In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.
- The state song of Florida is “Old Folks at Home.”
- Spoonfeed is the longest word with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.
- The average yearly milk production per cow in the U.S. totals about 4,815 quarts.
- On average, a bookstore browser spends 8 seconds looking at a book’s front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.
- Originally there were twelve on a jury because jurors were chosen to represent each of the twelve signs of the zodiac. It was believed, in this way, a better general opinion could be obtained.
- The deepest gorge in the U.S. is not the Grand Canyon as so many think, but Hell’s Canyon on the Snake River between Idaho and Oregon. At 7,900 feet, it has the Grand Canyon beaten by about half a mile.
- The rock band REO Speedwagon chose its unusual name from an early 1900s flatbed truck. The letters “REO” are the initials of Ransom Eli Olds, “Father of the Automobile,” who invented the Oldsmobile and was president of Reo Motor Vehicle Company from 1904 to 1924. The flatbed truck was high-speed and heavy-duty for its time, and was considered a milestone in transportation history.
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While the above headline is obviously false, for the moment, I’ll bet you didn’t have a hard time believing it, did you? That pretty well sums up the current state of financial chaos in our country today.
The Sears Tower is a 110-story, 1,450.58-feet skyscraper in Chicago, Illinois. At the time of its completion in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world, surpassing the World Trade Center towers in New York. Currently, the Sears Tower is the tallest skyscraper in the United States and the fourth-tallest freestanding structure in the world.
Money can do a lot—both good and bad. We’re all seeing that today more than ever before. It’s changing the name of the tallest building in the U.S., but only on paper and maybe a few signs here and there. In the hearts of billions of locals and tourists around the world, it will always be the Sears Tower in our hearts, minds and memories.
Total involvement and shared responsibility by everyone at every level is key to the success of any organization in today’s challenging world of change, competition, and survival.
And so it is in the workplace as well. The President of the Board, the CEO, and Vice Presidents throughout the organization must “show up” ready to contribute as readily as every front-line employee on the payroll. The responsibility, successes, failures, and all resulting consequences must be shared by the entire organization. In today’s chaotic world, the presence or lack of shared responsibility can and will make a critical difference.
I struggled to decide exactly where to place this particular posting. My first thought would have placed it in our “Is It Just Me?” category. However, the more I thought about it, I had to ask myself: “What were they thinking?”
He plowed right into the bus driver but not before the good Samaritan pushed the old ladies and the other passenger out of the way saving their lives. Now the bus driver is in St. Anthony Central Medical Center with bleeding in the brain, broken bones in his face, a dislocated shoulder, a possible ruptured spleen and liver and several other injuries.
When you have to settle for a “single” at Wendy’s because the “double” will put you over your weekly meal allowance, it’s nice to discover that our national financial crisis is reigning despair on billionaires as well.
#1: William Gates III
#2: Warren Buffett
#3: Carlos Slim Helú
Our local newspaper ran a story yesterday about one of our area McDonald’s outsourcing the drive-through window. Now that takes a minute to digest, doesn’t it? On the other hand, I guess it was inevitable. Let’s see how it works.
McDonald’s benefits from this new strategy as well. In the fast-food business, time is money. In fact, shaving a mere five seconds off the processing time of an order is significant. Test restaurants have reported the ability to process an additional 30 cars per hour, substantially reducing labor costs. They also discovered that when employees have to take orders over the drive-through microphone and deliver food at the same time, they start making a lot of mistakes. This new system has reduced mistakes considerably, resulting in fewer complaints.
Does your staff have a clear vision of what is expected of them?
In 2000, Paul signed a 10-year $100 million contract with ABC for two daily news and commentary segments and the evening “Rest of the Story” human-interest clip which is on 1,100 radio stations and an additional 400 belonging to the Armed Forces Network.