~synthesis~

e pluribus unum

"Out of many, one" was the translated motto on the Seal of the United States of America. It is a brilliant phrase, and speaks to the one nation formed of first 13 and eventually 50 states, to the principle of democracy shared by all Americans, to the idea that so much more unites Americans than divides them, to the idea that in being one, we are greater.

This was so from 1776 to 1956, when Congress officially replaced it with the motto "In God We Trust." Just a little bit ironic, especially today that a conceptually pluralist society chose to embrace a monotheist declaration isn't it?

We are human (I suppose Congress-people are as well, but I could be wrong). We each have strengths and weaknesses (not sure they have many strengths). How we deal with them is what makes us more or makes us less; our response, our actions are the true measure of who we are.

In changing the motto, Congress chose to shift accountability, to pass the buck. When management faces their shortcomings, what do they do? I think most embrace Congress' proven skill at passing the buck.

My last post was about the mistake America is making in seeking to measure teachers based on student performance. The meta point was that merit pay doesn't work in most team settings; it pits members against each other, and measures them based on their relative achievement - your "success" requires others in your team to "fail."

Merit is the easiest way to pay people - it is not equitable, but is perceived to be. It does not create a true team, but most MBA and HR-types will argue that it does. There is no e pluribus unum-ness with merit, unless your interpretation is "I emerged from the hoard and am the one." It requires you to not care if the team wins or loses, just as long as you win. Here's the other thing - in normalizing performance, you also normalize roles.

By normalizing roles, contrary to Jim Collin's Good to Great, you don't try to get the right people on the bus, you try and get the same people on the bus. That might be OK for certain jobs, but it's not realistic for most work done today. Having a team filled with like-minded and similarly-abled employees isn't ideal in today's competitive and complex world. Is it any wonder that there is so little innovation and creativity in the workplace?

These same MBA and HR-types will argue that merit is also the way to manage the herd and weed out poor performers. Hmmm... recalling the Congressional buck-passers, isn't merit management's way of compensating for their own recruiting, hiring and management failures? If managers were effective, the right employees would have been hired, perform optimally, work together, and achieve greatness as a team. This is exaggerating to make a point, but it might still resonate for some of us.

Passing the buck isn't just about normalizing the workforce. It's also about trying to get by without making tough decisions or more appropriately, deferring tough decisions to others. Steve Lohr wrote an article in the NY Times last week about the economics of elitism where he reflects on Steve Jobs' rule over product development at Apple. Lohr says: "They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products."

As engineers, rather than ex pauci plures (out of few many), they chose e pluribus unum - out of many minds and ideas and approaches, they would make rather than defer the difficult decisions; they would design based on the ideal, and not the compromise.

Matter, people, our very world tends towards entropy - it is easy to accede to chaos. The tougher path is to resolve to be one, to be a team, to make a choice.

merits of merit

I work for a large corporation where compensation is based on merit. This theoretically ensures that everyone aspires and those who achieve are rewarded. In practice you need a way to normalize performance so that you can judge relative achievement, to pay the best performers appropriately.

In the hands of some managers, normalization (aka standardization) can be effective because they assess and value the tangible, intangible, and extraordinary; they override "the model" because certain people contribute the magic ingredient that creates greatness or inspires team performance but isn't easily documented. They also recognize that a team requires different types of contributors to achieve consistent success over time, some are visible, many are not; but without these "invisible" contributors, success doesn't happen. In the end, effective teams don't really have a normalized model.

The bigger the organization, the less latitude and appreciation there is for "abnormalized" performance. The natural result is competition between team members to the detriment of their customers, and tension between the team and its management, to the detriment of their mission.

David Warlick used this fabulous quote in a recent post: "We don’t stop playing games because we’re getting older – We get old because we stop playing games" (anon). Seth Godin wrote a brilliantly-titled post called the false solace of vilification, where he suggests that when stuff happens, we tend to lash out, often at the person in the best position to help us. Then there's Amanda Ripley's piece in The Atlantic which attempts to dissect the anatomy of a great teacher. The premise being that there are great teachers who can accomplish amazing things - so how do we make all teachers individually accountable for creating great students?

