Growing and Refining Your Business

The economy is up and so is job-hopping. How can you attract superior talent to grow and improve your business while holding onto your top performers to refine your business?

85% of employees leave their job because of their manager (SHRM). Over 66% of CEO's say that talent-related issues are their top concern (HBR).

In previous articles, we've discussed how crucial talent retention is to the overall growth and health of a business. As the economy grows and skills become more specialized, the competition for talent is on the rise. This has driven culture, engagement, and leadership to the top of the human capital agenda (Deloitte University Press).

The dynamic nature of the current business environment has become so fast-paced that many workers are unable to find jobs even as companies report that they can't find the people they need. Meanwhile, over 70% of employees are disengaged (Gallup).

The results are stunted growth and stagnant wages. Turnover is high and morale is low. No wonder job-hopping is on the rise...

One of my clients said, "I need to hire better people who will work well within our culture." We mapped out a plan to improve the quality of new hires, retain top talent, look deeper into employee potential, manage poor performers, and create better soil where the best-fits can take root and flourish.

In today's modern workforce, it's time to look beyond the resume and add some dimension and sophistication around hiring and developing talent. There is a science to understanding what motivates people (beyond money).

People have drives. Drives create needs. People behave in ways that meet their needs. When needs are met at work, performance, productivity, and engagement improve. Scientifically valid data and analytics ensure more accurate and informed decisions to improve team dynamics and identify potential.

I've placed over 500 CEOs in my career. I hired based on three factors: head, heart, and briefcase. Most recruiters only check the briefcase (experience, skills, and education) - all of which can be found on the resume. Some will dive deeper into the heart (values, interests, and passions) during the interview.

But how many really measure the head (behavior and cognitive ability)? Skills and values can change, where behavior and cognitive ability are stable over time. Here's the good news, if you can measure it, you can manage it.

The best way to measure the behavior and cognitive ability of your workforce and use that data to create a customized solution is The Predictive Index (PI). PI is one of the most scientifically valid solutions on the market. Nearly 20 million people have used it in the last 60+ years (over 2.5 million in the last 12 months).

Make what you've got work, and then make it better.

Thanks for reading - If you enjoyed this article, please click the Like button above and let me know! (and if you like it, why not share it?)

About the Author:

David B. Nast owns Nast Partners based in the Greater Philadelphia area. David is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach with over 25 years of experience in Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, Training, Change Management, Career Coaching, Talent Acquisition, Executive Search, and Human Resources. He has coached thousands of CEOs, Business Owners and Executives.

For additional insights from David, visit his LinkedIn Pulse Author Page and follow him on Twitter @DavidBNast. You can also email David at dave@nastpartners.com.

#BusinessBalanceBetter

Here's How Scraps Can Help Grow The Food Of The Future

It’s tough to think of something more mundane than getting your electric bill in the mail. But that’s what launched two Chicago scientists down a path that just might lead to a farming revolution.

About five years ago, chemistry professor Elena Timofeeva and physics researcher John Katsoudas, who both work at the Illinois Institute of Technology, began to dabble in aquaponics, a soil-free method of farming that grows plants and aquatic life through connected systems.

The two, who are married, built an aquaponic system in their basement and began growing produce. But the eye-popping electric bill quickly showed them that the cost of powering their fledging farm was far greater than what they could grow. Power costs, it turns out, are a major drawback to the aquaponics industry.

“A couple of pounds of tomatoes were not worth the extra $200 on our bill,” Timofeeva told HuffPost.

The scientists began wondering what a more cost-effective approach to powering an aquaponic farm might look like ― a challenge they have been chasing ever since then.

They believe they’ve found an answer: a stackable, mobile aquaponic growing system that can be operated totally off the grid.

Credit: Illinois Institute of Technology

 Physics researcher John Katsoudas and chemistry professor Elena Timofeeva of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago believe their new invention could help feed the world.

The system they invented, housed inside a 45-foot shipping container, generates energy by feeding food waste into a biodigester that works like a mechanical stomach to convert the material into methane. The gas is used as fuel for a generator that powers the aquaponic farm’s pumps and lights. 

The units, developed in a collaboration with Nullam Consulting, a firm specializing in anaerobic digestion systems, will be sold for $150,000, according to Timofeeva. Aquaponic farmers can recover their investment in two or three years, she and Katsoudas said, with up to $80,000 in annual profit from what they grow with the system.

