Every year, Ive listened to Republicans tell us how pro-life they are. But a couple of years ago, when they had the House and the Senate and the presidency, we didnt defund Planned Parenthood, said Lance Lohr, a resident of Lancaster County, Pa., who attended his 10th March for Life on Friday.

I go by peoples actions, he continued, and in Trump's case I believe he is pro-life because of what hes done.

Trumps top aides and religious advisers have taken great pains to portray him as a fervent abortion opponent after the 2016 cycle, when his views on the hot-button issue were anything but consistent. At the time, Trump declined to say whether any of his past romantic partners had abortions, suggested that women who have undergone the procedure should incur some form of punishment and infuriated anti-abortion groups, like the Susan B. Anthony List, when he said it wouldve been better if it were up to the states to determine the legality of abortion.

Many of those same groups that were confused by Trumps positions and reluctant to support him are now working to reelect him in 2020 not because they all believe hes had a change of heart, but because, in their view, no one has done more to dismantle abortion protections or pave the way for a test of the landmark Supreme Court legal decision in Roe v. Wade.

I dont know enough about Trump to know what his stance was prior to his presidency. Even now, I dont really care what he feels. I care what hes doing, said Nicole Burnshaw of Glen Mills, Pa., who attended this years March for Life with her nine children.

Trump used his remarks on Friday to remind the crowd of his administrations actions on abortion, an issue his reelection campaign has leaned on heavily as it looks to shore up evangelical support for the president and target other religious voters in key battleground states.

Speaking to tens of thousands of anti-abortion advocates from across the country, Trump emphasized how his administration has overseen the confirmation of 187 federal judges who apply the Constitution as written. He also highlighted his successful nominations of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two judges who were carefully vetted by anti-abortion groups prior to making it onto his list of potential nominees for the high court. And speaking about himself, Trump said unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.

From the first day in office, Ive taken a historic action to support Americas families and to protect the unborn. ... I reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, and we issued a landmark pro-life rule to govern the use of Title X taxpayer funding, he said, referring to the ultimatum his administration gave family-planning clinics last August to stop referring patients to abortion clinics or risk losing federal funding.

I notified Congress that I would veto any legislation that weakens pro-life policies or that encourages destruction of human life. At the United Nations, I made clear that global bureaucrats have no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that protect innocent life, he added.

The lines drew raucous applause and showed how many of the presidents socially conservative supporters a vital part of his electoral success in 2016, and a key coalition for his 2020 campaign are undeterred by the drama surrounding his Senate impeachment trial.

I love this impeachment. It keeps those creeps on the hill so busy that they dont pass any laws or mess with what the president is doing, said Lohr, the Lancaster County resident.

Since his January 2017 inauguration, Trump has worked to regulate and restrict abortion access using a series of rule changes that restrict the way taxpayer funds flow to foreign and domestic organizations that perform or promote abortions. Hours before his speech on Friday, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services threatened to withhold federal funding to California unless the state drops its mandate requiring private health insurers to cover abortion procedures.

Just as government shouldnt force a kosher deli to serve ham, you shouldnt require nuns to pay for abortion, and even more so because it involves the taking of a human life, Roger Severino, director of the agencys Office for Civil Rights, said on a conference call with reporters ahead of Trumps remarks. The department issued a similar notice of violation against the University of Vermont last August after concluding that a nurse was forced to participate in an abortion procedure despite repeated personal objections.

Because of his follow-through on certain abortion-related policy promises, Trump has used the issue on the 2020 campaign trail to draw aggressive distinctions between himself and the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls, nearly all of whom support codifying Roe in legislation. He spent a sizable portion of his remarks Friday going after what he called the dangerous agenda of far-left Democrats claiming that lawmakers in New York celebrated legislation allowing abortion up until delivery and repeating his dubious claim that Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said he would allow for newborns to be executed after birth. (Northams comments came last year, as Virginia state legislators debated a bill that would have rolled back certain restrictions for women seeking abortions).

Together, we are the voice for the voiceless, he told the crowd, standing on a stage alongside Republican Sens. Mike Lee and James Lankford, who introduced legislation in 2015 to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding.

When it comes to abortion Democrats have embraced the most radical and extreme positions taken and seen in this country for years and decades and you can even say or centuries, Trump said, adding that Democrats are coming after me because of his anti-abortion agenda.

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Many of the same sentiments were featured in Trumps second State of the Union address nearly a year ago, when he railed against his political opponents for supporting legislation in New York that expanded abortion access beyond 24 weeks if there is a threat to the womans life or health, or if the pregnancy is considered nonviable. White House officials and outside allies involved with the speechwriting process at the time told POLITICO the idea to include a line about abortion originated from the president himself.

The day before the State of the Union I met with him about what was going to be in it and he had clearly been thinking about this a lot because the first thing he said was about abortion and how outrageous it was to see what happened in New York and Virginia, a person close to Trump recalled.

The speech Trump eventually delivered to Congress marked another first for the incumbent Republican, whom anti-abortion supporters now widely refer to as the most pro-life president in history. No other modern GOP president devoted a significant portion of his State of the Union to the topic of abortion. Its these milestones under the current administration that abortion opponents are expected to pay close attention to long after Trump leaves office, as they search for candidates who match his zeal and build on his anti-abortion agenda.

