A Biblical profit-sharing plan

We’ve talked about bonuses here before. The subject came to mind again one morning as I read 1 Samuel 30. You may not normally think about the Bible offering advice about profit-sharing plans, but of course it has advice about practically everything.

If you’re not prepared to go read the whole chapter right now, here’s a quick recap:

Photo by Janine Chance

While David was on the outs with Saul, Ziklag was his base of operations. While he was away, the Amalekites raided Ziklag and carried off everyone and everything in it. David went after them with 600 men. By the time they reached the Besor Valley, 200 were so exhausted they couldn’t continue. So they remained there while David went on with the 400. They fought the Amalekites, recovered what was stolen, and took the herds of the Amalekites as plunder. When they returned to the Besor Valley, the 400 did not want to share the plunder with the 200. But David said, “The share of the man who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down to the battle. All will share alike.”

Remember how flummoxed we all were at the stories of investment bankers and CEOs getting outsized bonuses, even when their companies saw losses for the year? That happened because the bonuses weren’t tied to corporate profits, they were tied to individual performance.

The lesson I see in David’s Besor Valley decision is that generosity across the board is to be preferred. That it’s better to give 100 employees each a $100 bonus than to give one top salesperson a $10,000 bonus.

Does your profit-sharing plan or bonus structure reward all employees, or only those who directly generate revenue? Are bonuses based on corporate performance, individual performance, or a combination?

The mismatch between what science knows and what business does

The best way to motivate your employees, especially creative types, may be to not motivate them at all. Rather, our goal as leaders should be to help people discover their own intrinsic motivation.

In the TED talk above and in his book Drive, Dan Pink shares the counterintuitive findings of researchers who discovered that when people are paid to accomplish a task, they are actually less efficient than those who do it for free.

Does this mean "stop paying employees?" No. It does mean consider where your employees find motivation. Are you trying to give it to them? Or are they discovering it within themselves? Only the latter really works.

Pink notes that people derive their motivation from three main areas:

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

The key, Pink says, is to inspire intrinsic motivation, which is self-directed. "It is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters. And it connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose." Our friend Kevin will appreciate that.

Pink says intrinsic motivation "emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team." That is, what they do, when they do it, how they do it, and with whom. The more latitude you can give in these areas, the happier your workers will be.

Ideally our deepest, best motivation will come not from external rewards, but from the highest source.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.—Colossians 3:23-24

5 keys insights for working with digital natives

By Michelle Manafy

Neustockimages — iStockphoto

Between all generations lie gaps. Yet today many individuals and businesses face a massive one. The digital native generation -- those who grew up immersed in technologies such as computers, mobile devices, and social networks -- are becoming our dominant employee and consumer base. That means digital immigrants -- those of us who didn’t grow up plugged in -- must navigate an altered landscape to successfully work with them. These insights will help you understand how to leverage the digital native worldview to achieve your business objectives:

1. They live publicly online.

Businesses must address the expectations of those raised in social networking environments, in which they routinely share activities and opinions with a potentially limitless group of friends.

Tip: Capitalize on digital natives’ openness. Understand their inclination to live publicly, and guide those activities so they are consistent with business objectives. Structure employee activities and customer interactions to put this openness to good use.

2. They share knowledge.

Despite much hyperbole about social media and marketing, many organizations limit or ban the use of social networks on the job. This shows a fear of exposure and a lack of understanding of how to channel this generation’s knowledge-sharing inclination.

Tip: Craft guidelines for appropriate use of social networks. Social media and collaborative ways of working can help companies capture otherwise transient knowledge. The old adage was “knowledge is power.” For digital natives, “knowledge shared is power.”

3. They believe transparency yields trust.

Because digital natives live publicly and value knowledge sharing, organizations that demonstrate transparency will attract and retain them as employees and customers. Digital natives make new friends, followers, and fans every day. Remember that it takes a lot of work to maintain a genuine relationship. If digital natives dislike your brand, they will make it publicly known. Luckily, the reverse is also true. Ultra-connected consumers look for organizations that listen, respond, own up to mistakes and maintain authentic relationships.

Tip: To attract and retain this generation as employees, recognize that the best of them monitor opportunities and discuss employers online. For recruiting, this can provide insights into who are the best, brightest, and most social-media savvy. For retention, employers can leverage these same tools to ensure they are competitive in the market.

