To hire a thief, part one

Most of us have sat around a table with friends and colleagues, sharing our viewpoints about how to fix the social problems we all face.

A few years ago, I got the unexpected opportunity to not only espouse my social philosophies, but to actually test how much I really believed them.  It was the equivalent of the Universe saying, “Okay, Stan.  Put up or shut up.”  The issue had to do with rehabilitation of ex-convicts in order to reduce the cycle of recidivism.  In today’s column, and for the next few weeks following, I will share with you my experiment in hiring someone who stole from me.  The story is written by myself, and by the thief.

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The 83 secret steps to success

Before you complain about false advertising, let me assure you that there are not eighty-three steps to entrepreneurial success.  But if I was a relatively famous individual, and I published a book with this title, you might be tempted to read it.  Because if there were indeed a definable set of steps to success, and you were an entrepreneur working eighty-three hour weeks to accomplish your goals, you’d pay good money to discover them.

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Sustainability as an investment craze?

In his book, “Natural Capitalism”, Paul Hawken (co-founder of Smith and Hawken, the wildly successful catalog specialty retailer of gardeners’ dreams), laid out a very compelling case for what has come to be known as the “triple bottom line”.  The notion is that if a company generates profits, while doing what’s right for people and for the planet, it creates a sustainable and competitively advantageous organization.

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I ain’t retiring, so quit asking

I am now of legal age to take advantage of those wonderful senior citizen discounts at Denny’s.  So this subject is one I am intimately familiar with, as a student of the workplace and as one of the many individuals who represent the biggest demographic segment of the American population.  And just how many are we talking about?

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