Hasta La Gadget!

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners make the mistake of not taking the time to craft a mission statement. They think it’s just fluff and a waste of time.

Truth be told, it’s just easier to think that than put the effort into crafting one.

Just think about it for a moment. If you don’t have a clear vision of what your mission is, how can your employees, your joint venture partners, your vendors and most importantly, your customers? The answer is they can’t.

Instead confusion takes charge. And when this happens you may as well say good-bye to growth, good-bye profits and good-bye to your business!

If you do not have a mission statement, I urge you to write one immediately.

Once you do so, you will find that your customers understand you better. You will begin working only with joint venture partners who share your values. All of your employees will have a better understanding of their purpose in your organization. You will find that it is much easier to make decisions about how to run your business, including whether an advertising campaign or your marketing methods are appropriate and truly representative of you and your organization.

Know Your “Why”

Your mission statement should be a formal, short, written statement of your company and/or organization’s purpose. In a nutshell, it should answer the question “Why does my company exist?”

In Peter Drucker’s book, The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your Organization, Mr. Drucker writes “A mission cannot be impersonal; it has to have deep meaning, be something you believe in — something you know is right. A fundamental responsibility of leadership is to make sure that everybody knows the mission, understands it and lives it.”

If you’ve never developed a mission statement before, here are a few essentials it should address:

• The purpose and aim of your organization (i.e., a definition of what your company is and does)
• The products and/or services your company offers
• What your company aspires to be
• What features/characteristics distinguish your company from its competitors
• Your company’s core ideology, values, purpose and visionary goals

Your mission statement should be specific and narrow enough that it couldn’t apply to just any company… but it should be flexible enough to allow for growth and change.

Make sure that the statement is clear (i.e., it does not contain a bunch of buzz words or industry jargon) and easy for potential clients, partners, and employees to understand.

Here are some examples of mission statements from some incredible companies:

Google: Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Apple: Bringing the best personal computing experience to consumers around the world.

Facebook: Give the people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Adobe: To help people express, share, manage and collaborate on their ideas in imaginative and meaningful new ways.

Samsung: We will devote our human resources and technology to create superior products and service, thereby contributing to a better global society.

Netflix: To revolutionize the way people watch movies.

The CEO’s Edge: To give every CEO, Entrepreneur and Business Person the facts and essential tools for running a PROFITABLE business.

Once you have your mission statement laid out, you can turn to it for help guiding your company’s actions, laying out its primary goals, offering direction, and directing decision-making.

After your mission statement is finalized and written, post it a spot where everyone who walks into your office or visits your website can see it.

Review it on a regular basis with your employees and business partners. And always make sure when you bring a new employee into your business they know this is what you stand for and why you are in business.

Allow your mission statement to guide you… and you will never find yourself making questionable decisions. The decision will be made for you.

Of course, writing a mission statement is not enough. What matters is living it on a daily basis.

Use it as a tool to help you make decisions about your business — from which companies you partner with, to which products you design. to how you communicate with your clients.

To help you move forward, I’ve put together a special report for you…The Ultimate Success Code: Make More Money for Yourself in Seven Easy Steps than You Ever Made Working for “The Man”.

The movement is clear, and the results are undeniable. The sharing economy is a $26 billion industry and is redefining business infrastructures across the board. Uber and Lyft have upended the transportation industry, while Airbnb has transformed the way we look at hospitality. Thanks to the sharing economy, we now have the power to consume collaboratively, relying on the resources of one another, rather than a third party vendor. We’ve decreased consumption of resources, and maximized our own personal assets for a limitless self-sustaining industry.

We recently embarked on a project to elevate the awareness of the sharing economy and are proud to share a look into a Day in the Life of the Sharing Economy. This movement is not just a trend, it’s a way of life.

A Day In The Life of the Sharing Economy from PivotDesk on Vimeo.

We’ve listed the companies we used in the video below by their Twitter handle. Feel free to give all of them a shout out!

@HomeJoy
@TaskRabbit
@Uber
@Airbnb
@Lyft
@Brandfolder
@Convercent
@Denver_bcycle
@PivotDesk

If you’re looking to utilize the sharing economy in your area, check out the following services:

Hitch a ride to work with Uber.
Share your office space with PivotDesk.
Hitch a ride home with Lyft.
Schedule a pet-sitter through Rover.
Hire a gardener through TaskRabbit.
Save on a hotel and stay through Airbnb.
Score some extra cash by sharing your car through Getaround.
Or cruise the city on a rented bike through Spinlister.

We’re proud to be a part of one of the largest economic movements. Tell us, what’s your favorite sharing economy service?

