This is helpful, from the Desiring God site.
Christians and Negotiation
Alex Chediak wrote an excellent article on Christians and negotiation about a year ago that remains relevant today and always will. I haven’t written up anything on negotiation, but if I ever do it will be very close to what Alex wrote. He covers some of the key principles, which include: Separate the people from […]
Teaching as Leadership
I saw this recommended by Dan Heath and ordered it. The full title is: Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap
What Makes a Good Teacher?
Dan Heath gives some reflections on a recent article in the Atlantic which he highly recommends. He notes: For years, people have speculated about what makes a great teacher. But now there is data. It has been gathered painstakingly by Teach For America for over a decade, and it covers hundreds of thousands of kids. TFA […]
Controlling Medical Costs by Knowing the Purpose of a Hospital
On Friday we discussed Rudy Giulian’s point that leadership involves applying a well-thought-out set of beliefs to the real world. Then we gave education as one example. Health care is another good example that Giuliani gives, also from his book Leadership: I practiced the same discipline in examining the purpose of New York City’s hospitals […]
Educating Students or Protecting Jobs?
After discussing how the job of leadership entails applying beliefs to real-world situations, Giuliani gives the New York City school system as an example of how this works out: The New York City school system was never really going to improve until its purpose, its core mission, was made clear. What the system should have […]
Applying Strengths to Parenting and Education
The underlying philosophy in most of the school systems I’ve encountered (growing up and as a parent, with one notable exception) seems to be based on the assumption that a student’s greatest opportunities for growth are in his areas of weakness. Obviously students do need to develop their skills in areas where they don’t demonstrate […]
Systems Trump Mission Statements; Culture Trumps Systems
A few months ago I blogged on how systems trump intentions because systems create behaviors. In discussing the attempted Christmas bombing plot, Dave Logan makes the good case that the reality goes one step further: culture trumps systems. Hence, no amount of systemic change will ultimately solve the problems that led to the security breach […]
Price-Driven Costing Rather than Cost-Driven Pricing
Here’s a good word from a BusinessWeek article summarizing Peter Drucker’s insight on how to price a product: Properly pricing a product is no easy exercise. It involves a complex bit of calculus that must take into account not only a business’ up-front investment but also the ongoing costs it expects to incur (as it […]
The Costs of Medical Care
Thomas Sowell does a good job of explaining in a recent column how costs are not reduced simply because you pay them in another form. We are incessantly being told that the cost of medical care is “too high”– either absolutely or as a growing percentage of our incomes. But nothing that is being proposed […]