Briggs hits back in police expenses row
Posted: February 13, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Adam Briggs hits back in police expenses row
3:35pm Sunday 12th February 2012 in
A FORMER deputy chief constable who faced an investigation over his expenses has branded the inquiry “vindictive”.
Adam Briggs was investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) over allegations he claimed £11,700 for personal development training from North Yorkshire Police despite already receiving a £31,600 allowance to cover private medical insurance and personal development training since taking up his post in 2007.
The IPCC’s report said it was unacceptable for the authority to give Mr Briggs more than £30,000 without auditing how the money was spent.
It added it was disappointed that Mr Briggs, who retired last year, had not so-operated with its inquiry.
But Mr Briggs said: “The issues contained in the IPCC release were all closely examined by the chief constable and the ethics of the standards committee of the North Yorkshire Police Authority, who are the appropriate bodies.
“They were examined in detail in 2009 and 2010 when I answered every question asked of me, acknowledged I had made a minor administrative error in a procurement process that was new to me and I listened to the advice.
“I regard the IPCC inquiry as a vindictive act and I was not prepared to be a party to it as the appropriate bodies had already concluded no further action was required.”
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Briggs hits back in police expenses row
ClevrU and China Telecom Sign Memorandum of Understanding to Jointly Work Together in Developing the Mobile Online …
Posted: at 12:30 pm
China Telecom and ClevrU Corporation signed a Memorandum of Understanding today in Beijing China witnessed by the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, to jointly work together to develop the mobile online education market in China and in 50 other countries.
Waterloo, Ontario (PRWEB) February 10, 2012
It is the intention of ClevrU and China Telecom to develop a long-term strategic partnership relationship to research and develop a business model for the mobile online education market in China and 50 other countries that China Telecom has operations.
China Telecom and its subsidiary China Communication Services Corporation Limited and its subsidiary’s will support ClevrU’s market development with assistance in market research, business model development, platform deployment and operational implementation.
ClevrU agrees to support China Telecom and its subsidiaries with adapting ClevrU’s education platform and applications to the needs of the Chinese market and 50 other countries supported by China Telecom.
“ClevrU is excited with the opportunity to work with China Telecom and its affiliated companies to jointly study and develop the mobile online education market and the need to provide greater access to quality education services both in the enterprise training market and the consumer education market.” said Dana Fox, CEO and President of ClevrU Corporation.
About ClevrU Corporation
ClevrU is focused on WEB 3.0 applications that intelligently leverage Cloud Computing in a mobile environment. ClevrU has developed an e-teaching content delivery platform with advanced tools to assist in interactive teaching and student/instructor collaboration. This application uses an intelligent engine to adapt course content to users personal needs in a mobile environment. ClevrU is initially focused on international education markets. ClevrU's technology combines video e-teaching with semantic based intelligent social network tools for educational institutions universities and colleges, cellular phone/ tablet computer manufacturers and cellular carriers to deliver course content to students anywhere, anytime. ClevrU branded the platform ClevrU EDU and registered a patent pending on its Intelligent Collaborative Platform Technology.
About China Telecom
China Telecom Corporation Limited is the world's largest wireline telecommunications and broadband services provider and the world's largest CDMA mobile operator. Serving as a full services integrated information service operator, China Telecom provides basic telecommunications services, such as wireline telecommunications services and mobile telecommunications services, and value-added telecommunications services, such as Internet access services and information services in the PRC. As of the end of March 2011, the Company has wireline access lines in service of about 173 million, wireline broadband subscribers of over 66 million and mobile subscribers of more than 100 million. The Company's H shares and American Depositary Shares ("ADSs") are listed on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited and the New York Stock Exchange, respectively.
###
Dana Fox
dana@clevru.com
519 575 1477
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ClevrU and China Telecom Sign Memorandum of Understanding to Jointly Work Together in Developing the Mobile Online ...
