How to Manage Organizational Stress by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

There appears little doubt that stress at work is one of the biggest problems in most of the Asian, European and US companies and one of the major adverse influence on the quality of working life and work performance. Stress is a complex and and dynamic concept. It is a source of tension and frustration , and can arise through interrelated influences on behavior, including individual, group, organizational and environmental factors.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines stress as: The adverse reaction people have to excess pressure..It isn't a disease. But if stress is intense and goes on for some time, it can lead to a mental and physical ill health like depression, nervous breakdown and heart disease.

Despite all the business speak, people get seriously vague when it comes to definitions and raises question: What is stress? Is it a new name for an old fashioned condition such as unhappiness or overwork, or is it peculiar to our uniquely pressured times? There is something in the idea that stress isn't just about hard work or unhappiness, but about conflict, confusion and frustration. It's about the anxiety generated by multi-tasking and balancing priorities, meeting contradictory demands, about knowing where to start and papering over the cracks when you want to do much.

An increasing number of survey reports, perceived or actual, increases in levels of stress. There have also been a number of highly publicised reports of successful legal claims based on the effects of stress.  Understandably, however, there is also a level of scepticism about the amount of emphasis placed on stress, and a number of press and other articles feature the "myth" of work stress.

An interestting report from the Institute for Social and Economic Research suggests that claims of workplace pressure may be misplaced. Levels of jobs and mental distress vary systematically according to the day of the week on which respondents are interviewed. It tended to be because employees were working too few or too many hours. Stress appear on Friday and Saturday.When genuine dissatisfaction was found, it tended to be because employees were working too few or too many hours.However , the main cause of stress was money difficulties; caused by unemployment or debt. The research casts a question mark over the generous compensation regularly handed out by the course to employees claiming they suffer from stress.

Stress, however, is very personal experience, as is the response of each individual to it and their belief. Questions about the prevalent view among managers in Asia which seems to be that stress at work is something to be avoided after all. Although stress appears to have become public health enemy number one and is viewed as the culprit of myriad complaints, the term is badied about far too readily and there is a need to stand back and attempt to get things into some sort of perspective. A measure of stress is natural. A degree of stress at work is no unhealthy thing and without it nothing would ever get done. However, it is important to bear in mind that stress can potentially be very harmful.

A certain amount of stress may arguably not necessarily be seen as a bad thing and may even help  promote a higher level of performance. But what is the distinction between pressure and stress? "Pressure can be sen as a positive factor that may be harnessed to help people respond to a challenge and function more effectively. " Stress" may be regarded as a continuous negative response arising from extreme pressure of other demands and the individual's inability to cope.

Personal performance may improve with pressure, up to a certain point.Beyond that point, continuous pressure leads to a fail in  performance as the person is no longer to cope. Signs of this are fatigue, poor judgment and bad decision making . In turn, this can lead to serious business problems.

Research by organization such as the Health and Safety executive have identified stress, anxiety and depression as among the most commonly the most reported illnesses, and wider research has also indicated that stress, brought about through work intensification and conflictss between home and work, is related to the risks of disease and ill health.

"The result of unrelieved stress on the individual and on business are worrying. The result may be higher accident rates, sickness absence, inefficiency, damaged relationships with clients and colleagues, high staff turnover, early retirement on medical grounds, and even premature death... The cost of stress is huge. It is devastating to the individual and damaging to the business at a time when the need to control business costs and ensure an effective and healthy workforce is greater than ever. It is everyone's interest to tackle the taboo on talking about emotional problems because it is this which inhibits from seeking help".

Coping with stress
There are a number of measures by which individuals and organizations can attempt to reduce the causes and effects of stress. There are also many suggested techniques to help individual's bring stress under control- for example, changing your viewpoint , identifying causes of distress, laughing and telling jokes, working on stress reduction and appreciating that some stress can be useful. However, there are not always easy remedies for stress and much depends upon the personality of the individual. Techniques such as relaxation therapy may help some people, although not others, but still tend to address the symptoms rather than the cause.

 Stress inducing hazards are hard to pin down, much less eliminate. It is important to know how people feel about the things that cause them stress as well as which "stressor" are most common in a particular industry and occupation. Human resource policy should include several stress management building blocks within the organization structure including management education, employee education, counselling and support, critical incident briefing, and good sound management. Organizations also need to give greater attention to training, support and counselling and to the work organization and job design.

