Creating a dropdown list in an Excel sheet, Part 2

This post will walk us through setting up a multiple item drop down selection list in an Excel spreadsheet using a bit of VB code from a vlogger who shared just such a bit of code (Bansal, 2025). This is Part 2 of this process (see Part 1 here).

Oh - and if we are new to the Developer tab in Excel, we can see how to get that working here, before we get onto the next element (Microsoft Support, 2024).

On the Developer Tab, to create my first dropdown list, first I created the drop down list that I wanted to use in an additional spreadsheet, with some additional details for when it needed updating. I intended to to hide this sheet on a "Competency_List" tab so that spreadsheet users would not see it (as users do not need to see it: they only needed to see, in the relevant cell, the list of options that they were going to select).

We select the first cell that we want our multiple selection box to appear in, and then go to the Data tab in Excel, then click on the "Data Validation" box in the Data Tools area. A dialogue box pops up. In the Settings tab we select "List", then in the source area select the range of our drop down from our - not yet hidden - "Competency_List" tab. At this stage, because this is "native" Excel ddl, we can only select one option (Bansal, 2025, 2:10).

Now we need to download and install some VBA code (which can be downloaded as a text file from here; Bansal, 2025). Open the text file and copy the code. Now back to Excel and click on the Developer tab, then the Visual Basic icon which will open the visual basic editor (or key Alt & F11). We double click on the sheet in the left-hand outline pane that we want the dropdown to appear in,  then paste the copied code into the right-hand pane.

Our next step is to go through the code and ensure that we make the right changes to range, tab names etc are changed consistent with the comments that Bansal has written in green alongside the VB code (2025).

Once we have done this, then we should be able to minimise the VB window and make multiple selections in our spreadsheet straight away. If we want to 'unselect' one of our multiple selections, we simply click on it again, and it toggles off.

I was amazed when this worked, straight out of the box. And it still works :-)

Sam

References:

Bansal, S. (2025, June 12). Creating Multiple Selection Drop-Downs in Excel (It's Possible - Here's How). YouTube/TrumpExcel. https://youtu.be/KoTKTwx7cA0

Microsoft Support. (2024, April 19). Show the Developer tab. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/show-the-developer-tab-e1192344-5e56-4d45-931b-e5fd9bea2d45

Stratvert, K. (2025, February 4). How to Create a Drop-Down List in Excel (2025 Tutorial). YouTube. https://youtu.be/CaD4-5UAK0I

Wong, C. (2024, November 11). 2 Simple Ways to Create an Excel Drop Down List. SpreadsheetPoint. https://spreadsheetpoint.com/excel/drop-down-list/

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Service organisation decline, part 2

I have been continuing to mull over why service club membership is declining (read my earlier thoughts here), and stumbled across a PhD thesis and article by David Yates, looking largely at Freemasonry in the UK (2018, 2025). I wonder if this is something we easily say though: "Oh, I don't have time"; it is an easy excuse rather than the real reason.

Apparently, UK service organisation members in general were at a 1.65m high in the early 80s, of 3% of the population, dropping by 2009 to 600,000 (Yates, 2025). It seems likely that today membership will be closer to half a million in the UK or 0.7%, which I feel will be similar to the numbers to Aotearoa New Zealand today (although I don't have any New Zealand statistics, so this is purely guesswork).

Service organisations can be a bit of a "best kept secret" as charitable donations are not effectively promoted, reducing media exposure and community understanding (Yates, 2018, p. 144). A story untold. Another aspect of secrecy is the incorrect association with "secret societies" such as the Freemasons, with a flavour of network privilege, 'jobs for the boys' and professional corruption (Yates, 2018).

I also wonder another aspect of a rigidity mis-match is the cost of belonging. Since 2008 we have been hit with crisis after crisis: 2008 GFC; Trump 1; Covid-19; Trump II. Financial stress tend to mean we cut discretionary spending: and pulling back in will also mean we feel less free with our time as well as with our charitable donations (Conway, 2024). Costly membership fees with set meeting times and catered meals can be a significant barrier for those with less disposable income (Yates, 2018). Additionally, since Covid-19 many feel less social, still more hesitant to attend in-person gatherings (Conway, 2024). Virtual service is safer, cheaper... and easier to opt out of.

Something feels out of step between society and service organisations, whether that is a perceived "American cultural and economic imperialism" in the model (Tamayo, 2018, p. xi), or some mis-match between "organisational level message of inclusion and the exclusive nature of some clubs" (Yates, 2018, p. 229). I personally find something distasteful about Rotary and other service organisations: the protocols feel alien; as does the overly conservative viewpoint of many organisation members (Tamayo, 2018). Perhaps it is partly the increasing secularisation of society that makes service clubs seem more alien due to the underpinning Christian framework. Many internal rituals may seem arcane, such as singing a national anthem or saluting a head of state... and as fewer of us are identifying having a religion, fewer of us may be drawn to such organisations (Conway, 2024, p. 11). Worse, membership remains overwhelmingly 'white' even in diverse areas, with all the attendant implied privilege which makes joining distasteful for many groups (Conway, 2024). Many clubs are seen as male-dominated - "old boy's clubs" - having a nasty after-taste of women not being welcome, regardless of whether that remains true (Yates, 2018).

Many clubs are facing membership decline, and will effectively 'die out' if the organisations do not change with the shifting societal views (Yate, 2025). And maybe that is not a bad thing. Sometimes societal structures have reached the end of their usefulness.

Rather than sustained traditional service club commitment, there seems to be a growing shift toward 'episodic' volunteering where people deliver a one-time project, or deliver drop-in project tasks such as an annual event (Conway, 2024). Participation is more likely to be casual, and people are probably unwilling to pay AND donate their time. There may also be a move toward "mega-charities" which have the systems and resources to expertly manage events and volunteers (Yates, 2018, p. 227).

