Indiana Statesman For ISU students. About ISU students. By ISU students.
Indiana Statesman
Friday, March 30, 2018
@ISUstatesman
isustatesman
Volume 125, Issue 66
Listening, learning and leading Ann Rhoades visit campus to speak on how to build a better business Jack Gregory Reporter On Wednesday, Ann Rhoades, former Vice President of People for JetBlue Airlines spoke at the Tilson Auditorium about the most successful companies, why they’re successful, and how to build a successful business yourself. She outlined what she called a “values-driven” company – one that strives to put its values first and to instill them in their employees. This idea to build and maintain an environment in which both the leaders of the company and the employees push these specific values forward isn’t just limited to businesses either. These ideas can be used to build any kind of social club or other organization. Rhoades’ idea for building a successful, values-driven business basically consists of five parts: making a “values blueprint”, hiring “A” players, accountability/rewards, customer branding, and continuous discipline. For the first part, it’s important to know what kind of company you want to be and to specifically outline the values you wish to both live by and run your business by. By stating your values clearly, there will be no confusion along the way as to what you or your company stands for. Next, you need to hire “A” players. Rhoades described these employees as
those who share your values and strive to live by them every day and who work passionately towards a shared goal. She also described “B” and “C” players. “B” players are those who share your values, but won’t necessarily work passionately toward them every day and “C” players are those who don’t share your values and won’t work very hard to promote and support them. “The most important thing you can do as a leader is hire people with the same values,” Rhoades said. As far as accountability and rewards go, Rhoades said that holding people accountable for what they do is important, and not just in a disciplinary sense. Employees that do bad work should be worked with the see what the issue is so that it can be fixed, and employees that consistently do good work and go the extra mile and show that they care about how well the company does should be rewarded, and not just financially. It’s also important to establish a working environment that puts your employees at ease and makes them feel like doing good work is easy. Rhoades used Google as an example. Google rewards its employees with “social” perks rather than
monetary ones and maintains a positive work environment. For example, many companies have Bring Your Kid to Work Day, but many of Google’s employees are younger, fresh out of college, so they don’t have kids. Instead, they implemented Bring Your Parents to Work Day and it’s a huge success. They’re employees love it and so do the parents and it doesn’t cost the company very much, either. Employees want to know how they’re doing and many of them want to know if they can improve, which is why accountability is important. The last two key items of the presentation were customer branding and continuous discipline. Customer branding basically means that however well your customers are treated is how well your brand is going to be perceived. Many companies will state that their customers come first, but Rhoades says that the most successful companies put their employees first. If you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of your customers because they’ll be happy to do the work. Continuous discipline means to always strive to maintain the values your company has established and to revisit
“The most important thing you can do as a leader is hire people with the same values.” Ann Rhoades
Photo courtesy of Google
Ann Rhoades.
them to make sure you and your employees are living up to those standards. The main idea of this presentation, ultimately, is to try to be part of or to build a different kind of company. Rhoades mentioned in her presentation that when you look at lists of the top 100 companies, the same ones consistently make the list each year and it’s because of how they run their business. They are typically values-driven, “employees first” companies who do things differently than anyone else. She said, “Don’t be afraid to be a dis-
RHOADES CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
An ‘eye’ opening Conquering collegiate money experience matters with CollegeGurlJB Patrick Chavis Reporter The Cunningham Memorial Library has come up with a clever solution on a local level to the everyday problem of color blindness many people face. Starting in February the library has been offering glasses referred to as EnChroma glasses. The purpose of these glasses is to correct the color deficiencies that many color blind people face and give them a chance to see the world in a different light. Shelley Arvin, an associate librarian who helped suggest the program to the dean and got the funding to purchase the glasses and make them available to students had this to say about the glasses. “The main function of the glasses is to shade out the wave length of light where the overlap of color occurs,” said Arvin. “The glasses show less light and helps to divide the separate cones that would usually end up overlapping each other.” There are two different sets of glasses that the library offers, one for indoor use which have a lighter tent and one for outdoor use which has a darker tent to adjust for sunlight. She explained that these glasses were relatively new, only being available to the public starting about a year ago. This leads to many uncertainties about the effectiveness of the glasses and how they will end up affecting different people who have varying levels of color blindness. Arvin gave the example of her colleague Brian Bunnett, who is color blind, and stated that “When Brian tried on the glasses he said that the glasses did make images darker and for some images he was able to determine their correct color, but this did not happen every time he was shown an image.”