4. They are timely, not time-managed.

While most people are painfully aware that the line between "at work" and "off duty" is increasingly blurred, digital natives will move beyond work-life balance to a new sort of work-life integration. Work and social activities are with them anywhere, anytime. Digital natives may log more hours at their computers during the course of a day than those in previous generations, but switch back and forth between work and leisure in short bursts. Though this may strike some managers as inappropriate, it helps to realize that while an older worker might head to the break room or a co-worker's desk to clear their head, natives are more likely to catch up on a quick burst of Facebook updates.

Tip: Companies that emphasize collaboration, learning, and socialization will see benefits in comparison to those that focus solely on productivity. Work can be constructively influenced by the expectations of younger workers.

5. They believe in interactions, not transactions.

With all this socializing, one might begin to wonder how any business gets done. But it does. Organizations that develop good social skills will have a competitive advantage over those that don’t. One essential quality is recognizing that this generation is not interested in transactions -- exchanges of money for goods and services. This generation is interested in interactions.

Tip: Unlike a transaction-based system, an interactive one is based upon social currency. Businesses will need to embrace interaction, from marketing to product development and content creation. This generation wants to do business with companies it views as friends and expects to see its ideals and objectives reflected in the companies it chooses to do business with.

While many digital immigrants whole-heartedly adopt digital tools, it is not simply emerging technologies that must be mastered. Lifelong immersion affects the mindset, behavior, and expectations of digital natives. To succeed in business with them, we must understand and build models based on this native culture.

            

Michelle Manafy is director of content for FreePint Ltd. and co-author of Dancing With Digital Natives: Staying in Step With the Generation That’s Transforming the Way Business Is Done.

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

Preventing Everyday Conflicts

Conflict seems to be everywhere: in our homes, our workplaces, and especially lately, in our government. But it doesn’t have to be a part of your daily life, according to Tim Scudder. His firm helps companies and executives handle workplace conflict.

Dan Tero — iStockphoto

He says conflict anywhere can be an opportunity to resolve long-standing issues and can help us lead more productive lives. It’s not just about resolution. It is also, he says, about learning to have nicer conflicts.

Scudder is CEO of Personal Strengths USA and co-author of Have a Nice Conflict: A Story of Finding Success and Satisfaction in the Most Unlikely Places. “As one set of conflicts is resolved,” he says, “others will take their place, so it’s important to learn how to make conflicts productive and positive, instead of allowing them to distract us from our goals.”

Scudder shares five keys to conflict:

Anticipate. Know who you’re dealing with. Consider how differently others might view the same situation. When people see things differently, there is potential conflict. Keeping that in mind can give you a good shot at steering clear of it.

Prevent. Use deliberate, appropriate behaviors in your relationships. A well-chosen behavior on your part can prevent conflict with another person. But sometimes, you also need to prevent conflict in yourself. That might have more to do with choosing your perceptions than choosing your behaviors.

Identify. There are three basic approaches to conflict: rising to the challenge, cautiously withdrawing, or wanting to keep the peace. When you can identify these approaches in yourself or others, you are empowered to handle the situation more productively.

Manage. This has two components: managing yourself and managing the relationship. Create conditions that empower people to manage themselves out of the emotional state of conflict. It’s also about managing yourself out, which can be as easy as taking time to see things differently.

Resolve. To reach resolution, we must show others a path back to feeling good about themselves. When they do, they are less likely to feel threatened and are free to move toward compromise and resolution.

“Unresolved or poorly managed conflict costs companies in ways they can’t even calculate,” he adds. For example, recent research shows the top reason people leave jobs is poor relationships with supervisors. “Lost institutional memory, low productivity, bad morale, high turnover all cost real dollars.” But well-managed conflict can not only prevent those losses -- it can also promote higher productivity and a stronger bottom line.

Maybe Scudder should visit Washington, D.C.


Tim Scudder is a CPA and president of Personal Strengths Publishing Inc. Since 1995, he has focused on helping clients improve relationships.

For more about resolving conflict, join us at the August luncheon,
where Ken Sande will talk about peacemaking.

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

Sabbaticals: A Strategic Tool for Improving Bottom Line Results

by Rita Foley

Corporations that offer sabbaticals don’t do it as a nicety. They do it because it’s good for employees, for the company, and for customers.