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Sam

References:

Conway, A. L. (2024). Serving the Nation: Volunteer Management from an Anthropological Perspective [Master's thesis, California State University]. https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/41687t01c

Tamayo, D. (2018). Volunteers as a Community of Practice: Rotary and Lions Clubs, the Mexican Middle Classes, and the Post-Revolutionary State, 1920s-1960s [Doctoral thesis, University of California]. https://escholarship.org/content/qt6ds9m3b3/qt6ds9m3b3_noSplash_9fe8ce200da731f05c191571e8b1b082.pdf

Yates, D. G. (2018). The Role, Status and Accountability of UK Service Clubs: An exploratory study (Doctoral Thesis, Aston University). https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/41317/1/Yates_D.G._2019_Redacted.pdf#page=230.08

Yates, D. (2025). The Object Not of One's Desire: UK Service Club Membership Recruitment, Retention, and Public Image. Financial Accountability & Management, 41, 525-538. https://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12430

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The benefits of PD

All professions evolve, with technological advancements, regulatory changes, and shifting societal expectations, so on-going PD is essential for maintaining public trust in professions (Fenwick, 2009). Well-written professional standards, when used as a PD framework, can help us to understand our breadth of practice and promote PD consistency (Hay et al., 2022). CDANZ certainly does that well, in my opinion.

Research in Alberta Canada found that PD ensures pharmacy professionals there remained proficient in their practice and were better able to respond effectively to new challenges, and teachers created annual PD plans aiding self-reflection and improved goal-setting (Fenwick, 2009). New Zealand practitioner research in the social work field shows most of us value the chance to upskill, and our confidence is increased by participating in PD (Hay et al., 2022). 

However, we need to be sure that the cost does not exceed the benefits. PD that adds too much workload makes it difficult to reflect meaningfully (Fenwick, 2009). UK research has found longer or expensive PD programmes have been discontinued through a lack of perceived practice improvement (Hay et al., 2022). 

We also need to be careful about the limitations of self-assessment: personal reviews may not accurately reflect our actual knowledge or skills; learning logs and checklists may not capture our complexity of practice (Fenwick, 2009). Being involved with communities of practice may gives us more opportunities for knowledge sharing, helping our identity development, and reducing isolation (Hay et al., 2022). And a community of practice helps to ensure that our self-assessment reflection gets some oversight. This too is where professional supervision can provide a great deal of value. 

Even establishing informal online communities for practitioners, if well-guided, can help prevent practitioners feeling isolated (Taylerson, 2020), enabling practitioners to have PD modelled by others around them in a meaningful way. We can draft others along with us by showing our peers how to participate; that PD is enjoyable and builds community (Taylerson, 2020). PD should not be presented as a chore. 

Socio-material theories, such as complexity science, cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), and actor-network theory (ANT), offer alternative ways to understand professional learning. These frameworks show us that learning doesn't just happen to us, but also happens in talking to others across our professional networks. For example, CHAT highlights how learning arises from resolving contradictions within a system, such as balancing innovation with error-free performance (Fenwick, 2009).

We need to move beyond traditional models and be able to embrace the distributed, emergent nature of professional knowledge (Fenwick, 2009). PD is vital for maintaining our professional competence, adapting to change, and fostering reflective practice (Fenwick, 2009), but only if we make the benefits obvious; the delivery flexible; and it is easy for us to participate.

Sam

References:

Fenwick, T. (2009). Making to measure? Reconsidering assessment in professional continuing education. Studies in Continuing Education, 31(3), 229-244. https://doi.org/10.1080/01580370903271446

Hay, K., Chilvers, D., & Maidment, J. (2022). Chapter 13: Aotearoa New Zealand Field Education Practice. In R. Baikady, S. M. Sajid, V. Nadesan, M. R. Islam (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Field Work Education in Social Work (pp. 203-218). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032164946-17

Taylerson, L. (2020). Growing Concerns: practitioners’ positions on engaging in Continuing Professional Development in a deregulated FE and Skills sector [Doctoral thesis, University of Sunderland]. https://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/13406/1/13406.pdf

 * NotebookLM was used to create the Lego graphic accompanying this post

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How to cite multiple book chapters

So what is best practice when we needed to APA cite two or more chapters of a single edited book - or how many chapters can we/should we cite before we should cite the whole book and not individual chapters?

I decided the best strategy was to ask the APA gurus. I told them that I seemed to recall past supervisors requiring that - if I was drawing on more than one chapter, I needed to cite the whole book. But I also wondered if perhaps my impression was conflated with copyright law (that I needed to have a copy of the text and mayn't rely on a one chapter scan)? Plus I had a secondary question: what if we wanted to cite multiple chapters of an UNedited book - i.e. where the authors remain the same throughout? Was it different then? Did we need to cite the chapters or the book?

I had assumed that in both cases it would be the book. However, I was only half right!

The APA style gurus came back to me, which was BRILLIANT. They said that:

"In APA Style (7th ed.), there is no rule that says once [we] cite a certain number of chapters [we] must switch to citing the whole book". In fact, our "choice depends on what [we] actually used and what" gives our reader the most clarity (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). They noted that if we were "using specific chapters from an edited book written by different chapter authors, the best practice is to cite each chapter individually, no matter how many chapters from the same book" we decide to cite. They said this was "because each chapter is effectively its own source, with its own authorship and sometimes its own title and page range" we could "cite three, four, or more chapters from the same edited volume", then referencing "each chapter separately in the reference list".

But. If instead we were "referring to the book as a whole, for example, discussing the editor’s framing, the collection’s overall theme, or multiple ideas that are spread throughout without focusing on chapter authors, then" we should cite the "entire book" (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). As they point out, it is more about what we are "drawing on" rather than the number of chapters: substance over form.

