#but to work towards a sustainable approach to it that doesn’t disregard human rights

[mytholegy]

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[redspiegelman]

How it is to be a person of love

I had a recent conversation with my closest friends about love and how we share the same experience and perspective, but one thing that struck me the most was how we are able to cope-up with being the person who believes to our partner’s potential. As we go through the details, one thing I realized was we are following the same pattern in which we are focusing more on what our relationship could look like if they will just cooperate rather than how it is looking at the present.

We, most of the time, do the things that we need to do. We try to see what is going on, we try to come up with agreements, we try to make everything work but at the end of the day, it just doesn’t work. We try to understand as we know the feeling of being misunderstood. Signs are showing, flags are waving yet we manage to believe and find workaround to another workaround for our relationship to be bearable and sustainable, and that is because we are hoping that the time will come when they will be able to see the potential that they have. There will be times when our approach of trying to make everything work is looking superficial already, and the question that most of the time that pops-up was “Am I trying to change them?” or in their case, “Why are you changing me?”.

Well, the truth is we don’t really want to change them or anything from them, and we don’t even think that we need to, but we are trying to make them realize for who they really are, to actually see their own potential the way we see them with our very own eyes because the way they are right now is perfectly imperfect.

Not that we are disregarding all the hiccups of the relationship but we are leaning towards to the greener side and this is different from seeing them with a rose-colored glasses as we are acknowledging both highs and lows of things which is definitely an important thing to consider in creating a conscious relationship. The good and the bad side contributes to their essence as a person which makes them unique and makes them lovable.

Maybe you are thinking that this is not actually right; to give chance and risk our ourselves knowing that they are not yet capable of handling themselves. Maybe it’s not right to be hopeful about trying to make them realize their own worth and succeed. Maybe it’s not right to believe in their potential when the reality is very much different from what it seemed. Maybe it’s not right to get that responsibility from them. Maybe you’re right with all of these but I also believe that humans are meant to connect because we are relational beings, that healing occurs when we reach out to one another. That they only need a fresh set of eyes to see what are the possibilities and sometimes, we can only do so much.

But you know, people like us... we are persons of love. We are empaths. We are born to care. We are brought to this world to be compassionate. We are blessed the ability to see the potential of others even if they can’t see it.

We absolutely go to a lengthy extent in which we may found ourselves in a deep hole of love trying to give everything that we could and well, most of the time, we may feel exhausted, we feel sad, we feel disheartened and that’s because we are trying too hard, being desperate to let them know about their worth. To be a person of love is to always believing that humans are inherently good and loving. That we are always capable of giving love despite any discouraging instance we are facing. We believe that love is regenerative, that love is definitely a cure. And that is the reason why we get heartbroken in the first place. When we fail in letting our love shone, it feels like we are failing our mission. The grief that we feel is not about being consumed and feeling empty but it’s because our love has no place to go, and that is the beauty of it... that no matter how much grief we have, we always find a way to redirect our love. I must admit that being a person of love and experiencing all these heartaches can really be demotivating but I just remind myself of how genuinely happy I am at some point of the relationship and see how I loved a person with all of my being despite having all the reasons why I shouldn’t love at all. In this world where we can easily be swayed by traumas and mental wounds, this is something to be proud of : To always believing in possibilities, to embracing vulnerabilities and to putting your heart into the world full of uncertainties. Go on, don’t be afraid. Love as much as you can. And yes, being a person of love has its fair share of downside too, but if you will be asking me, there’s nothing more fulfilling than loving and feeling alive.

[96thdayofrage]

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. … The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty.” Through this call to abolish poverty, King put forth an indictment of Western civilization and of capitalistic society.

The abolition of poverty contains the radical admission that the unacceptable doesn’t deserve repair or reform. It’s an honest approach to problems that can be so big and intimidating that they may tempt us to deny what’s plainly true. King was pointing out the mistaken perception that racial capitalism is civilized or advanced. Those who benefit most according to the logic of everyday terror say that we must accept the violence of capitalistic accumulation and the ruthlessness of money. They would have us believe this is as good as it can get. It’s not.

