Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Automotive Business - Birmingham Post

Jaguar Land Rover is set to deliver a huge boost to the automotive sector by revealing it is doubling the size of its new engine plant in the West Midlands.

The rapidly expanding car giant is going to create 700 extra jobs at its new i54 plant in Wolverhampton by investing ?500 million to double capacity ? before it has even opened.

Insiders say the move came after global demand has continued to rise since the plans were first announced.

Initially the company said it would invest more than ?350 million in the factory, creating more than 700 jobs, but the new plans will now see up to 1,500 jobs created.

An insider told the Birmingham Post: "Sales are going incredibly well. Market share is up and they believe they need to act quickly, even though the first phase is not constructed yet."

The factory on the i54 site, between Wolverhampton and Telford, will build engines for Jaguars and Land Rovers and is expected to be ready to start engine production in 2014.

The Gaydon-based luxury car maker is planning to more than double the number of its vehicles made annually to 600,000 by 2020.

A spokesman for Jaguar Land Rover declined to confirm the move.

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Source: http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/automotive-business/2013/03/04/jaguar-land-rover-to-double-size-of-new-plant-near-wolverhampton-65233-32920251/

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30 Books in 30 days ? Remembering 15 years of the 1st Friday Book ...

{On April 5, 2013, we will celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the First Friday Book Synopsis, and begin our 16th year.? During March, I will post a blog post per day remembering key insights from some of the books I have presented over the 15 years of the First Friday Book Synopsis.? We have met every first Friday of every month since April, 1998 (except for a couple of weather ?related cancellations).? These posts will focus only on books I have presented.? My colleague, Karl Krayer, also presented his synopses of business books at each of these gatherings.? I am going in chronological order, from April, 1998, forward.? The fastest way to check on these posts will be at Randy?s blog entries???though there will be some additional blog posts interspersed among these 30.}
Post #3 of 30

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encouraging-the-heartSynopsis presented May, 1999
Encouraging the Heart: A Leader?s Guide to Rewarding and Recognizing Others by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (Simon and Schuster, 1999)

This may be the single business book synopsis that I have presented more than any other.? I have presented this to leadership teams in many companies and organizations.? It is an incredibly practical, important book.

Why?? Because people need to get better at their jobs, and they need to be encouraged to get better and do better.? People do not get better on their own!? And every organization wrestles with this challenge ? ?how do we help our folks get better at their jobs?? ?The answer is found in practicing encouragement ? encouraging the heart.? That?s the wisdom of Kouzes and Posner, and this book sets forth a plan to do exactly that.

The book is filled with wisdom.? From the book:

Encouraging the Heart is ultimately about keeping hope alive.? Leaders keep hope alive when they set high standards and genuinely express optimism about an individual?s capacity to achieve them.? They keep hope alive when they give feedback and publicly recognize a job well done.? They keep hope alive when they give their constituents the internal support that all human beings need to feel that they and their work are important and have meaning.? They keep hope alive when they train and coach people to exceed their current capacities.? Most important, leaders keep hope alive when they set an example.? There really is nothing more encouraging than to see our leaders practice what they preach.

Really believe in your heart of hearts that your fundamental purpose, the reason for being, is to enlarge the lives of others.? Your life will be enlarged also.

We don?t do our best in isolation.? We don?t get extraordinary things done by working alone with no support, encouragement, expressions of confidence, or help from others.? That?s not how we make the best decisions, get the best grades, run faster, achieve the highest levels of sales, invent breakthrough products, or live longer.

All of this requires that leaders understand their roles ? and aim for self-improvement themselves:

Leadership development is self-development?? To know what to change in our lives, we need to understand what we?re doing that is getting the results we want and what we?re doing that is not.

And this book has one of my all-time favorite quotes:

We lead by being human. We do not lead by being corporate, professional, or institutional.? (Paul G. Hawken, founder, Smith and Hawken).

So, what is the path to ?encouraging the heart??? Kouzes and Posner propose five tasks for leaders.? (These five tasks provide the framework for their longer, more comprehensive book:? The Leadership Challenge).

Leaders:

??challenge the process
? inspire a shared vision
??enable others to act
??model the way
??encourage the heart

And, the last of these five, ?encourage the heart,? is the subject of this book.? They suggest a seven-step process to encourage the heart.? Here are the seven (with a little elaboration from me):

The seven essentials of encouraging:

#1:? Set clear standards ? (People have to know exactly what is expected of them in order to fulfill their assignments).

#2:? Expect the best ? (?Expect the worst,? and a leader will likely get the worst.? ?Expect the best,? and a leader will get something much closer to a person?s best.? Thus, practice the ?set-up-to-succeed? environment, not the ?set-up-to-fail? environment).

#3:? Pay attention ? (A leader has to pay attention ? listen, and observe, in order to know how to successfully encourage each individual employee).

#4:? Personalize recognition ? (This is a genuine breakthrough insight.? Do not give everyone the same ?recognitions/rewards.?? This can be very counterproductive.? By choosing personalized rewards, the leader indicates that he/she knows each employee as an individual.? This is powerfully encouraging).

#5:? Tell the story ? (The leader tells lost of stories of success ? lots of stories of success ? as part of the overarching story of the company or organization, which is told and retold over and over again.? This practice is morale building, culture building, and very encouraging!).

#6:? Celebrate together ? (The leader makes sure there are plenty of ?fun times? of celebration, shared by all, after noteworthy milestones or accomplishments.

#7:? Set the example ? (The leader has to do what the folks are expected to do.? ?Follow the leader? is in fact what happens.? So, the leader makes sure that he/she is setting an example/providing a model to follow.? The leader practices DWYSYWD:? do what you say you will do).

