Objections and Rebuttals

Objections and Rebuttals Whenever a customer has an objection to the offer or price, the problem is not that offer or the price it is actually that we as advocates have failed to build enough value in the product to justify the price. So in actuality the reason for the objection more often than not is that the customer is telling us that they are not willing to pay $19. 95/$24. 99 at this moment. The best way to combat this is to use an intelligent and informed rebuttal, do this by keeping the conversation going don't get flustered or aggravated Listen Think & Respond. Show empathy with the customer let them know you are here to solve their problem, remember we have to make the customers objections seem miniscule and offer a reasonable solution to get the sale. DO NOT LET AN OBJECTION TURN INTO A VERBAL BATTLE BETWEEN YOU AND THE CUSTOMER, YOU WILL LOOSE. How to address an objection: Step 1 – Cushion the objection by saying, â€Å" I totally understand but†¦ † Step 2 – Question the objection. I know this is a hurdle for some of us but we have to be confident remember these customers called us for a solution. Use what they revealed in the probing and call them out on it. Step 3 – Build more value tie the benefits directly to the objection. Again remind them why they called Paint a Picture for the customer help them visualize the results. Step 4 – Close. Don't wait after making a relevant rebuttal that makes purchasing the product today logical ask for the sale. Now lets explore some common objections and rebuttals for those objections. Objection: â€Å"I don't have a credit card! † Rebuttal: â€Å"I totally understand, many people don't use credit cards. This is when we need to go back to the hot button, remind the customer of their answers to your probing questions. Build value by tying the benefits directly to their reason for calling. This is were we need to make an affirmative statement â€Å"If I can guarantee you that for $19. 95/$24. 99 Proactiv would finally get rid of your acne or you get a full refund of the purchase price don't you agree that that would b e a full-proof investment? It's a win win situation you can't loose with this offer. If the customer still says they don't have a card we have to give them every option available such as â€Å"Is there someone there that understands what your going through that could let you use their card and you could give them the cash? † or â€Å"Is there someone that you can call to help you out with this I don't mind holding while we figure this out? † This particular objection can seem tough at first again DONT GET FRUSTRATED display your dedication in finding a solution for the customer. Objection: â€Å"I'm going to think about it† this particular objection should make our blood boil. What's to think about after talking to a knowledgeable advocate such as yourself, Right? Rebuttal: â€Å" I totally understand but don't you agree that the best way to think about this product is to actually use it in your home and get real time results, because that is exactly what this Risk-Free promotion is about† or â€Å"I totally understand but let's be honest with ourselves are you really going to go home and think about having clear skin? We all know life is hectic and putting this off will only make that clear and healthy skin be further out of your reach we are halfway there its time to take control† remember some of these customers are very indecisive we need to be the deciding factor in the phone call and we do this by displaying confidence in our rebuttals. Objection: â€Å"I need to talk to† this is usually just the customer backing out Rebuttal: â€Å"I totally understand but that is why we have the Risk-Free trial so there are no strings attached , if you thought enough of this person(or yourself) to call then I am positive that this is the solution for them/you the results will speak for itself† Objection: â€Å"I will call back† this one you have to do additional probing WHY do they need to call back Rebuttal: â€Å"May I ask why you would need to call back† it will most likely turn into another objection , at this point we need to build more value and create urgency in ordering today. Objection: â€Å"I thought it was FREE† this is the one we get the most do not get frustrated Rebuttal: Agree with the free â€Å"I totally understand the commercial does mention free gifts, and you are going to be receiving some really great free gifts today $35 worth in fact. But we give these free gifts to you when you purchase the Risk-Free trial, we simply want to prove to you how great Proactiv will work for you and what a difference it will make in your life. † Objection: â€Å"I'm driving and I cannot get to my card at the moment† we need to make this seem very miniscule Rebuttal: â€Å" I totally understand and honestly your calling off our radio add and 80% of our callers are calling in while driving, not a problem happens all the time. I'm willing to wait until you get to a safe spot or stop because I can tell your really interested and we can get that part done and it will take less then a minute† Then go on talking to the customer, if you have not received the address info do this first and take your time. If you have already took the address info then talk with the customer a little bit waiting 3 to 5 min is totally worth the sale Now not all of these rebuttals will work like magic and some of them you will have to do some improvising to tailor to your particular call. The key is not to give in until every option has been explored. Remember we want the customer to USE Proactiv and if it does not give them the results they are looking for then that is why we have the MBG. Let the customer know that the reason we have the MBG is because â€Å"We are so confident that this product will absolutely work for you that we just want to prove that and give you the clear healthy skin you deserve† Also after an objection the rebuttal should include some other values that have not previously been stated to entice the customer to buy instead of repeating what the customer has already heard. Ex. if the customer was already not aware that Proactiv is #1, its also great skin care system, they will always receive free gifts, mix and match, always have a MBG if that is a concern, able to get a hold of us 2 diff. ays to answer any questions and concerns, customizable accounts, free rush, upsells at $5 each, catalog has 25% discount off retail price,  Proactiv's Micro Crystals are exclusively with us, Proactiv was the first acne treatment with 3 steps â€Å"Combination Therapy† etc.. Some of these can be used in the presentation to boost confidence and sh ow great value before going into offer and also using the V/P/V (Value price Value) format. If we can do a great job with the presentation this will cut out some of those objections and make that price seem smaller, making an easy and quick sale.