Laurent Hamels -- Fotolia.com

Most of us have worked since we were in our late teens or early 20s, so of course it’s natural to crave some time off. Here are six reasons more companies are implementing sabbatical programs:

Employees return rejuvenated: Close to 100 percent of sabbatical takers return to their companies with higher levels of engagement, loyalty, motivation and appreciation for their employers. Research shows a high percentage of promotion and improved performance levels among sabbatical takers. But companies that provided sabbaticals only by exception, rather than as policy, had more sabbatical takers who did not return to work or remain employed with the company.

Clients will allow it: Some companies, especially professional firms, say the intense one-on-one relationship with clients prohibits sabatticals. The reality is many such firms offer sabbaticals. One law firm partner told me that sabbaticals actually help neutralize the ego factor. “It’s not healthy for the firm if a client gets too dependent on just one person.”

It can be cost efficient: This is another one that is especially hard for lawyers or other firms who share profits. But if everyone takes a sabbatical, then, at one time or another, each will cover for another and the profit washes out. Some companies offer only partial pay for sabbatical takers, but even for those who offer full pay, a sabbatical program shouldn’t cost you. Maybe at a clerical level you might have to hire a temp, but with careful preparation and juggling, work can usually be covered by existing employees.

Implementation is essential: It’s all in the preparation. The companies I spoke to have a very simple and effective system. Upon approaching the sabbatical year, an employee writes a memo to their boss requesting the specific time off. They then meet and outline coverage.

Stagger sabbaticals: In a formal program, one of the main concerns is how to start the implementation with tenured employees who have passed the five- or seven-year mark -- some many times. Most companies simply stagger leaves over a three-year period.

The bottom line: Our nation will lose its innovation and creativity if we don’t invest in our most important asset: our employees. We tune up our PCs, our cars, and our home heaters. Why not encourage people to give their minds and spirits a tune-up? Time and time again, sabbatical takers return as more interested and engaged employees, more loyal and more creative. Sabbaticals broaden a company by bringing in new ideas.

Loyalty alone should justify implementing a program. The cost of hiring and training a new employee can be 1.5 times a departing worker’s salary. Sharon Allen, Deloitte’s chairwoman, said her firm’s sabbaticals and flexibility policies had saved more than $45 million a year by reducing turnover.

A sabbatical program is a wonderful tool for checking an organization’s depth and breadth. Managers must proactively focus on developing their staff, complete succession planning, and provide training and exposure to teams. Sabbaticals promote teamwork and better decision-making.


Twenty per cent of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For offer fully paid sabbaticals. If you want to be a workplace of choice while still adding to the bottom line and the company’s future, consider implementing a sabbatical program.

Rita Foley is an adviser with Crenshaw Associates and is a co-author of Reboot Your Life: Energize Your Career and Life by Taking a Break.

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

Five Common Sales Team afflictions

by John R. Treace

Problems in sales teams can be found to some degree in almost every organization. Smart managers are aware of this and work to avoid the potential reduction in morale and performance. Any one of these problems will not necessarily hurt sales efforts, but multiple conditions at once can be extremely harmful.

Affliction 1: Wasting time

Endostock -- Fotolia.com

Forcing salespeople to perform non-sales tasks such as making accounts receivable collections, managing product recalls, or filling out reports unrelated to the sales process may be a waste of their time. Consider delegating these tasks to non-salespeople. If you divert five percent of a sales team’s time to collections, you effectively reduce the number of feet on the ground by the same amount. The reverse is true as well. It’s worthwhile to audit processes to see whether non-sales tasks can be re-assigned. Relieving the sales team of such tasks will result in increased sales.

Affliction 2: Poor sales meetings

The objective of any sales meeting should be to increase sales. Period. Every high-performing salesperson in a meeting thinks, “Is this meeting making me money, or is my time being wasted?” Powerful salespeople are self-motivated and intuitively know if their time is being wasted. If it is, management is hurting morale -- and sales. To ensure effective meetings, develop a strategic intent that includes clear success metrics. Define in specific terms what metrics are needed to determine whether goals are met. It takes a deep understanding of the business, the market, and the competition to do this. Powerful sales meetings produce sales and keep morale high.