I remember when Reagan spoke by closed-circuit television for the first time. I thought, Wow this is great, Lohr said of the former presidents live Oval Office address to March for Life participants in 1985.

But this is even better, he added, shortly before Trump departed the White House for the National Mall.

Myah Ward contributed to this report.

See the rest here:
Trump sets a new GOP standard in the abortion fight - POLITICO

Photo of NIC's Comox Valley Campus(Provided by North Island College)

North Island College is taking part in its first annual Thrive Week next month, which focuses on student mental health and well being.

Thrive Week is an initiative started by the University of British Columbia and has been adopted by many post-secondary institutions as a way to celebrate community, encourage self-care and promote mental health literacy.

NICs Director of Student Affairs, Felicity Blaiklock says good mental health is very important for students to be their best, both in school and in their own lives.

Thrive seemed like a wonderful opportunity to promote mental health, reduce stigma around mental health and help create that supportive campus culture. That engagement, that connection is a fundamental part of well being.

We all experience challenges in our lives at a certain time and college students are just the same as everyone else. They also experience challenges and struggles that may be to do with their academic studies or they may be to do with something completely different outside their lives.

Blaiklock adds that having healthy facility and staff who can support these students is also essential for the foundation of academic and personal success.

All of NICs campus will be taking part in the festivities, which will feature food on campus, first nations storytelling, activities where people can move their bodies, some trail walks, and some yoga from February 3rd through the 7th.

For more information on Thrive Week and NIC, visit http://www.nic.bc.ca.

Excerpt from:
North Island College launching Thrive Week across all its campuses - My Comox Valley Now

World number one Ash Barty's on-courtsecret weapon may be her slice backhand but it is her mental game which is helping her most to win, her mentor and leadership coach Ben Crowe says.

It's no surprise for Crowe that Barty thanked her team and joked she was sick of seeing her own face after advancing to the third round of the Australian Open, where she will play Elena Rybakina on Friday.

Crowe is the mindset coach restoring the fortunes of the Australian Cricket team, after helping the Richmond Football Club to two premierships and also mentors world champion surfer Stephanie Gilmore and fellow tennis ace Grigor Dimitrov. He also works with many CEOs and corporates.

"Ben has become a massive part of my team ... helping me with my mental application, and changing my perspective of things in both life and in sport," the young Aussie star has been quoted saying.

Crowe says the key to Barty's humility and mental strength is the separation between her personal and professional worlds.

"Ash knows tennis is what she does, it is not who she is," Crowe told The Australian Financial Review on Thursday.

There is a whole generation of 50-plus alpha males who have achieved success but are not fulfilled.

Ben Crowe, mindset coach

"Ash has captured the hearts and minds of Australians but also the whole world because she is showing how you can achieve professionally but still have perspective personally which I think the world is craving."

"Especially after the Hayne royal commission, there is a whole generation of 50-plus alpha males who have achieved success but are not fulfilled. Achievement without fulfilment is the ultimate failure in life," he says.

Ash Barty celebrates her victory over Polona to advance to round three on Friday.Eddie Jim

"That is why the separation between the personal and professional is so important."

Crowe, a former international marketing director for Nike,shares many of the same lessons with CEOs, executives and boardrooms, emphasising three key mindsets.

"The first is around purpose mindset," he says, which shifts your perspective from "I to we" or money, fame and status to intrinsic motivations.

"You stand for something, you believe in something, there is something that lights you up and there is a contribution or legacy you want to leave the world which at your funeral will be celebrated about you."

Our greatest failures can lead to our greatest success because it unlocks humility and learning.

Ben Crowe, Ash Barty's mentor

Secondly, connection mindset is really embracing vulnerability as a strength which gives people inside the organisation permission to be imperfect but unconditionally worthy.

"Often leaders put on a mask or armour for self preservation because you think you have to be this perfect CEO."

"The reason our greatest failures can lead to our greatest success is because it unlocks humility and learning. It is also why our greatest success can lead to our greatest failures because of ego, pride and identity."

Finally, performance mindset means totally focusing your attention in the moment of performance on the best version of yourself and the things you can control and letting go and accepting the things you can't control which cause anxiety, stress and worry."

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Meet the man helping Barty ace her mental game - The Australian Financial Review

It was January 19, 1997, and Steve Austin was alone in the ring at the Alamodome in San Antonio, taking full advantage of a rare moment of solitude during the usually crowded Royal Rumble. He sat on the top rope and checked the watch that wasn't on his wrist, obnoxiously signaling his impatience in waiting for his next opponent and in the process creating one of the images that would become iconic for his reign in WWF (now WWE).

Less than a year earlier, Austin had been known as The Ringmaster, a disastrous character that had almost sunk his chances at a big-time wrestling career. Now he was on the verge of superstardomfully inhabiting a new Stone Cold character he'd crafted, inspired by an HBO special on mob killers, as a blend of old-fashioned ass-kicker and hilarious, noxious lip. No one was safe from the bottom of his plain black boots when he was inclined to stomp a mudhole, and his motor-mouth silver tongue spared neither hero nor villain.

And fans couldn't get enough of it.

