Did you know that six out of ten of the boys who could help build our future drop out of school and end up in jail?
That’s a full 60% and that is one scary number.
These boys are just like your sons—only without the same opportunities.
These boys are black.
The M3 Foundation is changing that one small step at a time.
M3 was started three years ago by KG Charles-Harris, CEO of Emanio, who I met first as a client and now count as a good friend.
The following is from this year’s M3 year-end report.
“M3 has had tremendous success during the past 3 years. We started with 10 underperforming boys at King Middle School in Berkeley in 2006 and expanded to all three middle schools in Berkeley with more than 30 students in the program during the past school year.
The boys achieved an average GPA of 3.0 during the past school year, some starting as low as 0.6 GPA. The average GPA was raised from 2.7 to 3.0 during the last semester.
All our boys are from low-income families, many with single parent or guardian backgrounds. Since 54 percent of black boys drop out of school on a national level, and 73 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area, these results are a tremendous boost. We expect to improve these further during the coming year.”
Take a good look at the numbers. That’s the kind of improvement that No Child Left Behind was supposed to achieve—but didn’t.
M3 accomplished it by working directly with the boys, not by teaching them to take tests or drumming rote memorization into their heads, but by showing them the value of education and providing the attention needed to appeal to their pride.
Instead of being told they could not they were told that they could.
Not just told, but supported and encouraged.
And they succeeded.
Finally, M3 packs a lot more bang for the buck than most programs do—check it out.
Come back next week for an interview with KG Charles-Harris.
I became a thinking adult watching him deliver the news starting in 1962 and when he stepped down in 1981 I stopped watching TV news—I wanted intelligence and objectivity, not image and opinions.
How can those of us who are familiar with Cronkite convey what he did for us? How do we explain to a generation that thinks bloggers, Howard Stern and morning TV are viable news sources what Walter Cronkite gave us?
Walter Cronkite understood the meaning behind Lao Tzu’s words, “To lead the people, walk behind them.”
Here are a few of his comments that I especially like…
“I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.”
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.”
“I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.”
“We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.”
“America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”
“I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since.”
I hope all of you will click the link and read more about this truly unique man; our country would be different without him.
I know of no better words with which to end today then as Cronkite ended each of his news shows—
What do you do with a slightly-below-mediocre company that keeps its business going by staying in small markets where its dominance is assured by an almost total lack of competition; a company with little regard for its employees and less for the communities in which it operates?
You bring in a CEO who has a passionate belief that the interaction between customers and frontline associates has the greatest influence on success and that the greatest impact on that is the way their leaders/managers treat them.
In other words, employees at every level do unto customers as their bosses do unto them.
Jack Rooney is as far from a rock star CEO as you can get, but he understands that real leadership must permeate the entire company and knows that while true cultural change is neither fast nor cheap it works and therefore is worth the effort.
Rooney calls his approach the Dynamic Organization; he developed it under challenging conditions at Ameritech and brought it to full fruition at US Cellular, which he joined in 1999.
The Pursuit of Something Better tells both stories, Rooney’s and US Cellular’s; they are told by Dave Esler and Myra Kruger, the culture consultants who worked with him at USC and his previous company.
Both stories are the culmination of a man who believed in doing the right thing and a company that was changed accordingly.
“Jack Rooney and his slowly-expanding team of believers challenged the long-prevailing assumptions that business is a blood sport, that the advantage inevitably goes to the ruthless and the greed, that the only way to win is to hold your nose and leave your values at the door. He has proved beyond question, once and for all, regardless of what happens from her on, that a values-based model works, that it can raids both a company and the individuals who are part of it to undreamed-of-heights, to peak experiences that will last a lifetime and change the way those lives are lived.”
And while the authors do a great job of telling the story, the real leadership that Rooney provided, along with his concept of the Dynamic Organization, aren’t broken down or spelled out as a set of lessons and how-to’s separated for you to memorize.
It’s your responsibility to learn from what was done, drawing out those lessons that are most in synch with your MAP, because if they aren’t in synch there’s no way you’ll be able to implement them.
And in case you’re tempted to shrug it off as a fluke, I suggest that you give some long hard thought to Zappos and its ilk.
I highly recommend The Pursuit of Something Better. It’s fun, it’s fascinating. You might even start to believe that you don’t have to leave your ethics at the door; at the very least you’ll know what to look for in your next interview.
David Zinger’s post Friday (marvelous wordplay and puns) was all about freedom—freedom from clothes.
It seems that a Dave Taylor, a business shrink in the UK, recommends “Naked Friday” to boost team spirit—taking casual Friday to a whole new level.
“Inviting an organisation to go naked is the most extreme technique I’ve used. It may seem weird but it works. It’s the ultimate expression of trust in yourself and each other.”
Seems like naked is the rage among folks with those great accents.
Air New Zealand has made both an ad and a safety video using its own employees, including CEO Rob Fyfe, fully dressed—in body paint. (It’s probably the first time anyone paid attention to a safety video.)
“Each clip took one day to shoot and cost about 10 to 15 per cent of the cost of a major brand commercial.”
But don’t look for anything similar in the US any time soon.
Can you imagine the harassment lawsuits? Even if the staff agreed, someone would accuse someone else of staring and the simplest action would border on inappropriate.
The same with the commercial.
Can you imagine the lawsuits if an airline crew walked through a major airport here clad only in body paint?
The awards for developmental damage to children, the pain and suffering of the adults and the general flouting of public decency could pay off the TARP loans.
Perhaps this is where the US went wrong.