GW wary to adopt free online courses
Posted: at 12:30 pm
Administrators are skeptical about the trajectory of online education after a startup company made a splash last month by offering free online courses taught by universities’ top professors.
Udemy, a for-profit company that allows users to create and sell courses, tapped into professors’ knowledge base with the launch of The Faculty Project Jan. 26. Twelve professors at universities like Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Colgate have developed free courses in subjects ranging from public health to Russian literature and music.
The Udemy courses – which are offered for no academic credit – are presented through a combination of media, often including video mash-ups in which the professor is seen talking and outlining graphs next to a presentation. Students can post comments and questions under the lectures to which professors might respond.
GW professors are not offering any courses through the project, which cost about $500 each to develop, director of The Faculty Project Tim Parks said. The company has to select professors to participate.
Academic administrators have yet to jump on board with free online courses, citing their costly upkeep as a deterrent.
Provost Steven Lerman said the University is looking closely into the online education marketplace, which “has a lot of different models floating around,” including Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare, which Lerman helped launch 10 years ago when he was a professor there. After a decade of offering free lecture videos to students around the world, MIT will start granting certificates to students who take the courses this spring in a new program called MITx.
“The hard question is how do you sustain those [courses]. Even if you get some money to help do it at first, there’s a care and feeding cost to these things,” Lerman said. “The courses have to be updated, certainly if you want to do something like give examinations to students and give them certificates.”
The University is making strides in offering more hybrid courses – taught partly in the classroom and partly online – as a way to mitigate dwindling classroom space and the pinch of the city-imposed population cap for on-campus student enrollment. GW also offers 60 degree and certificate programs that use a standard distance learning model where students never have to set foot on campus.
To keep up with the expenses of developing online options and help subsidize free course materials, some universities rely on grants or donations.
Stephen Ehrmann, vice provost for teaching and learning, said the separation between GW and elite institutions that are taking up free online education models comes from the significant grants pulled in yearly from foundations.
“GW has no plans to offer free online non-credit courses comparable to the ones offered by MIT and Stanford,” Ehrmann said. “When we get large gifts or foundation support, I’d like to see us use it to improve the education of GW students who are working hard to earn a degree,” instead of outside students seeking free online courses, he said.
Likening free online courses to “public television or the New York Public Library,” Ehrmann said, “You have to have a lot of money to offer them. If you can do it, it can be a real public service.”
Especially as tuition costs are spotlighted nationwide, Robert Garland, a Colgate professor who is teaching ancient Greek religion through Udemy, said no-cost courses open doors for people who cannot otherwise afford higher education.
“This is an important issue for all institutions of higher learning, that online learning is here to stay. What format classes will be in and how they’ll impact higher learning is not clear at this moment,” Garland said. “I certainly believe in trying to promote learning to a wider group of people.”
Other online education issues, including the costs of courses, will be on the docket for GW’s six-month-old Teaching and Learning Collaborative this spring, the advisory board’s lead faculty member Rahul Simha said.
The 19-person board was created to examine teaching strategies toward boosting student engagement in the classroom.
“It’s exciting that today’s technology allows certain kinds of scaling and cost efficiencies, so institutions of higher education need to figure out how to make use of that,” Simha, who is also a computer science professor, said.
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VIP Executive Room Life Coaching and Lunch with Success Coach Jewel Diamond Taylor – Video
Posted: at 2:06 am
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VIP Executive Room Life Coaching and Lunch with Success Coach Jewel Diamond Taylor - Video
Aurelia’s 5 Life Coaching Tips for a Happy Valentines Day! – Video
Posted: at 2:06 am
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Aurelia's 5 Life Coaching Tips for a Happy Valentines Day! - Video
Coaching ceo to be a coach
Posted: at 2:06 am
BRIDGING THE GAP
'Khun Kriengsak, I want you to help me to be a coach to my team," says Sompan.
"Khun Sompan, let's clarify the definition first. What does coaching mean to you?"
