My School and Its Teaching Environment Essay Example for Free

My School and Its Teaching Environment Essay In my school, the teaching environment is very good for teachers and especially for the students. When you see the school, at first you will say â€Å" wow! Excellent facilities, playground for teachers and students, cozy cafeteria and a library with good ambience where you can study comfortably, all classrooms are air-conditioned, enough computers for students with the ratio of 1:1 with internet connection. Each student has internet password as well as the teachers and staffs. The school used Fiber Optic line for internet (this is part of my work where I maintain the internet connection for the whole school). In my first 2 years in this school, I was assigned in Middle School but this year I was transferred to Elementary Department as Head of Information Technology including repair and maintenance with 24 hours a week teaching load for students from grade 1 to 5 (too many works hehehe) forgot to mention at the same time I am one of the administrators for TOEFL (Test of English as Foreign Language) exam. Every year, especially year-end everybody is waiting for contract renewal, thinking who will be renewed and who will say goodbye. If someone will leave then we are thinking who will replace them. Why? Simply because we are waiting for another teacher who will introduce another technique in teaching or I simply put it this way for new teachers: If you can’t beat us, then join us†¦ hahahahaha! The Culture of this country (Thailand) is almost the same in our country (Philippines) when it comes to being hospitable and respecting other people. They have great respect with each other especially with the old ones. In my school, students develop respect and tolerance for all others, regardless of religion, race, or class. One of the most distinctive Thai customs is the wai. Showing greeting, farewell, or acknowledgement, it comes in several forms reflecting the relative status of those involved. Generally, the salutation involves a prayer-like gesture with the hands, and it also may include a slight bow of the head. This salutation is often accompanied by a serene smile symbolizing a welcoming disposition and a pleasant attitude. Thailand is often referred to as the Land of Smiles in tourist brochures. There are a number of Thai customs relating to the special status of monks in Thai society. Due to religious discipline, Thai monks are forbidden physical contact with women. Women are therefore expected to make way for passing monks to ensure that accidental contact does not occur. A notable social norm holds that touching someone on the head may be considered rude. Pointing at or touching something with the feet is also considered rude. In every activity we do whether it is curricular or extra-curricular, we always align it to their culture if this is acceptable or not. But since we do have native speakers, sometimes they don’t even care about the culture. They always say that â€Å"Everybody knows what Thailand is† (for them most of the Thai women are slut, people have already changed) but somehow these native speakers must learn how to adapt into this environment. Yes, maybe that is their perception in this county and they forgot that they are Teachers. Teachers should give moral values and educate them in proper way. One of the problems of this school and even this country, discrimination between Asian and English Native speakers are very obvious. Sometimes they just use these native speakers as front of the school but most of the teachers are Asian who are more dedicated to work and yet under paid compared to these native teachers. Our administrators are composed of Executive Director (owner), Associate Executive Director, Business Director, Curriculum Coordinator, Student Support Coordinator, Principals and PTA. PTA in this school is very active in every. If we have activities either curricular or extra-curricular, the parents are always there to support us. Just to name a few for extra-curricular activities: 1. Students vs Teachers and Staff football match 2. Teachers and Staff vs Parents football match 3. Teachers, Staff and Parents vs Military Personnel Football Match 4. Teachers and Staff Football Match These are some interesting extra-curricular activities that everybody loves to see. Because even the owner of the school also plays in this event. We do have some curricular activities such as: 1. Debate in English(I’m the coach) 2. Debate in Thai 3. Public Speaking 4. Spelling 5. Story Telling 6. Quiz bee

Interventions to Prevent Fall Research Results

Interventions to Prevent Fall Research Results Data Analysis and Findings Part 1 Demographic Profile Table1. Age Distribution Age Range F % 26-30 3 30 31-35 3 30 36-40 1 10 41-45 0 0 46-50 2 20 51-55 1 10 Total n = 10 n = 100 Graph Interpretation Majority of the respondents were between 26-30 and 31-35 age groups. 20% respondents were of 46-50 years of age and 10% respondents were of 36-40 and rest 10% belongs to 51-55 years of age. Table 2. Sex Sex F % Female 10 100 Male 0 0 Total n = 10 n = 100 Graph Interpretation All the participants (healthcare assistants) were female working at CHT Royal Oak Rest Home. Table.3 Ethnicity Ethnicity F % Indian 7 70 Fijian 1 10 Japanese 1 10 Kiwi 1 10 Total n = 10 n = 100 Graph Interpretation Majority of the participants were Indian (70%). Rest 30% of the participants were Fijian, Japanese and Kiwi respectively. Table 3. Work Status Work Status F % Permanent Full time 7 70 Permanent Part time 1 10 Casual Part time 2 20 Total n = 10 n = 100 Graph Interpretation 70% of the participants (Healthcare Assistants) were permanent full time employees whereas 20% of the participants were casual part time and 10% participants were permanent part time employees. Part II. Data Analysis and findings This research finding indicated that the best practices for fall prevention used by Healthcare Assistants were use of aids such as wheelchair and stick (50%), hazard identification (40%), signs for wet floor (30%), care plans and monitoring (30%), clutter free environment (30%), bell ring (10%) and sensor mat (10%). The immediate interventions used by healthcare assistants if they encountered fall incidence were injury risk assessment (50%), fill the ACC incident form (50%), ask help from others (50%), first aid (40%), inform nurse (40%), call ambulance (30%), give reassurance to the residents (20%) and use hoist (20%). This research indicated that CHT Royal Oak rest home provides ongoing training to all the staff of the organisation about moving and handling the residents. Furthermore, the fall incidence was being reported and documented by healthcare assistants by filling ACC incidence/Accident forms (100%), informing manager, Register Nurse and family (50%) and using progress notes (20%). Implication The use of best practices to prevent fall at rest home engaged the healthcare assistants to increase confidence, knowledge, skills and abilities in the identification of residents within health care facilities at risk of falling and to define interventions for the prevention of falling in order to achieve the vision of the organisation. Recommendation Although, CHT Royal Oak is competent enough to practice best interventions to prevent fall, there is always room for continuous improvement. It is hereby recommended that manager should assess and document all resident for intrinsic risk factors to fall such as history of a recent fall, specific co-morbidities: dementia, hip fracture, type 2 diabetes, Parkinsons disease, arthritis, and depression and any functional disability or use of assistive device. Furthermore, patient care environment should also be assessed routinely for extrinsic risk factors to fall such as floor surfaces for spills, wet areas, unevenness, proper level of illumination and functioning of lights (night light works), table tops, furniture, beds should be sturdy and are in good repair and if needed, institute corrective actions. It is recommended to use standardized environmental checklists to document findings and re-evaluate environment for safety. Moreover, the healthcare staff should promote early mobility and incorporate measures to increase mobility, such as daily walking, balance training, strengthening and weight bearing exercise, if medically stable and not otherwise contraindicated. General safety precaution and fall prevention strategies such as medication review; use of proper footwear, proper continence management should be implemented. Multidisciplinary plan of care for prevention and follow up monitoring should be done to prevent falls in healthcare organisation. In addition to that, education regarding procedures to follow in the event of a fall should be provided to the staff as well as to the residents. The goal of education among residents is to increase the awareness of falls risks and preventative strategies, thus decreasing the number and severity of falls. Education may improve the residents self-confidence therefore reducing the fear of falling.The most up to date information needs to be available and provided in order to educate residents effectively. All staff should be involved in this process, as each one is an important member of the health care team. Lastly, health care workers should be given training to increase their awareness of residents who are at risk of falling by giving them staff education brochure for fall, through visual aids and posters etc. Conclusion This study involved the healthcare assistants of CHT Royal Oak Ret Home to know the best practices among them to prevent fall in this facility. To sum up, the healthcare assistant showed quite good knowledge and awareness regarding best interventions they are using for fall prevention. Regular ongoing training for fall prevention was provided to all the staffs of CHT Royal Oak Home. Furthermore, fall prevention practices constitute the basics of patient safety. They apply across all rest home areas and help safeguard not only residents, but also visitors and staff in many cases. By this way, this research helps to improve and to better understand the best interventions that are used by healthcare staff and to implement the best policy to prevent fall worldwide. References CHT. (2015). About us. Retrieved from http://www.cht.co.nz/about-us-2/ Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Retrieved from http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1334586.files/2003_Creswell_A%20F ramework%20for%20Design.pdf Gama, Z. A., Medina-Mirapeix, F., Saturno, P. J. (2011). Ensuring Evidence-Based Practices for Falls Prevention in a Nursing Home Setting. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 12(6), 398-402. doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2011.01.008 Health Quality Safety Commission New Zealand. (2014). Falls in older people: the impacts. Retrieved from http://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Falls/10- Topics/topic1-falls-in-older-people-15-April-2014.pdf Ministry of Health. (2016). What is an interventions. Retrieved from health.mo.gov/data/interventionmica/index_4.html Nass, S. J., Levit, L. A., Gostin, L. O., Institute of Medicine (U.S.). (2009). Beyond the HIPAA privacy rule: Enhancing privacy, improving health through research. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Phelan, E. A., Aerts, S., Dowler, D., Eckstrom, E., Casey, C. M. (2016). Adoption of Evidence-Based Fall Prevention Practices in Primary Care for Older Adults with a History of Falls. Frontiers in Public Health, 4. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2016.00190 Shever, L. L., Titler, M. G., Mackin, M. L., Kueny, A. (2010). Fall Prevention Practices in Adult Medical-Surgical Nursing Units Described by Nurse Managers. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 33(3), 385-397. doi:10.1177/0193945910379217 World Health Organisation. (2016). Falls. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs344/en/

Reactive Fault Tolerance Strategies

Reactive Fault Tolerance Strategies Abstract Cloud is the buzzword among computational technologies. It has brought a paradigm shift in a way computing is done and data is stored. This cost-effective means of technology has attracted a lot of people towards it and companies are embracing cloud to reduce their operational costs. As grows the popularity so will the challenges. One of the foremost challenges is Fault Tolerance. Fault Tolerance ensures the availability, reliability, and performance of the cloud applications. This paper is mainly focused on the Reactive fault tolerance strategies. Firstly, the paper outlines various faults, errors, and failures in the Cloud Computing scenario. Then, various prevalent reactive fault tolerance strategies are discussed. Lastly, a comparative analysis is done to better understand the application of the discussed strategies. I. Introduction Cloud-Computing is gaining traction due II. Faults, Errors, and Failures 2.1 Faults. Fault is the cause of the system or a component in the system to fail. Faults induce errors into system which hinders the ability of any system to perform as expected and give desired results. An erroneous system ultimately leads towards failure. Fault tolerance is the ability of the system to keep going in presence of one or more faults but with decaying performance. We must thoroughly classify and analyze various kinds of faults, errors, and failures to come up with sound Fault-Tolerance Strategies.   Faults in Cloud Computing environment can be classified as follows. Aging related fault As time passes, these faults show up into the system. These can be further categorized into two types namely Software based aging and Hardware based aging. Once the software starts execution, there is an accumulation of software bugs in the system. Furthermore, the decaying performance of the system hardware makes the system incapable to perform to its requirements. Omission fault This kind of faults occur when the resources in the system dry up and eventually the ongoing processes end up falling short of the resources in terms of storage capacity and computing power. Omission faults are mainly of two types i.e. Denial of Service, where the attacker tries to make the resources unavailable to its intended users by overwhelming the system with too many superfluous requests.   The other type is Disk Space Full, in which the amount of free space required by the applications is no longer available, this leads to node failure? Response faults. Response faults occur when the server gives an incorrect response to a query made by the user. This is further classified into 3 types. Value Faults-If faults at an application level or at lower level in the system are not managed properly, this can cause the individual application or the processor to emit an incorrect value. Byzantine faults- This fault attributes to the erratic behavior of the processor when it gets corrupted. The processor has not stopped working but the results are not predictable. State transition faults- When systems change their states, this kind of fault surfaces. Timing Faults. Synchronization is a key factor when it comes to execution of tasks in a distributed computing ecosystem. There should be time constraints for communication and execution of tasks by the processor. Faults which arise due to poor synchronization are called Timing faults. If the communication or the task execution begins early, then it is called Early fault. If the processor takes a lot of time to execute the tasks and this results in undesirable delay in the communication, then it is called Late fault. Interaction Faults. As the number of services grow in the system along with its complexity, the interaction between the services also increases. This may cause faults which occur due to Policy and Security incompatibilities. Various service providers have different policies and different security protocols. Life Cycle Faults. The service time of an application may expire when a user is trying to use that application. User cannot further access it unless the service becomes active again. This is called as Life Cycle fault or Service expiry fault. 2.2 Errors. Error is the difference between the expected output and the actual output of a system. A system is said to perform erroneously when it starts behaving in a manner that is against its specification and compliance. To study the nature of errors in a cloud computing scenario, a few of them have been listed below. Network Errors. Cloud is a network of remote servers. Hence, we may observe a lot of errors in the nodes and the links which connect these servers.   This kind of errors are called as Network Errors. Mainly network errors can be in the form of three types. Packet Corruption-   As a packet moves from one node to another and traverses across various links, there is a fair amount of chance that it might get corrupted due to the system noise. Packet corruption tweaks the original information and might sometimes go unnoticed.? Packet Loss- If a packet fails to reach its destination, this leads to Packet Loss. The main causes of packet failure are link congestion, device failure, (router/switch) and, faulty cabling. Network Congestion- When the traffic This issue is encountered due to low bandwidth. When the flow of traffic increases on a single path, this may also create network congestion. This issue is very important as it determines the Quality of Service(QoS). Software Errors. Software errors are broadly categorized as memory leaks and numerical exceptions. Memory Leaks- When there is a bug in the software wherein the application uses huge memory to perform the task but the memory, which is no longer needed, is not freed upon the completion of the task. Numerical Exception-A software does a lot of numerical computations which are required by the applications. The applications might sometimes generate issues due to some numerical conversions which raise exceptions. If these exceptions remain unhandled then errors persist in the system. Time Based Errors. These errors arise when applications do not complete their task execution in a time bounded manner. This can be subdivided into three types. Transient Errors- the probability of occurrence is very less. Intermittent Errors- The pattern of these errors is sporadic but observed many number of times. Permanent Errors- These occur more number of times with a deterministic pattern. 