Farmers can harvest 14,500 pounds of fresh produce annually with the system — like leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers and even root vegetables. Additionally, 1,100 pounds of fresh fish could be raised inside the system, and 45 tons of organic fertilizer is a byproduct of the anaerobic digester. Plus, farmers can collect fees from providers of food scraps, like grocery stores and food processing facilities.

The aquaponic system uses dramatically less water than traditional farming, and diverts a significant amount of food waste from landfills.

“We want to bring all the technology and innovation together in a very compact, mobile, independent system that can be transported while still producing, and can be dropped wherever food is needed,” Timofeeva said.

Credit: Illinois Institute of Technology

A provided diagram shows how they have designed the AquaGrow system, combining an aquaponic farm operation and an anaerobic digester in one container unit, to work.

The ambitious concept is still in its early stages. The scientists are raising funds to build a full-scale prototype of their design. They’ve already attracted attention from the likes of Silicon Valley’s Cleantech Open Accelerator, which named the couple’s startup, called AquaGrow, a semi-finalist in its funding competition. 

Some researchers have been skeptical of aquaponic startups’ claims and question the AquaGrow projections.

Stan Cox, a lead scientist at the Land Institute, a nonprofit based in Salina, Kansas, has been a prominent critic of indoor vertical farms, which typically rely on systems like AquaGrow’s. 

Cox questioned whether such a system could produce enough food to justify the resources needed to power artificial light and climate-control mechanisms to protect the plants.

Aquaponics, obviously, is a lot more complex than growing a plant in a traditional way outdoors.

“When we’re growing a crop out in the field, the energy situation is pretty simple,” Cox told HuffPost. “When you’re going through a more convoluted process converting biomass [through the digester] and using artificial light, there’s a loss of energy at every step.”

Stephen Ventura, a soil science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who also has expressed skepticism of similar operations, said he sees promise in the AquaGrow project, but is concerned with its complexity.

“They are talking about moving and containing an immense amount of material,” Ventura wrote in an email to HuffPost. “And they’re talking about doing this with not one but three biological systems that are finicky to manage, let alone keep in mutual balance.” 

Still, Timofeeva and Katsoudas are confident. They project that their system will require some 900 pounds of food waste per day to operate. Farmers can easily obtain that much material by developing a relationship with a local grocery store or school cafeteria, both of which have a reputation for wasting many tons of food daily, Timofeeva said. 

As for the tricky logistics of the AquaGrow system, Timofeeva and Katsoudas said they’ve already succeeded in achieving balance within their system and making it easy for an operator to maintain that balance. They still need a prototype to prove it.

The scientists said AquaGrow will help feed a growing world population in a more sustainable way, allow under-resourced neighborhoods access to fresh foods, and offer an easily movable source of sustenance for communities hit by a hurricane or other natural disaster.

“Nothing prevents these systems from being picked up and dropped off in the event of a FEMA emergency. They’re ready to go,” Katsoudas said. 

And, with problems like world hunger and climate change, help is urgently needed. 

“We’re taking what we’ve got in the labs and we know we can do to actually turn it into something that can be utilized right now,” Katsoudas added. “We know the world’s going to need technology like this.”

―-

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. In addition, Erbentraut explores the evolving ways Americans are identifying and defining themselves. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

Scaling Culture 2: The Moment It All Goes Wrong

Somewhere between 50 and 150, whether by talent acquisition or company acquisition, if strong relationships aren't fostered, culture is more than likely to go off the rails.

The second part in a series exploring the why, when, and how of managing company culture in a growth organization.

If you've ever had to work with another human, you know good relationships make for good work. These bonds are the conduits of culture, and while they don't guarantee success, you can be sure it ain't happening without them. Think of relationships as connective tissue: take this essential layer away and business would just be a pile of old laptops and financial documents.

No blue chip CEO will argue the point: the human side of business is critical to success. But how does this system of relationships change as startups emerge from their proverbial garages with dreams of long-term success? In post one, I proposed an answer: relationship decay. As co-workers increase in number our brains have to work harder to remember all the names, faces, and details. We are forced to choose who we know and how well.

When our brains have to work harder to remember all the names, faces, and details, we are forced to choose who we know and how well.

Why should anyone care about relationship decay? It is the reason startup cultures fail.