And there is a second but. If we are citing an 'authored' book where all chapters are by the same authors, we "simply cite the whole book, because the entire work is by the same author(s)"(APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). We could - if we needed to - direct our reader "to a specific chapter or section", directing our reader to a particular "chapter within the text, but the reference list entry remains the full book" (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication).

APA style note that this was more "about scholarly practice" as opposed to "an APA formatting rule" (APA Style Blog, 3 April, 2026, personal communication). 

So that is: reference the entire authored book if using more than one chapter; reference the entire edited book if we are drawing on overall themes; reference individual edited chapter or chapters if drawing on chapter contents alone. 

And now we know.

Sam

 * NotebookLM was used to create the claymation-style infographic components in the image accompanying this post

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The career waltz

Career Construction Theory, or CCT, proposes that we actively build our working lives, making meaning from our experiences; our careers don't simply 'unfold' (Savickas, 2005). The adaptability of CCT fits the growingly unpredictable world of work, through four Cs: curiosity (exploring possibilities); concern (future planning); confidence (pursuing goals); and control (being responsible for our own actions) (Busacca, 2007; Inkson et al., 2015; Savickas, 2005). 

In Aotearoa's increasingly unpredictable labour market, CCT takes a constructivist or narrative approach, where our experiences - with guidance - can collectively create a coherent whole about who we are over time... and give us a clearer picture of where we are heading (Busacca, 2007). Sometimes our clients haven't yet "crystallized their self-concepts" (Busacca, 2007, p. 58), so aren't yet able "to meaningfully respond to interest inventories and to translate their self-concepts into occupational choices". Our rangatahi can feel pressured to make subject and pathway choices while their sense of identity is still developing, when career decisions mayn't be clear. We need to help them develop curiosity to explore interests, strengths, and values (Savickas, 2005). 

The constructivist perspective recognises that career development is not a single decision but an ongoing process of reflection and meaning-making (Savickas, 2005). We career practitioners can hold a mirror to enable our clients to see the common strengths and themes that they bring to their work, allowing the client can sees their career as a whole, finding common values and narratives (Busacca, 2007). Enabling what Savickas terms 'life design' (2005).

Further, CCT allows sequential developmental 'minicycles', where work interruptions or disruptions may mean we have to re-enter exploration and establishment work phases due to retrenchment, reduced hours, technology change, or relocation (Busacca, 2007; Savickas, 2005). We do not necessarily take a single path into work that fulfils us: we are more likely to dance our way across a ballroom of possibilities, with a segue here and there, a glide; a dip; and a pirouette. It is only on looking back that we see our work as a complete identity. 

In December 2025, with unemployment rising to 5.4% and our New Zealand labour market showing signs of 'cooling' (Statistics New Zealand, 2025), CCT can allow us to reframe who we are at work, and to build resilience despite setbacks (Savickas, 2005). While many of our national systems - e.g. government scales, NCEA, apprenticeships, NZQA, are traditional 'stage-based' models which reward service and age over competency, when life throws us a curveball, CCT allows us a more flexible lens to understand how we may fit into the world of work despite setbacks.

Sam

References:

Busacca, L. A. (2007). Chapter 6: Career Construction Theory: A Practitioner’s Primer. Career Planning & Adult Development Journal, 23(1), 57–67. https://research.ebsco.com/c/odfxrn/search/details/5n46z7tllf?db=edo

Inkson, K., Dries, N., & Arnold, J. (2015). Understanding Careers (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Savickas, M. L. (2005). Chapter 3: The Theory and Practice of Career Construction. In S. D. Brown, R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 42-70). John Wiley & Sons Inc.

 * NotebookLM was used to create the dance graphic accompanying this post

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Belbin team roles

A role could be defined as "a combination of values, attitudes and behaviour assigned to an individual who occupies a social position" (Aritzeta et al., 2007, p. 97); basically who we are in order to do a job. 'Who' we are will influence how we behave: "the behaviour expected from an individual occupying a specific position" (p. 97). 

We have long tried to work out what makes teams work: behaviouralists thought that we fell naturally into two groups; those of us who focus on the task, and those who focus on the relationships (Daft, 2008). Contingency theorists thought we also considered the situation. And then along came John Holland (1959) who proposed six environments: those of motoric, intellectual, aesthetic, supportive, persuasive, and conforming (1959, p. 35-36), which developed over time into occupational codes, or RIASEC: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional (Nauta, 2010). If we have certain attributes we are more naturally suited to some roles than others, because of who we are. 

There are six categories that Belbin came up with which drives our "tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way", including our personality, mental abilities, values and motivation, our work environment, our experience and cultural factors, and our role learning (Belbin, 2010, p. 24). Belbin also established the Team Role Self Perception Inventory, or TRSPI (Aranzabal et al., 2022). When I was doing my undergrad degree, I remember hearing about Belbin's team roles (1997), where each person in a team filled a different role depending on how they started with the team, and what the team needed:

• Advising: Gathering and reporting information
• Innovating: Creating and experimenting with ideas
• Promoting: Exploring and presenting opportunities
• Developing: Assessing and testing the applicability of new approaches
• Organising: Establishing and implementing ways of making things work
• Producing: Concluding and delivering outputs
• Inspecting: Controlling and auditing the working of systems
• Maintaining: Upholding and safeguarding standards and processes
• Linking: Coordinating and integrating the work of others

Belbin's team roles (2010), although not necessarily terrifically scientific, provides a useful lens to consider how people fit together as a team. 

Sam

References:

Aranzabal, A., Epelde, E., & Artetxe, M. (2022). Team formation on the basis of Belbin’s roles to enhance students’ performance in project based learning. Education for Chemical Engineers, 38, 22-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ece.2021.09.001

Aritzeta, A., Swailes, S., & Senior, B. (2007). Belbin's team role model: Development, validity and applications for team building. Journal of Management Studies, 44(1), 96-118. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2007.00666.x

Belbin, R. M. (2010). Team Roles at Work (2nd ed.). Butterworth Heinemann.