"Coaching relates to the activities you have done with me for the past six months," says Sompan. "You observed and learned about my styles and strengths a lot in the beginning. Then, you sought my concerns and listened attentively without judging me. Thus, you facilitated by asking questions that enabled me to discover the solutions by myself."
"Okay, so, we have same idea about coaching. Lots of people have a misunderstanding that coaching is about telling or teaching. Khun Sompan, why do you want to coach your team?"
"Because I think my team can do much better if I can unleash their potential. I was inspired by the way you coached me. Before you coached me, I had been mentored by my chairman. His command-and-control style didn't help me progress much. I reflect back that I did the same to my team. Now I realise that these teams have a lot of potential but they may have been unable to reach their potential to be high performers because of me. Do you think I should coach them as a group or one by one?"
"How many people do you plan to coach?"
"Eight of my direct reports"
"Why do you have eight direct reports instead of 300 people?"
"Because I will not have time to work with 300 people," says Sompan, pausing to think. "Ah, coach, I should coach them one on one. But it will take a lot of time. How much time should I spend on people?"
"I don't know. It depends on each organisation and several factors such as the organisation phase: startup, growth or turnaround. The nature of business: fast-moving and dynamic, highly technical or people-oriented. In Talent Masters, authors Bill Conaty and Ram Charan found that leaders in high-performance organisations invest at least a quarter of their time in spotting and developing other leaders, at GE and P&G, it's closer to 40%."
"I think I will spend 20% of my time. I plan to have a one-hour meeting per week for each person."
"What's your plan?"
"I plan to inform everyone in my executive committee meeting today. One hour per week with each person will be the pilot phase for the first three months. After that I will re-examine the result and probably modify things according to the situation."
"It sounds like a good plan to me. What will be the outline for your first meeting?"
"I will start by asking about each individual's career goal. Based on the goal, what are the capabilities required? Then, compare current capabilities and those required. One should be able to spot the capability gaps. From those gaps, we can discover the areas in which I will be able to help that person develop. Once we agree on the development area, then our coaching sessions will be on that subject."
"That's good. What could go wrong?"
"I'm afraid that I will not be able to listen to them well."
"Why?"
"Because several of my direct reports have complained to me directly that I am impatient."
"Do you think you will be impatient during the coaching sessions as well?"
Sompan nods.
"Why?"
"Because there will be lot of things that need to be done."
"So, if you have already allotted time to each individual, why aren't you calmer?"
"It's who I am. I'm an impatient person."
"Who told you that?"
"Lots of people."
"Do you always believe what other people tell you?"
"No."
"But why do you believe you're impatient?"
"Because it aligns with what I tell myself."
"When did you tell yourself that you're impatient?"
"Since I was 10."
"Tell me more."
"One night at the dinner table, everyone had finished while I had eaten only half of what was on my plate. My father was so frustrated. He shouted at me: 'Boy, if you want to have a good life, you have to be quick in everything, starting with eating.'
"That belief has helped me be successful to this day. I'm an overachiever who is always fast and good."
"Khun Sompan, that belief is probably good for several situations but not for coaching. You have to be 'present' with your coaching client. What belief must you have when you're listening to your coaching client?"
"I have to believe that listening to them is the foundation. It's how I learn more about this person at this particular moment. I am a doctor and my coaching client is a patient. If I want to unleash her potential, I have to really understand her."
Kriengsak Niratpattanasai provides executive coaching in leadership and diversity management under the brand TheCoach. He can be reached at coachkriengsak@yahoo.com. His columns are available at http://www.thaicoach.com
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Winters couple separate home life from basketball coaching
Posted: at 2:06 am
Photo by Joe Gerhart J&T Photography
Courtesy Art/Joe Gerhart The husband-wife Winters coaching duo of Scott and Brooke Bicknell prefer to talk about other things besides basketball when they are away from the court. "There's got to be that separation between the two," Scott said, "Otherwise the marriage wouldn't work and that's not what we're trying to accomplish."
