Travels etc.

Meetings are important part of the business activity. Our basic need to communicate is topped by necessity to deliver meaningful results at workplace. As usual though reality is not as rosy as the ideal that many of us trying to achieve with meetings. What is a good work-related pastime for one is at the same moment a time wasting and useless activity to another. This contradiction is coming from a few factors (among other things): 1.     Core difference in perception of meetings between different levels of workplace hierarchy or among committee/board members 2.     Meeting audiences and agendas 3.     Involvement and focus level of participants during the meetings Therefore usually instead of being an effective business or private processing tool, meetings become the opposite. There is an opportunity to adjust existing practices to meet new expectations of the work related activities to be more productive and fun....

While reading some paperwork regarding International Tax Law subject following statement drew my attention: "The complexity of the international tax rules makes it nearly impossible to diffuse the public sensibility about the issues." It is from the speech "Sense and Sensibility: The Policy and Politics of BEPS" by Manal S. Corwin.  The full text can be found here: https://www.kpmg-institutes.com/content/dam/kpmg/taxwatch/pdf/2014/beps-corwin-tillinghast-tn-100614.pdf That thought is not unique to tax law. In my experience of more than 3 years doing what I call “applied dispute resolution” which correlates with law research and paralegal activities I see that in any area of law, social matters, environmental, humanities, economics and others we can witness increasing level of challenges that our society face. Let’s take as an example The Law. Carefully crafted legal framework is one of the essentials of contemporary society. However ...

There is usually two distinct perspectives on multi-tasking: 1. Multitasking is counterproductive. We get distracted by multiple tasks that all get our way and fight for our scarce attention, time and resources. This leads to a common fallacy that if you do multiple activities “at a time” you are not doing good work in any of those. 2. Multitasking is a way of getting many things done in a short period of time or in a long run. Indeed it can be either a disaster or a great helper depending on how it is used and practiced. Most recent research shows that we don’t do multiple tasks purely in parallel or simultaneously. That means we don’t purely multi-task, but switch between tasks and execute them one at a time, but by spending very small timeframes on each task. A good example from the history is a story about Julius Caesar capabilities in that area. Plutarch writes, “Caesar disciplined himself so far as to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directi...

We all have probably seen on the Web pictures which may look like the following: It implies that if someone quotes to a customer low (or lower than average, I presume) price for the services or products it necessary means low/lower quality of the services or products provided. This is very interesting assumption and I had a short conversation a while ago on Twitter with another SharePoint specialist about it: Original Bjørn's article should be here http://t.co/36brwYq4Kf A study in Journal of Consumer Research http://www.jstor.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1351717003127/DevalRelease.pdf in regards to the subject clearly shows: '" Consumers rarely have complete information and use various strategies to fill the gaps in their knowledge as they consider and choose products. One of these strategies involves using naive theories : informal, common sense, explanations that consumers use to make sense of their environment. For example, consumers may believe th...

Have read an ambiguous article today about " Young People in the UK to Choose Between Poverty and Debt ". What is apparent, there are socio-economical issues that the UK people would like to resolve: growing unemployment growing poverty young people sitting on welfare payments competition from skilled people from other countries The initiative David Cameron announced sounds very interesting, especially in it's part where jobless "would have to accept mandatory 'community work'" if failing to find employment within reasonable timeframe. I would like to highlight some failing points in the article that are presenting the initiative as "predictably vindictive" and with permission from a reader to provide advice to "young" persons like me. One of the complaints is low level of payment for apprenticeship and for young men and women who just finished studies. This claim is based on presumption that every business owner (and...

Interesting article regarding increasing childcare prices in Australia: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/06/22/rocketing-childcare-fees-sees-parents-lose-60-salary In my opinion, the explanation by principal researcher of rising prices is not all valid. I agree with lack of supply though. This is due to following reasons: Too much regulation and red-tape before a childcare facility can start operating. This is reasonable, because not everybody should be allowed to open a childcare facility.  High wages that childcare centres have to pay to a high number of employees. It's not high salary that each childcare worker receives - in reality it's indeed opposite. There is a requirement that children per teacher ratio should be 4 or 5. Therefore many teachers are required.  High rent.  I accept the items 1 & 2, because it's is valid to keep the regulations high and keep proper basic childcare at a good level of compliance. However "high standards...