Belbin, R. M., & Brown, V. (2023). Team Roles at Work (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Margerison, C., & McCann, D. (2026). Team Management System. https://www.teammanagementsystems.com/

Nauta, M. M. (2010). The Development, Evolution, and Status of Holland's Theory of Vocational Personalities: Reflections and Future Directions for Counseling Psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(1), 11–22. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018213

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Saving pages files as docx

I don't know if you ever been sent a file from an Apple Mac user of the type ".pages"? Totally impossible to open on a Windows system. However, there is a relatively easy solution, which I have written about before: using a platform called Cloud Convert at (File Converter, 2026).

If you have encountered .pages files before, and not been able to open the files, simply apply this work-around:

• Go to https://cloudconvert.com/
• In the header, select "pages" in the left-hand dropdown
• In the right-hand dropdown, select "docx"
• Use the red box under the header section to upload the .pages file you want to convert
• Download the resulting file.

That should do it.

Sam

References:

File Converter. (2026). https://cloudconvert.com/

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Career development not organisational development

One of the things I love about career development is that our focus is on the person we walk alongside - and we have total acceptance of that person we accompany. This is the Rogerian approach of "unconditional positive regard" (Rogers, 1957, p. 96). Further, Rogerian theory suggests that our client is "in a state of incongruence". We - the practitioner - are "congruent" and we have that "unconditional positive regard for [our] client" (p. 96). Our "empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference" and our ability to let our client see our empathy and positive regard over the time of our assistance helps the customer to make change (Rogers, 1957, p. 96). But we have to accept the client totally as they are: without judgement, as we accompany them for a part of their journey. 

What the client decides to do is their business, not ours. Our job is not to judge, but to help the client see themselves and their potential choices. We can provide a reality check, but not rain on the client's parade. We may show we support the client's choices, show care, respect, and warmth (Rogers, 1957). We allow the client to see that we see them as their own selves, and "not in a possessive way" (Rogers, 1957, p. 98). The clients choices are not about us: they are about the client. 

One other aspect we need to keep firmly front and centre is that our focus is individual, not organisational. If we are working inside an organisation and seeing other staff members as clients, unless our organisation is very progressive, and understands career development, it is more likely that it will expect our loyalty to lie with the institution, not to the individual. Yet from a career development perspective, our job is to meet the needs of the individual. 

These Rogerian characteristics are important differences between career development and organisational development.

Sam

References:

Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95-103. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045357

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Diverting rangatahi from NEET

A worrying 13.2% of our rangatahi in the 15-24 age group are unemployed (Statistics New Zealand, 2025b). These young people are classified as "NEET", or not in education, employment or training (Godfrey et al., 2002). With our overall unemployment rate at only 5.4% (Statistics New Zealand, 2025c), it is likely to be our young people who will be out-competed for entry level jobs with older and more experienced workers. Thus our vulnerable rangatahi who have already missed out education, training and experience, then have the knock-on effects of having their work opportunities reduced. Worse, those who spend more time as NEETs become more likely to experience ‘scarring’, or long-term detrimental effects (Samoilenko & Carter, 2015), including reduced job prospects, job instability, long term unemployment or underemployment (Dinku, 2024), and life-long lower wages than non-NEETs (Samoilenko & Carter, 2015).

That 13.2% of our nation’s young people may experience NEET scarring is concerning (Statistics New Zealand, 2025b). But it does get worse: disabled NEET unemployment is 45.9% compared to 11.3% of non-disabled NEETs, with both NEETs living with and without a disability being more affected by recent 2024-2025 market downturns than other groups (Statistics New Zealand, 2025a; Whaikaha, 2025). The increased impacts may be due to NEETs having higher part-time, casual and entry-level employment rates; these roles tend to be the first to go as employer wage budgets tighten (Dinku, 2024).

While explicitly sharing NEET statistics, and explaining the impacts of NEET with at risk young people will help, it is more likely that early career intervention for our rangatahi will help them to find their 'why' - assisting them to find reasons to stay in school (Maree, 2018). This is particularly important for those in families already experiencing generational unemployment (Dinku, 2024).

Our young people going into their first paid roles have to learn how to do the job, AND the organisational culture; AND about the world of work. When we think about it that way, it is understandable why employers may find young workers a challenge: there is a perception that this group will a lot of additional coaching (van der Baan et al., 2022). And that is where Gateway and similar programmes in Aotearoa can provide employers with some security (read more here).

Many years ago I stumbled across some research - which I have not found since, darn it! - which suggested that our career ideas seemed to branch at '7th grade'. This is late intermediate age, or age 11 and 12 here in New Zealand - which also indicates that this was probably a piece of US research that I had found. The findings suggested that there were two groups of rangatahi: those were embedded in reality - such as law, medicine, finance; or those who were wildly imaginative - such as seeking fame, superheroicness or high office. Those young people who were more 'real' could map a path, seeming to take the steps they needed in order to be prepared for their next transition. Those with the flights of fancy were often unable to map a path to their next steps, completely miss any action decision-making for the roles which interested them, and so were significantly more likely to be NEETs.

The second most commonly reported career choice for boys aged between 7 and 13 was to become a Social Media/You Tuber/Influencer (TEC, 2019). This technological factor affecting the context in which boys view careers has likely led to an increase in young NEET men. While our rangatahi may seek digital media influencer celebrity, few make it. There may be an aspiration gap.

But if we had some type of age 8 or 9 plus sorting hat in primary school, where we (a) identified those with the flights of fancy early (i.e. those most at risk), and (b) had career conversations with them all the way through to the end of high school, we could help them connect with and learn the skills required for - say - diplomacy so they were able to segue into some form of high office; or focus on performance to at least play a superhero; or on presence and determination to be more likely to become a celebrity. We could help those rangatahi to map to their desires, and NOT to rain on their parade.

