Morgenthau's Realism and Today's Middle East

Morgenthau's Realism and Today's Middle East

America can find a middle ground in the Middle East.

Once again, realism is in vogue. Apparently the White House is quite fond of the Peloponnesian War and wants to use it as a guidepost for contemporary foreign-policy challenges. If this feels like déjà vu, you’re not alone. Foreign-policy scholars have been invoking Thucydides since the 2003 Iraq War, when Washington-as-Athens comparisons were all the rage.

But like the second Bush administration, Trump’s Middle East foreign policy is a betrayal of the realist tradition. In demonizing Iran while aligning with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, Trump has committed the United States to an unrestrained regional competition that observers rightly warn will lead to war. Since this administration has already misinterpreted the Peloponnesian War, we might instead look to other realists, like Hans Morgenthau, for guidance on how the United States should navigate a multipolar and unstable region. If Washington wants stability in the Middle East, then it should seek a balance of power grounded in a common moral framework acceptable to all nations.

Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations is most famously known for its Six Principles of Realism. Nathan Sears correctly illustrates how Morgenthau assumed that statecraft was guided by national interests defined in terms of power and that states should always temper their moral claims with political prudence. These principles have been interpreted to mean that realism requires an unflinching appraisal of the world as it is, without being blinded by liberal fantasies of universal justice.

But if power politics must act as a brake on morality, then the opposite is also true. In his third principle of realism, Morgenthau argues that the pursuit of interest-as-power is “determined by the political and cultural environment.” In other words, states should constrain their use of power based on the moral standards acceptable to others around them. And as that moral context changes along with the international system, then how power ought to be used will change as well. Morgenthau even leaves open the possibility that the primacy of sovereign states—one of the classic assumptions of realism—might not be applicable in the future. “Nothing in the realist position,” says Morgenthau, “militates against the assumption that the present division of the political world into nation states will be replaced by larger units of a quite different character, more in keeping with the technical potentialities and the moral requirements of the contemporary world.”

According to Michael Williams, Morgenthau’s emphasis of the world’s “moral requirements” and its potential for change illustrate how ideas remain highly relevant in the realist tradition. These assumptions come through yet again when Morgenthau discusses the balance of power, which maintains order through an equilibrium of opposing forces: “[I]t is the purpose of all such equilibriums to maintain the stability of the system without destroying the multiplicity of the elements composing it.” Yet power balancing is not a mechanical outcome of state behavior. Instead, it emerges from a “moral consensus of the modern state system.” The classic European balance of power, which maintained peace among the region’s leading states, was thus a function of “the intellectual and moral foundation of Western civilization.” The great powers felt that they were part of a single historical community of European states. Membership in that community required that they abide by certain rules to preserve its stability, including the conscious maintenance of the balance and restraint in the use of one’s own power. These principles generated the most robust kind of balance seen in international history, namely the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe. It was shared moral principles, then, “which kept in check the limitless desire for power” that made possible the preservation of state sovereignty and prevented any one state from dominating the system with its own moral standard.

So what might we learn from Morgenthau when looking at the Middle East? If the United States wants to see regional stability, then it ought to pursue a balance of power underwritten by some kind of moral principle acceptable to all. That principle is pluralism, or the acceptance of others’ existence and mutual respect of each other’s autonomy. For Joel Rosenthal, pluralism means accepting that some moral claims cannot be resolved in a neat consensus. But its rejection of universalism does not mean we should relapse into relativism. Instead, we should explore how our different understandings of right and wrong blend into each other while respecting our differences. Pluralism thus requires that we “enter into another world and experience part of it as others do,” and the process of doing so is what defines us as human.

Pluralism has historically not been accepted as the basis of regional order. Rather, the United States has sought to impose its own rules through regional hegemony. That’s generally not gone well. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran has viewed American dominance as a threat to its own survival and reacted by seeking revisionism. American clients like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel have continuously repressed rival political movements (either Islamists or Palestinians) which seek opportunities for political participation or self-determination. Combined with the Iraq War, some Muslims have sensed that their repression will always be constant in an American-led order and instead have turned to extremists like Al Qaeda or ISIS. The Trump administration’s current Middle East policy is merely a continuation of this failed strategy. By siding with Saudi Arabia over Iran, it will only exacerbate the sectarian Sunni-Shia conflict and strengthen extremists whom are the United States’ real enemy.

But glimpses of pluralism have emerged in recent years. The Obama administration’s engagement with Iran via the nuclear deal effectively was grounded in recognizing the Islamic Republic as a member of the “community of nations.” And President Hassan Rouhani, who won reelection by promising to continue engaging the world rather than than attempt to overthrow it, has offered the strongest challenge in history to the Islamic Republic’s revisionist identity. These kinds of postures are entirely consistent with pluralism: Both the United States and Iran sought coexistence as members of the same community, albeit a much looser one compared to that of Europe. If continued, these initiatives could have served for the basis for not just a balance of power, but even a regional concert: any change in regional order would only take place if it maintained the status quo and is agreed to by all powers, a kind of power-sharing agreement but at the regional level.

Let’s assume for a moment that there was a U.S. administration willing to pursue a Morgenthau-inspired balance of power. How might Washington achieve this outcome? By adopting a more transactional foreign policy that leverages its existing sanctions against Iran and military aid to its allies as incentives to promote mutual coexistence.

The United States would begin by engaging Iran with an offer to restore diplomatic recognition and withdraw economic sanctions. It would renounce regime change in Iran and formally accept the Islamic character of Iran’s democracy. In exchange for normalization, Iran would limit and eventually withdraw support for its militia proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. Normalization would also be conditional on Iranian recognition of Israel and its pre-1967 borders. Such a commitment would be a major blow to the hard-line Iranian Republican Guard Corps, which has defined itself institutionally as the defender of Shia Muslims against Sunnis backed by the Saudis as well as the Palestinians.

If United States wants Iran to de-escalate, then it must ensure that American allies moderate their behavior as well. For years, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel have pursued policies that exacerbate regional conflict and undermine American interests in stability. Washington should propose to make military aid for its allies conditional upon accepting the regional status quo and greater pluralism at home. Many Democrats in Congress have begun to question why the United States supports Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen. They should next call for wholesale reductions of military aid to the Saudis if they continue their military adventurism and persist in oppressing their Shia minority. Conditionality should also be applied to Israel and Egypt, whose respective refusal to end the occupation of the West Bank and brutal repression of domestic opponents undermine U.S. interests in a two-state solution and fuel extremism. The United States also must demand that Qatar’s autonomy be respected by the Gulf states and Egypt. The United States cannot tolerate any state subjugating one of its own allies, especially one that hosts U.S. military assets at Al Udeid Air Base. Finally, all Sunni states must ensure an end to financial support for extremists like Al Qaeda and ISIS.


Labor Day ≠ Memorial Day ≠ Veterans Day

Labor Day ≠ Memorial Day ≠ Veterans Day. Labor Day weekend is a time to remember and celebrate the Labor Movement.

Here’s to the folks who organized, went on strike, and committed to bringing you things like the weekend, the possibility of a 40-hour work week, lunch breaks, sick leave, social security, 8-hour work day, overtime pay, child labor laws, workplace safety standards, and workers’ comp.

And here’s to the folks who continue this movement today, despite the political forces working around the clock to attack unions, collective bargaining rights, and worker protections.