Encouraging the Heart should be, in my opinion, the first book every leader should read.? Because, a leader is leading people!? And people need great and continual encouragement to get closer to their ?best.?

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Monday, March 4, 2013 - Posted by Randy Mayeux | Randy's blog entries

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Source: http://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/30-books-in-30-days-remembering-15-years-of-the-1st-friday-book-synopsis-encouraging-the-heart-by-james-kouzes-and-barry-posner/

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How many frogs does it take to make a handbag? Tokyo museum has the answer

Tucked away in Tokyo is a little trafficked museum that houses bags from the world over. It is an unexpected reminder of how much more than a bag a piece of luggage can be.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / March 3, 2013

The World Bags and Luggage Museum is home to the personal collection of the owner of Japan's Ace luggage company (the world's first producer of nylons bags). It houses more than 400 examples of handbags, travel bags, and trunks made from everything from Zebra to frog.

Peter Ford/The Christian Science Monitor

Enlarge

Hidenori Hirosaki acknowledges that the museum of which he is the director is ?unusual.?

Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

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He is proud, he says, that ?it is unique. There is no other museum with this concept in the world.?

Mr. Hirosaki is the director and driving force behind the World Bags and Luggage Museum, a shrine that imbues the humble suitcase with a sacred quality.

On display, picked out like jewels by artful lighting, are satchels and steamer trunks, backpacks and portmanteaus, clutch bags and briefcases from around the world and down the ages.

The collection began with Ryusaku Shinkawa, the founder of ACE, a Japanese luggage manufacturer, who gathered many of the pieces that are now on show for the small and little-visited museum. The late Mr. Shinkawa, described in the museum brochure as ?pursuing bag as divine vocation,? was clearly passionate about his business.

Hirosaki has inherited his enthusiasm, and his taste is eclectic. As a man who has worked for ACE and lived with leather all his adult life (?the first thing I notice about a man is his shoes,? he says), he cannot disguise his preference for perfectly tanned cowhide and the workmanship that went into classic Italian luggage in the 1960s.

But he is just as keen to show off a navy blue Panam flight bag, made in 1960, which Hirosaki explains in the descriptive panel alongside the bag, was ?a longing symbol of overseas travel for us Japanese.? Japanese were not allowed to go abroad, except on business or to study, until 1964, he recalls.

The museum, housed on the seventh floor of the ACE corporation?s headquarters, owns about 600 pieces (and the collection is growing: Hirosaki bought the Panam bag last year on eBay for $150) but only half of them are on display. Even so, they encompass an extraordinary variety of things for putting things in.

Zebra, water buffalo, hippopotamus, oh my

There is a pair of zebra skin travel bags; an elephant hide suitcase that once belonged to a Kuwaiti emir; one attach? case made from rich yellow water buffalo hide, another of hippopotamus leather, and a third from deeply crevassed sharkskin.

There is a trunk covered with the black skins of 12 saltwater crocodiles, gleaming like patent leather; there is an elk-skin shoulder bag from Finland, a barrel-topped Saratoga trunk from the United States, and an elegant clutch made in Thailand from a patchwork of pale green and delicate yellow rectangles.

?A considerable number of frogs are needed to make a single bag,? a sign explains.

And did you ever wonder why a Saratoga trunk had that distinctive barrel-shaped lid? In the days of carriage and train travel when cases were piled on top of each other, a Saratoga trunk could only go on top of the pile, thus running less risk of damage.

The museum embraces the modern and the practical with as much ardor as it reserves for the exotic and luxurious. Hirosaki waxes lyrical in his description of the first Samsonite suitcase that ACE made under license, (the classic Silhouette, whose subtle wedge shape has defined the brand for half a century), describing it as ?a flower on a lofty height.?

In another glass display case nearby is an even more prosaic looking item ? a grey aluminum box with an orange Bakelite handle, secured by a couple of hasps.

This, it turns out, is the toolbox that Richard Halliburton designed for himself in 1938. The American engineer, scion of the oil-services giant bearing his name, ?through his bitter experience in the Middle East that inside of a bag get covered in sand, decided to invent a case of his own satisfactory,? Hirosaki?s sign explains in somewhat fractured English.

A very similar, though somewhat larger, box was used by the Apollo 11 crew to store moon-rocks, says a sign. ?The spec. was nothing special, with slight interior modification, which proved the case valid in universe.?

Valid throughout the universe. What greater praise could be bestowed on a travel accessory?

Just before the exit, the last display area in the museum shows off ACE?s current output ? fairly standard pieces of lightweight, robust luggage in bright colors equipped with the casters and pullout handles familiar from airports the world over.

Hirosaki is proud that ACE is Japan?s only remaining luggage manufacturer, but he cannot hide his nostalgia for the glory days of luxury travel and the exquisitely crafted baggage that went with it.

?Today people put too much stress on rationality, functionality, and efficiency,? he sighs, admiring a strapped suitcase made from natural leather by the Italian company Franzi (where Guccio Gucci got his start) half a century ago.

The sign beside the case is simple and eloquent. ?The same cannot be manufactured under the present circumstances of attaching too much emphasis to productivity,? it says. The World Bags and Luggage Museum is an unexpected reminder of how much more than a bag a bag can be.

(The museum can be found in the Asakusa district of Tokyo at 1-8-10 Komagata, Taito Ku, Tokyo. Phone 03-3847-5680)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/rAL65GKdQwY/How-many-frogs-does-it-take-to-make-a-handbag-Tokyo-museum-has-the-answer

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