Effective communications at all levels of the organization are clearly important in helping to reduce or overcome the level of stress. However, in addition to good communications. The ability to hold good quality conversations is becoming a core organizational and individual skills. Unlike communication, conversation are intrinsically creative and roam freely across personal issues, corporate gossip and work projects. "Conversations are a defense against stress and other mental health problems. People with good social relationships at work are much less likely to be stressed or anxious".

A growing number of organizations are introducing an e-mail, facebook, twitter or social networking- free day to encourage staff to use the telephone or walk across the corridors to talk more with one another.

What Jolito Ortizo Padilla says about Fiscal Policy and Demand Management.

Fiscal Policy concerns the decision of government about spending, taxation and borrowing. Fiscal policy is an instrument of policy used to achieve three main policy goals or objectives:

• To improve macroeconomic performance- fiscal policy is used to achieve lower employment, lower inflation, higher economic growth and an improved balance of payments situation. It does this either by influencing the demand side of the economy, which is subject of this unit; or by influencing the supply side of the economy.
• To achieve a more desirable distribution of income and wealth- taxes and government spending are important ways in which government can affect the distribution of income and wealth. It can use fiscal policy to reduce or increase inequality.
• To correct market failure at the microeconomic level- government spending and taxes are used to correct a wide range of market failures including the provision of public and merit goods, discouraging the consumption of demerit goods, improving the mobility of labor and increasing competition in product market.

Demand management
 Fiscal policy can be used to manipulate the level of aggregate demand. A larger budget deficit or a smaller budget surplus will increase the government injection into a circular flow of money. There will be a multiplier impact according to Keynesian economists, where every $1 of extra deficit or reduced surplus will lead to a more tha $1 increase in final GDP. Because of this increase in GDP, policy which leads to larger budget deficit or smaller budget surpluses is known as expansionary fiscal policy.

In contrast, there is deflationary fiscal policy when the government decides to reduce a budget deficit or increase a budget surplus. This reduces the level of aggregate demand by reducing the government injection into the circular flow.

Expansionary fiscal policy should be used when there is a negative output gap and the economy  is in recession. In this situation, the level of GDP is below what the long term trend growth of GDP would predict. Unemployment is likely to be above average whilst inflation is low. The rate of growth of GDP may be below average. On the other hand, the current account position may be better than would be the case if the economy were at full employment, a level of employment where there is neither a negative or positive output gap. This is because in a recession, imports will be reduced due to lack of spending both by consumers and firms. Conversely, deflationary fiscal policy should be used when there is a positive output gap and the economy is in boom. GDP is above its long term trend rate, unemployment is below average, inflation is above average whilst the current account position is deteriorating.

Automated stabilisers
In the 1930s, large falls in export earnings and investment spending led to the Great Depression. Today, any reduction in export earnings or investment would have less impact on the economy become automatic or built-in stabilisers are greater. Automatic stabilisers are expenditures which automatically increase when the economy is going into a recession. Conversely, they automatically fall when national income begin to rise.

Government spending and taxation are both automatic stabilisers. When the economy goes into recession and unemployment rises, the government automatically increases its social security spending, paying out more in unemployment benefits and other related benefits. The fall in aggregate demand is therefore less than it would otherwise have been. Tax revenues fall too at a faster rate than the fall in income. This is because tax rates tend to be higher on marginal income than on average income.For instance, a worker paid on commission may sell less in a recession. Her tax rate might then fall from the higher rate of 40 percent to the basic rate of 20 percent.If household spending has to be cut, then it is likely that consumption items such as consumer durables taxed at 17.5 percent VAT will see falls rather than zero rated food. With the government collecting less tax, disposable incomes are higher than they would be the case without this automatic stabiliser.

When the economy goes into a boom, government spending falls as the benefit budget falls automatically. Tax revenue increases at a faster rate than the increase in income. An unemployed person will pay very little tax. Once unemployed person get jobs, they start to pay substantial amounts of direct and indirect tax> so aggregate demand is lower than it would otherwise be with these economic stabilisers.