2.3 Failures. As said earlier, failures result due to errors. If a system does not achieve its intended objective, then its in a state of failure. Several things can go wrong in a system and yet the system may produce desired results. Until the system produces wrong output, there is no failure?4 To study the nature of failures, following is the list of failures. Node Failure. In distributed systems, such as cloud computing, we see that sometimes resources and nodes are dynamically added to the system. This brings along a lot of uncertainties and the chances of node failure increase. Reliability and availability are the major criteria for nodes to be adjudged as functioning properly. Node failure occurs if a node is not available at any time a node is not present in the system to perform tasks(unavailable) or produces errors while doing computations. Process Failure. Process failure occurs when a process is unable to place the messages into the communication channel and transmit it or a processs algorithm is unable to retrieve messages from the communication channel? Network Failure. Network failures are very serious issues with regards to cloud computing. There is no communication without a network. Network failures occur when there is a link failure, network device failures such as routers and switches, configuration changes in a network. Configuration change or a change in policy of a machine will cause problems to the applications using the resources of that machine and this problem is most likely reason for a network failure.? Host Failure. A host is a computer that communicates with other computers on the network. In the scope of Cloud Computing, hosts are servers/clients that send/receive data. Whenever a host fails to send the requested data due to crashes, host failure occurs. Application Failure. Cloud applications are the software codes that run on cloud. Whenever bugs develop in the codes, application fails to fulfil its intended objective. The errors caused due to this leads to Application Failure. # cloud endure†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 3. Reactive Fault Tolerance Strategies. Fault Tolerance Strategies in Cloud Computing are of two types, namely, Proactive, and Reactive. Proactive Fault Tolerance Strategies are those techniques which help in anticipating faults and provides preventive measures to avoid the occurrence of faults.   Here, the faulty components in the system are identified and replaced with operational ones. Reactive Fault Tolerance Strategies, are the techniques used to effectively troubleshoot a system upon occurrence of failure(s). Various reactive fault tolerance strategies are discussed below. 3.1 Checkpointing. In Checkpointing, the system state is saved and stored in the form of checkpoints. This taking is both preventive and reactive. Whenever a system fails, it rolls back to the most recent checkpoint. This is a popular fault tolerance technique and placing the checkpoints at appropriate intervals is very important. Full Checkpointing. Complete state of the application in saved and stored at regular intervals. The drawback of full checkpointing is that it needs a lot of time to save and requires huge chunk of storage-space to save the state. Incremental Checkpointing. This is an improvement over the full checkpointing. This method performs full checkpointing initially and thereafter only the modified pages of information from the previous checkpoint are stored. This is much faster and reliable than full checkpointing. Optimized Checkpoint/Restart. The crux of checkpointing lies in how we space our checkpoints. Good number of checkpoints ensure that the application is resilient to failure. However, this comes at the cost of time, space, and causes a lot of overhead. On the other hand, having less number of checkpoints makes our application vulnerable to faults thereby causing failure. It has been seen that cloud tasks are typically smaller than the grid jobs and hence more time sensitive to the checkpointing/restart cost.? Also, characterizing the failures in the cloud tasks using a failure probability distribution function will be inaccurate as the task lengths in cloud tasks depend on the user priority too.? This technique aims at bettering the performance of Checkpointing technique in threefold approach. Firstly, optimize the number of checkpoints for each task. Secondly, as the priority of the task may change during its execution, a dynamic mechanism must be designed to tune the optimal solution in the first step. Thirdly, find a proper tradeoff between local disks and shared disks to store the checkpoints.   The optimal number of checkpoints is calculated by evenly spreading the checkpoints during the execution of the task. The calculation is done without modelling the failures using a failure probability distribution function. A key observation that we make during the execution of cloud tasks is the tasks with higher priority have longer uninterrupted execution lengths in comparison with low-priority tasks. Hence the solution needs to be more adaptive considering the priority of the tasks. Mere equal spacing of the checkpoints will not do in this case. If the priority of the task remains unchanged the Mean Number of Failures(MNOF) remains the same. The position of the next checkpoint needs to be recalculated and its position needs to be changed if the priority factor that influences the MNOF changes during the execution of the task. Lastly, the problem of where to store the checkpoints is addresse d. The checkpointing costs for both local disks and shared disk is calculated and then based upon the costs an efficient choice is made. It is noticed that, as the memory size of the tasks increase, the checkpointing costs also increase. Also, when multiple checkpointing is done, in the local disks, there is no significant increase in the costs, but owing to congestion, there is a significant rise in checkpointing costs. Hence, a distributively-managed algorithm is designed to mitigate the bottleneck problem and lower the checkpointing costs. 3.2 Retry. Simplest of all the fault tolerance techniques. The task is restarted on the same resource upon occurrence of the problem. The underlying assumption behind this approach is that during the subsequent attempts, the problem will not show up.? 3.3 Task Resubmission. A job consists of several small tasks. When one of the tasks is failed, the entire job gets affected. In this technique, the failed task is resubmitted either to the same resource or a different one to finish the execution of the task. 3.4 Replication. Running the same task on several machines which are different locations. This is done to ensure that when a machine fails, the process of task execution is not halted as the other machine takes it up. Replication is further categorized as follows. Semi-active Replication. The input is provided to all the replica machines. The task execution simultaneously goes on in the primary replica as well as the backup replica. However, the primary replica only provides the output. When the primary replica goes down, the backup replica provides output.   This technique uses a lot of network resources as the task is running in simultaneously in all the replicas. VMware uses Semi-active replication Fault Tolerance Strategy. [4.] Semi-passive Replication. This technique has a flavor of checkpointing in addition to replication. The main replica performs the checkpointing operation over the state information. Replication is done by transferring this checkpoint information to all the backup replicas. The backup machines dont have to concurrently execute the task with the primary replica, but its duty is to save the latest checkpoint information. When the primary replica fails, it designates the backup replica to takeover. The checkpoint information is updated with some loss in the execution. This technique uses lesser network resources than the semi-active replication but there is a tradeoff as some of the execution. Also, in this case, whenever the backup fails, the latency is more as the time taken for recovery and reconfiguration when compared with semi-active replication. [ref 3] Passive Replication. The state information is stored in the form of checkpoints in a dedicated backup machine. When the backup fails, the Fault Tolerance Manager, commissions another machine to be the backup. The backup is updated by restoring the last saved checkpoint. The fault tolerance manager uses a priority based scheme while appointing new backups. 3.5 Job Migration. When a task fails in one of the machine, it can be transferred to another virtual machine. Sometimes, if a task in a job cannot be executed due computational and memory constraints, the task is given to another machine to execute. 3.6 Rescue Workflow. A cloud job consists of several small tasks. Upon failure of a task, this method continues the execution of the other tasks. The overall workflow is stopped only when the failure of the task impacts the entire job. [rescue workflow] 4. Comparative Summary of the Reactive Fault Tolerance Strategies. Checkpointing: This technique effectively detects Application Failure. This technique is used when the application size or the task size is too big. Moreover, checkpointing provides efficient resource utilization. Retry: If the problem persists beyond multiple tries, this method is time inefficient. This is used to detect Host failure and Network failure. Task Resubmission: As the job is tried on the same or different resource, this technique is both time consuming and has more resource utilization. This detects Node Failure and Application Failure. Replication: This technique detects Node Failure and Process Failure. As the task is run on various machines, we see more resource utilization here. Job Migration: This technique detects Node and Process failures. This method is time efficient as the task which cannot be executed in a machine is transferred to another. Rescue-Workflow: This method detects Node failure and Application failure. This is a time-inefficient technique.

