Scientific evidence clearly shows that global temperatures are rising, and weather patterns are changing. Evidence is also clear that climatic changes – including extreme changes – have been present on our planet for millions of years.While this scientific evidence is widely accepted, some are skeptical about the degree of human responsibility for our changing climate, arguing that there is no need to change our energy use to the detriment of the economy – because the climate change we are currently experiencing is a natural phenomenon, not a human-caused phenomenon. This program poses questions for debate and discussion in the classroom surrounding climate change. It presents expert opinions, statistics and historical references presenting two sides of the story, and ultimately asks us, how worried should we be?
Grade levels: Adult
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Ethics and Social Responsibility in Management
An increasing trend in businesses today is to prove to stakeholders it operates as a good corporate citizen. In order to achieve this, businesses are developing key policies and practices centering around business ethics and socially responsible management. This program explores the practical ways organizations are integrating business ethics and social responsibility into all aspects of its operations. In addition it examines the structure and purpose of the Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) as a means of benchmarking corporate responsibility in Australia.
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We’re All Different: Diversity in the Workplace
Today’s workforce is changing. Coworkers are now more likely to come from other countries, or from different cultural or ethnic backgrounds. Many of us find ourselves working side-by-side with others who are not just like ourselves. We’re all human, so friction is inevitable. But it is particularly counterproductive when conflict is blamed on difference rather than on workplace issues that can resolved through open communication. The program teaches the value of keeping an open mind, focusing on common goals, and accepting each other for who we are.
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The Art of Customer Service
Excellence in customer service boils down to three basic ideas: give customers the attention they want, the respect they deserve, and the time to answer their questions and take care of their needs. This newly revised program uses humorous scenes mixed in with first-person responses to tell viewers what customers really want. Attention, Respect and Time. It seems so simple, yet today’s customers generally feel that service has gotten worse. Use this show to bring the message home to your employees and make it stick: customer service is an ART.
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Leveraging the Spotlight of Leadership: What Every Leader Should Know
Managers and executives sit in a natural spotlight because of their leadership role. Professor Conger describes this spotlight-both the pros and the cons-and explains how to sue its power to set direction, lead your people and guide their decision making. He explains four specific techniques: Use story telling to emphasize your focus and leave a lasting impression, Guide with simple memorable rules called the “must dos”, Set standards through modeling and Signal critical shifts in priorities through “memorable moments”.
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The Best Service Is No Service
Pressures to reduce costs and increase customer loyalty are greater than ever. Bill Price argues that the best place to start is by eliminating the need for customer service. This game-changing approach treats service as a data point of dysfunction since it is almost always needed either to fix mistakes or resolve customer confusion. Eliminating the need for service, therefore, is the best way to satisfy the vast majority of customers.
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Drive Business Performance
With examples from Fortune 500 companies, Aziza and Fitts provide a six-stage approach for developing a culture of performance, including increasing visibility into operations, moving away from a gut feel to more data-driven decision-making, and articulating and incenting future success. At each stage, organizations must also exercise three critical capabilities: monitoring operations, analyzing data against best practices, and planning for success.
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Executing Your Strategy: How to Break It Down and Get It Done
Business failures occur when leaders fail-to align an organization with its strategy, to break down plans into doable chunks, or to ensure that project leaders get needed resources and apply them in priority order. Dr. Levitt emphasizes the critical need to revise your strategic portfolio to fit the demands of a dynamic environment. He details the imperatives that enable you to do the right projects, and do these products rights” Clarify and communicate purpose, Align structure and culture with strategy, Create clear goals and metrics and Move outputs effectively into operations.
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Leaving Microsoft to Change the World
While John Wood was a top executive at Microsoft, he made a life-changing decision to found Room to Read, a non-profit organization which now provides educational access to 1.3 million children in developing nations through its 400 schools and 5,000 Reading Rooms. What John brought to this organization was a vision for scalable solutions to world problems, an intense focus on results, and an ability to attract a high-level group of employees, volunteers and investors.
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Strategy by Design
Successful innovations must be desirable to consumers, technically feasible, and viable from a business point of view. But how do you meet these requirements? Tim Brown advocates using the three stages of “design thinking”: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. For inspiration, innovators must look at the world, performing research that is generative rather than evaluative and using empathy to understand consumer needs. For ideation, they can gain insight by finding analogous situations or studying extreme users. Implementation involved early prototyping and realistic testing. Then for the ultimate test: does it tell a story? If a narrative can be developed around an innovation, that’s when it has the best chance of taking off.