Thursday, November 28, 2019

Philippine Century Hence Essay Sample free essay sample

The Philippines a Century Hence is an essay written by our national hero Jose Rizal and it tells the hereafter of the state within a hundred old ages. In this essay. published in La Solidaridad. it starts analysing the assorted causes of the jobs suffered by the Filipino people. One of those jobs is the Spain’s execution of her military policies. because of such Torahs the poorness here in our state became rampant than of all time. And the household as a unit of society was neglected. and overall. in every facet of life of the Filipino was retarded. Next is the devastation of the Filipino civilization. the native Filipino civilization. because of this. the Filipinos started losing assurance in their yesteryear and their heritage. became dubious of their present life style. and finally lost hope in the hereafter and the saving of their race. The Spanish colonisers are the 1 with the most powerful forces and they influenced the civilization of silence among the indigens. We will write a custom essay sample on Philippine Century Hence Essay Sample or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Because of the usage of force. the Filipinos learned to subject themselves to the will of the aliens. Finally. the indigens realized that such subjugation in their society by foreign colonisers must no longer be tolerated. One inquiry Rizal raises in this essay is whether or non Spain can so forestall the advancement of the Philippines. maintaining the people uneducated and nescient had failed. Keeping he people impoverished besides came to no help. Spain. therefore. had no agencies to halt the advancement of the state. What needs to make is to alter colonial policies so that they are in maintaining with the demands of the Philippine society and to the lifting patriotism of the people. What Rizal had envisioned in his essay came true. In 1898. the Americans wrestled with Spain to win the Philippines. and finally took over the state. Theirs was a reign of democracy and autonomy. Five decennaries after Rizal’s decease. the Philippines gained her long-awaited independency. This was in fulfilment of what he had written in his essay: â€Å"History does non enter in its annals any permanent domination by one people over another. of different races. of diverse uses and imposts. of opposite and divergent thoughts. One of the two had to give and yield. †

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Free Essays on Variations Of The Word Love

love are used in the commercial industry. It also shows how the â€Å"vacancies† are filled in with enough of the hearts and lace to be sold. Even though the vacancies are filled with such trivial and meaningless shows of the emotion love, a few of us latch onto the existence of the idea of love and even wait for it to hit us in the face. Nevertheless, as described by Ms. Atwood, the waiting deafens us. â€Å"Then there’s two of us. This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness.† (21-27) She tells us in this quote that even though there is an â€Å"us†, the word love is much... Free Essays on Variations Of The Word Love Free Essays on Variations Of The Word Love Poetry Explication of â€Å"Variations on the word Love† by Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood’s poem â€Å"Variations on the word Love† is her own cynical views on the word love itself and how it is used too frequently, which has resulted in it becoming almost of no value. The author, who is also the speaker, is articulating the significance of how the word love has become adulterated, trivialized and commercialized. Ms. Atwood is attempting to show how, in her opinion; the word love has reached a point where it has lost its impact and true meaning. Love itself is described as a powerful emotion for another person manifesting itself in deep affection, devotion or sexual desire often occurring suddenly and without warning. As human beings, we require love to be in our lives and are happier when we feel it ourselves. Ms. Atwood's simple â€Å"poem† becomes so complex as it shows her opinion coming across as distain of the manner of which it is now used. â€Å"It’s the right size for those warm blanks in speech, for those red heart-shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing like real hearts. Add lace and you can sell it. (Margaret Atwood â€Å"Variations on the word love† 2-7) It is in this quote that shows the speakers view on how the words love are used in the commercial industry. It also shows how the â€Å"vacancies† are filled in with enough of the hearts and lace to be sold. Even though the vacancies are filled with such trivial and meaningless shows of the emotion love, a few of us latch onto the existence of the idea of love and even wait for it to hit us in the face. Nevertheless, as described by Ms. Atwood, the waiting deafens us. â€Å"Then there’s two of us. This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness.† (21-27) She tells us in this quote that even though there is an â€Å"us†, the word love is much...

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Project Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words - 5

Project Management - Essay Example Further, a project is highly resource intensive. In this context, a project life cycle denotes a logical sequence of activities that are employed to realize all goals and objectives associated with the project. Irrespective of the complexity or scope of the project, it must undergo several sequential stages during its lifetime. The project life cycle comprises four main stages (Kerzner, 2009): The planning phase primarily comprises the decomposition of the project into simpler tasks or segments that can be achieved individually with an adequate amount of interaction and coordination amongst them. For the purpose of the above question, the roles and activities of a project manager will be discussed within the last two stages of the project life cycle namely the implementation and completion phases. Haynes (2003) believes that the primary consideration for the project manager in this phase is to ensure that all major activities are executed correctly besides verifying whether proper control and monitoring is in place over all such activities. The implementation stage is the point where the planned solution is brought into existence to realize the specific requirements outlined under the problems being solved or purposes being realized. For example, in the case of systems and product development, an elaborate design identifying and accommodating all the major requirements is developed. The convergence between this design and the actual product being developed is evaluated through testing, constructing prototypes and by gathering reviews from major stakeholders. During the latter stages of this phase, there is a heavy effort among members of the project organization to begin planning for final activities like production, testing, maintenance and support. These subsequent activities also require considerable planning on a constant basis to take account of ongoing changes to the final outcomes and the supporting environment. Some of the

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Deaf culture. This paper contains answers for three questions about Assignment

Deaf culture. This paper contains answers for three questions about Deaf Again Book - Assignment Example Moreover, he does not need to speak openly or wear a hearing aid because they could easily communicate, because they were also Deaf. They understand that sign language is an optimum way to communicate with him; therefore, he does not struggle when he communicates with them. As for his hearing grandparents, the experience is opposite as he has to read their lips, speak plainly, wear a hearing aid, and act as a hearing individual; a process that is quite challenging for him. The second difference was their perspective toward deafness. His Deaf grandparents view deafness as a cultural difference between them and hearing individuals. They were very proud of being Deaf. They do not consider themselves as a disabled or consider deafness as something that needs fixing. On the other hand, his hearing grandparents were viewing deafness as a disability and something that needs to be fixed. Therefore, they reject the use of sign language and encourage him to use speech in his communication. In addition, they often felt sorry for him; as they try to improve his speaking skills. The last difference was the Dinner Table Syndrome. Anytime her visits his Deaf grandparents, he does not feel the isolated and enjoys sharing stories, joking, and all kinds of conversation with them via sign language. In contrast, when he visits his hearing grandparents, he feels left out at the dinner table, because he cannot participate freely as the talk, share their stories, and joke through spoken language. The author indicates that there is a critical period for language acquisition for Deaf children; which is usually during the first five years of age. He pointed out that the Deaf parents must focus on sign language accessibility during this period of the Deaf child’s life by allowing their child to interact with his/her Deaf peers and involve in Deaf community activities. He explained that early exposure to sign language during

Monday, November 18, 2019

No more excuses, Hollywood needs to hire more female directors Research Paper

No more excuses, Hollywood needs to hire more female directors - Research Paper Example Sexism in Hollywood is real and such unacceptable situation for female film directors persists partially because the society at large is reluctant to take measures in order to address the problem and fix it once and for all. A young film director Lexi Alexander is not the only one who might think that Hollywood needs to put lame excuses aside and finally start hiring more female film directors. However, she is obviously one of few in film industry, who has courage to admit that the problem of gender inequality in Hollywood is not solved today just because the troubleshooting has been sabotaged at the highest level for years. There is no need to unmask conspiracy in here but it is utterly important to understand that the problem of sexism in Hollywood cannot be solved if it is only talked about with no real practical steps being taken to change the situation for better. And the first step for those, who have a enough enthusiasm to eliminate gender-based discriminatory practices, might be tapping out and acknowledging the fact that the main problem within the context of gender inequality in Hollywood is... indifference. As a matter of fact, male film directors are satisfied with the way it is right now in Hollywood, even if nobody articulates that. Those who are in charge of major Hollywood filmmaking companies are not interested in changing the existing status quo either because they are sexists themselves, who consciously encroach on female directors legitimate rights, or they are unaware of the problem and believe that there is just not enough female film directors in movie-making industry. Those who are unwilling to fix the problem of gender inequality within the framework of film industry often say that there are not enough female film directors to choose from and women are just not interested in directing the way