Photo by Joe Gerhart J&T Photography
Courtesy Art/Joe Gerhart
WINTERS — He prefers an up-tempo style of basketball and doesn't mind giving up a few easy baskets if the game's pace is suitable.
She prefers a disciplined, slower-paced game, and if her team allows a layup it's enough to make her cringe.
Nonetheless, shortly after meeting Winters girls basketball coach Brooke Motheral in December of 2010, former Stamford girls coach Scott Bicknell was smitten. So smitten, in fact, that while lacking Motheral's telephone number, he decided to ask her out on a date anyway — via email.
Hitting the send button paid off.
Six months to the day after they first met as adversaries on the basketball court, Brooke Motheral became Brooke Bicknell.
A little more than a year later, Scott is now the head boys coach at Winters, giving WHS a genuine rarity: two head basketball coaches who are married to each other.
As one can imagine, the arrangement offers a host of advantages and disadvantages, both for the couple and for the school system.
Some of the pluses and minuses were discussed beforehand. Others are still being discovered.
"One of the biggest advantages is that you have someone who you trust more than anyone else, to give you feedback on your team," said Brooke, a Sundown native who graduated from Hardin-Simmons University. "We're both experienced and we can get good, honest feedback from each other. "One of the disadvantages is knowing when to say something. ... We do things differently and have different philosophies, so sometimes we can say too much."
Not that either coach is in need of much advice.
Now in her third season at Winters, Brooke guided the Lady Blizzards to the area round of the playoffs last season, and is again in playoff contention this year with tiebreakers pending.
In his first season at Winters, Scott has guided the boys team to its first district championship in years, along with a first-round playoff bye.
Yet there are still awkward scenarios that the couple has had to face — not the least of which is when one Winters team enjoys a big win while the other suffers a big loss. With one coach over-the-top happy after a victory and the other being ticked off after a defeat, some adjustments become necessary when the losing coach accompanies you on the car ride home.
"It hasn't been a problem," Scott said. "Both of us do a pretty good job of focusing on each other and being encouraging.
"That's what you've got to do, and we've have experienced both sides of that this year."
With both the Bicknells admittedly being very competitive, some scenarios can be even more challenging.
On those rare occasions when both Winters teams suffer disappointing losses, encouragement can give way to a short cool-down period.
"It can get pretty quiet," said Scott, an Illinois State graduate who migrated to Texas in 2001. "But it's one of those things that we're both pretty mature about.
"We know that the other is thinking, and we know that if we say something stupid it won't be taken well. But I think we both have a great understanding in that."
Perhaps it's better that way.
Contrary to what some may envision, the Bicknells actually prefer not to discuss basketball at all during their free time. And though they will study game tapes together and share their analysis of each other's teams, those activities are strictly done while at work.
Building a home life away from Xs and Os, remains the top priority.
"When we go home, we leave (basketball) up at the school," said Scott, who with a laugh, made it very clear that he did not propose marriage via email. "In fact, before our seasons got started, we rarely talked about basketball, even though it's a huge part of our lives.
"It may sound funny, that we don't go home and talk about the game, but we don't. ... There's got to be that separation between the two, otherwise the marriage wouldn't work and that's not what we're trying to accomplish."
Achieving that separation, however, could be even more important (and difficult) in the Bicknell's situation, given that both coaches are now emotionally tied to two teams, rather than one.
Where most girls coaches hope that their school's boys team will win and vice versa, the Bicknell's have an actual vested interest in seeing the other team succeed because it as a direct effect on their livelihood.
As one can imagine, worrying about two teams, rather than just one, is doubly taxing.
"I think it's a lot tougher, and that's something I would have never thought about before we (were married)," said Brooke, who is a high-level math teacher at WHS. "You always want the other team to do well for the kids and coaches.
"But when your husband is the one on the bench, you want them to do just as well if not better than your own team. The emotional part of that is something I never would have (imagined). ... It's crazy how much you invest into both teams. Even though I'm not at his practices, I feel like it's my team out there too."