This may be echoing Gottfredson (2005; more here) with rangatahi refining career interests and values from around age 10 (allowing for identity, skills, cultural and social shaping). It seems possible that by secondary school our rangatahi may appear to form two groups: we have group A who have already significantly narrowed their focus and where career development is closely linked to wellbeing, agency, and future orientation; and group B who may have experienced trauma or negative self-beliefs, where the future is murky, unclear and something to avoid (Gottfredson, 2005).

Providing age-appropriate career development across our entire school system would help. Across years 9 and 10 we could look at exploration and broadening horizons. From years 11 to 12, we could work on identity-building and pathway development. And from year 13 we can then provide that targeted transition support (Gottfredson, 2005).

We might be able to embed more creativity in our national culture. But that would mean that we see young people ALL THE WAY through school, having regular career conversations with them, to help them map to their interests, values and desires.

Sam

References:

Dinku, Y. (2024). Future Labour Market Prospects of Youth Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET). New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 48(2), 1-14. https://www.nzlii.org/nz/journals/NZJlEmpR/2024/13.pdf

Godfrey, C., Hutton, S., Bradshaw, J., Coles, B., Craig, G. and Johnson, J. (2002). Estimating the Cost of Being ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’ at Age 16-18 [No. 346, Research Report]. Social Policy Research Unit, University of York/University of Hull. https://www.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/pubs/pdf/RR346.pdf

Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). Chapter 4: Applying Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise in Career Guidance and Counseling. In S. D. Brown, R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 71-100). John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Maree, J. G. (2018). Chapter 11: Using life design counseling for career construction to facilitate sustainable employability and decent work in a developing country context. In V. Cohen-Scali, J. Pouyaud, M. Podgórny, V. Drabik-Podgórna, G. Aisenson, J. L. Bernaud... J. Guichard (Eds.), Interventions in career design and education: Transformation for sustainable development and decent work (pp. 195-214). Springer International Publishing.

Samoilenko, A., & Carter, K. (2015). Economic outcomes of youth not in education, employment or training (NEET) (Working Paper No. 15/01). New Zealand Treasury. www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2015-03/twp15-01.pdf

Statistics New Zealand. (2025a). Disability statistics: 2023. https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/disability-statistics-2023/

Statistics New Zealand. (2025b). Labour market statistics: September 2025 quarter. https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/labour-market-statistics-september-2025-quarter/

Statistics New Zealand. (2025c, November 5). Unemployment rate at 5.3 percent in the September 2025 quarter. https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/unemployment-rate-at-5-3-percent-in-the-september-2025-quarter/

TEC. (2019). Drawing the future: Exploring the career aspirations of New Zealand children. ‌Tertiary Education Commission. https://www.tec.govt.nz/assets/Publications-and-others/TEC-Drawing-the-Future-Report-v3.pdf

van der Baan, N., Gast, I., Gijselaers, W., & Beausaert, S. (2022). Coaching to prepare students for their school-to-work transition: conceptualizing core coaching competences. Education+ Training, 64(3), 398-415. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-11-2020-0341

Whaikaha. (2025, August 13). Labour market statistics for disabled people - June 2025 quarter. Ministry of Disabled People. https://www.whaikaha.govt.nz/news/news/labour-market-statistics-for-disabled-people-june-2025-quarter

 * NotebookLM was used to create the infographics accompanying this post

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Re-numbering Adobe Acrobat pages

I often download book chapters from the library, then compile the ones I want to keep. But every now and again the book chapters don't show their numbers correctly in the page x of x field in the Navigation Toolbar, which seems to affect being able to compile or extract pages. It seems that the page lacks a name, or a label, so the software app doesn't know what the object is for the action I am asking the app to take.

And then I stumbled upon the answer. All we need to do is to number the pages. And we do that by: 

1. Going to "Tools" | "Organize pages"
2. Selecting the page range we want to rename
3. Selecting "Page labels", and when the dialogue box opens, select the (a) style of numbering - for example, "i, ii, iii..."; then (b) a prefix if required... but don't need this for front matter though; (c) the starting page number - usually "i" if front matter
4. Clicking OK (Adobe, 2025).

And, like magic, there are now page labels that the bottom of each thumbnail. And the corresponding page letter, number, or name in the Navigation toolbar.

And it is the same process to "renumber" the cover in the label dialogue box: from step 3 above, we select the (a) style of numbering as None"; then (b) in prefix we enter Cover; then (c) enter the starting page number of 1 (Olivo, 2013). And lo! We have a cover label. 

And now we have all our pages numbered, with no more blanks in the page range in the Navigation toolbar.

Easy when we know how.

Sam

References:

Adobe. (2025, September 23). Renumber pages in PDFs. https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/desktop/edit-documents/organize-pages/renumber-pages.html

Olivo, V. (2013, December 8). how do i rename a page in my PDF?. Acrobat Library. https://answers.acrobatusers.com/how-rename-page-PDF-q91181.aspx

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The high cost of not training staff

There is an old training conundrum, where the CEO asks from the cost perspective "What if we [...] train our staff and they leave?" and the HR person who replies "What if we don’t train them and they stay?" (Hackel, 2017). While I have not seen this cited from a peer-reviewed source, I have heard this may have been the bon mot of Tom Peters: 

"Management guru, Tom Peters, at a live event, was extolling the virtues of training managers in proper leadership and management skills. One senior manager asked, 'What if we train them, and they leave?' He responded, 'What if you don’t train them, and they stay?'" (Burns, 2023).