Rural HIV/AIDS in Southeast Ohio :: Case Management

Rural HIV/AIDS in Southeast Ohio History Of all the known cases of HIV / AIDS in the United States "†¦5.5 percent were reported from nonmetropolitan statistical areas (non-MSAs). The Office of Management and Budget defines a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) as a county or group of counties that includes a city of 50,000 residents or an urbanized area with at least 50,000. Nonmetropolitan counties are all remaining counties (Gwinn & Wortley, 1996). "†¦6 percent of the female AIDS cases reported to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) during 1994 were residing in non-MSAs at the time of AIDS diagnosis (CDC, 1996). This is the case in Southeast Ohio where the nearest metropolitan area is Columbus an hour and a half away from Athens. Rural HIV/AIDS patients tend to be diagnosed in later stages of the disease because their physicians do not consider them to be at risk for HIV (Calonge, Petersen, Miller, & Marshall, 1993; Miller, et al., 1995). Many of the clients that apply for services at the Athens AIDS Task Force do so only after a referral from a medical professional after they have been hospitalized with a serious illness. Most already have Center for Disease Control (CDC) diagnosis for AIDS (T-Cell count below 200, normal count is 800 – 1500). Even as the spread of AIDS into small towns escalates, HIV-infected patients who live outside urban areas continue to confront significant obstacles to effective care. Nearly all doctors who specialize in the treatment of HIV are located in cities. Quality of life for HIV-infected rural residents is potentially worse, often for reasons that involve a lack of person-to-person contact both at the medical level and at the personal support level. Researchers have noted that rural HIV/AIDS patients often travel two or more hours to obtain medical care because they lack confidence in their local physicians, are unable to find a local physician who will see them, and are concerned about confidentiality. (Mainous & Matheny, 1996; Rounds, 1988; Rumley, et al., 1991). This is certainly the case in Rural Ohio, many clients travel to Columbus, Akron, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Parkersburg, West Virginia for medical treatment. Many fear that they will run into acquaintances or relatives if they should visit physicians closer to home. People living in rural areas are still generally afraid of casual contact with anyone with the AIDS virus. We also see less intervention and prevention efforts directed toward rural areas, in part because they tend to be more conservative and not as open to sexuality education and safer sex education.

crtical thinking paper -- essays research papers

There is a South African Proverb that states "Until lions write books, history will always glorify the hunter". In his play "Los Vendidos", Luis Valdez tries to become a lion and let the voice of Chicano history be heard. Luis Valdez does this in a satirical way by presenting the views and stereotypes that many American’s have had and continue to have, about Chicano’s in the form of a shop where Chicano "model/robots" are sold. By presenting each Chicano as a robot and stereotype, Luis Valdez tries to earse of the "models" of Chicano’s that people have in their heads and tries to point out that there is a strong Chicano culture and a rich history that has been ignored by American’s for years. "Los Vendidos" is a challenge to all people but especially American’s to think about why these stereotypes are so known in culture and the role that American culture has played in creating and maintaining these stereotypes. One of the first things that Ms. Jimanez, the American woman "buying" a Chicano model/robot, looks at is the skin color. When the salesman, Mr. Sancho shows her the Indian model she says that he is too dark. She specifies that she is looking for a lighter shade of skin color, or as she says "perhaps beige". Her looking for a lighter shade of Mexican is a representation of what was known as the process of Americanization. Americanization was defined "as the securing through instruction such reactions on the part of non-Americans that they will accept and practice those ideals, customs, methods of living, skills and knowledge that have come to be accepted as representative of the best in American life†¦." For many people there was a belief that the darkness of a person’s skin had a direct correlation with their intelligence as well as their level of ability and intelligence. If you had darker skin you were assumed to be lazy and unintelligent. This special kind of racism known as hispanophobia, had been prevalent among Anglo-Americans since before the eighteenth century. In his article The Spanish Frontier in North America, David Weber describes what came to be known as the black legend, or la leyenda negra, as the view that the "Spaniards were unusually cruel, avaricious, treacherous, fanatical, superstitious, cowardly, corrupt, decadent, indolent and authoritarian†¦... ...a very polite gentleman who speaks fluent English and can give political speeches that are not as radical as the ones that were given in the 1950’s to the 1970’s. Eric’s skin, which is a light brown, is a way of depicting the fact that Chicano's are becoming more and more Americanized and in many ways serves as a warning to future generations of Chicano’s to not Americanize themselves to the point where they lose their heritage. In this sense, Luis Valdez and the Teatro Compesina, become lions in a sense and they re-write history. They show their audience some of the stereotypes and hispanophobia that has up until now, been Chicano history. In doing so Luis Valdez presents the other view and challenges people to think about where, why, who, when and how these stereotypes came to be. "Los Vendidos" challenges the notion of the Anglo-Europeans’ being the only ones that have written history, and by doing so lets the audience know that wha t has been presented to them thus far is not the real Chicano history. The real Chicano history must come from the lions themselves. It is in this way that Luis Valdez himself rewrites Chicano history and becomes a lion facing his hunters.

Hafford furniture Essay

A Crisis at Hafford Furniture: Cloud Computing Case study MMBA 507 Student ID: 300333323 PROBLEM DESCRIPTION Hafford Furniture was a furniture manufacturer since 1970, supplying to furniture retailers, wholesalers and occasionally one-time bulk purchasers across the United States. Hafford relied on a Business Information System (BIS) to handle all the internal business processes. The BIS was seamlessly connected to a VAN-based EDI system, which served as the customer’s interface for making orders. In 2008, Hafford’s entire IT infrastructure and data storage were destroyed by a massive hurricane. Hafford was able to restore the company data with its disaster recovery plan, but not all its IT function. In March 2009, VP of IT proposed in a management meeting to adopt SaaS cloud solution to restore the IT function. Hafford could access to the same BIS without having to worry about the cost to rebuild another IT data centre. He projected that the IT staff strength could be halved, as the cloud vendor would take care of the management of the software’s platform and its infrastructure. The next day, the president of Hafford ignored the internal decision-making protocol and contracted their disaster recovery vendor, PFI Services for that same cloud service. In January 2010, Hafford was faced with appalling sales report for the year before, mostly caused by bottlenecks in the ordering system supported by PFI. Not only was the cloud capability insufficient, PFI was also filing for bankruptcy and undergoing liquidation. Hafford once again fell into a desperate situation. REVIEW OF KEY ISSUES Management issues Lack of Corporate governance The weak corporate governance in Hafford is especially notable in the fundamental change process. While there was an internal policy for creating a fundamental change in Hafford (Fig 1), Feckle, the President, had ignored it by entering into a cloud contract without consulting any of his top management, just one day after the premature proposal was shared with him. It was extremely risky to make such a significant business decision without sufficient knowledge in the service that he engaged. To make a well-informed decision, Feckle should have adhered to the corporate policy and trusted the IT professionals to evaluate and recommend a suitable vendor. Figure 1 Fundamental change policy 2. Failure to think critically during decision-making It is understood that Hafford used to adopt a VAN-based EDI-system specifically due to its security, despite it being slower and more costly. In Norris’ proposal for using cloud, he altered the company’s priority by pushing for an internet-based EDI-system, without providing solid justification. Questions like â€Å"will the internet-based EDI change the business in any way?† or â€Å"will it compromise customers’ security? † were not asked. The management seemed to have accepted this change too easily, without understanding its impacts. This concern should have been analysed more thoroughly before concluding to transit to an internet-based EDI-system. 