Kentucky Fried Chicken History Essay Example for Free

Kentucky Fried Chicken History Essay The company operates with five long-term measures identified as essentials of corporate growth and progress .. 1 International Expansion Yum! Brands number-one goal is to drive global expansion with its category- leading brands. In 2002, the company opened a record 1,051 new international estaurants and increased international system sales 9% prior to foreign currency conversion. 2. Multibrand Innovation Expansion Yum! Brands is the worldwide leader in multibranding, offering consumers more choice and convenience at one restaurant location from a combination of two of the companys brands. The company and its franchisees today operate over 1,975 multibrand restaurants, generating over $2 billion in annual system sales. Approximately 350 new systemwide multibrand restaurants were opened in 2002. 3. Portfolio of Category-Leading U. S. Brands U. S. ystemwide same-store sales increased approximately 4% while U. S. same-store sales at company restaurants increased approximately 2% in 2002. 4. Global Franchise Fees Global franchise fees, a significant factor in annual profits and cash flow, grew 6% to $866 million. Global franchise net restaurant growth was 2% in 2002. 5. Strong Cash Generation and Returns Yum! Brands generated over $1. 3 billion in cash from all sources in 2002, more than fully funding capital expenditure needs, allowing free cash flow for share repurchase, and some repayment of debt. Return on invested capital is 18%, in the estaurant industrys top tier. Culture Big on diversity in the workplace Promotes differences in background, ethnic cultures, and values oriented environment Focuses on teaching everybody something new Promotes unity in the workplace Team- Focuses on building relationships and creating diversity and commitment within the company and amongst employees and customers Organizational Structure and Design KFC is part of a divisional structure, which is Yum! Brands, Inc. Long John Silvers, A;W, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut are the other divisions Offers positions to change and growth KFC works to bring recognition and money to Yum! Brands, Human Resource Management We wont make you wing it is KFCs motto when it comes to training employees. Training includes: 1) Workbooks 2) Quizzes 3) On-the-Job competency based training Employees are encouraged to work together as a team their people grow to their highest potential interesting and exciting for workers Social Responsibility KFC is committed to making sure KFC does their best to make the Job KFC has made it their responsibility to consumers that they will provide quality chicken in a fast, efficient way. They also say that their meat comes about ethically and through humane treatment. This has not always proved true in the past, since the PETA has become involved with their warehouses that grow the chickens. KFC has made statements to the patrons of KFC, though, that the chickens will not be treated badly in the progression from birth to the processing plant. KFC sponsors a reward for senior citizens, those who live life to the fullest and are recognized in their community KFC also has the Colonels Kids program, a charity organization that helps kids become educated and grow up in a better world han that which they have known. It addresses the child care crisis and steps up to the plate to help out where possible. Scholarships and diversity programs are a part of KFCs social responsibility as well Recently, the PETA group secretly recorded a worker at the Pilgrims Pride, one of the processing plants, beating a live chicken against the wall in order to kill it. As soon as KFC was notified of this treatment, they immediately submitted a written statement saying that the treatment was appalling and took action immediately, placing an animal welfare expert at the plant to ensure he ethical, humane treatment of the chickens. The statement said that: We do not tolerate animal abuse by any of our suppliers, under any circumstance. KFC also told the company Pilgrims Pride that, unless they can definitively assure us there are absolutely no abuses taking place, we will not purchase from this Moorefield, West Virginia, facility. PETA says that more action should be taken, but KFC has done all it can to ensure that people are happy with the facilities and means by which their food comes about.

Stress: Impact on Health of Hong Kong People

Stress: Impact on Health of Hong Kong People Stress – Main Reason for Decline in Health of Hong Kong People Introduction In the crowded and competitive city, Hong Kong, pressure which appears in all age groups damages health of residents. According to the Department of Health (Public Health Information System, 2015), the main external death cause of Hongkongers were intentional self-harm. The World Health Organization (WHO) identified depressive illness is projected to be the second leading cause of disability worldwide in 2020. The main reason for the decline in health of Hongkongers are stress caused by the onerous educational system, taxing working environment and strict social conformity, but they can be resolved by reforming the educational system, modifying the work policies and implementing public stress management program to improve the health of Hongkonger. The purpose of this report is to present recommendations of stress relief. Analysis To begin with, strain is caused from Hong Kong rigorous educational system which sorts students into institutions ranked hierarchically[A1]. This system compels schools to focus on the academic results and vie against one another in fierce competition (Ho, 2008). There are exorbitant expectation, excessive homework and frequent tests for students. A study found that the first-year tertiary education students in Hong Kong are prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress. The high rates of morbidity and high prevalence of symptoms were alarming (Wong, et al., 2006). In fact, the academic problems, such as disaffection, disruption and underachievement were stressors for not only the students, but also their family members (Service Network on Ethnic Minorities, 2010). In Hong Kong, parents arrange pre-school educations and extracurricular activities insanely for their children as they are extremely anxious about their development. The students with overestimated ability will doubt about their performance in getting others acceptance and agreement. Besides, extreme pressure from this onerous educational system may trigger mental disorder, social withdrawal and even self-destructive behaviors. Education Bureau (EDB) can modify the educational system to relieve the school related stress by promoting well-rounded development and self-regulated learning. The comprehensive educational infrastructure in the United State (US) is established in a stress-free environment (University