President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Chancellor Rhee, Amanda Ripley and a gazillion others are putting all their money on merit-based pay for teachers as the next panacea. They are doing what Seth cautioned us not to - vilifying the people that can help us.

Merit pay ONLY succeeds in individual, competitive games; i.e. when you have to beat someone else to win. It's really easy to motivate salespeople based on merit 'cause they control their destiny; they can only win when their employer wins; and when they win, their competition loses.

Unless you're the only educator in the school, merit pay will fail. The community must work together to help every child achieve their true potential. If the community members are competing against each other, the one person that matters most is ignored or abused. I have written about this here and here. But don't take my word for it - check out this fabulous article thanks to Larry.

Obama et al are grasping at the teacher merit pay straw because they're not teachers, they need to do something, and No Child Left Behind tried and failed to improve things by making schools accountable. So let's make teachers accountable. This will result in David's quote becoming more true - teachers will lose any desire to play, and their classes will grow old and decrepit before our eyes.

When teacher merit fails, should we then legislate that American students must be smart or we "fire" them? When that fails, maybe we'll legislate parenting - hmmm... that could be a good thing - let's let the US Government decide who should be a parent! The one "interesting" outcome with this is when it fails, there won't be a need for an education system at all!

I think NCLB was mostly right - we have to make schools accountable for student achievement. Everyone within the school should act as one team; all benefited equally when their graduates leave with the best preparation possible for the next step in their journey. NCLB's failure is in how they chose to manage and measure performance.

It gave schools and districts control over the definition of success - this is just plain dumb. I'll take your money every time if I get to decide whether or not I did a good job. The proof of this is profound increases in American per-student spending with no improvement (often a decline) in student achievement.

What would I do? Well, I wrote insanity defined over a year ago, when I was just learning about education, and my perspective hasn't changed. Since then I have visited many successful schools, and all employ something of the approach I advocated; all teach as a team and not as individuals; and all have leaders whose very essence is committed to student greatness first, and all measure their achievement based on their students' success after graduation.

strength v integrity

For most people in a position of strength, whatever they're facing, their approach is more aggressive. Whether you have a gun and they are unarmed; or you have the chip lead at the poker table; when you're a parent and your child is still dependent on you; if you're in a gang, and your "victim" is alone; or even when you have a majority in politics - you assert power because you can.

But the tables can turn quickly, be it when you run out of bullets, lose chips by betting recklessly, see your child turn into a teenager, face your "victim" when you are alone, or of course when a senator dies and the people vote in a candidate from the other party.

Oddly, strength is more ephemeral than integrity. Look at Haiti, where so many have died and even more have suffered because there is no integrity in their system. Today, in a show of global strength, many are working together to help; but as David Brooks of the NY Times wrote, at some point, the immediate crisis will pass, the passion will fade, and the world will have moved on. The work of helping Haiti build an infrastructure with the integrity to withstand future crises will be left undone. This is not because Haiti is an easily-ignored foreign land; just look at the levees in New Orleans which years after Katrina are still a huge source of risk to the city. We act with bluster and ego and forsake integrity.

When Lord Acton wrote these words in 1887, he knew whereof he spoke: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

How do great men become bad men? Maybe power is one part amnesia + one part imperviousness? Amnesia because you immediately forget how difficult the journey was, who you were and how you felt before you rose to power, and your conviction that when you got there, it/you'd be different. Is a side effect of the amnesia also a loss of compassion - the ability to empathize with both your people and those you vanquished? I think so.

The amnesia makes you suddenly wake up in power, believing that this is what you were born to do and be, and not only can no-one take it away from you, but that every decision you make is right, every judgment you have is correct, and every idea you conceive is brilliant. There is also a lingering, selective amnesia that immediately vindicates or absolves you of any "small" mistake you might make while in power.

Now look back over the last 12 months at how the majority party in Congress has behaved. Heavy-handed, acting behind closed doors, and with an aura of self-righteousness. Maybe the President has been less corrupted by power than either the House or Senate Democrats, but that hasn't really mattered because he has relatively little say in the actual law-making process.

If the Dems had behaved with integrity, maybe they would have discovered a better and more communal path towards effective healthcare. Now they are contemplating a massively watered-down version of the bill or even unbundling it and trying to pass sections piecemeal. Pathetic.

The House had a Democratic majority in the last midterms during WBII (President George W. Bush's 2nd term), and accomplished NOTHING. Their excuse was the Republican presidency. They learned NOTHING from the Republican majorities during the Clinton presidency, and NOTHING from their failures prior to Obama's presidency. Pathetic.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi - both insipid, integrity-free "leaders" - are now in a pucker moment. My guess is they will find something or someone to blame for losing the Massachusetts seat, and continue to blunder through Congress as the grape-brained blithering fools that they are. The midterms will hopefully see them unseated, and the Republicans will enter the next session of Congress with parity or a very small majority.

Sadly, there is no redemption in the Republican power circle either - they relish the failure of the Dems but have demonstrated NO desire to act with integrity in their service of the American people.

What would I do? If I were President Obama, I'd invite a moderate Republican (with a bi-partisan team of two from each party, and one each from the House and Senate) to form a commission to write a healthcare bill by the end of April 2010. The President should personally spend at least one day/week with this group, but claim NO credit for the result - this was their work, not his. In exchange, the President should agree to campaign for that moderate Republican whenever s/he wants. The commission should be fully open to the public, and the conditions for success (cost, coverage span, etc.) should be laid out up-front.

The President can go before the people today and admit that the current approach has failed; admit that while there are good things in the bill, things he supports passionately, the process was wrong. He should point to the data the National Geographic published recently on healthcare cost vs. life expectancy, and how the US spends so much more, and yet her citizens see the doctor less and don't live as long. In the end, our outcome of healthier Americans is at risk, and that's not acceptable.

If I were with the insurance company leaders, I'd recommend an industry-wide preemptive strike to proactively eliminate many of the issues that the current bill has raised about their behavior (exclusions for preexisting conditions, caps on payments, etc.).

Thus far, they and the opponents of proposed healthcare reform have won with scare tactics. If instead they choose to act with integrity, especially when the tide is turning in their favor, they will control the agenda, chose exactly how to adapt to their new model, and maybe prevent regulatory intervention altogether. If they do this right, it might actually be a more profitable venture for them in the long run, irrespective of which party holds the majority. And they will have acted with a measure of integrity.

Integrity is laced with ethos, humanity, and a sense of what's right. It is shaped by accountability, transparency and the belief that your power is less important than the right outcome.

barriers

Barriers keep things away from other things - they might be levees that keep dangerous waters away from communities; they sometimes separate nations at border crossings; they might even be erected around buildings (as happened often after 9-11) to prevent wrongdoers from entering.

There are other kinds of barriers too - ones that aren't so physically tangible, but every bit as real. Consider barriers to entry for a company trying to get into a market or reach a demographic; consider also barriers to entry for a person trying to gain employment.

In this last case, there are a few ways that would-be employees can break through these barriers - I think it boils down to:

• Accreditation - a diploma or certification attesting to something you've learned that is of value to the employer
• Connection - someone you know either in the company or that the company wants to know
• Reputation - being proven or having a following that you bring to the table that improves the employers' ability to do something (attract new customers, build credibility, etc.)
• Experience - jobs you might have had, or work you may have done that is meaningful to the employer

Of these, the first two are most cited as likely to get you in the door, and the last two are the ones most likely to have them seek you out.

For most people starting out, having a piece of paper from the right institution accrediting their education is the only thing they have. In the past, you may have been hired solely for having a diploma, but today with the scarcities we face and the glut of prospective candidates, employers can be much more selective. It's not enough to have a piece of paper; what that paper represents is actually more important.

I wrote a while back about universities being at risk because of their steadfast commitment to keeping things as they were a century ago, but now we know that institutions do this at their assured peril.