Now that one school year is over and we are preparing for the next, June is a month of reflection for educators and parents on how to do better next school year. It is hard enough for students to learn at school in today’s world. You throw in overcrowding, teacher to student ratios, poverty affecting too many students and lack of funding for supplies, and it becomes almost impossible for the average student to get ahead.

The New York Daily News reported that in New York City, 6,313 classes ( 200 more than last year) were overcrowded, based on the teacher’s union contract which sets 34 kids as the limit in high schools and 25 in kindergarten. In these classrooms, kids were sitting on the floors or standing, the whole period. It is tough to imagine how children can function in these overcrowded situations, let alone how can teachers concentrate and keep the kids interested? How can these kids learn when they are sitting on top of each other?

Add, on top of this, 16 million children in the USA (22% of all children) live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level of $23,550 a year (which is $65 a day) for a family of four, according to the National Center of Children in Poverty. These children are far more likely to have limited access to sufficient food (known as food insecurity). And with Congress cutting out $8.6 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (known as SNAP) earlier this year, these kids just got a little bit hungrier. The states where the most kids go hungry include New Mexico at 29.2%, Mississippi at 28.7%, Arizona at 28.2% and Georgia and Nevada both at 28.1%. How can these kids learn when they go to school hungry?

Now look at the 1.2 million children in the USA who are homeless. Forty-one states saw a rise in homelessness among school-aged children. According to the American Institutes for Research, homeless children have four times as many respiratory infections, twice as many ear infections, five times more gastrointestinal problems and four times more likely to have asthma. And when at school, they have three times the rate of emotional and behavioral problems compared to non-homeless children. How can these kids learn when they have so many personal problems?

Poverty and poor performance go hand in hand in school. DoSomething.org reports that children living in poverty have a higher number of absenteeism or leave school all together because they are more likely to have to work or care for family members. Dropout rates of 16-24 year old students from low income families are seven times more likely than those from families with higher income. By the end of the fourth grade, low income students are already two years behind, and by the twelfth grade, they are four years behind. How can these kids perform when they are adults, when they fall so far behind in school?

The USA educational system is ranked as the fourteenth best in the world. South Korea is number one, followed by Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, UK, Canada, The Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, Denmark, Germany and Russia. Why is the most powerful nation in the world ranked in the middle of the pack in educating its children? Last year $1.15 trillion was spent on education in the US, of which 10.8% came from federal funds and the rest from state and local contributions. You would think that is enough to educate every student, rich or poor, but obviously it was not sufficient.

The US sure has a lot of things to fix to break into the top ten countries in educating its kids. Since the vast majority of funding for education falls back to the states and local communities, local help is where it has got to begin. It has to fix the children who go hungry and the children of the poor. There are great organizations to contribute to for this—like Save the Children and the Children’s Defense League to help these less fortunate kids. We have to fix the homeless children situation where organizations like Stand Up for Kids and NationalHomeless.org focus on these suffering children. And somehow we have to get the right equipment into the hands of these poor kids, like the right books, pencils, paper and calculators so they can keep up with everyone else in their classrooms. At DollarDays on our Facebook page, we are giving away backpacks stuffed with school supplies to six different classrooms (35 of the stuffed backpacks to each classroom), so make sure you nominate your favorite teacher or school or town to win these backpacks.

I wish we could just flip a switch and poverty and hunger and homelessness would disappear for our kids, but we all know that won’t happen. Who chooses what kids are born into wealth and those who are born to live on the streets? Who chooses the kids who suffer in overcrowded schools or those who go to schools with sophisticated arts, music and computer programs? Back in 1918, the US House of Representatives passed the American Creed, which states “The United States of America is a government of the people, by the people and for the people, established on the principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity for all.” It is up to all of us to bring these poor, hungry and homeless children up to the standards our forefathers envisioned for all of us, and we need to start today.

When President Obama bid farewell to White House press secretary Jay Carney on Friday, nobody seemed to see it coming. It was a SHOCKING SHOCKER! Here are some tweets about how people were surprised.

HOLY NEWS FRIDAY BATMAN.

— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) May 30, 2014

Whoa! @BarackObama says Jay Carney is stepping down as @PressSec who he says “has become one of my closest friends” pic.twitter.com/SvgRonx1mu

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) May 30, 2014

This will go down as one of the craziest White House Fridays in awhile.

— Julie Pace (@jpaceDC) May 30, 2014

But the talk quickly turned to the hug Obama and Carney shared. Because it was rather unbelievably awkward.

Carney and Obama hugged it out pic.twitter.com/yJJ9ruAtRM

— HuffPost Media (@HuffPostMedia) May 30, 2014

There was…elbow-on-upper-arm action, maybe? Did Carney kiss Obama’s arm? Does this pair know what hugs are?