Regardless of whether this quip was the speedy thoughts of a faceless HR person or the bon mot of Tom Peters, the principle is the key: from an organisational perspective, training staff is risky. From the organisation's point of view, that risk needs to be evaluated to ensure there is a return on investment: 

• Will the investment yield a positive return?
• Is the investment worth the potential productivity increase?
• Is the investment low enough risk?
• Wwill the investment add to shareholder value?
• Will NOT making the investment cost the company more than doing it?

But it also needs to be evaluated as a lack-of development risk which can be monetary costs or non-monetary (Garstang, 2021), covering a range of staff and organisational development factors:

• Current skill maintenance (Garstang, 2021; Podmoroff, 2005)
• Maintaining institutional knowledge (Garstang, 2021)
• Current organisational operational preparedness (Garstang, 2021; Podmoroff, 2005)
• Meeting human capability forecasts (Garstang, 2021)
• Determining if under-investment will cause higher staff turnover - if competitors are training (Podmoroff, 2005)
• Knowing recruitment costs - e.g. at the salary of the replacement person plus 50% of the first year as a productivity loss in getting up to speed. This is made up of costs around recruitment, selection, and hiring (including writing the contract and onboarding); time and resources required to train a replacement; productivity loss prior to the exiting employee going and during the new employee's onboarding; increased H&S risks with a new employee (Podmoroff, 2005; Stup et al., 2025)
• Knowing likely appointment delay; wrong hire risk (Podmoroff, 2005).

It becomes easy to see that the risk of not training is a lot greater than training.

Sam

References:

Burns, K. (2023, October 11). But What If We Train Them and They Leave?. Kevin Burns Blog. https://www.kevburns.com/blog/but-what-if-we-train-them-and-they-leave

Garstang, A. (2021). The transition from training to work roles [Master thesis, Massey University]. https://mro.massey.ac.nz/server/api/core/bitstreams/b3dd663b-78ef-4534-b0da-2462bd5de9a3/content

Hackel, E. (2017). The Cost of Poor Performance: Why Failing to Train your Employees Costs A lot More Than You Think. Canadian Manager, 42(1), 7-9. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Cost+of+Poor+Performance%3a+Why+Failing+to+Train+your+Employees...-a0619219982

Podmoroff, D. (2005). How to Hire, Train & Keep the Best Employees for Your Small Business. Atlantic Publishing Company.

Stup, R. E., MacKenzie, M. K., & Lutz, K. A. (2025). Onboarding dairy farm employees: Improving the new employee experience. Journal of Dairy Science, 108(4), 4462-4473. https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2024-25319

 * NotebookLM was used to create the claymation-style infographic components in the image accompanying this post

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Enshittification in 3 acts with the cure

As mentioned recently (here), "enshittification" is a concept created by Cory Doctorow (2023, 2025), Canadian-British author, academic, philosopher and critic of the digital economy. The term, enshittification, named the concept: the systematic erosion of online platforms as focus shifts from providing user service; to user exploitation maximising shareholder and founder returns (Doctorow, 2023). There are three stages: a user-friendly start, moving to a "business-to-business" exploitation mode; ending with enshittification - or total value extraction. User data is sold for targeted advertising, marketing profiling, voter analysis and forecasting. Competition is bought out and mothballed. Ownership is transferred for 'free' tools; the tools are ring-fenced, what is free becomes paid; access becomes tiered and free is worthless; all while opting out becomes more and more difficult. Companies have become monopolies. The hook was 'freemium', and the end-goal, fully paid premium. But wait! There will be a level beyond that too, I am sure. As C. S. Lewis said "Come farther up, come farther in!" (1956, p. 155), beckoning us onwards into the unknown.

Enshittification is the result of monopolies and the transfer of ownership and control. If we - the collective we - allow products without reparability, give our personal data away, and allow sharp practices, we will reap the rewards of restrictive digital ecosystems (Doctorow, 2025). I thought it was worth mentioning that there are solutions for "digital decay": prevention of monopoly-creation; allowing users to opt-out of software locks; opting out of upgrades/updates; ensuring users own their data and not allowing implied transferability via unread EULAs (end user licence agreements).

Norway has a great programme running to remind us how we can take action ourselves (Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council, 2026):

We could return to a more open internet, where we keep control over our devices and data. Although Tim Berners-Lee gifted the www to humanity (Berners-Lee, 2000; Fenton, 2010, p. 116), perhaps we could consider what he and his colleagues built-into the embryonic www: a micropayment 402 protocol allowing us to all pay a little, and thus create a true socially-owned space (Berners-Lee, 2000, p. 65), using the HTTP 402 placeholder 'payment required' (Li, 2026).

Something to think about.

Sam

References:

Berners-Lee, T., with Fischetti, M. (2000). Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web (1st ed.). HarperCollins Publishers.

Doctorow, C. (2023, January 23). The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok: Or how, exactly, platforms die. Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

Doctorow, C. (2025). Enshittification: Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it. Verso.

Fenton, N. (Ed.). (2010). New Media, Old News: Journalism and democracy in the digital age. SAGE Publications.

Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council. (2026, February 27). A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ

Lewis, C. S. (1956). The Last Battle (second reprint 1965). Puffin Books.

Li, S. (2026, March 27). The War for AI Payments Has Begun: HTTP 402 Awakens After 30 Years. LinkedIn Pulse. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/war-ai-payments-has-begun-http-402-awakens-after-30-years-simon-li-tzfnc/

 * NotebookLM was used to create the claymation-style infographic components in the image accompanying this post

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Luck and practice... or work?

Years ago I put together a slide deck for my students to help them create PowerPoint presentations. One of the quotes I used was - I thought, at the time - from Gary Player, who apparently said: "It's a funny thing; the more I practice, the luckier I get" - according to Yocom (2002). The implication in the saying is that it is not luck that makes us good at what we do: it is all that practice.

I used the quote because, the same as being a professional sports person, when it comes to presentations, the more we practice, the better we get. True. 

Then I saw the same quote attributing it to another golfer, Arnold Palmer. So I decided that I had best head over to the Quote Investigator's site to see what the real deal was. And Garson O'Toole advised that: "Gary Player is a very fine golfer, but he is not responsible for this well-known maxim. The best evidence that he did not coin the adage is in a book written by Player himself in 1962 where he credits the aphorism to fellow golfer Jerry Barber" (Quote Investigator, 2010). 

So we should say this is Jerry Barber's saying, especially in "1960 Jerry Barber does use a version of the maxim during a golf tournament", saying "The harder you work the luckier you get" (Quote Investigator, 2010). But Mr Barber doesn't say practice. He says 'harder' and 'work'. Same rough meaning, but not actually practice.

Garson O'Toole goes on to explain that "In 1949 another instance of the saying [...] appears in an anecdote told by the columnist Walter Winchell" who says that American retail chain owner, "J. J. Lerner, [...] met a great admirer of his playwright-son". The admirer said 'Isn’t it wonderful how lucky your boy is?'"; to which the reply came: 'Yes, [...] isn’t it wonderful. The harder he works the luckier he gets'" (Quote Investigator, 2010; Winchell, 1949, p. 4)

So I think I will cite J. J. Lerner from here-on out, and I will revert to hard work version with: "the harder [we] work the luckier [we] get" (Quote Investigator, 2010; after Winchell, 1949, p. 4).

J. J. Lerner, as recorded by Walter Winchell, feels right for now. 

Sam

References:

Quote Investigator. (2010, July 10). Quote Origin: The Harder I Practice, the Luckier I Get. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/

Winchell, W. (1949 June 6). ‘Harder Playwright Works, The Luckier He Gets’ (p. 4). The Spartanburg Herald. https://www.oldnews.com/en/record?lang=en&record_id=record-10623-384788&searchTerm=eJxtjz1PAzEMhv9Kpk4o0ZEuHW6qkBBDlwp1dnMuF%2BE418Q50X9f3xUxAIv9%2BuuxfWVI2B%2FUmAvbE5Bgcf4UOYxIpLmU7fPi6pyr7VaVogpaKtvF1SE94pou%2FlsV7d1cp3amGEBiZtdNBAH7lxlZDIrNMmIxONnjBEWAz618PDl%2FzE1G5%2FdQMkUGzbxzFBy0IiBYdUL34hcE%2BcWXKIT9vlXJycwPLK5Y%2FQfxk27Ov2IBUhbw8BN0b7kVBjJhkn%2FBg%2B79c%2FfNdrvtziTUh9eTakyRoNwBnjV3nA%3D%3D&page_id=4

Yocom, Guy (2002). Gary Player: take it from the man in black: rats save lives, caning isn't all bad, and we make our own breaks. Golf Digest.  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HFI/is_10_53/ai_93487307/

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The enshittification of education

Successive governments in New Zealand - and probably world-wide - have failed to adequately invest in education. The training and education sector - like manufacturing and so many other sectors - have taken hit after hit in recent years, and taken those hits out on staff first, and customers second. For example, our rangatahi "18-19-year-olds specifically, will now face a double blow. University fees were set to rise by 6 percent for the second consecutive year, after years of maximum fee hikes of about 2.5[%]" (Meyer, 2025). Further, "the high proposed fee ceiling 'reflects that fees have lagged behind inflation in recent years, making it harder for providers to maintain course quality'", yet post-Covid-19, inflation in Aotearoa has been at almost 7% yet course fees were "capped at 2.8[%]" effectively falling from 2021 (Meyer, 2025). 

Wages have increased in other sectors, inflation has impacted everything, infrastructure costs have risen, and the cost of living has increased: yet salaries and contractor rates have not increased in education. Further, the services which used to be supplied because this was not a well-paid sector are also being cut. For example, on-side printer services are closing, staff parking is now often a limited paid for service, creches have closed, coffee must be purchased via student cafeterias, heating must be turned on again and again as it is on a timer switch in classrooms, and extra services - such as gym access, discounted course fees, or private use of facilities - have become restricted or cut completely.

Canadian academic and author, Cory Doctorow wrote an essay on the erosion of TikTok's service (2023):

"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a 'two-sided market', where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them" (Doctorow, 2023).

I think this applies across many sectors, not just TikTok, and not just service platforms. The author thinks the same. In his words: "Worse, the digital is merging with the physical, which means that the same forces that are wrecking our platforms are also wrecking our homes and our cars, the places where we work and shop" (Doctorow, 2025, p. 11). 

Due to the continual erosion of funding, support, and service delivery, I think Doctorow's ideology can be applied to what we are experiencing in education as "the enshittification" of the education sector (Doctorow, 2023, 2025).

I am not sure how we stop it. But the erosion needs to stop before education becomes worthless.

Sam

References:

Doctorow, C. (2023, January 23). The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok: Or how, exactly, platforms die. Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

Doctorow, C. (2025). Enshittification: Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it. Verso.

Meyer, F. (2025, May 22). Alarm bells sound on tertiary education budget: More students set to seek tertiary qualifications than the system is funded to support. Fee hike set to remain at 6 percent. Newsroom. https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/22/alarm-bells-sound-on-tertiary-education-budget/

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Tax inequity in New Zealand

Interestingly, in Aotearoa New Zealand, the very rich don't pay much tax. 

Why do I say that? Because reports show that 19.5% is the average tax paid  and that most of us are in this tax bracket (Rashbrooke, 2023); yet the very rich ONLY pay 8.9% tax (Rashbrooke, 2023), or 9.5% (Inland Revenue Department, 2023a).  And worse, the poorest amongst us, those of us who are an income of under $14k who MUST be struggling to keep the lights on, keep enough petrol in the car, and feed the family, pay 10.5% tax (Inland Revenue Department, 2023b)... still a higher rate than the richest (Rashbrooke, 2023). 

