LinkedIn

Change This – The Promise of Entrepreneurship

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

We are made to believe that when it comes to business success, bigger is always better. In our super-sized, consumption-oriented culture, not even small business is exempt from the pressure to grow for growth’s sake. We fixate on top-line revenue growth and increasing numbers of employees and locations. We pepper entrepreneurs with questions such as, ‘What are your plans for expansion? What’s next? How many cities will you go to?’ instead of asking what their goals are or why they started their business in the first place. When talk about growth we focus on speed, not sustainability. When we talk about success we focus on size, not satisfaction.

via Change This – The Promise of Entrepreneurship.

From the Change This website:

Adelaide Lancaster is the co-founder of In Good Company, a community, business learning center and coworking space for women entrepreneurs in Manhattan. She is a small business expert and has advised thousands of women entrepreneurs on how to create businesses that meet their needs and keep them satisfied over time. She earned two graduate degrees in psychology from Columbia University and her undergraduate degree from Colgate University. ingoodcompany.com

GYL here – this manifesto really hit home for me.  I am 5.5 years down the Path and I would have to say the effort and sacrifice is worth it.  So if you’re on your Path or if you are not and considering getting on your own Path, you ought to read this.  The link takes you to the Change This website.  Once there you can download a PDF of the manifesto.

 

 

Facebook Is Making Us Miserable – Harvard Business Review

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

Facebook is negatively affecting what psychology Professor Jeffrey Parker refers to as “the closeness properties of friendship.”

via Facebook Is Making Us Miserable – Daniel Gulati – Harvard Business Review.

Please note I am not the author of the HBR blog article so please don’t shoot the messenger.  I’m neither a huge fan nor harsh critic of what the pundits term as “the dominant communication platform of the future”.  I simply don’t use Facebook a lot.  I don’t have a smart phone.  I have a dumb phone.  I don’t use an iPad.  I use an old-fashioned laptop if necessary.

If anyone wishes to communicate with me, email or phone works just fine thank you.

Or we could meet in person!

 

Bob MacDonald on What’s So Hard about Doing the Right Thing?

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

In the abstract it is easy to say that doing the right thing is – at the very least – reporting the improper activity. But what if your report seems to be ignored? Are you off the hook and have no further responsibility? Even worse, if you do report it and your boss survives with nothing more than a reprimand, what might this do to your personal well-being and your future with the company? In theory, of course, you could quit your job and find another; but in this economy, is that possible? Is now the right time to put you and your family’s financial future at risk? You could go halfway and say nothing while you look for another job, but is that the right thing to do?  This type of enigma is not an academic exercise. Anyone who has ever been in the business world, with ambitions to be successful and rise up the pyramid and support a family knows this type situation – and a wide variety of others – is more reality than theory. The real questions are: At what point are you willing to dilute or even trade in “doing the right thing,” to protect your career by “going along to get along”? At what point do you break and become willing to rationalize the elements of “doing the right thing?”

via What’s So Hard about Doing the Right Thing?.

Bob’s right.  Read his entire blog post to understand why it is not easy to do the right thing.  Thanks Bob and please keep writing and sharing.

Prostate-Cancer Screening — What the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Left Out — NEJM

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

These approaches to managing serial PSA levels reflect either a fundamental misunderstanding of — or an unwillingness to acknowledge — PSA’s limitations as a marker for early prostate cancer. Observational studies show clearly that PSA levels fluctuate spontaneously, moving above or below whatever threshold clinicians deem worrisome. In addition, random biopsies can detect prostate cancer in 12% of men with PSA levels below 2 ng per milliliter and in 25% of men with levels between 2.1 and 4.0 ng per milliliter4; the latter figure approximates the prevalence often reported for men with levels between 4.0 and 10.0 ng per milliliter. When the PSA goes up — for example, from 3.0 to 4.0 ng per milliliter — and triggers a biopsy that reveals cancer, clinicians refer to “PSA-detected cancer.” But many of these cancers are not really detected by PSA screening; they are incidental findings against a background of randomly fluctuating PSA levels and an age-related increase in prostate-cancer incidence.

via Prostate-Cancer Screening — What the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Left Out — NEJM.

Stratifying Risk — The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and Prostate-Cancer Screening — NEJM.

I realize today is the day after Thanksgiving and I’m working.  But medicine never stops and a life underwriter has to do what a life underwriter does on her day off.  Read medical journals!  Check out these articles from NEJM.  Time to change our PSA underwriting guidelines?  I think so.  Call me if you need help with this.  I have a mortgage, one undergraduate, and one medical student to support.

Speaking of the medical student I was trapped this Thanksgiving in the car and listened to over five hours of lectures on neurology and hematology during the ride.  To tell the truth, I enjoyed the lectures.

Medicine never takes a day off nor do expert life underwriters.