I have written a ton about K-12 education and how it's being impaled into the ground, but a couple of thoughts stand out. I'm the first to agree that we are what we measure - but we should also know that if you lower the barrier to entry, people won't try as hard!! If you protect management from failure, they won't feel as accountable!! 

Seth Godin wrote this great post today about how career fairs are (my words) the aspiration to be average. He didn't need to prove it, but here's more proof of this - the NY Times reported that several states are lowering their high school graduation test standards!!

How often have you seen a person say - well if I only need to produce 10 widgets a day, and no matter what I do, I only get paid to produce 10 widgets, I'll produce 20 (or even 11) anyway, just because I can and I care?

What gets measured gets done - if you lower the standard, guess what, you've guaranteed that the students will learn less! These legislative charlatans are trying to put a better spin on things - Dr. Gerald Zahorchak, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Education in one breadth said that 20,000 2007/8 graduates required remediation at a cost of $26 million before they were ready for their next step - a pretty damning condemnation of current graduation standards. BUT in the next breadth, of their plan to lower the standards for testing, he said: I want more than anything to be able to say with confidence that every Pennsylvania student who receives a diploma is ready for the real world.

I am speechless.

I think Dr. Zahorchak and all of his peers must be required to face the tens of thousands of unemployed high school graduates in their state every day, and hear from each of them about how their 13-year investment in public school has failed them.

The school system in this country is in peril - there should be a sense of urgency that eclipses the post 9-11 fervor on national security for approaches that improve the potential of every child in the school, not lower the standards so some imbecile with a big office can look good.

The barrier we are missing is the one that requires politicians to have an IQ above that of a grape.

grace

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him - Martin Luther King Jr.

I saw The Express the other day - a movie about Ernie Davis, the first black man to win the Heisman Trophy. Davis was one of the best ever to play collegiate football in America. He accomplished this in a time when being black was reason enough to be victimized; being black and successful in what theretofore was a white sport was simply unacceptable, and the 'incumbent' thugs weren't shy about letting you know it.

Rather than get angry and respond in kind (with violence) to the treatment he received from white players (even his own team mates), coaches, officials and fans, he did his talking on the field of play, and became an even better and more successful player.

I think I know a little bit of how he felt inside. I experienced racism when I was younger - it is a feeling like no other - to be broadly vilified just because you exist. I did not always react with the aplomb that Davis showed - I ran when I was well-outnumbered, and stood and fought when the odds were more balanced. Even when the abuse wasn't violent, it was extremely difficult to turn the other cheek and not feel like I was less for doing it. Worse, there was no response I could imagine that would actually change how they looked at me.

As I've grown past my teens, less and less racism is directed towards me (the Ernie Davis' of today probably can't say the same thing), but I will never forget that feeling.

We live in a society where everyone has the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But these aren't real rights - they have to be earned every day, and require hard, hard work. Seth Godin said something the other day that resonated: Take a look at the language you use to describe what happened at work yesterday, that's your first clue. If you're not the one creating the change, perhaps it's time to start.

Freedom is not granted, it is earned. But to be free you must first free yourself. I am only just understanding this concept. Davis understood it when he was but a child - he did not aspire to be the first black player to do a thing, he wanted to be the best player period. He did not resent or hate those who resented and hated him, he rose above that. Having already set himself free, no-one could 'imprison' him, no matter what they did. This is how he was free to achieve what he sought. BTW the reason you may not have heard of Ernie Davis is that he died of Leukemia before he had a chance to play professional football - he was 23.

President Kennedy (JFK arranged a meeting with Davis after the Heisman presentation) telexed these words to Davis at an event honoring his accomplishments just 15 months before he died:

Seldom has an athlete been more deserving of such a tribute. Your high standards of performance on the field and off the field, reflect the finest qualities of competition, sportsmanship and citizenship. The nation has bestowed upon you its highest awards for your athletic achievements. It's a privilege for me to address you tonight as an outstanding American, and as a worthy example of our youth. I salute you. - JFK, 2/3/62

I recently wrote about shibumi - I think grace is implicit in shibumi - in "being without the angst of becoming."

