In a business setting, much emphasis is currently placed on mentoring and coaching, but like buzz words that get floated around, do we know the differences between coaching and mentoring?

The differences between mentoring versus coaching are subtle but distinct; firstly we should start with identifying the differences between coaching and mentoring. Coaching is primarily focused on skill acquisition whereas mentoring involves skill transfer from an experienced person to a less experienced person. Coaching is performance-based and highly focused as evidenced in professional sports from teams to individuals.

Therefore, a coach is someone to learn with while a mentor is someone to learn from. When identifying mentoring, a mentor need not be employed in the organisation, in fact, in many cases, mentors are often external to the organisation. Typically, a mentor as as benevolent, mentors act with goodwill as opposed to coaches who are normally remunerated.

Whilst I agree with what Rob is saying in principle, the implication is to choose the ideal team based complementing skill-sets and then integrate personal relationships into a high performance team. However, he now runs the risk of creating a mini bureaucracy within an organisation where the team the individual personally selects turns into a best mate’s club full of yes men.

I have seen this occur all too often where dysfunctional relationships trump skills and knowledge to replace competency with nepotism. I am experiencing this exact phenomenon in my current workplace where the organisational culture has deteriorating to such a level, highly competent are seeking new employment opportunities due to this leadership vacuum.

Hard working competent people are at risk of losing their jobs while inefficiencies abound based on religious and pseudo-family values; this is an occupation, not a religious club of best friends. This plays very poorly on the organisation, how do they not see the incompetence playing out before them? I am a very big advocate of a competitive merit selection process, address the selection criteria of the job description when recruiting and selecting team members.

The prices and incomes accord was macroeconomic policy implemented by the Hawke Government beginning in 1983. The accord was designed to combat the endemic problem of that era – stagflation.

This is the crushing economic condition where the economy suffers simultaneous high unemployment and high inflation – a situation John Maynard Keynes stated was impossible to achieve. Hawke’s policy affected prices, wages, non-wage incomes, taxation and social payments. As an incomes policy, the economic goal was to limit nominal wage increases in order to achieve a sustained decrease in inflation.

American president, Richard Nixon introduced a prices and incomes policy in the early 1970s and despite a short-term respite, stagflation however returned with a vengeance immediately after the policy was lifted. The bitter medicine inflicted on the American economy by Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volker to purposely induce a recession finally smashed inflation in the late 1970s. A decade later, the prices and income policy framework was now Australian economic policy.

It was hypothesised that through such anti-inflation policy; employment growth would lead to an simultaneous decrease in inflation and unemployment. Stagflation was a problem Keynes economic theories had been unable to solve; signaling an end to the stagflation period of the late 1970s and early 1980s required monetarist policy intervention.

It has been implied – those who rule wages rule the country, or so it would seem. The prices and income accord was implemented due to wage inflation varying between 30% (1975) and 18% (1981). Governments unsuccessfully attempted to solve the stagflation problem through various fiscal and monetary policies, a wages breakout was blamed for the 1981/82 recession.

The accord provided a solution to the problem via a decrease in nominal wages without the need for contractionary fiscal and monetary policies, increasing employment at a moderate inflation rate. Nominal wage cuts led to decreases in real unit labour costs with an increasing proportion of Australian GDP heading towards business profits – away from wages. Increasing business investment, economic growth and employment, wage rises were traded off for economic and employment growth.

Costs, such as the price of labour, are subject to direct influence from agents with market power (unions); incomes policy is designed to influence such agent behaviour. The prices and incomes accord was designed not as substitute for demand demand management policies, but to compliment them. Therefore, the prices and incomes accord could be implemented restraining wage/price spirals whilst expanding demand simultaneously achieving higher levels of employment. It is also argued the goals of income policies curb inflation to positively influence prices and employment.

Utilising the Phillips Curve as their economic tool of choice; proponents argue labour supply prices increase at a slower rate due to the slower money wage growth combined with simultaneous productivity increases – pushing the Phillips Curve to the left. According to their argument, a lower inflation rate is achieved through a lower unemployment rate. The prices and incomes accord ultimately ended in 1996 with the election of the Howard government; under Howard, wages rose significantly, productivity rose and wages were negotiated freely.

I am a believer of individual wage negotiations; if you are professional in your conduct and you have knowledge and skills in demand, you hold a strong negotiating position, you have the opportunity to sub-contract your services operating as a small business reaping the benefits of such business structures in a deregulated environment.

Once the entry-level dive course is out of the way, dive centres and resorts inevitably want to on-sell further training; it stands to reason, a dive centre or resort is in the business of selling diving. Instead of the standard Advanced Open Water Diver course, why not undertake the Intro to Tech instead, the average newly certified diver is likely to gain more from taking this course.

The AOWD course is pretty weak; of the mandatory dives, the deep dive is a waste of time, the navigation dive is worthwhile and the night dive is the best of the elective dives, the other dives are just that, getting in the water and getting wet. The Intro to Tech is not a decompression course; you can expect to learn in-depth dive planning, advanced buoyancy control, gas management techniques, situational awareness, correct trim, gear configuration and selection – a much better outcome.

How could I be so stupid? What was I thinking? I had been diving in October, the second week was in Anilao, been there plenty of times in Anilao, I know the routine well.

My normal mode of operation for Friday is two dives in the morning, wash gear, hang in the sun to dry, lunch, shower, pay bill, catch lift to jeepney pick-up point, cramped jeepney ride, bus to Manila and walk to hotel room. This takes hours to execute, but it is the cheapest way and I get to Manila with time to spare in daylight hours. Of course, once in the hotel room, I pull my gear from my bag to air out. Ok, that is my first mistake, I forgot Friday – probably too keen for Friday night drinks. So Saturday morning, too hungover to care, Saturday afternoon – just forgot. Sunday forgot and Monday flight, not thinking of dive gear.