Basic Speaking Skills by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

This article is dedicated to my sisters (Otilia and Delia) , cousins (Richel, Eva, Aurora, Margarita RIP, Florita Ilustre,RIP, Elsie and Rex,  nephew (Rexone), Aunt (Carina Ortizo) and nieces who are successful educators.

                    
Personal Qualities

Clarity
To be a good speaker you need first and foremost to be able to express your ideas clearly. Your language should be simple and you material organized so that it can be easily followed. You should avoid trying to impress by using long, complicated words. Of course, you may use specialized vocabulary or jargon in some situation but you should take care to explain any terms that may be unfamiliar to your audience.

As well as clear thinking, speaking clearly also means uttering the words distinctly so that they are easily recognizable.

Accuracy
You should also make sure that the words you use say exactly what you mean. You therefore need a reasonably wide vocabulary so that you can choose words with precise meanings to suit your purpose.

The facts you should be correct, so you should take care to research your subject thorougly and ensure that any authorities you quote are reliable. You should also avoid making statements which go beyond the facts and which might therefore be challenged. Statements which begin " Everybody thinks..." or "Nobody in their right mind would accept... " are always dangerous and open to challenge, especially since they are likely to create a hostile reaction.

Empathy
Always try to be courteous and friendly. However angry you feel, try to control your emotions and at least remain calm. Perhaps the best way to be courteous and polite is to put yourself in the other person's place. Try to make yourself feel what the other person is feeling. Putting yourself in the other person's place in this sense helps you to establish empathy for that person. This doesn't mean that you have to agree with them or their ideas, but it does help you to be understanding and be patient. Facial expression and tone of voice are obviously important here, especially in group discussions and interviews.

Sincerity
This really means being natural. There is always a danger when talking to strangers or people of higher status of becoming stiff and awkward, and trying to put on an act. This usually stems from lack of confidence. Of course, when you talk to your boss you may not talk in exactly the same manner as you would when you talk to a friend or colleague, but you should strive to be yourself as much as you can in all situations.

Relaxation
The best way of getting rid of these unnatural speech characteristics is to relax. When our muscles are tense, we have difficulty expressing ourselves naturally. Awkward movements are also the result of tension.

Try taking deep breath, This may help you to relax. If you freeze up with tension, you probably begin holding your breath without realizing it. If you can remind yourself to breath in natural manner, or even more deeply than usual, your muscles will be relaxed, and you will be too.

Eye Contact
The direction of gaze and length of gaze are important factors in synchronizing speech and signifying desire to be frienly, but it is worth reminding ourselves here how crucial eye contact is whenever people are speaking to one another.

A speaker who never looks at his or her listeners may be conveying messages like "I am not very interested in you", "I don't like you", "I am not very sure of myself, " I am not sure about what I am saying" or even " Don't believe what I am saying".

So when you are speaking give your listeners their fair share of ye contact. Don't keep your eyes on the desk, or in your lap or out of the window, and when you are talking to a large group move your eyes around the room who shows interest in them by looking at them, to a highly fluent speaker who reads down over their notes.

Appearance
How you look can affect how well others understand you. Your appearance reflects how you see yourself-"self image". Since your listeners cannot help but notice your appearance they will receive metacommunications from the way you dress and your general grooming. In most speaking situations (apart from phome conversations and the radio) people see the speaker and form judgments about them even before they speak.

Attractive dress and good grooming are obviously important in formal situations: the public meeting, the job interview and so on. But being "dressed up" or "dressed formally" is not always practicable or even appropriate and in some jobs it would be absurd. Supposing you are in the middle of a dirty job and you are called to the manager's office or asked to explain something to a visitor, what then? Well, your personal appearance should commend you. Even oil stained overalls can convey the impression that they are well cared for and that you consider personal cleanliness and tidiness are important even when you are at work, tone things down for work.

- Personal cleanliness and tidiness
- Dress and appearnce appropriate to the situation

Posture
Good posture is also important. Someone who props up the wall or slouches in their chair as they speak conveys a message to their listeners which may surprise them. Their attitude is showing. They are either tired or bored or careless, or all three!And the listeners are not likelu to be impressed.