Friday, November 15, 2019

Analysis of Healthcare in California

Analysis of Healthcare in California By Team Bluefish: Brenda Benavides Liyang Hayworth Janelle Moulder Jesse Phillips Timothy Weigand Melecia Wright Introduction In recent years, United States healthcare expenditure focused on expanding health care coverage and increasing access to medical services. For example, the state of California has been grappling with the burden of cardio-metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Though billions of dollars are spent annually to treat these lifestyle diseases, the prevalence of both obesity and diabetes is still on the rise (Meng, Pickett, Babey, Davis, Goldstein, 2014; Mirzadehgan, Harrison, DiSogra, 2004). While access to basic health services is critical to maintaining health status, it is important to also acknowledge and capitalize on the roles of social, economic and/or environmental determinants contexts within which people live as they hold tremendous potential to positively influence health status. The objective of this Issues Summary is to address the current status of health care spending in California and demonstrate how an emphasis on the underlying social, economic, and environmental determinants of health may reduce financial hardship for the state while managing its most problematic chronic diseases more effectively in the long term. Background History Although health care spending in California is high, quality of care for individuals is low. Quality of care remains low because approximately 20% of California’s population is uninsured, and the majority of these individuals avoids seeing a doctor until emergency care is required (Helfand, 2011; â€Å"Emergency as normal†, 2002). This reliance on emergency care, which should act as a safety net and not a patient’s primary source of health care, leads to steep health care costs. Healthcare spending in California has come under scrutiny since the passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. In that year’s general elections alone, two health care spending measures were approved for the ballot. Proposition 45 would force health insurance companies to be more transparent about rate hikes and increase accountability through mandated review of requested rate changes. The other, Proposition 46, was meant to increase accountability from healthcare providers. The measure specifically required random drug testing for doctors and that those found to be impaired would face disciplinary action from the California Medical Board. Proposition 46 also proposed an increased cap on pain and suffering damages from medical negligence lawsuits. These propositions encourage increased vigilance from doctors with the aim of ultimately improving the quality of the services administered. However popular, neither of these propositions capitalized on t he potential for decreasing direct healthcare expenditures while increasing quality of care. With the increased financial cost of cardio-metabolic disease, Californians have recognized the strain that chronic disease such as diabetes and obesity-related illnesses put on the state’s health care system, as evidenced by recent policies such as Senate Bill 1000, which outlines the potential consequences of soda consumption and subsequently reduce its demand (â€Å"Warning Labels on Sugary Drinks†). Providing health education and more affordable preventative care services to vulnerable populations can significantly reduce the burden of chronic disease and its related healthcare costs. Current Status In 2011, nearly one-third of hospitalizations among Californians age 35 and older were related to diabetes; interestingly, only 8.4% of California adults had diabetes (Meng et al., 2014). According to the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) in 2009, 22.7% of California adults were obese based on their body mass index (Cook et al., 2013). Obesity is strongly associated with the incidence of chronic diseases, including coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and hypertension (Cook et al., 2013). The rising prevalence of obesity and diabetes in the United States is of particular concern among low income and minority populations (Melius, 2013). Researchers have shown that income is negatively associated with adolescent obesity: youth from low-income families were more likely to be obese than their higher income counterparts (Babey, Hastert, Wolstein, Diamant, 2010). This inverse correlation suggests that a successful intervention against obesity and its related diseases should address the conditions that drive differential behaviour and nutritional patterns in people of various socioeconomic strata (Melius, 2013). One such intervention is the proposed â€Å"soda tax† that will be on the ballot in Berkeley and San Francisco in this November’s general election. Evidence suggests that when prices of sugary drinks increase, â€Å"consumers, including low-income consumers, [make] more nutritious purchases† (Varney, 2014). The â€Å"soda tax† is estimate d to â€Å"prevent 240,000 cases of diabetes per year† according to Dr. Bibbins-Domingo, a professor of medicine at UCSF, who co-authored a study on the tax (Cook, 2014). In addition, the tax revenue generated by this measure may be utilized for programs focused on childhood nutrition (Cook, 2014). While taxes on unhealthy foods may be highly controversial, California may consider adopting other strategies that target nutritional choices and low-income populations throughout the state. Differential factors in the physical environment are also an issue. For instance, low income diets and neighbourhoods are characterized by low intake of vegetables and high consumption of fast food due to the lack of supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods (Melius, 2013). Additionally, access to public parks and other sites of recreation encourage increased physical activity, which can influence the development of obesity and diabetes (Melius, 2013). However, public parks are more likely to be absent or in a state of disrepair in low-income neighborhoods, due to limited funding or resources. Zoning regulations and incentives programs can be effective ways to produce changes in the physical environment. Finally, home environments that do not encourage healthy eating habits from an early age or encourage regular physical activity contribute to the development of obesity-related conditions (Meng et al., 2014). However, healthy eating habits and a healthy, active lifestyle is a learned behavior, which requires adequate health education, particularly early in life. Diabetes and obesity, and their comorbid conditions are expected to continue to increase in prevalence. It is absolutely essential to address the underlying factors contributing to obesity-related illnesses. With the current state of health care expenditures for acute care of largely preventable conditions, it is imperative that California consider measures that will maximize health status within the confines of a tight state health care budget (Meng et al., 2014; Helfand, 2011). These measures must include increasing access to preventative care or early intervention in the care of chronic disease. Recommendations Pandemic obesity and diabetes in the state of California and across the nation is a call to action to develop prevention strategies, rather than solely focusing and relying on providing primary health care. Both lack of physical activity and poor diet (high carbohydrate, high fat, and low fiber intake) increase the risk of developing obesity and diabetes. As such, our proposed policies are 1) establishing amicable environments encouraging physical activities 2) promoting healthy and nutritious dietary intake at a young age and 3) providing access to affordable preventive health care. The proposed policies intend to modify underlying causal determinants of disease and therefore improve the health of the general population and reduce health care related costs. Recent surveys and research on California’s population have shown that diabetes and obesity will continue to be of significant concern for the health status of the state’s population in coming years. While creating an environment where people can exercise and engage in regular physical activity and ensuring access to affordable health care are important steps to take in order to manage these diseases, we recommend prioritizing social policies aimed at improving nutrition and lifestyle choices. Californians are receptive towards policies that address social determinants of health, including early childhood nutrition, and these policies can have a tremendous impact on health outcomes in the long term at a lower cost than would be required of policies that simply increase health care services. Two policies recently approved in California that address social determinants of health are Senate Bill 402 and Assembly Bill 290. Senate Bill 402 was enacted in 2013 and requires that all hospitals with a prenatal unit adopt an infant-feeding policy that is equivalent to â€Å"Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding† (De Leà ³n, Pavley, 2013). It was adopted to manage obesity in California by addressing early life nutrition, supported by evidence that â€Å"early infant-feeding practices can affect later growth and development, particularly with regard to obesity† (De Leà ³n, Pavley, 2013). Assembly Bill 290 also aims to prevent obesity by ensuring that child care centers have an employee with â€Å"at least one hour of childhood nutrition training† as part of an already required health and safety training (California Senate, 2013). The bill targets child care centers because child care participation is at an all-time high, so they are a great space to reach a l arge number of youth at an age when â€Å"lifelong nutrition habits are formed† (California Senate, 2013). These policies have great potential to stem obesity and its associated chronic diseases and reduce healthcare costs in the future. In order to achieve our goals to positively influence health status in California, we recommend enlisting public health practitioners more frequently in the policy making process. With their background in health, social and economic determinants, and fluency in interpreting data from academically-driven research, public health practitioners are an untapped resource for policymakers. In fostering this collaboration between public health providers and our state policymakers, we will effectively bridge the data gap and provide the opportunity to maximize health status, while minimizing health care expenditures. The collaboration would promote active assessment of the impact of policy change, which can increase recognition of social determinants of health and of inter-sectoral responsibility for health (Oxford, 2013). References Author Unknown (Jun 2002). Emergency as normal. The Economist. Retrieved from  http://www.economist.com/node/1168001 Author Unknown. (n.d.). Warning Labels on Sugary Drinks. California Center for Public Health  Advocacy. Retrieved from  http://www.publichealthadvocacy.org/resources/warninglabel/WarningLabel_PressKit_FINAL.pdf Babey, S., Hastert, T., Wolstein, J., Diamant, A. (Nov 2010). Income disparities in obesity trends  among California adolescents. American Journal of Public Health, 100(11):2149-55. Retrieved from  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951974/ Babey, S., Wolstein, J., Krumholz, S., Robertson, B., Diamant, A. (Mar 2013). Health Policy  Brief: Physical Activity, Park Access and Park Use among California Adolescents. UCLA Center for Health Policy. Research. Retrieved from  http://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/publications/Documents/PDF/parkaccesspb-mar2013.pdf California Senate. (2013). AB 290 (Alejo), Child day care: childhood nutrition training.  Retrieved from  http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_02510300/ab_290_bill_20131011_chaptered.pdf Cook, C. (Oct 2014). Big Soda’s false populism. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from  http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1028-cook-soda-tax-poor-people-20141028-story.html Cook, S.N., Giddings, B.M., Parikh-Patel, A., Kizer, K.W., Kwong, S.L., Bates, J.H., Snipes,  K.P. (Dec 2013). Obesity-Linked Cancers: A California Status Report, 1988-2009. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Public Health, California Cancer Registry. Retrieved from  http://www.ccrcal.org/pdf/Reports/CA_California1988-2009_Obesity_v6.pdf DeLeon, Pavley (2013). Senate Bill No. 402: Breastfeeding. California Senate. Retrieved from  http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0401-0450/sb_402_bill_20130220_introduced.htm Diamant, A., Babey, S., Wolstein, J., Jones, M. (Aug 2010) . Health Policy Research Brief   Obesity and Diabetes: Two Growing Epidemics in California. UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Retrieved from  http://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/publications/Documents/PDF/Obesity%20and%20Diabetes%20Two%20Growing%20Epidemics%20in%20California.pdf Helfand, Duke (Dec 2011). California’s healthcare spending per person among lowest in U.S.  Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/07/business/la-fi-california-health-spending-20111208 Kelin, L., Ming, M. (Sep 2013). Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Leisure-time Physical  Activity in California: Patterns and Mechanisms. Race and Social Problems, 5(3):147-156. Retrieved from  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779616/ Meng, Y.Y., Pickett, M., Babey, S., Davis, A., and Goldstein, H. (May 2014). Diabetes Tied to a  Third of California Hospital Stays, Driving Health Care Costs Higher. UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Retrieved from  http://publichealthadvocacy.org/_PDFs/1in3/DiabetesHospitalStudy_PolicyBrief_FINAL.pdf Melius J. (2013). Overweight and Obesity in Minority Children and Implications for Family and  Community Social Work. Social Work in Public Health, 28:2, 119-128, DOI:  10.1080/19371918.2011.560821 Mirzadehgan, P., Harrison, G.G., DiSogra, C. (Dec 2004). Health Policy Fact Sheet: Nearly  One in Five California Adults Obese and Most Still Gaining Weight. UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Retrieved from  http://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/publications/Documents/PDF/Nearly%20One%20in%20Five%20California%20Adults%20Obese%20and%20Most%20Still%20Gaining%20Weight.pdf Varney, S. (Oct 2014). Soda-makers Try To Take Fizz Out Of Bay Area Tax Campaigns. NPR.  Retrieved from  http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/10/27/359325115/soda-makers-try-to-take-fizz-out-of-bay-area-tax-campaigns 1