Keep kicking ass for the working class…

17 Ways to Work Toward Justice for All

If you’re feeling inspired by the Supreme Court’s historic same-sex marriage decision, then do your part to help build and sustain forward momentum toward justice for all. Legalizing same-sex marriage is a huge victory, but it is not the finish line of justice. Inequality take many forms, and people are still waiting on their ability to live freely, safely, or… just to live.

1. Organize. Support community and issue-based organizations. Be part of front-end planning processes and not just the end-game celebrations. Help develop short-term and long-term strategies. Talk with activists and advocates to broaden and share understandings of equality and justice.

2. Show solidarity. Justice for all can’t happen without building solidarity across issues, communities, and movements. For instance, justice for all means being in solidarity with undocumented trans women of color, the ongoing struggles of indigenous communities, and the actions and demands of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

3. Hone Your Allyship. We can all be stronger allies, more conscientious of the language we use, our privileges, how deeply we listen, the ways we offer our support, and our willingness to be vigilant and visible.

4. See the Connections. Movements don’t exist in a vaccum — examine how the struggles for racial, gender, economic, environmental, and social justice intersect. Who is excluded when we ignore these intersections?

5. Take Risks. For some the risk of speaking out or taking action presents serious safety concerns. However, if all that’s at stake is mild discomfort, then what do you have to lose? What stops you from speaking up, speaking back, or showing up?

6. Look Closer at Language. How are social issues conceptions of justice constructed through language? What can you do to reframe how you talk about equality and what it means to seek justice? Be specific in your languange. Are you critiquing systems that perpetuate anti-blackness? Then say anti-blackness. Are you applauding acts of resistance? Then be explicit in describing why the act was necessary.

7. Deepen Your Critiques. Take time to push beyond surface critiques. Look for unquestioned assumptions. Identify and resist dominant narratives. Take in some inspiration from bell hooks, Vandana Shiva, Arundhati Roy, Eduardo Galeano, the Combahee River Collective, Gloria Anzaldua, Paolo Freire, and more. Up your critical analysis game.

8. Get to Know Your Communities. We are often part of multiple communities simulaneously. Think about your neighborhood, your city, your campus, or identity-based communities. Do you know one more than the other? What inequalities do you see? Keep exploring, dig deeper.

9. Asset Mapping for Action. Work with community members to map out community assets — meeting spaces, people, support groups, printing shops, independent businesses, local organizations, media, churches, social services, etc. Is your community working together? Around what issues? Who drives decision-making and who is left out of these decisions? Document progress, celebrate success, and evaluate strategies.

10. Presence Matters I: Attend events, rallies, protests, vigils, workshops, book fairs, lectures, teach-ins, and seminars. Make it a priority to show up when folks have taken the time and effort to organize events.

11. Presence Matters II: Public space is no longer just in person — build your on-line action community, too. Use your social media platforms to pose questions or to critique the limited ways in which media frames equality and justice. Just because a follower doesn’t engage doesn’t mean they aren’t reading. Challenges yourself to completing a cycle of #100DaysofJustice — Day One: A Call to Action for Justice for All.

12. Run for Office. Movement doesn’t only happen on the ground. Election season is coming and we need more elected officials who are willing to take action on issues affecting equality such as gerrymandering, voter-identification laws, paid leave, employment discrimination, and fair housing. Thinking about running? Check out Emily’s ListReady to Run, and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.

13. Pay Attention to Policy. Did you know the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013? The 2016 election will be the first presidential election in 50 years without full Voting Rights Act protections for voters. Visit the the Brennan Center for Justice to learn about voting rights and how many State legislators are making it more difficult to vote.

14. Share Your Story. Add your experiences, your voice to the public discourse. Is your story an example of everyday inequality that mainstream media ignores? Ready to provide a counter narrative? Start blogging or take a seminar with The OpEd Project.

15. Share Your Skills. Are you a copy editor? Are you a graphic designer? Are you bilingual? Are you familiar with web design? Share your skills with the community groups and organizations that help grow local and national movements.

16. Use Your Talents. Are you an artist, musician, writer, or photographer? How can you use your creativity and talents to inspire your community, build awareness, or help fuel movements? How can your work show new or critical versions of justice?

17. Stay Loud. Every single day. Stay loud for the generations who came before you, and those who will come after. Stay loud and drown out the silence of indifference. Stay loud until we have justice for all, and then get louder.

This list has also appeared on Medium and The Huffington Post.


Quotation Explorer - 'Overwhelming'

Someone who expresses a view that is contrary to the view of the overwhelming majority should be allowed to stand undisturbed as a monument to our commitment to free speech. - Albert Gore, Jr.
She knew that nothing was ever as overwhelming or final as he seemed to think - that if he would wait, instead of shouting, there'd be less to shout over in the end. - Josephine Johnson
you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes. - David Brooks
Courage is not the absence of fear or despair; it is the capacity to continue on despite them, no matter how great or overwhelming they become. - Robert Fanney
Dew settles without the fanfare of thunder or patter of falling rain, yet our wet feet in the morning still tell us there is something there. Sometimes miracles are like that. There is no overwhelming proof, but deep inside we know. - Chris Stewart, Ted Stewart
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. - Wernher Von Braun
The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances bent on keeping me from it. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else. I know. An overwhelming passion for it. No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong. - Anthony de Mello
I never knew how much I missed pickles and pickle juice. It's like, an overwhelming feeling that I can't even explain. - Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi
As I read the Qur’an and prayed the Islamic prayers, a door to my heart was unsealed and I was immersed in an overwhelming tenderness. - Jeffrey Lang
Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. - John F. Kennedy
This conversation with myself has an overwhelming aroma of narcissism. - Tawny Lara
OCDD -- Overwhelming Crap and Debris Disorder -- runs deep. - Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant
It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming first but many balances. - Sheldon Vanauken
Wisdom is more faithful than a woman,and knowledge is more faithful than a friend.Folly is more oppressive than a tyrant,and evil more overwhelming than fury. - Matshona Dhliwayo
Throughout my entire miserable childhood I woke at least once a night weeping from overwhelming delight. I did it hungry, I did it after beatings, I did it after the deaths of loved ones.Now you tell me if I’m crazy or if I’ve always been blessed. - Bob Thurber
... I have waited for this day, and grief faded with time.Or did it? Perhaps grief never leaves us but is merely drowned out by a flood of life overwhelming it. Perhaps the wound that bled once is bleeding still, and I did not notice it until now. - Claire North
The thing that I'm always left with is this overwhelming desire for people to be rooted and the only way that they feel rooted is through another person. - John Allen
Let today be the day you control your emotions. Don't let them get the best of you. Whatever you are feeling right now should not be overwhelming. Don't allow others to dampen your spirit. You are entitled to enjoy peace. - Amaka Imani Nkosazana
TV cookery is very like internet porn - the overwhelming majority of its audience will never ever get to act out what's happening on screen. - skint foodie
What starts out as an intrusive thought can turn into an overwhelming concept if we "feed" it with more negative thinking. From the book: Removing Your Shame Label. - Eddie Capparucci, LPC
Availability of knowledge is only next to prevalence of stupidity in its overwhelming abundance. - Pawan Mishra
If you are feeling stressed out, stop and take 10 deep breaths...it really does help! Then focus your mind on one thing and one thing only; things are only overwhelming when you look at them all at once. - B. Dave Walters
Audrey had an angelic quality about her. She didn't act like she was better than everyone, she just had a presence, an energy, a sort of light coming from within her that was overwhelming. - Kevyn Aucoin
Even when the odds are overwhelming, you can believe in God and His promises. - Jim George
Cracks in our souls help us bear the overwhelming imperfections of the world. They're not our flaws. Kindness knows this. - Aditya Bhaskara
The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. - David Bayles Art and Fear Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking
It's terrible to have to fear that your powers will activate at any given moment. Especially when you draw close to people... and find that your only choice is to pull away. It's overwhelming when you find a time, a person, with which there's nothing to fear. - Zechariah Barrett
I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion. - Franklin D. Roosevelt


The significance of the four following battles essay

It was generated by a vast complex of causes, the most important of which were the inability of the ruling classes of nobility, clergy, and bourgeoisie to come In any case, the dominant activity of early Genesis creation involves "separation" or diversity.