of Michigan, 2015). EDB can reform the system by referring to the well-rounded teaching method in US which is innovative, for instance, role playing, use of computer games, simulation, experience method and application method (Vallance, et al., 2014). As well as changing the teaching method in school, EDB should modify the education orientation. EDB should fund a wide selection of curricula opportunities while the education should be more value oriented than career or money oriented. Teachers should focus on the imagination and creative ability of students. The main point is reforming the entrance examination of schools. This modification of educational system can discover creative personnel and deceas e the burden on students. It makes the teaching more enjoyable (Patankar Jadhav, 2012). It motivates and stimulates students to develop happy normal lives as they can have their own goal. Thus, the school related stress, can be relieved. However, it takes time to change the operating mode of schools. EDB needs to collaborate with schools and provide a definite instruction so as to change the teaching method and selection system progressively. Another argument is that the decline in health of Hongkongers arise when there is pressure from placing a strain in workplace. Work related pressure occurs where workers perceive they cannot subject or cope with the demands within the workplace. Overloaded work, long working time and nebulous career prospect inducing excessive or uncontrolled pressure disquiets Hongkongers. The Hong Kong worker stress level was at 55%. The value was ranked third in the world and higher than the global average (Sarti, 2012). Work strains go home with the worker while home strains come to work with the worker (Perth College, 2014). As the ability of workers were overestimated in tight workplace, which brings terrible consequence such as fatigue, muscle wastage, adult-onset diabetes and adverse lifestyle, it would disturb their ability to perform to expectation (OvercomeBullying.org, 2015). It is time for the Legislative Council to formulate a work policies and legislation modification by referring to the cross-college Stress Management Policy and legislation in United Kingdom (UK) as a response to the decline in health of Hongkongers. The value of stress level of workers in UK was lower than the global average. Legislative Council can formulate this policy in Hong Kong in order to mitigate the occurrence of related potential harm from work. Under this policy, manager, supervisor and staff will be assigned responsibilities. The basic responsibility for managers are ensuring staffs are fully trained to discharge their duties. They should not only provide equivalent developmental opportunities for each staff, but also monitor workloads, working hours and overtime so as to ensure staffs are not overloaded or overworking. Supervisors are accountable for conduct Wellbeing and Staff Surveys to identify stressors in the workplace and ensure managers take appropriate actions to address the issues. Additionally, human resources staffs are in charge of conducting and implementing recommendations of risks assessments within their area of responsibility (Perth College, 2014). Along with acknowledging the responsibilities and ways to protect the mental wellbeing of themselves or their subordinate, work related pressure can be identified and managed by managers. Employee can seek assistance and support from their representative as early as possible as the policy requirement too. Therefore, the strain in workplace can be eliminated by protecting the autonomy and remuneration of all employees.On the other hand, as this legislation is related to settled responsibility of different stakeholders, it may cause dissension between each other easily. So, Legislative Council must hold a public advisory with promotion before the formulation. From a social point of view, Hongkongers are accustomed to blind conformity which brings an exhausting lifestyle. It is well-known that Hong Kong is a fast paced city where workers all have busy work, school, social life and other commitments. They pursue to be efficient in any time. However, this conformity damages health progressively. For example, overeating fast food causes obesity, overusing internet brings visual impairment and staying up late with harm to mental well-being. Some residents claimed that the main reason for the decline in health of Hongkongers are the insalubrious lifestyle, smoking. It is because cigarette smoking is the major cause of lung cancer (Public Health Information System, 2015). Although smoking is a lifestyle, it is a herd behavior. Hongkongers tend to follow the actions or beliefs of others. Under the social pressure, anyone who pursue to achieve social goals and have an intangible competition damage their health eventually. Hospital Authority (HA) should focus on seeking collaboration with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to relieve pressure of Hongkongers by implementing public stress management program. Government health sector plays a leading role. HA is already leveraged on available capacity and capability in the private sector through public private partnership (PPP) for managing demands (Cheung, 2015). If HA focuses on community-based activities and prevention concurrently, it will arguably better place to approach and win the trust of local communities. Moreover, NGOs can make a close affinity with community by collaborating with other advocacy groups (Thara Patel, 2010). Afterward, the seriousness of stress can spread widely by promotion and education which increase the awareness of the early signs of this treatable depressive disorder. Through the combined efforts from both the public and private sectors, this collaboration leads to an overall improvement in healthcare service qu ality. It alerts residents to have self-management of stress while early diagnosis and prevention benefit in further control of the health status. Nevertheless, a key problem in NGOs is the source of their funding which rise required to augment resources. To tackle this problem, Labour and Welfare Bureau can establish a fund for providing assistance to organization. It encourages the organization to strengthen the related activities by solving their economic burden. Conclusion This report describes stress is the main causes of the decline in health of Hongkongers. It reminds people about the fact that an anxious status is in hazard. A process of collaboration and communication across public and private domains that focuses on common goals can relieve stress of Hongkongers comprehensively. Education Bureau, Legislative Council and Hospital Authority should be the leaders in creating a new stress-free educational system, working condition and social ethos. Take it as a mutual responsibility to further partnership activities and monitor impact on the health of the public.