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

How To Lead A Revolution :: essays research papers

How to Lead a Successful Revolution Profile For a Successful Leader   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are a lot of traits that a person must posses to become a successful leader. The examples I am about to present to you are just a hand full of the important traits. The first trait a group should look for in a revolutionary leader would have to be a strong military background, if you are going to war u must have a general of some capacity leading your forces into battle. The second most important trait that a strong leader must have is a good education, back then a good education was knowledge of literature and the ability to read. The ability to read would have given your leader a great advantage, your leader could have read a history book and he would have known what mistakes to avoid. The third most important trait is your leaders ability to command a large amount of people. If you have a leader who cannot control his own army than a defeat is inevitable. Also your leader must want to improve the well being and living conditions for all of his followers. And lastly he must be influential, he must posses the ability to sway the minds of skeptics who do not believe in him or the cause. Being influential has another benefit to it also, an influential person will leave behind people that will carry out your leaders plans in the untimely event of your leader being killed or exiled. A leader who seems to posses a great number of the qualities stated in the above paragraph is Toussaunt L’Ouverture. A self-educated former slave, who led a slave uprising in French-occupied Haiti. When the uprising began he was nearly 50 years old his intelligence of military skills soon earned him the position of leader. He learned about Napoleons struggles in Europe and he decided then was the time to act. In 1798 Toussaint had achieved his goals and he started on the rebuilding of a war-torn nation. He won support of French Planters by offering them generous terms, he tried to heal rifts between classes by opening a government to whites and mulattoes and also Africans, he set out to improve agriculture, expand trade and give Haiti a constitution. When he was exiled more Haitian leaders followed in his footsteps and in 1820 they were a free nation, the only non-slave nation in the Western Hemisphere at that time.