Added Scott: "When you find yourself emotionally invested in two teams, it can be very draining the following day. You're completely spent Wednesday and you're spent on Saturday"
The Bicknells weren't the only people on the Winters campus with positives and negatives to consider before Scott's hiring.
Having a package deal operating both varsity basketball programs can, on the one hand, offer much-needed stability if the right people are found. On the other hand, it can make fixing a bad fit more difficult.
But with Brooke already performing well, both as a coach and a highly valued teacher, and Scott getting solid references from Stamford, the plus side became obvious.
"There were pros and cons that we had to weigh," Winters athletic director Stephen Hermesmeyer said. "But I didn't mind the idea of having both them here as boys and girls basketball coach, (mainly) to try to keep them here.
"The hardest thing for the small schools is in keeping good, quality people. Brooke and Scott are both good coaches, but more importantly, they're also very good people."
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Winters couple separate home life from basketball coaching
Life Coaching: Learning To Ask For Help
Posted: at 2:06 am
Every day we rely on others for their help. From the dentist to the teacher, the farmer to the construction worker, we rely on our community to help us in countless ways. Why then, when we are struggling, is it often so hard to ask for help?
By species we are designed to cohabitate and to live in harmony with our world around us. Yet thousands of people each day are feeling alone, isolated in fear, pain, sadness and low self-esteem.
Perhaps you were taught that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Perhaps you feel burdensome to others by asking for their assistance. Then there are the times that we don't know what help we really need so we sit in the dark trying to figure out what to do, feeling too ashamed, exposed, foolish or vulnerable to reach out and seek guidance.
Countless studies and examples from history extol the benefits of teamwork over individual accomplishments. We are more creative, more effective and more powerful when we unite forces. That same principle applies in times of personal need; connecting with others can help you face fear, overcome obstacles and find a new perspective. Whether struggling with finances or family issues, physical or mental health, we can find strength in developing partnerships. Be it a free clinic, a financial advisor, life coach, friend, support group, teacher, self-help book or inspirational website, whatever method works for you, there are people out there ready and willing to help.
When you go about your day today notice all the ways you rely on others to help you. Then take a good look at places where you've been resisting help and ask yourself, what are you resisting? What are you gaining by going it alone? What fears show up for you when you imagine asking someone to help you? Don't let your fear or pride keep you playing small. Don't let your fear or pride hold you back from receiving help and reaching back to those around you that are offering. People are sincere in their offering and often feel delighted that you will take them up on it. It's a way you give to them, too.
Still feel hesitant? Grab a pencil and jot down a list of all the places you could use a little help today. Brainstorm the people you think could be helpful. Pick one off the list, take a deep breath...and ask for help.
[Kim Tapper, ACC, CPCC. For more information, visit http://www.kimtappercoaching.com]
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Life Coaching: Learning To Ask For Help
Coaching an orchestra, living an opera
Posted: at 2:06 am
The Irish Times - Monday, February 13, 2012
MICHAEL DERVAN
ON MY WAY to meet Antonio Pappano at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, where he’s been music director since 2002, I pass him in the street. A few minutes later, when we meet in his office, he is wolfing down breakfast. It isn’t his first breakfast, he tells me, but it is essential that he gets charged for the energy he is about to expend when he takes that morning’s rehearsal.
His energy is apparent at all times. He’s one of those talkers who can articulate the construction of a sentence a couple of times before settling on exactly what he’s going to say. The ideas sometimes come in a tumble. He’s soft-spoken, with a genuinely mid-Atlantic accent. He was born in England in 1959, a year after his family relocated from Italy, and when he was 13, his family moved again, to the US.
