust, or selfish.”
The article begins innocuously enough, by mentioning some of Whole Foods’ innovative and progressive corporate strategies. Included in the list are its commitment to advancing the fair trade movement, supporting micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries, improving living conditions for farm animals, empowering its team members, and fostering a work culture of acknowledgement and appreciation. (Not to mention that they are in the business of providing wholesome nourishment to their customers.)
Then Smith attempts to pull back the curtain to reveal “something sinister [that] lurks beneath the surface of Whole Food’s progressive image.” Later, she writes, “Whole Foods turns ferocious” — implying that all of this “do-gooding” is sheep’s clothing for a voracious wolf eager to gobble up anyone who steps in its path of profit.
The central assumption in Smith’s pronouncement of evil — that unions are unequivocally good — remains highly controversial. Although historically a powerful force in the empowerment of labor and evolution of corporate culture, it is hardly a matter of fact that unionizing works in every circumstance. Sometimes it protects workers from unfair corporate practices. Other times, it pits them against each other. I would not presume to take a stance on whether WFM workers should or should not unionize. However, the company should not be demonized and accused of intentionally immoral acts due to one journalist’s opinions on their labor practices.
No single sociopolitical agenda, be it progressive, conservative, libertarian, anarchist, or Marxist, should be defended at the expense of a larger mission. Smith, along with many well-meaning yet misguided progressive activists, would better serve that larger mission by focusing on revealing the most backward and corrupt organizations, rather than what is likely the most sustainable Fortune 500 company.
Smith writes that “[s]omehow, Mackey has managed to achieve multimillionaire status while his employee’s hourly wages have remained in the $8-$13 range for two decades.” First of all, I would argue that salaries are a reflection of the value a person creates for the organization. Executives are paid high salaries because they create more value for the organization than a fruit stacker. All team members are all essential to the success of the business, but the executives are creating the conditions that provide jobs to the fruit stackers in the first place. If their organization does not duly compensate them, they leave to find another company that will, just like anyone else offering trained services (including journalists).
Smith accuses WFM of being profit-hungry. How does Smith suggest Whole Foods decrease its profits and simultaneously increase benefits to employees? The more successful the company, the more successful the employees, the greater the profit, the more everyone wins.
Secondly, and perhaps more to the point, Smith failed to mention WFM’s policy that caps executive salaries at $19 for every $1 made by their average full-time team members. That may still sound like a lot — but to put that in perspective, as of 2005 the average US CEO was making $411 on every employee dollar. That’s a twenty thousand percent difference between Mackey’s “evil” earnings and those of the other executives with whom Smith has lumped him. What more, since 2007 Mackey has reduced his salary to $1, directing to the rest to charitable organizations such as the Whole Planet Foundation and Animal Compassion Foundation. In addition, I have heard that close to 90% of stock options are offered to team members, not upper management. Are these the actions of an evil mastermind, someone who milks his “workers” for all they’re worth so he can fatten his pockets from the profits?
Smith also attacked WFM’s high prices, as if this is a cruel and unusual practice. Largely thanks to the market created by — and the standards set by — Whole Foods, there now exists a wide array of healthy grocers from which to choose. Customers are not forced to shop there any more that the employees are forced to work there. As a customer, I prefer produce from my garden, the local farmer’s market, the local co-op, Whole Foods, and then the standard markets — in that order. However, I buy my toiletries in bulk when possible to reduce packaging waste, and Whole Foods provides that in a convenient and cost-effective way. They also have the widest selection of the locally-grown, small-batch artisanal products that I prefer. For these items, and many others I freely choose to shop at the store that best serves my needs. In fact, a lot of people do — which is how WFM grew from a “mom and pop operation” into what it is today, beating the odds by competing against conglomerate grocery chains with more purchasing power and lower prices.
WFM also provides the single greatest opportunity for all the courageous conscious entrepreneurs I know — people creating healthy, environmentally sustainable, artisanal, innovative, socially beneficial goods. People who, without WFM, would have a limited marketplace to reach the consumers who want their products.