Another important reason for examining your posture -how you sit and stand when you are talking - is that posture is related to voice quality.

If you should slouch over, hang your head or let your shoulder droop, the quality of your voice will not be good , because your breathing is affected.You cannot draw as much breath in your lungs, nor do you have a complete control over how you let out the air.

Furthermore, if you slouch or bend your head down, your throat muscles, jaw and vocal chords, do not operate as freely as they should, with the muffled, poorly pronounced results we have seen.

Poor posture also affects your voice psychologically as well as physically. The sense of not caring about yourself or about anything-communicated by poor posture-creeps into your voice as well. If you have a hangdog look, your voice will probably have a hangdog sound. It will be listless and spiritless. A whining quality which most people find unpleasant may very well colour the tone of your voice.

By improving your posture when talking, you can do much toeards instilling in your voice and your whole manner four characteristics of good voice quality.
- Alertness
- Pleasantness
- Distinctness
- Expressiveness

Vocal Qualities
Don't think that you can't change the way you speak. You can and do control your voice all the time. Listen to the way you use your voice in different situations, raising and lowering the volume, adjusting the tone to suit particular circumstances and so on. You can improve your voice if you want to, but you have to work at it. The first step is to be aware of the factors which affect the sound of your voice.

                           

The Mechanics of speech
Speech involves many mechanical skills. It requires a complicated manipulation of the diaphragm, the lungs and muscles of the chest as well as vocal chords, mouth, tongue and lips.

The vocal chords are rather rubber bands stretched across the ineterior of a kind of box called the larynx, behind what we call the Adam's apple. As the air in your lungs is forced up through the larynx and past the vocal chords, sound is produced. The sounds are affected first by the vocal chords, and then successively by the position of the jaw, the interior of the mouth, the tongue, teeth and lips. Of course, you are not aware of all this when you speak, unless excessive speaking, tiredness or emotion draws your attention to your voice.

To ensure that the sounds you produce are clear, your throat muscles must be relaxed, your jaw must be taut or rigid and your lips must be flexible and capable of assuming a variety of positions. If you have ever had an anaestheric injection at the dentist you will know what it does to your ability to move your lips properly to pronounce the words.

Pitch- a person whose voice has a high pitch may sound thin or squeaky or shrill. A person with low pitch will sound or throaty. When your vocal chords are stretched tight, the sound will be higher as the air is forced past them causing them to vibrate (like plucking a tight elastic band)

When people are frightened or tense, their vocal chords stretch tight and their voices tend to squeak. One way to relax your throst muscles is to practice this simple exercise:

Practice:
Take a deep breath then, as you breath out, say several short syllables, for example:
"She gave us all a short talk on art."
Try it. Notice how the tightness disappears as you exhale. It is in fact, physically impossible to breath out and keep the muscles tight at the same time. This is why deep breathing can help you realx.

Volume- volume is more easily controlled than pitch, but practice is still required to get the right volume. Proper breathing is essential to volume control and good speaking. Practice taking deep breath and letting out the air with just enough force to generate the right volume. Learn how to project your voice so that you can be heard at great distances without yelling or sounding strained.

If you can control your voice and speak clearly without appearing to strain or shout or run out of breath, you will impress your listeners by the quality of your voice alone. They are likely to assume that you also know what you are talking about and will find it worth their while to listen to you.

The right volume depends on the situation. You should therefore note:
- where you are speaking ( in a small room or a large lecture room; in a room where sound echoes; indoors or out in the open), as the location will affect how well your words can be heard.
- the size of the group to whom you are speaking
- background noise, for example the nois of air conditioning

Diction and Accent- diction is the way in which you say or ponounce words, and is acquired. To some extent it is affected by your accent. Someone from the north will have different diction from someone who comes from London or America. Diction depends on "articulation" and "enunciation", which are terms used to describe how you pronounce words:

- articulation refers to the way people pronounce consonants
- enunciation refers to the way people pronounce vowels

If people articulate and enunciate well, that is clearly, they will have good diction. Good diction is generally considered to be the result of being well educated abd well informed.