Our Puritanical roots are very close to the surface and we’ve lost our national sense of humor—if we ever had one.
There is nothing like laughter to take the hot air out of the leading windbags who dominate all viewpoints in our national news, whether business, religion or politics.
I have only one item for you today, but it’s a real goody.
Meet Robert L. Joss, Business School Dean at Stanford University.
On his first day he saw his position as Dean was in the bottom position of the unofficial org chart and a legend underneath that said, “And everything runs downhill.”
Over nearly an hour, Joss discusses Leadership Is Responsibility, Not Power.
It’s well worth your time. And if you want great take-away quotes, click here.
Today, a compilation study tell more about women’s efforts to achieve executive roles and three CEOs talk about why, how and what they did to outperform the competition.
Ladies first, so let’s start with the women. The ‘glass ceiling’ has been blamed for women’s inability to reach top executive levels, but a new study out of Harvard says that it’s more than that. Instead of one major barrier to hurdle, it’s a series of obstacles along the career path.
But women do make it. Women such as Dany Levy, founder of DailyCandy.com, who talks about managing, founding and running a company and the value of the “criticism sandwich — praise, constructive criticism, praise.”
Next A.G. Lafley, the storied CEO of a storied company—Procter & Gamble—talks about what a CEO does, no matter the business cycle.
Finally, meet Todd Wille, CEO of Unify Corp and the man the American Business Association named the best turnaround executive in 2008. Turnaround in 2008? Now, that’s saying something!
You may not be a CEO, you can learn from from them and tweak the information to work for you.
First is an article written by Neeraj Bhargava, who co-founded India’s WNS Global Services and ended up CEO. It’s interesting because the focus his learning curve in an overheated market, how he hired an exceptional team and got out of their way.
Next is an interview with James J. Schiro, CEO of Zurich Financial Services (they didn’t crash and burn) focusing on what he’s learned, how he manages, how he uses social media and building the company’s culture.
CEOs jobs are safer than they’ve been in a long time. That’s right, their boards and investors are sticking with the devil they know and giving them time to succeed, instead of turning them like flapjacks.
My final offering is for all you road warriors (warrior wannabes) or just people who like to work away from the office. If you have an iPhone or Blackberry you can do all your Office applications on it. (Better you than me:)
As I’ve always said, the best managers are also leaders. Here are three examples, one tech thing and two people.
First up is Google, the current leader in finding and managing information, but there’s a new kid on the block.
“The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet’s Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.”
Next is a great article dissecting the leadership of Capt. James T. Kirk who, for those of you that live in a barrel, was commander of the original Starship Enterprise.
Lastly, an interview with Rear Admiral Margaret Klein, who drops some great jewels, especially not to be afraid of making mistakes and to try things outside your comfort zone. Enjoy! (Sorry about the link; the Washington Post’s embed code never works—at least not for me.)
CEOs have been envied for decades; the pedestal kept getting higher and we all know that the higher the pedestal the further the fall. Things started changing in the eighties and now CEOs as a group are scorned and reviled as symbols of ego and greed who caused most of the problems we’re facing.
Certainly some do qualify for that title, but tarring all CEOs with that brush is plain stupid, as stupid as judging any group based on the actions of a tiny minority—no matter how high profile its is.
Today’s links offer up info on the folks in the corner office, whether they’re one of the vast majority who work hard and are getting a bad rap or one of the folks who screwed up.
First for the good guys.
The Milken Institute’s Global Conference 2009 offers a video discussion at their recent conference called CEO: How Will It Stop Being a Dirty Word?
And a new website offers a place where CEOs post stuff to show that Not All CEOs Are Jerks.
Do you apologize when you screw up? An article in Chief Executive says that an apology can improve performance; while Steve Pearlstein talks about an almost confession from a Wall Street bigwig—as he says, it’s a start.
Last is a bad guy; an interview with a jailed CEO courtesy of the BBC. Remember Dennis Kozlowski? He of the $600 shower curtain? Listen to what he has to say about himself and current events.
There are very few places where politicos are in favor with the exception of purely ideological grounds.
An exception seems to be Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, Canada.
It was incorporated in 1974, has had astounding growth over the last three decades and is now the 6th largest city in Canada; located on the Great Lakes it larger than either Milwaukee or Cleveland.
What’s interesting is that the mayor, Hazel McCallion, is 88 years old and has held her office for the last 30 years.
Everyone is buzzing about the town being debt free, but in an interview in the Mississauga News she says, “I think we have to talk in strong terms about subsidized social housing. I don’t think we’re doing a very good job. Quite honestly, the City of Mississauga is debt free, the City of Brampton is debt free and the Region of Peel is debt free—and still we have more than 13,000 families on the wait list. We lead the pack where wait times are concerned.”
I find it sadly amusing that few people anywhere want to understand that you get what you pay for and that includes government services at every level.
Taxes and revenues are directly connected and just because you don’t use a particular service doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.
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,
The M3 Foundation is changing that one small step at a time.
What do you do with a slightly-below-mediocre company that keeps its business going by staying in small markets where its dominance is assured by an almost total lack of competition; a company with little regard for its employees and less for the communities in which it operates?
Meet Robert L. Joss, Business School Dean at Stanford University.
First up is Google, the current leader in finding and managing information, but there’s a new kid on the block.
CEOs have been envied for decades; the pedestal kept getting higher and we all know that the higher the pedestal the further the fall. Things started changing in the eighties and now CEOs as a group are scorned and reviled as symbols of ego and greed who caused most of the problems we’re facing.