It was a kind of wrestling character that had never really existed before. Even WWE owner Vince McMahon, the sport's most influential and successful promoter, was confounded. No matter how dastardly, how vile, Austin's behavior was, his popularity only grew.

"I was supposed to be a heel. They weren't supposed to like me," Austin says now, revealing that the conundrum even led to a discussion with McMahon in a parking lot in Lowell, Massachusetts.

"I said, 'Vince, I noticed when I'm watching the show back, you guys are editing a lot of things that I say on commentary.' And he goes, 'Well, quite frankly, Steve, you're popping the guys in the truck.' The TV guys who have seen and heard everything were laughing and getting a kick out of what I was saying. And to Vince, that didn't work. ...

"I told Vince, 'Hey man, you got guys here, 6'10", 7-foot, 300, 320 pounds.' I said, 'I'm 6'2". I got black trunks, black boots, bald head and a goatee. If you take my personality from me, I cannot compete with anybody here. But if you give me my personality, I can.'"

McMahon, to his credit, had taken in what his budding new star was saying and, faced with floundering ratings and a competitor in WCW challenging his supremacy for the first time in a decade, he'd decided to take a chance on something outside his regular collection of stock wrestling characters.

"That's when he took the restrictions off and I started really growing into that character, finding my confidence, flipping people off, flying the bird," Austin says. "And for some reason, I just think people wanted a different brand of entertainment than they had been used to. And I broke from the mold of being a traditional babyface. I was a guy that was running in the gray area. You didn't know what Stone Cold was going to do, but you knew he was going to be wildly entertaining."

Austin walked the fine line between good and evil, and it was one of those magical combinations that led to a boom in business for WWF.

Sitting on that top rope in San Antonio, he had become bigger than the tropes that previously defined professional wrestling.

He was announcing himself as the chosen one in a field of Hall of Fame talent and in the process helping create a whole new era in wrestlingthe "Attitude Era," as we now know itin which the stars were a little more personal, a little more real, and heroes could be villains because sometimes what the world needs is a little righteous justice.

"I was operating as someone with an extreme attitude, and that was highly entertaining to the people just because of the energy I was emitting or giving off," Austin says. "It was captivating, and, in the end, the people thought it was awesome.

"I don't like to sit here and blow smoke up my ass. I just think people were ready for a change."

And his performance perfectly encapsulated how he would deliver that change.

The Royal Rumble match is more than just a vehicle to launch a new star or reestablish an old one. It's an attraction in its own right, an elegantly designed brain child of McMahon's longtime consigliere Pat Patterson. Himself a wrestling star in the 1970s and early '80s, Patterson had marvelled at the yearly success of the Battle Royal in the San Francisco territory when he was there.

The match typically gathered every star in the territory, imported superstar slabs of beef from outside promotions, like Andre the Giant, and threw them into the ring at the same time. The last one left standing without being tossed over the top rope was the winner. Patterson's unique twist was to have each wrestler enter the ring individually every minute or so until all 30 had walked the aisle. The resulting series of countdowns, surprises and WWE's dazzling entrances made the match, now entering its 33rd year, immediately iconic.

"I think it has resonated because of that excitement factor. It's an hourlong match that just keeps building on itself. There's always something happening," says Paul "Triple H" Levesque, WWE's executive VP of talent, live events and creative. "Just when it seems to settle down, the buzzer goes off and a new surprise comes out and everyone says, 'Oh my God.' The dynamic just keeps changing for the whole hour."

While the bones of the Rumble have remained the same for three decades, WWE has perfected the match to the point it's almost its own art form. Today, rather than having Patterson come up with all 29 eliminations like he did for the first Rumble, it takes a team of WWE's top producers to keep the match moving. Every wrestler goes into the match knowing when they are going to be eliminated and by whom. The rest of the canvas, down to the most minute details, has to be painted every year, with the goal of keeping the crowd energized and the action moving for 60 minutes or more.

"It's a huge, huge team effort," says Seth Rollins, who won the Royal Rumble match last year and will be one of the 30 competitors in the 2020 event this Sunday. "You've got all the producers backstage coming up with ideas. Everybody in the match is trying to make moments for themselves too. It's a big, big undertaking, and I think, when it comes out good, everybody feels a huge sense of relief, and then we're moving on towards WrestleMania.

"I give a lot of credit personally to [producer] Jamie Noble. He has been instrumental in really kind of laying groundwork for these things and being the guy that everyone goes to to make sure that the things are sorted. He's one of those guys who's always been real crafty when it comes to seeing things before they happen in the ring. He's been one of the guys in charge of the Rumble matches for as long as I've been up here."

For the performers, the match can be alternatingly chaotic, thrilling and boring. There's a huge spotlight on them, especially when they first arrive in the ring, but then there are also minutes at a time where the entire goal is to stay out of the way and let others shine.

"I think they're fun to work, but at the same time they're a pain in the ass to work because there's a lot going onthere's a lot to remember," Austin says. "You're always going to have a couple of guysI've been there myselfjust standing around in the corner 'trying' to throw the other guy over the top. Doggone it, they just can't leverage him enough, you know?

"Sometimes the ring is so crowded, you really can't lock into anything because if someone tries to do something, it inevitably turns into a cluster because there's too many guys in the ring. They are tedious."

