An article in the NY Times gives a first look at new directions for education,

“…the Obama administration will use a Congressional rewriting of the federal law later this year to toughen requirements on topics like teacher quality and academic standards and to intensify its focus on helping failing schools. … The stimulus requires governors to raise standards to a new benchmark: the point at which high school graduates can succeed — without remedial classes — in college, the workplace or the military.”

Sounds great, but all I can say is good luck.

Not because of teacher quality; not because of money, since they actually plan to fund education (unlike the original N. C. L. B.) and not because the state governors won’t get behind it, but because there is no way to mandate parental support.

Previously, “the No Child Left Behind law allowed each state to set its own academic standards, with the result that many have dumbed down curriculums and tests. Colorado even opted to use its “partially proficient” level of academic performance as “proficient” for reporting purposes.”

And even with the dumbed down standards the kids complain and parents rush to their defense.

“…an unpopular math teacher was dismissed from a suburban high school where I live because parents complained that she was far too tough on her students.  She gave them way too much homework, and her tests were much tougher than the other math teachers’ tests, forcing her students to study for hours each week outside of class.  Interestingly, her students also scored the highest on state mandated standardized achievement tests as well as higher than other teachers’ students on the quantitative portion of the SAT and on the math AP exams.  Still, she was tough, so they fired her.”

Parents as a group are vocal about wanting better education and are quick to blame teachers, schools and government for its sorry state.

They never consider their own complicity in the downward spiral of US education. It just couldn’t have anything to do with their parenting.

After all, it’s only fair that they talk to the principal/school board about Ms. Randell’s/Mr. Johnson’s totally unfair treatment of their precious children; all that time the kids are expected to spend on homework when they would rather be socializing with their friends. And the papers they’re expected to write, not just copy off the internet, using good grammar and being down-graded for using texting terms; not to mention the tests—they’re just too difficult.

Nor should they be expected to tell their kids that they need to work really hard if they want to get into college—let alone at a job—that’s not supportive and may damage their fragile egos.

Whoever thought that it would be American Idol that would teach kids that the world isn’t theirs for the taking?

“”The show counteracts the stance that the world owes you whatever you want, even a living as a rock star, just because you happen to want it,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.”

I’ve never watched Idol, but if it’s teaching that lesson I’ll be a lot more tolerant when it pre-empts something I do watch.

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Now learn what an open door culture really means!

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Economic pundits, eagerly searching for signs of the recovery, are grasping at almost anything. “The rate of decline has slowed.” “Unemployment has stabilized.” “The cardboard box index has bottomed out.” And the shape of the recession and recovery has been predicted to be a V,  W,  L, or even a double-bounce W.

I think they’re all wrong.

The old economy will never come back.

This economic meltdown is much like a forest fire. After the fire burns itself out, the storm may be over, but the burn area is fundamentally changed. It does not “bounce back.” It starts at a different place.  Sometime in 2010, the economy will stabilize, but it will not “come back.” We will go forward from a fundamentally different position. This new starting point will reflect the impact of deep, long-term, global trends in the nature of work, the value of the dollar, and our relationship to our government. The current recession is a convenient marker to recognize these trends.

Work Is Changing

The nature of employment will continue to change. The United States will continue to shift to a “just-in-time,” service-based workforce. The manufacturing sector will continue its decline, from 29% of GDP in 1950 to 15% in 2000 (see analysis by Dr. Mankiw). It will drop below 10% by 2010. You can construct your own labor trend at indeed.com. ( This website is a fascinating example of the business of data, which we discussed in the last three posts.)

Many new service-sector workers will be involuntary. Growing unemployment and under-employment in the United States (which will exceed 15% this year) is driving many people into self-employment as service workers. An analysis of Japan’s Lost Decade by Tom Coyner, long-time resident of Japan and Korea, provides one instructive example of this phenomenon, and some associated risks.