Leading Quietly by Joseph Badaracco

Lecture Text Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr. : Leading Quietly* Now what I’m going to do today is talk for a while about research I’ve done over the last five years and completed with the publication of a book by that title: Leading Quietly. What I set out to do initially was to see what I could learn about leadership and effective leadership, if I looked beyond, if I looked away from, what I’ll call the heroic model. And the heroic model is one that, with the briefest sketch, is familiar to all of us. Who are heroic leaders? They are people who change the world or part of the world, they’ve got very strong values, they are charismatic, they are inspiring, they are willing to make sacrifices, sometimes, in some walks of life, the ultimate sacrifice, because they sacrificed their lives. I have no intention, here today or at any point, in tearing down all that the great figures have contributed to our world. Without them, our world would be a poorer and meaner place. Without them, we wouldn’t have examples of courage to talk to our kids and to others about. But the proposition I want to put in front of you today is that viewing leadership, particularly leadership in organizations, particularly in the middle of big, complicated business organizations, simply in terms of heroism, is a limited and sometimes even misleading perspective. Let me say a little bit more about why I think that’s the case. I think there are at least three problems with this heroic view. One of them I call the pyramid issue. If you think about the world in terms of heroes, you tend to have in the back of your mind a big triangle, and at the top you’ve got great leaders, and at the bottom, fill in your favorite candidates, the skunks, bottom-dwelling slugs, T. S. Eliot’s hollow men. What about everybody else who is in the middle? People who are neither out saving the world like great heroes, saving companies, saving brands, nor are they exploiting it. They are doing their jobs, living their lives, taking care of the people around them. The heroic model doesn’t say much about them. The second problem with the heroic model was expressed in the Burke videotape. He said, â€Å"I never had any trouble telling right from wrong. † And I think that is fundamentally right because there are so many situations, as you know, when this is right and this is wrong, and the task is not to figure out what is the right thing to do, it’s to get yourself or other people to move in that direction rather than this one. But there are a whole set of messy, complicated problems that I refer to as right versus right problems that do not fit the simple, heroic, dothe-right-thing model. Let me give you an example. * Edited for clarity Copyright ? 2002 Page 1 You are at home. It’s evening. Someone knocks on your door. It’s somebody who works for you, he’s worked with you for a number of years. He says, â€Å"I’m really sorry to bother you at home, but I’ve got some really fabulous news. † This individual lives just a couple miles away. And he says, â€Å"I wanted you to be one of the first to know. My wife and I have been looking for a home and we really think we have found the house of our dreams. It’s really expensive, we are going to have to take some money out of the kids’ college funds, but this is just a fabulous home, and you know you are my boss, and you are the best boss I’ve ever had†¦. I’m sure many of you have had this experience. â€Å"The best boss I can even imagine having. † So you nod politely and in the back of your mind you know that there is a layoff coming and that this individual’s name is on that list. By buying this house, he’s not only putting himself on t he brink of financial calamity, he’s going to be taking a plunge over it. Now what do you do? You know the layoff is coming. As a corporate officer, you have a duty of confidentiality to the corporation. You’re not supposed to disclose the coming layoffs piecemeal to your friends. That’s supposed to be announced when everything is set up legally, when the HR work is done, at a point in time that senior executives decide. But this person is a friend. You owe this person a lot. Surely you have an obligation, I think, to help them out. And what if the person happens to go a little bit further and says, â€Å"Do you think I ought to do this? † And of course what you’re thinking is â€Å"You’re crazy if you do this. † And you are supposed to tell the truth, right? This is not a right versus wrong situation. You’ve got three obligations here: to your friend, to the truth, and the duty of confidentiality to your organization. You may think this is kind of a made-up story, but in the last eight or ten years or so, even when the U. S. economy was growing slowly in the early 90s and even when it was growing quickly in the late 90s, we had continuous layoffs. I heard four or five versions of this exact story. A good friend, what do you tell them about a layoff when you can’t tell them anything prematurely? This is what I would describe as a messy, right versus right kind of problem. The final thing wrong with the heroic view is that, at bottom, most of us most of the time don’t want to be heroes, even think it is irresponsible to act heroically. The saying is that martyrdom is a oncein-a-lifetime experience. I had a student, an auditor in fact, from the Nieman program, which brings journalists here to Harvard, in my second-year elective course a couple of years ago. The rules for auditors say that you can listen, you can’t participate. So we were having a discussion about an organization, it was a mini-Enron, there were lots of things going on that shouldn’t have been going on. A young guy knew what was going Copyright ? 2002 Page 2 on, he had copied some documents. The question was, what he should do? And there was a lot of enthusiasm building up in the class for him to blow the whistle. He had a tennis pal who was a journalist with the local newspaper. And I was watching this woman sitting over on the side, she was a reporter for a big New York City newspaper, and she was getting really agitated, and you could see her almost physically holding her hand down, because she knew what the rules were but she was going to separate her shoulder or something like that trying to restrain herself. So I called on her and she said, â€Å"Listen, what you have to understand is, if you are going to propose blowing the whistle, is that whistleblowers always get screwed. † That may be an overgeneralization, but life is really tough, at least in this country, for people who blow the whistle. And that’s the message she wanted to send. So you have the problem of the pyramid that leaves most of us out. You’ve got these messy problems that don’t fit into the right versus wrong format, and you’ve got the fact that most of us want to live to fight another battle. We’ve got complicated obligations in life, very few people realistically, pragmatically, are going to roll everything up into one big ball and sacrifice it, often no matter how great and how urgent they think the problem is. We might do that for somebody close to us, but would we do it for our organizations? I don’t know. So what I want to do is encourage you for a little while this afternoon to think beyond this model, and it’s a very, very powerful model. You’ve got the great figures of history that we’ve learned about since we were kids in school. Every walk of life has its heroes. Every business and industry has its heroes†¦I don’t know how many of you have seen the latest Economist, the title is â€Å"Fallen Idols: The Overthrow of Celebrity CEOs. † This looks like one of those statues in East Germany or in Eastern Europe after the breakup of the Soviet Union, down on the ground smashed. The smiling face here is Jack Welch. So we have the celebrity CEOs. Turn on the TV, go to a movie, go see Spiderman, it’s a relentless diet telling us that the people we really ought to admire and emulate are the folks who do great things, whether it’s fighting the mafia, or space aliens—pick your own favorite. I think in fact that this heroic view is almost—I’m going out on a limb here because I’m hardly a scientist—almost genetically etched in us. A long time ago when somebody in a crowd said, â€Å"We’d better go this way because the saber-toothed tigers are going that way,† the folks who responded and followed these leaders away from the sabertoothed tigers are the ones who survived, and the ones sitting over there saying, â€Å"Well, I’ll think it over, we’ll see,† are the ones who got consumed for lunch. That’s one view. My argument is that it is not the only view. In fact, I want to go a little bit further because the conclusion of the study I did, Copyright ? 2002 Page 3 and I should tell you a little bit about the study†¦What I essentially did was gather a lot of case studies, in the end about 150, of people who were typically in the middle of an organization, had a messy, complicated problem, had a significant degree of self-interest, prudent self-preservation, but also wanted to do the right thing for their organizations and for themselves, and I looked at how they resolved their problems. And I did it pretty systematically. I put them in three categories: people who looked like they were successes, they did the right thing for themselves and their organizations. People who failed, and they often said, â€Å"I failed,† explained why, and said what they would do differently the next time. And then the muddy cases. And I tried to go through systematically and see what separated the success stories from the others. And what I want to put in front of you are some basic conclusions about how these people think, how they behave, what they did. And I’ll give you some examples and, in fact, I’ll even come back to the little anecdote about the â€Å"house of my dreams,† and tell you a little bit about how you might approach that in this quiet leadership vein. But the big conclusion I came to is that we really need to look away from the figures on the pedestal, from time to time, maybe quite often, so we can see it’s the daily, unglamorous, in-the-trenches quiet leadership that so often is what moves and changes things in organizations. And I hope to encourage you to think a little bit about the people who work for you, the people you work with, to see if some of them don’t fit this model of quiet leadership that I’m describing. See if there’s something you can learn from them, and see if, when they work for you, there are ways you can encourage them, support them, help hold them up as examples for people in your organization. As you’ll see, quiet leadership can be lonely work. It’s out of the spotlight, it’s often unrewarded, sometimes it is even unnoticed, it’s done by people who are doing something right for themselves, right for the organization, but often there is no one standing by to give them a medal. Now I did a 150 cases, I’m a professor here at Harvard, but neither of these are reasons you should pay attention to the ideas I’m putting in front of you. Let me give you a more serious and more historically significant way of thinking about this†¦. This is a quote from Albert Schweitzer. I imagine most of you know who he is. He was born at the end of the 1800s in Germany. He was an astonishingly talented young man. He could have had a career as a theologian. Not just sort of a technical theologian; he was a deeply religious Christian. He was also a brilliantly talented musician. So, he could have had a nice life in Germany following either of those pursuits. Copyright ? 