So he temporarily slashed the price by more than 75% and gave the product new, income-generating features, including ads and a search tool, by forming partnerships with other businesses.

The original fee “was a leap for something that wasn’t proven,” says Mr. Murphy, who started the Dublin, Ohio, company in 2007 in anticipation of a pink slip from a large Internet company. “We had to be nimble enough to make that change or this business would not be here today. It was live or die.”

Start-ups don’t always evolve according to plan. Some end up targeting the wrong market, while others get sidelined by unforeseen competitors. To avoid failure, experts say it’s critical for owners to quickly identify what’s obstructing them and come up with a solution that sticks.

“Change is absolutely critical to success,” says Lou Davenport, an adviser in Lancaster, Pa., for SCORE, a nonprofit small-business mentoring and training organization. “There are things in the business plan that are simply not going to work.”

Kate Byars originally launched a photography business in Atlanta last year that offered to take family portraits and provide digital copies of those shots. But within six months, it became clear that the business wasn’t generating enough income to survive for much longer.

“I had an avalanche of customers, but after I crunched the numbers, I realized I was working at less than minimum wage,” Ms. Byars says. “I needed to find a niche that would allow me to become profitable.”

Ms. Byars also needed to act fast. “It was sink or swim,” she says. She started her company, Kate Byars Photography, following a layoff from a nonprofit organization. And just a few years earlier, she had to flee New Orleans empty-handed when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Ms. Byars resolved to turn her business into an upscale photography service — a change she made by increasing her picture-taking fees fourfold and offering framed, printed copies of her shots to account for the price inflation. Today, her business has four employees and is in the black. “I can actually make a living at this,” she says.

For other entrepreneurs, turning a struggling start-up around may require adopting a new way of finding customers.

Barry Randall says he initially relied on networking to build a client base for Crabtree Asset Management, a money-management business he started in 2008 after getting laid off from a large firm in the same industry. But six months passed and he had nothing to show for his efforts.

Mr. Randall, who works out of his home in St. Paul, Minn., says things changed when he happened upon Wealthfront, a company that promotes the services of firms like his online. In return for a percentage of the fees it charges, Crabtree Asset Management is now being promoted on Wealthfront.com. It currently has 11 clients.

“It’s the equivalent of getting shelf space at a supermarket,” Mr. Randall says of the exposure, adding that being listed on the website also helps to strengthen his company’s image. “There’s an implied level of substance that goes with appearing alongside other businesses, particularly ones that are larger than your business.”

Leslie Sell says her first approach to generating buzz for her custom children’s book business, Little Wonder Company, failed to attract many buyers. It entailed giving free samples of her product to bloggers and journalists who write about parenting, in hopes of getting positive press. Not only was the strategy costly, but it was also “very labor-intensive,” she says.

Ms. Sell, who started her business after getting laid off from an advertising agency in 2007, says she fared better 10 months later when she hired an independent public-relations professional, who would get paid only if she produced results. She did, getting Ms. Sell a mention in a gift guide for this holiday season on a parenting website.

Soon after, Ms. Sell scored an interview with a local TV news show on her own by tapping her personal network.

As a result, says Ms. Sell, this past month her average customer orders per week were 40 times greater.

Of course, it can be difficult for entrepreneurs to concede that their businesses are heading in the wrong direction, says Isaac Barchas, director of the Austin Technology Incubator at the University of Texas at Austin. “Sometimes, it’s obvious to everyone except you,” he says.

For this reason, Mr. Barchas urges entrepreneurs to consult with mentors or advisers throughout those first few volatile years. “Getting that friendly but honest third-party perspective is really important,” he says. “It’s a good way to make sure you haven’t fallen so deeply in love with your original business idea that you’re blind to making necessary changes.”