However, it is important not to confuse diction with accent. Whatever your accent, you should pronounce your words clearly. Listen to television and radio announcers to hear the difference between accent and diction. There was a time when "BBC English" was held up as "the way to speak". Nowadays, every possible regional accent is represented and is quite acceptable because the speakers pronounce their words clearly; so like your accent , your diction will tell your listeners something about you.

If you mispronounce words, for example, "labratry" instead of " laboratory", nucular" instead of "nuclear" or drop your "hs" or "ts" , as in "Ave you go" the le'er"?, or slur your words. , you won't impress your listeners. In some situations this may not matter. In others, such as job interviews, it could mean the difference between getting something you want or need and not getting it.

                                                                                  END

What Jolito Ortizo Padilla says about Innovation

Four years ago, this mission was submitted to a strategic committee to one of the colleges in the Middle East where I was a mentor, but outright rejected. Now, thousand of universities and colleges refers to this insight.  

Innovation involves the creation of new knowledge. At the same time most innovations are new combinations of old insights. They come out of an interaction where people with different talents, interests, insights and experience get together in open communication and willing to share their knowledge with others.

Innovation processes that neglect the needs of users are inefficient. Science based innovations that are not supported by experience based learning are not successful. Therefore, innovations are best seen as outcomes of collected entrepreneurship. A generalized trust among people in working life contributes to innovation.

Science plays a growing role for innovation, but without experience based knowledge about production, markets and organization investment in science has little impact on economic performance. Innovation strategies and policies need to be broad. Firms need to combine research and development with building a learning organization that includes networking with external organizations. Public policy that aims at harnessing innovation for growth needs to combine science and technology policy with institutional change in education and labor market systems.

We are in a learning economy where success of people, organizations and countries reflects the capacity to learn. Old knowledge becomes less relevant as technologies change and global competition transforms working life, making some types of jobs disappear and others grow. Whatever knowledge you have, it does not constitute a lifelong guarantee of success for firms or for individuals. This is very important in the designs of education, in labor markets and for strategies of organizational trade and unions. All institutions need to focus on how to facilitate learning.

Oil and Gas Sector in Troubled Water

Write a list of all industrial hazards you know and most, will be present in the oil and gas industry. From high pressures and flammable liquids to working at height, confined space entry and radiation, the list goes on. On land you can spread your plant out, take parts away for maintenance, repair or upgrade and get away from danger areas by truck ( or even running). More importantly, on land you can go home to a safe bed for the night.

In the oil and gas industry , a plant is packed into a smallest possible space with accommodation for up to 200 people placed in the middle of some of the world's harshest marine environments for 30 years. During a two week shift, employees work, rest and sleep on site and escape is by lifeboat or helicopter -you can't just run away from danger.

Repairs and upgrades are done in situ and take place continually. Nothing is the same to day as it was yesterday and change management enters the daily vocabulary. It may be something as obvious as a replacement part or a changed procedure or a less obvious change in some operating parameter. People make mistakes but the trick is to make sure that mistakes don't add up to disaster. This was clearly illustrated on July 6, 1988 hen a string of fairly incidents-none of which have been fatal on its own -led by the deaths of 167 people on the Piper Alpha platform.

You can's stop people making mistakes, nor can you design an installation that is foolproof. You can to manage people and manage change. Some people still believe that documenting procedures down to the smallest detail will keep everything safe, but who routinely reads the instruction manual or procedure in detail when doing a job? Management systems have to identify and manage risks, recognize weaknesses and, most importantly, work with people.

ISO and multinational businesses can see benefits that can be gained from the adoption of global standards and systems but people aren't the same the world over. You can see different cultures at different businesses in the same town, so why do we expect the same culture in different countries?

The TV series Oil Riggers may have been a compulsive viewing for some and perhaps it portrayed real life on a Texan land rig , but it bore little relation to work in the North Sea. Offshore drilling is certainly hard work and dangerous, but risk is managed not challenged. We may never really really know what happened on the Deepwater Horizon on 20 April-the inevitable legal battles will ensure that- but it has stated that it was not a result of a single failure.

So how do you audit health, safety and the environment in the oil and gas sector? What makes HSE different from quality? To answer the second question first, not a lot. Quality is a word notably absent from many oil company discussions. Instead the frequently used term is "integrity management". That tends to put the in-house focus on HSE and competence , with quality relegated to a supplier and subcontractor issue. But any quality failing on their part will lead to an increased HSE risk for the oil company as BP is now discovering.