Do we need to face difficulty (real difficulty) to achieve grace? Perhaps only then do we really understand what we want, what we will do to get it, and more importantly, what we won't do to get it. But when we do face difficulty, do we rise above it, or do we seek vengeance in the name of pride or respect?

In spite of all that was thrown at him, Ernie Davis embodied grace. It's time we learned from him and create our own change.

no why, no how

One of the cornerstones of "good business" is to create consistent, predictable outcomes. Customers value it, Wall Street values it, it's basic MBA theory, and most employees value it as well. As leaders grow and shape their companies towards this outcome, there is a natural excitement attenuation effect - 'mundane' is rewarded more frequently than 'exceptional'; and 'different' is just plain discouraged. Keep at it long enough and creativity turns into procedures, and breakthrough turns into incrementalism. The final step is commoditization, margin pressures and, with an ironic twist, eventual demise - all in the name of "good business."

Seth Godin wrote Why ask why? today - it struck me as an interesting variant on this theme, not just in the commercial world, but especially in education.

'Progress' demanded the same "consistent, predictable outcomes" of education as it did of business. The Industrial Age needed a massive influx of skilled workers and education was scaled up to respond. In the interests of standardization, they distilled curriculum into 'core' knowledge, and in the interests of efficiency, all teachers focused teaching 'core,' to the exclusion of almost everything else. One result is the suppression of students' ability to ask "why?"

A few years ago, the "new" idea of 21st Century Learning became vogue - a lot of .orgs were formed, a lot of companies intent on social responsibility set up programs to support it, and a lot of edu-cognizanti heralded 21st Century Learning as the basis for education reform. IMO, there is no difference in the essence of learning in the 18th century versus the 21st century; content, method and tools may change, but the fundamentals remain the same. Ironically, while these proponents all think that inquiry and creativity are new skills, most want to mechanize their teaching.

I am reminded of this quote (my emphasis) when students did ask "why?":

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. - John Keating from the film Dead Poets Society.

Seth argued that not being able to ask "why?" prevents improvement; I think not being able to ask "why?" also leads to the suppression of our essential poeticism - the very thing for which we stay alive. When you walk into a great school, there is a vibrancy that sparks a need to channel Thoreau (with my emphasis and also from the same movie): "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." It's why as adults we wish we were that young again, to have that passion, and be immersed in that place.

Even in Dead Poets Society, Keating was forced to succumb to the school authorities, and extract the passion and marrow out of his class in favor of consistent, predictable and conventional outcomes.

I am convinced that size does matter, that overemphasizing predictability leads to the starvation of passion and excitement, and when the original wave of innovation dissipates, we are left with emptiness. The bigger a company or a school gets, the more likely it is to lose its mojo - there are exceptions - High Tech High comes to mind, but I can't think of many others.

Business has the luxury of bankruptcy and acquisition and start-ups and venture capital to achieve renewal - education doesn't. When education goes under, it takes futures with it.

While there are many federal and state programs in America aimed at investing in education, the one common denominator is consistent and predictable outcomes. I'm not saying this is not required, it absolutely is; but today it seems that the winners of the grants and prizes and awards have to be mechanical right from the get-go, and there goes our mojo.

As I've written before, I think it's absolutely appropriate for schools to be funded federally, but that the feds don't get to tell schools how to teach, theirs is to define the outcomes they expect for their investment. 

The schools in turn must treat their students as customers, respect them, and create an environment that allows them to wildly exceed the federally-designated outcomes, and most critically, experience the joy of learning.

acceptance

Ask ten people what the opposite of "love" is and chances are at least nine will say "hate." I don't agree. I think its indifference. When asked what "love" means, most will speak at length about many facets of what makes them feel good, but I think it's simpler - it's unequivocal acceptance. In most (ideally all) cases, this is how your mother feels about you. This acceptance is what we all seek.

There is power in knowing that you are accepted just as you are, just as you behave, just as you act, dress, think, play, whatever. When you are in this place of acceptance, you are empowered to be you; in fact, you're just plain empowered to be.