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Stefan Thomke

9-603-022 REV: OCTOBER 28, 2002 STEFAN THOMKE Bank of America (A) The banking industry is ripe for innovation. We need to grow through value creation and excellent service that is appreciated by customers as opposed to price alone. — Milton Jones, president, Georgia Banking Group â€Å"I wonder if we’re being ‘overrewarded’! † exclaimed Warren Butler to Amy Brady, the executive responsible for Bank of America’s Innovation & Development (I&D) Team in Atlanta, Georgia.As an executive in the consumer bank’s quality and productivity group, Butler led innovation and process change in Brady’s group, which was responsible for testing new product and service concepts for the th bank’s branches. In the company’s elegant 55 floor conference room on a day in May 2002, the two prepared for a team meeting on an important strategic decision that would affect how experimentation would be done in the I&D Market. Seeds of change wer e in the air at Bank of America.Indeed, earlier in the day, Butler had escorted an astonished visitor, a European banking executive, on a tour of some two dozen real-life â€Å"laboratories† in Atlanta. Each was a fully operating banking branch, yet in every location new product and service concepts were being tested continuously. Experiments included â€Å"virtual tellers,† video monitors displaying financial and investment news, computer stations uploading images of personal checks, and â€Å"hosting stations. † (See Exhibit 1 for a selection of experiments carried out in a single branch. Currently, the I&D team had 25 bank branches in Atlanta in its experimentation portfolio. Senior management, however, had now offered them additional branches across the country that could expand experimentation capacity by nearly 50%. This offer appeared a vindication of the I&D Market project, which had been launched as an experiment itself only two years earlier. This rewa rd posed some tough questions. Would increasing the size of its innovation laboratories aid or inhibit the group’s ability to develop new product and services? What would be the effect on the group itself?The issue of whether it was a dedicated research and development (R&D) operation or not had yet to be resolved. And, finally, what kinds of expectations would be placed on the group if its size were to increase so dramatically? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Professor Stefan Thomke and Research Associate Ashok Nimgade prepared this case. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.Copyright  © 2002 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www. hbsp. harvard. edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 603-022 Bank of America (A) Bank of America: A Pioneer in BankingMany innovative banks have gone out of business, often because they deviated from the â€Å"best practices† followed by most. — Rick Parsons, executive vice president, Strategic Projects When Bank of America was formed in 1998 through a merger between California-based Bank of America and NationsBank of North Carolina, it could be proud of a long and rich history that spanned more than 150 years. Under its last CEO, the colorful but controversial Hugh McColl, the company had gone on a three-decade-long acquisition binge that resulted in a truly nationwide bank.In the fitting end to an era of hunting, McColl left his last annual meeting wearing cowboy boots and jeans on his way to a turkey shoot in Texas. Toward the end of the 20th century, Bank of America was the second-largest national bank with nearly 4,500 banking centers in 21 states, more than any other financial services company and with most of them in the high-growth belts of the South and the West Coast (see Exhibit 2 for a map of the bank’s regional market share). In the United States, the bank served 27 million households and two million businesses and processed more checks per day than the Federal Reserve System.Globally, it boasted over 140,000 employees across 190 nations, over $8 billion in annual revenues, $360 billion in deposits, and some $600 billion in assets (see Exhibit 3 for key financial data). Yet, increasing competition ensured that Bank of America could not rest on its laurels. Like many of its successful peers, its growth had been driven by cost reduction a nd consolidation. From 1985 until 2000, the number of U. S. banks had dwindled from around 14,000 to about 7,000. These still large numbers—especially when compared with there being only six major banks in Canada— reflected the highly competitive nature of the U.S. banking industry as well as its regional focus. Driving consolidation had been a realization that while service was local, products were national. Despite this realization, however, banks continued viewing financial services as commodities, and this bottom-line orientation did not make for an industry rife with innovation. In the estimation of Butler, a senior vice president and industry veteran, â€Å"People’s expectations for banks are very low; in fact, they’re used to being treated badly by banks. To meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive environment, Bank of America had started decentralizing its national operations and encouraged branch managers to undertake more responsibili ties. According to reengineering expert Michael Hammer, however, the era of acquisitions had left the bank with â€Å"the loopiest organizational structure I’d ever seen†Ã¢â‚¬â€organized partly by customer, partly by geography, and partly by product (see Exhibit 4 for a section of the bank’s organization). As CEO Kenneth Lewis put it, â€Å"We’d talk about customer satisfaction, then go out and buy that next bank. 1 For the new century, however, things would change. Fortune magazine observed: The hunter will become a farmer. â€Å"Organic growth† is the strategy, reduced earnings volatility and greater profitability the goals. The plan is to make more money from essentially the same customers by selling more services. In the huge Consumer & Commercial bank, which generated 65% of earnings, that means getting a bigger â€Å"share of wallet† by encouraging 1 T. A. Stewart, â€Å"BA: Where the Money Is,† Fortune, September 3, 2001. 2 B ank of America (A) 03-022 consumers to consolidate their banking and—the Holy Grail—bring their portfolios over from Fidelity and Merrill Lynch. 2 Few banks, however, had formal efforts under way that would generate the continuous stream of new products and services needed to grow organically. Only in recent years did banks start filing for patent applications. When innovation occurred, it did so only in specific areas: the Fifth/Third Bank in Ohio, for instance, innovated on the cost side, while Washington Mutual (WAMU) innovated on the service side.Many large banks had pockets of innovation that quite often simply remained that— pockets. WAMU, one of the more innovative U. S. banks, had aggressively started opening traditional as well as experimental branches, sometimes directly across the street from Bank of America’s I&D Market branches. Taking a cue from retailers such as department stores as well as coffee retailer Starbucks, WAMU started its Occasi o pilot program. A concierge at the front entrance and several casually dressed roving sales representatives carrying mobile handheld computer devices answered customer questions.Several strategically placed teller stations replaced the traditional monolithic teller counter. Play areas for children also provided parents more time for banking. The first five Occasio branches opened in Las Vegas in April 2000, and customers opened checking accounts at twice the rate of regular branches. 3 For most banks, however, little sense of urgency existed. The State of Innovation in Banking Our banking branches haven’t really changed much in the last hundred years. If Jesse James brought his gang here, he’d still know where to go for the cash. Al Groover, senior process design consultant and I&D Team design lead One of the first actions Lewis took when becoming CEO was to consult several outside executives in areas from e-commerce to process management on what they considered to be â€Å"best management practice. † â€Å"Process and competence will win,† insisted Lewis, who also announced a Six Sigma quality program to reduce errors and streamline processes. In his focus on operational excellence, Lewis tried to rectify a situation that, according to a leading financial consultant, could be best described as â€Å"banks are very good at being mediocre at a lot of different things. 4 Innovation, too, would require a revolution. That banks traditionally downplayed product and service development was reflected by a near universal lack of R&D departments. The comforting, stolid shadow of the three-piece-suited banker, after all, still loomed over most large banks. New products and services in the banking industry, if and when they came, generally arose from marketing departments, which lacked the formal processes, methodologies, and resource commitments that companies in many other industries took for granted.In fact, even inspired senior executive s with sufficient initiative could, through relatively informal channels, bring their own ideas to test markets. Although banks had IT departments, these primarily supported ongoing infrastructure changes in technology and software. 2 Ibid. 3 WAMM Web site at . 4 T. A. Stewart, â€Å"BA: Where the Money Is,† Fortune, September 3, 2001. 3 603-022 Bank of America (A) In the late 1990s, however, several converging forces led Bank of America to launch its formalized system for product and service development, the I&D Team.First, along with other industries, the bank began appreciating the value of continuous experimentation and testing in its efforts to grow through innovation. Second, Internet fever had nurtured a spirit of innovation everywhere, including the banking world. Third, banks began realizing that value creation had to be based on the voice of the customer to grow revenue and deepen customer relationships. Bank of America initially viewed the emerging Internet as a wa y to overcome geography. This led to a strategy of moving customers out of branches.As a result, according to Butler, â€Å"Sometimes we were downright rude in our attempts to get people out of our branches. But eventually we realized that people like dealing with people and therefore branches were our strongest base. † Frank Petrilli, president of TD Waterhouse, the country’s second-largest discount brokerage, also acknowledged that â€Å"branches are a crucial customer acquisition tool which solicits 30% to 50% of our clients through the 160 offices in the U. S. The branches are continuous advertising outlets, allowing us to spend only $58 per new account, compared with our online competitors that have cost up to $250. 5 The question then became how to change the role of the branches to balance customers’ needs for a human touch with the bank’s desire for cost-efficient, high-technology-based transaction platforms. The strategists at Bank of America re alized that such a balance could not be found overnight; nor, in a world of changing technologies, could solutions ever prove permanent. A dynamic test bed for experimenting with new banking concepts had to be found. The Innovation & Development Team VisionThe Innovation and Development Market is a test bed for creative ideas to increase customer satisfaction and grow revenues. — Amy Brady, senior vice president, I&D Team executive Every day, Bank of America processed 3. 8 million transactions—including more checks than the entire Federal Reserve System. A typical noncommercial customer entered a branch every nine days and used an ATM nearly three times a week. 6 Thus, even a 99. 9% success rate would still mushroom into over one million mistakes a year and expose consumers to problems ranging anywhere from paycheck deposit errors to bill mispayments.It was feared, therefore, that â€Å"experiment† and â€Å"mistakes† would be considered synonymous. Yet i f consumers wanted Swiss-watch precision for their money, they also craved Mediterranean warmth for their service experiences. At about the same time that WAMU was taking a page from successful retailers to create more inviting bank branches, so too was Bank of America thinking about how to experiment with the human dimension of its bank branches as well as the human-technology interfaces.To reduce risks of large-scale failure, the bank confined its experimentation to a set of bank branches eventually called the â€Å"I&D Market. † In the controlled environment of these laboratory branches, routine transactions could be handled efficiently while customers’ wishes for a good experience could be studied and experimented with. The bank could explore myriad questions: Could people’s waiting time in line be made more tolerable? Was there even a need for lines? Could technology-inexperienced customers relate well to American Banker, October 7, 1999. 6 T. A. Stewart, à ¢â‚¬Å"BA: Where the Money Is,† Fortune, September 3, 2001. 4 Bank of America (A) 603-022 using keyboards and other devices? How best could staff members coach customers about Internet banking options? The goal was to boost customer and staff satisfaction at bank branches, which would ideally boost revenue growth within a given customer base while secondarily lowering staff turnover. The original idea for the I&D Market came from different sources, including several senior executives. Proceeding with the Innovation & Development Market project was a no brainer,† according to Rick Parsons, one such executive. â€Å"What was trickier were issues such as execution and budgeting of the project. For execution-level leadership, we assigned Amy Brady, Rob Johnson, and Warren Butler, all managers with good track records of getting results on a day-to-day basis. † The team sought to establish a process whereby ideas could be generated, collated, and queued up for systematic , objective evaluation (see Exhibit 5 for its product and service innovation process).For the few ideas that made it through this â€Å"filter,† experiments would be designed and planned for the I&D Market branches. Successful experiments—determined on the basis of consumer satisfaction or revenue growth—could then be recommended to senior management for a national rollout To set up the new system for innovation, little upfront financial investment was required, as many team members worked part time on the project. Soon, however, the team grew to roughly a dozen managers, who often worked evenings and weekends.The 2001 budget allocation was $11 million, of which only $6. 