Without foresight and guidance, startup cultures weaken with growth. It's hardly noticeable at first, but when it gains momentum employees will look up and no longer know all of the who's and what's that make the organization work. This is it: the moment culture is at greatest risk of unraveling. If we can see it coming maybe we can prepare for it.

DR. DUNBAR, I PRESUME?

In 1993, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that as a group grows in size it requires more relationship strengthening activities or "social grooming" to operate effectively. In his research of primates, he observed that the more individuals in a group, the more relationships existed. The more relationships there are, the more social grooming is needed. The more social grooming that's needed, the more energy is required to maintain the groups structure. I'll let him tell you.

Nonhuman primates maintain group cohesion through social grooming; among the Old World monkeys and apes, social grooming time is linearly related to group size.

It turns out for primates, social grooming is mainly achieved through, ta-dah, actual grooming. But I'm interrupting:

Maintaining stability of human-sized groups by grooming alone would make intolerable time demands. [...] the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on developing a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding.

(Spoiler alert: it's language.)

In human conversations about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences. Language may accordingly have evolved to allow individuals to learn about the behavioral characteristics of other group members more rapidly than was feasible by direct observation alone.

Fascinating. But no matter how chatty we may be, even homo sapiens have an upper limit when it comes to group size. Dunbar concludes that groups can only grow so large--eventually what it takes to maintain the relationships outweighs the benefit of being together. When the number of individuals grows beyond 150, now known as Dunbar's Number, the group will divide or create subgroups. (Even author Malcolm Gladwell name checked this phenomenon in his book The Tipping Point.)

Neighborhoods within towns, teams within leagues, and even clans within online communities are all examples of organized groups that more or less adhere to Dunbar's theory. So that's our moment of risk, yes? I wasn't so sure. I had seen organizational culture go through significant change well before that. So I did some more digging. It turns out, when it comes to work, the wheels on the culture wagon may get wobbly way before Dunbar might expect.

WHEN CULTURES GO COCKEYE

Internet Cryptography Pioneer Christopher Allen has tussled with Dunbar's number in a few well-written articles. In them he argues that groups subdivide at significantly less than 150; probably around 50 he argues. Why? For groups that come together for reasons less than true survival, the amount of energy required to maintain relationships above fifty individuals is greater than the benefit received. While corporate America's competitive environments can evoke "kill or be killed" attitudes, we aren't fighting off large toothy predators like our hairier ancestors, even if sometimes it feels like it.

While corporate America's competitive environments can evoke "kill or be killed" attitudes, we aren't fighting off large toothy predators like our hairier ancestors, even if sometimes it feels like it.

Add the layers of management, departments, and new locations that happen around this time and, boom, culture spaghetti all over the floor.

Does Allen prove an exact number for this phenomenon? No. But it doesn't matter. When it comes to an organization subdividing and relationships weakening (or not happening in the first place), the story is the same nearly every time. Somewhere between 50 and 150, whether by talent acquisition or company acquisition, if strong relationships aren't fostered, culture is more than likely to go off the rails. And if leaders aren't looking, when they are finally forced to tangle with the symptoms of an unraveling culture it will be too late.

Maybe not too late, but the sooner founders and leaders realize that culture can and should be designed, the sooner they can begin thinking about how to strengthen relationships even as their organization grows beyond 50, 500, or 5000.

Josh Levine is a speaker, consultant, and educator of all things culture. His writing has been featured in publications including Fast Company, The Design Management Journal, and 99u Magazine. You can follow him around the web @akajoshlevine.

How Entrepreneurship Can Help Achieve World Peace

The gig economy is alive and well, and disruptive innovation has empowered many to earn money driving for Uber or by monetizing their home as an AirBnB rental. But there is a deeper value and sustainable role in the start-up and entrepreneurship culture that is impacting the global landscape more than you may have considered.

Steven R. Koltai is the author of "Peace through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development" (Brookings Press, 2016). He is a successful repeat entrepreneur and was Senior Advisor for Entrepreneurship in Hillary Clinton's State Department and is currently a fellow at two Washington think tanks; the Brookings Institution and New America. I recently interviewed him on my podcast, Your Working Life and the conversation transformed how I think about entrepreneurship.