This whole wandless magic thing is bugging me. King Edmund forbade blood revenge in his burgh 1 ; that is, he delimited an in-group in which there must be law and an administration of justice by his tribunal; Jews and merchants bought the protection of the king's peace throughout his realm.

The dictionary consultant is asked to rely on imaginative reconstructions rather than provable fact. Well, IF it happens, not to worry, we won't miss a minute of it.

The precise site of the ancient Tower of Babel is a matter of uncertainty for there are remnants of several ruins in the region that are possibilities. People today us it to remember the war. He was impressed with its magnificence.

But it is great, not as Jerusalem is great as God's citybut great in its defiance of God.

Significance of Vladimir Lenin

The Tower of Babel will have to be reconstructed brick-by-brick, word-by-word, in the study of Edenics. Gould writes about the "acrimonious rebuttal and dismissal [of] most scholars [who] balk at the very thought of direct evidence for connections among these basic "linguistic phyla".

The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies NSW

We can see how the king's peace grew by the following case: Those who perform the rites of worship towards the same ancestors or the same gods come into the same cult-group, but no religion has ever succeeded in making its cult-group into a peace-group, although they all try to do it.

He was the 16th US president. Middling academics and writers see C in the readings above still posit that humans developed grammars and vocabularies out of simian gestures and grunts.

My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age—to the stout in spirit, regardless of party. Their remoter relationship does not keep them from quarreling Edition: When a group outgrows this limit, it breaks up and scatters.

The Allies planned to invade the Solomon Islands in an effort to deny the use of the islands by the Japanese. A sub-root is 2 consonants in the core of the Edenic word. Even though his family was poor, he worked himself to the highest office in the US.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Summary & Significance

They instead seized resource-rich territories in Southeast Asia. The troops of the battle of Gettysburg, as well as the entire civil war, were made upof common men. The Eskimos of Bering Strait think it wrong to steal from people in the same village or tribe; a thief is publicly reproached and forced to return the thing stolen.

Antigone felt that the law no one was supposed to bury her brother Polyneicies should be broken so she took what she thought to be appropriate measures.

The Abolition of The Slave Trade

What appalls us, however, is the frightful waste of this process of evolution by war — waste of life and waste of capital.

He named it a TooKey exotic bird in Hebrew.Part 1 (IEEE Computer, December ) Introduction. With the death of Isaac Asimov on April 6,the world lost a prodigious imagination.

Unlike fiction writers before him, who regarded robotics as something to be feared, Asimov saw a promising technological innovation to be exploited and managed.

One of the greatest battles in Canadian history was the battle of Vimy Ridge. The significance of the battle was not in the actual battle itself, but rather the effects that Canada would feel nationally afterwards.

The objective was a ridge that ran from the northwest to the southwest between Lens. A collection of scholarly works about individual liberty and free markets. A project of Liberty Fund, Inc. Facsimile PDF MB This is a facsimile or image-based PDF made from scans of the original book. Kindle KB This is an E-book formatted for Amazon Kindle devices.

EBook PDF KB This.

Marbury v. Madison Essay Sample

Published: Mon, 5 Dec Turning point being a change in the course of events during the Hundred Years War concerning the English and the French, for example a shift from a state of peace between the 2 nations into an aggressive situation, or a shift of fortunes during the fighting or within their own country’s politics.

about , years ago early seaweed formed. Molecular clock methods indicate that red and green algae arose around 1,, years ago, and the secondary symbiosis that eventually led to the chromists occurred around 1,, years ago during the late Mesoproterzoic era, after the earth's transition to a more highly oxygenated atmosphere with an ozone screen.

Start studying 5. What was the significance of the following battles?. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Separating Political Conduct and Personal Morality in Niccolò Machiavelli's, The Prince

Separating Political Conduct and Personal Morality in Niccolò Machiavelli's, The Prince

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Separating Political Conduct and Personal Morality in Niccolò Machiavelli's, The Prince

Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, in his novel The Prince, that strong central political leadership was more important than anything else, including religion and moral behavior. Machiavelli, writing during a period of dramatic change known as the Italian Renaissance, displayed attitudes towards many issues, mostly political, which supported his belief that strong government was the most important element in society. These attitudes and ideas were very appropriate for the time because they stressed strong, centralized power, the only kind of leadership that seemed to be working throughout Europe, and which was the element Italy was lacking. Machiavelli understood that obtaining such a government could not be done without separating political conduct and personal morality, and suggested that the separation be made. The Prince, written to the Medici family over five hundred years ago contained many truths, so universal and accurate that they still influence politics today.

To understand the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, it is necessary to understand the world of Niccolò Machiavelli, Renaissance Italy. The region was not one nation as it is today, rather a collection of several city-states, which contained internal fighting between powerful families, fighting with each other. This era differed from the preceding middle ages in many respects, the pope's power was weakened, money controlled power instead of noble birth, and there was a revival of ancient Greek and Roman literature, architecture and art by a new breed of people, the humanists. These changes created the environment in which Machiavelli lived. He saw how the quarrelling was weakeni...

... middle of paper ...

...he ideas in contained proved themselves to be very useful in the government of people.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born into a world of drastic change, Renaissance Italy, that would cause his mind to conjure ideas about many political issues transferred into books that the entire world has profited from since. His ideas were incredibly relevant to his time, because they suggested harsh governments, the only kind of governments that seemed to be working. He proposed creating these harsh governments through a separation of personal morality and political behavior. His ideas were so relevant and so universal, that they still influence politics today. Niccolò Machiavelli proposed the creating of strong central government more powerful than anything else, including religion and morality.

Works Cited

Machiavelli, Niccoló. The Prince. New York: Penguin Classics, 1999.

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What diversity and inclusion mean at Cardinal Innovations

Our employees reflect the diversity of our members, and each employee is responsible for creating and maintaining an environment of mutual respect and support.

We value different perspectives and understand that when we leverage the diverse thinking, skills, experience and working styles of our employees and other stakeholders, we will have the greatest success in promoting both individual and organizational growth.

We believe in creating a safe space where individuals can safely speak up and express their authentic self. Discrimination based on age, generation, gender identification, sexual orientation, race, national or ethnic origin, religion, language, political beliefs, and mental and physical abilities is not tolerated.

Our employees learn and work better when they interact with others who are not like themselves. Innovation occurs more rapidly when we draw on the diverse perspectives, skills and experience of others.