I recently walked the halls of the Natural Products Expo, the largest of its kind in the world, where over 1900 vendors from all over the country come to market their conscious products. Helping to evaluate companies for potential investment, I asked many of them where they sell their products. Every time, the response was the same: “WFM! Thank God!,” or “Hopefully we will get into WFM soon!” I’d wager that 5% or less sold their products to Wal-Mart, who only started even tracking interest in organic and sustainable goods in 2007 — and whose green branding website LiveBetterIndex.com, which shows state-specific “adoption rates” for a depressingly limited palette of eco-friendly items, hasn’t been updated in over a year.
I have had the opportunity to engage with Whole Foods team-members on both store and corporate levels. In each and every case, I encountered a conscientious, thoughtful individual with a passion for making the world a better place and a commitment to the purpose of Whole Foods (which includes and transcends all of their corporate practices). If any other grocery business doing a better job, I guarantee you that WFM is open to learning from them. They are quick to evolve and improve, to expand their mission and practices to create value for the most stakeholders — not at the expense of the employees, but for and because of them. They call this a stakeholder-centric model — one practice among many that other leading businesses ought to model, and that emerging entrepreneurs ought to build into their corporate DNA from the beginning.
The point is this: legitimate critical analysis distinguishes between whole and part, rather than leveraging one controversial practice to rationalize sweeping proclamations of evil. Whether history decides that WFM’s stance against unions is wise or misguided, this single issue hardly outweighs the tremendous good that WFM has done for the culture of sustainability. Smith would do well to get some perspective and remember the overarching and increasingly urgent priorities of progressive business.
We as advocates need to prove through every vehicle available that a more sustainable, more just, more efficient, more successful way is possible. When we do this, we move from being a counter-movement, to the new guard — the standard bearers of a widely accepted values system — because the strategies for peace, happiness and prosperity simply work better.
I encourage anyone interested to read the following paper by John Mackey about Conscious Capitalism and leave your comments below. Consider these issues yourself and let me know: Do you think Whole Foods Market is “just another evil corporation?”
http://www.flowidealism.org/2007/Downloads/Conscious-Capitalism_JM.pdf
(If you agree with me, please distribute this, and take a stand with me against such slanderous and uninformed mudslinging wherever you may find it.)
For a deeper dive, check out Mackey’s CD:
Passion and Purpose, the Power of Conscious Capitalism
…and his co-founder at FLOW, Michael Strong’s new book:
Be The Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems
Minimum Wage Hike A Stimulus To Economy: Study
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A higher U.S. minimum wage is providing a cushion to the economy when it is most needed, according to a report released on Thursday.
Google Launches Web Elements for Your Blog
Yours truly GordonWebbo today wants you to read the following article, courtesy of this site:
I got a heads up yesterday from a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News that Google was launching some new tools for bloggers today at their annual developers conference, and she wanted to ask my opinion after the announcement (today). Never say “no” to a media interview, right?!
Among other announcements, here’s what Google has launched for blogs and websites:
Google Web Elements: A new product launching today, Google Web Elements is an easy way to incorporate Google products onto a website or blog. This includes content such as Maps, News and YouTube videos, as well as social comments functionality by Google Friend Connect. Already, Google has 4 billion API calls a day. Google Web Elements makes it even easier to add functionality to sites by choosing optional customizations and copying and pasting a few lines of code. More information is available at www.google.com/webelements.
Being the curious active experimenter that I am, I jumped right over to the site to check out the new elements.
You can add your calendar (share your events), global commenting, maps, custom search, news, slide presentations, spreadsheets and news videos. And Google has made it super easy to add these elements to your site.
I added Custom Seach to this blog. Simply choose what type of search you want, copy the HTML code they profide, and paste it in the sidebar of your blog.
Have an event you’re promoting and want to include a map on the registration page or in a blog post? Choose the size map you want, type in the address, a title for the location and you immediately get the HTML to paste in your blog. Nothing could be easier. (click on the image to get the full size graphic)
If you write a blog about news and current affairs, why not add a video feed with news from The New York Times, CBS News Online, or Al-Jazeera English. Video adds “stickiness” and eye candy to your blog.
I’d love to hear your comments about the new Google Web Elements. How would you use them?
Related Post:
<a href=”http://www.biztipsblog.com/2009/04/is-your-google-profile-up-to-date.html”>Is your Google Profile Up to Date?