Audit don't pick up every deficiency in a system and any belief or attempt to achieve that is doomed to failure. Far more important is to identify the culture in the company and the drivers : do they fit with the customer's own? Will the customer and supplier be able to communicate clearly with each other? Do they understand each other needs? As everyone involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster will discover , whether you are based at land or sea, taking cultural differences onto account can be key.

What Jolito Ortizo Padilla say about "Flexibility" and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes..

On the News:
Adidas, BMW and Unilever are among the best performing sustainable companies in the world, according to 2011 Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Launched in 1999, the indexes tracked the financial performance of leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.

The World Index analyses the largest 2,500 companies in the world, assessing them against long term economic, environmental and social criteria and lists the top 10%. The research includes evaluating each corporation's approach to climate change strategies, energy consumption, risk management and supply chain standards.

This year saw 33 companies deleted from the indexes and new additions that included Coca-Cola and Samsung Electrics.

The organizations listed are broken down into 19 "super sectors" and the top company for each was also announced. BMW topped the automotive sector and Unilever led the food and beverage sector for the 12th year in a row.

 A new index analysing the top 40 companies in Japan was launched this year, just weeks before the Japanese prime minister vowed to lower carbon dioxide emissions to 25% below the levels of 1990 by 2020.

In a business context, flexibility can refer to a number of different ideas. Today its most common usage is in the workplace where it refers to such things as flexi-time. But the word has a longer pedigree in the area of strategy, where it generally refer to a firm's ability to respond to changes in its environment rapidly and at low cost. in the (limited) sense that strategy is an unchanging commitment to something, it is the antithesis of flexibility.

A firm's strategic  flexibility depends partly on its liquidity, since its ability to respond speedily is inevitably determined by access to funds. More importantly, it depends on its organizational structure, on the way in which its units work with each other, and the freedom hey have to take decisions.

The trade off between flexibility and firmness has been a long running subject of management discussion. GA Business and Management Consultancy wrote" For a company to succeed over a long term it needs to master both adaptability and alignment-an attribute that is sometimes referred to a ambidexterity".

For adaptability, read flexibility, and for alignment, read firmness. The balance between he two, ambidexterity, is a term was used in this sense in 1976.

Sumatra Ghosal put the dilemma slightly differently, writing: "One of the most fundamental and enduring tensions in all but very small companies is between sub-unit autonomy and empowerment on the one hand, and overall organizational integration and cohesion on the other hand."

For most of the past century, firmness has had the upper in corporate strategy. Companies have set themselves on a particular course and it has taken a huge effort to divert them. A big company, wrote one author "is a bit like an oil tanker. There is no way it can turn on a fills".

What jolito Ortizo Padilla says about Strategic Alliance

A strategic alliance is a relationship between two or more organizations that falls somewhere between the extremes of an arms-lenght sourcing arrangement on the one hand and a full blown acquisition on the other.

In general, there are two types of strategic alliance:a bilateral alliance (between two organizations) and a network alliance ( between several organizations). They have many advantages:they require little immediate financial commitment,they get soaked and they offer a quiet retreat should a venture not work out as the partners had hoped.However,going into something knowing that it is (literally) not a big deal, and that there is a face saving exit route , may not be the best way to make those charged with running it hungry for success.

The most popular use for alliances is a means to try out a foreign market.Not surprisingly there are more alliances in Europe and Asia (where there are more foreign markets nearby) than in the US. In some cases, alliances are used by companies because other means of entering a market are closed to them.

One thing crucial to a successful alliance is a degree of cultural compatibility. Companies are advised for example, to pick on someone their own size. Alliances between very big organizations and very small ones are hard  to operate not least because of the different significance that the alliance assumes in each organization's scale things

Strategic alliances grew at a phenomenal rate during the 1990s.Some companies such as General Electric set up several hundred. But aliances have not always been successful. In 1998 BT and AT@T agreed to bundle their international assets into a single joint venture that started off with annual revenue of 11bn dollars, annual operating profits of 1bn dollars and some 5,000 employees. In 2001 the two companies agreed to unwind the alliance-at considerable cost.