We believe that culturally competent organizations have improved health outcomes, increased respect and mutual understanding, and increased participation from the local community.

Our policies are clear and equitable: suitability for employment, promotions, transfers, demotions, and wages is determined only by an individual's ability to perform the job.

By embracing diversity in our communities, we develop collaborative, sustainable relationships with our colleagues, our members, and our local community stakeholders.

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Archive for category Shoulder Pain

Swimmers Shoulder

Swimmers shoulder is a generic term used for what is an overuse issue for the shoulder, particularly concerning the muscles and tendons of the rotator cuff. Despite the name, this painful shoulder issue isn’t specific to swimmers but is seen in a variety of people, from those who are highly active to people who are couch potatoes.

People with swimmers shoulder generally experience a dull pain in the morning which ‘warms up’ throughout the day but may not necessarily disappear completely. You may also feel a sharp pinching pain in the shoulder with overhead activities. As with most musculoskeletal injuries, swimmers shoulder can have a number of contributing factors including load management, muscle strength and endurance deficits, stiffness or tightness, and inadequate neuro-muscular control of the shoulder.

Load Management

Swimmers shoulder will often come on due to an increase in the use of the shoulder. For example a swimmer may have had a sudden increase in the amount of time they’ve been training per week, the intensity, or have been training a new stroke. In those who are less active, it may be due to things like giving the house a new coat of paint or doing some spring cleaning. The reason these rather innocuous activities may cause shoulder pain is not so much related to the activity itself but to the ability of the shoulder to tolerate what you’re asking it to do (i.e. having the strength and control of the shoulder and shoulder blade to perform the activity).

Muscle Strength and Endurance

In order for the upper limb to move freely and allow us to complete tasks like reaching up to the top shelf to grab something or to reach behind us to do up the zip on a skirt, the joint itself relies less on bony stability (like the deep ball and socket joint of the hip) and relies more heavily on active stability (muscles). When these muscles don’t have the strength and/or endurance to control the shoulder joint, we can get excess movement and aggravation of the structures surrounding the joint. Often there can be an underlying weakness, but you won’t know it until you ask the muscles to do something quite difficult or something you’re not used to, such as spring cleaning, painting or a sudden increase in training load.

Range of Motion and Control

Although a sudden increase in activity is usually the catalyst, there are other factors that can leave you more susceptible to this issue and these should be targeted in terms of treatment. Tightness at the front of the chest, weakness of your upper back muscles, thoracic cage mobility and shoulder blade control all may have some contribution to a swimmers shoulder issue. As with many musculoskeletal issues, swimmers shoulder is a complex pathology which requires thorough assessment in order to identify the contributing factors. Once these have been identified, a thorough rehabilitation plan targeting the contributing factors is paramount in achieving the best outcomes for you and your shoulder moving forward. If you think you have a case of the swimmers shoulder, come in and see one of our physiotherapists for a comprehensive assessment and treatment plan that targets your specific goals!

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Shoulder Impingement Is A Common Cause OF Shoulder Pain

Shoulder Impingement

Shoulder Impingement Is One Of The Most Common Types Of Shoulder Pain

One of the most common complaints we see as physio’s is shoulder pain, and it doesn’t just affect athletes. While acute shoulder injuries often happen in collision sports or because of a sporting accident, people performing overhead activities such as lifting in the gym, throwing, racquet sports or swimming are also prone to shoulder pain.

What Causes Shoulder Pain?

Shoulder Impingement Syndrome is the most common cause of shoulder pain in the general population & with many types of sports activities. It can be very debilitating for people such as swimmers, racquet sports players and gym-goers. Throwing, bowling or pitching sports like cricket, baseball and softball are also common places to find shoulder impingement injuries.

Some occupations that involve lifting, carrying, and other repetitive tasks, especially if they are performed with the arm away from the side of the body, are also common causes of shoulder impingement. Even some common DIY tasks like painting walls or ceilings, repetitive drilling at shoulder height or above, and digging in the garden can bring on the pain.

How Does Shoulder Impingement Happen?

The shoulder is made up of three bones: the scapula (shoulder blade), the humerus (arm bone) and the clavicle (collar bone). The joint itself is a ball-and-socket joint, and the tendons of four muscles called the rotator cuff muscles are very important to hold the ball in the centre of the socket. The supraspinatus tendon is the most common tendon to get impinged.

As the arm is raised, the rotator cuff muscles keep the ball of the humerus tightly in the centre of the socket of the scapula. If this position is not maintained well, the tendons of the rotator cuff may be pinched between the top of the arm bone & the bony “roof” of the scapula. This can cause irritation of the tendon which can lead to inflammation, weakness and pain. Eventually it can lead to more significant problems like tearing of the tendon.

How Do You Know If Your Shoulder Is Getting Impinged?

The classic presentation is a painful arc, which is when you feel pain as you lift your arm away from your side and up to your ear. This corresponds with the narrowing of the sub-acromial space, which is where the tendon gets pinched.

Many people also feel pain with twisting movements such as putting on a jacket or when reaching behind your back. When the inflammation is active you may feel pain at night and be unable to sleep comfortably on that side, and your shoulder can ache even when your arm is resting. Sometimes people describe a ‘locking’ sensation in the arm on certain movements.

What can you do to fix shoulder impingement?

Initially, avoiding painful activities to help settle your symptoms is important. If you have recently started or significantly increased your exercise regime you may just need to progress more slowly once your pain has resolved. However because most shoulder impingement is caused by an imbalance in muscle length &/or strength around the shoulder, you need to fix the underlying cause of your pain otherwise it is likely to return again in the future. This is especially true if you have had more than one episode of pain because recurrent pain strongly indicates an underlying imbalance within your shoulder, often within the rotator cuff muscles or the muscles that control your shoulder blade.

Keeping correct shoulder alignment relies a lot on keeping the right balance of length and strength within your shoulder muscles. Having a balanced gym program of pulling and pushing exercises is a great way to help achieve this. If you don’t normally go to the gym then you may need to do some extra strengthening for the muscles at the back of your shoulder, especially if you are an office worker and tend to hunch over your desk a lot. Shoulder and pec/chest stretching can also help.

If you have had a significant episode of pain, or several mild-to-moderate episodes recently, then you should get it checked out by a physio because you are very likely to have an underlying imbalance that will keep giving you problems in the future. Treating the pain when it is only recent and relatively mild is usually fairly simple. However, recurrent episodes can lead to more tendon damage requiring prolonged treatment, costly investigations such as an MRI, potentially more invasive management like cortisone, and much more time away from doing the things that you love.

If you have shoulder pain then we can help. You can speak to one of our friendly physios by calling us on 9280 2322.  We also have a dedicated Shoulder Program and you can  book an appointment online or contact us for more information.

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How Did Geographic Studies Of Medieval Compare To Ancient Greek Studies

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Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

720 pages16 hours

In this spectacular New York Times bestselling father/son collaboration that “barrels along like a freight train” (Publishers Weekly), Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?

Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanted to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world. Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a woman’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.

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Disadvantages of offshoring and outsourcing

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You Can Hire Better.

How To Empower Yourself to Create Equity at Work.

Hi friends. It’s been a long time—I’ve been working on this piece for weeks, so I hope you enjoy! More content coming soon! If you enjoy what you’ve been reading, please consider checking out my Patreon account. Thanks for everything!