Affliction 3: Poor strategy

Ineffective marketing or sales strategies will always hurt the sales team. This is especially true for teams selling commodity products or services. A player with small market share who enters a commodity market without a well-defined and well-implemented strategy can be assured of certain death. These types of companies usually say, “It’s a huge market, and we can grab some of it,” but it’s not that simple. The sales team will recognize ineffective strategy and will lose faith in the managers who developed it.

To compound the error, companies often try special promotions to save sagging sales on ill-conceived products. Some promotions can be effective, but managers should never call for a pointless charge of the light brigade. Sending the sales team to support a poor product or service is a severe tactical error. A successful sales effort hinges on good strategy. Companies that fail in this regard severely handicap their sales teams.

Affliction 4: Capping or reducing income

Powerful companies have managers who do not envy large sales force paychecks. Managers who resent highly paid salespeople often respond by reducing commissions, capping earnings, reducing territories, or removing products. Avoid these practices. They destroy morale. Powerful salespeople want to leverage today’s efforts into greater sales and income for tomorrow. If their earnings are limited, they will feel that ability has been taken away. High performers will soon look for employment elsewhere.


Affliction 5: Favoritism

We all have favorites in life, and that’s normal, but playing favorites on a sales team is destructive. Salespeople want to work for companies that keep the playing field level. If select salespeople are given extra incentives, benefits, or favors not available to others, management is creating a privileged class. Managers can’t build loyalty by strengthening a small political power base. Keeping the playing field level will pay big dividends.

Wasting time, poor sales meetings, poor strategy, capping income, and playing favorites are, with few exceptions, situations to be avoided. They are destructive to morale and lead to poor performance. Effective managers avoid these situations, and astute salespeople will bring these practices to the attention of management for correction.

John R. Treace is the founder of JR Treace & Associates, a sales management consulting business. He is the author of Nuts & Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization. Website: www.treaceconsulting.com.

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

When to pay bonuses despite posting a loss

One of the many great things in Kris DenBesten's book SHINE is the account of how he surprised his employees one year by giving bonuses even though the company had posted a loss.

I thought of that this week because of two very different news stories. First, my colleague Adam O'Daniel at the Charlotte Business Journal reported that Bank of America's board awarded its CEO, Brian Moynihan, a $9 million stock bonus, even though the bank posted a $3.2 billion loss for 2010.


Then, Bloomberg reported that Lockheed Martin's CEO, Robert J. Stevens, asked the board to keep his pay where it's been for three years. The company won't award raises to any executives at the level of vice president and above, because although it did have a profit last year, the profit margin was too narrow.

Lockheed Martin's bonus policy "accounts for individual performance and the performance of the company, or business unit."

Lockheed Martin's policy makes sense. I, too, work for a company where bonuses are not issued unless financial goals are met. And BofA? What a crock. How do you award a bonus when there's a loss? If there's no profit, there can be no bonuses.

Then I remembered SHINE.

Mind you, there's a big difference between DenBesten's company and Bank of America, and it doesn't only have to do with how many digits follow the dollar sign.

BofA paid its executive bonuses because, as we have seen so often lately, that's just what banks customarily do. In the world of high finance, you don't withhold an executive's raise or bonus. It's part of that culture. Defense contractors and newspapers have a different culture.

And so, I think, do equipment companies.

When DenBesten handed out those bonuses, he was acting on his own principle of serving others. It's exactly the kind of radical step of faith we're called to take, especially when times are tough.

Six lessons for building successful virtual teams

The office of the future is no office at all. Many of us work from our homes, hold client meetings at coffee shops, and have a business address that’s a post office box. Without an office, we frequently rely on phone and e-mail to communicate with collaborators.

But Darleen DeRosa and Rick Lepsinger warn that the vision often falls short of reality. “Virtual teams” may be popular, but they’re not always successful.

spekulator | stock.xchng

DeRosa and Lepsinger wrote Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance to help businesspeople create teams across distances. They say too many companies treat virtual teams the same as teams that share the same location.

“Frankly,” says DeRosa, “that just doesn’t work.” Leaders who understand the different needs of virtual teams are the ones whose teams succeed.

