Clare Consultation, LLCBring Your Best or Forfeit Your Country
In the January/February 1996 Harvard Business Review, 21 years ago, economist Paul Krugman ran out the ways countries are not businesses. The ways successful business people cannot automatically apply their skill sets to steering a nation and its economy. At the same time, he admitted that economists could not, without considerable extra expertise, run successful businesses. Krugman writes, “Let me begin with two examples of economic issues that I have found business executives… Read More
Paying Attention
Today a friend posted the notice above on her Facebook page. This friend is a communications and diversity specialist – a Chippewa/Cree woman nearing completion of her PhD as a scholar of decolonization. Another friend, a white Texan in Denver, posted the runoff results in Georgia’s 58th District. Park Cannon, a health advocate, has earned this Congressional seat, filling the post left vacant when Simone Bell, the first Black lesbian to serve in… Read More
Thanksgiving was Yesterday
And, today Americans awaken to what the commercial conglomerate has named “Black Friday.” The term originated in 1951 in relation to industry and business owners noting the tendency of workers to call in sick the day after Thanksgiving in order to have a four-day weekend. By the 60’s the term was a derogation on the part of law enforcement officers in Philadelphia who had to deal with significantly increased pedestrian traffic on… Read More
On Robots and Listening
As ever, change is afoot. Autumn is heading for winter, for example. Starbucks is well into shifting its holiday paperware (the plain red paper cups a significant and publicized offense to a few “Christmas-only” types). Oceans are heating up, children are growing taller and Artificial Intelligence is animating robots to replace workers around the globe. There’s much more – and too much of it troubling. But you know that. So, this… Read More
Identity and Work
I was going to title this Identity, Work, Motherhood and Death, but that seemed a touch too ambitious. Nonetheless, all apply. On August 31, at the turn from midnight to midnight-01, and for the first time since I was 15 years old, I became unemployed. Sheesh. Actually, I’m self-employed now and giving a good go at establishing this new career. Still, there’s the tenacious pull of my 30-year academic career. And it’s… Read More
Standing in Wildfire
Yesterday, my husband Gary and I began a drive to Montana. We live there parts of the year. Just outside a really small community tucked into muscular folds of the Intermountain West. With water and trees, with big mammals like Elk, Moose and Bear – with Eagles and Hawks, and this past spring, with a mama hummingbird nested just outside our window. It was early when we left Portland – the place… Read More
3084 Miles of Road
“We’ve just driven the entire length of Interstate 84,” Sara said, “and we’re only in Utah.” She was in the driver’s seat at that moment, and we were 500+ miles east of Portland, Oregon – the hometown we’d left at sunrise, encased in a rectangular cube of mostly yellow – a rental truck filled up with Sara’s 28-year lifetime of belongings. For a mom and daughter, this is one of those big… Read More