Let’s see a Vine of it. Replay!

The most #romantic Obama / Jay Carney Vine in the history of ever https://t.co/0czfb0rL2t

— Dorsey Shaw (@dorseyshaw) May 30, 2014

Uh…

People had thoughts!

Oh my GOD this photo one of the most awkward things in history pic.twitter.com/g81BUd0bo0

— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) May 30, 2014

Suppose for a moment that you are recruiting new management trainees for your company. One of your candidates is a recent graduate of a top business school with the ink still wet on her MBA diploma. Another is a recently released ex-convict with the ink still wet on his parole. Who should you hire?

Study shows convicts have higher ethical standards than MBAs

If you are looking for someone with high ethical standards, a sense of loyalty, and a desire to put the customer first, you should probably pick the ex-con over the MBA. It turns out that convicts have higher ethical standards than business school graduates in many situations. So, if your company is stressing ethical behavior, a convicted felon may be a better choice than an MBA. That may seem shocking, but a study confirms it.

Several years ago, Ball State University compared the ethical values of convicted felons to those of MBA students, and some interesting findings came to light. Although the prison inmates and MBAs scored fairly evenly in many categories, the survey found that:

• Convicts valued loyalty and group trust more than the MBAs valued those characteristics.
• While MBA students put the interests of the stockholders first, convicts put the needs of the customers first.
• 73 percent of the MBA students said they would hire a competitor’s employees who had knowledge of a profitable discovery while only 59 percent of the convicts said they would do so.

While the big scandals receive all of the publicity, the statistics show that smaller amounts of fraud are rampant among managers. A different survey found that 85% of corporate fraud was committed by employees, but most shocking was the fact that 55% of the fraud came from management. Of those managers who committed fraud, 85% were new managers who had been in their jobs for less than a year. Clearly, business school graduates and others who are entering management are responsible for much of the fraud taking place in corporations today. We must ask ourselves why this epidemic of management-based fraud is so widespread.

I’ve seen this firsthand

As a professor who taught thousands of prospective MBAs, I can personally attest to this phenomenon. The most alarming thing is that out all of the classes that I taught, the greatest amount of cheating and plagiarism took place in my ethics classes. Perhaps there is some ironic message here that I haven’t yet been able to decipher.

Why are we faced with this situation?

Is it because ethics can’t be taught? Even The Wall Street Journal once bemoaned in an editorial the proposition that ethics courses in school are a waste of time since ethics isn’t something that can be taught. You either have it or you don’t. But if ethics is knowing what we should do in a given situation, then why can’t we teach people the skills they need to make the morally correct decision?

I think we can. Although I don’t believe you can make a corrupt person ethical, I do believe you can teach employees how to make an ethical decision. There is a difference. Companies need to provide training on how to make an ethically defensible decision. I say “defensible” because two people can look at the same issue and come to different conclusions, with each believing their decision to be completely ethical. This is because ethical dilemmas today are more ambiguous than they used to be. Things are no longer black and white.

Right vs. Wrong

Ambiguity can be found in our inability to distinguish between competing interests. As human beings with various values and differing notions about what is right and what is wrong, we are often faced with some really tough choices. Those choices often involve right vs. right. They are tough because they involve choices where either alternative is based on one of our deeply rooted beliefs. Here is one example an employee might face:

Truth vs. Loyalty

We are often placed in situations where we possess some facts that, if revealed, could harm someone to whom we feel some loyalty. For example, we may know about some improper conduct or crucial mistakes made by our boss, but because we have worked for him for years and feel some loyalty toward him, we are conflicted. If the president of the company asks us if we know who is responsible for the problems, we are torn between our value of honesty, which requires us to provide the information, and our loyalty to our boss, which requires us not to cause him any harm. We can either tell or not tell on our boss, but we cannot do both. Therefore we must choose between what appears to be two “right” courses of action.

Two employees put into this situation can come up with opposing “right” courses of action. So who is correct, ethically? The answer is: the employee who makes the best argument for his actions. It is possible to teach people how to use solid ethical principles to defend their actions in such a way that they can justify (or defend) those actions. Over the years, I have seen employees articulate a great argument for their behavior using some sound ethical principles to bolster their case.

The bottom line is that focusing on trying to teach people how to be ethical is probably a waste of your company’s time and money. You can’t teach a person to “be” something they aren’t. However, giving employees the tools to guide them through making an ethical decision, and teaching them how to use ethical principles to defend their actions in such a way as to show that this action was the “right” action, is a much better use of resources.