Conducting was never an ambition he nurtured. His father taught singing (as well as being in the restaurant business), and Pappano became a pianist, working in partnership with his father. “I was very happy playing the piano. My father was a voice teacher, I played for his students. For 12 years we were a team. And then I left the fold and went to work in different opera houses, as a repetiteur, as a musical assistant, pianist.” The pressure to conduct came from other people. “They saw in me the possibility that I could conduct, from the way I played the piano. Some friends, they brought me in front of the orchestra, and I did some concerts. I could conduct, one, two, three, four, but I was rubbish.”
He obviously wasn’t total rubbish. “I could communicate something, and I had a spark. So it was something I did every now and again. But then I realised I could almost coach the orchestra, and I came to it more willingly.”
There were a couple of important turning points. “The lightning bolt for me was in 1987 when I conducted Bohème for the very first time. I walked into the room for the staging rehearsals, and I started taking over the direction, telling the singers what to do, no, the acting was wrong, and this and that. I just saw that this is what I was meant to do. The theatre was so much a part of me. That was the moment I knew I had to conduct.”
But his bread and butter was still as a pianist; he was working as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant and was supposed to move to the Opéra de la Bastille in Paris, where Barenboim was to become music director in 1990. “There was some political turmoil, and he ended up not doing the job. So all of a sudden I found myself with my calendar open, and surprisingly it just got filled. Bang! Things came very, very quickly, and I started certain relationships that just flowered and blossomed. All of a sudden, I realised I can do this.”
It wasn’t all plain sailing. “I had a disastrous debut [in Covent Garden] in 1990, when I jumped in for Sir John Pritchard, who had recently passed away. It was a difficult situation for many reasons. There were many cast changes. I had come here too young, it was too soon. This happens. But all’s well that ends well. Twelve years later I became the music director. In those 12 years I was at Brussels as music director of the opera. I invested a lot of time in places where I was fixed, and in every sense, in creating musical families. Because I think that’s the environment I work best in.
“In 1997 I did a recording with the London Symphony Orchestra which started a relationship which to this day is going on. We have a wonderful closeness. My continuing relationship with the LSO has to do with wanting to nurture and keep nurturing something that is a constant in my life. When I got the job in Italy with my Rome orchestra, the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, about six years ago, there was a hiatus with the LSO. All of a sudden, I’d got into another marriage with this orchestra. And I’m here, in Covent Garden, too.
“The investment in time, and loyalty, and creating environments where people understand what it is you’re trying to do, is very, very important.
“Opera is a complete, very complex artform. When all the disciplines are put together and it works, there’s nothing like it. It’s fantastic. Also, how you communicate to the orchestra what they’re playing about – there is nothing opera musicians like more than having a clue as to why they’re playing the notes they’re playing. I love that relationship with them, trying to make the orchestra as theatrically aware as possible. And to sound different with every piece. That there’s not a house sound that you apply. They have to reinvent themselves all the time. That’s very important to me.
“In terms of the symphonic repertoire, it’s opened up a world to me. I had some experience before, but nothing like what I’m doing now. The broadening of my knowledge, and the possibilities in terms of expressing emotion without words has been important for me. The deeper experience is trying to say it without words.”
Key recordings
Massenet: Werther . Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, Thomas Hampson, LSO (EMI Classics)
Verdi: Requiem . Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (EMI Classics)
Mahler: Symphony No 6. Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (EMI Classics)
Antonio Pappano conducts the London Symphony Orchestra at the NCH on Monday. nch.ie
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Coaching an orchestra, living an opera
Life Coaching Susan G. Komen's Nancy Brinker
Posted: at 2:05 am
Dear Ms. Brinker –
Last week while leaving my apartment building at the same time as my 50-something male neighbor, he told me he’d just written a check to Planned Parenthood. In fact, the next day, Susan G. Komen for the Cure was the topic at happy hour and two days after that I was discussing it with other friends at a bar while waiting for the Super Bowl to begin.
What an amazing tribute you have built in the name of someone you love. Now you have chosen – yes, chosen – to bring it to a moral crossroads. If things happen for a reason and all your decisions up to this point have brought you here, it’s time to dig deep and ask why.