2002 Page 4 He decided instead to become a medical missionary. He worked in Africa. He won the Nobel Prize in 1952. Took the money, spent it expanding his hospital down there, and stayed in Africa working as a medical missionary until the point when he died. This is what he says. And I think this is a remarkable statement: â€Å"Of all the will toward the ideal, all of our highest aspirations, only a small part of it can manifest itself in public action. All the rest of this force must be content with†Ã¢â‚¬â€ notice that phrase—†small and obscure deeds. The sum of these, however, is†Ã¢â‚¬â€ notice again how strongly he puts this—†a thousand times stronger than the acts of those who receive wide public recognition. These folks who get the recognition compared to the former are â€Å"like the foam on the waves of a deep ocean. † This is someone who is a heroic leader, by so many standards, basically saying, don’t pay a lot of attention to people like himself. Look elsewhere—look at the people engaged in the se small and obscure deeds. So, what I’d like to do now is spend the remaining time, maybe fifty minutes or so, telling you a little bit about these quiet leaders: What I looked at, what I learned, how they think, and what they do. I summarize this in the form of seven lessons. Let me say a little bit about each one of these. The first thing about these people is they don’t kid themselves. What they don’t kid themselves about is how much they know, how much of what goes on around them they can control, how far they can see down the road. This is true even when people had titles like CEO, like general manager, like plant manager. They had a sense of the fragility, the uncertainty, the tentativeness of almost everything. Now, of course, for Americans, and the Americans in this room, you know we had our Internet bubble blow up and then collapse. And for so many people in the world after September 11th, maybe these reminders of the fragility of things are not as necessary as they were a few years ago, at least in this country, when it looked like we had sort of a lock on everything. Machiavelli says somewhere in The Prince that â€Å"fortune is basically the equivalent of a great powerful river. † And what human beings are doing is building little structures on the side of the river. And he says, of all the things that happen, about half of it is under our control. The rest is the plaything of this great force, this river he talks about. You take all the precautions you can. You build the dykes. â€Å"But, at the end of the day,† he says, â€Å"it’s only 50/50. About half of this is out of your hands. † Copyright ? 2002 Page 5 These folks I looked at had sort of a permanent view that they were likely to be surprised. That the future, whatever it might hold, was made up of multiple alternative scenarios. The future, no matter how hard and smart their efforts were, could easily come up from behind and sort of bite them in the posterior. They were also political realists about their organizations. They didn’t kid themselves about other people’s motives. They knew that in any organization, there are some people who are basically in it for themselves. They also didn’t kid themselves about the fact that most organizations are organized like pyramids—a lot of the goodies go to the people at the top, and lots of smart, ambitious people are trying to get hold of those goodies. They realize that organizations tend to be organized on the basis of insiders and outsiders. Insiders tend to take care of themselves; lots of outsiders are trying to get in. In other words, I’m not talking about saints, social workers, would-be martyrs, folks who are holier than thou. In fact, I’m talking about people—and I’ll spend a little more time on this in a moment—who are quite eager to get higher pay, promotions, and make their way up to the top of the greasy pole. They did not kid themselves about how the world worked. But, there’s one other element that I want to add to this basic idea of, â€Å"don’t kid yourself. † These folks were not cynics. When I mention things like the politics, the competition that takes place in any organization, it’s easy for you to think when I say, â€Å"Don’t kid yourself,† that I’m talking about the sort of Machiavellian maxim, â€Å"Do unto others before they do unto you. That’s not what I’m talking about. And that’s not the way these people thought. They were realists. They expected to be surprised. And they were just as likely, they thought, to be surprised by good things as by bad things. In other words, pessimistic, dark- tinted glasses are just as distorting as naive, pink-tinted glasses. These folks tried to see the world for what it was. They recognized that people do things for all sorts of reasons. People who you don’t expect—who are almost at the bottom of the list of people to show up when times get tough and there were things in organizations that really needed doing— sometimes surprised them. The second basic trait I found, I summarize this way†¦these people trusted their motives, even when their motives were mixed. Let me explain that a little bit. The heroic view tends to say that great leaders are motivated by altruism, by idealism, by the highest and most noble instincts you can imagine. By the way, that’s what makes it so easy for biographers— and this has been fashionable for about twenty or thirty years now—to write biographies of great leaders in which they point out that they were actually motivated by human, even low, motives: ambition, Copyright ? 2002 Page 6 pride. And often did some things that even these leaders themselves are hardly proud of. But that’s only because we have a kind of false conception of what it really is that makes human beings tick. As I said a moment ago, the quiet leaders that I looked at, that I talked with, that I thought about, they liked bigger paychecks rather than smaller paychecks. They preferred to have more people reporting to them than fewer. They wanted to have long, successful careers in their organizations or, if that didn’t work out, in other organizations. And when they found themselves in one of these messy, complicated problems, one of the things they thought about, and thought a lot about, was their own careers and their own reputation. â€Å"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? † You can get stranded alone out there. Who is going to take care of you? â€Å"If I am only for myself, purely, unalloyedly self-interested, what am I? † This is what I mean by mixed motives. And I want to go a little further than this to say why these mixed motives are so important. Let me give you an example of a senior marketing rep. This is somebody who is a little surprising because he had lots of opportunities to move into management but never took them. He really loved sales. He worked for a big American pharmaceutical company, and it had a terrific product for a fairly common form of mental illness. I don’t want to point fingers at any particular company. It turned out that this product had a second use, one that the Food and Drug Administration had not approved. It worked really well for losing weight. And some doctors were actually prescribing it for people who needed diets, not treatment from depression. And the company caught on to this, and it organized an unwritten, undocumented marketing campaign to encourage more of its reps to get out there and sell the product for this unregulated, unapproved use. This guy, whom I will call Elliott Cortez, wanted to get ahead, like most of the people I looked at. He went along with the program. So, he’d meet with doctors. He’d describe to them that it could be used for diet. He’d fill prescriptions. But, for some reason, I don’t know what it was, he began after time to get a little uncomfortable about this. Then a little more uncomfortable about it. And finally what did he do? He decided he was going to stop doing this. And he went around to the doctors to whom he’d been pushing or promoting his product for diet purposes, told them he was going to stop doing that, and explained why. He told a couple of other sales reps he was going to do the same thing. And he told his boss. Copyright ? 2002 Page 7 I don’t know what the initial trigger was that got him to do this stuff. But I later asked him why, once he was alerted to the problem, he went and did all of this. And he said, â€Å"Well, to be honest, there were really two things. I came to realize, first of all, that some people could get sick with the misuse of this product. And I realized secondly, given the scale of the campaign that this company was waging, unapproved and unregulated, that the company could get in a whole lot of trouble. And who was going to get the bull’s-eye painted on them? When the time came, it would be the reps and the marketing execs who were out promoting this unapproved product. And I did not want to get hung out to dry. † Now, what do you make of this story? It’s kind of an interesting one to talk about. Is this heroic leadership? Not by any standard. This guy was very careful. What motivated him? He didn’t want people to get sick as a result of what he was doing. But he also didn’t want to get himself in trouble. His motives were quite mixed. You might ask yourself, wouldn’t it have been better if he had blown the whistle, if he had dropped a dime, called the FDA, photographed some papers and sent them off? Who was going to win that uneven competition between a giant pharmaceutical company and a lonely rep? It’s a no-brainer. The company would have won. So he made the sensible decision not to blow himself up in place. But, he did something. He didn’t do everything; he did something. Within the little sphere where he reasonably could have some influence, and maybe set an example—the doctors, a few other sales reps and his boss—he explained to them what he was doing and why he was doing it. What if his motives had been purer? What if he didn’t have the selfpreservation instinct? I would argue he would not have done so well. A lot of cases of quiet leadership that I looked at are much more like distance runs than glamorous 50-yard, 100-yard sprints in front of a cheering crowd. And what often matters is not the purity of your motives, but the strength of your motives. You’ve got to have some skin in the game. And part of the reason he went around and did what he could is because he did not want to end up in court, in the press, on TV, in the event things came down on his company. His motives were mixed. And my argument is that he was probably much more effective as a result of that. There’s so many fascinating studies coming out now, the folks who do mind/body research. And what many of these studies tend to find is that our minds do far more processing and analyzing of reality preconsciously, unconsciously, than anybody ever realized. And often this analysis, this analytical work that’s done by these deep levels of our mind, doesn’t express itself in rational linear thinking. It expresses itself in feelings, in hesitation. If you’re facing one of these messy Copyright ? 