From furloughed workers to the unemployed and others facing dire circumstances, we live in a time that has made crowdfunding a regular go-to for people who are struggling to meet their basic needs. The lack of a universal safety net has forced people to try to create their own. The fundamental basis of solutions that many on the left are arguing for — such as socialism — can be explained with this crowdfunding trend. We are saying that it’s completely absurd to work and pay taxes, yet still not have health care, functioning schools and all the needed resources for our communities that tax revenues are supposed to pay for. Our rights should not be made into luxuries, and we should not have to crowdfund for necessities that should be paid for with the wealth our labor generates.

A society that has the nerve to call itself “free” should never operate according to a model of fraudulent scarcity, as the United States is doing. The growing austerity practices that oppress us while wages remain virtually stagnant will not be debated or wished away. This exploitative system does not combat poverty, it develops it. Poverty is not a simply a byproduct of racial capitalism; it’s a fuel that keeps it going. A rejection of poverty must include an outright rejection of this system that creates and encourages it.

Knowing that suffering is wrong should be enough of an argument to condemn a system that prioritizes the wealth of a select few at the expense of countless others. What cannot be accepted is this everyday reality that veils itself as something sustainable. As King wrote:

The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.

Dr. King suggested many strategies for combatting poverty. Among King’s solutions was an annual income for everyone or “universal basic income.” However, it’s worth noting that King’s proposals came in the context of his time. Who knows what King would have advocated if he saw how much worse things have gotten, and how wealth disparities have grown? Currently, a version of the basic income idea has been enthusiastically revived among the wealthy philanthropic class. This fact alone should encourage our skepticism. Our liberation will not be handed to us by the elite. The work of abolishing poverty means abolishing astronomical wealth too. Wasteful spending on things like the nearly $1 trillion military budget and the money lost not taxing wealthy corporations is enough to drastically alter the impoverished conditions many suffer across the nation.

Poverty is not a simply a byproduct of racial capitalism; it’s a fuel that keeps it going.

As we work to confront extreme wealth disparities, we also must focus on building the communities we deserve. We should challenge those around us to think about how we’re already practicing anti-capitalism. For instance, a closer look at why people feel the need to give to others asking for help through crowdfunding platforms may reveal principles more suited to a better world. Anti-capitalist principles associated with anarchism, socialism and other important politics that may be unknown to many people going about their daily lives are already being practiced (but not necessarily in name of ideology, or identified by jargonistic terms).

There’s organizing work happening that can always be expanded in making the significance clear to people pushing back in whatever ways they can. To some extent, what we need to achieve could be explained to people through this logic of crowdfunding. We need to build our own institutions where we amass what resources, skills and contributions we have together in order for everyone to have what they need. This sort of solidarity around the fair exchange of what we have to offer based in solidarity is mutual aid.

Disaster response, in this time of climate crisis, is another place where we regularly see practices of mutual aid playing out. After disaster strikes, people regularly mobilize and organize their communities to survive amid government neglect and state negligence. People share food, housing and other resources until things return to some sort of normalcy. Building programs that disregard the boundaries around us and respond to the consistent crises of racial capitalism is a central tenet of what’s called “intercommunalism.” This was the practice of the Black Panthers, a programmed response to the violence we know is coming.

The abolition of poverty starts with honesty and ends with what we truly deserve.

Rather than await the next storm, starvation or stranding, we can be preparing so we don’t have to suddenly crowdfund when it arrives. We need to be creating our own institutions that are tasked with fighting the problems capitalism inflicts. Reactionary practices do not offer stability — participants simply enter back into the precarious position of awaiting the next disaster — but the intention behind many of them can help us re-examine our values and push our own institutional practices toward liberation.

The abolition of poverty will not simply happen overnight. We have to bring it about in our everyday lives. It’s not going to be given to us by liberal politicians or charitable billionaires who are part of the problem themselves. We’ll have to work where we can and how we can without dismissing our own circumstances in the name of purity. Abolishing oppressive forces means circumventing and undermining them to create our own realities. The abolition of poverty starts with honesty and ends with what we truly deserve.