These new service sector workers will be driven to a “do-it-yourself” model for almost everything. They will have to provide their own health care plan, retirement plan, office arrangement, and business planning. Many of these workers will be home-based, with little differentiation. The most common product/pricing model will be piecework, with unit pricing based on the alternative of being completely idle. Ironically, one result will be the re-integration of work and home life.

Entrepreneurship is Changing

Investment capital will no longer be available for any but the most solid businesses; and the vast majority of these newly-independent service workers do not have plans to build large businesses. As a result, the successful ones will exhibit four common, positive characteristics:

Local—In a global world, being present still counts. A local service provider who can show up in person has a distinct advantage. In addition, some services simply cannot be outsourced. When your car is broken or your roof leaks, you need a local service person. For locally-based services we may see an increase in a local, personal relationship with service providers.

Immediate—Without investment capital to fund long-term research and development, independent service-providers and small businesses must focus on services that provide immediate value. The “cash-to-cash” cycle must be less than one pay period. Fortunately, credit/debit cards and other immediate payment methods support this trend.

Information-based—Information will provide significant improvements in service quality and competitive differentiation. For instance, simply finding a customer is difficult and expensive. Irritating prospects with unnecessary and unwanted sales promotions is also costly. Successful service providers will use information to target customers on a “just-as-needed” basis.

Green—Setting aside the discussion of whether the earth is warming or whether green is good, government policies will reward green activities preferentially. Independent service providers will offer green services or enhance green aspects of their existing services.

Start-Ups Will Explode in Unlikely Niches

The availability of many talented people and the flexibility of independent service providers will fuel new start-ups. While these may not completely replace the loss of investment capital, they will certainly provide an alternative path of low-cost labor for new businesses. The change may be refreshing, for us individually, and for our economy.

This is perhaps the greatest unknown—how much will individual creativity and inspiration replace financial engineering.

I am hoping for a few delightful surprises ahead.

If you read me often you won’t be surprised to learn that I love culture. I believe in the power of culture. I believe that good culture is the difference between great companies and the rest.

Most importantly, I know that if it’s going to succeed culture must be stain not paint.

Unfortunately, many companies use culture paint, believing they can pass it off as culture stain.

The difference is obvious, just as stain is absorbed by wood, culture stain is absorbed into the very fiber of an organization affecting everybody’s thoughts and actions.

And just as paint covers a surface masking its imperfections, culture paint sits on the surface where it is paid lip-service and its effects are grounded in convenience.

In great cultures the CEO enables ideas and desires to percolate up from many quarters to become part of the culture.

In others companies, CEOs only include them to make people feel good; they don’t really buy into them and the result is culture paint. As with real paint, culture paint hides the imperfections, dry rot and structural weaknesses.

Today’s employees have a deep distrust of paint and an abiding desire for stain.

And employees always vote on culture with their feet.

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Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule, recently wrote a 40th anniversary tribute called The Peter Principle Lives.

For those of you too young to remember, the Peter Principle states that “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

“Dr. Peter argued, “When people do their jobs well, society can’t leave well enough alone. We ask for more and more until we ask too much. Then these individuals—promoted to positions in which they are doomed to fail—start using a bag of tricks to mask their incompetence. They distract us from their crummy work with giant desks, replace action with incomprehensible acronyms, blame others for failure, cheat to create the illusion of progress.”

Well put and oh, so, ironic.

The very supermen who performed such extraordinary feats of financial legerdemain were actually at the peak of their Peter Principle.

Sutton writes, “If Dr. Peter were alive today, he’d find that a new lust for superhuman accomplishments has helped create an almost unprecedented level of incompetence. The message has been this: Perform extraordinary feats, or consider yourself a loser.”

What do you ask of your people?

Do you ask for competency; for them to do the best they are capable of at that point in time? Do you give them the tools, training, support and opportunities to grow and develop?

Or do you promote your people before any of these happen, tossing them into the deep end of the pool to swim—or drown.