Hell's teeth, that doesn't sound equitable, does it?! Our collective and successive governments could work harder much harder for the average Kiwi to shut tax loopholes for the very rich, and tax high income citizens the same amount as those of us who earn so very much less. 

And the bulk of our tax take "comes from individuals paying income tax - in the 2024 financial year, that was 51 percent of tax revenues. That was followed by GST, which was 25 percent of revenue, corporate tax at 16 percent and 'other' at 8 percent" (Edmunds, 2024).

Further, our richest citizens have many assets which are insufficiently taxed, such as property transactions; they can pay for the expertise and instruments to shift wealth offshore in order to avoid tax. They are also able to influence - threaten - governments to dump policy changes they see as unwelcome, in order to protect their incomes (Inland Revenue Department, 2023a; Rashbrooke, 2023). 

What rubs salt even more in that wound is it seems the wealthy in the US are taxed at roughly 23% (Loe, 2024) (though I must admit, I was pretty sure I had seen a 10% income tax for the USA wealthiest, but cannot find that source at present, so will go with the evidence). We tend to think of the US billionaires as being 'fat cats' who pay few taxes, yet they contribute more to their society than wealthy Kiwis.

Not something for us to be proud of. 

Sam

References:

Edmunds, S. (2025, March 22). Who is actually paying the tax in NZ? - Ask Susan. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/545634/who-is-actually-paying-the-tax-in-nz-ask-susan

Inland Revenue Department. (2023a). High-Wealth Individuals Research Project [Report]. Te Tari Take. https://www.ird.govt.nz/-/media/project/ir/home/documents/about-us/high-wealth-research-project/hwi-research-project/final-report-april-2023/report-high-wealth-individuals-research-project.pdf?modified=20230423203807

Inland Revenue Department. (2023b). Tax rates for individuals | Ngā pāpātanga tāke mō te tangata. Te Tari Take. https://www.ird.govt.nz/income-tax/income-tax-for-individuals/tax-codes-and-tax-rates-for-individuals/tax-rates-for-individuals

Loe, M. (2024, March 13). No, billionaires don’t pay average of 8.2% in federal taxes. Verify. https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/joe-biden/biden-billionaire-tax-rate-fact-check/536-75be1f9b-d40f-45b3-9201-82b161a4e61b

Rashbrooke, M. (2023, April 27). New Zealand’s millionaires pay lower tax rates than cashiers – it’s time to fix the system. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/27/new-zealands-millionaires-pay-lower-tax-rates-than-cashiers-its-time-to-fix-the-system#:~:text=The%20report%20shows%20that%20New,the%20average%20Kiwi%20(19.7%25).

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Some Heinlein quotes part 3

As previously mentioned (here), I have been searching for a Robert Heinlein (RAH) quote around the idea ‘make it idiot-proof and the world/universe will build a better idiot’. In undertaking this search I have been more or less doing a Heinlein retrospective. I have discovered a new collection of short stories - three of which I had not read for years - and one entirely new book ("The Pursuit of the Pankera"). I have - as I have already mentioned - been noting other quotes that I have rediscovered in the process. 

Having already posted two sets of favourite quotes (here and here), this is part 3 of RAH's notable and quotable phrases:

• Some great socialising advice: "a[nyone...] can get a reputation as a sparkling conversationalist simply by letting the other [... person] do all the talking" (Heinlein, 1956, p. 94)
  
  
• Some sound advice about going to court: "nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers" (Heinlein, 1957, p. 18). And ain't that the truth...
  
  
• A trouble-shooting strategy: "When faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand and then look at it again" (Heinlein, 1969, p. 368)
  
  
• Caution on mentees learning from our experience: "Son, one of the few things I’ve learned is that humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn — when they do, which isn’t often — on their own, the hard way" (Heinlein, 1981a, p. 38)
  
  
• On being realistic: "Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get" (Heinlein, 1973, p. 370)
  
  
• On being responsible: "Heredity isn't everything [...]. You aren't your parents. You're not your father, you are not your mother. [...] So be yourself, Knothead, and have the courage to make your own mess of your life. Don't imitate somebody else's mess" (Heinlein, 1953, p. 189)
  
  
• He was great with framing what the adventurous reader longs for:
  "What did I want?"
  "I wanted a Roc’s egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur—I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the 'Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
  "I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, 'The game’s afoot!' I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
  "I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be—instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is." (Heinlein, 1981b, p. 28)
  
  
• On the special status of religious organisations: "My dear, religion is a null area in the law. A church can do anything any organization can do — and has no restrictions. It pays no taxes, need not publish records, is effectively immune to search, inspection, or control — and a church is anything that calls itself a church. Attempts have been made to distinguish between ‘real’ religions entitled to immunities, and ‘cults.’ It can’t be done, short of establishing a state religion... a cure worse than the disease" (Heinlein, 1961, p. 230)

Heinlein had 19th century ideals in a 20th century world, so he could be overly militaristic, sometimes had very silly ideas about women, was overly obsessed with sex, and was somewhat blind to his own privilege. But he was also a prolifically imaginative writer who created new horizons for humanity just by being alive. If you haven't read him yet, give his works a try, and see what you think.

Sam

References:

Heinlein, R. A. (1954). The Star Beast. C. P. Scribner's Sons.

Heinlein, R. A. (1956). Double Star. Signet Books (New American Library).

Heinlein, R. A. (1957). The Door Into Summer. Signet Books (New American Library).

Heinlein, R. A. (1961). Stranger in a Strange Land (third printing 1966). Berkley Books.

Heinlein, R. A. (1966). The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Heinlein, R. A. (1981a). Time Enough for Love: The lives of Lazarus Long (first edition 1974). Berkley Books.

Heinlein, R. A. (1981b). Glory Road (first edition 1963). New English Library.

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