3 million was spent on the team’s experiments. Management considered this allocation generous, even for a company with $8 billion in revenues. The company’s senior leadership resisted any attempts to carve out a â€Å"president-level† special budget for the innovation and pr ocess change team, arguing that, instead of enabling it to become another cost center, the group’s funding should be tied directly to the performance of the 25 I&D banking centers.These branches also â€Å"brought their own checkbook† and paid for part of the experiments themselves. Intensive initial debates had centered on whether the new group should operate as a stand-alone R&D center. Those in favor argued that a specific budget for new products and service development would protect the team from the day-to-day responsibilities of running a bank. Without such protection, the risk always existed that short-term market pressure would stifle long-term thinking and opportunities.It would also prevent comparisons between new concepts and mature products or even help prevent premature testing in live conditions. Thus, products and services under development could incubate properly without risking premature termination. After all, no automobile company would want a custom er to walk up to one of its dealers and drive away with an untested prototype car. And finally, creating an R&D group charged to tinker allowed for much more organizational focus on innovation rather than a group that was supposed to also show operating results.Many executives, however, felt that a separate R&D center would run the risk of becoming â€Å"too hypothetical and impractical. † Some feared that results from the I&D Market might then not prove duplicable elsewhere. Marrying experiments with real-world banking facilities would thus decrease cycle time for rollout. As Jones reflected on the thinking of the bank’s senior leadership: â€Å"We were really looking at being able to execute fast—so making a separate R&D center is harder. Furthermore, ideas in some R&D centers never get a chance to see the light of day. But the issue of dual operating and innovation responsibility was hardly settled. As one employee in a feedback seminar put it succinctly, â €Å"We are building a plane as we are flying it. † Indeed, the issue was still up in the air in May 2002. 5 603-022 Bank of America (A) The Vision at Work: Atlanta’s I&D Market Branches For a variety of reasons, Bank of America settled on Atlanta as the site for its I&D Market. The bank branches here boasted the most advanced communications infrastructure, with T1 and broadband communication lines installed.Atlanta also represented a â€Å"stable† market, with the bank’s last major acquisition there in 1996. Finally, Atlanta lay a stone’s throw from the bank’s national headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Of its 200 branches in Atlanta, Bank of America initially gave 20 to the I&D Team. This hardly proved an imposition on the Mid-South Banking Group. The locations generally came from richer neighborhoods where customers were more computer literate and interested in a wider range of services.The I&D Team also replaced the conventional à ¢â‚¬Å"one size fits all† mentality with three different types of branches configured to satisfy varying customer needs: â€Å"express centers,† where consumers could quickly perform routine transactions; â€Å"financial centers,† where consumers could access more complex technologies and more highly trained associates for a wider range of services; and â€Å"traditional centers,† which provided conventional banking services, albeit with enhanced processes and technologies (see Exhibit 6 for a brief description of the banking centers).The Atlanta I&D Market included 5 express centers, 5 financial centers, and 15 traditional centers. The group unveiled its first remodeled branch—a financial center—in the posh Buckhead section of Atlanta at a cost of about $1 million, for mostly technology. The other branches were remodeled to one of the three branch types and reopened shortly thereafter. Customers entering any financial center were greeted by a host at the door—an idea taken from department and clothing stores. Customers no longer needed to sign in to see bank officers.At freestanding low kiosks, associates stood ready to perform transactions such as opening accounts, creating loans, retrieving copies of old checks, or, in some instances, even selling stocks and mutual funds. None of these associates had private offices. Customers could visit an â€Å"investment bar† with computers where, once online, they could bank, check personal portfolios, or just surf the Internet. Customers waiting for tellers could pass the few minutes in line watching television news monitors above the tellers’ desks or observing electronic stock tickers running along another wall.Some branches featured â€Å"investment centers† where customers, sipping complimentary coffee, could lounge on couches reading magazines, newspapers, or financial journals or hook up their personal computers. All these nontraditional items w ere, in fact, experiments. The flat-panel monitors above the tellers, for instance, represented part of the â€Å"Transaction Zone Media† experiment (detailed in a later section); the instant retrieval of old checks comprised the â€Å"ImageView† experiment; the investment centers and complimentary coffee, too, came under experimental scrutiny.All branches closely monitored customer reactions to these innovations through a variety of means, including customer satisfaction surveys and statistics on such factors as revenue growth, deposit growth, and number of services used by each customer. Prior to introducing these experiments into the I&D Market branches, the team actually rehearsed how the activity should occur. So, in a â€Å"prototype center† in Charlotte, North Carolina, people acted out how the host would behave as he or she handed off customers to specialists.They choreographed how a bank associate (not a specialist) might spend only 30 minutes with a cu stomer to set up a mortgage. To maximize the fidelity of these prototype rehearsals, actual specialists mimicked the intervening steps. When all the kinks were worked out in this rehearsal process, the experiment was launched in the â€Å"living laboratory. † The Walt Disney Company designed and taught them a â€Å"Bank of America Spirit† program—demonstrated in theme parks and taught through seminars as a service approach to other industries—which was a principal motivator of the team. 6 Bank of America (A) 603-022The staff at local branches put the â€Å"Bank of America Spirit† into action in different ways. They got to know their customers better, more personally. And the results were impressive. Bank teller Kemaly Jacques recalled: â€Å"One customer had been boycotting our branch for the past three months because of poor service; now he swears he won’t go anywhere else. † The host, a key figure who guided customers as they entere d the branch toward appropriate services, became a great success story, though at the outset the role confused some customers, particularly those with complex transactions. â€Å"Where do I sign in? many would ask. Host Kilah Willingham, who had worked her way up the organization from teller to loan officer, described the host’s role as follows: I spend up to five minutes probing customer needs. I also intercept people going toward the old-fashioned tellers and usher them toward our innovative stations [where â€Å"experimental† technologies were offered]. A lot of customers are wary of technological change, for instance, of having the camera on them at the virtual personal banker station. My role is to make them comfortable here. I like not knowing what’s coming up next; it keeps me on my toes.During the early months, however, planning and running experiments tied up tellers and associates in meetings for almost 30%-50% of their time (later this would drop to about 25%). On one occasion, a fill-in teller, providing temporary coverage during one of the meetings, mistakenly gave a customer a â€Å"dye pack,† a fake wad of dollar notes meant for use only during robberies. As the customer walked out, the wad started smoking in his pocket and exploded. The Bank of America Spirit, however, persevered. Hosts and tellers emerging from the meeting showed their service experiments to firemen arriving at the scene. â€Å"This is so cool! cried out one fireman before opening an account. Experimentation, Learning, and Measurement At the end of the day, the most critical aspect of experimentation and learning is measurement. Measurements will defend you if done right; otherwise they will inhibit you. — Milton Jones, president, Georgia Banking Group Of the many difficulties the team faced, one of the thorniest was resolving â€Å"how to† questions: how to gauge success of a concept, how to prioritize which concepts would be tested , how to run several experiments at once, and how to avoid the novelty factor itself from altering the experimental outcome.Moreover, according to Butler: â€Å"While we were building R&D capabilities, those controlling the purse strings thought we were doing just a one-time experiment. † Thus, the problem list included one last addition: how to defend the I&D Market itself from budget cuts. The team selected concepts to be tested on the basis of available funding, business fit, and business case. To some extent, just continuing with the evaluation process served as a natural filter for ideas. But with many ideas and concepts that needed formal testing, according to team managers Joann Donlan and Mark Lewis, â€Å"Even top-priority experiments need prioritization. As a result, the team started assigning priorities (high, medium, or low) based on the assumed impact to customers, and Brady and Butler made the final decisions about which product or service concepts to actually test. By May 2002, more than 200 new ideas had been generated, of which 40 made it to testing, 36 were successfully implemented and measured, and 20 were recommended or had been already rolled out nationally. Only four experiments eventually failed—and one of these became a â€Å"redefined† concept. 7 603-022 Bank of America (A)Central to the team’s innovation process was how quickly people could learn from experiments, and measurements played an important role. The group amassed considerable experience and mastery of the subtle factors that affected learning. High-fidelity experiments The team sought to ensure that its experiments mirrored reality, or possessed high â€Å"fidelity. † Concepts that worked only inside their branches, after all, had little value to senior management interested in the scale effect of national rollouts. But high fidelity also meant high cost and commitment, which was hard to justify when ideas were at an early stage.Sometimes , low-fidelity tests using small focus groups gave the team an alternative during the very early stages of idea assessment. Experiments requiring minimal human intervention, such as news monitors over the teller’s counter, for instance, would likely work just as well in regular branches as in I&D Market branches. But not all innovations might transfer perfectly in the course of a nationwide rollout. For instance, would staff in a regular branch provide the handholding and attention required to initiate technophobes to a virtual teller?In such cases, the insistence by upper management that experimentation occur in a live banking situation helped ensure high fidelity and confidence in the team’s learning. Minimize the effect of noise Isolating the effect of a particular experiment on a bank branch’s performance meant being clear on what that effect was in itself, minus â€Å"noise† factors. Such noise could arise from a variety of sources such as seasonal p erformance fluctuations and changing market or even weather conditions. To minimize the effect of noise on learning, the team made heavy use of two techniques, repetition of trials and experimental controls.First, repeating the same experiment at one branch or running it simultaneously at different branches averaged out the effect of noise and thus reduced the possibility of obscuring the changes that teams were interested in observing and measuring. It would also ensure that success of a given concept would not rely on factors unique to a given branch. Second, pairing up two similar branches, one with an experiment (the â€Å"intervention†) and the other running under normal conditions (the â€Å"control†), enabled the team to attribute differences between the branches primarily to the intervention itself.It could draw on controls from the I&D Market, or even from other branches in Atlanta or nearby regions such as North Carolina. The best controls, however, were like ly the very same I&D Market branches themselves in a before-and-after type of experiment; if properly done, this would help factor out the so-called Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect referred to the implications of actually participating in an experiment and how that might affect its outcome. The team was aware this was possible, given the direct and indirect pressure on staff to perform. Willingham acknowledged, â€Å"We are spoiled.We get special corporate shirts, we get parties; every quarter we have special ‘let’s talk’ sessions. We associates can even contact the regional manager if we need. Other associates envy us. So we had better do well. † Rapid feedback The cycle time for any