Can you imagine telling your boss that you deserve a raise because you come to work on time every day?
Or that she shouldn’t fire you for poor performance because you tried really, really hard?
Last week on Leadership’s Future a young man named Andrew started a conversation. During it he gave me a link to an article in the NY Times about student expectations.
Expectations based on that sense of entitlement which makes me nuts.
It seems that today’s students expect an A if they attend class and turn in assignments.
And it’s wrong for the professors to consider the quality of work, since a lower grade will affect their job opportunities and that’s not fair.
“A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading. … Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.”
It’s not surprising, since K-12 inflates grades, passes everyone in order to keep their funding, and fires teachers who cling to the out-moded idea that school is a place to actually learn.
Here are two student quotes that seem to sum up a majority viewpoint…
“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade. What else is there really than the effort that you put in? If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point? If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.” –Jason Greenwood, senior, University of Maryland
“I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.” –Sarah Kinn, junior, University of Vermont
As hiring managers and potential colleagues I’m sure this attitude thrills you no end.
Do you find it terrifying that at some point in the future these same students may be your doctor or lawyer and that, reality forbid, these are the people who will teach the next generation? I do.
The story drew 131 comments; I didn’t read them all, but here are three that struck me.
“I think the disputes about grading also stem from students approaching education as consumers. Because they pay to attend school, they have an attitude of, “the customer is always right” and feel they should have their grades their way.” –Tiffany Mills, Detroit, MI
“Having been for a time peripherally associated with a Junior Year Abroad program in Paris, I was shocked to learn that certain parents of students whose grades were mediocre would actually telephone the program director and threaten her with various forms of retribution if the grades were not inflated. Apparently students are not the only ones with a sense of entitlement!!” — Jill Bourdais, Paris, France
I appreciated this one, since it sums up what should happen when grades are down…
“I received a D+ on my first paper for a history course in my freshman year of college. After the initial shock and indignation wore off… That course was a turning point in my education. I wasn’t just regurgitating facts, but thinking about the source materials from the perspective of those who wrote it and really analyzing the content. It showed me a new way to read into materials in other courses and helped me earn better grades. I earned a B in the class and was delighted with the grade, considering how far I come. A bad grade isn’t always a bad thing. It can be an opportunity to improve.” — Maggi S, Chicago, IL
And finally, a comment that probably reflects what many of you are currently thinking.
“Students who think that just attending class and doing the reading is enough are in for a huge shock when (or if) they enter the world of work. I’m a writer. If I spend hours on a piece, but it doesn’t do what my client wants it to do, I’ve failed. I don’t get paid. Merely “doing the work” ain’t enough; it’s the QUALITY of the work that counts.” — JoMo, Minneapolis MN
On a practical note, hiring managers might find it of more value to look at grades a bit differently as I explain here.
Did you read the links from yesterday? I hope so, because some of these quotes play off those articles.
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” –Agatha Christie (Good words to remember these days.)
“A woman is like a tea bag, you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” –Eleanor Roosevelt (This is one of my all-time favorites; it’s stood me in good stead for a long time now.)
“The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.” –Ann Landers (I don’t know where the naked truth is hiding, but the lies were running the banks.)
“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” –Mother Teresa (True. You don’t know how good a leader is until after the fact, but you should know yourself.)
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” –Sally Berger (So you can keep crying in your beer or get started, get moving and kick butt!)
“The percentage of girls who say they believe that today both men and women have an equal chance of getting a leadership position has declined from 35 percent to 24 percent between 2007 and 2008.”
And the guys still seem to have problems if women “get tough” (like them), especially in male-dominated fields.
“Speak lowly and slowly, but smile frequently…This advice…was based on my observation that women must adhere to a narrow band of behavior in order to be effective in mostly male settings.”
WSJ Online republished an article from 2005 looking at the difference between how most women relate to numbers vs. most men and its effect on earnings. Sadly, it hasn’t really changed.
“Female M.B.A.s have a bias to nurturing and team building and male M.B.A.s to a more analytically driven focus on success and independence. My advice is that both should develop more well-rounded skills.”
“Studies show that in almost all measures of executive performance women are equal to or outperform men, with one exception: vision. Ibarra’s review of the 360 degree reviews of nearly 3,000 women revealed that, in general, they were seen as less visionary.”
McKinsey, however, presents a trenchant case (requires free registration) on why women are important, not in terms of political correctness, but to the bottom line.
“The gender gap isn’t just an image problem: our research suggests that it can have real implications for company performance. Some companies have taken effective steps to achieve greater parity.”
But the world turns and times change. When the ruling class screws up big time, people often embrace the opposition.
“Icelandic women, however, are more likely to be studying the financial news than the recipes – and more likely to be thinking about how to put right the mess their men have made of the banking system than about cooking them comfort food. … But for a generation of fortysomething women, the havoc is translating into an opportunity to step into the positions vacated by the men blamed for the crisis, and to play a leading role in creating a more balanced economy, which, they argue, should incorporate overtly feminine values.”
“John Coates, a researcher at Cambridge University concluded that traders made the highest profits when they had the highest levels of testosterone in their spit. The downside, he said, was that elevated testosterone also led to riskier behavior, a formula for disaster as well as profit.”
What do you think? Would the bankers have played derivative Russian roulette if there had been more women in the in the halls of Wall Street power?
I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that as important as hard work, good planning, etc., are, there was something else at work in my life. Something outside of my control and I wanted to know what it was.
I finally decided it was luck—definitely outside my control.
I wrote recently abut how the luck of right time/right place luck played a role in the early success of a startup and also touched on Malcolm Gladwell’s research as described in Outliers: The Story of Success.
