FORWARDTHINKING
A FAST PASS THROUGH
AIRPORT SECURITY
If you’re a frequent traveler, tired of the lines at airport security, here’s how to
get around the crowds. For a fee, you can enroll in the Clear program, which
prescreens you and issues you a card that contains your fingerprint and iris scan
information and allows you to access designated airport security fast lanes.
“You no longer have to worry about whether the wait at the security checkpoint
is five minutes or an hour and a half,” says Clear CTO Jason Slibeck. “For busi-
ness travelers, that’s one of the biggest frustrations. Our service improves pre-
dictability and takes some of the hassle out of
the security checkpoint experience.”
At the Clear lane, attendants are there to
speed you through the process, helping you
with bins and your boarding pass. Travelers
pay an annual fee of US$128 to use the Clear
lane at 18 airports throughout the U.S. The
company is working to expand its service to
additional domestic and international airports.
Go to www.flyclear.com to get started.
KIM BRANDT
ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION
100 THINGS YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW
It can be tricky coming up with anecdotes to open speeches—or inventive
small-talk topics. But with Russ Kick’s 100 Things You’re Not Supposed to
Know at your fingertips, your listeners are sure to remember you long after you’re gone.
The book, published by Disinformation and
available through Barnes & Noble in the
United States, contains what Gary Baddeley,
president and CEO of Disinformation, calls “A
smorgasbord of different kinds of information,
whether it’s politics, religion, sex, or history.”
Inside, you’ll find plenty of conversation starters (for example, 4. 5 trillion cigarette butts end up
as litter each year) and material that will really take
a crowd’s breath away ( 2 million workers die on the job
each year, making work a bigger killer than war). Beyond the fun and not-so-fun facts, Baddeley says there’s something else executives can learn from
100 Things, which exposes several of big business’s secrets: “Be honest in
the information that you put out to the public. If there is a dirty secret, don’t
try and hide it,” he says. “Spin it, maybe, but don’t hide it.”
LINDY GROENING
KEEPING YOUR
DISTANCE
Nobody wants a doctor or dentist who
“phones it in,” but for many people ( 33
million in the U.S. at last count, according
to telework research authors Kate Lister
and Tom Harnish) telecommuting makes
sense in more ways than employers might
imagine. In fact, Lister and Harnish’s
research shows that telework could
reduce Persion Gulf oil imports by 24 to
48 percent, reduce greenhouse gases by
up to 67 million metric tons each year,
and save as much as 7. 5 trillion gallons
of gasoline a year—a savings of US$110
million a day.
There are even a handful of experienced
organizations—including the Telework
Coalition, Commuter Connections, and the
Telework Exchange—that are dedicated to
the “work wherever you are” cause. “It’s
obvious that getting people out of their
cars saves on fuel,” says Chuck Wilsker,
president and CEO of the Telework
Coalition. “What’s not as patently obvious
is that teleworking also opens doors to
finding top talent because it gives employers access to a larger and more diverse
pool of candidates.” In a 2006 report published by the Telework Coalition, research
results showed that there are significant
cost savings (an average of US$3,000 to
$10,000 per employee) for organizations
that have reduced their real estate holdings. In addition to saving money, offloading real estate mitigates risk.
Surprisingly, even the federal government, famous for its staid 9-to- 5, glued-to-your-desk office work policies, is
embracing the idea. In fact, according to
Lister and Harnish, “all federal agencies
are required to promote telework to the
maximum extent possible,” and legislation
dating back to 1995 provides financial
support for work-at-home programs.