Preserve The Forests :: essays research papers

Preserve the Forests   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In agreement with Kim Stafford, who opposes the clear-cutting of old growth forests, I feel that it is necessary to preserve the profitable lumber in its natural state for future generations. Currently, the tons of lumber produced from the Pacific Northwest region of the United States are taken for granted, and most people do not realize that the forests will be destroyed within ten years at this rate of exploiting our natural resources. We must make loggers a profession of the past and divert those current ones into another sector in our society. The spotted owl is more than a *Darwinistic* survival of the fittest issue; it represents the direction of our only planet.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In order to preserve the beauty of this planet, we must cease the clear- cutting of forests. All old growth forests have been around for multiple centuries and are cut down daily in a matter of hours in order to produce more buildings and houses in this already over-crowded world. If the rate at which we cut down trees is continued without any regulation, the forests will all be gone in ten years, so we should do mankind a favor and try to preserve what is left. If the old growth forests are gone, then they can never return because it takes over five generations to produce one and at the rate that the human population is increasing, there is not enough land to have a secure place for a new forest.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  If we realize that it is best for the human race to stop destroying the natural resources, then we must destroy, too, the existence of loggers all together. To do so, there must not be any new loggers, so all training potential loggers must be stopped. The current loggers must be diverted to another occupation. Perhaps if the public supported the notion of stopping clear-cutting, the government would be able to provide services to educate the loggers in a different field. Also, with public support, many companies will probably offer several programs for former loggers. No matter what we choose today, the loggers have seen their last Haley*s comet; they will all be gone with forests in ten years.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When we stop the development and decrease the number of loggers, we will help save the spotted owl, a species that has greater importance than a mere animal towards the our species. It is a symbol of the general health of Mother Earth, a figure without which no living object can survive. If the cutting of

All Quiet on the Western Front :: essays research papers

All Quiet On the Western Front Born Erich Paul Remark (later changed to Remarque) on June 22, 1898, he grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Osnabruck in the province of Westphalia, Germany--a city in the northwest part of what is now West Germany. He adored his mother, Anna Maria, but was never close to his father, Peter. The First World War effectively shut him off from his sisters, Elfriede and Erna. Peter Remark, descended from a family that fled to Germany after the French Revolution, earned so little as a bookbinder that the family had to move 11 times between 1898 and 1912. The family's poverty drove Remarque as a teenager to earn his own clothes money (giving piano lessons). In November 1916, when Remarque was eighteen and a third-year student at Osnabruck's Lehrerseminar (teachers college), he was drafted for World War I. After basic training at the Westerberg in Osnabruck (the Klosterberg of the book), he was assigned to a reserve battalion, but often given leave to visit his seriously ill mother. In Jun e 1917, he was assigned to a trench unit near the Western Front. He was a calm, self-possessed soldier, and after carrying fellow comrades to safety during battle, he himself was severely injured and was sent to the hospital in Duisburg for much of 1917-1918. He was there when his mother died in September 1917. The war ended before Remarque could return to active service, but even though he had not experienced front-line fighting at its worst, the war had changed his attitudes forever. He had learned to realize the value of each individual life, and had become disillusioned with a patriotism that ignored the individual. To him and many of his companions, civilian careers no longer held any meaning. In 1929, he published All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel about the experiences of common German soldiers during World War I. Remarque stripped the typical romanticism from the war experience in his shocking anti-war novel. The novel instantly became an international success, and also was turned into an Academy Award winning movie. After reading the book, I can’t even fathom what a different lifestyle Remarque led, fighting for survival every day while I find myself watching hours of TV searching for entertainment day after day. One can imagine the intense emotions that Remarque includ ed in his story, seeing as how his first hand experiences have affected him so greatly.