Source: WSJ.com

AI PRIMI POSTI – Il primo funerale va celebrato per il Vhs e le sue videocassette, capaci ormai di far quasi sorridere al cospetto del ben più autorevole Dvd. Il Washington Post scriveva della sua morte già nel 2005: «Il Vhs è morto, a soli 29 anni di vita». A seguire troviamo nella classifica delle cose obsolete le agenzie di viaggio, ormai spazzate via dai siti e dalle applicazioni per viaggiatori digitali, capaci di offrire soluzioni ben più capillari e originali. Al terzo posto Huffington Post cita il tramonto della separazione tra vita lavorativa e privata, definitivamente annientata dopo anni di assottigliamento di un confine sempre più labile, complici il multitasking e le connessioni senza fili. Ma nella lista nera si possono trovare, come ricordato, anche concetti astratti: ne è un esempio l’oblio che, in una rete con una memoria da elefante che conserva una copia digitale di ogni pensiero e di ogni azione dei suoi utenti, semplicemente non ha più ragione di esistere. La fine del diritto di dimenticare viene sancita dall’autorevole New York Times nel luglio di questo anno con un articolo dal titolo The Web Means the End of Forgetting (Il web significa la fine dell’oblio). Gli ultimi dieci anni hanno significato anche la lenta agonia delle librerie e dei loro frequentatori, i topi da biblioteca. L’anno che verrà sarà l’anno della fine delle librerie brick and mortar (calce e mattoni) secondo le previsioni dell’editore Mike Shatzkin che nel suo blog profetizza il fallimento di molti colossi del settore, oscurati da Amazon e simili e dall’ebook. Anche l’orologio da polso è destinato a sparire, sorpassato da cellulari, laptop e gadget tutto fare che offrono un servizio molto più completo della semplice indicazione dell’orario. Uno studio del Beloit College sulle abitudini studentesche della generazione imminente concludeva pochi mesi fa: la generazione a venire non saprà più scrivere in corsivo e non conoscerà l’orologio, inteso come oggetto utile. Sopraviveranno gli orologi particolari, di lusso, capaci di regalare un valore aggiunto rispetto alla semplice indicazione pratica dell’ora.

GLI ALTRI DEFUNTI – Ma nell’ultimo decennio si sono dissolte, impercettibilmente e lentamente, tante altre cose. Nella lista c’è un posto per le linee erotiche, decisamente demodé, le cartine geografiche (impallidite rispetto alle mappa online e al Gps), la chiamata telefonica, gli annunci sui giornali, le connessioni dial-up, l’enciclopedia, il Cd, la linea fissa, le pellicole, le pagine gialle, i cataloghi, il fax. Infine, grazie al wireless sono diventati obsoleti i fili. «Nonostante per ora i fili siano ancora con noi», scrive l’Huffngton Post, «si stanno avviando a diventare una cosa del passato».

Fonte: CorriereDellaSera.it

Seeing the world as black and white, in which choices seem clear, or shades of gray can affect people’s path in life, from jobs and relationships to which political candidate they vote for, researchers say. People who often have conflicting feelings about situations—the shades-of-gray thinkers—have more of what psychologists call ambivalence, while those who tend toward unequivocal views have less ambivalence.

High ambivalence may be useful in some situations, and low ambivalence in others, researchers say. And although people don’t fall neatly into one camp or the other, in general, individuals who tend toward ambivalence do so fairly consistently across different areas of their lives.

For decades psychologists largely ignored ambivalence because they didn’t think it was meaningful. The way researchers studied attitudes—by asking participants where they fell on a scale ranging from positive to negative—also made it difficult to tease apart who held conflicting opinions from those who were neutral, according to Mark Zanna, a University of Waterloo professor who studies ambivalence. (Similarly, psychologists long believed it wasn’t necessary to examine men and women separately when studying the way people think.)

Now, researchers have been investigating how ambivalence, or lack of it, affects people’s lives, and how they might be able to make better decisions. Overall, thinking in shades of gray is a sign of maturity, enabling people to see the world as it really is. It’s a “coming to grips with the complexity of the world,” says Jeff Larsen, a psychology professor who studies ambivalence at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

In a recent study, college students were asked to write an essay coming down on one side or another of a contentious issue, regarding a new labor law affecting young adults, while other groups of students were allowed to write about both sides of the issue. The students forced to choose a side reported feeling more uncomfortable, even physically sweating more, says Frenk van Harreveld , a social psychologist at the University of Amsterdam who studies how people deal with ambivalence.