Photo by Steinar Engeland on Unsplash

I got an email recently asking me about workplace equity. The gist of the email was that, unintentionally, the majority of their staff and leadership ended up being male, and they asked me for resources that might help them rectify this imbalance.

A situation like this creates a big question: what do you do when the room you occupy doesn’t look like the room you envisioned?

It reminded me of a time when I was a teacher—this is a story I tell all the time and normally I’d apologize to those who’ve heard it but the lesson I learned was so important and I hear so many stories that remind me of this time in my life so I’m going to tell it again story again—when I was called into the principal’s office after a particularly rowdy day with my students. The principal, after I threw out excuse after excuse about why my classroom was out of control, said to me, “Nope, the fact that the class is out of control is your fault.”

Then he paused and said, “I don’t intend that to be mean. I intend it to be empowering.”

I love getting emails like the one I got above. What gives me hope about emails like this—and questions about staffing or hiring or creating equity in the workplace—is that to ask these questions you have to assume some level of responsibility. Like my classroom, your workplace may be rowdy or out of control or not the space you wanted to build. If so, to some degree, it is your fault.

But that means you can change it.

I asked this person to identify the step in which the staffing issues began to become a problem. Was it that only men were applying for jobs at their cafe? Was it that men were being disproportionately promoted over women? These were the first questions we needed to ponder. Without clarity on where the problem lies (and the problem could lie in a number of places), it’s hard to know where to start.

So how do we go about creating spaces that reflect our values? It requires knowing the amount of control you have over a space, and accepting that responsibility. It requires active participation, critical engagement, and meaningful steps and practices. We don’t simply build inclusive and equitable spaces by breathing them into reality—they require intentional work.

And yes, that’s meant to be empowering.

I think this is a helpful set of questions for folks to consider when they think about how to build an equitable space. This is by no means exhaustive, comprehensive, or prescriptive—basically a fancy way for me to tell you that I don’t have all the answers, there’s more research and tools available by doing a simple internet search, and that following these steps won’t fix everything.

Instead, this list is meant to make you think about being proactive. Equity in the workplace isn’t an accident. I hope with these questions you can begin to think about how being proactive can start the process of creating a space that serves more people and provides equal opportunity to employees.

Answer these questions and see if you can figure out where the problem might lie in your business:

Question: Are folks from non-marginalized groups applying for jobs disproportionally than other groups?

If so, then the problem is in job posting—both where and how the job posting is worded.

Where do you post for jobs? If the answer is on industry websites, then you’re only going to attract folks with a very specific set of job skills and experiences. Craigslist might seem like inviting an overflowing amount of emails into your inbox, but it’s one of the most widely-used job seeking platforms available.

Did you post your job notice in your cafe? Perhaps you made a sign that you hung in the window of your coffee shop? You’ll likely attract someone who would already come into your cafe on the regular—which is fine if you’re a cafe that attracts all members of the community, but not great if only certain groups feel safe in your space (again, a bigger issue for another article).

Consider reaching out to job placement groups or community organizers in your neighborhood. Is there a high school around looking to place students in jobs? Reach out to them!

If you’re seriously committed to serving your community, you have to make sure the community both feels comfortable in your space (another topic for a much larger conversation) and that they know of opportunities in your cafe that they might be interested in pursuing. You have to get outside of your regular channels—if you’re surfing through the same three channels on the television, you have no idea what’s playing on anything else. Go beyond where you are normally comfortable.

There’s also the issue of wording in job advertisements. I went to Craigslist to try to find barista postings in my city, Chicago, and this was in the second posting I clicked:

I’ve been a barista for almost ten years, and that sentence intimidates me. First off, it codes out a whole group of people (Starbucks baristas who might be looking to get into specialty coffee). And secondly, this is a sentence meant to intimidate—there’s no other reason for such a strong statement against certain types of coffee experience unless it’s meant to convey that these folks are “serious coffee people,” and those without the knowledge we have need not apply.

When you code for experience—like this ad that says no Starbucks baristas—then you code for people who have been given opportunities versus those who haven’t.

Perhaps Starbucks was the only coffee shop in a person’s town, or a Starbucks was the only place this person could get hired as a new barista. Regardless, with statements like that, people are saying that you only care to perpetuate the pathway for opportunity. They care only to give jobs to people who have already been privileged enough to get a leg up in the first place.

I’m not saying that there aren’t instances where experience matters, but I truly wonder if experience really matters in most situations. Sure, I’d want my surgeon to have experience, but do I really need my barista to have years of experience? What do we mean when we ask for our workforce to be experienced? Would someone who has worked in hospitality but not as a barista qualify for this job?

If you’re truly keen on asking people to have experience in a low-paying position, then I think you need to think carefully about what experience means and expand your lens of experience more broadly. You will include more people, and you will find better candidates—you’ll just have to search for their skills a little harder.

Question: Are folks from marginalized groups being passed over for job offers? Do folks from one identity group keep getting hired over others?

If the answer is yes, then the issue is a hiring issue.

Imagine a stack of resumes. Imagine that there are resumes from people of all types of backgrounds, experiences, and identities. If, with this stack of resumes someone still continues to hire the same type of person over and over, I’d ask them to consider what their hiring criteria are.

Hiring criteria? What’s that? Do you go into interviews with a vague sense of the questions you might ask and figure you’ll “wing it” throughout? That’s a recipe for disaster, and by disaster I mean tons of unconscious bias.

Ask everyone at least a baseline set of questions—and make sure you write down responses. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, and if you’re vibing with an applicant, you might go off course and remember just the good vibes and not that they said they would only work opening shifts and refuse to work weekends. Always have a pen and paper ready to write down responses. Treat an interviews as seriously as you’d feel if you were being interviewed. Honor every interview as such.

Another way to avoid personal bias is to invite someone else into the interview. In general, I encourage bosses to invite baristas and non-managerial staff to interviews. Not only does your have a better sense of what a space needs—they’re the ones who work in the space everyday—but they also serve as a check to your unconscious biases. Having others around helps to make sure that the things you perceive and take away from an interview aren’t just good vibes and a “feeling” that this person will be a “good fit.” Build in checkpoints for yourself—you are not infallible.

In my past life as a teacher, rubrics were a really popular teaching aid and tool for students.  Rubrics are grids that students can use to figure out how we (teachers) assess their work. Students are usually graded on a scale of 0-3, and the criteria for getting a 0, 1, 2, or 3 are clearly lined out for them. There’s no ambiguity—a student knows what they need to do to score well. Likewise, these are useful tools for teachers who have to navigate a slew of information. A rubric ensures that students are graded based on the same criteria—it helps to avoid mistakes like giving one kid’s report a A and another kid’s report a C+ just because the second kid’s report was later in the stack.

I’m not sure why we don’t have rubrics for hiring. People might argue there’s an “ineffable” quality to job candidates that can’t always be measured—I would argue against that—but if you have an idea of your needs in the position you posted for, it should make your job easier to create a standardized set of criteria. Ok, so the person doesn’t have coffee experience, but they do have hospitality experience? That gets them a few points on the rubric. This avoids any sort of “buddy buddy” vibes that could come up in an interview and creates a framework for standardization.