DeRosa and Lepsinger’s company, OnPoint Consulting, studied 48 virtual teams to find the success factors of top performing teams. Surprisingly, 27 percent of the teams were not fully performing. The authors identified these pitfalls:

• Lack of clear goals, direction, or priorities
• Lack of clear roles among team members
• Lack of cooperation and trust
• Lack of engagement

The authors identify these points of success:

1. Focus on people. Compensate for the inherent lack of contact by supporting team spirit and trust.

• Develop a team web page where team members can get acquainted.
• Use communication tools like instant messaging, Facebook or Twitter to create a virtual water cooler.
• Build a collective online “resource bank” to share information and experiences.
• Create ways to virtually celebrate successes as a team.

2. No trust, no team. Task-based trust is one factor differentiating top performing teams. In virtual teams, trust seems to develop more readily at the task level than at the interpersonal level. DeRosa says trust “doesn’t simply develop because a team has been working together for a while.”

• Make sure teams meet face-to-face at least once early on to build relationships and learn about one another’s capabilities.
• Empower team members to make and act on decisions. Beware of micromanaging.
• Proactively manage conflict.

3. Soft skills are essential. Virtual teams that have been through team-building and interpersonal skill development activities perform better than those that have not. Selecting team members based solely on technical skills without considering interpersonal skills is a mistake.

• Include characteristics like effective communication and collaboration in the selection criteria.
• Use team-building sessions to strengthen relationships and create momentum.
• Assess development needs for team members and team leaders and conduct training on these areas.

4. Watch out for performance peaks. Teams who have been working together for more than three years tend to be more successful than teams working together for less time, but many teams peak around the one-year mark. After that, performance tends to level off or decline.

• Clearly define team roles and accountabilities.
• Review and refine processes regularly.
• Periodically examine the level of team performance. Collect feedback from various stakeholders to assess the team’s performance.
• Identify barriers to high performance and steps that can be taken to overcome these barriers.

5. Create a “high touch” environment. The technology that makes virtual teaming possible it is not a perfect substitute for human interaction. Arrange for virtual team members to meet in person at least once a year. “Virtual teams that invest in one or two such meetings per year outperform those that don’t,” says Lepsinger.

• Use electronic bulletin boards to create a sense of shared space.
• Choose communication technologies that are most appropriate to the task. E-mail is good for sharing facts, while conference calls are better for sharing ideas and plans.
• Use videoconferencing. Teams that use video technology outperform those that don’t.

6. Leadership matters. Leadership is the factor most important to the success of virtual teams. Virtual team leaders must be especially sensitive to interpersonal communication and cultural factors. “Organizations can avoid this performance barrier by selecting team leaders who not only have the necessary technical skills but also the soft skills required to effectively lead in a virtual environment,” says DeRosa.

• Set clear goals and direction and revisit these as priorities shift.
• Engage team members in developing strategy.
• Provide time for team building.
• Provide timely feedback. Be responsive and accessible.
• Emphasize common interests and values, and reinforce cooperation and trust.
• Create a system to easily integrate new team members.
• Teach the importance of conflict resolution.
• Celebrate team achievements and successes.

Lepsinger says, “organizations start virtual teams in response to an opportunity or problem without planning or proper follow-up—never a recipe for success.” DeRosa adds, “Better planning could dramatically improve their odds for success.”

Six key steps to working out customer service kinks

Author Maribeth Kuzmeski shares this anecdote to show that customer relationships are made or broken when something goes wrong:

While at a hotel, getting ready for a crucial business meeting, you turn on the hairdryer, but the power goes out. You call the service number and hear "Someone is on the way." After twenty minutes and two more calls, anxiety turns to anger, when a "service" person asks, "What do you want me to do about it?" Finally, the power comes back on, and a maintenance man explains it wasn't his fault and makes excuses about what went wrong internally. No one acknowledges or apologizes for your inconvenience.

Brian A Jackson | iStockphoto

“If a service recovery plan isn't understood by the entire staff, everything snowballs,” says Kuzmeski, author of ...And the Clients Went Wild! How Savvy Professionals Win All the Business They Want and The Connectors: How the World's Most Successful Businesspeople Build Relationships and Win Clients for Life. The hotel incident actually happened to one of her associates.

"If you don't have well-developed service recovery techniques in place, you'll lose the customer every time," she says. That leads to angry customers vowing never to return—and maybe decide to share their anger with countless others online.”