How can entrepreneurial start-ups lead to security and development on a global scale? According to Koltai in a recent Harvard Business Review article:

"Because entrepreneurship reliably generates jobs, and joblessness -- especially among young people or failing states - is probably one of the most significant root causes of the unrest and extremism vexing American foreign policy and threatening American security today. My research into entrepreneurship's role in job creation, my professional life as an entrepreneur and investor, and my experience as a one-time government official have led me to one conclusion: Entrepreneurship can solve big problems, but our government has not adequately leveraged this American-as-apple-pie tool in its foreign policy."

Why Entrepreneurism is Good for You

The U.S. economy reversed a five-year downward trend in startup activity in 2015 with a big jump in the number of new entrepreneurs.

With the largest growth in two decades, American startups are on the rebound, according to the 2015 Kauffman Index: Startup Activity.

Koltai believes there are some key reasons why entrepreneurism is a positive thing:

•Entrepreneurs are the same person all over the world - just think, you have something immediately in common with someone from Ghana or Chile or Thailand or Barbados; Israeli, Palestinian, Shia, and Shiite entrepreneurs are the same person too
•If you care about empowering those not normally born to privilege (like many women in developing countries, or those outside the top .1% of the privileged few), entrepreneurship is just about the best way to give people a leg up
•Entrepreneurial ventures are historically the single greatest path to wealth - for both entrepreneurs themselves as well as the investors who invest in them
•Entrepreneurship is the indispensible "bridge" between innovation and commercialization. Innovation without entrepreneurs usually remains in the laboratory, classroom, or academic journal

The Role of Global Governments

Koltai believes that government is indispensable to entrepreneurial success, both in the U.S. and abroad. Governments provide the rules of the game - regulations, institutions, judicial systems that give business (and investors) confidence to act. They also invest in high-risk fields and in realms where future benefits are currently unknowable. And so it is not unreasonable to involve government in entrepreneurship promotion - as has always been the case in the United States.

Apple Pie and the American Dream

Even those around the world who don't favor America still see the USA as the land of opportunity. But the USA does a poor job of leveraging entrepreneurial advantage around the globe. 1% of American foreign aid - at the very most - goes towards entrepreneurship promotion. Many other countries, including Canada, Germany, the U.K. and the Netherlands, do more entrepreneurship promotion funding than the U.S., which is supposedly the "mother" of entrepreneurship-driven economic growth.

In 2014, over $600 billion was spent on private contractors - all across the board from cleaning offices to fighting wars. The U.S. government is thus the biggest customer in the American economy; its annual procurement spending is ten times greater than AT&T's and exceeds Walmart's yearly revenues. Yet, the method we use for contracting (federal contracting and procurement rules) is grossly broken. "It's like trying to 'turn a screw with a rubber screwdriver.' No wonder Healthcare.gov didn't work!" - says Koltai.

When a Mouse Dances With a Hippo

Similarly, while small entrepreneurial businesses have long been admired to be the engines of America's wealth and creativity, it is virtually impossible for them to work with the U.S. government when it comes to procurement. This what Koltai calls a "mouse and a hippo dancing with each other."

Hillary Clinton's Innovation Army

With the Presidential election only a few weeks away, it's opportune to look at both candidates' approach to global entrepreneurship. Over the last year, Hillary Clinton has amassed what many are calling an innovation army. She has quietly assembled a national network of tech and telecom advisers, subject matter experts and influencers in the entrepreneurial sphere. Donald Trump has undefined efforts on this front.

According to a Politico Report:

"Clinton's advisers have been charged with helping to craft the campaign's policy agenda, and they've been organized into working groups, like ones on the disruptive economy and broadband competition -- as well as one called "Rules of the Road," which is looking at ways to remove regulatory hurdles. Among those lending their expertise (sometimes via Google Hangouts) are Bill-Clinton-era Patent Office director Q. Todd Dickinson, former start-up exec Lorraine Hariton, and former State Department entrepreneurship adviser Steven Koltai.

A Clinton campaign spokesperson explains the sprawling network is "a way to make sure our technology and innovation policy agenda presents a clear and comprehensive vision for the country."

Additionally, Clinton has revealed her small-business plan of cultivating 50,000 entrepreneurs in underserved communities with online lending as an alternative funding resource. The proposal aims to make the tools for small-business starters more user-friendly and she would quadruple the start-up tax deduction to lower the financial barriers faced in founding a company.