To be clear, these standards should be critically examined—you shouldn’t find yourself in the same pitfalls that having a job posting with very specific, and often exclusionary, criteria can often land you in. Instead, a rubric can help you analyze what’s actually necessary in a job, and how you evaluate potential applicants. It’s so easy to like people who affirm either our own existence (we then hire people who look like us) or affirm the decisions we’ve made in the past (we hire people who look like the people who already work for us), and a rubric can help quantify the qualities that matter.

Question: Are folks from marginalized groups leaving your workplace faster than others? Do you have a problem retaining folks from marginalized groups?

If the answer is yes, there is a culture problem.

This problem is easy to diagnose, but harder to combat. “Culture” is one of those words we use to define qualities about a job that sort of escape definition—and that can be especially dangerous.

Let’s use a tangible example. Say that part of the culture of your cafe is to go out for drinks on Fridays. You have a staff member on your team that has a child and has to go straight home after work. Even though this employee is great, you don’t get as much face time with them as you do other employees. When a promotion or a new position comes up, who do you think you’ll hire?

There are two problems in this situation. One is the Friday drinks. It’s ok for staff to organize events that don’t cater to everyone (not everyone wants to join your soccer league), but for official company outings you have to have at least some sort of venue for that caters to and allows participation for everyone. Let your staff and other non-managerial folks do whatever they want outside of work—they can meet for drinks any day of the week—but if you’re the leader, you have to make sure you create spaces that all members of your staff can feel invited to and comfortable in.

The second problem is about how people move up in a company. How are promotions handed out? Are jobs posted for everyone to apply to? Who occupies spaces of leadership? Are departments in your business segregated by a specific category?

I had a friend who was told to apply for a position that had been posted for weeks, and was given the position the day after he applied. It was clear the bosses only wanted him (I mean, I could obscure his identity more, but obviously it was a him are we even surprised) for this position and weren’t going to consider anyone else.

That job was at least posted within the company, but there are countless jobs that are never posted anywhere. They are simply breathed into existence for the “right person.” Or perhaps a job is posted, but the bosses really have the position in mind for someone they want to keep around. And usually, it’s for the person they can “imagine” taking the job because they see themselves in that person. Power perpetuates and promotes keeping the status quo.

This is the part of the article where I encourage you to read up on confirmation bias or implicit bias.

I’ll talk about this idea in depth another time, but if you’re a person in power, consider how and who you promote. Equity means nothing if your staff is stratified by any sort of identity. If cis het men are in positions of power over a more diverse group of lower-paid employees, then your claims of “equity” are not only false, but they carry with them real ramifications around building job skills and financial outcomes.

These aren’t the only places where equity is broken in the workplace—in fact I’d argue this is a pretty simplistic understanding of the issues surrounding equity in the workplace—but these are necessary places to start. And remember: issues of equity in your workplace are your problem. But it’s a problem you can work to solve if you accept responsibility. And yes, that is meant to be empowering.

If this message speaks to you, I kindly encourage you to check out my Patreon account. Writing about wage transparency, shitty bosses, and how to disrupt the power system is risky—but necessary. For the first couple of weeks, we’re gonna keep all content free, and may add paid content in the future. But if you want to jump in and contribute now, the Patreon is the place to do it.

If you can’t donate, please share this article with someone you know. Someone who might be struggling at work or someone with whom this message will resonate. The key to power is keeping folks ill-informed—and we’re here to fight that.

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The defibrillator saves lives

The defibrillator saves lives

Each year in the U.S., there are approximately 359,400 Emergency Medical Services (EMS)-assessed cardiac arrests outside of a hospital setting and on average, less than 10% of victims survive.

Cardiac arrest affects people of all ages, but occurs more commonly in adults with prior heart disease.

Our defibrillator includes a uniform operating system that will guide you through the entire resuscitation process, easily and easily.


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Breaking the Monolithic Database in Your Microservices Architecture

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Breaking the Monolithic Database in Your Microservices Architecture

As you break down your monolithic codebase to move to microservices, don't forget about your database. Learn how to break down your database.

· Microservices Zone ·
Free Resource

When you are decomposing your application to adopt microservices architecture, it is important to focus on the monolithic database. You will need to come up with a solid strategy to split your database into multiple small databases aligned with your applications. In short you need to decouple your applications/services from using a single monolith shared database.

You should design your microservices architecture in such a way that each individual microservice has its own separate database with its own domain data. This will allow you to independently deploy and scale your microservices.

Traditional applications have a single shared database and data is often shared between different components. We all have worked with such databases and have found the development to be simpler since the data gets stored in a single store. But there are multiple issues with this database design.

Problems With Monolithic Database Design

1. The traditional design of having a Monolithic Database for multiple services creates a tight coupling and inability to deploy your service changes independently. If there are multiple services accessing the same database, any schema changes would need to be coordinated amongst all the services, which, in the real world, can cause additional work and delay in deploying changes.

2. It is difficult to scale individual services with this design since you only have the option to scale out the entire monolithic database.

3. Improving application performance becomes a challenge. With a single shared database, over a period of time, you end up having huge tables. This makes data retrieval difficult since you have to join multiple big sized tables to fetch the required data.

4. Most of the times you have a relational store as your monolith database. This constraints all your services to use a relational database. However, there will be scenarios where a No-SQL datastore might be a better fit for your services and hence you don't want to be tightly coupled to a centralized datastore.

How to Handle Your data in a Microservice Architecture

Each microservice should have its own database and should contain data relevant to that microservice itself. This will allow you to deploy individual services independently. Individual teams can now own the databases for the corresponding microservice.

Microservices should follow Domain Driven Design and have bounded contexts. You need to design your application based on domains, which aligns with the functionality of your application. It's like following the Code First approach over Data First approach - hence you design your models first. This is a fundamentally different approach than the traditional mentality of first designing your database tables when starting to work on a new requirement or greenfield project. You should always try to maintain the integrity of your Business model.

While designing your database, look at the application functionality and determine if it needs a relational schema or not. Keep your mind open towards a NoSQL DB as well if it fits your criteria.

Databases should be treated as private to each microservice. No other microservice can directly modify data stored inside the database in another microservice.

In the below image, the Order Service won't be able to update the Pricing Database directly, it can only access it via the microservice API. This helps you to achieve consistency across different services.

Event-Driven Architecture is a common pattern to maintain data consistency across different services. Instead of waiting for an ACID transaction to complete processing and taking up system resources, you can make your application more available and performant by offloading the message to a queue. This provides loose coupling between services.

Messages to the queues can be treated as Events and can follow the Pub-Sub model. Publishers publishes a message and is not aware of the Consumer, who has subscribed to the event stream. Loose coupling between components in your architecture enables to build highly scalable distributed systems.

Handling database changes in your journey from Monolith to Microservice is challenging. In this article, we understood the problems with Monolithic Database Design and how you can handle your data in a microservice architecture. Please let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to discuss further.

For more information about Architecture for Containerized Applications, please download the free ebook provided by Microsoft here.

microservices ,database ,monolith ,software architecture

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21 August 2005 @ 04:20 am
Give me a pairing and a word and I will write a one-line (who am I kidding I don't do short drabbles XD) drabble for it.

Bleach or Weiß Kreuz, puh-lease. There are a few fandoms I'll just laugh at you if you ask for them.