given experiment carried out by the I&D Team was specified at 90 days. This did not include a preliminary â€Å"washout† period of a couple of weeks during which the novelty for both staff and customers hopefully subsided. Obviously, shorter turnaround time for feedback would help experimenters learn and prepare modified experiments more rapidly.Occasionally, it became quickly evident after the first few days if a concept would flop or succeed. Only rarely, however, did the team remove flops prematurely. On one occasion the team canceled a mortgage loan program after just a 30-day trial, primarily because getting credit approvals took far too long. The early termination allowed for quicker revision of this experiment, leading to a successful mortgage program. Increase experimentation capacity The number of experiments a single branch could run depended on available floor space and personnel, among other things.Less capacity would force the team to cram more experiments into one branch. If no capacity remained, the team could be forced to 8 Bank of America (A) 603-022 do things sequentially, which, in turn, would slow the entire concept-evaluation process. If the team succumbed to the understandable temptation of cramming too many experimen ts in a single branch, it would be hard to analyze the contribution of each individual experiment—another signal-to-noise problem. A single branch might have as many as 15 active experiments running at any given time.If customers loved an experiment, however, it was left in the branch even after the 90-day trial period. This being the real world, after all, the branches could not simply pull the plug on something customers had grown to relish. Measurement team leader Scott Arcure admitted, â€Å"We often worry about changing too many chemicals in the mix and wonder about which one made it explode. As bankers, we’re not experts at this type of measurement. † The team planned to bring in a statistics expert to help sort out the effects of multiple variables.One of the bank’s outside research partners suggested moving to an entirely different market for further experiments. But the group was focused on its Atlanta market. With the customer satisfaction perce ntage higher than in traditional bank branches, some felt that capacity still remained for assessing additional experiments. In any case, Arcure warned that â€Å"the Hawthorne effect would spike again in any new bank branch. † The biggest problem with experimenting in a real-world laboratory was balancing innovation with a need for bottom-line success.Pursuing radical innovations would allow the team to explore entirely new possibilities; an incrementalist approach, however, allowed for improving current banking processes. Successful radical innovations would bring glory to the team. But home runs came at the cost of strikeouts. With its future not ensured, the team could simply not take outrageous chances. Many tests thus ended up validating ideas that were likely to succeed. Team members readily acknowledged such to be the case for host stations Transaction Zone Media and Bank of America Spirit.According to Teri Gann, a former regional executive, â€Å"Interestingly, and not surprisingly, many of our successes, such as the host station, have been simple and low cost. † The biggest impact so far came from Bank of America Spirit—technologically, a nonrevolutionary program transplanted wholesale from Disney. While the original vision called for a 30% failure rate, the actual rate in the first year hovered close to 10%. Butler commented, â€Å"We’re trying to sell ourselves to the bank. If we have too many failures, we just won’t be accepted.Currently, we may have failure within concepts, but not failure in concepts. † â€Å"We might tweak a process, but everything conforms to the status quo,† observed Wells Stanwick, Bank of America manager of channel strategy. â€Å"Could we try out a more radical concept such as providing branch offices similar to attorney offices in large office buildings for wealthy customers? † Deborah McAdams, banking center manager, agreed: â€Å"Let’s do something really i nnovative, such as trying out loan machines similar to automatic teller machines like they do in Japan.When I mention this, some people aren’t sure if I am joking. † Concepts that appeared intuitively obvious did not always prove so in reality. Such was the case for innovation and for financial payback. Team leaders wondered if a â€Å"breakthrough† product should be measured through its degree of innovation or through financial payback or both. According to Brady, â€Å"Our metric should be how an innovation affects the bottom line two years out, rather than looking for instant feedback [through customer satisfaction]. † Problems with assessing innovation soon surfaced.What might appear radical to one person, for instance a â€Å"mobile teller† to a technophobe, might prove less radical from a purely technical standpoint. Nor did the innovation team take financial performance into account, largely because of an anticipated lag of 18 months to 2 yea rs in going from concept to rollout beyond Atlanta. The I&D Market, instead, would settle on the proxy measure of consumer satisfaction. Many team members recognized the shortcomings of their measurement process. Gann stated, â€Å"I believe we’re doing the wrong thing by measuring the I&D Market staff on productivity, not innovation. But, she added, More learning comes from more radical experiments 9 603-022 Bank of America (A) â€Å"You can’t chase two rabbits at the same time. † Some team members pointed to WAMU as a possible benchmark, for it was â€Å"a competitor willing to change and willing to raise the bar. † The Transaction Zone Media Experiment A good example of the bank’s new innovation process at work was the Transaction Zone Media (TZM) experiment. Internal researchers, who â€Å"intercepted† some 1,000 customers at bank lines, noted that after about three minutes the gap between actual and perceived wait time rose exponential ly.Two focus groups with sales associates and a formal analysis by the Gallup organization provided further corroboration—and the TZM experiment was born. The team speculated, based on published psychology literature, that â€Å"entertaining† clients through television monitors above the lobby tellers would reduce perceived wait times by at least 15%. The team chose one enhanced â€Å"traditional center† for the TZM experiment and another one as a control branch so it could maximize learning from the experiment. In the summer of 2001, the team installed monitors set to the Atlanta-based news station CNN over teller booths in the branch.The team then waited for a week’s washout period to allow the novelty to wear off before measuring results for the subsequent two weeks. Results from the TZM-equipped branch showed that the number of people who overestimated their actual wait times dropped from 32% to 15%. During the same period, none of the other branches reported drops of this magnitude. In fact, the control branch saw an increase in over-estimated wait times from 15%–26% (see Exhibit 7 for results from the experiment). Though these were encouraging results, the team still had to prove to senior management that TZM could positively affect the corporate bottom line.To do so, the team relied on a model that used the easily measurable â€Å"customer satisfaction index† (based on a 30-question survey) as a proxy for future revenue growth. Prior studies indicated that every one-point improvement in a customer satisfaction index corresponded to $1. 40 in added annual revenue per household from increased customer purchases and retention. A banking center (branch) with a customer base of 10,000 households would thus increase its annual revenues by $28,000 should the index increase by just two points.Percentages generally ranged in the mid-80s in Atlanta’s I&D Market and in the high 70s to low 80s nationally. The team me asured an overall 1. 7% increase after installation of the TZM monitors. Sufficiently encouraged, it entered a second phase, to study and optimize the impact of more varied programming, advertising, and sound speaker parameters. While the benefits of the TZM program were laudable, the team now had to consider whether they outweighed the costs. Studies indicated that it would cost some $22,000 to install the special TV monitors at each I&D Market branch.For a national rollout, the estimated economies of scale would bring costs down to about $10,000 per site. Incentive and Compensation Issues: Tellers Do Not Like Change Another thorny â€Å"how to† issue the team faced was how to motivate its staff. Could—and should—the performance of employees who were part of continuous experimentation be measured and rewarded conventionally? At the Atlanta branches, Bank of America tellers earned about $20,000 a year; annual turnover averaged about 50%. The next step up from te ller was sales associate; people in this job helped 10 Bank of America (A) 603-022 ustomers start up savings or checking accounts, fill out mortgage applications, notarize documents, and entice customers with new services. At I&D Market branches, some associates could serve as hosts—making many decisions without bringing in the branch manager. Some 30%–50% of associates’ compensation derived from performance bonuses based on a decade-old point system that used sales quotas—where points varied according to product, customer satisfaction, local market demographics, as well as managerial discretion. Given this system, associates were tempted to ignore customers’ actual needs. For instance, they would encourage customers to open up a checking account, which yields one point, rather than a savings account, which yields none,† said an internal financial consultant. For the first several months, the I&D Market maintained the conventional incentive s cheme. The sales associates seemed to relish the additional pressure. But it soon became apparent that they would have to spend as much as a quarter of their time in special training sessions, not to mention â€Å"alternate† time working as hosts, an experiment that yielded no bonus points.The staff, thus, began feeling disadvantaged by their rewards as hosts, since they faced the same monthly quota of points despite having less time with customers as part of an actual selling activity. For some, however, being part of the experiment proved reward in itself. â€Å"I would not go back to my old job,† said one associate who looked forward to working every morning. â€Å"It would be like stepping several years back in terms of technology and service. † Annual â€Å"Bank of America Spirit† motivational sessions with vibrant music and motivational speakers reinforced this sense of exclusivity.Yet cracks in the prevailing incentive scheme began showing. â€Å" Let’s be realistic,† one sales associate admitted, â€Å"you can’t be happy all day long; sometimes you have to fake it. † In January 2001, senior management switched associates in all 25 branches to fixed-incentive compensation. Most of them welcomed the change, which added to the feeling of being special. It also represented a commitment from top management to the experimentation process. But not all staff thrived under the new fixed incentives.One executive complained that â€Å"those in the I&D Market branches now thought they didn’t have to chin to the same level as others. † Another manager had to reassign an associate â€Å"since that person now sat passively at a desk; the team mentality of working for the customer proved foreign to her. † With all the attention and resources dedicated to the I&D Team, some senior executives echoed a growing impatience that it was time â€Å"to pay the piper. † Resentment from personnel in other conventional branches might also have fueled this feeling.The group already enjoyed more resources than other branches, and there was a fear that different incentive schemes would remove them further from the daily realities of banking. There was also uncertainty whether the concepts tested in prototype form would work nationally because of different market conditions. As Allen Jones, a regional executive, pointed out, â€Å"If a test is successful only under fixed-incentive schemes, then we can’t roll it out elsewhere. † With growing discomfort, senior management switched the staff back to the old point-based incentive system after just a six-month trial.Not surprisingly, with this about-face the behavior of the staff reverted as well. Hosts, for instance, became reluctant to send customers over to insurance agents because they got no points for such referrals. On two occasions, in fact, supervisors witnessed a host undertake entire transactions just to make his points quota rather than direct customers to associates. The about-face also led one staff member to question Brady about senior management’s commitment to the I&D Market vision. What concerned Brady and Butler the most, however, was the impact of incentives on the learning and quality of in-branch experiments. 1 603-022 Bank of America (A) First-Year Performance I see the following challenges for the I&D Market: ownership, evaluation, and continued support in a changing environment. The solution is to highlight successes, have a good batting average, rapid experimentation cycles, and maintain awareness at senior management level. — Milton Jones, president, Georgia Banking Group By traditional banking measures, the I&D Market performance appeared less than stellar. Overall deposit growth in 2001 stood at just 0. 5%, compared with 3. 