A Soccer Ball That Lights the World

Entrepreneurs have the power to change the world. Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman were paired together as juniors at Harvard in an engineering class for non-engineers. Challenged to create something that combined art and science to ease a global problem - they developed Soccket, a soccer ball that harnesses kinetic energy with every kick to it and can power a lamp for three hours from just 30 minutes of play. The two later founded Uncharted Play.

Yahoo News - The Upbeat blog shared their story:

"No one was paying attention to the importance of play. Amplifying existing enjoyment to make the world a better place," is how Matthews described their idea. But packing technology into an airless ball that looked and moved like a normal soccer ball was not easy.

First, they stuffed a shake-the-charge flashlight in a hamster ball and shook it--and sure enough the light was charged. Using this concept but in a soccer ball, they took their prototype out into the world to test it with the pros: 10-year-old kids playing in fields, at playgrounds and on slabs of concrete in Nigeria, South Africa, and Brazil, places where soccer is omnipresent but electricity is not.

Today, the Soccket is in its seventh iteration and is highly praised from both the developing world and engineers alike. Former President Bill Clinton even hailed Matthews at the Clinton Global Initiative. "If ever there was an innovator, she is it and she came up with an idea for clean energy that hardly anyone else has before!"

The ball is distributed in six countries through local nongovernmental organizations, who are making sure it gets to the communities that can benefit the most. Yahoo! followed the ball to the small village of Yohualichan in Puebla, Mexico. Besides having a shiny new ball to play with, the indigenous kids used it to do their homework. The women used it to cook and sew after sundown, helping them sustain their main source of income. From the kick of a ball, the reality for these families was flipped around and their lives were forever changed for the better.

"In the developing world, the ball becomes a symbol of empowerment," Matthews said. "It's about your happiness in the now [while playing], and a hope for a better tomorrow."

Let There Be World Peace

As we look to a new 2017 Presidential administration and the continued aspiration to end extremism, terrorism, and foreign threats to American security, it makes sense that joblessness, not religious or cultural conflict is the root cause of world unrest. Perhaps the greatest foreign policy tool moving forward is entrepreneurship and empowering global citizens with the sustainable tools and resources to provide for their families. Peace though entrepreneurship will help bolster start-up activity in fragile and developing markets to generate economic opportunity for people living in unstable environments around the world.

Caroline Dowd-Higgins authored the book "This Is Not the Career I Ordered" now in the 2nd edition, and maintains the career reinvention blog of the same name. She is Executive Director of Career & Professional Development at the Indiana University Alumni Association and contributes to Huffington Post, AOL Jobs, Ellevate Network, and The Chronicle newspaper in Indiana. She hosts and produces an online show called: Thrive! about career & life empowerment for women on YouTube. Caroline also hosts the international podcast series Your Working Life - on iTunes. Follow her on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter.

Big Banks Won’t Say If They Use The Same Scheme That Led To Wells Fargo’s Fraud

The four biggest banks in the U.S. won’t say whether they offer workers the same kind of sales incentives that drove Wells Fargo employees to open millions of accounts for customers without their knowledge.

That scam led to a record-setting fine, congressional hearings and a rare case in which a bank CEO was forced to give up a few million dollars in compensation, with legislators calling for his ouster. California recently announced it would no longer do business with the bank, and Illinois is expected to follow with its own announcement on Monday.

Representatives from Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and US Bank declined to respond when The Huffington Post asked them if they use the same high-pressure, lofty sales quotas that pushed underpaid Wells Fargo employees to rip off customers in an effort to keep their jobs or earn bonuses to enhance their low hourly pay. Along with Wells Fargo, these banks are the five largest in the country, ranked by total assets.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Many are demanding Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf step down in light of the scandal. So far, he is being forced to give up some of his pay.

No one has accused these institutions of pulling off a fraud like Wells Fargo’s. The bank was fined $185 million for the widespread behavior.

Yet it’s notable that none of the banks contacted by HuffPost would be forthcoming about practices within their bank, even as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a stern warning to financial institutions to carefully monitor sales practices to prevent a Wells-like debacle. 

JP Morgan Chase, for instance, declined to talk about incentives and instead referred HuffPost to a press release about its plans to raise bank teller pay to $16 an hour in some high-cost cities.

The CFPB has said it’s investigating other banks to see if the practice is going on there.

