Will Fewer Days of Work, Work?
The latest buzz in resource conservation involves the switch to a four-day work week. While schedule flexibility is not a new concept, it is gaining more attention as managers look for alternative rewards to give in place of bonuses. With gas prices around $4/gallon, a shorter work week could certainly be beneficial.
But will it work? Concerns about employee productivity at the end of a 10-hour day are worth weighing, as is the need to respond quickly to client requests and market demands. For example, it probably won’t work for an ad agency already pushing its employees to contribute long days to meet tight deadlines. On the other hand, an extra day away from the office could enhance the level of commitment and creativity expressed inside.
If successful operations won’t accommodate occasional telecommuting, flex hours or switching to a four-day work week, it is important to continue looking for other creative ways to offer positive reinforcement and ongoing appreciation. The perception of whether management “cares” or not can make a huge impact on employee morale.
Since so many of the senior executives of Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, etc. were exposed and subsequently jailed, you would think that every businessperson in America would have learned the importance of maintaining a high level of integrity in business practices. It is a real shame that some still have not seen the light and grasped the obvious. High standards, honesty, and ethical leadership all pay off in the long run, and the opposite is simply a path to ultimate failure. Wake up business leaders!
It's all in good fun, of course, but what makes it funny is that we've all found ourselves scratching our heads at times and wondering the same thing. How come we seem to spend so much more time talking about doing than actually getting something done? At work, at church, at home, even personally. If you're interested in how to change this paradigm and didn't get around to this resource when it first came out, I urge you to take a look at Pfeffer & Sutton's The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action (Harvard Business School Press, 2000). The book's certainly a great resource to read but also then to keep in a visible place in your office or at home where you won't be sucked back into the land of ideation. For a nice summary of Pfeffer and Sutton's work, visit this link at FastCompany There's also a nice summary of the book available in 
Next fall, Belmont University will begin offering a major in Social Entrepreneurship. The fundamental idea is to provide a practical academic curriculum to serve the fastest-growing segment of society—the millions of individuals that are creating a society of citizen change agents. It makes sense. This is where much of the new job growth is, not to mention that some of the jobs are the most challenging, ethically based and well-paid. Bill Drayton is a pioneer in social entrepreneurship who, in 1978, founded Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. Drayton states that the citizen sector is growing explosively. “It is generating jobs two and a half to three times as fast as business. There are now millions of modern, competing citizen groups, including big, sophisticated second-generation organizations, in each of the four main areas where the field has emerged most vigorously: Brazil-focused South America, Mexico/U.S./Canada, Europe, and South and Southeast Asia.” (For more information, go to 
It is encouraging that the scholarly literature necessary to support an academic discipline like social entrepreneurship is growing. Morris Bornstein’s book How to Change the World provides a kind of In Search for Excellence for social entrepreneurs. If you are at all interested or intrigued by social entrepreneurship, I encourage you to read Chapter Eighteen entitled “Six Qualities of Successful Social Entrepreneurs.” Indeed, Bornstein’s conclusion that successful entrepreneurs are the ones determined to achieve a long term goal that is deeply meaningful to them, is a worthy foundational principle for our new program at Belmont University.
Yesterday (Thursday), our Belmont College of Business Administration Blog went "live." The day came and went without a a lot of fanfare. However, we would like to note that the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had dropped by 100 points earlier in the day, rebounded to close at 41 points higher as Strictly Business site visits peaked later in the day. Coincidence you say? Most certainly. But we are excited about this new blog tool and the potential it holds for enhancing the learning experience here in the College as more and more of our faculty and alumni business leaders join the list of active content contributors. 
Yesterday, a few of us from Belmont were treated to a first-rate tour of the national headquarters and on-site assisted-living community for a company that is continuously improving the post-retirement living experience for numerous U.S. seniors and their families.
The following post is from our good friend Joe Scarlett, the non-executive chairman of the board of Tractor Supply Co., the largest retail farm and ranch store chain in the United States. Joe served as the company's CEO until 2004, and more recently launched the Scarlett Leadership Institute here at Belmont. As you can imagine, he knows quite a bit about holding CEOs, and the boards who pay them, accountable for performance.