Rollins, while putting it a little more delicately, agrees that it can be easy for a wrestler's eyes to glaze over, especially when they are going to be in the match for 30 minutes or more.

"There's so many stories that are interweaving and going on throughout the course of the matchup that it's hard to get lost in the moment in the match," Rollins says. "There's a timeline for how many people we want to be in different places and at what times during the match. There's so much going on that doesn't involve you that it can be easy to lose focus.

"Whereas in a one-on-one match you have to be focused at all times, sometimes in the Rumble you're in there and you find yourself almost just watching to see what's happening around you. It's almost like an out-of-body experience; you become an observer, a fan in a way."

The match is also an opportunity for wrestlers beyond the eventual winner to make their mark. Each year, someone stands out by working just a little harder than their peers, tossing themselves around for an appreciative fanbase that is savvy enough to recognize the hard work.

"You can really make a case for yourself," Austin says. "Winning sets you up for a designed push, because they've designated you as that guy, but man, if someone goes out there and just shines, like Kane did when he eliminated 11 guys [in 2001], it's like, 'Holy smokes, this guy's badass.'

"That was a planned thing. But you can go out there and ad lib your way to success by doing a lot of things that are entertaining. It's a litmus test. It's an eyeball test. If you do it right, everybody's thinking: 'That guy did pretty damn good. We might be able to do something with that cat.'"

And if you don't do it right?

Mistakes happen, sometimes requiring the carefully scheduled match to undergo some real-time revisions. Austin still shakes his bald head at his first Rumble appearance, in 1996, an opportunity to announce himself to the WWE Universe he badly botched.

"I was supposed to be like the fourth-to-last guy left in the ring, a pretty damn good spot and a pretty good shove from the company for a guy coming in," Austin says. "I did a clothesline spot with Fatu and was going to hang onto the top rope and come back in. Well, the thing was, everybody was wearing baby oil in those days, so the ropes and everything were very, very slippery, and I couldn't grab the top rope, and I ended up on my ass on the floor, eliminated early.

"I had to get Shawn Michaels' attention and let him know I was out. He had to figure out how to fix my mess. I go back to the back, and I'm thinking, 'OK man, here's this company taking a chance on me, and I blew it.'"

The 1997 Rumble was a chance to make that rightand start a revolution.

In some ways, Austin was portrayed as a babyface in his iconic 1997 Rumble, standing tall against all comers, a man apart, even among the baddest men on the planet.

He was the fifth of 30 competitors to enter, and he went the distance, lasting more than 45 minutes and eliminating a then-record 10 opponents along the way.

But just as important as any of that was how the match ended, with Austin reestablishing himself as a heel. After being "eliminated," Austin sneaked back into the ring, unseen by the referees, and dispatched the promotion's staunchest protector of good, Bret Hart, attacking him from behind and throwing him over the top rope and then basking in a glory he hadn't truly earned.

Only the fans still didn't turn on him.

"I didn't feel that I was performing as a babyface. I thought I was totally performing as someone who didn't give a rat's ass, so to speak," Austin says. "God dang it, man, I tried to entertain people whether I was heel, baby, whatever I was, I tried to be that 120 percent, and I believed everything that I was doing was completely real.

"It was all about attitude, just chucking people over the top rope, dropping down and giving them the bird. And then of course, yeah, I cheated at the end."

Twenty-three years later, fans still haven't turned on him. His iconic "Austin 3:16" is still a staple T-shirt for fans at live WWE eventsand beyond the wrestling world. Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard even went viral dressing as Austin for Halloween last year.

Wrestlers, too, still feel the impact of Austin and the movement he got rolling at that Royal Rumble.

"I think a huge, huge part of his popularity had to do with his struggles," says Rollins, who grew up watching Austin in his prime. "That's something our audience can relate to. I think everybody in their life in one way or another feels like they're the underdog, and so to have someone like Steve who embodied all your fantasies of wanting to stick your middle finger in your boss' face or punch your boss in the face...he was an every man, the guy who just drank beer and didn't give a damn about anything."

Rollins even plays a part in spreading the gospel of Austin to up-and-coming wrestlers.

"I have a wrestling school, and one of my big things we teach is, when all else fails, What would Stone Cold do? Sort of like WWJD, it's WWSCD," Rollins says. "If you're in trouble in a match, and you don't know what to do, What would Steve Austin do?"

If there is a wrestler today best living up to Austin's legacy of success at the Royal Rumble, it must be Kofi Kingston. No, he's never managed to win, but each year he does something we've never seen before to avoid elimination and commands the audience's attention.

"He's almost made himself a legend in Royal Rumble lore," Rollins says. "It's one of those things that the audience looks forward to every year ... Who's going to win? Who's going to start? What kind of surprises do we have to look forward to? And what's Kofi going to do? How's he going to top himself?"

"The margin for error on that stuff is so slim, but yet somehow he pulls it out every time," Triple H says. "He's a remarkable athlete. He creates these moments where, yeah, you remember the winner, but fans are like, 'Oh my God, Kofi walked on his hands and jumped on a table.'