Pressuring bank workers to “cross-sell” customers ― industry jargon for convincing them to sign on for more products like credit cards, bank accounts and loans ― is a common practice at U.S. banks, Christman reported in a detailed analysis NELP released this summer.

Indeed, there are signals that Wells Fargo isn’t alone with its fake account problem. Consumers have reported problems with unauthorized credit card openings at other banks since at least 2015. The CFPB has received 638 complaints from people who said they received credit cards they did not ask for since January of that year, according to an analysis the S&P Global Market Intelligence released last week. Just 28 of those complaints were directed at Wells Fargo; 31 were for Bank of America; 59 were about JPMorgan Chase and 83 complaints regarded Citi.

“Those banks that don’t do this [sales incentives] are happy to say so,” Anastasia Christman, a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, told HuffPost.

That none of these banks were willing to talk about their practices is perhaps a sign of extreme caution in the wake of the penalties levied on Wells Fargo. The bank was forced to pay $185 million in fines earlier this month, including a record $100 million penalty levied by the CFPB. 

At the time, CFPB Director Richard Cordray put the banking industry on notice.

“This was outrageous conduct. It was a violation of trust and an abuse of trust. It should not have happened, and I guarantee you that we will be seeing that it does not happen again at any bank,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “We will be looking for these types of problems.”

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

CFPB Director Richard Cordray has said other banks should carefully look at their incentive systems to ensure a Wells Fargo-like scam doesn't happen.

Bank workers interviewed for the NELP report talked about the immense pressure to sell more products to customers, who often not only didn’t need a new credit card ― but would likely face financial harm from one.

“If someone’s getting married, tell them to get a credit card. Any life event that happened, you were supposed to say, ‘Get a credit card for it.’ If you heard kids in the background, the answer was a credit card,” a Rhode Island Bank of America service specialist told the organization.

The comprehensive analysis was based in part on interviews with 75 workers currently or recently employed by seven major banks ― including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and US Bank. It was released the month before news of Wells Fargo’s fine broke.

The pressure on workers is amplified by the fact that they’re low-paid. The average wage for a bank teller is around $12 an hour. A stunning 70 percent of the lowest-paid bank workers are women. 

Nearly one-third of bank tellers’ families use public benefits ― including food stamps and Medicaid ― according to a 2014 report from the University of California, Berkeley.

One banker reported signing her sister up for a credit card that she didn’t really understand. “She maxed it out, and she still has that maxed-out credit card 10 years later,” this banker told NELP.

A U.S. Bank collection worker said: “There was a constant battle of how you do right for the customer without sacrificing, you know, not paying a light bill or having shoes for the kids going back to school. You can’t make that sacrifice.”

Amalgamated Bank, a small New York-based union-owned bank, is one of the few financial institutions to publicly disclose it does not use sales quotas or incentive pay for cross-selling. The bank announced last year it would pay its workers at least $15 an hour.

Until recently, Amalgamated did offer bonuses to branch managers for reaching certain goals in opening accounts, but the bank plans to discontinue the practice at year’s end.

“We don’t want to have any shred of doubt in our consumers’ minds that we are watching out for their best interests,” Amalgamated CEO Keith Mestrich told HuffPost. He said tellers at Amalgamated often make far more than $15 an hour.

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Union-owned Amalgamated Bank says it doesn't have the quotas or incentive systems that other banks employ.

But Mestrich’s bank isn’t public and under the same pressure to increase its bottom line as the largest banks. In the wake of the financial crisis, the nation’s biggest banks have increasingly relied on fees from consumer accounts to keep bringing in money. 

“We don’t know if this is going on at other banks,” Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, told HuffPost. “We do know that cross-selling products at all the banks is both a priority and highly incentivized and must be policed with care and diligence or we will see more scandals like this.”

“The banks make massive amounts of money in selling their own products to their customer base,” Kelleher said.

For years, low-paid Wells Fargo tellers and customer service representatives were under enormous pressure to cross-sell. These workers, who typically made about $12 an hour, were offered bonuses for reaching their quotas. Some were warned they could be fired for not meeting these aggressive sales goals. The bank said it wanted to sell each customer eight products ― “eight is great!” Wells Fargo said publicly of its cross-selling efforts.