Adolph Coors :: Biography Biographies

Adolph Coors My Personal Interest: The Rise and Fall (Literally) of Adolph Coors After already sharing my thoughts of my family, and myself, I felt as though neither of my favorite personal interests would accomplish the task at hand. It was Saturday afternoon, and I still didn’t have a good personal interest topic to write about. I started mind-mapping, writing every topic I could think of, including: The Real Civil War; Mental Instability – Possession or Illness; Finding the Perfect Home – Mortgage and All; and even The lightning Capital: Why Here? Then I realize I must dismantle the subject, so as to fit it on only 3 or 4 pages. The project is becoming a lot tougher than I anticipated; I start scratching out ideas. A half hour later, I have a page with many scribbles, no topics, confusion, and thirst. I walk swiftly and irritably, to the refrigerator, open the door, and grab a cold, wet, Coors Light, tall can. I found my personal interest topic. There in my hand, I was holding history: â€Å"The Rise and Fall, Literally, of Ado lph Coors. I try to imagine the thoughts of Adolph Coors as he was plunging 6 stories to his death. How or why would he have fallen from a beautiful Virginia Beach hotel-room? In the past 9 years, the prohibition of 1920 had made life more difficult, but could Adolph’s desires and ambition end this way? Throughout his entire life he showed nothing less than a strong driving force in everything he attempted and accomplished. On February 4, 1847, Adolph was born in Barmen, Prussia. His parents passed away only 15 years later. Finding necessity for a quick occupation, Adolph started an apprenticeship at the Henry Wenker Brewery. The ambitious young man paid for his apprenticeship by working at the brewery as a bookkeeper. He completed his apprenticeship in a short three years, 1 year less than expected. This would be young Adolph’s first of many overachievements. After finishing his lessons, he worked at three other breweries in the area until 1868, when avoiding a military draft seemed necessary. He then left for the bright stars and stripes of America. Stowing away, he landed at Port Baltimore, Maryland. For the next 5 years, Adolph worked in several industries, ranging from gardening to his first love, brewing.

Steve Jobs : Book Review

STEVE JOBS BY WALTER ISAACSON Dear all dignitaries and peers present here, Welcome to this hall, where we are all presented with the rarest opportunity on hearing about various respected and popular members of this world. On given an opportunity, I wondered what should be the theme of my speech. Should I go for the Nobel laureates or the most popular figurines or people who changed this world? Nobel laureates are historic, and popular people as noted are already quite popular. So, let’s hear about a person who changed the way we look at technology now. The way he drove a multibillion dollar company, the way he became a symbol of youth GOD!Yes, I’m here to talk about the authorised biography, the i-bio of the master, STEVE JOBS by Walter Isaacson. ‘Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography' was one of the most eagerly awaited books of the year 2011. The book is a journey into the life of a legend who revolutionized the way people saw technology. Walter Issacson brings to life, the innovator, the dreamer and the devil within Steve Jobs. An absolutely must read! In my mind the sole purpose of reading non-fiction is to learn, and if you learn something, by definition you will be changed. So, what did I learn from this book? 1.I have a better understanding of Apple products and understand why they enjoy premium pricing. 2. Jobs ability to focus on only 2-3 things at once with absolute intensity. I, like many, have too many interests and hobbies and could benefit from a tighter focus on just a few. 3. Jobs was able to get the most from his employees, but sometimes with tactics that I wouldn’t be comfortable using, including intimidation and tearing down of others. 4. His goal was to surround himself with  Grade A minds. Surrounding yourself with the best is not a bad motto. 5. Life is short-treat time with your family as if you are aware of your short time on earth.So, How does the author portray the genius Was he unbiased? Well, to the authorà ¢â‚¬â„¢s credit, Walter Issacson  is a biographer and a writer. He is also the director of Aspen Institute and has been the Managing Editor of TIME. Issacson has previously written the biographies of Henry Kissinger and Albert Einstein. As a  biographer of Albert Einstein  and Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Isaacson knows how to explicate and celebrate genius: revered, long-dead genius. But he wrote â€Å"Steve Jobs† as its subject was mortally ill, and that is a more painful and delicate challenge. He had access to members of the Jobs family at a difficult time.Mr. Isaacson treats â€Å"Steve Jobs† as the biography of record, which means that it is a strange book to read so soon after its subject’s death. Some of it is an essential Silicon Valley chronicle, compiling stories well known to tech aficionados but interesting to a broad audience. Some of it is already quaint. Mr. Jobs’s first job was at Atari, and it involved the game Pong. (â€Å"If youâ€⠄¢re under 30, ask your parents,† Mr. Isaacson writes. ) Some, like an account of the release of the  iPad  2, is so recent that it is hard to appreciate yet, even if Mr. Isaacson says the device comes to life â€Å"like the face of a tickled baby.    