Kuzmeski offers these tips for service recovery:

1. Recognize and truly understand your customer's situation. Provide individual care. People with children have very different needs from busy businesspeople. Train your customer service people to recognize key differences and adjust responses accordingly.

2. Make sure what you're saying is happening is really happening. Customer service is more than following a script. "When the hotel guest made the second call, it's likely the front desk representative didn't check to see where the maintenance man was," says Kuzmeski. "Taking the time to locate him would have gotten the guest the service she needed."

3. Be specific about how the problem will be handled. Let the customer know what will happen and when. The more information customers have, the less anxious they feel.

4. Complaint number two is an emergency. Most people can forgive one mistake, if it’s addressed promptly. A second complaint calls for emergency mode. If you want to keep your customer, you must take care of the problem immediately.

5. Make sure the service philosophy permeates the business from top to bottom. The hotel in the anecdote is part of a chain with a rewards program for repeat customers. When the guest called to complain, the rewards people understood the inconvenience and tried to make it up to her by offering additional rewards points. "They hadn't properly trained their onsite staff,” Kuzmeski says. It’s crucial that everyone understand the customer service plan and be able to solve problems.

6. Don't assume customers will give you a second chance. If a customer takes the time to call you about a problem, you are lucky. You don't always get a chance to make it right. Often, customers just move on. And the real concern is that it takes only one dissatisfied customer to create a public relations disaster. Dissatisfied customers have created blogs and YouTube videos sharing their tales of bad service with the world.

Kuzmeski says customer loyalty is achievable, “but you have to have the service chops to take care of them. Make your customers and your relationships with them a priority—always! When you do so, you can create clients for life."

Every manager should read this book

How Full is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, is based on the simple metaphor of a bucket and a dipper. Each of us has a bucket that is continually filled or drained by our interactions with other people. Positive encounters fill us up, and negative encounters drain us.

Among the authors' key points:

• The Number One reason people leave their jobs is they don't feel appreciated.
• Praise must be meaningful and specific.
• Recognition is most appreciated and effective when it is individualized, specific, and deserved.
• We are at our best when our buckets are full, and at our worst when they are empty.
• Every interaction is an opportunity to fill someone's bucket — or drain it.
• When we fill other people's buckets, we simultaneously fill our own.

Like parents who focus on the F's on a report card rather than the A's, many managers focus on critiquing weaknesses rather than developing strengths.

Mind you, it's not possible to simply offer groundless praise. As the authors note, "positivity must be grounded in reality." They cite the pointlessness of "Employee of the Month" programs, because inevitably — in the interests of "fairness" — every employee gets one. I've also seen workplaces where the award just moves about between a select few high performers, which may be more honest but doesn't do anything to lift up the mid-level performers.

Every worker has room for improvement. But consider a method used by many writers' groups, including the one I belong to. It's called the "sandwich method," though being a bookish person, I prefer to think of it as bookends.

Start with a genuine compliment, then give constructive feedback on what needs fixing, then end with more praise for strong points. Employees, like students, and writers, need to build on their strengths in addition to improving their weaknesses.

Individualization is important, because while one worker may appreciate a plaque to hang on the wall, another might prefer some extra time off to spend with family. To aid in this, the book includes a "Bucket Filling Interview," which can help managers learn about what really motivates each employee.

How Full is Your Bucket? will not only help managers encourage employees, it will help anyone see where they've been missing opportunities to fill other people's buckets.

Diversification is the key to preserving state’s place in space

By Kristen Stieffel

Although the Space Coast was prepared for the end of the shuttle program, the sudden cancellation of its replacement, the Constellation program, left us scrambling for direction. What next?

Maintaining — or increasing — Florida’s role in space exploration and keeping our space workers from looking elsewhere for jobs will require government, academia and business working together to diversify Florida’s role.

Economic development leaders, brought together by the UCF Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies in an April 16 public forum, agree that Florida’s present focus on launch operations will not suffice as more of the space program is transferred to private industry.

Lynda Weatherman, president and CEO of the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast, said business has always had a large part in the space program. Her organization has been working with “the usual suspects” for many years, including Orbital Science, Lockheed Martin and United Launch Alliance. She said growth in the industry will be bolstered by asking such companies “what is it that you need that this state can deliver in the next two years?” Some of those needs will be filled by companies already in the market.