2002 Page 8 problems, don’t think you’ve got to be General Patton or some other charge-the-hill hero. If something inside you is saying â€Å"slow down, slow down,† trust those mixed motives. That’s the second trait that I found among these people. The third thing these folks did was buy time. Sometimes they begged, sometimes they borrowed. I’ll come to this in a moment. Sometimes they played games. They stole a little time. They did exactly the reverse of what so many American managers were told to do just a couple of years ago. Remember the mantra about Internet time? And instead of this sort of old-fashioned ready, aim, fire, the new mantra was fire, ready, aim. Because the world was moving so fast. Now, in retrospect, you can see that for the monstrously bad advice it was. Hundreds of billions of dollars were thrown away by folks trying to seize opportunities on Internet time. The only thing that actually moved on Internet time was the Internet bubble itself, which rose and collapsed pretty much on the Internet time schedule. That said, the folks who were telling us that things were different were right about something else. Because they frequently reminded us that the world was getting to be a more complicated place. Business was becoming globally deregulated; you know all the rest of that sort of story. Why they went on to say that as the world got more complicated, you ought to make decisions faster and faster, I don’t know. But, they were right about the ever-growing complexity of situations that people faced. Taking their advice, however, doing things on Internet time, basically made them a candidate for an award that medical schools give out occasionally. It’s the SSW award. It stands for â€Å"swift, sure, and wrong. † The quiet leaders I looked at found ways to take time to get decisions right. They didn’t make their decisions on the basis of external pressures. They made their decisions when they were ready to make the decisions. Now, that may sound to you like a kind of naive, academic, ivory tower piece of advice, because all of you have about twenty-eight times more things to do than you’ve got time to do them. And typically, the In basket is a lot bigger than the Out basket. And I understand that. But, when you get one of these messy, complicated sorts of problems, you have a sense that it’s got ramifications, ripple effects leading throughout the organization, you’ve got to find the time. And you’ve got to take the time to get things right. There was a fascinating article, an interview about six weeks ago in the New York Times with Joseph Murray, a now-retired surgeon who Copyright ? 2002 Page 9 lives in a suburb of Boston. He was a pioneer in kidney transplantation. And he used to have a slogan up in his operating room, and the slogan said, â€Å"If the operation is difficult, you’re not doing it right. † And what he meant by that was, before you do something, especially something pioneering, like taking a kidney out of one person and putting it into another, you better make sure you’ve imagined all the steps and all the possible scenarios. And what does that take? That takes time. Quiet leaders find ways to get the time they need. Quiet leaders also learn some lessons from investment bankers and venture capitalists. They invest wisely. Now, let me tell you a little bit about what I mean by â€Å"invest wisely. † Sometimes professors here give their students a little bit of advice at the end of the course, which is that what they ought to do is get themselves some â€Å"go to hell† money. This is money you keep in fairly liquid form in the event that you just can’t take it anymore wherever you’re working. Then you don’t have to keep that job. You can get another job, but you’ve got a cushion. It makes perfect sense. That’s not exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about here. I’m talking about investing something that is far more important to careers and far less tangible, much more subtle than just money. I’m talking about political capital, a composite of two things. It’s your actual track record, and it’s your reputation: what people, especially influential people in an organization, think about your track record. So, it’s those two things. The quiet leaders I looked at, I’m only exaggerating a little bit, when they came upon these sort of messy problems, they thought about them like venture capitalists. They asked themselves, â€Å"How much political capital do I have? How much am I going to put at risk? What kind of returns am I going to get? And when am I going to get those returns? † In an ideal world, they looked for ways to handle these problems, even if there was some initial investment or a risk of their political capital. In the end they got back out even more than they put in. As I said, they weren’t looking to be martyrs or saints. Like venture capitalists, they often invested their political capital, and I’ll say more about this in a moment, in increments. They took small steps. They nudged a little bit. They escalated gradually to get a feel for what was going on, to learn a little bit more. If things looked bad, they’d back off and they’d move in another direction. If things looked good, they would invest a little bit more. They were very pragmatic people. They were looking for what was attainable. They were sort of following, without ever having heard it, this French maxim, which is Copyright ? 2002 Page 10 â€Å"the better is the enemy of the good. † Try to find something in this complicated, shifting, uncertain world that will work. Now, keep in mind what I said earlier, that they cared about getting these things right, and they were tenacious people. So, when they looked for ways to invest capital, they weren’t looking for your savings bond investment where you put in some money and you get an absolute guarantee of four or five percent. They were willing to take some risks, willing to shake the tree a little bit, willing to use some imagination, but they were concerned about the art of the feasible, the art of the practical. And they picked their battles. There were some cases where they said with regret, â€Å"Something was going on over here, and I just didn’t want to get involved. I don’t think I could get involved. If I had gotten involved, I would not have been able to make a difference. And so with regrets, I moved on. † Now that is not the heroic charge-the-hill, all purpose do-gooder approach to getting things done in organizations. But many of these people felt— and you can judge for yourself whether you think they were thinking soundly or not—that they had to pick their battles because they wanted to live to fight another day. And they wanted to move up in their organizations where they would have even more influence. There’s a wonderful statement of Machiavelli’s: â€Å"A man who has no position in society cannot even get a dog to bark at him. † That means you’re invisible. â€Å"A man who has no position in society. If you want to make a difference, you’ve got to be a player at the table. And not just once, but several times, again and again and again over a career, and at smaller and smaller tables. And that’s what these folks were thinking. A limited amount of political capital—they wanted to build it. They invested it carefully, with some imagination, with some care, but they invested it carefully. The fifth thing I found was this—which may not be intuitively obvious to all of you. Let me give you a little bit of background, a little bit of Harvard University lore. In the mid-1800s there was an ichthyologist named Louis Agassiz. Ichthyologists study fish. And he got to be a very important person, not just in his field, but nationally. Why? Well, in the mid-1800s Darwin and people who looked at fish fossils supposedly had something to say about whether God did it, or whether it was the unfolding of an evolutionary process. He was also a brilliant researcher and scholar. And so for a variety of reasons his lab attracted the best and brightest. The tale has been told many times. When graduate students came to work at his lab the first day and he’d say, â€Å"It’s really great to have you here. Here’s what I want you to do. † He gave them a little tray. And the tray would have on it an ordinary fish. He’d say, â€Å"I want you to go and look at this fish Copyright ? 