“Higher-income parents did gesture more and, more importantly, their children on average produced 25 meanings in gesture during that 90-minute session, compared with an average of 13 among poorer children, they reported in the journal Science. … Gesturing also seems to be an important precursor to forming sentences, as children start combining one word plus a gesture for a second word. … In fact, kindergarten vocabulary is a predicter of how well youngsters ultimately fare in school.”
Such a little thing, but with such potentially enormous impact.
I don’t remember my mother gesturing, but I do know that she talked to my sister and I using the exact same vocabulary that she used with her peers and that became our vocabulary. Fortunately for us, she had a large vocabulary between having gone to college and being an avid reader, but I wonder where I would be if that had been different.
Plus, researchers are finding that children start learning long before it was originally thought.
The problem is that from zero to six kids dependent on what they get from home; from 6 or so to18 or so they look to their peers, which is the blind leading the blind, and then it’s on to adulthood where changes are far more difficult and, if the research is at all accurate, limited.
No one can control when they’re are born, who their parents are or the economic strata into which they’re born, but you can reach out and help change the people’s luck.
And for all those who look at me and say that they’re busy or that they have donated all they can or it’s just not their problem and there are schools/social services/etc., to deal with it I have a news flash for you.
Unless you plan to die tomorrow, it’s your problem.
It’s your problem because of a little thing called demographics.
This recession will eventually turn around, even if it takes longer than our instant gratification culture likes, and when it does the US is going to need every warm body if it plans to retain/regain its success and influence.
No one is expecting you to solve the problems, but you can reach out and touch just one life. If everyone over 21 did that we would be well on the way to change.
Your choice is whether to be part of the good luck or the bad.
As you probably know there are hundreds of ways to mess up a culture and a lack of authenticity is one of the big ones.
There’s a lot about written about authenticity, but are you aware that one of the quickest ways to announce your lack of authenticity is to issue ultimatums?
Thousands of times a day, day after day, bosses in every industry, in companies both large and small, issue “or else” ultimatums, sometimes without even realizing it.
These threats aren’t always direct (Do it or start looking.), more often, they are subtle (“I expect employees who work here to be team players.”), but the threat is there: Do X if you want to keep your job.
Obviously, this is not only atrocious management, since
threats are tremendously debilitating to those receiving them, often costing them the confidence to do their job; but
the manger who uses threats loses the most—the credibility to run the organization.
Bad enough, but beyond the direct effect of the threats, there is a ripple effect that is far worse—the seeding of a self-propagating culture of intimidation—as with hazing people start thinking, “I’ll do it to you because the person above did it to me [and I want to get even].”
Ultimatums kill creativity, innovation, motivation, caring, ownership, in fact, everything it takes to create a culture that allows a company to successfully compete in today’s economy.
If intentional you need to look long and hard at your MAP and decide if that’s who are and how you want to be, then change—or not.
When not intentional, ultimatums are often the result of poor communications but they can be stopped—the choice is yours and yours alone.
Greed is certainly in the news these days, from stories about it to tirades against it, so it seemed like a good time to offer up a few you may not have seen recently.
“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” –Erich Fromm (Hello John Thain and friends, I think Erich is talking to you.)
“It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, aquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.” –John Steinbeck (This is so true it makes you want to weep.)
“To make a business decision, you don’t need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.” –Bill Watterson (After listening to all the rationalizations and excuses for what’s happened this is the first thing that makes sense.
Finally, to round this out I’m adding something I said during a conversation. I can’t remember having read it, but I doubt it’s really original.
“Greed is the driving force in the pursuit of many things besides money.” Me
What about you? Any thoughts on greed—your own or someone else’s?
How much longer do you think it will take corporate Earth to get off their terrified, or comfortable, collective asses and embrace a real, live, authentic, proven solution to most of their problems?
“But businesses bold enough to develop a forward-looking, risk-taking corporate culture and brave enough to cannibalise existing successful products, in order to commercialise radically new ones, are more likely to dominate world markets and increase the competitiveness of their national economies.”
Bold and forward-looking, aren’t those the traits that every over-paid CEO on the planet claims to be their expertise along with how they will ‘lead’ their company into a bright new world…blah, blah, blah.
Are you as tired of hearing them as I am? They talk and talk…and talk.
Or they’re replaced by an impatient Board running from Wall Street’s demand for short-term profits.
Prabhu, along with a host of other experts, says his research shows that “Innovative companies appear to have a similar corporate culture, wherever they may be located in the world.”
“We have identified three specific attitudes and three practices within innovative firms that make them special and drive radical innovation. These are
risk tolerance,
a willingness to cannibalise existing products,
future market orientation,
empowering product champions,
fostering internal competition and
providing incentives for enterprise.”
Attention Wall Street, this stuff is not implemented overnight—or in a quarter.
Whoa. Do you think it’s possible that the silver lining in the current mess that was started and facilitated by Wall Street denizens might be a return to long(er) term thinking?
That CEOs will get canned for embracing quarterly numbers a la Jack Welch in place of radical innovation.
That investors will actually take Warren Buffet’s philosophy to heart and quit putting their faith in hedge funds, day trading and fast profits?
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Can you imagine telling your boss that you deserve a raise because you come to work on time every day?
Did you read the links from yesterday? I hope so, because some of these quotes play off those articles.
Last year I wrote about the 
I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that as important as hard work, good planning, etc., are, there was something else at work in my life. Something outside of my control and I wanted to know what it was.
A few days ago I read a brief article about University of Chicago researchers Susan Goldin-Meadow and Meredith Rowe, who have been studying the 
As you probably know there are hundreds of ways to mess up a culture and a lack of authenticity is one of the big ones.
How much longer do you think it will take corporate Earth to get off their terrified, or comfortable, collective asses and embrace a real, live, authentic, proven solution to most of their problems?