There were still images that he was unable to determine the correct color for, that non color blind people were able to correctly determine. Not only do the glasses not work 100% of the time, they also only focus on Red-Green color blindness. Since they do not have the ability to add cones that are missing from a person’s vision, these glasses would not be able to help someone that is completely colorblind. According to the National Eye Institute as many as 8% of American men and .5 % of women with Northern European ancestry are color blind. Although these percentages are low compared to the total population, this still leaves millions of people not being able to experience all the colors that people with normal sight are able to see. Color blindness is caused by a complication among three cones that our eyes use to see out of. These cones consist of long, medium, and short which are sensitive to different colors that give us our rich color vision. In rare cases some people end up missing two of those three cones, which leads to them seeing the world in black and white. However in most cases of color blindness, people have all three cones to see out of but these cones do not function properly together. These complications are due to long and medium cones overlapping one another, which lead to Red-Green color blindness. Researchers hypothesize that a long-term effect of wearing the glasses could end up being the gradual change in how someone interprets color without the glasses. If this turns out to be true, then potentially this would lead to the ability to being able to one day cure color blindness in all of its forms.
Jada N. Holmes Reporter An informational facilitation on financial literacy, presented by the Black Graduate Student Association and additional contributors on Tuesday, March 27, allowed ISU attendees to become more aware of financial aid opportunities and how to take advantage of them. Leading the event located in 138 of the Science Building was guest speaker, financial advocate, and author Jessica L. Brown—branded as CollegeGurlJB. With the diligence and collaboration of BGSA, the Department of Educational Leadership, and resources from Financial Aid & the Zeta Nu chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. students learned how to employ scholarship, Federal loan, work study and community involvement opportunities as a means of practicing financial stability while living on fixed incomes throughout their undergraduate studies. Representing BGSA was second year graduate student Tyrianna Jones, who reactivated the organization on Indiana State’s campus in December of 2016. Attributing the event coordination to BGSA Vice President and Educational Leadership graduate assistant, Ashley Robinson, Jones describes the objective for the financial literacy workshop as a need to present various options for a student to enable a secure financial foundation upon graduating. Lecture style implementation allowed the enthusiastic speaker to engage attendees with an essential segment relating to the recycling of scholarship funding that could serve as additional aid for those who are aware of it. The 28-year-old advocate, equipped with experiential knowledge and resources, first suggested that—when in pursuit of extra education funding—a college student must make it a priority to build solidified relationships with financial aid representatives. According to Brown, students who practice a healthy exploitation of financial advisement are most likely to receive extra money in the event that it is found and provided. Deeply invested into the teachings of Jessica L. Brown was an audience of approximately 50+ attendees, who took heed as they were informed of useful search engines and apps like Scholly, which assist in finding the money that pleasures a college kids pockets. Segmenting into explanations of
Photo courtesy of promotional poster
An informational presentation on financial literacy took place on Tuesday. Students learned how to employ scholarships, federal loans and much more.
internship possibilities and organization benefits, Brown urged students to not only begin their quest for jobs early, but also internships, which provide excellent financial gains. If there is any existing enemy to an undergraduate college student, it is the terror of unawareness, with an exceptional fear of loans and interest rates! Prepared with information on both maximizing and minimizing loans, Brown tackled the reality of student borrowing—specifically in the form of Direct, Parent Plus, Graduate, and Private loans. Percentage rates of 4.4 for undergraduate borrowers, 6 for graduates, and 7 for parent and private loans, students became informed of how excessive borrowing fiscally impacts their future—whether it relates to home ownership, credit building, and even professional employment. In other words, borrow only what you must, pay what you can early, and ensure that academic progress is satisfactory enough to generate more financial advantages; academic competitiveness may be the very
thing one needs to pay the fees! Guest speaker Jessica Brown successfully armed upcoming graduates with roadways to financial freedom, some of which are the following: 1) live within your means, 2) start a business (even while in school!), 3) build an emergency fund, 4) pay bills on time, and connect with lenders or collectors to reschedule payments to avoid penalty! Those who upon the cusp of graduation or nearing the finish line were—and are—encouraged to research job opportunities well in advance (6 months, if possible), secure their internships, view their credit scores to eventually build and pay off credit, and begin to build positive saving and investment habits. Senior Psychology major, Julienne Christian—also representing Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc—expressed satisfaction with the presentation, and the representation from ISU’s financial aid employees. To learn more about speaker Jessica L. Brown and her CollegeGurlJB initiative, follow her journey on Twitter and Facebook handles under CollegeGurlJB.