2002 Page 11 and then come back in a little while and tell me what you see about the fish. † So, they’d go off. And when would they come back? A half hour, an hour, and knock on the door. And kind of eager, they’d have some things to report. He said, â€Å"No, I want you to go and look at the fish. † So, they’d come back at lunchtime. â€Å"Go back and look at the fish. † At the end of the day, same routine. Even at the end of the week. And they had ice in those days, but these fish were probably getting a little funky. It was only after two or three weeks that Agassiz would say, â€Å"Come in and tell me about the fish. † What he was trying to inculcate in them is the habit of discipline: focused, consistent, penetrating powers of observation. Looking and looking and looking and looking. As you move into more and more complicated general management situations, there are just more layers there. There’s more to see. There’s more to understand: There’s more to understand technically, there’s more to understand politically, there’s more to understand financially. And if you’ve got general management responsibility, you’ve got to bring that together. These folks that I looked at bought time. And in the process of investing carefully, they spent lots of time living with, sleeping with, and sweating over their problems. They really worked and worked their problems. And it was often only at the end of this effort to drill down that they had the creative breakthroughs that were critical. Let me give you a list of names here: Darwin Smith, George Cain, Alan Wurtzel. Am I ringing any bells? Colman Mockler? It’s interesting, there’s a book that I suspect that many of you have heard of, and maybe a number of you have read, called Good to Great by Jim Collins. He did a big statistical sample and found about twenty companies that had been doing terribly for fifteen years and then, for the subsequent fifteen years, outperformed the market by a factor of three. And he went in and studied their executives to try to find out what happened, how these companies were turned around. Darwin Smith was at Kimberly-Clark, Colman Mockler was at Gillette, George Cain was at Abbott Labs, and Alan Wurtzel was at Circuit City. All companies you’ve heard of, all companies that have had spectacular long runs after these turnarounds. Collins notes about these people that they spent their whole careers in their industries, if not in their companies. Talk about drilling down, looking at your fish. They knew these businesses from the bottom up, from the inside out. And Collins’s conclusion, not mine, was that this intimate sort of knowledge was what enabled them to accomplish all of what they did. I heard a talk by somebody who was getting an award for outstanding leadership a couple of months ago. He used an interesting phrase. He Copyright ? 2002 Page 12 said, â€Å"I didn’t really realize I was a leader. He said, â€Å"I was working too hard to lead. † A lot of the heroic stuff that you hear about sounds kind of glamorous. The message of this drill down stuff is, look at your fish: It can be pretty tough. Come back to that little example I gave you at the beginning. This long-term co-worker and friend comes to you saying, â€Å"I found the house of my dreams,† what are you going to do ? The easy way out of that situation is, don’t look for wiggle room, stick to the rules. And remember, we had three rules you could apply. You had the rule of the duty of confidentiality. And so what do you say to your friend? â€Å"Great. That’s fabulous, congratulations. I wish you and your family the best. † And you try to paste a smile on your face that doesn’t look too fake, because you know you’re helping to send him over the precipice. Or, you say, simple rule, tell the truth. So you blurt out the truth. And you swear this person to confidence, of course. And you hope that the old piece of advice that says, â€Å"Best friends only tell their own best friends† doesn’t come into play. And you haven’t violated confidentiality, and you’re not going to get in trouble for it. OK? Or you say, â€Å"This is my friend. Friends have to help friends. There’s going to be a layoff and your name is on it. † I would argue that in a case like that, following the rules is hardly leadership, barely ethical. You’ve got to find a way to have a little bit of wiggle room. Following the rules in a world full of rules, and oft-conflicting rules, can be a copout. The final little piece of advice here is to create compromises. The quiet leaders I looked at were really good at compromising. That’s probably not leadership—that’s what politicians do. You know, that’s what you do when you go to a car dealer. And you say, â€Å"This is a piece of junk. I’ll give you $10,000 dollars. The car dealer says, â€Å"It’s appraised $20,000 dollars. † You agree on $15,000. That’s a capitalist act between consenting adults. That doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with leadership, morality, what’s good for an organization. And that’s right. Although I have t o say that, in some of these cases, these folks who were really committed to doing what was best for their organization and for themselves realized that after digging down, after trying to be creative, after thinking like venture capitalists a little bit, they could go so far and go no further, and they compromised. There’s this Country Western song that says, â€Å"sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. † Sometimes you’re the bug: you stop. But the important word there is the word â€Å"create,† not the word â€Å"compromise. † Because what the best people did was find a way to rethink, to reconfigure a situation, so it didn’t look like zero-sum, I Copyright ? 2002 Page 13 win/you lose. So, there was another way of thinking about the whole thing so that they could go forward. I want to give you an example that’s not a quiet leadership example. It’s a heroic leadership example. And it involves Abraham Lincoln, who was not simply an American hero, but in many ways is in the pantheon of world heroes. In 1858 Lincoln was running for senator, and he would have the same problem when he ran for president. The great problem in America at that time was, should we have slavery in the Northwest Territories? Should the territories be free, or should they have slaves? And Lincoln did not want to take a stand on that issue. In his heart, most people believe, at the time he opposed slavery. But he was an ambitious politician. His best friend said about Lincoln after died that he had a little engine of ambition that would never stop ticking. So, what would Lincoln do? What could he do? If he said he opposed slavery in the Northwest Territories, all the votes in the South would be lost to him in his running for president. If he supported slavery, he would lose the abolitionist vote in the North. Lincoln came up with the following answer. He said, â€Å"I oppose slavery in the Northwest Territories because it is unfair. Who is it unfair to? It is unfair to free white men who may want to migrate to the Northwest Territories to build careers. Why is it unfair to them? Because slavery is unfair economic competition. And free white men (i. e. , the voters I’m seeking) should not have to face that kind of competition. † Now, if we had more time, we could discuss this at some length. I will say, quite plainly though, that had Lincoln not come up with this tactic, which was described as one of the most brilliant pieces of political strategy or propaganda in American history, he would be an obscure, unknown Illinois politician. He could not have been elected otherwise. The Civil War might have turned out differently. What was one country might have been two. You can speculate about when or whether the Emancipation Proclamation would have been issued. What Lincoln did was take what looked like a win/lose, either/or situation and recast it. Let me come back and close off by talking about the â€Å"home of my dreams† case. My hunch is that the vast majority of you in that situation would do something like the following. And this is what the people I’ve run into have actually done. It looks like you’re on the hook. Either you say congratulations or else you say, â€Å"Look, I’ve got to warn you. † Copyright ? 2002 Page 14 In one case I asked somebody point blank, â€Å"What did you do? And he said, â€Å"What I did, I don’t know if it’s the right thing or not, but I said, ‘Look, there are a lot of layoffs now in some of our competing firms, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some here. Are you really sure you want to get that far out on a limb? ’† Now, is that he roism? Of course not. Is it leadership? Well, you’re trying to make a difference in this person’s life. You’re not trying to make the decision for him, and you can’t make the decision for him by telling him what’s going to happen. You’re trying to get him to think a little bit. And often that’s what quiet leaders do. Instead of telling people the answer, they find ways to get other people to think a little bit. It’s creative. It’s a way of finding a little wiggle room. You’re not the hero who’s saving this person, this family. You’re not the corporate hero maintaining the duty of confidentiality. You can judge for yourself. But I take it as a way of imaginatively and quickly, on the spot, recasting the situation. Let me summarize just very briefly. I don’t think quiet leadership is the only way. There’s lots of situations where what needs to be done is clear. And you’ve got to get it done, or you get it done through other people. And I don’t mean to detract for a moment from the great heroes who have made the world a much better place. But I am saying that we need a broader view, and I’m encouraging you to look in your organizations for people who don’t make noise, who you may not have noticed, who tend to operate quietly, behind the scenes, without asking a lot for themselves, but who are the kind of unseen cogs and gears that keep people going. People who, when they face, not a big problem that everybody gets excited about, but an everyday problem, bring to it a little extra effort, a little more care, a little more imagination, a little more analysis. These little brush strokes cumulatively make things a much better place. I’m suggesting you look for them, try to learn from them, and even try to reward them. One quiet leader used a phrase that actually ended up as the cover art in my book; you see those footprints over there on the side. He said what quiet leaders try to do is they try to leave a trace on the beach. And I really like that phrase, because it captures a degree of modesty. We’re not trying to change the world. It captures a degree of realism. The waves and the wind will come and wash away stuff on the beach. But despite that, these folks are determined. They’re tenacious. They look for ways to get the things done that need to be done. So they are willing to leave traces on the beach, even though these are only traces. Put differently, they care about small things. And that’s the final thing I want to say, both about quiet leaders and, as kind of a caution or asterisk about great leaders and the heroic approach: that it tends to distort your view. Copyright ? 2002 Page 15 The last thing I want to put up is a quote from a remarkable but little known American named Bruce Barton. He started a big advertising firm. He ran for Congress. He was a very successful writer at the end of his life on religious subjects. And this is what he said: â€Å"Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, a chance word, a tap on the shoulder, or a penny dropped at a newsstand, I am tempted to think that there are no little things. That, I think, is almost the diametrically opposite view of the folks who say, â€Å"Look on the pedestal. Look at the defining moments. Look at the catalytic events. Look at the big folks in history. † It’s pretty easy, I think, to miss the wisdom that lies behind this view. So, learn from leaders. Use them as models. Use the great leaders to teach yourself, to teach people in organizations, to teach your kids. But, don’t forget the quiet leaders, they matter too. Thank you very much. Copyright ? 2002 Page 16