Survey: Most Economists Predict Recession Will End In ‘09
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
WASHINGTON — More than 90 percent of economists predict the recession will end this year, although the recovery is likely to be bumpy.
That assessment came from leading forecasters in a survey by the National Association for business Economics to be released Wednesday. It is generally in line with the outlook from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues.
About 74 percent of the forecasters expect the recession _ which started in December 2007 and is the longest since World War II _ to end in the third quarter. Another 19 percent predict the turning point will come in the final three months of this year, and the remaining 7 percent believe the recession will end in the first quarter of 2010.
“While the overall tone remains soft, there are emerging signs that the economy is stabilizing,” said NABE president Chris Varvares, head of Macroeconomic Advisers. “The economic recovery is likely to be considerably more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines.”
One of the major forces that plunged the economy into a recession was the financial crisis that struck with force last fall and was the worst since the 1930s. Economists say recoveries after financial crises tend to be slower.
Against that backdrop, unemployment will climb this year even if the economy is rebounding, the NABE forecasters predict. Companies won’t be in a rush to hire until they feel certain any recovery is firmly rooted.
For all of this year, the forecasters said the unemployment rate should average 9.1 percent, a big jump from 5.8 percent last year and up from its current quarter-century peak of 8.9 percent. If NABE forecasters are right, it would be the highest since a 9.6 percent rate in 1983, when the country was struggling to recover from a severe recession.
Some forecasters thought the unemployment rate could rise as high as 10.7 percent in the second quarter of next year. The NABE outlook from 45 economists was conducted April 27 through May 11.
General Motors Corp., chemical company DuPont and Clear Channel Communications Inc. were among the companies announcing mass layoffs during the survey period.
With joblessness rising, consumers _ major shapers of overall economic activity _ likely will stay cautious, making for a tepid turnaround. And given the big bite the recession has taken out of household wealth, notably the values of homes and investment portfolios, consumers probably will stay subdued for some time.
Seventy-one percent of the forecasters believe a more-thrifty consumer will be around for at least the next five years. Americans’ personal savings rate edged up to 4.2 percent in March, marking the first time in a decade that the savings rate has been above 4 percent for three straight months.
Even as the NABE forecasters believe the country will emerge from recession later this year, they also predict the economy’s overall performance in 2009 will be rotten.
The economy should contract by 2.8 percent this year, the forecasters said in updated projections. That’s worse than the 1.9 percent drop they forecast in late February. If they are right, it would mark the worst annual contraction since 1946, when economic activity fell by 11 percent.
Still, the forecasters believe the worst is already behind the country in terms of lost economic activity.
The economy shrank at a 6.1 percent annualized pace in the first three months of this year, on top of a 6.3 percent decline in the final three months of last year, the worst six-month performance in 50 years.
For the current April-June quarter, the NABE forecasters believe the economy will shrink at a pace of 1.8 percent. After that, the economy should start growing again _ at a 0.7 percent pace in the third quarter and a 1.8 percent pace in the fourth quarter.
NABE’s growth projections for the third and fourth quarters are lower than those made in late February. The downgrade was based on the expectation that businesses, whose profits and sales were hit hard by the recession, will remain wary of ramping up investment.
President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package of increased government spending and tax cuts, near-zero interest rates ordered by the Fed and government programs to get banks to lend more freely again all factor into the expected economic revival.
Many forecasters also predict that home sales will hit bottom by the middle of this year, another stabilizing factor for the economy. A report on sales of previously owned homes will be released Wednesday, and data on new-home sales is due Thursday.
Next year, the economy should grow by 2 percent, the forecasters said. That was lower than the 2.4 percent growth projected in February.
With a lethargic recovery expected, forecasters predict the Fed won’t start boosting interest rates until the second quarter of next year.
Because Fed policymakers expect credit and financial problems to ebb slowly, “the pace of the recovery would continue to be damped in 2010,” they said last week.
McDonald’s Aiming To Overtake Starbucks in Europe
Here are some business news, courtesy of HuffingtonPost.com:
McDonald’s is aiming to overtake Starbucks as Europe’s biggest coffee chain, with plans to open several hundred McCafé stores selling pastries and cappuccinos this year.