Notice that last sentence doesn’t say, “It’s time to hire the best publicist around to strategize and assess what move you could make that looks good or puts your organization in a positive light.” Hogwash. You need to get real. So real it sets some people’s hair on fire.
It’s time to make a decision that feels right, not looks right. The way I see it, you’re being called on to pay attention to your spiritual beliefs and figure out where they play in your company. This is big. Let the truth chips fall where they may.
According to a recent Huffington Post article relaying information from leaked emails from someone in your organization, it’s clear you’ve been lining things up to cut Planned Parenthood funding for a while. You hired staunch pro-life vice president Karen Handel-- who resigned this week -- as part of that mission. A Los Angeles Times piece tells a story from a former advisory board member’s vantage point that illustrates what has been happening between pro-choice and pro-life camps within Komen.
OK.
But rather than stand in your truth and for what you apparently believe is morally correct, you agreed to the creation of a new grant eligibility guideline you could hide behind. Moving stridently forward one minute, ducking behind a curtain the next.
I know, I know, it’s business. Your resume in this arena is stellar on a global level. You’ve worked for George W. Bush as United States Ambassador to Hungary and Chief of Protocol. President Obama presented you with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for goodness sake. You’re not some startup operating out of a basement. You’re on the international stage. We can see you.
Here’s a sign you’re heading for trouble. When you start having meetings trying to figure out what to tell people about what you’re doing instead of telling them the truth. It’s a big fat flashing red light that you have lost your way. If you are staunchly pro-life and you are standing in that, then stand in it.
Façade is your enemy.
You get this is seen as political on your part because you took on an organization that isn’t doing anything illegal, right? You made a decision that would essentially demonize a place that so many women remember as their source for checkups, information and birth control when they were in college. These are women of every stripe and affiliation, probably living away from home for the first time, perhaps just becoming sexually active or getting real talk about sex. And this is an organization that is doing nothing wrong from a legal standpoint. Abortions are legal in the United States of America.
Looking to change that is your right as a citizen. Using Susan G. Komen for the Cure is your right as its founder. But it is advocacy no matter how you slice it because you are making an executive decision based on a belief that a law needs to change. You can opt to keep it out of your business and take it up with your god or you can stand by it. You tried to somehow play it down the middle.
How does all this feel in your gut? Not from a business standpoint but a personal one. As a sister? And I mean that in a much bigger sense than just your organization’s namesake. Because your supporters over the years – people in the throes of the worst health battle of their lives or those who love them – see you as “family.” You, as in the plural form, have been their hope, their rock and their place to go when they didn’t know where else to turn.
What a tribute to you and all the people who have worked tirelessly over the years to make that so. But maybe this is a call to be a whole different kind of company. You’ve inadvertently drawn a line in the sand for yourself. Maybe you’re supposed to operate on a smaller scale, but a more authentic one. You followed your instincts up to a point, but then went off the rails to cover up intent.
I didn’t know your sister, but this is about her, yes? Would she be cheering your decision to cut the Planned Parenthood funding? Or your decision to bring it back? Doesn’t your next move lie in that?
People so often criticize celebrities who take stands on major issues, but I find it admirable in some ways because they’re willing to risk alienating supporters to stand in their truth. There’s a lesson in there for you.
If your aim is to take a stand against what you consider baby killing, then what were you doing giving to Planned Parenthood in the first place? If your aim is to give support and bring awareness to a disease that affects women of all stripes and class, then stare down the pro-life movement in the name of business.
This may be your make-or-break moment. Manipulate or lead? Lie to people giving you money or be transparent and above board?
One restaurant in New York has already revamped its pending fundraiser and taken Susan G. Komen off the recipient list. I imagine this is the tip of the iceberg.
Truth is pretty much your only option now. I’d go with that.
Sincerely,
Nancy Colasurdo
Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is http://www.nancola.com and you can follow her on Twitter @nancola. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.
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Life Coaching Susan G. Komen's Nancy Brinker