WorldBlu Article in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal has a feature article entitled “Can a Company be Run as a Democracy?” about select companies on the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces 2007 in the Monday, April 23 edition. Included in the article are Ternary Software, Honest Tea, and Continuum.

Fellow Member Traci is thrilled about the article and the fact that workplace democracy is hitting mainstream business thought. University of Phoenix students can read the article by logging into the Online Library and clicking on this link.

Feel free to share this great news with others!

Innovative Ideas for GMail...

I love information about how to do more with less.

Consider that we have only 24 hours each day, and an amazing amount of new information to digest. Might it be possible to COMBINE online tools that we already have to help cope with the increasing amount of new information?

Steve Rubel, a PR and marketing expert, offers 3 blog posts that suggest many new and innovative ways to combine Google Email with other products and services to either save time or do things you didn't know you could do!

1. Turn GMail into your personal nerve center,

2. More ways to use GMail as a personal nerve center, and

3. How to use GMail as a business diary and more tips.

More posts like this are on the way in the future...

Even if you don't use all or even any of Steve Rubel's suggestions, I think you'll appreciate the creative spirit with which he combines common everyday online tools to save time and do more.

Coming U.S. Challenge: A Less Literate Workforce

U.S. workers may be significantly less literate in 2030 than they are today.

The reason: Most baby boomers will be retiring and a large wave of less-educated immigrants will be moving into the workforce. This downward shift in reading and math skills suggests a huge challenge for educators and policymakers in the future, according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS).

If they can't reverse the trend, then it could spell trouble for a large swath of the labor force, widen an already large skill gap, and shrink the middle class.

"There is no time that I can tell you in the last hundred years" where literacy and numeracy have declined, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston and one of the report's authors. "But if you don't change outcomes for a wide variety of groups, this is the future we face."

The decline in literacy is one of the more startling projections in a report that examines what it calls a "perfect storm" of converging factors and how those trends are likely to play out if left unchecked.

The three factors identified are: a shifting labor market increasingly rewarding education and skills, a changing demographic that include a rapid-growing Hispanic population, and a yawning achievement gap, particularly along racial and socioeconomic lines, when it comes to reading and math.

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College Students Seek Therapy in Record Numbers

The number of University of Washington students seeking new medical evaluations for mental health problems such as depression and anxiety has nearly tripled in the past five years.

At SPU, one-fifth of its undergraduate student body has sought therapy, many of the students reporting that they were suffering from stress.

Universities around the country -- including the University of Washington, Seattle Pacific University and Seattle University -- are reporting increases in campus mental illness, at times creating a backlog of cases and weeks-long waits to see a therapist.

No one is certain what's behind the phenomenon. Experts suggest that students today face greater pressures, taking on college loan debt to pay for rising tuition. Therapy is more socially acceptable, prompting more students to seek help. And students who once might not have attended college because of a mental illness are being diagnosed earlier, making it possible for them to go on to higher education.

"The generation that's in college right now grew up with Prozac advertised on television," said Alison Malmon, 25, executive director and founder of Active Minds on Campus, a grass-roots organization working to reduce the stigma of mental illness.

Study Finds Students Narcissistic

Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating, 'You're special,' and having children repeat that back," said Jean Twenge , the study's lead author and a professor at San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop today in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory asks for responses to such statements as, "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person," and "I can live my life any way I want to."

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' inventory scores have risen steadily since the test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.