3. Poor understanding of business needs The IT obj ective was not fully aligned with the business objectives. For example, in 2009, while the company was expecting a 30-35% increase in sales due to the efforts in a series of product improvements, the IT team was preparing a cloud proposal to the company basing only on the old IT functions. It had missed out on considering how it could support an explosive sales surge. Furthermore, Hafford was switching its VAN-based EDI to an internet-based EDI, which could potentially allow Hafford to widen its reach to attract a new group of SME customers. This could play a part in increasing their sales. However, Hafford did not foresee these changes, likely due to lack of communication between departments within Hafford. IT issues 1. Lack of thorough analysis in cloud computing The IT team failed to conduct due diligence in exploring all possible solutions that could meet its needs. While cloud offered great advantages for the company, it might have been too hasty to consider only private cloud as the final solution. In fact, public, private or hybrid cloud offered different potentials and could achieve the goal within competitive cost as well. The IT team should also have analysed each cloud model against its business needs before determining if software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or a combination of services would work best. 2. Lack of on-going management While cloud is said to be flexible, it demands some level of active management to harness the most of it after implementation. The IT team should be able to react quickly to resolve problems like the order bottleneck or a data lock-in. Besides, the IT team should have been more vigilant in ensuring business continuity for the company. RECOMMENDATION The key failure observed in the case was the lack of understanding in cloud computing and the lack of communication in the company. Like any other business decisions, the management should have exercised prudence by developing clear objectives and analysing the opportunities and threats before arriving at its conclusion. In this section, a recommended methodology to approach Hafford’s IT restoral problem is presented. Step 1. To develop business objectives The most important step is to approach a business problem with a clear business objective. It will be necessary for the management to look at the restoral of the IT centre as a collaborative business problem. Communication within the organisation is crucial in aligning all the stakeholders’ goals. With effective teamwork, the IT will appreciate the business values better and be able to analyse the suitability of various options. Step 2. To compare various viable options The IT team should research on what the available solutions are, before zeroing into a particular infrastructure option. While the restoral of a physical data centre may be expensive, there may be payment structures that could help reduce the impact. On the other hand, cloud computing may appear cheaper but it inextricably exposes users to a range of risks, especially in the aspect of security. Also, there are hybrid options that can minimise risk while offering cost benefit. In short, the IT team should fully understand the merits and shortcomings of the following options before selecting the IT infrastructure. 1. Public cloud 2. Hybrid cloud 3. Private cloud 4. Public cloud – Physical data centre 5. Physical data centre Step 3. To choose the suitable cloud service model There are three common service models in cloud computing. It is important to evaluate each model’s attributes and determine which cloud model would be more suitable for the business needs. 1. Software as a service (SaaS) To understand threats and opportunities of cloud computing Cloud computing offers the following powerful advantages but also opens a gateway to a wide range of threats. 1. Elasticity – Usage-based pricing model, charging users only for the capacity used – Scalability in terms of network and speed depending on demand 2. Simplicity – Setting up and maintaining a data centre can take significant manpower. Cloud computing offers convenient and economical business solutions to clients, while taking advantage of the economy of scale by taking care of one specialised area in bulk. 3. Cost-efficiency – No capital cost required. Companies benefit from the transference of risk (of over-provisioning and under-provisioning) of investing in a private data centre. While accepting these benefits from cloud, users should also exercise due diligence by being aware of all the possible problems cloud computing brings. Some of the crucial problems are outlined as follows. 1. Business continuity There is always a risk with placing valuable business information with a single third party. As such, the best way to go about is to even out the risk by employing multiple cloud providers and devising a business continuity strategy should any of them fail. Data lock-in It would be risky for a company to be unable to easily extract their data and programmes from one cloud provider to another due to compatibility issues of the programme and data from one cloud provider. In order to mitigate this risk, SaaS developer could use standardised API so that the business can remain flexible and mobile. 3. Data security While most cloud providers invest a considerable amount of attention on managing security, users should assess the security standards adopted by the cloud provider against their requirements before engaging it. 4. Insufficient capacity Although it is said that cloud is scalable, in rare occasions, businesses may experience traffic surges beyond what their contracted cloud can offer. Hence, it is important to strategize carefully before deciding on the cloud service. Step 5. Choosing the cloud vendor After thorough analysis and establishing a clear description for the cloud service needed, the user will have to evaluate the following factors to arrive at the most suitable vendor. 1. Pricing structure While cloud vendors typically follow a pay-as-you-use pricing model, pricing structure varies. For example, Google AppEngine charges users by the cycles used while AWS charges by the hour for the number of instances the user occupied. 2. Security Users need to look at a cloud service’s physical as well as network security. This refers to the physical location the cloud provider houses its equipment and network security measures like firewall and data encryption. Also, a cloud provider should be compliant to government standards specific to your business. In the case of Hafford Furniture, it was an auditing requirement for Hafford to ensure the cloud vendor is compliant with Statement on Auditing Standard No.70. 3. Other factors A clean record does not promise anything, it would be beneficial to also look at the vendor’s track record against available benchmark systems. Also, it would be helpful to have a vendor that can provide reasonably good service. Hence, it is important to know about the extent of customer support services, the setting up process and the ser vicing response and resolution time. Step 6. Engagement of cloud vendor and getting started During cloud rollout, especially from a different sort of data management, it would be common to face various teething problems. Cloud vendor should try to achieve seamless implementation, and companies might need to prepare their staff and/or customers should it affect their routine jobs significantly. Step 7. On-going active management of the cloud service Internal IT team should be continuously vigilant towards possible threats to ensure that the cloud service adopted by the company is safe and secure. Active backups of data must not be neglected. Also, internal feedback reviews could help the IT team understand the possible difficulties faced by the users, and also stay up to date with the company’s business initiatives.

Managing with the Brain in Mind

strategy+business Managing with the Brain in Mind by David Rock from strategy+business issue 56, Autumn 2009 reprint number 09206 Reprint features special report 1 by David Rock Naomi Eisenberger, a leading social neuroscience Managing with the Brain in Mind researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), wanted to understand what goes on in the brain when people feel rejected by others. She designed an experiment in which volunteers played a computer game called Cyberball while having their brains scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. Cyberball hearkens back to the nastiness of the chool playground. â€Å"People thought they were playing a ball-tossing game over the Internet with two other people,† Eisenberger explains. â€Å"They could see an avatar that represented themselves, and avatars [ostensibly] for two other people. Then, about halfway through this game of catch among the three of them, the subjects stopped receiving th e ball and the two other supposed players threw the ball only to each other. † Even after they learned that no other human players were involved, the game players spoke of feeling angry, snubbed, or judged, as if the other avatars excluded them because they didn’t like something about them.This reaction could be traced directly to the brain’s responses. â€Å"When people felt excluded,† says Eisenberger, â€Å"we saw activity in the dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate cortex — the neural region involved in the distressing component of pain, or what is sometimes referred to as the ‘suffering’ component of pain. Those people who felt the most rejected had the highest levels of activity in this region. † In other words, the feeling of being excluded provoked the same sort of reaction in the brain that physical pain might cause. (See Exhibit 1. ) Eisenberger’s fellow researcher Matthew Lieberman, lso of UCLA, hypothesizes that human beings evolved 2 features special report Illustration by Leigh Wells Neuroscience research is revealing the social nature of the high-performance workplace. SPECIAL REPORT: THE TALENT OPPORTUNITY this link between social connection and physical discomfort within the brain â€Å"because, to a mammal, being socially connected to caregivers is necessary for survival. † This study and many others now emerging have made one thing clear: The human brain is a social organ. Its physiological and neurological reactions are directly and profoundly shaped by social interaction. Indeed, asLieberman puts it, â€Å"Most processes operating in the background when your brain is at rest are involved in thinking about other people and yourself. † This presents enormous challenges to managers. Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremos t as a social system. Like the experiment participants whose avatars were left out of the game, people who feel betrayed or unrecognized at work — for example, when they are reprimanded, given an assignment that seems unworthy, or told to take a pay ut — experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful and painful as a blow to the head. Most people who work in companies learn to rationalize or temper their reactions; they â€Å"suck it up,† as the common parlance puts it. But they also limit their commitment and engagement. They become purely transactional employees, reluctant to give more of themselves to the company, because the social context stands in their way. Leaders who understand this dynamic can more effectively engage their employees’ best talents, support collaborative teams, and create an environment that fosters productive change.Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will be a disti nguishing leadership capability in the years ahead. Triggering the Threat Response One critical thread of research on the social brain starts with the â€Å"threat and reward† response, a neurological mechanism that governs a great deal of human behavior. When you encounter something unexpected — a shadow seen from the corner of your eye or a new colleague moving into the office next door — the limbic system (a relatively primitive part of the brain, common to many animals) is aroused.Neuroscientist Evian Gordon refers to this as the â€Å"minimize danger, maximize reward† response; he calls it â€Å"the fundamental organizing principle of the brain. † Neurons are activated and hormones are released as you seek to learn whether this new entity represents a chance for reward or a potential danger. If the perception is danger, then the response becomes a pure threat response — also known as the fight or flight response, the avoid response, and , in its extreme form, the amygdala hijack, named for a part of the limbic system that can be aroused rapidly and in an emotionally overwhelming way.Recently, researchers have documented that the threat response is often triggered in social situations, and it tends to be more intense and longer-lasting than the reward response. Data gathered through measures of brain activity — by using fMRI and electroencephalograph (EEG) machines or by gauging hormonal secretions — suggests that the same neural responses that drive us toward food or away from predators are triggered by our perception of the way we are treated by other people. These findings are reframing the prevailing view of the role that social drivers play in influencing how humans behave.Matthew Lieberman notes that Abraham Maslow’s â€Å"hierarchy of needs† theory may have been wrong in this respect. Maslow proposed that strategy + business issue 56 features special report 3 David Rock ([email   protected] .com) is the founding president of the NeuroLeadership Institute (www. neuroleadership .org). He is also the CEO of Results Coaching Systems, which helps global organizations grow their leadership teams, using brain research as a base for self-awareness and social awareness. He is the author of Your Brain at Work (HarperBusiness, 2009) and Quiet Leadership: Six Steps toTransforming Performance at Work (Collins, 2006). Exhibit 1: Social and Physical Pain Produce Similar Brain Responses Physical hysic cal Pain ain solving; in other words, just when people most need their sophisticated mental capabilities, the brain’s internal resources are taken away from them. The impact of this neural dynamic is often visible in organizations. For example, when leaders trigger a threat response, employees’ brains become much less efficient. But when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisio ns, support people’s fforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response. Others in the organization become more effective, more open to ideas, and more creative. They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resent- Illustration: Sam tion: Samuel Valasco muel Valasco Source: Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams, Science, 2003 (social pain images); Lieberman et al. , â€Å"The Neural Correlates of Placebo Effects: A Disruption Account,† : Lieberman, Science, (social Lieber rman â€Å"The N Neuroimage, May 2004 (physical pain images) mage, 4 features special report Social cial Pain ain Brain scans captured through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) show the same areas associated with distress, whether caused by rejection or physical pain. cingulate (highlighted social rejection or physical pain. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (highlighted at left) is associated with the degree of distress; the right ventral distress. prefrontal cortex (highlighted at right) is associated with regulating the distre ntal ess. humans tend to satisfy their needs in sequence, starting with physical survival and moving up the ladder toward self-actualization at the top. In this hierarchy, social eeds sit in the middle. But many studies now show that the brain equates social needs with survival; for example, being hungry and being ostracized activate similar neural responses. The threat response is both mentally taxing and deadly to the productivity of a person — or of an organization. Because this response uses up oxygen and glucose from the blood, they are diverted from other parts of the brain, including the working memory function, which processes new information and ideas. This impairs analytic thinking, creative insight, and problem Neuroscience has discovered that the brain is highly plastic. Even the most ntrenched behaviors can be modified. Status and Its Discont ents Research into the social nature of the brain suggests another piece of this puzzle. Five particular qualities enable employees and executives alike to minimize the threat response and instead enable the reward response. These five social qualities are status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness: Because they can be expressed with the acronym SCARF, I sometimes think of them as a kind of headgear that an organization can wear to prevent exposure to dysfunction. To understand how the SCARF model works, let’s look at each characteristic in turn. eatures special report 5 ment makes it difficult to focus their attention. They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress. They feel intrinsically rewarded. Understanding the threat and reward response can also help leaders who are trying to implement large-scale change. The track record of failed efforts to spark higher-perfomance behavior has led many managers to conclude that human na ture is simply intractable: â€Å"You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. † Yet neuroscience has also discovered that the human brain is highly plastic. Neural connections can be reformed, new behaviors can e learned, and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified at any age. The brain will make these shifts only when it is engaged in mindful attention. This is the state of thought associated with observing one’s own mental processes (or, in an organization, stepping back to observe the flow of a conversation as it is happening). Mindfulness requires both serenity and concentration; in a threatened state, people are much more likely to be â€Å"mindless. † Their attention is diverted by the threat, and they cannot easily move to self-discovery. In a previous article (â€Å"The Neuroscience ofLeadership,† s+b, Summer 2006), brain scientist Jeffrey Schwartz and I proposed that organizations could marshal mindful attention to create organizatio nal change. They could do this over time by putting in place regular routines in which people would watch the patterns of their thoughts and feelings as they worked and thus develop greater self-awareness. We argued that this was the only way to change organizational behavior; that the â€Å"carrots and sticks† of incentives (and behavioral psychology) did not work, and that the counseling and empathy of much organizational development was not fficient enough to make a difference. strategy + business issue 56 As humans, we are constantly assessing how social encounters either enhance or diminish our status. Research published by Hidehiko Takahashi et al. in 2009 shows that when people realize that they might compare unfavorably to someone else, the threat response kicks in, releasing cortisol and other stress-related hormones. (Cortisol is an accurate biological marker of the threat response; within the brain, feelings of low status provoke the kind of cortisol elevation asso ciated with sleep deprivation and chronic anxiety. Separately, researcher Michael Marmot, in his book The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity (Times Books, 2004), has shown that high status correlates with human longevity and health, even when factors like income and education are controlled for. In short, we are biologically programmed to care about status because it favors our survival. As anyone who has lived in a modest house in a high-priced neighborhood knows, the feeling of status is always comparative. And an executive with a salary of US$500,000 may feel elevated. . . until he or she is A Craving for Certainty he skills they have acquired, rather than for their seniority, is a status booster in itself. Values have a strong impact on status. An organization that appears to value money and rank more than a basic sense of respect for all employees will stimulate threat responses among employees who aren’t at the top of the heap. Similar ly, organizations that try to pit people against one another on the theory that it will make them work harder reinforce the idea that there are only winners and losers, which undermines the standing of people below the top 10 percent. 6 features special report ssigned to work with an executive making $2. 5 million. A study by Joan Chiao in 2003 found that the neural circuitry that assesses status is similar to that which processes numbers; the circuitry operates even when the stakes are meaningless, which is why winning a board game or being the first off the mark at a green light feels so satisfying. Competing against ourselves in games like solitaire triggers the same circuitry, which may help explain the phenomenal popularity of video games. Understanding the role of status as a core concern can help leaders avoid organizational practices that stir ounterproductive threat responses among employees. For example, performance reviews often provoke a threat response; people being rev iewed feel that the exercise itself encroaches on their status. This makes 360degree reviews, unless extremely participative and welldesigned, ineffective at generating positive behavioral change. Another common status threat is the custom of offering feedback, a standard practice for both managers and coaches. The mere phrase â€Å"Can I give you some advice? † puts people on the defensive because they perceive the person offering advice as claiming superiority.It is the cortisol equivalent of hearing footsteps in the dark. Organizations often assume that the only way to raise an employee’s status is to award a promotion. Yet status can also be enhanced in less-costly ways. For example, the perception of status increases when people are given praise. Experiments conducted by Keise Izuma in 2008 show that a programmed status-related stimulus, in the form of a computer saying â€Å"good job,† lights up the same reward regions of the