Brevard Workforce is recruiting businesses to help place shuttle workers in new positions. Among the workers that will be seeking new positions are data management specialists, machine operators, project managers, electrical engineers, and quality control managers. To see whether your company can benefit from the organization’s efforts, visit the Aerospace Workforce Transition Program website.

In addition to three areas in which Florida already has expertise — launch operations, payload processing and ground support — Space Florida identified seven market sectors in which Florida’s space industry has room for expansion:

• Environmental monitoring, which includes applications for weather observation and agriculture
• Emergency management
• Life sciences
• Communications and robotics, which is a large part of defense as well as spaceflight
• Adventure tourism
• Clean energy, including photovoltaics and alternative fuels
• Development of new materials

With the International Space Station nearing completion, it will be available to universities and companies for microgravity experiments. Such work will need to be coordinated Earthside, and Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, believes Central Florida is the perfect place for that.

He said Lake Nona’s Medical City is an ideal site for the ISS ground node. Space Florida is reaching out to pharmaceutical companies around the world to educate them about the possibilities in this area.

M.J. Soileau, vice president for research & commercialization at the University of Central Florida, attended NASA’s Conference on the American Space Program for the 21st Century, held at Kennedy Space Center April 15. There, he learned that reaching Mars will be impractical, if not impossible, with current materials. The mass of such a ship would be ten times that of the ISS, as it would need to carry, said Soileau, “A year and a half of life support.”

He said entities in the Florida High Tech Corridor, which includes UCF, University of Florida and University of South Florida, are “working technologies that will be critical to the next phase of our space program.” Those technologies include not only structures but new materials: Lighter-weight materials and more efficient fuels will be needed to reach Mars.

Soileau said it’s likely that companies that will dominate in the development of these new resources “don’t exist yet,” but UCF’s Business Incubation Program can help entrepreneurs with new ideas be successful.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy set a goal of “helping make the I-4 corridor the Silicon Valley of space.” Soileau said this goal is achievable, given the “intellectual infrastructure” of the High Tech Corridor.

For companies and entrepreneurs looking to break into the space business, Soileau said UCF is prepared to help with research and development. “Give us a call,” he said. “We’re ready to play.”

Flu needn't leave us wallowing in misery

News that a colleague contracted the flu -- yes, that flu -- led me to write. As increasing numbers of the clunkily named H1N1 flu are reported, it’s easy -- dare I say tempting -- to give in to fear and dismay.

Let’s not. That will not help our employees, our clients, or our community.

There are several important things to remember about H1N1:

It’s no worse than the normal seasonal flu. In fact, some cases are milder. So far this year, 593 deaths nationwide have been attributed to H1N1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that seasonal flu and its complications kill an average of 36,000 people a year.

“Pandemic” isn’t as scary as it sounds. It just means the disease has been found on more than one continent. While this was unusual 100 years ago, air travel has made intercontinental transmission much easier.

Young people are more at risk. Usually, the elderly are at an increased risk for flu, but with H1N1, people over 64 are more likely to have resistance due to exposure to a related strain earlier in their lives. Younger people lack this immunity.

It's not swine flu. The virus was misidentified early on because of its similarity to swine flu. An inappropriate amount of media coverage followed, spurred by memories of the swine flu epidemic of the 1970s.

The CDC advises these precautions for all cold and flu viruses:

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Then throw away the tissue.


• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth. Germs spread this way.


• Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough, sneeze or touch your eyes, nose, or mouth (because we all will, especially when we're trying not to). Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are also effective.


• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.


• If you have a flu-like illness, stay home until your fever has been gone (without the aid of fever-reducing medicines) at least 24 hours.

What employers can do:

• Offer your employees paid sick leave. One of the primary reasons people work while sick is that they cannot afford to lose pay.


• Make sure no one in your company is “indispensable.” Cross-training will ensure that staff members do not work while sick just because no one else is able to do what they do. Every person in your company -- including the owner -- should have a backup.


• Sponsor flu shots for your staff. Reimburse employees for all or part of the cost of a flu shot. in addition to the seasonal flu vaccine, an H1N1 vaccine will be available this fall.


• Keep a clean workplace. Flu viruses can survive on surfaces like door knobs for up to 8 hours. Clean regularly with disinfectant.


• Educate yourself. General information about influenza is available at the easy-to-remember flu.gov, while information specific to business owners is available here.