And some is definitely intended for future generations. â€Å"Indeed,† Mr. Isaacson writes, â€Å"its success came not just from the beauty of the hardware but from the applications, known as apps, that allowed you to indulge in all sorts of delightful activities. † One that he mentions, which will be as quaint as Pong some day, features the use of a slingshot to launch angry birds to destroy pigs and their fortresses. So â€Å"Steve Jobs,† an account of its subject’s 56 years (he died on Oct. 5), must reach across time in more ways than one. And it does, in a well-ordered, if not streamlined, fashion.It begins with a portrait of the young Mr. Jobs, rebellious toward the parents who raised him a nd scornful of the ones who gave him up for adoption. (â€Å"They were my sperm and egg bank,† he says. ) Although Mr. Isaacson is not analytical about his subject’s volatile personality (the word â€Å"obnoxious† figures in the book frequently), he raises the question of whether feelings of abandonment in childhood made him fanatically controlling and manipulative as an adult. Fortunately, that glib question stays unanswered. As far as the making of the book, that in itself is a wondrous story.During the summer of 2009, Walter Isaacson got a phone call from Steve Jobs. It so turned out that Jobs wanted Isaacson to write a biography of him. After  Steve Jobs  anointed  Walter Isaacson  as his authorized biographer in 2009, he took Mr. Isaacson to see the Mountain View, California, house in which he had lived as a boy. He pointed out its â€Å"clean design† and â€Å"awesome little features. † He praised the developer, Joseph Eichler, who bu ilt more than 11,000 homes in California subdivisions, for making an affordable product on a mass-market scale. And he showed Mr.Isaacson the stockade fence built 50 years earlier by his father, Paul Jobs. â€Å"He loved doing things right,† Mr. Jobs said. â€Å"He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn’t see. † Mr. Jobs, the brilliant and protean creator whose inventions so utterly transformed the allure of technology, turned those childhood lessons into an all-purpose theory of intelligent design. He gave Mr. Isaacson a chance to play by the same rules. His story calls for a book that is clear, elegant and concise enough to qualify as an iBio. Mr. Isaacson’s â€Å"Steve Jobs† does its solid best to hit that target.Mr. Jobs promised not to look over Mr. Isaacson’s shoulder, and not to meddle with anything but the book’s cover. (Boy, does it look great. ) Steve Jobs asked for no right to read it before it was published and had no control over what was being written before it was published. He also encouraged people to speak honestly. In the book Jobs sometimes speaks brutally and candidly about the people he worked along with and also his competitors. And he expressed approval that the book would not be entirely flattering. But his legacy was at stake. And there were awkward questions to be asked.At the end of the volume, Mr. Jobs answers the question â€Å"What drove me? † by discussing himself in the past tense. His friends, colleagues and foes offer an unparalleled view of the perfectionism, passion, artistry, obsessions, compulsions and devilry that shaped his approach to the innovative products and business that resulted. Within hours of Steve Jobs's death in October, impromptu shrines began to appear outside Apple Stores – flowers, half-eaten apples and iPhones and iPads with images of flickering candles. The man whose company had always attracted a cult following was fast becoming a saint.But, no more than a day later, the backlash began. Jobs was not a saint or even a genius, just, in the words of AN Wilson, ‘a clever backroom boy who got lucky'. What Walter Isaacson's masterful biography reveals is that both the true believers and the cynics got Jobs wrong. In a warts-and-all portrait that continually had this reader recoiling in disgust at the petulant pioneer's behaviour, he shows that Apple's co-founder was very far from being a saint. As a teenager, he browbeats his kindly parents into sending him to a college they cannot afford – then drops out after a year. After teaming up with the rilliant but naive engineer Steve Wozniak he cheats him out of his share of a bonus they get for designing a game. ‘Ethics matter to me,' the always tolerant Wozniak tells the author, ‘but, you know, people are different. ‘ And as a tyrannical leader, he is either screaming at Apple staff about their appalling inadequacies or stealing their ideas and taking the credit for them before an adoring public. Throughout, we see the cranky food habits, the misguided belief that a fruit diet means you only need to shower once a week and an almost wilful disregard for the feelings of others, including those of his family.But, hey, Henry Ford was not the world's nicest man and Thomas Edison was apparently a ruthless egomaniac. Those who aspire to change the world are almost always difficult people, and Isaacson, while obeying the instructions of Jobs's wife not to whitewash his life, presents a compelling case for his genius. Yes, he was a magpie, snatching the idea for the graphical user interface from Xerox Parc, the iPod concept from other MP3 players, the iPad from Microsoft's tablet computer. But, as he said: ‘Picasso had a saying – â€Å"good artists copy, great artists steal† – and we've always been shameless about stealing great ideas. It was what he did with those ideas that proved his genius f or spotting where technology might head next and shaping it to his will. The perfectionism meant driving his executives to distraction with constant demands for tiny adjustments – a different font, a paler shade of green – before anything could be shipped. Jobs was not a quarter the engineer that Wozniak was or as gifted artistically as Jony Ive, the designer whose close but somewhat tortured relationship with his boss is an interesting subplot in the latter half of the book.But his creative imagination changed a series of industries – computers, mobile phones, music and, with Pixar, the movie business. His greatest creation, though, was Apple itself, a company that always wanted to be about more than technology. ‘It is in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough,' he said at the unveiling of the iPad 2. ‘We believe that it's technology married with the humanities that makes our hearts sing. ‘ Cynics would say that it has been not the hu manities or the arts but a ruthless attention to marketing and margins that has enabled Apple to put more than $70bn in the bank.But the Jobs strategy of management remained pretty constant throughout his career, and it was always centred on product not profit. At its core was complete control over hardware and software and of every stage of the product's life cycle, from conception through to the retailer. We see that strategy triumph as early Apple products define home computing, then fail as Microsoft's rival philosophy of licensing its software prevails. Then in 1996, with Apple on the ropes, its co-founder returns.This amazing book takes you on a rollercoaster ride into the ferociously intense personality of a passionate