brain as a financial windfall. The perception of status also increases when people master a new skill; paying employees more forWhen an individual encounters a familiar situation, his or her brain conserves its own energy by shifting into a kind of automatic pilot: it relies on long-established neural connections in the basal ganglia and motor cortex that have, in effect, hardwired this situation and the individual’s response to it. This makes it easy to do what the person has done in the past, and it frees that person to do two things at once; for example, to talk while driving. But the minute the brain registers ambiguity or confusion — if, for example, the car ahead of the driver slams on its brakes — the brain flashes an error signal.With the threat response aroused and working memory diminished, the driver must stop talking and shift full attention to the road. Uncertainty registers (in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex) as an error, gap, or tension: something tha t must be corrected before one can feel comfortable again. That is why people crave certainty. Not knowing what will happen next can be profoundly debilitating because it requires extra neural energy. This diminishes memory, undermines performance, and disengages people from the present. Of course, uncertainty is not necessarily debilitating. Mild ncertainty attracts interest and attention: New and challenging situations create a mild threat response, increasing levels of adrenalin and dopamine just enough to spark curiosity and energize people to solve problems. Moreover, different people respond to uncertainty in the world around them in different ways, depending in part on their existing patterns of thought. For example, when that car ahead stops suddenly, the driver who thinks, â€Å"What should I do? † is likely to be ineffective, whereas the driver who frames the incident as manageable — â€Å"I need to swerve left now because there’s a car on the rightâ €  — is well equipped to respond.All of life is uncertain; it is the perception of Relating to Relatedness given more control over decision making lived longer and healthier lives than residents in a control group who had everything selected for them. The choices themselves were insignificant; it was the perception of autonomy that mattered. Another study, this time of the franchise industry, identified work–life balance as the number one reason that people left corporations and moved into a franchise. Yet other data showed that franchise owners actually worked far longer hours (often for less money) than they had in corporate life.They nevertheless perceived themselves to have a better work–life balance because they had greater scope to make their own choices. Leaders who know how to satisfy the need for autonomy among their people can reap substantial benefits — without losing their best people to the entrepreneurial ranks. features special report 7 The Autonomy Factor too much uncertainty that undercuts focus and performance. When perceived uncertainty gets out of hand, people panic and make bad decisions. Leaders and managers must thus work to create a perception of certainty to build confident and dedicated eams. Sharing business plans, rationales for change, and accurate maps of an organization’s structure promotes this perception. Giving specifics about organizational restructuring helps people feel more confident about a plan, and articulating how decisions are made increases trust. Transparent practices are the foundation on which the perception of certainty rests. Breaking complex projects down into small steps can also help create the feeling of certainty. Although it’s highly unlikely everything will go as planned, people function better because the project now seems less ambiguous.Like the driver on the road who has enough information to calculate his or her response, an employee focused on a single, ma nageable aspect of a task is unlikely to be overwhelmed by threat responses. strategy + business issue 56 Studies by Steven Maier at the University of Boulder show that the degree of control available to an animal confronted by stressful situations determines whether or not that stressor undermines the ability to function. Similarly, in an organization, as long as people feel they can execute their own decisions without much oversight, stress remains under control.Because human brains evolved in response to stressors over thousands of years, they are constantly attuned, usually at a subconscious level, to the ways in which social encounters threaten or support the capacity for choice. A perception of reduced autonomy — for example, because of being micromanaged — can easily generate a threat response. When an employee experiences a lack of control, or agency, his or her perception of uncertainty is also aroused, further raising stress levels. By contrast, the perceptio n of greater autonomy increases the feeling of certainty and reduces stress.Leaders who want to support their people’s need for autonomy must give them latitude to make choices, especially when they are part of a team or working with a supervisor. Presenting people with options, or allowing them to organize their own work and set their own hours, provokes a much less stressed response than forcing them to follow rigid instructions and schedules. In 1977, a well-known study of nursing homes by Judith Rodin and Ellen Langer found that residents who were Fruitful collaboration depends on healthy relationships, which require trust and empathy. But in the brain, the bility to feel trust and empathy about others is shaped by whether they are perceived to be part of the same social group. This pattern is visible in many domains: in sports (â€Å"I hate the other team†), in organizational silos (â€Å"the ‘suits’ are the problem†), and in communities (†Å"those people on the other side of town always mess things up†). Each time a person meets someone new, the brain automatically makes quick friend-or-foe distinctions and then experiences the friends and foes in ways that are colored by those distinctions. When the new person is perceived as different, the information travels along eural pathways that are associated with uncomfortable feelings (different from the neural pathways triggered by people who are perceived as similar to oneself). Leaders who understand this phenomenon will find many ways to apply it in business. For example, teams of diverse people cannot be thrown together. They must be deliberately put together in a way that minimizes the potential for threat responses. Trust cannot be assumed or mandated, nor can empathy or even goodwill be compelled. These qualities develop only when people’s brains start to recognize former strangers as friends. This equires time and repeated social interaction. Once peop le make a stronger social connection, their brains begin to secrete a hormone called oxytocin in one another’s presence. This chemical, which has been linked with affection, maternal behavior, sexual arousal, and generosity, disarms the threat response and We now have reason to believe that economic incentives are effective only when people perceive them as supporting their social needs. The perception that an event has been unfair generates a strong response in the limbic system, stirring hostility and undermining trust. As with status, people perceive airness in relative terms, feeling more satisfied with a fair exchange that offers a minimal reward than an unfair exchange in which the reward is substantial. Studies conducted by Matthew Lieberman and Golnaz Tabibnia found that people respond more positively to being given 50 cents from a dollar split between them and another person than to receiving $8 out of a total of $25. Another study found that the experience of fairne ss produces reward responses in the brain similar to those that occur from eating chocolate. The cognitive need for fairness is so strong that some people are willing to fight and die for causes hey believe are just — or commit themselves wholeheartedly to an organization they recognize as fair. An executive told me he had stayed with his company for 22 years simply because â€Å"they always did the right thing. † People often engage in volunteer work for similar reasons: They perceive their actions as increasing the fairness quotient in the world. In organizations, the perception of unfairness creates an environment in which trust and collaboration cannot flourish. Leaders who play favorites or who appear to reserve privileges for people who are like them arouse a threat response in employees who are outside their circle.The old boys’ network provides an egregious example; those who are not a part of it always perceive their organizations as fundamentally unfai r, no matter how many mentoring programs are put in place. Like certainty, fairness is served by transparency. Leaders who share information in a timely manner can keep people engaged and motivated, even during staff reductions. Morale remains relatively high when people perceive that cutbacks are being handled fairly — that no one group is treated with preference and that there is a rationale for every cut. Putting on the SCARF If you are a leader, every action you take and every ecision you make either supports or undermines the perceived levels of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness in your enterprise. In fact, this is why leading is so difficult. Your every word and glance is freighted with social meaning. Your sentences and gestures are noticed and interpreted, magnified and 8 features special report Playing for Fairness further activates the neural networks that permit us to perceive someone as â€Å"just like us. † Research by Michael Kosfeld et al. in 2005 shows that a shot of oxytocin delivered by means of a nasal spray decreases threat arousal.But so may a handshake and a shared glance over something funny. Conversely, the human threat response is aroused when people feel cut off from social interaction. Loneliness and isolation are profoundly stressful. John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick showed in 2008 that loneliness is itself a threat response to lack of social contact, activating the same neurochemicals that flood the system when one is subjected to physical pain. Leaders who strive for inclusion and minimize situations in which people feel rejected create an environment that supports maximum performance. This of course raises a hallenge for organizations: How can they foster