If there isn’t an easy answer, ambivalent people, more than black-and-white thinkers, are likely to procrastinate and avoid making a choice, for instance about whether to take a new job, says Dr. Harreveld. But if after careful consideration an individual still can’t decide, one’s gut reaction may be the way to go. Dr. van Harreveld says in these situations he flips a coin, and if his immediate reaction when the coin lands on heads is negative, then he knows what he should do.

Researchers can’t say for sure why some people tend towards greater ambivalence. Certain personality traits play a role—people with a strong need to reach a conclusion in a given situation tend to black-and-white thinking, while ambivalent people tend to be more comfortable with uncertainty. Individuals who are raised in environments where their parents are ambivalent or unstable may grow to experience anxiety and ambivalence in future relationships, according to some developmental psychologists.

Culture may also play a role. In western cultures, simultaneously seeing both good and bad “violates our world view, our need to put things in boxes,” says Dr. Larsen. But in eastern philosophies, it may be less problematic because there is a recognition of dualism, that something can be one thing as well as another.

One of the most widely studied aspects of ambivalence is how it affects thinking. Because of their strongly positive or strongly negative views, black-and-white thinkers tend to be quicker at making decisions than highly ambivalent people. But if they get mired in one point of view and can’t see others, black-and-white thinking may prompt conflict with others or unhealthy thoughts or behaviors.

People with clinical depression, for instance, often get mired in a negative view of the world. They may interpret a neutral action like a friend not waving to them as meaning that their friend is mad at them, and have trouble thinking about alternative explanations.

Ambivalent people, on the other hand, tend to systematically evaluate all sides of an argument before coming to a decision. They scrutinize carefully the evidence that is presented to them, making lists of pros and cons, and rejecting overly simplified information.

Ambivalent individuals’ ability to see all sides of an argument and feel mixed emotions appears to have some benefits. They may be better able to empathize with others’ points of view, for one thing. And when people are able to feel mixed emotions, such as hope and sadness, they tend to have healthier coping strategies, such as when a spouse passes away, according to Dr. Larsen. They may also be more creative because the different emotions lead them to consider different ideas that they might otherwise have dismissed.

People waffling over a decision may benefit from paring down the number of details they are weighing and instead selecting one or a few important values to use in basing their decision, says Richard Boyatzis , a professor in organizational behavior, psychology and cognitive science at Case Western Reserve University.

For example, in making a decision about whether to buy a costly piece of new medical equipment, a hospital executive may weigh the expense, expertise needed to operate it and space requirements against its effectiveness. But ultimately, Dr. Boyatzis says, in order to avoid getting mired in a prolonged debate, the executive may decide on a core value—say, how well the equipment works for taking care of patients—that can be used to help make the decision.

In the workplace, employees who are highly ambivalent about their jobs are more erratic in job performance; they may perform particularly well some days and poorly other times, says René Ziegler, a professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Tübingen in Germany whose study of the subject is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Positive feedback for a highly ambivalent person, such as a pay raise, will boost their job performance more than for someone who isn’t ambivalent about the job, he says.

Every job has good and bad elements. But people who aren’t ambivalent about their job perform well if they like their work and poorly if they don’t. Dr. Ziegler suggests that black-and-white thinkers tend to focus on key aspects of their job, such as how much they are getting paid or how much they like their boss, and not the total picture in determining whether they are happy at work.

Black-and-white thinkers similarly may recognize that there are positive and negative aspects to a significant relationship. But they generally choose to focus only on some qualities that are particularly important to them.

By contrast, people who are truly ambivalent in a relationship can’t put the negative out of their mind. They may worry about being hurt or abandoned even in moments when their partner is doing something nice, says Mario Mikulincer, dean of the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel.

Such shades-of-gray people tend to have trouble in relationships. They stay in relationships longer, even abusive ones, and experience more fighting. They are also more likely to get divorced, says Dr. Mikulincer.

