Sales at a Detroit pawn shop are up 49% this year, a trend being seen at many pawn shops due to one obvious reason – consumer confidence is still very shaky, and folks are looking for a deal.  Cheap merchandise is probably the key reason for the recent pawn popularity, but there’s a few more intriguing reasons you might have missed.  Consider the uniqueness of the merchandise.  Whether it’s for the office “white elephant” gift exchange, or for Uncle Rico who simply has everything, pawn shops are full of cool stuff that meet the “unique” requirement many shoppers are searching for.

Think you’ll find something unique at WalMart?  Doubtful.  The pawn shop is the place to go for that gift that says “I cared enough to brave the rough part of town to find something truly different.”  And who couldn’t use half a drum set? Or, say,  a bowling pin lamp like the one in the tv commercial?  Jewelry, electronics, prosthetic limbs, it’s all there at your neighborhood pawn shop.

Another reason shoppers are more comfortable at the pawn shop is due to the popularity of the pawn-based reality shows like Hard Core Pawn; making pawn a dirty word no more, and showcasing the gritty variety of goods, and that goes for the shoppers too.

Then there’s the “currency flexibility” advantage.  The rough economy has spawned a spirit of “doing more with less” this season, and many pawn shoppers are walking in with their own seldom-used items, converting them to cash, then shopping til they drop.  Where else can you walk in with grandma’s set of tiny spoons you inheirited, and walk out with a Wii?  Sure, the buttons on the controllers might be a bit wiggly and the stickers have all come off, but it’s all about the gaming experience right?

A gracious recipient won’t ask where the gift came from anyway ( although they’re sure to speculate unless you get all the dust off ), and they’re sure to appreciate the fact that you didn’t just grab the battery-powered nose hair clippers in the check out line.  You actually put some thought into it!  And after all, in this the season of giving and hitting credit limits, isn’t it the thought that counts?

Don’t always fight fire with fire. If you’re confronted with shouting protesters on your way to work, shouting back only results in one thing – more noise.  Subtlety has its place, especially in situations that easily escalate.  Speakers who have their speeches disrupted by hecklers know this to be true, when cooler heads can prevail and security personnel are left to do their thing.  This rule does not apply to stand-up comics, of course.

Consider the optics. In the heat of battle, things can get a little blurry.  Say, when the competition has unleashed a PR blitz against your brand and you’ve got the Board of Directors pounding the boardroom table demanding a return salvo.  Remembering to consider how things appear from the outside, or the “optics”, can pay dividends.  Say, you’re the President and the press catches you golfing during a national disaster.  Or, your rogue security guard soaks somebody with pepper spray and during the press conference you voice your concern about whether your car is parked in a safe part of town (this actually happened).   Good PR is easy if you try to see things from the outside.

Control the message.  In times of crisis, staying “on message” is crucial (see previous).  This the occupiers themselves could use a lesson in, as tv crews interviewed occupiers who were “protesting um….the markets, and banks….and corporate influence in….um, corporations.”   Remember that the media is in the business of turning a good PR effort into buffoonery, and always put the best person for the job in front of the cameras.  Rick Perry, we’re looking at you.

Is this thing on? Organizational communication - internal and external – must be tightly controlled.  At Apple for instance, developers have strict guidelines about what they can and cannot say, even among friends.  The only thing worse than varying from the talking points would be, say, leaving a prototype iphone behind at a bar.  Twice.

Observe Wheaton’s Law.  Wil Wheaton that is, of “Star Trek” fame, whose “Don’t be a (expletive)” is well-worn advice.  Creating a culture in your organization where everyone tries not to be a weenie goes a long way toward avoiding mass weenie-dom, and will hopefully disuade the next guy who reaches for the pepper spray, literally or metaphorically.  Jeff Bezos for instance is probably the furthest thing from a weenie in all of Silicon Valley, and has become known not for his aggression but for his contagious laughter.

And when it comes to laughter, the more the merrier – seriously, what could be funnier than an occupier bedecked in Nike and North Face, bemoaning corporate influence in their life by tweeting away on an iphone?

In the study, kids who were praised for their smartness did 25% worse on a follow-up control test; on the other hand, kids who were praised for their effort did 25% better on the follow-up test.  What gives?

It’s fairly simple – when students are praised for being “so smart” or “such a good student”, it implies that these traits are something they either have or they don’t.  Consequently, when these kids find that learning something new is truly difficult, they take it as a sign they’re not so “smart” rather than as a sign to try harder.

This is particularly true for women.  In a similiar study in the 1980′s, “bright” girls were found to give up earlier than “bright” boys, and the higher their I.Q., the more likely they were to throw in the towel.  In fact, girls with straight A’s were found to respond with the most helplessness.

The implication throughout these studies is that when a student believes their success is tied directly to their amount of effort – a variable that can be called upon as needed – they come to understand that they are in control of the outcome, as opposed to either being one of the “smart kids” or not.

The lesson for professional adults is the same – the concept that success is relative to effort and not some innate qualities of a “business whiz” or having MBA credentials is key.  Remember, Bill Gates literally started off in a dumpster, retreiving old code out of the trash and fixing the problems he found.  That’s not genius, that’s hard work.

In rural Alabama for instance – a state where a new immigration law has just taken effect – a fish processing plant run by Harvest Select is having a hard time finding workers.  One reason is that hundreds of them disappeared on the morning of September 29, the very day the new immigration law went into effect; the other reason is, in the absence of the largely immigrant (Guatamalan) workforce that disappeared all at once, there are no local (American born) workers willing to snap up the plethora of new jobs that just opened up.