"There used to be this prevailing notion when I first came into the company that if you weren't winning it, you don't want to be in the Rumble. Now wrestlers recognize you can get over and become a star. You could make the argument that those moments that Kofi had in the Royal Rumble are things that led to him becoming WWE champion. Because without those moments, I don't know that he would have been in that position."

For Austin, the 1997 Royal Rumble win set up a feud with Hart that would carry over to WrestleMania 13. Austin lost that match but was on his way to becoming the headliner who would win two more Rumbles, become a six-time champion and change WWE forever.

"His impact on our industry, on what a babyface looks like, what a good guy, a hero looks like in our stories, it's forever changed because of him," Rollins says. Without him, the business wouldn't be where it is today."

Today, it's well-established that the Rumble can have that type of impact. It's an event that sets the tone for the first half of the year, establishing the key players leading into WWE's yearly showcase of the immortals, WrestleMania.

While 30 superstars may enter, only a handful are viable potential winners capable of headlining the biggest show of the year. When the final body hits the floor, WWE will have made its case to the fans, asking them to accept the winner as worthy of the honor.

Sometimes that decision holds. Occasionally, it is hastily rewritten to better serve the audience. Either way, it's a statement of intent and a unique vote of confidence that tells both the talent and the wider world of wrestling who WWE sees as the most compelling superstars on the planet.

"As the match wears down and gets into the end, you begin to see, 'All right, here's what they're focusing on,'" Triple H says. "It's almost like in football where, as you start to get to the end of the season, you realize: 'All right, these are the teams that are really good. This team had a lot of hype, but the season didn't pan out. Now you're getting into the playoffs, and we see who's really there.'

"By the end of the Rumble, you're saying, 'Hey, here's your top five or six people in the company right now.' And sometimes there's a surprise that you didn't see coming. Sometimes it's exactly who you thought. When it's done well, there's almost nothing more exciting. You can really make it into something special."

The 2020 Royal Rumble streams live on the WWE Network this Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @JESnowden.

Read more:
A Rumble to Remember - Bleacher Report

As business leaders adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), which marries physical assets and advanced digital technologies, leaders are now taking responsibility for developing the skills of their workforce.

Getty

According to Deloitte Globals 2020 Readiness Report, The Fourth Industrial Revolution: At the intersection of readiness and responsibility,preparing workers to meet the demands of Industry 4.0 continues to be a fundamental business challenge, and leaders lack confidence in how their organizations are faring. Only 10 percent of executives surveyed said they have made a great deal of progress in understanding what skills will be needed in the future, and only one-fifth completely agreed their organizations are ready.

To meet this challenge, executives are focusing on training and developmentand looking to hire people with the appetite for continuous learning. In fact, according to the report, three-fourths of these executives are now making workforce development a top Industry 4.0 priority and plan to make their biggest investments in this area. And more than 80 percent of executives say they have created, or are creating, a corporate culture of lifelong learning.

Thats a stark difference from the hands-off approach of the past.Two years ago, executives, suggested there wasnt much they could do to ready their people for the skills required in the Industry 4.0 era; only 12 percent of executives said their organizations could influence education, training, and lifelong learning to a significant degree.

Companies are starting to understand that if they want to succeed in Industry 4.0, they must create agile work environments and modernized workplace cultures where employees can continuously acquire new skills to keep up with the changing nature of work," says Michele Parmelee, Deloitte Global Chief People and Purpose Officer.

The skills of the future

While technical proficiency is an obvious and evolving need, its critical that people also cultivate so-called human skills, which will have even greater value in a more-automated workplace. Not only will developing these soft skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, and empathy, create a more adaptable workforce as jobs are restructured, but it will also help human workers specialize in areas where machines are less likely to excel, says Parmelee.

According to IFTF research, the top skills that future employees will need to be successful include contextualized intelligencea nuanced understanding of society, business, culture, and peopleand an entrepreneurial mindset.

While many human skills are often considered to be innate traits, they can actually be taught to future workers and are linked to improved performance. According to a Harvard research study, social-emotional, non-cognitive skills are malleable into adulthood and can be developed with the right resources, environment, and incentives.

Young professionals are eager for this kind of training, according to Deloittes Millennial Survey. They understand that automation can free them from repetitive and mundane tasks to focus on assignments that require a more personal touch, Parmelee explains. So, theyre especially seeking help building confidence, interpersonal skills, andparticularly for Gen Zethics aptitude.

However, millennials do not believe their employers are focused enough on nurturing soft skills. More than a third said it is essential to a companys long-term success that its employees and leaders have strong interpersonal skills, but only 26 percent said they were offered much help or support in developing them. They said similar support deficits existed in the areas of confidence, integrity, critical thinking, and creativity.

Universities and companies are starting to take note and develop their own emotional intelligence, or EQ programs. Stanford University, for example, offers a Compassion Cultivation Training course to help people develop compassion and empathy for others, while one of the courses in Deloittes internal leadership program is The Art of Empathy, which helps leaders learn to walk in the shoes of others.

I think the best way we can serve our organizations and our people is to create a company culture that actually trains and equips people to be flexible, self-reliant, and empowered, says Pierre Naud, CEO of nCino, a software company that provides cloud solutions to financial institutions. And they should feel that they can use their own brain power and experience to actually mold their jobs as we go forward, to adapt at the pace of change.