Recognizing that a partner has strengths and weaknesses is normal, says Dr. Mikulincer. “A certain degree of ambivalence is a sign of maturity,” he says.

Source: WSJ.com

Le aziende, non finanziarie, nell’ indice di Standard & Poors 500 (S&P) hanno accumulato un record di $837 milliardi durante il primo trimestre del 2010.  La questione qual’e’ “con una cifra cosi’ enorme perche’ queste ditte non investono I loro soldi oppure non assumono piu’ lavoratori?”.

Infatti, secondo S&P “c’e’ colletivamente una cifra abbastanza grande per pagare 2.4 milioni di dipendenti gli stipendi di $70,000 da 5 anni comunque non li stanno assumendo.”  Per una persona disoccupata da mesi questa idea e’ incomprensibile.  Per le azioniste di queste aziende forse  potrebbe essere una strategia  intelligente per conservare i loro soldi durante un periodo di crisi.

Intellettualmente capisco il dolore di un lavoratore disoccupato, comunque, in un sistema del capitalismo, come il nostro, non c’e’ un obbligo per un’azienda di assumere qualcuno.  Durante questo periodo di incertezza le imprese hanno determinato i metodi piu’ efficaci  a fare il loro business con meno dipendenti.  Mentre questa ombra di instabilita’ rimane, non ci sara’ una fretta dalle aziende di investire oppure di assumere.

Secondo me, questa non e’ una questione di moralita’, comunque, una situazione per cui il mercato determina quando e’ un buon tempo di andare avanti.  Per adesso, il mondo di business sta aspettando ancora…

On the other hand, there are about as many mistakes to be made as there are entrepreneurs to make them.

Recently, after a work-out at the gym with my trainer—an attractive young woman who’s also a dancer/actor—she told me about a web series that she’s producing and starring in together with a few friends. While the series has gained a large following online, she and her friends have not yet incorporated their venture, drafted an operating agreement, trademarked the show’s name or done any of the other things that businesses typically do to protect their intellectual property and divvy up the owners’ share of the company. While none of this may be a problem now, I told her, just wait until the show hits it big and everybody hires a lawyer.

Here, in my experience, are the top 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs make when starting a company:

1. Going it alone. It’s difficult to build a scalable business if you’re the only person involved. True, a solo public relations, web design or consulting firm may require little capital to start, and the price of hiring even one administrative assistant, sales representative or entry-level employee can eat up a big chunk of your profits. The solution: Make sure there’s enough margin in your pricing to enable you to bring in other people. Clients generally don’t mind outsourcing as long as they can still get face time with you, the skilled professional who’s managing the project.

2. Asking too many people for advice. It’s always good to get input from experts, especially experienced entrepreneurs who’ve built and sold successful companies in your industry. But getting too many people’s opinions can delay your decision so long that your company never gets out of the starting gate. The answer: Assemble a solid advisory board that you can tap on a regular basis but run the day-to-day yourself. Says Elyissia Wassung, chief executive of 2 Chicks With Chocolate Inc., a Matawan, N.J., chocolate company, “Pull in your [advisory] team for bi-weekly or, at the very least, monthly conference calls. You’ll wish you did it sooner!”

3. Spending too much time on product development, not enough on sales. While it’s hard to build a great company without a great product, entrepreneurs who spend too much time tinkering may lose customers to a competitor with a stronger sales organization. “I call [this misstep] the ‘Field of Dreams’ of entrepreneurship. If you build it, they will buy it,” says Sanjyot Dunung, CEO of Atma Global, Inc., a New York software publisher, who has made this mistake in her own business. “If you don’t keep one eye firmly focused on sales, you’ll likely run out of money and energy before you can successfully get your product to market.”

4. Targeting too small a market. It’s tempting to try to corner a niche, but your company’s growth will quickly hit a wall if the market you’re targeting is too tiny. Think about all the high school basketball stars who dream of playing in the NBA. Because there are only 30 teams and each team employs only a handful of players, the chances that your son will become the next Michael Jordan are pretty slim. The solution: Pick a bigger market that gives you the chance to grab a slice of the pie even if your company remains a smaller player.