Dealing with Stress the Genentech Way Case Study

Dealing with Stress the Genentech Way - Case Study Example The company has for many years been recognized by professional bodies for its human resource policies that identifies it as a favorable workplace. This has been because the company prioritizes a balance between its commercial goal and employees’ social ‘well-being’. The company for instance promotes â€Å"creativity and innovation† that encourages its employees to communicate their ideas, even outside the organization, besides accommodating its employees’ diverse ideas (Nelson and Quick, 2010, p. 250). The company’s interactive forums between its human resource and patients also enhance emotional stability while employee benefits promote utility at the workplace. These, together with a conducive environment that balances work and family life conversely benefits the organization by motivating its employees towards achieving Genentech’s objectives such as profitability, efficiency and customer utility (Nelson and Quick, 2010). Diagnosis a nd analysis Distress or ‘eustress’ Genentech’s employees are experiencing ‘eustress’ and not distress. ... the impacts of Genentech’s programs towards employee’s well being The Yerkes-Dodson law that provides for a relationship between employees motivation and performance identifies Genentech’s programs as the factors to the company’s success in the industry. The principle stipulates that employees’ performance is directly proportional to motivational factors to a given limit beyond which further increase in motivational factors leads to a decrease in performance. This rule relates to Genentech’s employee motivational programs through achieved employee utility level and the company’s level of success. Commendable human resource policies that develop emotional stability, a balance between work and family life besides academic support programs for example allows the employees to focus on service delivery (Nelson and Quick, 2010). How the company’s management philosophy and culture sets stage for employees’ well being The managem ent philosophy and culture sets stage for employee well being by providing a favorable social environment for the employees. The organization’s management philosophy that stipulates â€Å"causal intensity† offers employees a level of freedom towards well being (Nelson and Quick, 2010, p. 250). A level of informality in the organization for instance facilitates informal communication towards collaboration for innovation, a factor that further promotes employees satisfaction. Informality also breaks monotony that could be a detriment to employees’ well being through boredom and burning out. Similarly, a culture where every employee feels recognized and appreciated promotes employees sense of belonging towards social well being. The organization achieves this through providing an environment for idea generation among employees and

Quan-Haase Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Quan-Haase - Essay Example This causes an elimination of the poor in accessing the learning facilities to be at par with the rich. With the introduction of m-Learning, there can be a high possibility of reduced cost of learning. This can also ease the access of the learning materials over the phones. It is unfortunate that the number of people who can afford such phones is limited. This automatically eliminates the less privileged. Quan-Haase is very clear on the issues that affect the effectiveness of technology-enhanced learning in developing countries – teachers, time, classrooms, books, and money continue to be significant issues. Although technological developments aim at extended and equitable opportunities extending to poor and disadvantaged populations, lack of trained teachers, negative attitude over distance learning, inadequate technology and educational infrastructure and cultural and social restrictions imposed to women and girls, have increased the gap that exist between the poor and the rich, urban and rural, and between genders. The issues addressed in the paper make it appropriate especially to the developing countries. It can be used to plan for strategies to curb the most contagious issues in order to benefit all levels of citizens equally in the developing

Evaluation of the Queens Head Hotel Strategy Essay

Evaluation of the Queens Head Hotel Strategy - Essay Example Future recommendations for food and beverage operation will be provided and then advice Cullum about converting the other hotel restaurants in the group to a Giuseppe’s using the situation analysis as well as academic references to support the findings. Queen Head generates high revenue from providing food and beverage services to their customers. O’fallon and Rutherford (2011) noted that food and beverage is a term that is used in the hospitality industry to describe items in banquets and outside catering services. The department of food and beverage consists of kitchens, internal and external catering, restaurants, room service, and internal and external banqueting. The hotel requires a huge quantity of various staff members to cater to the needs and services of the customers outside and inside the hotel in order to facilitate the smooth running of the business. Developing a positive image on Facebook and other social media activities strengthens the food and beverage operations, as they are able to target many customers especially the middle-aged who frequently need to meet friends and hang out in the best restaurants. Giles-Gash family who operates about ten ventures in Southwestern part of England own Queens Head hotel. The hotel has a 50-cover restaurant, 50 bedrooms, a leisure complex, and a bar. Cullum is the younger son of the Giles-Gash who joined the business after completing his hospitality degree. Strianese et al. (2012) noted that the hotel provides a spectacular setting with its 16th Century fireplaces and bespoke chandeliers. They have a live performance venue where their customers can dance all night during the DJ nights. Cullum made a lot of money after taking over Giuseppe’s businesses as lots of profits were made during the first few months when the restaurant was new and it developed loyal customers during that period hence hope for more productivity. Hill et al. (2010) defined the trading position as the number of securities borrowed or owned by dealers or individuals. Queens Heads mainly deals with the hotel and restaurant business where they provide different traditional British cuisines to their customers and hold various events such as weddings and funeral teas.  

Conversation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Conversation - Essay Example Such a practice invariably ends with the death of the fox and oftentimes severe physical injury to the terrier due to the wounds that the fox has inflicted upon it as an act of self defense and being cornered. Phyllis Daugherty, the author of the newspaper article that discusses this practice proffers to the reader that the government of Ireland is currently considering legislation that would ban the practice of the â€Å"digout† itself; however, such legislation would have no effect on the continued prevalence of fox hunting as such (Aaltola 395). With regards to how this particular news article would relate to Pollan’s analysis that we have read, this author would have to connect it to one of the primary points that Pollan made concerning animal rights. As Pollan’s article progresses, he develops a rhythmic analysis of animal rights that uses a type of Boolean logic to draw the reader in to understanding the complexities of the given viewpoints. Due to the fact that these viewpoints deal with such issues as morality, ethics, the further definition of animal welfare/fair treatment, and rights, Pollan incorporates metaphorical parallels to other â€Å"rights† issues that have preceded animal rights in order to more fully develop and nuance his approach (Pollan 59). In order to understand Pollan’s view on the particular process as it relates to the fox hunt and the practice of the â€Å"digout† one must first broach the topic of what is meant by the term â€Å"equality† within the given news article that has been selected. The given news article expressly connects the ideas put forward by Pollan and Singer; ethically humans have responsibilities. Therefore, what one determines to make of these responsibilities therefore becomes the crux of the matter (Singer 11). Says the news article, â€Å"Fox  hunting  is a ‘blood sport,’ masked as an elite activity. Introduced in the 16th Century in the U.K.,   fox  hunting  is still popular in Ireland.  Ã‚  Fox  hunting  involves the tracking, chasing and killing of a helpless, terrorized fox hounded for hours until exhaustion delivers  it to the waiting dogs, to be killed in a frenzy of biting and savagery† (Daugherty 1). Regardless of how one feels about the issues of animal rights, the Daugherty article appeals to the dignity of life as a means to end such savage practices in the same way that Pollan and Singer evoke the higher ethical principles of overall equality and the nonsensical nature of animal cruelty. In this way, although the topics that Daugherty, Singer, and Pollan discuss are divergent, they all hinge on the belief that humans possess an innate responsibility towards other animals. Although Singer and Pollan would take this idea of responsibility further, Daugherty assumes that at the very least, this concept applies to lack of cruelty. Pollan discusses this idea of responsibility within the first tw o pages of his analysis and begins to encourage the reader to take a position as to how they stand upon this principle. Likewise, if one pursues the basis that equality is a moral ideal that should be ascribed to all things equally, there is but one logical end for the reader. Pollan describes such a process by defining that equality, as it relates to humans, does not mean that all people are equally intelligent; instead, he argues through the logic of Peter Singer that the idea of equality