Most of us recognize the sense of comfort we feel when we arrive at a place where we are loved, a sense of ...de-burdening - the load lightens, the stress fades away, words flow smoothly, smiles are more frequent, expressiveness is more unfettered... There's more - we also feel safer, more cocooned, perhaps even impervious to harm. It's a sense of home isn't it?

I was talking with a good friend a couple of weeks ago about the differences in our two upbringings, how we were educated, and the role that people around us played. We looked at schools that are successful (measured by student success after graduation) and also have happy, energetic, and engaged students, and we saw that we had traveled similar paths. While we both successfully emerged from our respective public schools systems, many students don't. 25% of American students don't graduate from high school, of those that do, more than a third require remediation before entering tertiary schools (but it's really worse - more than 60% of those that were accepted into university required remediation). In our two cases, we saw also that others helped make sure we stayed on the straight and narrow, that we were given the impetus and support to stay in school, do well in school, and aspire.

I was talking yesterday with another close friend about binge drinking in the UK - more than half of all teenagers in Britain have been binge drinking in the last month. Scandinavians and Americans are also prone; and the drinkers are getting younger, developing other issues (poor academic performance, health issues, delinquency, etc.), and costing the system increasingly more money -£2.7 billion annually in injuries and illness in the UK alone.

Whether education or binge drinking, governments have attempted to isolate micro points of failure (poor teachers, drinking hours), and tried to fix these issues in the hopes that they will lead to widespread change. But things haven't improved; instead it's increased the tension with teachers, teacher unions and pub owners.

There is no research on macro common denominators that indicate increased learning performance or reduced drinking, so there's no data or foundation for what follows, it's my conjecture.

When you look at successes in education or when you look at places where binge drinking isn't as much of an issue, there is one (at least) common denominator - community. When I think of community, I think of a place where acceptance reigns - the group accepts and cares for the individual, and every adult is a parent to every child, every one a sibling to each other. Look at almost every successful school and you will find a community of people (parents, teachers, administrators and students) that share in the goal of raising great children; you can judge the strength of that community by whether students and their families stay connected to the school after graduation. Schools like this have a sustained record of success, and are led by people who care and people who are committed to the best for their community.

The indifference towards the individual, the absence of real community from birth onwards could be a predictor of poor academic performance, drinking, other addictions, the tendency towards criminal behavior, etc. Most people go out drinking because it's the only time they have a connection (albeit ephemeral) with others - a chance to belong for those moments to a group. Children join gangs because of the pride of belonging. When there is no alternative to real connection, real acceptance and real community, an easy way out is to drink your way into that feeling for at least those few hours where your behavior is accepted, your words are listened to (and enjoyed), your seat is held for you.

But if you can find a real and safe place to call home, a place where you belong, are accepted, and can just be, things change. Look at the Harlem Children's Zone and similar places where people invest in the community, and in turn the community invests in the individual, and you will find better students, less crime, less drinking, and a chance for redemption. Some centers are able to do this in a small way, but they will always struggle because they can't care for the whole child - that requires a broader effort.

Investing to build communities that live, that care, and that last are where I would put energy if I were running the show - I would center it on the youngest children and work upwards. It will take time, it will not yield immediate politically compelling results, but if we keep at it, it will work - acceptance will happen.

differentiation

Today is one of those days - the whole year is ahead of us and sadly, the prospect of imminent holidays is not. So what do you do? You get up, face your truth, and you get it done.

When an organization faces the prospect of a long struggle, it's different - there is no guaranteed holiday in five months, there is no fixed cadence that assures it of two fun weeks 50 weeks hence, etc. The organization faces a much more dire truth - survive or die. Seth Godin laid out an interesting corporate evolution process today:

1. Technicians who invented it, run it
2. Technicians with taste, leverage it
3. Artists take over from the technicians
4. MBAs take over from the artists
5. Bureaucrats drive the medium to banality

Organizations facing dire straits are generally well past stage 2 and usually in 4 or 5. When that happens, where do they turn to find their truth? The 4s and 5s will commission analysis, fabricate a plan to turn things around within a quarter or two to demonstrate to Wall Street that they've righted the ship. The strategy will be filled with data from quantitative and qualitative research, it will have lots of graphs and graphics, and it will answer the question - how do we turn our sow's ear into a silk purse?