7% growth in other Atlanta branches.In terms of revenue, however, I&D branches did about 10% better than traditional branches. Some ex periments proved quite effective; for instance, a â€Å"loan solutions† experiment generated an extra $700,000 in the first quarter in all 15 participating I&D branches combined. With all additional costs factored in, however, the I&D Market was not, at least on a pilot scale, a winning proposition. The team therefore wondered about how senior management would react to its performance in an environment where many programs throughout the bank were being axed.Were comparisons with traditional benchmarks fair, given its mission of being the bank’s product and service development laboratory? Despite just a slight rise in customer volume, many associates observed a larger spike in customer satisfaction, with some customers now coming from longer distances just to bank at the new branches. Another promising trend not captured by traditional measures involved personnel turnover. Except for an initial turnover spike, annual teller turnover had dropped from 50% over the past th ree years to 28%.In the last quarter of 2001, annualized teller turnover had dropped to as low as 20%, but it was unclear how much of this stemmed from employment uncertainties in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. At the same time, some senior executives viewed the I&D Market as the crown jewels of the Atlanta branches. The bank offered tours of its gleaming prototype facilities to customers, Bank of America executives, visitors from other industries, and even competing banks. â€Å"Everyone’s eyes are on us,† admitted Allen Jones. â€Å"Just last week, one of the bank’s top executives visited us. In 2001 the I&D Team received an additional five branches as part of a corporate reorganization that would increase each regional manager’s branch portfolio. While these measures increased operating budgets, they did not boost the research budget for experimentation and testing. Brady and Butler wondered how to deal with the unexpect ed â€Å"reward. † Some people even suggested leaving these five new branches untouched to serve as additional experimental controls. Ultimately, the five branches joined the ongoing experimental portfolio, bringing the total to 25. The new branches added much-needed experimentation capacity.Operationally, however, taking on additional branches stretched the team’s efforts thin, since it required staff retraining and the setup of additional experiments, let alone all the minor logistics of managing branches that literally involved running among them all day long. With the potential drag of these branches on overall portfolio performance, the team also worried about increased corporate pressure for positive results. A Vote of Confidence? â€Å"We had a good first year,† Brady said as the last of the small group took their seats at the conference table overlooking downtown Atlanta. [The year] 2001 was our year to prove the I&D Team vision; 2002 is our year to grow up. At the end of this year I will have to restate our case, but 12 Bank of America (A) 603-022 hopefully to double funding. † The I&D Team had been one of the few projects to survive companywide cuts, albeit with a smaller budget. â€Å"We still make a small profit in our branches,† Brady added, â€Å"and potentially, this could cover our salaries, but it is too early to say. † Next, Brady explained how the bank’s senior leadership had offered the group yet another â€Å"reward† of additional branches across the country.These branches could expand experimentation capacity by some 40%–60% and take the strain off the 25 branches that were piling up so many experiments. But only about half the team responded to the news with smiles—just as Brady and Butler had expected. The team had debated almost since inception the use of external control branches from North Carolina or even other Mid-Atlantic or East Coast regions. Some felt that geo graphy did not matter in this Internet age, as long as demographics, customer profiles, and size of banking centers were comparable.Others, such as Stanwick, disagreed: â€Å"The prospect of using, say, North Carolina branches as controls for our Atlanta Innovation and Development Market scares me to death. † Those in favor of taking on the new branches pointed to the limited experimentation capacity and the increasing testing backlog. In 2002 alone, 26 new experiments were added to about 25 on-going tests carried over from 2001, bringing the number of active experiments to more than 50 (see Exhibit 8a for the group’s growing idea pipeline).They argued that more experimentation capacity allowed for faster evaluation of ideas through the running of more tests simultaneously and reduced feedback times because of potentially lower capacity utilization (see Exhibit 8b). Alternatively, the bank could run fewer simultaneous experiments and obtain cleaner and more reliable re sults. They further noted that the team by now had gained much experience in running experiments. In any case, it took the same time to design concepts for one center as for 10.Having a larger portfolio of branches might also make scale-up and national rollout of successful concepts easier and quicker. By making a big splash within the corporation, the I&D Team could win greater prominence. Because the offered branches were underperfomers, the team would look good in case of turnarounds but lose little if these new branches failed. Those against taking on the additional branches argued that the current 25 branches (or even fewer) in the portfolio were optimal. Taking on five branches within Atlanta had been difficult enough.Ten additional branches would be difficult to manage even if they were all in Atlanta. How much harder would it be for Atlanta managers, who were already stretched thin, to simply march into another branch and say, â€Å"Hi, we’re here to test. † Sp ecifically, some pointed out that associates in other states such as California appeared more individual than team oriented. Experience had also shown that associates would need to spend a quarter of their time undergoing additional training. In Atlanta, increased demands on tellers and associates had led to an initial rise in turnover (before eventually declining).Who could predict teller and associate turnover in a different geographic area? Some executives further noted that a larger I&D Market would increase the drag on the balance sheet, potentially stifling innovation. Too large a market might also confuse customers using more than one branch. Brady and Butler jotted down the rapidly flying ideas. Soon they would formulate a recommendation to the bank’s senior leadership about whether to accept new branches into its experimentation portfolio. One thing that stuck in both their minds was, ironically, â€Å"failure. In particular, the need for failure so as to generate m ore learning. Failures had been few and far between so far—indeed, the last failure was that of a mortgage loan experiment whose post-mortem analyses indicated â€Å"red tape† as the cause, that is, too much paperwork at the back end. Hardly a â€Å"revolutionary† experiment, thought Brady; hardly something—even if it had worked—remarkable. For both Brady and Butler, the words of their superior, Jones, an enthusiastic champion of their efforts, rang loud: â€Å"So far, most of our experiments have been successful.Perhaps we don’t fail often enough. † 13 603-022 -14- Exhibit 1 Examples of Selected Experiments in Atlanta’s Buckhead Financial Center Media Wall Main Stock Ticker Assisted Work Station Self-Service Internet Tool Host Station Source: Bank of America. 603-022 -15- Exhibit 2 Bank of America’s Regional Deposit Market Position and Share (consumer and commercial banking) Source: Bank of America Web site, . Deposits are as of June 2001. 603-022 Bank of America (A) Exhibit 3 Selected Financials and Operating Data (dollars in millions, except per-share data)Bank of America Year Cost of goods sold Selling and administrative expenses Research and development expenses ROA ROE Market value Total interest income Total interest expenses Net interest income Provision for loan losses Net interest income after provision for loan losses Other Income Salaries, occupancy, and equipment Depreciation Total other expenses Pre-tax income Income taxes Income before extraordinary Items & discontinued operations Earnings per share basic from operations Earnings per share diluted from operations 2001 22,290 12,718 n. a. 1. 14 98,158 38,293 18,003 20,290 4,287 16,003 8,564 12,718 1,732 14,450 10,117 3,325 6,792 4. 8 4. 71 2000 27,351 12,255 n. a. 1. 2 15. 8 74,025 43,258 24,816 18,442 2,535 15,907 9,920 12,255 1,784 14,039 11,788 4,271 7,517 4. 77 4. 72 1999 20,906 12,281 n. a. 1. 2 17. 8 84,179 37,588 19,086 18,237 1,820 16,417 9,996 12,281 1,917 14,198 12,215 4,333 7,882 4. 77 4. 68 Source: Compustat. 16 603-022 -17- Exhibit 4 Section of Bank of America’s Organizational Chart Ken Lewis Chairman and CEO Consumer/ Commercial Bank Banking Center Channel Commercial ChannelSmall Business Banking Channel Premier Channel MiddleMarket Treasury Management Quality & Productivity (Milton Jones) Consumer & Commercial Bank Credit Processing Mid-South Banking Group Banking Center Channel Support Liability Risk Management Network Strategy / Location Planning Innovation & Development (Amy Brady) (Warren Butler) Source: Bank of America. 603-022 Bank of America (A) Exhibit 5 The I&D Market’s Product and Service Innovation Process and Activities 2. Planning & Design 5. Recommend 1. Idea Conception The Innovation Process 3.Implement 4. Test ! Accepts, implements, and tests ideas and concepts (â€Å"experiments†) ! Optimizes speed to market and cost ! Coordinates activities and decisions thro ugh stages Market Rollout = Go / No Go 1. Idea Conception Conceive Ideas Input: Ideas/Info Output: Updated Idea Queue Desired outcome Assess Ideas Input: Updated Idea Queue Output: Approved Ideas Decision Ideas Input: Approved Ideas Output: List of Prioritized Ideas Success factors Key measures Desired outcome Success factors Key measures Desired outcome Success factors Key measuresInnovative ideas generated through internal and external sources Bank awareness and commitment # of total ideas % of approved ideas Rapid design, build and rollout planning Minimal planning time Timing and quality of design Cycle time for design types Ratio of redesigns Successful implementation of ideas Successful integration Zero market overload Cycle time Market readiness On-time implementation Stable operating environment for testing of new concepts and ideas Fast feedback of results Meeting test and mkt. oals Test cycle < 90 days Operating results Idea evaluation and national market rollout Quality r ecommendation package Cycle time Clarity/completeness 2. Planning and Design Assign and Scope Input: Prioritized Ideas Output: Design Needs Complete Design Input: Design Needs Output: Design Plan Build Rollout Plan Input: Detail Design Output: Rollout Plan 3. Implement Develop Test Plan Input: Individual Rollout Plan Output: Integrated Rollout Plan Implement Idea Input: Integrated Rollout Plan Output: Implemented Ideas 4. Test Manage the Market Monitor PerformanceInput: Output: Implemented Ideas Data Results Desired outcome Success factors Key measures Desired outcome Success factors Key measures Report Results Input: Output: Data/Research Test/Mkt Reports Conclusions Improve I&D Process Input: Process/Output Measures Output: Enhancements 5. Recommend Complete Recommendation Input: Idea Test Results Output: Recommendation Review/Approve Recommendation Input: Recommendation Output: Approval Communicate Recommendation Input: Approval Output: Communication Source: Bank of America. 18 B ank of America (A) 603-022 Exhibit 6Banking Branches in the Innovation and Development Experimentation Portfolio Financial Centers (5): Provide ability to advise across product line with expanded people, technology, process, and environment capabilities Express Centers (5): Provide fast, friendly, convenient access for routine transactions with self-directed options and teller services Traditional Centers (15): Provide traditional banking products and services with enhanced processes and technology Source: Bank of America. 19 603-022 Bank of America (A) Exhibit 7 Data from Transaction Zone Media (TZM) ExperimentThe TZM Experiment: ! Flat-panel monitors above bank tellers broadcast news for people waiting for service. ! Do such customers perceive shorter waiting times to service? ! Are such customers more satisfied with their banking experience? Actual versus Perceived Waiting Time (Customers who wait > 5 minutes) D iffe re nce 8. 16 Pre-Tes t 6. 17 P erc eived Tim e A c tual Tim e E xperimental Site: 32% 7. 04 Post-Test 6. 14 Tim e (m in) 0 2 4 6 8 10 15% ! Prior to installation of TZM, customers who waited longer than five minutes significantly overestimated their waiting time (32%). After installation, overestimates for the same customer group dropped to 15%. Control Branch: 8. 48 Pre-Tes t 7. 38 P erc eived Tim e A c tual Tim e 15% ! No experimental intervention was carried out during the observation period. ! Control branch had very similar customer demographics to experimental site. ! During the observation period, overestimates actually increased from 15% to 26%. 9. 27 Post-Test 7. 37 Tim e (m in) 0 2 4 6 8 10 26% Source: Bank of America. 20 Bank of America (A) 603-022 Exhibit 8a List of Product or Service Concepts Waiting to be TestedJanuary 13 (4) (10) 10 0 10 (7) -8 (7) -9 February 5 (1) (6) 6 0 6 (1) +29 March 27 4 (1) 1 0 1 (20) -21 April 3 0 (4) 4 0 4 (5) +16 May 27 0 (6) 6 0 6 (40) +7 Total 75 (1) (27) 27 0 27 Process Measure Inflow of new ideas be fore assessment* Ideas put on hold/reactivated Assessments completed — recommended for design/testing — not approved Ideas moved to design/testing New ideas discontinued (before or during assessment) Change in idea backlog** * New ideas come from brainstorming workshops, employee input, etc. * The January 1, 2002, backlog of new ideas awaiting a decision (assessment or discontinuation) is about two months. Source: Bank of America. Exhibit 8b Waiting Time Waiting for a Resource According to queuing theory, the waiting time for a resource increases gradually as more of the resource is used. But when the utilization passes 70%, delays increase dramatically. 0 40 50 70 80 90 100 60 Percent of Resource Utiliza tion Source: S. Thomke, â€Å"Enlightened Experimentation: The New Imperative for Innovation,† Harvard Business Review, February 2001. 21