Life Philosophy. What is My Philosophy How Do I Live My Life Essay

Life Philosophy. What is My Philosophy How Do I Live My Life - Essay Example In that sense, our life will continue even after our death; but where and how? Socrates is believed to be the first philosopher who tried to find the meaning of life. He tried to explain the life in terms of a person’s commitment towards the state. Even though he had not written anything; he transferred all his knowledge and opinions about life to his disciples or students. Plato, one of the prominent students of Socrates, was responsible for spreading the thoughts of Socrates to the external world. Each and every person has a life philosophy. It will start from the birth and will end with death. Life philosophy of a person can change periodically based on his/ her life experiences and the knowledge he acquires from the world. In this paper I briefly explain my life philosophy until now with respect to the arguments of Socrates. I have started to think something about life when I was around eight years old. From that period onwards, I started to listen, the opinions of my pare nts, priests and other people about the meaning of life. I had lot of doubts at that period since all these people talked about good and evil. They taught me that only good people will get salvation whereas bad people will go to hell. I was very much afraid of my life at that period. My parents told me that the life in hell is a miserable one whereas the life in heaven is an eternal one and also enjoyable. I never liked the idea of going to hell because of the miseries waiting for me there and decided to make a conscious effort to go to heaven. But, it was difficult for me to strictly adhere with the norms for getting salvation. I found it extremely difficult to handle the pressure going in the routes to heaven. My worries about life continued till I became around 15 years of age. From that period onwards I started to enjoy my life and had given less importance to the norms of a moral life. I think both my physical and psychological needs started to change drastically during this pe riod which prevented me from opting for a moral life. I started to neglect the moral views about life and looked only at the materialistic aspects of life. I thought life is for enjoyment and there is no pint in worrying about the future life. I thought the present life is the important one and the creator will manage our future life. I thought we came to this world unknowingly and the creator is responsible for sending us here and it is his responsibility to make necessary arrangements for our future as we have no control over our life. But, from 18 years onwards, my life philosophies again started to change mainly because of my learning about Socrates and his teachings through Plato. I was very much attracted by the way in which Socrates met his death. Even when his life was in jeopardy, he never tried anything to rescue it. He never gave up his views and philosophies about life. He has given less importance to his personal life and gave more importance to the wellbeing of the nat ion. He never considered what other people said about life and argued that what other people will say clearly doesn't matter and only the opinion that counts is not that of the majority of people generally, but rather that of the one individual who truly knows (Socrates: Philosophical Life). The above teaching of Socrates has influenced me a lot. I have realized that life is precious to all and it should be lived as per our own ideas and knowledge rather than the ideas of others. Moreover, I have realized that truth has a significant role in life and it is impossible for a society or nation to progress using false means. The argument of Socrates that the truth alone deserves to be the basis for decisions about human action has influenced me

The influence of leadership of developing effective life-long learning Essay

The influence of leadership of developing effective life-long learning experience for me - Essay Example In addition, the unit serves as a major basis for me to build new skills, (the most important being leadership skill) that other modules/units in my degree program may not have given me the opportunity to develop. For instance, I was able to identify a leader whom I admire, the themes/leadership qualities that enabled the leader to attain outstanding success in this area of endeavour and how I can emulate those qualities in my own personal development. I wish to evaluate how directly and indirectly their lives have influenced my circumstances as well as personality.In furtherance of the skills developed, I am able to adopt a critical thinking approach to several areas of my life, reflecting and constantly assessing my life to ensure continuous development/growth. I am able to challenge myself as an individual as well as my intellect and nurture my inbuilt abilities to bring out the leader in me.In the light of my continuous wish to excel in life, it is very important to state my back ground as well as early influences in life that induced a source of motivation in me to work hard in order to accomplish tasks towards success. My name is Mukaila Adegoke, born on 15th February 1962 in Iwo, the Osun State of Nigeria. This was the era when President John F Kennedy established his office as 35th president of the USA and gave a major input in the history of civil rights. President John F Kennedy pressurized the government authorities and organizations to provide work for African Americans equivalent to Britain Civil Service.

Comparing and contrasting three poems that portray the yearning to belong Essay Example for Free

Comparing and contrasting three poems that portray the yearning to belong Essay We all long to be a part of something and to feel accepted, irrespective of age, culture and society. Similarly, Stephen Spenders poem, My Parents kept Me from Children who were Rough, Moniza Alvis An Unknown Girl and Phyllis McCormacks Crabbit Old Woman talk about how each of the poets long to be a part of a certain society or culture, and this longing outlines the underlying theme across all three poems. My Parents kept Me from Children who were Rough is about childhood bullying and regret. The narrator experiences bullying at a young age and I sense a feeling of regret as the poet wished he could be a part of the group of rough boys. I get the impression that the narrator, now at his adult stage, feels that he did not make the most of his childhood, and this was perhaps due to class differentials. Whereas, Moniza Alvis poem reveals how the narrator had left her hometown at a young stage and when she returns, she yearns to be a part of it. I believe she finds it difficult to reconcile her roots with her foreign lifestyle and falls under the dilemma where she is forced to choose one life, despite her strong desire for both. We get a contrasting idea in Crabbit Old Woman, as it is a plea to break free from the stereotypical image of old people. The old woman feels that she is being judged unfairly because her body has crumbled. She expresses how her soul remains intact, and would like the nurses to realize that her battered heart swells with undiscovered vivacity. All the three poems have an underlying theme of belonging. My parents is about how the narrator longed to fit in with the group of bullies. The world being so brutal, made growing up hard for the narrator. At a young age, the narrator probably needed to feel wanted and important and hence, wanted to be part of a group. There are many other significant themes present, such as a theme of childhood bullying, as the narrator fears the boys who had muscles like irons. A theme of regret, coupled with loneliness is distinguished, as the poet longed to forgive the bullies, but never had the chance. The constant use of I and Me tells the readers how the poet was lonesome. Therefore, I get the impression that the poem is written based on a bitter childhood memory. I feel sorry for the poet as he was made fun of for his lisp and the bullies salt-coarse pointing, which seems to have affected the poets life greatly, even throughout his adult phase. Similarly, in An unknown girl, the poet wants to belong to her native community, which she once left behind. There is a theme of admiration, as her fascination for the evening bazaar studded with neon is clearly depicted. In addition to that, a theme of self-identity is found, as the poet is desperately trying to find herself through her roots. She is unknown to herself. Whereas, the narrator in Crabbit Old Woman wants to belong in a world and society untouched by the evils of stereotype. She would like to feel accepted and gain the same respect as everybody else. She hopes the nurses would include her in their world, and would look beyond her physical inabilities, in order to admire and recognise the beautiful life she has lived and experienced. Alongside that central theme, a great deal of regret is conveyed, as the narrator immensely resents the way she is stereotyped, and hopes to prove that she is still young at heart. There is also a nostalgic sensation in the poem, as the narrator indulges in reminisces about her past experiences and life stages. I believe that the titles of each poem represent the reason for the narrators inability to belong. My Parents kept Me from Children who were Rough suggests how the poet blames his parents for not being able to bask in the pleasures the bullies experienced, as they were very protective of him. I get the impression that he envied the other childrens freedom, in contrast to his restricted life enforced upon him. On the other hand, the title An Unknown Girl has a double meaning as it could refer to the actual girl hennaing the poets hand or it may refer to the poet itself. The poet finds this culture overwhelming yet admires it, and she strongly craves to be a part of it. Moreover, the title Crabbit Old Woman itself illustrates the way the old woman is perceived by the nurses. This stereotypical image is what prevents the nurses from exploring the real old woman and prevents her from belonging into their world. Structure aids a reader to visualise a poem and the free verse structure in An Unknown Girl expresses the narrators exploration of thought and conveys her dream-like admiration. The lack of pauses in the poem is successful, as these would break the connection between the narrator and the bazaar. I felt the layout of the poem was particularly striking, and this furthermore made me realize that it could symbolize the pretty henna, which is described as icing to us, enhancing its graceful manner. Similarly, the use of enjambment in Crabbit Old Woman depicts to the reader the constant running of thoughts and memories of the various stages of life of the old woman. This creates a fast pace coupled with a constant rhyme and free flowing rhythm, which contrasts with the impression the nurses have of old people being slow. I believe the poet chose to use a fast pace and rhyme, to further emphasis that point. Moreover, I feel the use of three structured stanzas with four lines each in My parents made me realize how the narrator was always forced to follow his parents rules and hence, control himself from many things. As a child, one is helpless in front of his or her parents decisions and therefore, I feel as if the author felt caged. I sometimes feel obligated to my parents decisions and this often aggravates me, hence I can understand the underlying tone of anger and blame placed upon the parents in this poem. The use of effective language by the poets helps suggest the ideas of the poems. The constant use of similes in My Parents show the childs admiration and interest for the bullies; as muscles like iron suggests strength and power, which are qualities that generally excite young boys. Torn Clothes reveal class differentiation and this helped justify the reason why the parents did not want the narrator to be a part of the bullies. On the contrary, Moniza Alvi uses striking imagery in her poem, as she paints a wonderful metaphoric image in our minds depicting her state of longing to be a part of this culture. The way the narrator will lean across a country [India] with my hands outstretched longing for the unknown girl in the neon bazaar is a very powerful image. I can almost imagine an anxious woman holding out her arms, in hope to receive her roots; it gives me the idea that the narrator is practically begging for this connection with her hometown. Colours leave the street float up in balloons is another influential metaphoric image. This symbolizes how the poet is trying to reach out for something [her roots], but it is not within her grasp. Moreover, the constant repetition of an unknown girl is hennaing my hand gives me the impression that the poet needs to constantly remind herself that she connects with this place; showing her desperation to remain connected to her roots. I chose these poems as I felt I could relate to them very well. I can understand Alvis situation, as I myself am away from my country of origin and often I find myself indulging in a more foreign culture, yet many a times I get nostalgic about the place I come from, despite feeling detached and distant from it. In addition, I think I could share my thoughts and feelings very well with My parents as it is about a young adult, just like me. Fitting in and being part of a group of children is very vital and therefore, I solemnly sympathize with the narrator. Lastly, I think Crabbit Old Woman deals with a great problem of stereotypical images, which are present in all works of life. It was inspiring to see the old woman standing up against these stereotypical images created by society. The poem made me to realize that I need to offer more respect and admiration for the older generation. All the three poems are written in a unique style and each one conveys very deep issues, in accordance with the universal theme of belonging. All the poets were very much successful in conveying their ideas and they were able to create a lasting impact upon the readers.