5. Entering a market with no distribution partner. It’s easier to break into a market if there’s already a network of agents, brokers, manufacturers’ reps and other third-party resellers ready, willing and able to sell your product into existing distribution channels. Fashion, food, media and other major industries work this way; others are not so lucky. That’s why service businesses like public relations firms, yoga studios and pet-grooming companies often struggle to survive, alternating between feast and famine. The solution: Make a list of potential referral sources before you start your business and ask them if they’d be willing to send business your way.

6. Overpaying for customers. Spending big on advertising may bring in lots of customers, but it’s a money-losing strategy if your company can’t turn those dollars into life-time customer value. A magazine or web site that spends $500 worth of advertising to acquire a customer who pays $20 a month and cancels his or her subscription at the end of the year is simply pouring money down the drain. The solution: Test, measure, then test again. Once you’ve done enough testing to figure out how to make more money selling products and services to your customers than you spend acquiring those customers in the first place, roll out a major marketing campaign. (See related article, “On a Tight Budget? How to Land a Client.”)

7. Raising too little capital. Many start-ups assume that all they need is enough money to rent space, buy equipment, stock inventory and drive customers through the door. What they often forget is that they also need capital to pay for salaries, utilities, insurance and other overhead expenses until their company starts turning a profit. Unless you’re running the kind of business where everybody’s working for sweat equity and deferring compensation, you’ll need to raise enough money to tide you over until your revenues can cover your expenses and generate positive cash flow. The solution: Calculate your start-up costs before you open your doors, not afterwards.

8. Raising too much capital. Believe it or not, raising too much money can be a problem, too. Over-funded companies tend to get big and bloated, hiring too many people too soon and wasting valuable resources on trade show booths, parties, image ads and other frills. When the money runs out and investors lose patience (which is what happened 10 years ago when the dot-com market melted down), start-ups that frittered away their cash will have to close their doors. No matter how much money you raise at the outset, remember to bank some for a rainy day.

9. Not having a business plan. While not every company needs a formal business plan, a start-up that requires significant capital to grow and more than a year to turn a profit should map out how much time and money it’s going to take to get to its destination. This means thinking through the key metrics that make your business tick and building a model to spin off three years of sales, profits and cash-flow projections. “I wasted 10 years [fooling around] thinking like an artist and not a business person,” says Louis Piscione, president of Avanti Media Group, a New Jersey company that produces videos for corporate and private events. “I learned that you have to put some of your creative genius toward a business plan that forecasts and sets goals for growth and success.” (See related article, “Are Business Plans a Waste of Time?”)

10. Over-thinking your business plan. While many entrepreneurs I’ve met engage in seat-of-the-pants decision-making and fail to do their homework, other entrepreneurs are afraid to pull the trigger until they’re 100% certain that their plan will succeed. One lawyer I worked with several years ago was so skittish about leaving his six-figure job to launch his business that he never met with a single bank or investor who might have funded his company. The truth is that a business plan is not a crystal ball that can predict the future. At a certain point, you have to close your eyes and take the leap of faith.

Despite the many books and articles that have been written about entrepreneurship, it’s just not possible to start a company without making a few mistakes along the way. Just try to avoid making any mistake so large that your company can’t get back on its feet to fight another day.

Source: WSJ.com

As simple—or even scary—as that formula sounds, a host of entrepreneurs have found that conquering public speaking can be the route to more contacts and customers. Impressing people with your expertise at a conference, in a classroom or over the radio can sometimes win more business than making sales calls or manning a booth at a trade show. Not to mention that the most successful speakers can take home thousands of dollars in fees for an appearance.

Of course, it’s not always easy to get started. Many entrepreneurs—like many people in general—suffer from stage fright, or simply don’t think they have anything to say to an audience. In many cases, they have to get up to speed with the help of speakers’ groups such as Dale Carnegie & Associates Inc. or Toastmasters International, or even coaches and therapists. But those who have done it often say it’s worth the effort, for both their business and their self-esteem.