[euro3plast-fr]

How CFOs Implement Advanced Analytics: 5 Best Practices

How to make the most out of your company's data

Today’s corporate agendas revolve around the staggering amount of data available and the advanced analytics needed to gather, interpret and use such data. When it comes to Big Data and Advanced Analytics, things can get really tricky for a company not making the best of them.

A recent McKinsey report shows that businesses which are not able to leverage Big Data and which fail to achieve performing data management also witness an average of 14% in lost revenues per year. Surprisingly, oil companies, life sciences, and consumer goods make the top three industries where big data and advanced analytics are poorly managed, thus leading to financial losses.

As opposed to the McKinsey report, a study coming from MIT and Harvard Business School shows that companies focusing on big data management and advanced analysis witness an increase in revenue of up to 6% in comparison to companies not injecting big data into their financial and operational strategies.

But what are Big Data (BD) and Advanced Analytics (AA) when we refer to financial management and good practices? A broad description of BD defines it as being:

Massive in volume and complexity, scaling up to multiple terabytes or even petabytes

Unstructured and diverse

Widely distributed both on the outside of the organization and inside the organization

Fast moving and fast changing, needing perpetual sourcing and transmission.

In order to be able to source, understand and use BD, Advanced Analytics comes as a set of tools and techniques which are hard (if not impossible) to replicate with traditional analytics methods in size, accuracy, scale or scope.

Advanced Analytics go beyond simple regression or predictive models, using “new analytic methods” such as the study of social media buzz, data-mining, and others. The advantage of AA when it comes to predictions, however, is that (if used correctly) they can achieve higher levels of accuracy due to the larger data sample sizes.

AA strategies are based on tools and instruments helping CFOs improve the company’s performance on multiple levels. Let’s see today how CFOs implement AA and what good practices examples you can look into to adopt and adapt for your company.

1. Viewing the Budget in 360°

Using Big Data and Advanced Analytics can surely help a company stay ahead of the competition and get better at operations, financial management, sales forecasting, and consumer retention and so on. Optimizing data and analysis can help the CFO tackle with complex business rules, market shifts, and economic constraints. Thus, they become able to simultaneously evaluate them all and make better decisions.

However, before investing in AA frameworks, hardware, and data scientists, the CFO needs also to use BD to assess the company’s capability of implementing a BD and AA-centered approach.

While advanced analytics help the CFO translate business opportunities and constraints into mathematical formulas, charts and prediction models to create more accurate budgets and scenarios, the main issue is the company’s internal financial and managing architecture able to sustain the shift to the AA approach.

Such an endeavor can take years and needs a stellar coordination with all the departments in the company.

However, if the company is able to take the first steps towards such paradigm, CFOs need to pay attention to their environment and understand how to implement good practices.

2. Choosing the Right Data and Using it Creatively

All managers and CFOs are literally bombarded with data they sometimes deem unimportant. Other times they have access to the entire information they need, but don’t know where to look for it. The best practice in using advanced analytics on BD is finding the data in your environment and creatively choosing its sources.

Given the fact that now we have massive amounts of unstructured information coming from new sources like social media and machine sensors, CFOs can become creative in picking the data sources and using them to improve working capital, resource allocation strategies, the management of costs, risks, human resources and revenues.

One example is of Sears Holding wanting to improve its promotions, personalized offers to customers and generate greater sales values.

But processing information coming from three sub-brands to tailor relevant and revenue-generating promotions in the traditional manner took around eight weeks, which was counterproductive for the company. Instead, Sears Holding switched to BD analysis using Hadoop cluster analysis (together with servers and software) to process the data and create revenue-generating, comprehensive and reliable product promotions in a week.

Other companies use social media, weather forecasts, electronic shipping records, customer surveys results, clients’ feedback and ratings.

3. Building Prediction Models

Prediction models are an instrument CFOs have been using traditionally to identify trends and patterns in market shifts, consumer behavior, and business performance. However, in the AA framework, prediction models should be constructed not starting with the data but with the identified business opportunities/weaknesses and with determining how the model can actually improve performance.