Faced with that kind of pressure, thousands of workers created fake accounts for customers. More than 2 million sham accounts were created, causing all kinds of consternation for customers ― extra fees, lower credit scores, calls from debt collectors on accounts these people did not know existed. And Wells Fargo fired 5,300 bankers for engaging in the practice. It’s not known how many other bankers were fired for not meeting the aggressive quotas.

A Lesson In Empowering Young Black Men

It only took about 20 minutes of watching “Last Chance U” before it hit me: educating young men who aspire to play football and training boys and young men of color to pursue technology pathways are one and the same in many ways. The men in this Netflix original documentary are not just college-age student athletes in East Mississippi, these are our Hidden Geniuses. Strong, fast, intelligent, and gregarious as they are, they demonstrate the same highs, lows, hope, promise, and pitfalls we see daily in the adolescents developing technology skills with The Hidden Genius Project.

The Hidden Genius Project trains and mentors black male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship, and leadership skills to transform their lives and communities. We offer intensive, project-based training to young people to develop their skills in computer science, problem solving, software development, business, and critical analysis of issues related to identity and social justice.

Over six installments of “Last Chance U,” we follow national football powerhouse East Mississippi Community College (EMCC, or “Scooba Tech”) as its players navigate the trials and tribulations of a strenuous season, high-stakes academic responsibilities, and daily life stressors (many stemming from home and family). We marvel at their keen insights, big hearts, and physical prowess. Still, at the same time our hearts drop with every missed assignment, failed exam (possibly owing to a failure to bring a pencil), class absence, traumatic family experience, and self-doubt.

In addition to offering an intimate view of the complicated business of college football, the documentary simultaneously humanizes the students by exposing their vulnerabilities and insecurities. Consequently, we see a little bit of ourselves in each of these young men. Accordingly, as Scooba Tech’s football team is comprised primarily of black males—many of whom come from underserved communities—we see our Hidden Geniuses in them as well. Thus, the lessons from “Last Chance U” carry real implications for our work:

1.Self-doubt is insidious. Too often, the bad decisions we see our young people make are not necessarily rooted in bad intentions or fundamental ignorance, but rather self-doubt. In the first episode, “Last Chance U’s” most dynamic character responds to a teammate’s declaration that, “They say ya’all don’t learn in Mississippi,” by agreeing: “They say we don’t do nothin’ in Missippi…they say we just fat ass, dumb ass country folk…that’s f***ed up ain’t it?” When we internalize other people’s negative perceptions of us, self-doubt can drive us to make decisions based on assumption that we are incapable, or have nothing to lose. Such decisions can effect dire consequences that self-confidence might otherwise help us avoid.

2.Exposure counts. In youth development work, we often assume intensive programming should carry priority over shorter-term exposure activities. Still, exposure is critical. After a difficult game, one EMCC student intimates that he is not sure he wants to keep playing football, and he “might just leave school to become a garbage man and make one or two [thousand dollars] a week.” An academic adviser then explains that in Mississippi it is rare to earn $50K-$100K per year in sanitation. Here, we see this young man feeling the weight of limited options, stemming in part from limited exposure to what is available. In our work, we struggle to demystify, debunk, and expose the vast array of opportunities available to young people within the technology space, to show just how broad their career options are.

3.Trauma matters. Life inevitably presents all of us with various traumatic experiences. When multiple traumas compound for an individual at a young age, it can have a deleterious effect. For the young men from EMCC and our young men alike, each trauma increases the load on their shoulders, and often impedes positive decision making. We are sometimes dumbfounded when young people make decisions that seem to undermine their goals. Pain certainly has that effect. Addressing that pain is a critical step toward improving performance and outcomes.

4.Hope and resilience breed healing. For all the challenges outlined above, I constantly marvel at the brilliant exploits of our Hidden Geniuses. Just in the way we see the Scooba Tech players’ sharp wit, tenacity, and ability to rise to the occasion at the most critical juncture, the youth we serve show tremendous resilience and brilliance. It brings me joy to see young people excelling in the face of great hardship. Even seeing their ability to smile and laugh inspires us to do whatever we can to infuse our young men with the hope and exposure to advance.

What I love about “Last Chance U” is how it compels us to challenge one critical assumption: that there is a linear relationship between interest and achievement. These young men are just months away from playing big-time college football, and yet we see them get frustrated, under-achieve, and even consider walking away from the game altogether. The stressors, trauma, and insecurities they wrestle with all conspire to sabotage their progress.