Research and Account Essay Example for Free

Research and Account Essay Report One: Old Deanery care home One staff member has been sacked and seven suspended from one of Englands largest care homes after an undercover probe by BBC Panorama found poor care. The filming at the Old Deanery in Essex showed some residents being taunted, roughly handled and one was slapped. The home said it was shocked and saddened by the allegations. Care minister Norman Lamb described the images as absolutely disgusting and said there could be a role for the use of CCTV in care homes. Care Quality Commission figures seen by the BBC show over a third of homes that received warning notices since 2011 still do not meet basic standards. Allegations of poor care and mistreatment at the 93-bed home in Braintree, where residents pay roughly  £700 per week, were first raised by 11 whistle-blowers in August 2012. see more:identify reports into serious failures Essex County Council put it on special measures for three months until concerns were addressed. But secret filming by Panoramas undercover reporter over 36 shifts found many of the same sorts of issues reported a year earlier, including: a woman slapped by a care worker who had previously been complained about for her poor attitude towards residents the same woman, who has dementia and is partially paralysed after a stroke, was also repeatedly mocked and taunted by other care workers cries for assistance from a resident suffering a terminal illness ignored as she sought help for the toilet, and her call bell for assistance left unplugged on one occasion a resident bed-ridden with a chronic illness left lying in his own excrement after two care workers turned off his call bell without assisting him Report Two: Winterbourne view care home The 11 defendants – nine support workers and two nurses – admitted 38 charges of either neglect or ill-treatment of five people with severe learning difficulties after being secretly recorded by a reporter for the BBCs Panorama programme They were filmed slapping extremely vulnerable residents, soaking them in water, trapping them under chairs, taunting and swearing at them, pulling their hair and poking their eyes. Whistle-blower Terry Bryan,  a former nurse at the home, contacted the BBC after his warnings were ignored by Castlebeck Ltd, which owned the hospital, and care watchdogs. Hours of graphic footage recorded during a five-week, undercover BBC investigation in February and March last year, showed one support worker, Wayne Rogers, telling a resident: Do you want me to get a cheese grater and grate your face off? Do you want me to turn you into a giant pepperoni? Rogers slapped another resident across the cheek, saying: Do you want a scrap? Do you want a fight? Go on and I will bite your bloody face off. His colleague Alison Dove was recorded saying a resident loved pain, then saying to the resident: Simone, come here and Ill punch your face. Dove threatened another resident when she broke a window in the lounge with a chair. She was recorded snarling: Listen, in future Im going to let you sit on the fucking floor, cos you dont deserve a chair. On another occasion, Dove, Graham Doyle and Holly Draper restrained a female resident as a fourth member of staff, Sookalingum Appoo, forced a paracetamol tablet into her mouth. Later, during the same incident, Doyle put on a mock-German accent and, mimicking a Nazi guard, slapped the resident over the head with his gloves shouting: Nein, nein, nein, nein. The Panorama investigation, which was screened in May 2011, led to a serious case review two months later, which criticised Darlington-based Castlebeck Ltd for putting profits before humanity. These reports show that safeguarding of the individuals involved should have been enforced. The failings to do with this incident could have been due to the fact that the care homes were: under staffed over worked language barriers not had up-to-date training trained in dementia a better approach to safeguarding across agencies a better system for flagging concerns and referrals better information sharing A most recent report from CQC on 1st April 2014 shows  that overall, providing care, treatment and support that meets peoples needs and staffing, required improvement. The Old Deanery also had a CQC report from June 2012 which showed staffing problems and when residents pressed their bells in their rooms, they were waiting a long time until they were attended to. This shows that these issues were not addressed. Also the staff employed at The Old Deanery care home ignored or failed to recognise the individuals rights and need for protection. There was poor communication, planning, coordination and thoughtlessness which left each individual in an abusive and dangerous situation. The government review found as well as reports from the police, the CQC and the local NHS drew the following conclusions, to Winterbourne Views case: Patients stayed at winerbourne view for too long and were too far from home- the average length of stay was 19 months. Almost half of patients were more than 40 miles away from, where their family or primary careers lived. There was extremely high rate of physical intervention- well over 500 reported cases of restraint in a fifteen month period. Multiple agencies failed to pick up on key warning signs-nearly 150 separate incidents- including AE visits by patients,police attendance at the hospital, and safeguarding concerns reported to the local council- which could and should have raised the alarm. There was clear management failure at the hospital- with no registered manager in place, substandard recruitment processes and limited staff training. A closed and punitive culture had developed- families and other visitors were not allowed access to the top floor wards and patient bedrooms, offering little chance for outsiders to see daily routines at the hospital.