Visit link:
The Best Job Skills For The Future Are Inherently Human - Forbes

Sometimes you just have to kill the zombie.

We learned Wednesday that Boeing has abruptly decided to end its participation in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys Experimental Space Plane (XSP) program an effort intended to build and fly a reusable rocket ten times in ten days.Admittedly, its a bit personal for me, since XSP comprised a significant portion of my space portfolio during my most recent stint at DARPA.

The program got its start back in 2013, right around the same time Elon Musk decided to build a Falcon 9 that can land itself. The difference? Musks rocket works. He and his team worked overtime for three years and they figured it out. XSP, on the other hand, has already consumed over six years of engineering effort yet never managed to get beyond an engine demonstration, and had Boeing not walked away would still be years away from first flight.

Rendering of an Experimental Space Plane (Phantom Express")

High-tech projects, whether they involve building a new aircraft, a complex software application, an autonomous car, or a rocket, tend to take on lives of their own, and almost never in a good way. Often, a seemingly elegant concept collides with the harsh reality of poor technology forecasting, a totally predictable lack of resources (human, budgetary, and otherwise), vague or badly understood requirements, and most critically no clearly stated way to know when youve done all you should and its simply time to move on to something else.

I cant emphasize this last problem enough. Hard projects become agonizing slogs if you arent meticulous about designing test events (gates) that unambiguously shout succeed or fail. Why? Because the project team and its patrons desperately want to keep trying theyre invested, theyve fallen victim to sunk cost, they grow increasingly risk-averse and as a result their programs become de facto zombies, eking out a twilight existence for year after miserable year, despite mounting evidence suggesting that whats being attempted is not a good idea after all, and that it would probably be better to go back to the drawing board or shut down altogether. Knowing when to kill a bad idea has become something of a lost art.

The U.S. Air Force's U-2S, the upgraded version of Kelly Johnsons original U-2, in service today.

On July 4, 1956, after a few preliminary overflights of Eastern Europe, a U-2 pilot flew the jets first operational mission over the Soviet Union. The black-as-pitch U-2 (now nicknamed Dragon Lady for its notoriously difficult handling characteristics) was and is an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft designed by famed Lockheed Skunk Works aerospace engineer Clarence Kelly Johnson. Johnson and his team designed the plane to fly at an altitude of 70,000 feet, hoping to evade interceptors, ground-based radar and surface-to-air missiles that would pose unacceptable risks to lower-flying airplanes and their crews.

The U-2 was a very good idea.

Unfortunately, while the Soviets interceptors and missiles were unable to climb high enough to engage the U-2, the U.S. quickly discovered that it was trackable on radar. Thus, it would only be a matter of time before the Russians would come up with a way to down the Dragon Lady. And, indeed, this tragedy finally occurred in May 1960, when Francis Gary Powers U-2 was struck by a Dzina surface-to-air missile.

But before that eventful day, and indeed not long after it became clear that the U-2 was not invisible to Russian radar after all, a group of scientists and engineers led a crash program to develop a stealthy U-2 almost two decades before Lockheed built the first prototype of what would become the F-117 stealth bomber. This one-year effort, nicknamed Project Rainbow and lovingly memorialized by Paul Suhler in From Rainbow to Gusto, resulted in a slew of hardware modifications to the Dragon Lady. None of them were particularly pretty. The engineers glued radar-absorbing structures to the aircrafts fuselage and strung assemblies of wires over the wings leading edge, between the nose and fuel tanks on the wing, and elsewhere. Pilots derided it, calling it the dirty bird.

As it turned out, not only were the Project Rainbow modifications ineffective at defeating radar, they also dramatically reduced the planes operating range and altitude. More disturbingly, the radar-absorbing material acted as a very efficient insulator and overheated the U-2s cockpit, resulting in a pilot fatality. And so, unceremoniously, Project Rainbow was consigned to the wastebasket a bad idea or, perhaps more charitably, an idea before its time.Its team pivoted, laying the groundwork for an entirely new aircraft, one that would fly both higher and faster than the U-2 the SR-71 Blackbird. Others began working on reconnaissance satellites that would fly higher and faster still.

Rainbow could have become a zombie. Its proponents could reasonably have argued that theyd made some mistakes but had come close, that a little more funding and time would get the U-2 to an acceptable end state. After all, returning to square one and designing a new plane could take even more time and more money and might still fail who could say with certainty?But this team was endowed with uncommon wisdom. They recognized the deficiencies of their approach and dispassionately halted their efforts when it became clear that their success criteria werent going to be met. And they recognized that a stay the course decision under these circumstances might have resulted in many years of onerous work and, worse, could have ceded the lead to the Soviets. Whats more, the Rainbow team arrived at this decision in May 1958, less than two years after identifying the problem.

Technology developers hear the term fail fast so often that many have developed an immune response to it, but this suggests a misunderstanding. Tom Peters is credited with the original, and far more clarifying, phrase: Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast. Figure out what your problem is, design a solution, and test that solution as rapidly as you can.