But it will not have been authored by any of the 1s & 2s that found a truth, began from nothing and created a differentiated good or service that thrived. It will rather declare that the fruits of 1 & 2 were the sow's ear, and must now be re-thunk. "Our survival comes from giving them what the research and our consultants told us they want." Well... that's hard to argue, but it's also hard to show why customers will leave those that are already doing this (after all, if the market already knows what it wants, it's because it's already getting it somewhere else). It's also hard so show how your new extruded silk purse will be better than the competitions', and spark the turnaround.

The question of Making College 'Relevant' was discussed in the NY Times today. In it, liberal arts school students (and prospective students) are worried that this education won't translate into meaningful work. The schools are responding: University of Texas, Austin for example has a class called "The English Major in the Workplace," which includes reading Death of a Salesman, résumé writing and how to network. The provost at University of Michigan claims that they are too keeping up with changing times, after all - they have recently stopped offering majors in elocution and animal husbandry...

I don't know about you, but that doesn't feel like a liberal arts education anymore. It feels like schools run by, and designed to prep students to become #5s.

In five minutes of searching, I found this report that surveyed 25 Canadian employers (500k employees collectively) about the traits they seek in new hires; you can find hundreds of similar surveys - they all want the same thing:

1. Ability to communicate, think, and continue to learn throughout life
2. Ability to demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviors, responsibility, and adaptability
3. Ability to work with others.

I also found this essay On the Purpose of a Liberal Arts Education, after extracting the religious overtones, it is about exactly the skills that employers want, as is this Michael Roth Huffington Post post, which talks about Wesleyan University's value proposition.

The Liberal Arts folk from the NY Times article are missing a rather vital point - their truth, the thing that differentiates them from others is not whether they create jobs, or whether they are able to graduate students with pretty CVs, it is that they create thinkers with broad, open minds that are able to collaborate, learn, create and communicate. Turning their schools into résumé-writing factories is moronic and beneath everything their 1s and 2s stood for.

Why not instead demonstrate how liberal arts graduates added more sustained value to an organization than others? Why not demonstrate how their students were more innovative and created more shape-changing opportunities for their employers because they had ability combined with breadth?

The truth that sparked their being oughtn't be rendered meaningless so easily. Instead they must demonstrate with conviction that there is value from such an education, that the skills they create are sought by employers, and that their students bring even more to the table. <-- This last might be where they add to their truth - helping their students develop experiences more relevant to the anticipated needs of the workplace, and using their innate abilities to document them with maximum effect.

I'm not saying that a liberal arts degree is the panacea for graduates in the next decade, what I am saying is liberal arts schools were born because their truth was clear and differentiated; by becoming yet another #4 or #5 factory, not only do they (or any other company that succumbs) become mundane, but they also concede that their very reason for being (in this case to educate) is a commodity, and they must now follow the downward spiral to low-margin, high-volume genericness.

There is no truth in that, worse, there is no good in that.

1-1-10

The first day of the year is the most widely celebrated day on earth. It is the one day that almost everyone recognizes and feels good about.

But a new dawn, no matter the day is just that - it's what we do with it that counts. Our world today is so much more connected than ever before; today almost any action is a visible action; almost any idea is a shared idea; almost nothing can hide, and almost everything seeks exposure.

One implication of this is that we (people and organizations alike) must be quick to sense, quick to diagnose, and quick to react. This instinct is in us, and has evolved to protect us. But as often as it saves us, knee-jerk reactions can also hurt us; and in our world, this hurt can easily be magnified.

I am a CAAD, someone who is more interested in the beginning than the middle or the end, someone who thrives in a world of ideas. And as a marketer, I understand the power of ideas, the reality of perceptions, and the potential of the moment.