As a manager at any level you hold your people’s future in your hands. At any point you have the choice of helping them on their path to success, slowing them down or destroying them.

What do you choose?

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It doesn’t seem that the financial crisis is really changing things all that much.

The exodus of Wall Street bankers is mostly smoke and mirrors, not change, as many of the so-called disgraced leave for banks that didn’t accept bailout money, taking their clients and attitudes with them.

“Banks paid out some $18 billion in bonuses last year, down 44 percent compared with a year earlier, and many workers viewed them as paltry payouts… Sensing a shifting tide, talented bankers who fear a dimmer future at banks that have taken taxpayer money are migrating to brash boutique firms like Aladdin, which are intent on proving their critics wrong by chasing fast profits and growth in hopes of one day rising up as challengers to the old guard.”

Wall Street forces companies to focus on short-term profits, often at the expense of long-term corporate success and innovation, primarily  to add more zeros to their own paychecks.

State politicians solve their budget shortfalls by trashing those least likely to vote and completely incapable of donating to their campaigns—the poor, elderly and children.

According to Arizona’s Linda J. Blessing “There’s no question that we’re getting short-term savings that will result in greater long-term human and financial costs,” expressing the concerns of officials and community agencies around the country. “There are no good options, just less bad options.” Ohio’s proposed budget “will dramatically decrease our ability to investigate reports of abuse and neglect,” with some counties losing 75 percent of their investigators The Illinois governor’s budget proposal would scale back home visits to ill-equipped first-time mothers, who are given advice over 18 months that experts say is repaid many times over in reduced child abuse and better school preparation.”

Politicians implement short-term fixes at the cost of long-term social solutions, because (a) they have little negative impact on their re-election and (b) they won’t be around to deal with the mess anyway.

I have an acquaintance who isn’t wealthy, probably midway between middle and upper-middle class. She constantly talks about how she and her husband do everything they can to avoid taxes and would never vote in favor of them no matter what.

During the same conversations she gripes that the unincorporated county where she lives doesn’t plow the road near her house quickly enough when it snows; the ambulance didn’t arrive fast enough when her husband had trouble breathing; her grandchildren’s schools keep reducing enrichment programs and the classes are too large.

Their attitudes aren’t all that unusual.

Does anyone else see a dichotomy here?

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Great insights for you today—all as true now as when they were originally written.

You’ll have to forgive Galileo; he wasn’t a chauvinist, just a product of his times. Feel free to add ‘hu’ to ‘man’ if it bothers you too much.

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” –Galileo (Early exploration of MAP.)

“I never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.” –Galileo (Often more than from the educated ones.)

“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.” — Lois Wyse (Does that make out-of-control ego and excessive greed a strength?)

“The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants them to do, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” –Theodore Roosevelt (True for managers at any level. Does the shoe fit?)

“I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand.” -–Linus (I’ve always felt this way, but lately I’m starting to wonder about mankind.)

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See all mY generation posts here.

I’ve always thought of life as a corridor with dozens of doors opening, each one representing an opportunity.

You may open one or pass them by—it’s your choice.

Each time you do open one and enter that door closes forever and you move down a new corridor full of doors.

The door you entered is sealed because whatever lay behind it changed you, so you can’t go backwards, only forward.

Some people to through life opening as few doors as possible, changing as little as possible and staying as safe as possible.

Others launch themselves through the most interesting doors with gusto, taking advantage of whatever opportunities are concealed and then on to the next door.

In honor of all those who are, or lean to, the latter description I dedicate these two Rules. They are especially apropos today.

Watch for big problems—they disguise big opportunities.

Welcome the unexpected! Opportunities rarely come in neat, predictable packages.

You can’t open every door and you don’t have to stay long if you don’t like what you find, but if you pass straight through never opening any doors you’ll stay in pristine condition and you don’t really want to arrive at the end as untouched as you were when you started—do you?

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