Why? Because you want to know as early as possible if you are on the right track. Decent success criteria and a well-designed test will tell you but you cant just keep playing with new technology, postponing that test, and hoping that all the tweaks youve come up with will give you an ultimate solution.Get into test with what you have and fail now if you do, youll immediately learn something vitally important. And now you can adjust. That adjustment might be a minor change or a complete reboot.

Lessons from the last century abound. Vanguard rockets, MiDAS missile warning satellites, and the F-16 fighter all experienced failures in early demonstrations but were able to rebound quickly to adjust and try again without losing a beat. MiDAS launched seven spacecraft before it was able to obtain missile tracking data but every one of those satellites was launched in a three-year period between February 1960 and May 1963.

Contrast the MiDAS programs speed with contemporary missile warning satellite development, whose test campaigns dictate seven years or more to reach orbit. Such a glacial pace is hardly conducive to innovation. If you require a decade to test a product and, after all the effort you put into it, it still fails, itll take you no less than two decades to get to a solution and thats a problem in a world of more and more capable companies and nation states. Relearning the art of test fast, fail fast, adjust fast isnt just a good idea, its a crucial survival skill.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage touches down at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zone-1

Some have adopted Peters maxim and are demonstrating remarkable success. Elon Musks dream of a reusable first stage was widely panned as impractical or pointless, yet he and his team soldiered on, in much the same way the Vanguard and MiDAS teams did, testing and failing and testing again over just twenty-six months, until, finally, a scorched Falcon 9 rocket landed proudly upright on a Cape Canaveral launch pad on December 21, 2015.Few detractors remain. The value of multi-use rockets has been demonstrated, and even Musks arch-competitor and one-time reusability skeptic, United Launch Alliance, is investigating ways to reuse some of its gear.

Sadly, test fast isnt making inroads everywhere. Aircraft carriers that cost nearly $15B and take more than twenty years to get to sea trials may end up vulnerable to hypersonic missiles developed by China in just the past five or ten years. Weve embarked on yet another round of increasingly expensive stealth fighter and bomber development efforts despite growing concerns that our adversaries have figured out approaches to defeat stealth. This might be alright if we were rapidly generating new solutions. But were not. Programs like the F-35 and F-22 have taken decades to get from initial requirement to first flight. Can we say with any credibility that a design that had its origins in the early 1990s is still relevant today? These all represent failures to test fast, fail fast, and adjust as threats evolve. And it cant go on.

Perhaps the next team that tries to build a spaceplane will incorporate a test fast mantra as a prerequisite. If not, it will likely face the same fate as Boeings and DARPAs doomed XSP six years of work and not much to show for it.

Project Rainbow left us with an invaluable lesson: When you spot a zombie, shoot it and move on.

Read the rest here:
Boeings Exit From Space Plane Project Is A Lesson In Why We Need To Kill Zombies - Forbes

Starting a company requires a lot resilience, determination, curiosity, not to mention all the financial and operational know-how. But what's the most important trait?

Many of Dreamers // Doers' members are founders of companies, so we asked them. A resounding theme was passion: passion for solving a problem, for filling a market gap, for creating an ideal work environment, or for being on the bleeding edge of future innovation. When the challenges of entrepreneurship inevitably surface, it's this passion that serves as the fuel to keep going.

As shown in the journeys of the following 27 founders, their companies are built on a foundation made up of far more than their products or services alone. Each of these women have a clear "why" a reason for being that propels their visions forward.

Here are the stories of their "aha moments," along with their No. 1 piece of advice for those who've ever thought about starting a similar company.

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27 founders share how they knew what type of company to start - Business Insider - Business Insider

If you already think you know enough to get by, you're sadly mistaken. Find out why and how to continue learning to be the successful person you'd like to be.

January 15, 2020 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The following excerpt is from Debbie Allens book Success Is Easy. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | IndieBound

If you were to survey highly successful people, youd discover they share a philosophy of being lifelong learners they continue to learn and grow. Unsuccessful people think, I already know enough to get by.

Making a commitment to lifelong learning isnt easy. Most people have a negative view of continuing education, but this works to your advantage. What others cant commit to is your opportunity. Every day you commit to learning, growingand developing yourself adds value to who you are and what you have to offer. As you increase your value, you also gain the rewards and compensation of knowledge, skillsand income. The fact is, becoming a lifelong learner is a must if you want to achieve and maintain success in our ever-changing world.

To be a successful lifelong learner, make a commitment early to expand your horizons by making room for new topics of inspiration in your life. Easy ways to start moving toward success are by reading empowering books and finding inspiring people to learn from on a daily basis.

Related: How to Make Business Decisions Faster and Better

Expanding your knowledge comes down to diving deeper into your areas of expertise. Commit to learning things that are relevant to your industry and business, and commit to sharpening timeless, applicable skills that will help you move forward every day. Learning at this level puts you in a positive state of mind and inspires you to raise your standards and increase your value as an expert.

As you continue to learn, youll also learn more about yourself and create a greater quality of life: increased earning power, more opportunities, and amazing experiences. When you commit to lifelong learning, youre creating a need to constantly improve yourself so you can gain a competitive edge in business.

Your ultimate goal should be to live a life where you see no boundaries because, with your extended knowledge, you have the options to create anything you desire.