Friday, November 8, 2019

How to Write About Pets Writing a Book About Pets Step-by-Step

How to Write About Pets Writing a Book About Pets Step-by-Step How to Write About Pets: 6 Steps for Writing a Book About Pets the Right Way Writing about pets is a great way to share your passion and get paid for it!But thats only doable if you know how to write about pets in a way that others will actually want to readBecause lets be real, wed all love to gush about how amazing our pets are ALL day long, but thats not whats going to sell.I have some tips for writing a book about pets (or just writing in general) to help you out.Here are the steps for writing about pets:Journaling or free-writing about petsResearching writing about petsDevelop your pets characterDecide on the themeRead books about pets to learnBuild your pets author platformNOTE: If youre ready to start your book about pets, we can help you with that. In our VIP Self-Publishing Program, weve helped hundreds (even thousands) publish their books, even some about pets. Learn more about it hereHow to Write a Book About PetsIf you’re ever having a bad day at work, you may indulge in scrolling through some kind of social media app to get your mind off y our problems.As you scroll, something catches your eye, so you stop. It’s a video of cat with no front legs, learning how to jump, run, and play while still managing to be cute and adorable.You can’t help yourself; you smile.Not only is the kitty’s antics a little funny, but the story is also inspiring. Despite its disability, the cat forges on as if it had four legs instead of only two. Well, if that sweet little kitty can overcome its obstacle, you can get through your bad day at work.This is the power of pet stories.Along with making us laugh, pets and animals have a way of tugging at our heartstrings. Even though they’re animals, their tails- I mean, tales- humanize us every day.Pets and animals- big or small, hairy, feathered, covered with scales, paws, wings, or hooves- have a way of impacting our lives, whether it’s with humor or heroism.Either way, there’s a big market for pet stories and they give you a strong reason to write a book about them.Besides, anybody who has ever had pets always has a few stories to tell.So, do you think your pet/s have a unique story to share? Ive got some tips to help you share it.#1 Journaling or freewriting about your petsSet aside a few minutes each day- let’s say, 20 minutes or more- to write about your pets. Developing this writing habit is crucial to actually finish your project.Try to focus on one memorable event and write it down. This doesn’t need to be perfect; you can always revise later.If you are still feeling a bit stuck, try these ideas for writing about pets:Write about the time you met your pet for the first time. Were they given to you as a present? Did you adopt them from the shelter? Or did you find each other through some sort of happenstance?Write down something funny your pet did. Did they fail at training? Did they have an odd habit? Why was this memory significant to you? Was anyone else there with you and were they also amused or no?Write ab out a time you lost your pet. How did this affect you? How was their loss significant? What brought you two back together again? If your pet passed away, how did you handle your grief after?If you are still feeling stuck, try using these pet writing prompts to help you get some ideas to write down.#2 Research and notesJust like any other form of writing, you will need to backup your brainstorming with sound book research.This research will provide background information to your pet’s story to give it a fuller narrative and may help you to develop a theme (we’ll talk about themes next).Here are some research topics for pets and animals:Species/breeds: Research your pet’s species and breed. Does your pet fit these characteristics? Make notes of your pet’s behaviors and habits and see if they are common. How do they communicate (think sounds and body language)? Do other pet owners experience the same behaviors with their pets? This kind of research is espec ially important for exotic pets, like tarantulas, snakes, and turtles. It is unlikely that many readers of your story will have any kind of experience exotic species and/or breeds, so be sure to share more information with themService animals: If your pet was a service animal of some kind- therapy, police, military, leading the blind, search-and-rescue- research about those services provided and the organizations out there that provide them. These animals have benefited people tremendously and have very moving stories. If you have done any kind of professional and/or volunteer work with service animals, readers will find your insights and experiences invaluable.Adopted/rescue pets: Perhaps you adopted your pet from an animal shelter. Research the specific shelter you adopted your pet from, as well as how shelters functions in general. How high is the need to adopt animals? If your pet’s species or breed is one that has a high rate of ending up in shelters, it’s imperat ive to conduct research on this issue and provide readers information on it and how to prevent it. For example, pit bull terriers and huskies are two dog breeds that are known to often be sent to shelter; pit bull terriers are sent in because people use them for dog fighting and believed to be an aggressive breed, while huskies have extremely high energy and are very clever, both of which make them difficult to handle. This will encourage readers to think carefully about pets they adopt into their family and prepare for the responsibility they require. Perhaps you volunteered with a pet or animal sanctuary. Research the history and the purpose and mission of the organization.Pet care advice: Taking care of pets requires a great deal of responsibility. Each pet has its own set of care instructions, and some even require special care. What is the best way to care for this particular pet? What kind of expenses has your pet incurred? For example, let’s say you bottle-fed a kitten because it was an orphan. In your story, detail where you bought supplies for bottle-feeding, how often you fed them and how much for each feeding, how long you had to bottle-feed them, and at what age is best to finally transition from milk to solid food. Readers may find this information handy in the future.It may be wise to research and share some advice on how to encourage kids to be responsible for their pets.Sometimes kids are eager for a new pet, but once they realize how much work it is to take care of them, they quickly lose interest and neglect the pet they so badly wanted before.This is an issue that many parents face and often end up taking care of the pet themselves. It’s important to hold children accountable to their choices, but there are ways to do that without making them begin to dislike their pet.#3 Developing your pets characterIf your pet is still in your life, observe them and take notes. What are their habits? How do they interact with people and oth er animals? Do they do anything unique or peculiar? This research will enable you to develop your pet’s character and endear them to your reader.Don’t assume that just because you love your pet, your readers automatically will as well. This may be hard to believe, but it’s true. What makes your pet any different from others? You have to develop their character just as deeply and richly as you would a human character.Your pet’s story won’t stand out to readers unless their character stands out to them as well.Here’s some character development tips and advice to help you out:Detail their backgroundNote their strengths and weaknessesObserve unique habits or traitsCreate a character arc for themThe following excerpt from Marley by John Grogan is a great example of developing a pet’s character by using the rule of show, dont tell:â€Å"Just as we were reaching the car, we heard a commotion coming from the woods. Something was crashing thr ough the brush- and breathing heavily. It sounded like what you might hear in a slasher film. And it was coming our way. We froze, staring into the darkness. The sound grew louder and closer. Then in a flash the thing burst into the clearing and came charging in our direction, a yellow blur. A very big yellow blur. As it galloped past, not stopping, not even seeming to notice us, we could see it was a large Labrador retriever. But it was nothing like the sweet Lily we had just cuddled inside. This one was soaking wet and covered up to its belly in mud and burrs. Its tongue hung out wildly to one side, and froth flew off its jowls as it barreled past. In the split-second glimpse I got, I detected an odd, slightly crazed, yet somehow joyous gaze in its eyes. It was as though this animal had just seen a ghost- and couldn’t possibly be more tickled about it.â€Å"Then, with the roar of a stampeding herd of buffalo, it was gone, around the back of the house and out of sight. Jenn y let out a little gasp.â€Å"‘I think,’ I said, a slight queasiness rising in my gut, ‘we just met Dad.’†Even though we only see the daddy dog for a just brief moment- literally- we’ve learned something about John’s new puppy, Marley; he is going to be a big, wild, hard-to-handle, and happy dog.This scene is foreshadowing the kind of main character Marley will be later in the story.#4 Think of a themeNow that you have some done some substantial brainstorming and research, think of a theme your pet’s story could fall into. Themes in pet stories help connect ideas and issues with stories. Often our experiences with our pets coincide with life-changing events. If this is true for you, consider how your pet’s presence helped you through that time in your life.Examples of themes include coming-of-age, new relationships/romances, new parents, twenty-something years, thirty-something years, historical events, etc. You could eve n write a pet-themed cookbook with recipes for fun pet treats!#5 Read books about petsTo better understand the niche market of pet and animal stories, read books about pets.Here are some examples of books about pets you can learn from:Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog by John GroganSeabiscuit: An American Legend by Lauren HillenbrandDewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki MyronAlex Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence- and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. PepperbergFor more examples, you can check out thislist of animal memoirs on Goodreads.As you read, ask yourself these questions: What kind of impact did this animal have on the writer?What’s the theme of the story?What kind of research about this animal did the writer have to do?What does the writer do with this story that you like?What would you do differently in your pet’s story?#6 Build the pets onlin e platformYes, you did read that right. While many pets have an online platform, its necessary for yours to have one if youre writing about them.As you complete your pet’s story, begin building an online platform†¦for your pet. Having an established online platform will help market your story once you publish it, so come up with a plan on how to promote your story, and your pet.Here are some creative ways to create â€Å"buzz† about your upcoming book about your pet:Create an Instagram account for themBlog on your author website about themHave a bunch of videos of your pet? Make an online video seriesTheir online platform can be about anything- funny things they do, the two of you traveling together, throwing birthday parties for them, and so on. You can even write posts and captions from their point-of-view.In fact, this will even help you with building their character to make them more relatable to your audience.If you’re still feeling at a loss on how to do this, read some pet blogs and search social media for examples. They may give you an idea of what you need to do to get followers for your pet.Ready to write about your pet?Your pet’s story deserves to be heard. Start writing today. Give your pet a kiss on the head and put your fingers to the keyboard while you sign up for this training thatll help you make headway on your book today.

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

The Importance of Being Earnest Review

'The Importance of Being Earnest' Review ​​The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wildes most well-known and best-loved play, as well as being an enormous success in his lifetime. For many people, it is the apogee of Wildes work. Like Wilde, the play is the very embodiment of fin de sieclà © British dandyism. However, this seemingly frivolous play has a much darker side. Its critique of Victorian societythough delivered in a velvet gloveis every inch an iron fist. The play is a satire both of the hypocrisies of the society in which Wilde lived, and the damaging effect that these hypocrisies can have on the souls of those live under their rule. Wilde was to become one of those souls shortly after the first performance of the play when he initiated a libel trial that was to lead to his imprisonment for being a homosexual.​ Overview ofThe Importance of Being Earnest The play is based around two young men, one of whom is an upright young man called Jack who lives in the country. However, in order to escape the drudgery of his highly conservative lifestyle, he has created an alter-ego, Ernest, who has all kinds of reprobate fun in London. Jack says he often has to visit his poor brother Ernest, which gives him his opportunity to escape his boring life and have fun with his good friend, Algernon. However, Algernon comes to suspect that Jack is leading a double life when he finds a personal message in one of Jack’s cigarette cases. Jack makes a clean breast of his life, including the fact that he has a young and attractive ward by the name of Cecily Cardew back on his estate in Gloucestershire. This piques Algernons interest and, uninvited, he turns up on the estate pretending to be Jack’s brotherthe reprobate Ernestin order to woo Cecily. In the meantime, Jacks fiancà ©e, (and Algernons cousin) Gwendolen has also arrived, and Jack admits to her that he is, in fact, not called Ernest, but is called Jack. Algernon, despite his better judgment, also confesses to Cecily that his name is not Ernest either. This causes a good deal of trouble in our heroes love lives, as both women have a rather strange attachment to the name Ernest, and cannot consider marrying anyone who does not go by that name. There is another impediment to the marriages. Gwendolens mother, Lady Bracknell, will not countenance her daughter marrying someone of Jacks social status (he was an orphan who was found by his adoptive parents in a handbag at Kings Cross Station). As Jack is Cecilys guardian, he will not allow her to marry Algernon unless his aunt, Lady Bracknell changes her mind. This seemingly irresolvable conundrum becomes brilliantly solved when, on inspection of the handbag, Lady Bracknell reveals that Algernons brother had become lost in just such a handbag and that Jack must, in actuality, be that lost child. What’s more, the child had been christened Ernest. The play ends with a prospect of two very happy marriages. The Importance of Being Earnest combines a labyrinthine plot, the seemingly irresolvable narrative of a farce, and some of the most comic and wittiest lines ever written. It is, as can probably be surmised from its extraordinary to-ings and fro-ings and its incredibly unlikely resolution, is not to be taken as a serious drama. Indeed, the characters and the setting lack any real depth; they are, first and foremost, vessels for Wilde’s witticisms lampooning the shallow and roots-obsessed society in which he lived.   However, this is not to the plays detriment – the audience is treated to some of the most sparkling verbal wit ever seen. Whether luxuriating in paradox or simply in the ridiculousness created by the plot that Wilde has set in motion, the play is at its best when it is portraying supposedly serious things in an extremely trivial matter.   However, this seeming piece of fluff is enormously influential and is actually a destructive critique of the social mores of the times. The emphasis that is put in the play on surfacesnames, where and how people were brought up, the way that they dressbelies a yearning for something which is more substantial. Wilde can be credited, by producing a piece of polished decadence, with contributing to the destruction of a class-based, surface-obsessed society. Wildes play seems to say, look beneath the surface, try and find the real people stifled beneath social norms. Brilliant, inventive, witty andwhen performedabsolutely hilarious, Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest, is a landmark in the history of Western theater, and probably that writer’s greatest achievement.