and creative entrepreneur whose powerful drive and vision revolutionized six industries: music, personal computers, phones, animated movies, digital publishing and tablet computing. Steve Jobs also re-imagined and tried to revamp retail stores, but it did not t urn out to be as revolutionary. Instead, he paved the way for an entirely new market for app based digital content. This is a book that's mainly about innovation.Steve Jobs stands tall as the sole icon of imagination, sustained innovation and inventiveness. His vision was very clear; if you want to create value in the industry, connect technology with creativity. A company called Apple was built on this vision, which changed the entire face of technology with its imagination blended with remarkable feats of engineering. Often driven by his demons, Jobs could make those around him lurch in despair and fury. His products and personality were interrelated and his life was cautionary and instructive at the same time.Apple's rise to that position has been characterised by a management style that is now right out of fashion – the egomaniac CEO, the obsessive secrecy, the total disregard for market research, the suspicion of collaborative ventures. Walter Isaacson has written an ent hralling history of the birth of our modern digital world and the company that may have done more than any other to shape it. And, in his obnoxious, smelly, ranting, impatient, intuitive, creative and inspirational Steve Jobs, he has presented us with the greatest business genius of the past 30 years. Mr.Jobs, who founded  Apple  with Stephen Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, began his career as a seemingly contradictory blend of hippie truth seeker and tech-savvy hothead. â€Å"His Zen awareness was not accompanied by an excess of calm, peace of mind or interpersonal mellowness,† Mr. Isaacson says. â€Å"He could stun an unsuspecting victim with an emotional towel-snap, perfectly aimed,† he also writes. But Mr. Jobs valued simplicity, utility and beauty in ways that would shape his creative imagination. And the book maintains that those goals would not have been achievable in the great parade of Apple creations without that mean streak.Mr. Isaacson takes his reade rs back to the time when laptops, desktops and windows were metaphors, not everyday realities. His book ticks off how each of the Apple innovations that we now take for granted first occurred to Mr. Jobs or his creative team. â€Å"Steve Jobs† means to be the authoritative book about those achievements, and it also follows Mr. Jobs into the wilderness (and to NeXT and Pixar) after his first stint at Apple, which ended in 1985. With an avid interest in corporate intrigue, it skewers Mr. Jobs’s rivals, like John Sculley, who was recruited in 1983 to be Apple’s chief executive and fell for Mr.Jobs’s deceptive show of friendship. â€Å"They professed their fondness so effusively and often that they sounded like high school sweethearts at a Hallmark card display,† Mr. Isaacson writes. Of course the book also tracks Mr. Jobs’s long and combative rivalry with Bill Gates. The section devoted to Mr. Jobs’s illness, which suggests that his canc er might have been more treatable  had he not resisted early surgery,  describes the relative tenderness of their last meeting. â€Å"Steve Jobs† greatly admires its subject. But its most adulatory passages are not about people. Offering a combination of tech criticism and promotional hype, Mr.Isaacson describes the arrival of each new product right down to Mr. Jobs’s theatrical introductions and the advertising campaigns. But if the individual bits of hoopla seem excessive, their cumulative effect is staggering. Here is an encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves. Mr. Jobs’s virtual reinvention of the music business with iTunes and the  iPod, for instance, is made to seem all the more miraculous (â€Å"He’s got a turn-key solution,† the music executive Jimmy Iovine said. ) Mr. Isaacson’s long view basically puts Mr.Jobs up there with Franklin and Einstein, even if a tiny MP3 player is not quite the theory of relativity. The book emphasizes how deceptively effortless Mr. Jobs’s ideas now seem because of their extreme intuitiveness and foresight. When Mr. Jobs, who personally persuaded musician after musician to accept the iTunes model, approached Wynton Marsalis, Mr. Marsalis was rightly more impressed with Mr. Jobs than with the device he was being shown. Mr. Jobs’s love of music plays a big role in â€Å"Steve Jobs,† like his extreme obsession with Bob Dylan. (Like Mr. Dylan, he had a romance with Joan Baez.Her version of Mr. Dylan’s â€Å"Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word† was on Mr. Jobs’s own iPod. ) So does his extraordinary way of perceiving ordinary things, like well-made knives and kitchen appliances. That he admired the Cuisinart food processor he saw at Macy’s may sound trivial, but his subsequent idea that a molded plastic covering might work well on a computer does not. Years from now , the research trip to a jelly bean factory to study potential colors for the  iMac  case will not seem as silly as it might now. Skeptic after skeptic made the mistake of underrating Steve Jobs, and Mr.Isaacson records the howlers who misjudged an unrivaled career. â€Å"Sorry Steve, Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work,† Business Week wrote in a 2001 headline. â€Å"The iPod will likely become a niche product,† a Harvard Business School professor said. â€Å"High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product,† Mr. Sculley said in 1987. Mr. Jobs got the last laugh every time. â€Å"Steve Jobs† makes it all the sadder that his last laugh is over. Perhaps the funniest passage in Walter Isaacson's monumental book about  Steve Jobs  comes three quarters of the way through.It is 2009 and Jobs is recovering from a liver transplant and pneumonia. At one point the pulmonologist tries to put a mask over his face when he is deeply s edated. Jobs rips it off and mumbles that he hates the design and refuses to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he orders them to bring five different options for the mask so that he can pick a design he likes. Even in the depths of his hallucinations, Jobs was a control-freak and a rude sod to boot. Imagine what he was like in the pink of health. As it happens, you don't need to: every discoverable fact about how Jobs, ahem, coaxed excellence from his co-workers is here.As Isaacson makes clear, Jobs wasn't a visionary or even a particularly talented electronic engineer. But he was a businessman of astonishing flair and focus, a marketing genius, and – when he was getting it right, which wasn't always – had an intuitive sense of what the customer would want before the customer had any idea. He was obsessed with the products, rather than with the money: happily, as he discovered, if you get the products right, the money will come. Isaacson's book is studded with mome nts that make you go â€Å"wow†. There's the  Apple  flotation, which made the 25-year-old Jobs $256m in the days when that was a lot of money.There's his turnaround of the company after he returned as CEO in 1997: in the previous fiscal year the company lost $1. 