Big Brothers Essay -- essays research papers

Becoming a mentor can have a tremendous impact on the life of a youngster. Children need someone to look up to that doesn’t necessarily need be a part of their immediate family. Sometimes they have no siblings, or maybe their siblings or parents are busy. Perhaps they have no grandparents to do things with. These children are the ones that spend their afternoons in crowded after school programs where they may not get the attention the crave. This may lead to isolation and oppositely over hyperactive children starved for attention. In other cases, some children who are not so fortunate as to be offered after-school programs are subject to the world outside all on their own. In too many cases, these are the children that become statistics. These are the children who turn to drugs or crime, be it out of fear, or simply to feel accepted. Accepted in the wrong crowds still may comfort a lonely child. One of the most renowned mentoring agencies is a non-profit organization called big brothers/ big sisters of America. A man who saw a young boy sifting through the trash for food created this establishment over 90 years ago. He took the boy home, fed him, and then met his poverty-stricken family. From that point on, he became a mentor to the little boy, and this inspired him to form the organization for other boys, and in following years, a group of Christian women created a program for little girls. The soon joined forces and became the big brothers and big sisters of America. I...

Management and Workbook Process Essay

As a leading pioneer in outdoor retailing and a company at the forefront of the movement for environmental sustainability, we write this letter in response to your request to evaluate your current Workbook Process and appraise the advantages as well as the drawbacks to the system. We are not in favour of the current Workbook Process for reasons that we will list for you. We feel that a company with such a reputation as Patagonia, Inc., needs to adopt a less sophisticated but progressive system. MAIN FINDINGS With the research we carried out it was very clear and apparent to us that the Workbook Process was ineffective. However, it did open up communication among employees, and it also encouraged employees to share their ideas with some upper level management. We do feel that the process can be improved upon. OVERVIEW OF THE WORKBOOK PROCESS The Patagonia Workbook Process in our view was designed to make information about the company’s planning, budgeting and quality improvement flow more fluently amongst all the employees. The Process was also designed to encourage the employees to take a more active role in the company’s planning, operating review and decision making process. We will start our analysis by critiquing and listing what we feel are major concerns of the workbook process. CONCERNS OF THE WORKBOOK PROCESS * The Process of sharing information could weaken the managers’ powerbase, because selective disclosure of information can be used to control and to manipulate employees to do their work. * Expensive system because training is required for the employees to learn and to understand the system. In addition, training is time consuming. * The poor deliverance of financial information, due to the fact that some employees did not want to participate in the Process. * The one to two months lag behind of paperwork. Thus information was never relevant for that specific time period. * Large proportion of employees refused to engage in the Process because they found it tedious. * The plan was not accepted by all levels of management. * The Workbook Process focuses mainly on planning in advance for the longer term rather than on a day by day basis. * The Workbook Process had difficulty in judging environment, quality and distribution objectives, which are crucial success factors for Patago nia, Inc. * The Workbook Process is very complex and time consuming. The level of planning and the enormous amount of meetings needed to discuss company plans leaves very little time for constructive work to be done. * The Process could be limiting in the sense that it does not promote innovations; if anything it encourages people to just stick to a set plan and nothing else. * The profit sharing plan that was introduced was not based on merit; it was just allocated in equal percentages of the base salary. On the contrary, the workbook process also has some benefits. Although, the concerns outweigh the benefits, it is for your benefit and to give you a better perspective of the Process. BENEFITS OF THE WORKBOOK PROCESS * The Workbook Process has been significantly embraced amongst the employees at Patagonia, Inc. * A significant amount of the employees feel that the Process is worthwhile and that it has given everyone an opportunity to bond; and also optimized better solutions for the company. * The Workbook Process being a much longer term strategy can detect problems or issues before they arise, which is a more proactive approach, rather than waiting for an issue to arise before it gets attended to. * The Workbook Process gave a chance for employees at the top of the hierarchy a better understanding of what lower ranked employees where up to, therefore it created an atmosphere whereby everyone was interested in what was happening within the company. EVALUATION On the basis of our evaluation, we would like to recommend that Patagonia, Inc. discontinues with the Workbook Process. We are of the view that the Process has served its intended purpose. The Process has worked in the sense that it has educated the employees on how the company operates and how their jobs interface with each other. A control system is applied to ensure that an organization strategy is implemented which is not the case with the Workbook Process. The Workbook Process focuses on long term rather than looking at each scenario as it arises. In looking back at the time dedicated to achieving company objectives is lacking, which we feel is a key component of the future success of the company. A value driver is an objective which can indicate future success. An example would include product design, quality and design, quality and customer service, which are all qualities that Patagonia, Inc. values. MAIN RECOMENDATIONS AND MODIFICATION Our recommended replacement for the Workbook Process is a Balanced Scorecard. A Balanced Scorecard is a less sophisticated and more grounded evaluation method. A Balanced Scorecard not only focuses on financial but also non-financial contributors to the success of the company. Management can set objectives that involve different areas of the business. For example the production and distribution could qualify as efficiency objectives, research and development would focus on innovations, and the human resources would look after the quality of life for the employees. We are of a strong view that these aspects are key elements to the success of the company. The Balanced Scorecard will not guarantee success for Patagonia, Inc. but, we see it as a step in the right direction. The Balanced Scorecard does have some drawbacks as well as advantages. The drawbacks are, a Balanced Scorecard can add a new type of reporting without necessarily improving quality or financial numbers; it could be viewed as a non-value adding report method and a distraction for achieving actual goals. One more disadvantage is that Balanced Scorecard goals are easy to reach but hard to quantify. The advantages of the Balance Scorecard are that, it caters for employees who are both financially and non-financially literate, a Balanced Scorecard is less technical and easier to understand, and the last advantage is that the Balanced Scorecard is less time consuming and will allow workers to focus more on their real tasks. CONCLUSION In concluding, we feel that the time and effort required to keep the Workbook Process operational are too costly. The staff within the organization are only partially committed, which in our view is causing complications with the success of the Workbook Process. The level of training required is exhaustive. The employees who are not financially literate regardless of how much training they receive might never fully grasp the concepts of the Workbook Process. When an organization focuses all its efforts on financial results, other tasks that cannot be measured objectively are neglected. We hope that you will take all of our advice and recommendations into consideration and, we wish you and Patagonia, Inc. all the success in your future endeavours.