“I have 158 jobs, and I need to give them to somebody” says Randy Rhodes, President of Harvest Select.  He’s scratching his head over this new dilemma, considering how unemployment  is clocking in at over 18% in Uniontown, Alabama where the factory is located.  Uniontown’s median household income is just $12,386 and 48% of the population are living under the poverty line.  One would think with conditions like these, there would be hundreds of people lining up for those 158 jobs.  But one would be wrong.

The work is cold, hard and not very rewarding, skinning and beheading catfish all day.  And the pay is minimum wage.  But still, with poverty being near 50% there should surely be some people willing to do the work to escape their dire financial situation.  Mr. Rhodes has an idea about what’s happening.  Americans, he reasons, are simply not willing to do these kinds of jobs.

At a nearby tomato farm in Northern Alabama, farmer Chad Smith is in a tough spot too – most of his tomato fields are sitting unpicked, because when 30 immigrant workers disappeared also on Sept. 29th, there was nobody to do the picking anymore.  Not that he hasn’t tried to find replacements among the locals.  ”Oh, i tried to hire them” Smith says, “I even put a radio ad out, and 15 people showed up.  But most of them quit, they couldn’t work fast enough so they just quit.”

Taking it all in, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that Americans are too soft to take hard labor jobs for little pay.  The opposite may be true however, that being maybe the employers are not offering sufficient rewards to attract the American worker.

This imbalance of labor supply and demand is not unique to Alabama, it’s happening today at organic farms in Oregon and at sod farms in Michigan.  Evidently, certain types of labor are found to be just too difficult or demanding for the modern-day American Worker – or perhaps the current bevy of social programs for the unemployed is so generous that the allure of hard labor falls on mostly deaf ears.

Either way, the business model where immigrants are the only ones willing to do the hard work needs to change, and fast.  Otherwise the most fearsome statistic won’t be the unemployment rate, but the underemployment rate.  Which is worse?

1. “360-Degree View” means A) the view from a spinning merry-go-round, or B) a thorough analysis.

2. “30,000 ft. View” means A) the view from a plane, or B) taking a broad perspective without going into details.

3. “Deliverable” means A) capable of shipping via FedEx, or B) a task that must be completed under and agreement.

4. “Invisible Hand” means A) at the end of the invisable man’s arm, or B) the legendary force guiding the free market system.

5. “Lean” means A) carefully trimmed bacon, or B) management strategy emphasizing value and minimizing waste.

6. “Leverage” means A) prying your way into the executive bathroom, or B) to take advantage of.

7. “Mindshare” means A)  an involuntary brain-swap experiment, or B) consumer awareness of a brand/product.

8. “Monetize” means A) anything done by Claude Monet, or B) turning something into a money-making asset.

9. “Paradigm Shift” means A) the latest dance craze, or B) a dramatic change in perspective.

10. “Scope Creep” means A) a creepy guy with binoculars, or B) expanding project limits without change in budget or timeframe.

11. “Six Sigma” means A) a lesser-known fraternity, or B) business management strategy developed by Motorola emphasizing lean methodology.

12. “Triple Bottom Line” means A) extra-large pant size, or B) organizational performance measured by by People, Planet and Profit.

13. “Verticals” mean A) a very steep climb, or B) referring to a specific market or common group of prospects.

14. “Win Win Win” means A) a chant heard at the stadium, or B) when three parties benefit from a situation.

Now, if you answered “A” to any or all of the above, you may or may not be destined for management greatness.  On the other hand, if you answered “B” to any or all of the above, congratulations!  You’ve just crossed the threshold of greatness and are bound for True Management Ascendance (see also: ready your golf game).  Now take these new terms you just learned into the C-Suite, and shift somebody’s paradigm with your new value proposition!

Who’s behind this?  An illustrious ivy-league school, or maybe one of those scrappy I.T. schools who advertise on the rock station? Neither – it’s GF Education Group, a Philadelphia start-up flush with angel cash and fresh out of the incubator.

The money-back guarantee is for college grads who take their Certified Business Laureate Exam, or CBL, for $199.  Take the test, and if you don’t find a job within six months you get a full refund.  But, wait for it…….there’s a catch: the money-back guarantee only applies if you scored in the 30th percentile of all test takers.

The CBL is intended to be a general test of core business skills, including financial proficiency, basic accounting, general marketing, writing and MS office skills.  This is in contrast to other similar tests including the Bloomberg Assessment Test, which is free and tests specifically for skills needed by corporate accountants and investment bankers; and the CABM Credential, a test that covers ten competencies related to business and costs $1000.

These tests are intended to help freshly-minted MBA’s and other college graduates rise above the crushing tide of job applicants, illustrating the under-supply of jobs and the over-supply of college grads of whom 80% are currently moving back in with the folks after graduation.

Can differentiators  like the CBL and the CABM Credential really make a difference in such times as these when supply so outweighs demand?  Time will tell, but one thing is for sure – the next time you hear someone talking about a money-back guarantee, it might not be “Vince the Sham-Wow Guy”.

A new study

To conduct the study, 100,000 internet users were asked to take an online I.Q. test, and it was noted what browser they used to take the test. Highest scores were reported among users of Opera (average I.Q. 125), middle of the road were Chrome and Firefox (average I.Q. 110), and lowest scores were versions 6,7,8 and 9 of Internet Explorer ( average I.Q. 80).

A similar study was conducted in 2006, which shows that since then more people on the higher side of the I.Q. scale have moved away from Internet Explorer in the last five years.

This might reflect that alternative browsers are too complex, or that IE is beautifully simple. Perhaps it could mean that in order to use Opera or Chrome you need to be relatively clever due to their complex nature.

This new data regarding the relatively low I.Q. of the Internet Explorer user is expected to create a storm, because nobody wants to be told they are a dummy. Of no surprise to anyone however is the fact that Internet Explorer is the browser of choice in Washington, D.C.