04bn, but he returned it to profit in his first quarter. There's the  launch of the iTunes store: expected to sell a million songs in six months, it sold a million songs in six days. When  Jobs died, iShrines popped up all over the place, personal tributes filled Facebook and his quotable wisdom – management-consultant banalities, for the most part – was passed from inbox to inbox. Thisbiography  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ commissioned by Jobs and informed by hours and hours of interviews with him – is designed to serve the cult.That's by no means to say that it's a snow-job: Isaacson is all over Jobs's personal shortcomings and occasional business bungles, and Jobs sought no copy approval (though, typic ally, he got worked up over the cover design). But its sheer bulk bespeaks a sort of reverence, and it's clear from the way it's put together that there's not much Jobs did that Isaacson doesn't regard as vital to the historical record. We get a whole chapter on one cheesy ad (â€Å"Think Different†). We get half a page on how Jobs went about choosing a washing machine – itself lifted from an interview Jobs, bizarrely, gave on the subject to  Wired.Want to know the patent number for the box an iPod Nano comes in? It's right there on page 347. Similarly, the empty vocabulary of corporate PR sometimes seeps into Isaacson's prose, as exemplified by the recurrence of the word â€Å"passion†. There's a lot of passion in this book. Steve's â€Å"passion for perfection†, â€Å"passion for industrial design†, â€Å"passion for awesome products† and so on. If I'd been reading this on an  iPad, the temptation to search-and-replace â€Å"passionâ €  to â€Å"turnip† or â€Å"erection† would have been overwhelming.Isaacson writes dutiful, lumbering American news-mag journalese and suffers – as did Jobs himself – from a lack of sense of proportion. Chapter headings evoke Icarus and Prometheus. The one on the Apple II is subtitled â€Å"Dawn of a New Age†, the one on Jobs's return to Apple is called â€Å"The Second Coming†, and when writing about the origins of Apple's graphical user interface (Jobs pinched the idea from Xerox), Isaacson writes with splendid bathos: â€Å"There falls a [sic] shadow, as TS Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation. † But get past all that pomp and there's much to enjoy.Did you know that the Apple Macintosh was nearly called the Apple Bicycle? Or that so obsessed was Jobs with designing swanky-looking factories (white walls, brightly coloured machines) that he kept breaking the machines by painting them – for example bright bl ue? As well as being a sort-of-genius, Jobs was a truly weird man. As a young man, he was once put on the night-shift so co-workers wouldn't have to endure his BO. Jobs was convinced his vegan diet meant he didn't need to wear deodorant or shower more than once a week. His on-off veganism was allied to cranky theories about health.When he rebuked the chairman of Lotus Software for spreading butter on his toast â€Å"Have you ever heard of serum cholesterol? â€Å", the man responded: â€Å"I'll make you a deal. You stay away from commenting on my dietary habits, and I will stay away from the subject of your personality. † That personality. An ex-girlfriend – and one, it should be said, who was very fond of him – told Isaacson that she thought Jobs suffered from narcissistic personality disorder. Jobs's personal life is sketchily covered, but what details there are don't charm.When he got an on/off girlfriend pregnant in his early 20s, he cut her off and aggres sively denied paternity – though he later, uncharacteristically, admitted regretting his behaviour and sought to build a relationship with his daughter. Jobs himself was adopted, and seems to have had what Americans call â€Å"issues around abandonment†. He cheated his friends out of money. He cut old colleagues out of stock options. He fired people with peremptoriness. He bullied waiters, insulted business contacts and humiliated interviewees for jobs.He lied his pants off whenever it suited him – â€Å"reality distortion field† is Isaacson's preferred phrase. Like many bullies, he was also a cry-baby. Whenever he was thwarted – not being made â€Å"Man of the Year† by Time magazine when he was 27, for instance – he burst into tears. Nowadays we are taught that being nice is the way to get on. Steve Jobs is  a  fine counter-example. In 2008, when  Fortune magazine  was on the point of running a damaging article about him, Job s summoned their managing editor to Cupertino to demand he spike the piece: â€Å"He leaned into Serwer's face and asked, ‘So, you've uncovered the fact that I'm bad.Why is that news? ‘† Well.. that’s the story. Sorry if I had given out a few spoilers on the book.. but they were essential to bring out the nature of an awesome personality! The book is well written and an easy read. To tell the story of Jobs’ complete life, the cast of characters is large. Mr Isaacson identifies the importance of those he included and what influence they had on Jobs. So, in a nut shell, this book, to use a few words from Job’s dictionary, is a ‘Must read! ’

Defining the Purpose and the Problem When Writing Proposals Essay