Nagi/Schuldig + glorious - koijewel
Aya/Schuldig + superfluous - mr_mercutio
Ishida/Orihime + Quincy Hood - starswing
Ishida/Renji + compensating - luminamon
Schuldg/Aya-chan + imaginative - indirect
Kon/Ichigo + dry - tes_orion
Aya/Ken + gallon - tes_orion
Ichigo/Ishida/Kon-in-Ichigo's-body + Sunday - mushrooms
Farfarello/Brad + Buddha - keikain

Kia: Snicker- crazydiamond_starswing on August 21st, 2005 02:09 pm (UTC)
XD I love you.
One midnight gone...: Bleach - Ishida blushfirstmidnight on August 21st, 2005 02:13 pm (UTC)
Notice! Ishida did not push her away from his arm! Thus. The pairing luv.


Cross-Cultural Team-Building

45834826 - team corporate teamwork collaboration assistance concept

Modern business is global by nature and teams are invariably composed of people from diverse cultures. Success in a multi-cultural setting relies heavily on the ability of employees and stakeholders to communicate effectively and efficiently.

When to focus on cross-cultural dynamics?
Organizations often face cross-cultural communications issues during corporate actions (mergers, acquisitions, joint-ventures) and during every day operations when integrating expats into a local office or managing international virtual teams.

Why invest in cross-cultural team-building?
Better communication results in more synergy and innovation, faster progress toward goals, fewer misunderstanding, more satisfying work environments and better employee retention.

What is involved in cross-cultural team-building?
There are many dimensions of culture that affect the way people collaborate. Idiosynch addresses cultural difference related to scheduling, persuasion, decision-making, confrontation, delivering negative feedback, hierarchy & power dynamics and gender. The Idiosynch approach challenges your employees and leadership to expand beyond their local cultural framework, learning about themselves and enabling them to connect with others in more positive and fruitful ways.

What does Idiosynch deliver?

Idiosynch will lead you through a robust process that identifies your objectives and needs and then delivered customized training for your employees. But raising awareness and building skills is only the start. Working with Idiosynch you will come away with better management systems that include cross-cultural communication as a proactive focus.

Are you ready to become an authentically global team? Contact Idiosynch today!


What to Do When People Keep Quitting

Sometimes the best efforts at retention fail. Here’s how to understand why people leave, and what to do about it.

Ever notice how one person quitting their job can lead to a rush of others out the door in short order?

Whatever the reason, says Lisa Sterling, chief people officer at Ceridian, a global human capital management technology company, managing a team with high attrition requires internal changes to ensure employees feel satisfied and engaged, as well as stop further departures that can eat into the bottom line. The Bureau of National Affairs has estimated that $11 billion is lost annually due to employee turnover.

A Multitude Of Reasons Why

To pinpoint the source of resignations, it helps to check on broader workplace trends. Surveys suggest that many factors can fester and influence a wave of people quitting.

Overall, the latest Gallup report found that a record 47% of the workforce says now is a good time to find a quality job, and more than half of employees (51%) are searching for new jobs or watching for openings. Gallup found that this is due in part to a national employee engagement rate currently hovering at just 30%.

Workers also switch employers to get a salary bump that can go above the traditional annual cost of living raise that hovers around 3%, barely outpacing inflation. Right Management, ManpowerGroup’s global career and talent development expert, polled 4,600 workers globally, and found 1 in 5 people are simply in the wrong role.

A new report from Ceridian, based on a survey of 1,602 U.S. and Canadian employees, revealed that even generational differences are influencing the urge to jump ship. Over a third (33%) of gen-Xers were actively looking for work versus just 22% of millennials and gen-Z. Those between the ages of 18-29 did say that they wouldn’t stick with one employer for more than five years.

While all these factors can contribute to an exodus, there are likely other underlying reasons why staff are dissatisfied.

The Culture Question

Digging deeper, Mohit Garg, cofounder of the sales training platform MindTickle, says that millennial loyalty–or lack thereof– is driven by the need to build a career that resonates with their values and what helps them self-actualize. “They are looking to work for companies and managers that provide them with psychological safety to express themselves, transparent communication, a well-understood path for their learning and growth, and most importantly, to be accepted for who they are,” Garg explains. If they don’t find this, they’re likely to leave, says Garg, who believes that culture is more important than the need for advancement.

Ziprecruiter’s CEO Ian Seigel, agrees that workplace culture is the biggest and most direct driver in turnover. But Seigel says they’re looking beyond feedback and clear communication of opportunities to advance. “Seventy-five percent of millennials want flexibility that also keeps them on promotion tracks,” Seigel notes. That’s why he recommends that managers take a closer look at what motivates their teams, and how to diverge from traditional best practices in order to retain them.

Is Silence Encouraged?

Recent news of the firings of high-profile leaders for sexual harassment and sexism have illuminated just how deeply a “culture of silence” exists at many companies, even at those with formal systems for reporting bad behavior.

A survey from theBoardlist and Qualtrics found that the vast majority of boards (77%) had not discussed accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior and/or sexism in the workplace. Only a few had discussed risks/rewards of company culture that encourages drinking or partying at work (8%). The reasons? They were focusing on other things or it didn’t feel like a board-level issue. Unfortunately, fear of the repercussions of speaking out can lead to turnover.

Listen Before They Go

To figure out whether employees are leaving because of the culture, Fran Katsoudas, Cisco’s chief people officer, suggests that managers listen and engage with their team regularly.  “If you understand your team dynamics, the individuals on your team, and their strengths,” she explains, “you will have a much better lens on what is going well or where there are challenges.” She encourages leaders to show their vulnerability and take ownership of what is not working, which is key to getting to the root causes of people retreating.

Another way to do this is to use data and analytics. Cisco has a weekly check-in tool, quarterly surveys, and regular feedback from every monthly and quarterly event. “When employees know that their manager is regularly listening to them, the impact is significant,” she says.

Mohit Garg of MindTickle says this is particularly helpful in larger organizations where subcultures can form. “Data analytics on attrition by region, department, or business unit can help highlight hot spots of good and bad by comparing industry averages and company averages,” he points out. “It is always good to share the (anonymous) data with the managers on where their team ranks.”

Exit Interviews

Garg says the last talk with an employee who is leaving needs to be as honest and open as possible. He advises that it is led by someone who is seen as trusted and neutral, and with the reassurance that the conversation will be kept confidential.

Lisa Sterling at Ceridian says that exit interviews can help managers to understand why that specific employee is leaving, but engaging the remaining workforce to understand why they choose to stay can be far more useful, especially when turnover rates are rising.

Instead of just interviewing the employees who are leaving, she recommends talking to those who stay about their work experiences, and get both the positive and negative takes on working for your company. “Don’t simply ask employees why they stay,” she cautions, “but probe into what sometimes tempts them to leave, be it money or career growth or whatever else.”

Managers should also ask if they are getting any new employee referrals from their team, suggests Garg. This is consistently the top source of hires, according to the Society of Human Resource Management. Referrals are responsible for 30% of all hires overall in 2016, and 45% of internal hires. If staff are unwilling to recommend the workplace to a friend or colleague, it can be a red flag, says Garg.

Don’t be afraid to ask early and often. As common themes emerge, says Sterling, managers will gain a better sense of the root cause or causes of attrition, and which factors have the biggest influence on employee flight risk, empowering them to recognize turnover trends and address issues before they become unmanageable.

By Lydia Dishman


Gamify Your EventProf Stress.png

Being a professional event planner is a stressful job. Here are 4 ways to make being an #eventprof less stressful.