Here are some of the crucial lessons these entrepreneurs have learned about finding their voice—and using it to land clients.

Get Out There.

For all the training they go through, entrepreneurs say it was vital to practice delivering their message in public. “You don’t get better by reading and studying the craft,” says Scott Miller of Cincinnati. “The only way to improve is to put yourself out there.”

Mr. Miller, founder of B2Bee LLC, a developer of invoicing and bookkeeping software for very small businesses, says giving speeches didn’t come easily. “When I graduated from college, I was a terrible public speaker and deathly afraid of the experience,” he says.

He started off his speaking career with a Dale Carnegie course on professional selling, and then bolstered his training with lots of practice before technology groups. He also taught college classes, which kept him nimble by forcing him to answer tough questions on the fly.

“College students force you to be prepared and bring your A game,” he says.

That practice didn’t just help his speaking, he says. “Being prepared for a 45-minute talk followed by 30 minutes of Q&A helps develop the skills of preparedness and organization that all entrepreneurs need to succeed,” says Mr. Miller.

Now he often speaks before technology-industry groups and teaches a class in entrepreneurship at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He also makes presentations to raise capital for his business from angel investors and to obtain state grant money. His efforts have landed him plenty of business. After a speaking engagement last November, for instance, Mr. Miller picked up a handful of beta testers, who agreed to run their business on his new invoicing software. They are now customers.

Tony Coretto also benefited from lots of practice. Mr. Coretto, co-founder and co-chief executive of PNT Marketing Services Inc., a Long Island City, N.Y., database-marketing company, trained in speaking and negotiating a couple of years ago through a Harvard Law School program, then “followed that up with a few quick sessions with a behavioral therapist, to attack the problem of stage fright and fear of public speaking.”

After that, he began seeking out opportunities to speak: day-chairing an event, doing a radio interview and being a panelist at a conference. He even had some videos of himself professionally recorded and posted them on his website and on YouTube. “More people are calling, referencing an event at which they saw me, or one of my videos, and we’re definitely building more of a buzz around our company,” Mr. Coretto says. “We can’t yet quantify the effect in terms of sales, but it’s early days and we’re confident it will eventually pay off.”

You’re the Expert.

Lots of people are intimidated by the prospect of speaking in front of a huge crowd at a conference or similar event. They’re more comfortable with the intimacy of a sales call or a convention booth. But remember that when you get onstage you have one simple, but huge, advantage: People want to listen to you.

“Often with a cold sales call you can play telephone tag and talk to seven different people until you reach the individual in the right department—who may or may not be interested in your service,” says Marty Metro, a Los Angeles entrepreneur. “Compare that to a captive audience at a conference in which the people in the audience are interested enough in the topic to leave the office, pay for the event and sit and listen to your message.”

Mr. Metro, founder and CEO of UsedCardboardBoxes.com, which promotes conservation by buying and selling used boxes nationwide, says public speaking is such a great source of clients that he doesn’t make outside sales calls anymore. He appears at about one event a month, talking about how companies can go green. His recent engagements include keynote speaker at the Mid-Atlantic B2B Green Forum in Baltimore in March and emcee for the Good Housekeeping/Wal-Mart Green Expo Speaker Series in Bentonville, Ark., in April.

“I meet potential clients at almost every event…and I’m in the position of thought leader and not salesperson, because I’m offering valuable information and the audience appreciates that,” Mr. Metro says.

Be Specific.

Many people aren’t sure what to talk about on stage. One good rule: Stick to real life. Effective speakers say they use actual examples whenever they can, to liven up their talks and give the audience something to relate to.

In 1998, Maribeth Kuzmeski, president and founder of Red Zone Marketing, a consulting firm in Libertyville, Ill., was asked to speak about a marketing plan her firm set in place for a financial adviser. The venue: a national sales conference, with 350 advisers in the audience. “I was so nervous I thought I wouldn’t make it,” she says.

