Author Archives: Art Ocain

            Neil Ritson’s Strategic Management discusses three schools of strategy: the planning school, the positioning school, and the resource-based school (Ritson, 2013, p.11).  Each strategic method has its strengths.  While larger corporations may use variations of the planning school, smaller companies tend to use the resource-based school, and most of the rest of the marketContinue reading “Organizational Behavior and Diversity”

            Leadership is about personal growth, increasing responsibility, and building influence through achievement, gaining trust, and caring.  In my own personal leadership development, I have done things that have lost the trust of my team.  I have failed to take responsibility and I have said things that I immediately regretted.  I have led my teamContinue reading “Me as a Developing Leader”

            In the self-analysis questions by the National College for School Leadership, it is apparent that there is not only a strong link between personal development and capacity for leadership, but there is a link between the quality of social relationships and leadership as well as a link between learning through experimentation and leadership.  Personally,Continue reading “Personal Development Affecting Leadership”

            Back in the year 2000, Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, flew to Dallas to meet with the Blockbuster CEO, John Antico (Tyler, 2017).  Interestingly, Reed Hastings chartered a private jet to Dallas because no commercial flights were available on short notice (Randolph, 2019).  Reed and the Netflix team presented their business to Blockbuster (whoContinue reading “Decision-Making Processes and Failures: Netflix vs Blockbuster”

            General Mills has taken measures to position their company as a leader in the inclusion and diversity.  Their market strategy is to connect deeply with customers and communities by being diverse and inclusive.  Their talent strategy is to innovate and build on new ideas also by being diverse and inclusive.  In 2011, Working MotherContinue reading “Leveraged Diversity”

            BP has failed the world in the last two decades, between oil spills, refinery explosions, and pipeline leaks, showing carelessness for human safety and the environment, while constantly cutting costs and ignoring best-practices.  Through these incidents, they have had a revolving door of Chief Executive Officers, which have all been similar:  saying they willContinue reading “Organizational Change After Failure”

                Today, I passed my PCI QIR (Qualified Installer & Reseller) training and test for their certification/qualification for point-of-sale and payment processing application installation.  More on their program is here:  https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/program_training_and_qualification/qualified_integrator_and_reseller_certification

                In IT operations as well as incident response, I have found that understanding and implementing Scrum is extremely useful.                 In October 2020, I took the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM®) training through Brett Palmer & Associates (https://brettpalmer.com/) as an online, 2-day workshop.  Training was very participative and intensive, but by the end of the training,Continue reading “ScrumAlliance Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner”

                On Saturday 4/24/2021, I took the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner.  For study materials, I used both the Prepare for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam learning path on LinkedIn Learning by Hiroko Nishimura as well as David Tucker’s 3-course AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner learning path on Pluralsight.  Between those two resources, I was plentyContinue reading “AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner”

                Companies have a substantially higher obligation to act ethically to its customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and environments than they currently act.                 Milton Friedman, famous economist in the 1970s, said that the sole purpose of a business is to make profit for its shareholders and that corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics were notContinue reading “Quality as an Ethical Obligation”