The Pats are going to the Super Bowl!!!

Just like all of us in New England and especially right here in Boston, we love our sports teams!

Many of the alumni players from the New England Patriots are now excellent speakers. Over the years AEI has booked such amazing talent as Troy Brown, Brian Holloway, Patriot's Hall of Famer Steve Nelson and Steve Grogan, and most recently, Pro Football Hall of Famer Andre Tippett!!

Consider one of these star players or any of the super star athletes on our roster for your next event!

AEI SPEAKERS BUREAU on BET.com!

AEI's President Mark Castel was quoted in the article "Herman Cain, After Suspending Campaign, Stands to Do Well as Speaker" on www.Bet.com on Thursday, December 8th, 2011.

AEI SPEAKERS BUREAU in New York Magazine!

AEI's President Mark Castel was quoted in the article "Herman Cain Set for Huge Payday After Campaign" in New York Magazine on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011. Click here to view the full article.

Between Innovation and Creativity

What is the difference between innovation and creativity? An article from Harvard Business Review, named Innovation is not Creativity pointed out that creativity is about “coming up with the big idea”, while innovation is about “converting the idea into a successful business”. To quantify the effects brought by creativity and innovation, a survey was carried out targeting executives from Fortune 500 companies to rate their companies’ innovative skills from one to ten (one being very poor and ten world-class) and found out that companies were better generating ideas (with a score of six) than executing them (with a score of one). To evaluate the effects of focusing on creativity (generating new ideas) by moving the score from six to eight and of concentrating on innovation (executing ideas) by lifting the score from one to three, we could come up with these figures as follows:

Current capacity to innovation: 6 (current score of creativity) * 1 (current score of innovation) = 6

Anticipated capacity to innovation by increasing creativity: 8 (anticipated score of creativity) * 1 (assuming the score of innovation remains the same) = 8

Anticipated capacity to innovation by increasing innovation: 6 (assuming the score of creativity remains the same) * 3 (anticipated score of innovation) = 18

This is an interesting and vivid way of demonstrating the impact between generating ideas and putting them into reality. The sentence of "Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" said by Thomas Edison was quoted. The reason this sentence is so often quoted lies in the beauty of execution. Personally, I am a strong believer of “if you dream without doing anything to your dreams, you end up getting nothing”.

However, innovation is way more than execution. It means much more to a business. Jim Carroll is a great consultant for creativity and innovation. Check out his video below to see how creativity and innovation function as a propeller in the progress of a business and what that implies to your business. If you want more resources, I am always ready to provide more.

Jim Carroll

Collaboration

The recent issue of Harvard Business Review (July – August 2011) focuses on collaboration.

The article of “Are you a collaborative leader?” written by Herminia Ibarra and Morten T. Hansen, talks about how Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com managed to take advantage of the company-designed information sharing tool called Chatter to gather 5,000 employees through the entire company for a virtual meeting. In this way, everything happened in real time: every manager, given an iTouch, was encouraged to comment in real time; employees could read comments and reply to them in real time; and there were large monitors displaying all the feedbacks in real time as well. The result was inspiring as Steve Gillmor, the head of technical media strategy, recalled, “We felt the empowerment in the room.” Salesforce.com is apparently looking for a more open and empowered culture.

Another article that interests me is “Who moved my cube?” written by Anne-Laure Fayard and John Weeks because it talks about collaboration in terms of the discussion of benefits and harms that architectural design could bring to a company. A failing experience of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) was given as a negative example. With the goal to facilitate informal interactions and to encourage “impromptu meetings” and “creative encounters” among employees in new space, in 1987 SAS redesigned its headquarters around a central “street” that linked a café, shopping, and medical, sports, and other facilities, including several “multi-rooms” containing comfortable furniture, coffeemakers, fax and photocopying machines, and office supplies. The results was not pleasing because open spaces reduce privacy, they don’t foster informal exchanges and may actually inhibit them. Some studies show that employees in open-plan spaces, knowing that they may be overheard or interrupted, have shorter and more-superficial discussions than they otherwise would. Yet, ideally, removing physical barriers and bringing people closer to one another could possibly promote casual interactions. Both negative and positive scenarios are possible depending on the complex interplay of social and physical factors. And the effectiveness can be determined based on three criteria: proximity (to bring people together and remove barriers), privacy (so that people don’t fear being overheard or interrupted) and permission (to convene and speak freely).