relatedness among people who are competing with one another or who may be laid off? strategy + business issue 56 features special report 9 combed for meanings you may never have intended. The SCARF model provides a means of bringing conscio us awareness to all these potentially fraught interactions. It helps alert you to people’s core concerns (which they may not even understand themselves) and shows you how to calibrate your words and actions to better effect. Start by reducing the threats inherent in your company and in its leaders’ behavior.Just as the animal brain is wired to respond to a predator before it can focus attention on the hunt for food, so is the social brain wired to respond to dangers that threaten its core concerns before it can perform other functions. Threat always trumps reward because the threat response is strong, immediate, and hard to ignore. Once aroused, it is hard to displace, which is why an unpleasant encounter in traffic on the morning drive to work can distract attention and impair performance all day. Humans cannot think creatively, work well with others, or make informed decisions when their threat responses re on high alert. Skilled leaders understand this and act accor dingly. A business reorganization provides a good example. Reorganizations generate massive amounts of uncertainty, which can paralyze people’s ability to perform. A leader attuned to SCARF principles therefore makes reducing the threat of uncertainty the first order of business. For example, a leader might kick off the process by sharing as much information as possible about the reasons for the reorganization, painting a picture of the future company and explaining what the specific implications will be for the people who work there.Much will be unknown, but being clear about what is known and willing to acknowledge what is not goes a long way toward ameliorating uncertainty threats. Reorganizations also stir up threats to autonomy, because people feel they lack control over their future. An astute leader will address these threats by giving people latitude to make as many of their own decisions as possible — for example, when the budget must be cut, involving the peo ple closest to the work in deciding what must go. Because many reorganizations entail information technology upgrades that undermine peo- ple’s perception of autonomy by foisting new systems on hem without their consent, it is essential to provide continuous support and solicit employees’ participation in the design of new systems. Top-down strategic planning is often inimical to SCARF -related reactions. Having a few key leaders come up with a plan and then expecting people to buy into it is a recipe for failure, because it does not take the threat response into account. People rarely support initiatives they had no part in designing; doing so would undermine both autonomy and status. Proactively addressing these concerns by adopting an inclusive planning process can prevent the kind of unconscious sabotage hat results when people feel they have played no part in a change that affects them every day. Leaders often underestimate the importance of addressing threats to fairness. This is especially true when it comes to compensation. Although most people are not motivated primarily by money, they are profoundly de-motivated when they believe they are being unfairly paid or that others are overpaid by comparison. Leaders who recognize fairness as a core concern understand that disproportionately increasing compensation at the top makes it impossible to fully engage people at the middle or lower end of the pay cale. Declaring that a highly paid executive is â€Å"doing a great job† is counterproductive in this situation because those who are paid less will interpret it to mean that they are perceived to be poor performers. For years, economists have argued that people will change their behavior if they have sufficient incentives. But these economists have defined incentives almost exclusively in economic terms. We now have reason to believe that economic incentives are effective only when people perceive them as supporting their social needs. Status can also be enhanced by giving an employee reater scope to plan his or her schedule or the chance to develop meaningful relationships with those at different levels in the organization. The SCARF model thus provides leaders with more nuanced and cost-effective ways to expand the definition of reward. In doing so, SCARF principles also provide a more granular understanding of the state of engagement, in which employees give their best performance. Engagement can be induced when people working toward objectives feel rewarded by their efforts, with a manageable level of threat: in short, when the brain is generating rewards in several SCARF-related dimensions.Leaders themselves are not immune to the SCARF and cognitive problem solving reside in the lateral, or outer, portions of the brain, whereas the middle regions support self-awareness, social skills, and empathy. These regions are inversely correlated. As Lieberman notes, â€Å"If you spend a lot of time in cognitive tasks, your ability to have empathy for people is reduced simply because that part of your circuitry doesn’t get much use. † Perhaps the greatest challenge facing leaders of business or government is to create the kind of atmosphere that promotes status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.When historians look back, their judgment of this period in time may rise or fall on how organizations, and society as a whole, operated. Did they treat people fairly, draw people together to solve problems, promote entrepreneurship and autonomy, foster certainty wherever possible, and find ways to raise the perceived status of everyone? If so, the brains of the future will salute them. + Resources Reprint No. 09306 John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (W. W. Norton, 2008): A scientific look at the causes and effects of emotional isolation.Michael Marmot, The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and L ongevity (Times Books, 2004): An epidemiologist shows that people live longer when they have status, autonomy, and relatedness, even if they lack money. David Rock, Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long (HarperBusiness, 2009): Neuroscience explanations for workplace challenges and dilemmas, and strategies for managing them. David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, â€Å"The Neuroscience of Leadership,† s+b, Summer 2006, www. strategy-business. om/press/article/06207: Applying breakthroughs in brain research, this article explains the value of neuroplasticity in organizational change. David Rock, â€Å"SCARF: A Brain-based Model for Collaborating with and Influencing Others,† NeuroLeadership Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, December 2008, 44: Overview of research on the five factors described in this article, and contains bibliographic references for research quoted in this article. Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieb erman, with K. D. Williams, â€Å"Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion,† Science, vol. 302, no. 643, October 2003, 290–292: Covers the Cyberball experiment. Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman, â€Å"The Pains and Pleasures of Social Life,† Science, vol. 323, no. 5916, February 2009, 890–891: Explication of social pain and social pleasure, and the impact of fairness, status, and autonomy on brain response. NeuroLeadership Institute Web site, www. neuroleadership. org: Institute bringing together research scientists and management experts to explore the transformation of organizational development and performance. For more business thought leadership, sign up for s+b ’s RSS feeds at www. trategy-business. com/rss 10 features special report dynamic; like everyone else, they react when they feel their status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fair treatment are threatened. However, their reactions have more impact, because th ey are picked up and amplified by others throughout the company. (If a company’s executive salaries are excessive, it may be because others are following the leader’s intuitive emphasis, driven by subconscious cognition, on anything that adds status. ) If you are an executive leader, the more practiced you are at reading yourself, the more effective you will e. For example, if you understand that micromanaging threatens status and autonomy, you will resist your own impulse to gain certainty by dictating every detail. Instead, you’ll seek to disarm people by giving them latitude to make their own mistakes. If you have felt the hairs on the back of your own neck rise when someone says, â€Å"Can I offer you some feedback? † you will know it’s best to create opportunities for people to do the hard work of self-assessment rather than insisting they depend on performance reviews. When a leader is self-aware, it gives others a feeling f safety even in un certain environments. It makes it easier for employees to focus on their work, which leads to improved performance. The same principle is evident in other groups of mammals, where a skilled pack leader keeps members at peace so they can perform their functions. A self-aware leader modulates his or her behavior to alleviate organizational stress and creates an environment in which motivation and creativity flourish. One great advantage of neuroscience is that it provides hard data to vouch for the efficacy and value of so-called soft skills. It also shows the danger of being a hard-charging eader whose best efforts to move people along also set up a threat response that puts others on guard. Similarly, many leaders try to repress their emotions in order to enhance their leadership presence, but this only confuses people and undermines morale. Experiments by Kevin Ochsner and James Gross show that when someone tries not to let other people see what he or she is feeling, the other part y tends to experience a threat response. That’s why being spontaneous is key to creating an authentic leadership presence. This approach is likely to minimize status threats, increase certainty, nd create a sense of relatedness and fairness. Finally, the SCARF model helps explain why intelligence, in itself, isn’t sufficient for a good leader. Matthew Lieberman’s research suggests that high intelligence often corresponds with low self-awareness. 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