But after the talk, Ms. Kuzmeski had a line of advisers who wanted to work with her firm. She took away an important lesson: Audiences respond strongly to stories. “Today, I speak more than 80 times per year and speaking has built my marketing consulting firm entirely,” says Ms. Kuzmeski. “I have not done any marketing besides my Web site and writing books and articles.”

Whenever she gives a speech, she makes sure to use real-life examples. For instance, she relates a story about a client who complained of poor results after spending $100,000 a year on dinner seminars. He described the invitees as “plate lickers” who didn’t even listen to his pitch.

Ms. Kuzmeski suggested an event in which existing clients are invited to a special event if they give a referral. The event—a dinner cruise on the Detroit River—drew 40 client referrals. The strategy was so successful, and so much less expensive than the seminars, the client does three of the events a year, and no other marketing.

“Audiences don’t want theory, they want to know how someone is actually putting the theory to work,” Ms. Kuzmeski says. “I use success stories from our consulting clients, and I use only recent ones because what worked years ago may not work today.”

Source: WSJ.com

Sono appena tornato da sei giorni di ferie in Arizona, in particolare, Scottsdale vicino la capitale dello stato Phoenix. Mi interessavo ascoltare per me stesso qual’e’ l’opinione quotidiana della legge sull’immigrazione? Dato che questa storia abbia attirato tanta attenzione della mass media, volevo scoprire se le loro storie fossero corrette.

“La durissima legge sull’immigrazione varata dalla governatrice dell’Arizona Jan Brewer in aprile è stata bloccata da un giudice federale di Phoenix, a un giorno dall’entrata in vigore. L’attuazione della legge, che da mesi solleva proteste in tutti gli Stati Uniti, è stata sospesa nell’ipotesi di violazione del dettato costituzionale. In particolare è la norma, controversa, che avrebbe consentito alla polizia di interrogare e arrestare chiunque sulla base del semplice sospetto di presenza illegale negli Stati Uniti.”

Ovviamente non ho fatto un sondaggio scientifico, comunque, ho provato a parlare con le persone diverse. Che cosa ho trovato? Puo’ confermare che il 70 percento degli Arizoniani appoggiano questa legge e fra di loro c’e’ una frustrazione verso il governo federale per non aver applicato la legge. Gli elettori sono stanchi e volevano Washington DC di fare la sua parte. Arizona e’ tradizionalmente conservativo e il popolo vede le cose in nero o bianco. Non c’e’ la confusione con la parola “illegale”.
Secondo me, loro hanno il rispetto per i diritti umani, comunque, la loro posizione potrebbe essere una strategia per America di avere una conversazione sincera su questo argomento. Mi pare che sia piuttosto semplice…vedremo.

Ho Un Osso Duro…

Steven Slater non ‘e un eroe.

“Slater, 38 anni, assistente di volo della linea JetBlue, si è scritto il copione da solo. Ha prima insultato con l’altoparlante di bordo un passeggero maleducato, ha agguantato un paio di birre e poi è scappato dall’aereo, appena atterrato, attivando uno scivolo di emergenza.”

“Ha commesso un reato oppure no? Il suo raptus di rabbia è comprensibile? Giustificabile? Secondo JetBlue Slater ha creato un potenziale pericolo per i passeggeri e per l’equipaggio, attivando lo scivolo che costa 25 mila dollari e che gli sarà probabilmente addebitato.”

Una volta oppure l’altra, durante un giornataccia di lavoro, abbiamo il desiderio di dire  al cliente o forse il nostro capo “va fa”.   Per la maggior parte delle persone questo tipo di comportamento rimane una reazione nascosta, si gioca nelle sue fantasie.  Forse Slater era sincero e ha fatto questo in un momento improvviso oppure faceva soltanto una sciocchezza con in mente un’altro motivo?

Infatti, oggi ho letto che lui ha ricevuto le offerte di fare uno show reality.  Basta!  Se questo fosse giusto, che vergogna, che disgrazia!  Mi raccomando che, sebbene a volte difficile,  e’ sempre importante comportarsi in una maniera professionale e non come Corona.