To commit to being a lifelong learner, you must cultivate the right mindset. A lifelong learning mindset requires curiosity about the world. A curious mind wants to know more it longs for new challenges, ideasand experiences, and isnt satisfied with the status quo. When you have this mindset, you want to grow, learnand develop beyond imagination. You want to become a well-rounded, better version of yourself.

The lifelong learner mindset is always open to new possibilities, and you come to understand that the only way to reach your ultimate success potential is to be open to anything that comes your way and be willing to explore everything.

This mindset also allows you to approach life from a place of gratitude, where nothing is taken for granted. Every bit of knowledge youve learned is appreciated and respected because you understand that over time it will help transform your perspective on life.

This process of lifelong learning isnt just about reading lots of books to gather information. Its also about taking the information you acquire and putting it into practice.

We all have weaknesses in our personal lives that we can improve on. And since our personal life has a tendency to spill out onto the rest of our life, including our business relationships, its important to become a lifelong learner in your personal development, too.

Ive had to work through weak areas of my personal life and implement the lessons I learned along the way. In fact, it never stops. I continue to work on my personal development and growth to this day.

Related: The 5 Things You Should Really Be Focusing on If You Want a Successful Business

When you want to learn a new skill, do you go off by yourself and try to figure it out, or do you find someone to show you how so you learn faster? Shared thinking returns greater value than solo thinking because when you learn from others, its much easier than trying to work things out on your own and it yields a higher return on your investment of time.

The compounding action of shared thinking with successful people moves your knowledge forward faster and easier. Ive discovered that the more I respect the wisdom of others, the more I listen and learn. For example, when Im being mentored by someone, I allow that person to do most of the talking so I can learn from them. When Im mentoring a client, on the other hand, I ask them a few questions and expect to do most of the talking, so the client can learn from me. In shared business relationships, its more of a give-and-take conversation between equals.

Even beyond the immediate need to solve a particular problem, listening to how others approach business or their personal lives can flip a switch in your thinking, leading to a breakthrough or a new insight. When youre excited to learn more, you do more, and work becomes more like play!

Knowledge allows you to master success again and again (both personally and professionally) when you develop the skills and the tools to continually win in business. Thats what makes success easy!

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How Becoming a Lifelong Learner Is a Must If You Want to Achieve and Maintain Success - Entrepreneur

Although they are uncommon, personal bills allow legislators a small window to get a bill printed without a committee hearing. Why do legislators use them?

For an idea to become a law, it takes a lot of steps.

Those steps have proven over the years to be very difficult for some ideas to clear, just getting a bill printed and taken into a committee can be a challenge.

There is a way, however, for legislators to skip over that first step.

Senator Maryanne Jordan along with other legislators have had almost no success on efforts to pass "Add the Words" legislation over the past decade.

The bill would add the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the Idaho Human Rights Act," Jordan explained. "There are people in Idaho right now who can legally be discriminated against in housing, employment, and public accommodation, and we are trying to make that right."

Getting traction on the "Add the Words" legislation has been a challenge over the years, it has only been taken into a committee one time, where it died.

So this time around Jordan is taking a new approach called a personal bill.

"What it does is it lets you have a bill number assigned to the bill, this is 1226 for 'Add the Words,' and it puts the bill automatically on the list of bills that are before the Legislature," Jordan said.

Normally, legislators need to go through a hearing process in a committee to have their draft printed as a bill. Personal bills skip that step.

"They are an opportunity to discuss issues that may not otherwise be discussed in the Legislature," Jordan said. "I did it because I'm not willing to let this issue sit on the shelf and just be ignored, it's too important to too many people."

Senator Grant Burgoyne has also gone the personal bill route with his idea to decriminalize drug use in private places.

"We've got to get on top of these issues, it's a matter of life and death," Burgoyne said.

Like Jordan, Burgoyne is hoping to start a conversation with his bill.

"Sometimes they do, sometimes they get traction and sometimes they spark the discussion that leads to an entirely different type of legislation that addresses and solves the problem," Burgoyne said.

There is only a limited amount of time at the beginning of the legislative session though for legislators to put together personal bills.

Senators have until this Friday to submit personal bills; Members of the House of Representatives have until next Friday.

Jordan hopes as a personal bill "Add the Words" will have better success.

"The importance of this is to keep this issue on the front burner because it is important to a lot people," Jordan said.

Personal bills are fairly uncommon. So far in the 2020 legislative session there are two personal bills, 2019 had one, and 2018 had two.

Read more:
Lawmakers use personal bills to get issues discussed in the Idaho Legislature - KTVB.com

There's a direct relationship between hard work and business growth.

January 16, 2020 2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Ask yourself, "What do I enjoy about what Ido?"

If you can't think of an answer, you may be contemplating the wrong aspects of your career. Evaluate your mindset to see if you're concentrated on the everyday routine at your job instead of the larger outcome of your professional goals.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Mike Phillips discusses how hard work leads to some incredible benefits. It can be especially noticeable when concentrated on a specific goal,since whatever you focus on will help you get the most out of it. A willingness to work hardwill lead to higher personal confidenceand higher morale for your team.

Click on the video to hear more from Mike Phillips.

Related:How to Establish Personal Accountability at Every Level of Your Business

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Why Hard Work Really Does Open Doors to Success - Entrepreneur