In training young men of color (even from a range of backgrounds), it is not enough to drum up interest, rather we must work hard to help them manifest their resilience in navigating a host of challenges en route to excellence. Just as a number of the documentary’s protagonists push through and earn four-year scholarship, our young men continue to advance as well. Hard as it may be, this work is possible, and it is fulfilling.

Access Your Potential is a new blog series focused on exploring the importance of developing technology skills and financial acumen in minority communities. Join the conversation by emailing PurposePlusProfit@huffingtonpost.com or by tweeting with #AccessYourPotential.

Lost Sight of 'Why' You Are Working? 3-Steps To Integrate Work-Life Balance

We’ve lost sight of why we work: the goal of well-being and happiness. October is National Work and Family Month which focuses on the challenges working families face every day. One of those challenges is being happy. Americans rank 13th among the happiest nations, according to the 2016 World Happiness Report. Since the US has the world’s largest economy, it clearly shows money does not buy happiness. Why do other countries, including third-world developing countries, score higher on happiness than American citizens? We work for many reasons, and one of those is money. We work longer and longer hours to make more money. We do this because we have been indoctrinated into the pursuit of profit and return on investment – Wall Street’s only metric in deciding if a company, and those that work for a company, are good or bad.

According to a 2014 Gallup poll, full-time American employees work an average of 47-hours per week with 39% working greater than 50-hours. Is this too much or too little of time to meet the needs of other roles in our life such as family, friends, self-care, spiritual, and pleasure? Well, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, and Sweden average a much shorter work week than the USA does, and those countries are higher on the world index of happiest citizens and are living a more balance life.

Do We Balance Work-Life or Integrate the Two?

Work-life balance has been broadly defined in the academic arena as how well an individual assesses his or her performance in balancing the multiple roles in life. In the past, turning off your office light or punching a time clock used to be the “off” switch that separated work from personal time. However, technology has not only blurred the lines; technology has interwoven them. There is no true divide between work and personal life.

Devon Bandison, based in New York City, is a high performance coach and speaker who, among many leadership attributes, is committed to helping his clients in work-life satisfaction. In one of Devon Bandison Podcasts, he interviewed Stew Friedman, who is the founding director of Wharton's Work/Life Integration Project. Stew’s take on work-life balance is that it shouldn’t exist. Balance is about trade-offs such as I need to give up family time for work time. Stew teaches work-life integration where people will benefit more by focusing on how an improvement in one role in life can have a ripple effect in another role. In other words, what positive outcomes in your life might occur if you make a positive change in one of your other roles? Stew teaches how to integrate work and life versus focusing on balancing life by contemplating the trade-offs one needs to make in their various roles.

I believe the ideal state might lie between balance and integration. For example, many Americans trade-off sleep to recapture more family or work time. According to the 2014 Gallup Sleep Study, 40% of Americans sleep six hours or less per night. The American Medical Association continues to advocate we should get between seven and nine hours of sleep to rejuvenate our minds and bodies.

Richard Fagerlin, one of the top 100 trust leaders in the world, believes the pursuit of balance in his life is a constant tension. He seeks excellence in everything he does yet realizes he can’t do everything at the same time. He chooses when to say no and when to say yes. Managing his priorities is how he manages the tension in his life and ultimately his happiness.

3 Steps to Become Happier and Improve Your Work-Life Satisfaction

1. Enjoy your work and the organization you choose to spend a significant amount of time with each day. Find engagement and meaning in your work so you can achieve a sense of accomplishment. Gaining these happiness attributes at work often lead to spill-over effects that bring happiness to the home. Can’t find this at work? Perhaps it is time for a career change.

2. Reflect on your meaning of happiness. What are your priorities in life? Where do you want to see improvements? Reflect deeply on what is important and why it is important. Then take a step in that direction. Remember, each of us are capable of great accomplishments. We can all eat an elephant one bite at a time.

3. What brings happiness to those you care about the most? One of the best injections of happiness is in having healthy personal relationships. Do you need to change the amount of time or mental energy you are applying in one or more roles in life to bring greater energy to your personal relationships? Do something today for someone you love that will catch them by surprise. Feel the gratitude and love they express to you. Remember that feeling and build on it in the near future.