Both articles have made me realize that collaboration is more than pure team work. It is also about how to also take into consideration external factors, technologically, architecturally (aesthetically), and so much more. Are you also concerned about how to release the art and power of “collaboration”? Patrick Lencioni and Dr. Tom Steiner are experts in giving advice on this area. And I believe that we can generate some heated discussion for sure.

Patrick Lencioni

Dr. Tom Steiner

Motivating Your Employees

It is an unwritten rule that, when you want something too much, you will finally lose control of it. Think about a person who pretentiously tries to be funny on stage. The more he/she wants to look funny and to amuse the audience, the less likely that the audience could be amused. The same theory applies to any company’s management of employees. The more a company wants to control its human resource, the less likely it might be to really hold them within the company. Wall Street Journal points out “Theory X” that most companies’ human resource management is based on and “Theory Y” that, Douglas McGregor, a founding faculty member of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, thinks should be applied in terms of employee management:

“Theory X”

1. The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can.

2. Because people dislike work, most people must be coerced, controlled, directed and threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives.

3. The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, and wants security above all.

“Theory Y”

1. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.

2. External control and threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort toward organizational objectives. People will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which they are committed.

3. Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.

4. The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility.

5. The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.

6. Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average human being are only partly utilitized.

There is shift from negativity to positivity from “Theory X” to “Theory Y”. The focus on company control has been changed to the objective of being employee-centered. And the key lies in employees’ self motivation. This topic will continue to be a heated issue over the coming decades.

This video is what I will share with you today. It motivates me as an individual. A company with powerful leadership, as far as I am concerned, is a company that regards every employee as an independent individual instead of someone at a lower rank who feels obliged to work.

We all need to be healthier

When I started my news reading in the nutrition section this morning, a topic caught my eyes: “still counting calories? Your weight-loss plan may be outdated.” I felt as if it were talking to me because I belong to the group that counts calories while eating. As I dug in, I found out that there are several interesting research results in health, which I think you, whether or not are a calorie-counter, might also be interested in.

The plan to eat everything in moderation, to take in few calories and to avoid fatty food would be considered the best approach. The quality of eating depends on the types of food rather than its calories. Keep in mind that there are good and bad foods. So we need to take in good ones more but bad foods less, instead of taking everything in moderation.

While physical exercise helps weight control, what you eat has more impact than exercise.




An increase in-take of diary products, either low-fat (milk) or full-fat (milk or cheese), does not influence the change of weight.




Even though we are advised to eat less fat, more yogurt and nuts (including peanut butter) can help weight loss because it slows the return of hunger.




Interestingly, the amount of sleep can also influence weight change. The results shows that either sleeping less than 6 hours or more than 8 hours can result in weight gain. And the given possible explanation is the influence of short nights on satiety hormones and the tendency to eat more while awake.




The in-take of other alcoholic drinks is more likely than the in-take of wine to cause weight gain.




Smokers who have been smoking for a long period of time (the result of a 4-year study is shown) lose weight probably because of undiagnosed underlying disease.

I was told by a Chinese friend about the importance of health the other day: health is the figure “1” that stays at the very beginning in a series of number, while other things in life are “0”s that follow. You grow richer as you add other treasure behind “1”. But without the figure “1”, the rest of the “0”s would mean nothing. I cannot agree more on this. Also I am more than happy to provide you with what I have on health issues in our database. It is my goal to live better and healthier. Also I feel motivated to offer resources that help people live better.

I have learned from several doctors such as Dr. Marion Nestle and Dr. David Kessler. They offer a lot of informative advice. And I am sure you will be interested in them as much as I do. Oh, I would particularly like to mention Dr. Melina Jampolis. She goes by Dr. Melina and I saw her on Dr. Oz! Feel free to check out her video below: