Fundamental of Communications
To improve communications, work not on the utterer but recipient.
It is the recipient who communicates. Unless there is someone who hears, there is no communication. There is only noise. One can perceive only what one is capable of perceiving. One can communicate only in the recipients’ language or in their terms. And the terms have to be experience-based we perceive, as a rule, what we expect to perceive. We see largely what we expect to see, and we hear largely what we expect to hear largely what we expect to hear. The unexpected is usually not received at all. Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation. If it goes against her aspirations, her values, her motivations, it is likely not to be received at all or, at best, to be resisted.
Where communication is perception, information is logic. As such, information is purely formal and has no meaning. Information is always encoded. To be received, let alone to be used, the code must be known and understood by the recipient. This requires prior agreement, that is, some communicate.
ACTION POINT: Take steps to improve communications by asking recipients to initiate an information exchange. Formulate questions such as, “What objectives do you believe are appropriate for your area of responsibility next quarter?”
Rules for Staff Work
Staff work is not done to advance knowledge; its only justification is the improvement of the performance of operating people and of the entire organization.
First, staff should concentrate on takes of major importance that will continue for many years. A task of major importance that will not last for-ever – for example, the reorganization of a company’s management – is better handled as a one-time assignment. Staff work should be limited to a few tasks of high priority. Proliferation of staff services deprives them of effectiveness. Worse, it destroys the effectiveness of the people who produce results, the operating people. Unless the number of staff tasks is closely controlled, staff will gobble up more and more of operating people’s scarcest resource: time.
Effectives staff work requires specific goals and objectives, clear targets, and deadlines. “We expect to cut absenteeism in half within three years” or “Two years from now we expect to understand the segmentation of our markets sufficiently to reduce the number of product lines by at least one third.” Objectives like these make for productive staff work. Vague goals such as “getting a handle on employee behavior” or “a study of customer motivation” do not. Every three years or so, it is important to sit down with every staff unit and ask, “What have you contributed these last three years that makes a real difference to this company?”
ACTION POINT: Keep support staff and few. Establish specific goals and deadlines for all staff work. Make sure goals are linked directly to one or more organizational goals.
Multinational corporations do control. They control the politicians. They control the media. They control the pattern of consumption, entertainment, thinking. They’re destroying the planet and laying the foundation for violent outbursts and racial division.
Jerry Brown
The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.
Robert Gilpin
As a result of the Stratfor hack, some of the dangers of the unregulated private intelligence industry are now known. It has been revealed through Wikileaks and other journalists around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of informants that they used to engage in intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.
Jeremy Hammond
I may be just an empty flesh terminal reliant on technology for all my ideas, memories and relationships, but I am confident that all of that everything that makes me a unique human being is still out there somewhere, safe in a theoretical storage space owned by giant, multinational corporations.
Stephen Colbert
I’m against the theory of the multinational corporations who say if you are against hunger you must be for GMO. That’s wrong, there is plenty of natural, normal good food in the world to nourish the double of humanity. There is absolutely no justification to produce genetically modified food except the profit motive and the domination of the multinational corporations.
Jean Ziegler
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It’s only in relatively recent years that Hollywood became the playground of multinational corporations which regard movies and TV shows as a minor irritant to their overall activity.
Peter Bart
We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism.
Howard Zinn
Democracy is just a word. You have to give it meaning. The US is not a democracy. Most Americans do not vote. We haven’t had a real choice for a long, long time now. Wealth rules. Corporations rule. The US is a plutocracy – government by wealthy people. Certain people control multinational corporations. You couldn’t get elected in the US without lots of money.
Ramsey Clark
Wake up America!
The insurance companies took over health care!
Wake up America!
The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing!
Wake up America!
The speculators took over Wall Street!
Wake up America!
They want your Social Security!
Wake up America!
Multinational corporations took over our trade policies!
Wake up America!
We went into Iraq for oil!
WAKE UP AMERICA!
Dennis Kucinich
I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.
Thomas Jefferson
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
All the studios are owned by multinational corporations, which are not usually bastions of the left. So all the actors, writers, and directors – or at least a great majority of them – live in fear because we’re all insecure, we all want that next job, we all want to be loved, and we don’t want to piss off some studio chief who won’t hire us for the next movie.
Paul Haggis
Salmon farming-the placement of large metal or mesh net cages in the ocean to grow fish-was pioneered in Norway in the 1960s. Since then, the industry has expanded to Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the US, and Chile, but is dominated by the same multinational corporations. Wherever it is practiced, net-cage salmon farming is controversial and raises serious environmental concerns.
David Suzuki
All of the jobs have gone away to satisfy the stockholders, so that’s where the economy has gone. These major multinational corporations do not see their futures in America.
Henry Rollins
What if one out of every three multinational corporation CEO’s were raped every year? Don’t you think that would raise a kind of ruckus?
Inga Muscio