Using Gamification to Cope With Stress
Whether you are a veteran or newcomer, burnout is a serious concern in our industry. The common pressures of being #eventprofs have us constantly looking for new ways to reduce and manage stress. One way to reduce stress is gamification. Gamification is the process of applying the exciting elements of games to non-game situations such earning rewards, points, or badges for crossing off tasks on your to do lists and being awesome. As discussed earlier on EventMB, event professionals should care about games because they are not just fun and games any more! Games are now being designed for people of all ages and for a wide range of goals, including increasing memory and attention, event attendee engagement, and even stress relief.

World renowned game designer, author, and researcher, Jane McGonigal, PhD has studied the effects of gamification. Her research indicates that even though games may seem to be a waste of time, they can actually be exercises that help build resiliency in 4 different areas: physical, mental, emotional, and social. This resiliency helps people deal with stress and difficult situations. McGonigal has even created SuperBetter, a customized game full of power-ups, quests, bad guys, and allies that is specifically focused on building and strengthening these 4 areas of resiliency.

Gamification is everywhere! Let’s look at a few more ways that you can use gamification to defeat stress and level-up in your everyday #eventprof life.

1. Checking It Off
Love the list! As #eventprofs, we seem to have endless tasks and to-do lists. Have you ever added something to your to-do list after you actually completed it, just for the satisfaction of being able to check it off? If so, you are already gamifying your world. That instant gratification you feel is one of the reasons people play games. Use gamification to take your task list to the next level.

If you like role playing games (RPG), Habitica may be a great option for you. You can turn your life and all the tasks in it into a customized RPG game. By setting up your own daily tasks and activities in the game, you can boost your productivity by completing your tasks on time. When you complete the tasks on your custom list, you earn coins and gems (or any other reward you choose) to level up your avatar, unlock new features, and go on exciting quests. Just be sure to set realistic goals or you will give yourself even more stress!

Bonus Level:
If you don’t want the full gamified experience for your checklists, and feel that marking a “done” checkbox is enough of a reward, take a look at Basecamp. It is an excellent tool to organize your task list. Sometimes, the small rewards are the best and being able to visually check off a task gives you a great sense of accomplishment. On those days where it is difficult to focus, gamifying your to-do list could be the difference between a productive or wasted day!

2. Let’s Get Physical
I recently conducted an informal experiment with a large multi-day event I was working on. There were a series of events spread out over an entire college campus. The days were long and the amount of walking was daunting. Instead of dreading what was coming, I invited the staff working during the event to participate in a Fitbit Daily Showdown Challenge. The challenge recorded how many steps each participant took and shared them to a leaderboard. It was open to anyone who had a Fitbit tracker or the app on their phone. The results were amazing! Instead of complaining, people were really competitive and enjoyed the challenge. Some staff jogged in place during normally boring downtimes or skipped a ride in the golf cart to get more steps. Some even volunteered to pick up needed items so they could get extra steps and move up the leaderboard! In the end, we were all a lot less stressed, and were actually able to build stronger connections due to the gamification of our chaotic day!

Whether you are bogged down with work or can’t seem to focus, try getting up and moving around. Even a short walk can help refocus and re-energize you. Exercise stimulates your endorphins, which make you feel happier, which in turn, helps reduce stress. If you can’t seem to get up out of your chair, try rewarding yourself and gamifying your exercise!

Bonus Level:
Gamify for the greater good! Besides step challenges with friends, you can also double down and help your favorite charity at the same time. There are a few apps like Wooftrax and Walk for a Dog that donate money to your local animal shelters every time you log a walk or run. If you are into a different cause, you can also use an app like CharityMiles to earn donations for your choice of a variety of charities simply by logging your exercise into the app. What a great reason to exercise!

Whether it be competing with friends, taking a walk during the day, or using some simple health and fitness tips, exercising will help you reduce stress and gamification will help keep you motivated and enjoying it!

3. Checking In and Staying Connected
Most #eventprofs typically have full, stressful days, with too many errands to run and too many different places to go. Since you have to do it all regardless, you might as well make it fun and get awesome stickers at the same time! By using Swarm, you can earn nifty badges and coins by “checking in” at all the places you have to go. There are secret badges and surprises that you can also earn by checking in at different locations.

Sometimes these “check-ins” can even lead to spontaneous social interactions with your friends. When passing through an airport or other location, you may see that your friend has checked in at the same spot. It’s a great opportunity to grab a bite to eat and catch up. You can also interact with friends and family by competing for who can visit a place the most times and become the “mayor”, earn the most coins for the most check-ins, or get that special sticker first! At the event I mentioned previously, we also competed for who could become (and remain!) the mayor of buildings on the college campus.

Ultimately, gamification can help you make the most out of your normal, daily tasks.

Bonus Level:
Are you traveling a lot and find yourself stressed when you are away from your family? Whether due to time zones or just a busy schedule, it is often difficult to stay in touch and connected with friends and family while traveling for conferences or events. My family uses multiplayer games like Scrabble or Words With Friends. Everyone can play when it is convenient for their schedule, and it creates a small connection with loved ones, knowing that they are thinking of you each time they play a word.

4. Quick Breaks to Recharge
If you are feeling overwhelmed with a huge to-do list, make sure to prioritize. Then, dive into the most important task and stay focused on it, without multi-tasking. Instead of just staring at the clock and counting the hours, consider using the Pomodoro Technique®, in which you work in 25 minute increments, followed by a 5 minute break. After 4 cycles you earn a longer break.

Gamify your time management by using apps like ClearFocus or Focus Booster. They are productivity timers that use the Pomodoro Technique and can help make getting things done feel like a game instead of a chore. You can use the recommended time frame or customize it to fit any schedule. It is quite amazing how simply using a small, visual timer can quickly focus you. There are no badges to win with this one, but sometimes I find myself intentionally making the “game” harder by trying beat the clock so things don’t carry over after the break.

Most importantly, don’t forget to take the breaks! If you feel like breaks are a waste of time, consider rethinking the concept of a break. You don’t have to come to a complete stop. You can switch gears for a few minutes and use your break to make yourself stronger and think more creatively. You can boost your energy with exercise, or play quick mental challenge games such as Candy Crush, Dots, DuoLingo, Lumosity, Elevate, Minecraft, or Tetris.

In Conclusion (Extra Life!)
Games are not just for kids any more. Today’s games are created with research in mind and can help you become a stronger and more resilient person. By becoming more resilient, you will be able to react and handle stressful #eventprof (and life) situations better. Try using gamification as one way to help build your mental, emotional, and physical strength, which in turn, makes you a better and calmer #eventprof. Maybe we can then push the job of Event Coordinator off the list of most stressful jobs.


avatar for Anirudh Koul, Aira

Anirudh Koul, Aira

Head of AI & Research
Anirudh Koul is the Head of AI & Research at Aira (Visual interpreter for the blind), and upcoming author of 'Practical Deep Learning for Cloud and Mobile'. Previously at Microsoft AI & Research, he founded Seeing AI App - often considered the defacto app in the blind and low vision community. With features shipped to a billion people over the decade, he has also been developing for building tools for communities with visual, hearing and mobility impairments. Some of his recent work, which IEEE has called ‘life-changing’, has been honored by CES, FCC, Cannes Lions, American Council of the Blind, and more.