Corinne Edwards

Now you get to pick between an autographed copy of “Chicken Soup for the Soul” or “heartwarmers.”  Which one will it be Corinne?

Congratulations Corrine!

For those of you curious about the final results, a total of 26 votes came in by 9:00 pm tonight, Wednesday, December 19, 2007 and the results were:

• Stephen Hopson Interviews (8 votes)
• Hopson Talks (7 votes)
• The Adversity University Guest Lecture Series (5 votes)
• Adversity Presss (2 votes)
• Scholarly Visits (1 vote)
• Distinquished Lecture Series (1 vote)
• Adversity on the Beat (1 vote)
• University Communes (0 votes)

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As of this writing, out of 8 suggestions contributed by the Adversity University community, 3 have emerged as running neck-to-neck so far:  

• Hopson Talks
• Stephen Hopson Interviews
• The Adversity University Guest Lecture Series 

The prize will be the winner’s choice between an autographed copy of Chicken Soup for the College Soul or heartwarmers, both of which published one of my stories.  On page 278 in the Chicken Soup book is similar to the Merrill Lynch story while heartwarmers contains the now-famous story you all know about,  THAT’S RIGHT STEPHEN!    

Who will win?  In another 24 hours, all of you will find out because I will post the winner’s name immediately after the polls close tomorrow night, Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 9:00 pm EST (USA).     

Once again, if you haven’t voted yet, you can go here and let your voice be heard.  It’s being run on the honor system, so if you’ve already cast your vote, well…you know what to do (or not).   

In a few days, I will be traveling to the East Coast to visit with my brother and his family for the holidays.  While I still expect to post my weekly gratitude article at the end of this week, I will take a short sabbatical from blogging until at least after Christmas is over.

Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of the week!

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Now granted, the poll you see below isn’t the prettiest you’ve ever seen but it’ll have to do for now at least until I become a little more technically saavy.  It was very easy to implement and I didn’t have to mess with the templates, a huge plus.  The poll was up and running in minutes!

Now that I finally have a poll set up, please go ahead and vote for what you think we should call the new interview series at Adversity University.  Please vote only once!

The poll closes on December 19, 2007 (Wednesday) at 9:00 pm EST (USA).  The winner will be announced that evening.  Please see End of the Week Gratitude Theme # 6 for more details on the prize.  

GOOD LUCK!

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Shaun at LifeReboot.com wrote a fascinating piece of work in “The Working Dead.”  In this article, he writes about an experience with his very first job, the purpose of which was to teach him the value of hard work, except the opposite happened.  In the summer of 1997, he was made aware of a class of people who did absolutely nothing in a job working for the local government.  In a funny sort of way, government employees have job security – it’s very hard for their employees to get fired unless it involves matters of national security.  It’s like how certain college professors have tenure – almos impossible to get rid of them.  Anyway, Shaun was only 14 when this happened.  

Back in the 80′s and 90′s, I also had my share of these people in the corporate environment, especially when I worked for “Harry the Bank Boss.”  Morale was low or non-existent.  Since the boss was known for chewing out subordinates, many of my fellow staff members developed the “who cares, it’s not job” mentality.  Departments that don’t communicate very well with each other often fall into that trap – they just want to do the bare minimum required of them and that’s it.  They simply don’t care. (Photo Source:  Comedy Zone)

Why does this happen?

One word:  management.

It is not my intention to create the ”us versus management” mentality but the way an organization behaves is directly a result of the prevailing attitudes of those at the top.  For example, if the boss is known for blaming others, pointing fingers away from himself, how do you think the people who report to him will behave?  They’ll think it’s perfectly acceptable to avoid stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility. 

In other words, “NOT MY PROBLEM!” 

Photo Source:  Call Center Consultants 

I’m going to do something different with today’s post.  Instead of listing ways I’ve dealt with these kind of people, I would like to invite YOU to comment and tell me how you’ve dealt with the “Not my problem” people.  Let’s have some fun with this and see how different people treat a common problem in the workplace!  

Food for thought:  How have you handled it when people said to you, “HEY, NOT MY PROBLEM!” in the workplace? 

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Driving along the other day, an idea popped into my head to do something I’ve never done before. It’s been a little over a year since I’ve started this blog. In the beginning, I had the comment feature enabled but then shut it down, taking the advice of other bloggers out there. But I’m just beginning to realize how important it is to actually interact with my readers at Adversity University because it is you who keep this blog alive.

I write for your benefit.

Therefore, I’ve not only reopened the comment feature (see the end of each post for the comment link) but I’ve also made it easy for you to contact me via email (see link at right sidebar).

Having said this, I want to take this one step further and conduct a short survey to learn more about the Adversity University subscriber community. One of the things I’ve been contemplating is moving this to a different program like WordPress or Typepad, which will give me a lot more flexibility in terms of providing categories (so that people can find articles without having to randomly search the blog for something that was read months ago but not bookmarked), expand my ability to write on different topics and not be limited to overcoming adversity, etc.

My vision is to expand to the point where not only will I have the capability of creating categories, but I’ll also have 3 columns (versus 2) with more materials for the reader’s benefit. But before taking upon the herculean task of migrating to another platform and starting all over again, I need to know more about who you are, why you subscribed to AU and what you like/dislike about this blog.

Here goes:

1. How did you know about Adversity University?

2. What attracted you to Adversity University in the first place?

3. What part of the world are you from?

4. If you found AU through a search engine like Google, what search term(s) did you use? What were you looking for?

5. What inspired you to sign up as a subscriber to AU?

6. What do you like about this blog? What would you like to see changed/enhanced?

7. What would it take for you to tell someone else about this blog?

8. Do you have your own blog too?

9. If I were to migrate to another blogging platform, would you come with me?

10. Do you have any suggestions, thoughts, comments or ideas on how I can better serve you?

11. When you first heard of “Adversity University,” what were your initial thoughts about those words? Did you think it was a play on words or did you think it was an actual university? Did you think it was a personal development site full of inspiring material or did you think it was about negative stuff (due to the word “adversity”)?

12. When you first learned of this blog, were you experiencing adversity at the time?

13. If I were to create an “Adversity University” conference with speakers, breakout sessions, networking sessions, would you be interested in coming (i.e. say to Cleveland, OH)??

I am really, really looking forward to learning more about you! Remember, you can respond via the comments feature (see below) or via private email (see link at right sidebar).

Thanks so much for your time – can’t wait to hear from you!

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