Have got an interesting read this morning -  America's young workers: Destined for failure? In regards to the education and "The obvious solution is for university, community college, and industry leaders to get together and design the coursework and the on-the-job experiences young workers need to be productive, learn, grow, and gain access to better and higher paying jobs.", I see a couple of issues here: 1. Current education system is still mentally a centuries old master-apprentice type of concept. At the times when it was relevant and apprenticeship may take years to spend on learning the certain trade the trade wouldn't change much and after somebody finishes the studies the trade would still be the same for the lifetime of the person or even several generations. This system just simply doesn't cope effectively with our modern challenges of industries appearing and disappearing and older traditional occupations paying less and less to their practitio...

Some interesting ideas from the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith regarding big capital: "The trade of a joint-stock company is always managed by a court of directors. This court, indeed, is frequently subject, in many respects, to the control of a general court of proprietors. But the greater part of these proprietors seldom pretend to understand any thing of the business of the company ; and when the spirit of faction happens not to prevail among them, give themselves no trouble about it , but receive contentedly such halfyearly or yearly dividend as the directors think proper to make to them." "The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own , it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not ...

Not long ago I published an article  Economic Lessons - Consumer Influence on Price  with an intent to show that not everywhere rules of supply and demand work as per the textbooks and as per wishes of some people. I have discussed this topic with many people and majority seem to still believe in supply-demand mantra. Today I stumbled upon the article by BT Financial Group -  4 surprising facts about the property market : "Supply and demand pricing rules don’t always work with property".

Have read the article  The Collapse of Big Law: A Cautionary Tale for Big Med In my opinion it is all logical. When instead of thinking about health (or law, or education) as a goal, but of money as a goal - this is a natural consequence. If everybody else around is focused on maximizing the profits why lawyers, teachers or medics should be exceptional? They are part of the society.

From time to time an opinion comes up regarding state deficits, national debts etc. Here's the insight on how it is relevant and whether it does influence wealth of the country or not: "The balance of produce and consumption may be constantly in favour of a nation, though what is called the balance of trade be generally against it. A nation may import to a greater value than it exports for half a century, perhaps, together; the gold and silver which comes into it during all this time, may be all immediately sent out of it; its circulating coin may gradually decay, different sorts of paper money being substituted in its place, and even the debts, too, which it contracts in the principal nations with whom it deals, may be gradually increasing; and yet its real wealth, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its lands and labour, may, during the same period, have been increasing in a much greater proportion. The state of our North American colonies, and of the trade ...

We have not long ago discussed some aspects of sociology. There is an opinion that theories of 17-19th centuries are not applicable today - in the 21st century. However as I am reading Adam Smith at the moment, here's quite an interesting quote: "In every country it always is, and must be, the interest of the great body of the people, to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest . The proposition is so very manifest, that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people . As it is the interest of the freemen of a corporation to hinder the rest of the inhabitants from employing any workmen but themselves; so it is the interest of the merchants and manufacturers of every country to secure to themselves the monopoly o...

From time to time the question of money comes up in conversation. Many people tend to think that money can increase wealth or to help to resolve many issues relating to health, starvation and education. However, there is an interesting quote from the 17th century: "It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove, that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money, no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it. It is not because wealth consists more essentially in money than in goods, that the merchant finds it generally more easy to buy goods with money, than to buy money with goods; but because money is the known and established instrument of commerce, for which every thing is readily given in exchange, but which is not always with equal readiness to be got in...

Have been reflecting on some economy principles and rules for a while and here's what still doesn't came through to me in regard to Supply and Demand equilibrium and price results: How do consumers influence the price? Say when we come to the grocery store or a super market we don't bargain, right? Also with big purchases like furniture, expensive electronics, cars or real-estate we don't do many of those frequently enough to influence the price. There is another part of economy - B2B  where "consumer" or one side of the relationship sometimes can influence the price and sometimes can't. Very often in case of businesses the procurement decisions are not made by one person and not always fair or economically efficient.  Or I am missing something here? I just thought the Demand part of this system should "belong" to the consumer, hence the idea that the buyer should influence the equilibrium somehow. However, to me usually the consumer has ...

Battle over number of women in senior roles in business and government: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/business-council-women-on-boards Climate change and related issues: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-claims-are-exaggerated-john-howard-rejects-predictions-of-global-warming-catastrophe-20131106-2wzza.html http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-06/howard-says-helping-people-out-of-poverty-more-important-than-c/5072162 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/climate-change-spruikers-religious-zealots-howard/story-e6frg6xf-1226753837614 http://spectator01.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/11/6/politics/howard-downplays-climate-change http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/climate-change-exaggerated-howard-says/story-fnihsg6t-1226753869345 http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national-news/tony-abbott-ducks-questions-on-howard-climate-speech-4899109.html http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/why-is-h...