Maritime Applications for Machine Learning and Data Science

As data collection and analysis seeps into the conservative maritime industry we are beginning to see cracks in this grand old system based on tradition and trial and error. When I say old, I don’t mean the 1980’s or even the 1880’s. Opinions vary on the exact time shipping became modern as any sailor or longshoreman would recognize today. When the English and Dutch began standardizing shipping practices between their two countries to increase safety and profit the practices soon spread. This was happening in the late 1600’s and if you wanted to be part of the shipping economy you looked to the English, Dutch, and to a lesser extent, the Spanish. Today we can see another example of this technology clustering having a lasting effect on a growing industry. Starting in the 1960’s California became the place to be if you were a part of the new generation of electronics companies. Standards were set and the jargon and culture of Silicon Valley we have today is a direct result of this small but powerful geographic area. In addition to soft concepts like jargon, deep architectural standards like eight digit binary numbers were solidified. The same sorts of transactions and relationships were also true of shipping as it became a standardized business. Global shipping today represents many cultures and values and it must be responsive in the era of pervasive media and digital content, or it will be demonized and lose the minimal goodwill available to a largely invisible industry. Yet when they see a good idea, which is one that will save money, it is quickly adopted by the upper levels of management. Workers are sometimes resistant to change for fear of job loss. Both of these behaviors occurred when the intermodal shipping container was introduced in the 1950’s as a cost saving measure. Automation of ships and ports will be a much more difficult journey than the one fought by the proponents of the modular container in the early days. Job loss among longshoremen was real and the sealed container ended the common practice of pilfering some of the cargo. This was common, and still happens occasionally today, with some Masters sanctioning the activity. The fact was it took much less labor to load a ship with large boxes than it did individual sacks or grain or crates of equipment that varied in size and weight. Automated ships and ports will eliminate some jobs that are hazardous or dirty and most people will not miss this kind of work. Jobs that have a high value are a different story. A totally autonomous ship is in the future and that means less risk for deck hands while increasing profits substantially for ship owners. The savings are similar to autonomous car savings, less risk, less insurance costs, more efficient operation, better traffic management, and elimination of human error. Â   The elimination of human error on the operational level is important since most accidents happen because of failure due to poor design or human error in some aspect of vessel operation. Machine learning is giving us insights into the marine world we never had before, and some of the revelations are contrary to accepted beliefs. A good example of this is the Digital Deck product for commercial fishermen that was developed by the company Point 97. Digital tracking of fishery data collected by fishermen in their daily operation led to discoveries local regulators used to manage fish stocks and reduce the resources needed to search for illegal fishing activity. Automatic importing of data allows for near real-time insights not only for regulators, but also fishermen. Now a new class of data is emerging with the announcement from MIT that they have developed an algorithm that monitors wave data in order to predict rouge wave formation. Rouge wave are giant and often deadly waves that form in the open sea where two wave fields combine. Rouge waves are often in the form of a peak and not a long running wave like those produced by tsunami. This is a new class of data because it needs quick action to work. Automatic avoidance systems are not generally accepted and permission to change course could take minutes. Rouge waves form and do their damage quickly so the best use of this data is in an automatic system that will change course or turn to face the wave bow-on. This will make mariners uncomfortable but the alternative is worse. Classification societies, insurers, and regulators all stand in the way of more automation but like self-driving cars, they will be accepted because of greater convenience and cost savings. We have already reached a point where there is too much data for one human to absorb. All that data on the helm displays can be better managed by computers which already run many parts of a modern ship. The few sailors that do remain on ships of the future will likely be technicians with few hands on duties unless automated maintenance and repair systems fail.