This shift in paradigm for CFOs can help them narrow the gap between strategic and operational decisions covering business levels that are not traditionally in the hands of the financial manager: supply chain optimization, customer retention, social media marketing planning, sales- and finance-linked forecasting, new product introduction profitability, customer satisfaction and so on.

For instance, instead of creating a complex product pricing strategy based on traditional data (historical sales data, price elasticity, market responses, competitors’ responses and so on), a company can develop a prediction model starting with the identification of factors that affect their sales. Then, they can determine what data and what model would best deliver the necessary insights for them to make price-related decisions.

What companies need to keep in mind when building models, however, is that they need to keep things simple, as models using 30-40 variables may exhaust its resources.

4. Changing the Company Culture

The CEO and the CFO may agree on using advanced analytics and complex models, but this doesn’t mean the employees will effectively use them in the front rows of operations. It is possible that while the CFO focuses on using AA to optimize the returns on advertising and marketing campaigns, the marketing team disregards the model, has little knowledge of how to correctly implement it or simply uses a different approach to decision making.

When using AA and tapping into big data, one of the best practices of a CFO is not only to implement new models but also make an impact on the company’s culture and practices changes. Granted, such approach is not a traditional one for a CFO, but in this day and age, one needs to think ahead and overpass the boundaries of the job description. Company culture change in relationship with AA can be achieved through a series of steps:

Before implementing AA, the CFO needs to come up with an analytics tool that can be used by all departments at all levels. Speaking the same language and being on the same page (from human resources to online marketers) eases the company’s switch to using advanced analytics and prediction models.

Complex software running through dozens of terabytes of data won’t surely make front row workers’ lives easier. One approach is embedding big data and complex analytics in simple and usable tools for the people working with such data minute by minute. As a CFO, it is your duty to optimize the company’s workforce performance and cut costs. Instead of worrying about the employee’s wasted time and resources to operate with complex data, it is cheaper and faster to use specialized IT companies to turn AA into simple, manageable tools.

Invest in the employees’ big data literacy and management. All CFOs know it is cheaper and faster to train your employees than be faced with employee turnover just because the front row workers can’t handle the tools and techniques you have them operate with.

5. The Use of Crowdsourcing to Boost Forecasting Accuracy

CFOs typically have cross-views on the entire organization, keeping tight relationships with all departments, meaning they have a broad view of all employees’ capabilities and departments’ best resources.

Crowdsourcing is usually a sourcing model in which organizations use contributions from individuals to obtain ideas or services. However, when using Big Data we mentioned that it can be found both internally and externally.

A good practice when it comes to AA is internal crowdsourcing, meaning using the company’s employees’ skills and expertise to improve sales, fix prices, tailor promotions and generate revenue.

There is at least one excellent example of how a company can leverage on its internal data, employees’ wisdom, skills and expertise and prediction models to improve sales forecasts’ accuracy: Henkel. A practice used by Google and Microsoft, crowdsourcing in Henkel took the form of an employees’ vote on the next quarter sales for a batch of selected products.

The technique resulted in 22% improved sales forecast accuracy and the identification of experts within the company who perpetually registered high levels of forecast accuracy. Needless to say, identifying experts within a company and matching them to the right organizational position is profitable from all points of view.

Another example is that of Deutsche Telekom using employee’s evaluations of product concepts. Such an approach led to a very quick sales forecasting analysis which was reliable (a 84% correlation with a parallel consumer survey) and which was very low cost, allowing the company to save 90%.

Big Data and Advanced Analytics are still in their newborn years, offering endless possibilities for companies to use every single piece of information (inside and outside the organization) to better structure their business on all levels. In this framework, it is likely to witness major shifts in the roles and responsibilities of CFOs in the years to come.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3

Thanks to Ethan Featherly for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. Ethan Featherly has a background in economics and trading. After he graduated from The University of Chicago he decided to become a financial analyst. Ethan is now a content manager at Admiral Markets, where he is in charge of the educational section.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/big-data-digital-marketing-platforms/cfos-implement-advanced-analytics-5-best-practices/