Ok, arrive home Monday night well after midnight and need to be up 6 am, maybe 4 hours sleep if I’m lucky. Normally I pull my gear from my bag and hang out, instead I didn’t unlock, I just threw the bag in the shed. So here we were in December, I unzipped my bag and much to my surprise, not only is everything still wet, the mould growth is impressive. A brand new regulator (second time used), brand new wetsuit and new bag all looking like 10 years old – my BCD, boots and fins hold up surprisingly well.

I was supposed to be diving in Bali with this gear – a slightly marginal proposition now. An overnight soaking in the bathtub full of detergent, a fresh water rinse out in the morning and some drying off time outside. Breathing from my reg might could have been a bit iffy, I shudder to think what the diaphragm and inner casing looks like – maybe a second soak in detergent is in order. The inflator is jammed, but not to worry, it hasn’t been working properly for over five years now – maybe closer to eight to ten years. I purchased the BCD in about 2003, done about 1000 open water dives with it and countless confined water pool sessions. Oh well, better give it a go, nobody likes a winger.

Tumblr is a social networking website and micro-blogging platform founded by David Karp in 2006 and was launched 2007. Tumblr is now owned by Yahoo Inc after acquiring the business for a reported $1.1 billion USD in 2013 – not bad for a 7 year old business.

I have started to utilise Tumblr for some short form blogs as well as post links to Observations in an Undemocratic World and Travel Observations as Tumblr allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog format; users also have the ability to follow blogs and comment on people’s blogs.

After some research, I learned that development of Tumblr began in 2006 during a two-week gap between contracts at Karp’s software consulting company – he started a billion dollar company between projects, amazing. Apparently Karp had been interested in tumble-logs for some time, I’m still not exactly sure what a tumble log is, he was waiting for an established blogging platforms to introduce their own tumble-logging platform. As none had been released, Karp and Marco Arment began development on their own tumble-logging platform and, as they say – the rest is history.

At university, we all know marx is marks; we do however need to balance academic interference against freedom of speech. 

Interestingly, Leigh and Gans research indicates mostly neutral political reporting from Australian media outlets with somewhat surprising results of News Corp and the ABC as being politically neutral and unsurprisingly, Fairfax and The Guardian reporting the greatest left wing bias. We are exposed to biased reporting daily, we do not want further exposure to excessive left wing ideals, we seek a balanced academic argument.

Universities need to lead critical thinking and deductive reasoning amongst students based on measurable facts with absolutely no emotion involved or institutional bias. What we ask for is free thinking not overly influenced by the pangs of socialist lecturers; give us the information, the tools to analyse the problem and the academic freedom to come up with reasoned argument. 

On a trip in the south-west forests, we drove through some wonderful regrowth forests and it was difficult to distinguish between old growth and regrowth as a novice. Located just before the timber town of Nannup, this picturesque swimming hole was for the exclusive use of the mill manager and his family. The timber mill operated from 1909 – 1915 and then from 1919 – 1925 employing 150 men until the timber resources were exhausted and the mill moved to nearby Nannup.

The mill manager’s residence was perched on the edge of the pool, it was a case economic segregation, the mill workers were able to use the aptly named Workers Pool, a little further downstream on St John Brook in the Cambray State Forest.

The picnic area, offers tables under the shade of the trees or a roofed structure. We enjoyed our breakfast under the trees, interestingly,  there are no rubbish bins at the pool as they attract feral animals. A sign kindly asks people to take their rubbish with them, I saw no rubbish around the area at all.

The boardwalk is located where St John Brook flows into the pool, the slow flowing brook meanders through the forest. There is a walk along a track around the pool and through the forest, while the area was logged in the early part of the century, growth in the area has returned although no tall timber is found in the area.

CNBC asks the question, what social media network will be around in 25 years? This isn’t an exhaustive list by any amount of the imagination, but it begs the question – will any survive? Facebook is the widest known social media platform, people are jaded with FB though, as Zuckerburg owns Instagram, I guess it is pretty popular and may remain so.

Google will still be be around, so YouTube will survive but I am not so sure about G+ unless it suddenly becomes cool or Google Inc sinks a ton of money and effort into the network. That’s a shame as I like G+ as a network. I am less than upbeat about Snapchat and sharing crude selfies may actually fall out of fashion crippling the media platform. Then again, venture capitalists are lining up for the company with reports of Yahoo throwing plenty of cash their way.

I positive about Twitter, downbeat on Tumblr despite the fact Yahoo owns the platform and my sister telling me how cool the network actually is. I know little about Reddit and think Pintrest will maintain its market share unless, of course, competitors create extreme competition. That leaves LinkedIn, that is the leading professional network but needs to gain market penetration to really become effective without becoming a second rate chatter social network.

Sitting in my alcohol fridge, I still have a number of bottles of 2006 Rosemount show reserve chardonnay I purchased from my wine dealer laying on their side chilling. On file, they know I like old style wooded chardonnay in summer; I remember their pitch, pull out your shoulder pads and roller skates, this is a throwback to old style winemaking.

Looking at the tasting notes, this chardy is pale gold colour, reminiscent of cat’s piss yellow. Peach and mango fruit accentuate the biscuit and spicy tobacco oak the overtones. While they describe this chardy palate as medium to full bodied, I feel it is definitely full bodied. A mix of tropical fruit, peach, ripe lemon, peach, spicy oak with savoury lees flavours round out this well crafted Hunter Valley offering. The tasting notes suggest this chardonnay drinks best between 2008 – 2010; yet in early 2015, this chards is still drinking well. I sometimes wonder if I am missing out on the 2008 – 2010 version.