Craig's Corner

It’s Halloween. Boo! I’m not a big fan. I used to be. I have a vivid memory of Mom making me a car outfit – a cardboard box attached to my shoulders by string. We colored the box, putting headlights on it and made a racing stripe. I loved cars and this was the be-all-and-end-all of costumes. It was totally fun, not to mention I loved the gargantuan amounts of sugar that my siblings and I would consume. I never liked the scary part of All Hallows Eve. I’ve never liked being scared. Maybe it was my older brother making me sit through Hithcock’s “The Birds” at like 4-years old...maybe I’m just sensitive! Today when I’m startled I will jump 3 feet in the air – likely the only time this white man jumps that high. I’m the exception. Scaring people is a huge business, though. The horror genre of media generates big money. The average person will spend $66 on Halloween this year – similar to 2008 – and total holiday spending will reach nearly $6 billion. Nearly on-par with that spending is...

A game I often play is the “what if” game. What if I had stayed in that job 20 years ago…how would my life be different today? What if I had gone up to that really sexy person and asked them out? What if I hadn’t gone up to that really sexy person and asked them out? Playing the game is rarely productive, occasionally instructive and allows me to look at decision making in a fresh light. Making decisions is something I love to do, something I thrive at and something I am usually very accomplished with. A typical business the day is filled with a constant opportunity to make decisions. It allows me to weigh the pros and cons of a particular situation, evaluate how the issue fits in with the strategic goal/mission of the organization and what its impact might likely be. I use as many concrete data points as I can, but, ultimately a decision is the ultimate form of what if. Having been largely successful my decisions generally pay off more than they don’t. I was faced this week with a d...

Punctuality is important to me. I can even get a little OCD about it. If I’m on time then all is right with the world, and I usually don’t get too wound up if somebody else is late – just so long as I’m on time. While I’d like to think it’s all about ME, tardiness should be a yellow warning light. Caution or concern didn’t exist for California lawmakers – finally approving this week a budget 100 days past the Constitutional requirement. The Federal Government didn’t even try this year. October 1st started the new fiscal year for the U.S. Government and not one Appropriation bill was passed authorizing the Government to spend money. Congress did quickly pass “Continuing Resolutions” to allow spending to continue, so even though there’s no budget funds can continue to be spent. For more than twenty years I’ve developed and implemented budgets for organizations as small as $1,000 and larger enterprises of $250 million and everything in between. The figures are dramatically different, an...

Gadgets are cool, fun and can either be great time savers or great time wasters. I was particularly interested in learning more about this week’s announcement of GoogleTV . Soon we’ll be able to buy a TV that connects to the Internet and using GoogleTV we can check on sports stats while the game is going on, watch what we want when we want, look up celebrity news about the actor in a movie we’re watching – really potentially cool stuff. I’ve always been drawn to technology – from my stint as the Editor-in-Chief of my high school newspaper where I converted the article submission process from manual typewritten pages to discs! Many clients and employers have either been in technology or have utilized technology to streamline operations and maximize what humans can do versus what machines can do. There are many areas where technological improvements have made tremendous differences in the day to day living of most Americans, helped businesses achieve or maintain profitability and creat...