Seth talked today about this being the frustration decade; there is some truth to that, but I think this is also going to be the decade of clarity - one that like today's date, consists only of ones and zeroes; one that requires modernizing (pictured) The Thinker in all of us. This is going to be a time of binary actions and reactions, where judgments will be made rapidly and often indiscriminately. Clarity is not truth, but clarity is easily grasped and easily shared. Actions need consideration.

I don't make resolutions (ever), but I was reading The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card and was so struck by the power of I was what I did; I am what I will do - that I had to stop and write.

My resolution is this - I will do many things from now, I will do many of them instinctively, but I will do some deliberately. I will sense, diagnose, contemplate and then respond. I will take more care to do what I do, to think what I think --- to be who I am.

mind the gap

This phrase is indelibly etched into my brain from my days riding the London Underground - and it has so many meanings.

Transparency International published their 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index last month, no surprises - poor nations are perceived to be more corrupt than rich nations. The authors of this survey are mostly of the top twenty nations, and their definition of corruption is very top-20 nation-ish. I was born in Tanzania (126th), and have spent time in some of the more "corrupt" parts of the world; I'm not saying that inequity and corruption are not present, I'm saying instead that there is a gap in the understanding of how things get done in the top-20 world vs. the rest of the planet.

How much would the list change if we added a new measure to the index - efficiency of outcomes? It would include tax rates, lobby/PAC spending, pork-barrel budgeting, government-led "preferential" spending, etc. It should also include the time it takes to get something done and the extent to which ethics and that nation's constitution are violated or flaunted by the government.

We in the "developed" world suffer from the arrogant righteousness of our way vs. "theirs", and measure others based on what we value, and not what they value. I wonder what would happen to the index if "tolerance and respect for others" was included?

American foreign policy is all about minding (or managing) the gap - it hinges on the premise that US success requires every "them" to look like "US" - it is more "Soviet" than the Soviets were. Like the Soviets, America prefers to use force as the first resort and diplomacy simply to manage perception - I wonder when President Obama will replace every American ambassador abroad with a US Marine General?

The NY Times published an article today that contrasts America's approach in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) to China's - it's an excellent read, I say this not just because it vindicates my recent post on Afghan redemption :-). Afghanistan is blessed with abundant natural resources; China (and India) recognize this and are doing something about it. The Americans in the article scoffed at China's overspending to win the contract, but how different is that from TARP in America (the overpayment is less than 1/10th of 1% of TARP, and equal to the cost of sending 1,000 troops to Afghanistan for a year)? From the article (my emphasis):

Nurzaman Stanikzai was a mujahedeen in the 1980s, using American-supplied arms to help drive the Red Army from his homeland. Today he is a contractor for M.C.C., building the Aynak mine’s electric fence, blast wall, workers’ dormitories and a road to Kabul.
“The Chinese are much wiser. When we went to talk to the local people, they wore civilian clothing, and they were very friendly,” he said recently during a long chat in his Kabul apartment. “The Americans — not as good. When they come there, they have their uniforms, their rifles and such, and they are not as friendly.”

...

The Chinese, meanwhile, have rebuffed requests to join the Afghan war effort, saying that national policy forbids military action abroad except as part of a peacekeeping force. Instead, China’s foreign policy is based on commerce. Its state-owned companies have been snapping up energy and mineral resources worldwide for years now, often by overwhelming competitors with lavish offers.

...

The Afghan government is seeking bids for its second great mineral project, a behemoth called Hajigak that is said to contain 60 billion tons of iron ore. There are seven finalists — all companies from India and China. M.C.C. is one of them.

China and India it seems have a foreign policy strategy, while America has foreign policy attitude.

According to BillShrink.com's analysis of the most profitable companies in the world, 2009 was a tough, tough year - aggregated profits for the top 100 dropped precipitously, lowest in at least the last five years. The top 6 are all oil companies, and together their profits totaled $163 billion; despite the tough economy, the United States is home to fully half the most profitable companies. I wonder which countries will host the most profitable companies at the end of the next decade?

Some gaps are shrinking and others widening... which ones are we minding?

Oh and the United States is ranked 19th least corrupt, China 79th, and Afghanistan 179th.