social commentary

Choices

Posted On: June 22, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Healthcare, Social commentary, VGM, Work Culture

We all exercise freedom of choice. We choose our partner, how to spend our time and where we buy groceries. We choose the shows we watch, our religion and our favorite teams. The people we serve exercise their freedom of choice as well. Every person we do business with has a choice. They can choose to work with us. Alternatively, they can choose to do business with someone else, or use alternative methods that do not include us. Success comes when make...

Addressing Inequality

Posted On: June 4, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Social commentary, VGM

Our nation is in a very difficult moment. Not only are we adjusting to a devastating pandemic, but we are confronting the scourge of racial injustice, yet again. This tumult arrives amid a foundation of an us-versus-them tribalism that has increasingly infected our country and escalated divisiveness. The pandemic will wane. Science and healthcare will advance upon it and destroy it, but that is probably going to take eighteen months. In the meantime, new habits of rigorous hand-washing, social...

Tags: vgm, racism, race, inequality

Ownership

Posted On: May 22, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, Opinions, Social commentary, Work Culture

Renting has its advantages. No commitment. No investment. Free from entanglements. Owning on the other hand, requires investment. It means putting something at risk. Ownership comes with commitment, obligation and responsibility. You might say ownership requires you to be all-in. When it comes to your career and your life, ownership is worth the investment. In fact, it’s the only way to go. Employee-ownership of business is the pathway to career and personal fulfillment. Further,...

The Bright Light of Optimism

Posted On: April 25, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Social commentary, VGM

The pandemic has cast a dark cloud of doom over much of the world. We’re largely locked down in our dwelling places, using Zoom or Ring Central by day and Netflix or Hulu by night – washing hands (again), avoiding people, being skeptical and generally existing in a dark place. Which is why today I’m writing about a bright light. One of the habits I’ve developed as CEO of VGM Group is that I send a congratulatory card and children’s book each time a VGM employee-owner...

Optimism

Posted On: February 1, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Opinions, Social commentary

“Progress is a historical fact. The numbers show that over the past seven decades humans have become longer-lived, healthier, safer, richer, freer, fairer, happier, and smarter, not just in the West, but worldwide.” – Steven Pinker In my last post, I tried to make the case for optimism as an antidote for fearing change. Even as I typed the words, I wondered how many of my readers would believe that things are getting progressively better with each passing year. As human beings,...

Tags: future, success, optimism, hope

The Iowa Caucuses

Posted On: January 15, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Opinions, Social commentary

My home state really messed up last Monday night. The Iowa Caucuses are a treasure in the state of Iowa, making us a temporary center of the political world every four years. Interestingly, my caucus site was highly organized and went off without a hitch. In fact, it was the best run Iowa caucus I have ever attended, and I’ve been to many. But at the level above, where results were collected, aggregated, and reported – well, that was a train wreck. There were a whole lot of voices calling...

Tags: iowa, caucuses, caucus, politics

Letting Go & Moving Forward

Posted On: January 3, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Social commentary, Work Culture

Happy New Year, everyone. It’s hard to believe that it’s 2020 already. I can still remember when the year 2000 sounded impossibly far off and futuristic. There was a lot of fear that surrounded the coming of the new millennium. Most of it was driven by the increasingly large role that technology was beginning to play in our lives, the rapid pace of change that came with it, and the worry that our over-reliance on it could bring civilization to its knees. Twenty years after the Y2K hysteria,...

Braiding

Posted On: December 13, 2019 by Mike Mallaro in: Community & Loneliness, Social commentary

One might be overwhelmed, but two standing together can resist. A three-fold cord is not easily broken. – Ecclesiastes 4:12 I began my career as a CPA in an accounting firm. One of my clients was a fishing tackle manufacturer whose lead product was fishing line. Fishing line is made by extruding a melted plastic substance to create a thin line that is both flexible and strong. Fishing for bigger, stronger fish requires a different line. I learned from my client that the way to make stronger...

Mom, Coffee, & Community

Posted On: November 29, 2019 by Mike Mallaro in: Community & Loneliness, Social commentary

I hope that everyone is having a safe and blessed Thanksgiving holiday. For many of us, these last few days have been a chance to connect and reconnect with friends and family members around the dinner table. We all have our traditions that we follow at this time of year, and our traditions and the people we share them with provide us with a sense of belonging and connectedness that we often take for granted. There’s a lesson there for us about the way we do business. When I was growing up,...

Better Late Than Never

Posted On: October 25, 2019 by Mike Mallaro in: Opinions, Social commentary

For the first one-hundred and forty-four years of America's existence, women were not allowed to vote. In 1920, ninety-nine years ago this summer, women finally won the right to vote in the United States via ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That was a really long wait! Our history classes teach us about Susan B. Anthony’s role in leading the fight for women’s suffrage. What you might not know is that Anthony began her quest in the 1850’s, almost...