INTRODUCTION When drafting a proposal for any type of changes in the workplace, it is important to define the purpose and identify the problem being addressed in the proposal. There must be a needed or desired change identified in order to begin the research and planning phases of the project. Once the desired change is identified, the request for proposal process can begin. This process is repeatable and interchangeable with all project and grant proposals. GENERAL INFORMATION Collecting project requirements is the first step in determining the processes to be used to meet those requirements. The stakeholders of the project should be identified and each group’s individual tasks and boundaries identified. At the Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO), efficient, accurate, and personal customer interactions are all part of the Service Department’s daily operating policies and procedures. As a major part of this operating strategy, change is often imperative to maintaining expected levels of efficiency and accuracy when servicing  insurance policies for GEICO customers. Service Agents are responsible for anywhere from 50-100 calls from policyholders per day. Developing a new system of self-service options for GEICO’s approximately 13 million policyholders nationwide help alleviate over-burdened call centers. In order to ensure that policyholders are able to complete needed transactions without a need to call a licensed agent, th e self-service system must include the same controls as the GEICO Agent’s systems. The duration of this system enhancement and development project will be no more than three months, beginning on August 1, 2014. Distribution of the system will be completed over the following two month period and will be fully on-line in all Regional Office Service Centers by January 1, 2015. Financial resources are unlimited, but will be approved at the discretion of the Approving Authority on a case by case basis. There will be a total of 22 participants in this system development project. The Regional Vice President in charge Region X as the overall Approving Authority for the project. All changes to the established project requirements will be sent via the Project Manager through her office for final approval. A Project Manager who is a current Team Leader / Supervisor of Employees is needed to oversee the project directly. This Team Leader will be chosen by the Regional Vice President. Updated monthly statistics through the month of June, 2014 will determine the best candidate for assignment to this project. In the interest of team integrity, the five Licensed Agents assigned to this Team Leader will be selected to serve as the Working Group of the project and will be pulled from regular floor duties for the duration of the project. This group will be responsible for providing performance and safety measures, system input requirements, and accuracy testing through periodic live reviews of the system. A five person Software and Systems Development Team (SSDT) of Information Technology Office Agents (ITOA) will be responsible for the creation of the  new Internet-based system. Taking inputs from the Working Group members, a system will be written and distributed to all GEICO Regional Offices upon completion of testing and final approval. In addition to the trained professionals assigned to this project, a small sampling of ten customers (Product Testers) from the Tucson area will be participating in the testing and improvement phase of the project to ensure simplicity and accuracy of use for the new system. These testers will receive no formal training on the new system. The only outside input provided will be a data entry sheet containing information for the customer to input / edit on training accounts to test the user-friendliness of the final interface before full distribution. These product testers will also be given satisfaction questionnaires throughout the duration of the testing period from October 1 – October 15. The Product Testers will work from 8AM – 5 PM, with a one-hour lunch break, Monday – Friday. The Product Testers will be paid $600 (before taxation) at the end of the two week testing period. REPORTING REQUIREMENTS The Project Manager will report bi-weekly to the Approving Authority directly with performance updates and any changes to the project Scope. Updates to project objective statuses will be included. These objectives are: Develop a user-friendly policy management system. Test the new system. Identify bugs, inefficiencies, and needed control measures to be built into the new system. Implement needed changes and control measures. Develop a training model using a closed operating system with identical functionality as the production system. Train all employees to use the new system. Put the new system into operation across the GEICO organization. Release the self-service version to policyholders through GEICO’s website at GEICO.com Market the new process to current and prospective policyholders throughout the country. RECORD KEEPING Upon completion of the project, a final report (summary of all tasks), changes, and improvements to the original scope of the project is compiled and turned in to the Approving Authority and kept on file for three years in accordance with State Insurance Regulations. All documents and records kept throughout the creation and testing process will be collected, scanned for sensitive information, and all non-essential pieces will be destroyed. Essential project â€Å"keeper† documents containing sensitive information and company procedures will be edited and stored with the final summary document for three years. EVALUATION CRITERIA Upon completion of the project, a final report (summary of all tasks), changes, and improvements to the original scope of the project is compiled and turned in to the Approving Authority and kept on file for three years in accordance with State Insurance Regulations. All documents and records kept throughout the creation and testing process will be collected, scanned for sensitive information, and all non-essential pieces will be destroyed. Essential project â€Å"keeper† documents containing sensitive information and company procedures will be edited and stored with the final summary document for three years. CONCLUSION Through effective use of the Proposal and the Project Planning Processes, change can be implemented across any size organization effectively and efficiently. Accurate identification of the purpose and possible problems when writing a Project Proposal will increase the chances of efficient and effective change.