Scary times require rhymes
October 31, 2008 by Miki Saxon
It’s Halloween and things are scary—
the economy is really hairy;
your savings trashed, your mortgage iffy
and it can’t be fixed in a NY jiffy.
Today is the start of the holiday season,
but to celebrate you need a reason—or do you?
You have a choice to engage your MAP
in doom and gloom or ignore that crap.
What goes up must come down
and the other way around
The pain is real, but it will pass
much faster if you kick gloom’s ass!
Like my rhyme? Here’s another that’s prime.
Your comments—priceless
CandidProf: an educational shafting
October 30, 2008 by Miki Saxon
By CandidProf, who teaches physics and astronomy at a state university. He shares his thoughts and experiences teaching today’s students anonymously every other Thursday—anonymously because that’s the only way he can be truly candid. Read all of CandidProf here.
College is expensive. Students have to pay for tuition, fees, books, school supplies, and all sorts of other expenses. Many years ago, college was still expensive, but at least the average college student could afford to go to college. But tuition, fees and textbooks have increased in price at far more than the inflation rate. Students and parents are understandably upset over this. At many institutions, the tuition goes up every year, sometimes at several times the inflation rate. Many people think that the universities are just raising tuition to be greedy. It isn’t that simple, though.
The average student’s tuition does not adequately cover the cost of education. College is not like high school. College professors need to maintain expertise and remain current in their fields of study. That means more than just reading about the subject on the internet. Also, college professors need to be paid. Libraries need to be current, and professional journals are not cheap. Books are not cheap for libraries, either.
State colleges and universities are supposed to be supported by tax dollars. However, state legislatures have cut funding to higher education, reasoning that colleges and universities can make up the difference through tuition. That means that tuition goes up to cover inflation, and then goes up even more to cover the reduction in state funding.
Private institutions rely not only on tuition, but on investments from their endowments to generate operating funds. In today’s economic climate, those endowments are not bringing in much money, so tuition has to rise to compensate.
Then, textbook companies keep coming up with new editions of textbooks. They are pretty proactive killing the used book market, too. I have on occasion tried to adopt an old edition of textbooks when the new editions come out, only to find that the bookstore could not get copies of the old edition. We wound up using the new editions. So much for trying to save my students some money.
As you can imagine, costs quickly spiral upwards too high for most students to be able to afford college. There are some grants and scholarships, but most are for those who have very low incomes.
The wealthy can afford college.
The poor have it paid for them.
The middle class, the bulk of our students, don’t qualify for grants and can’t afford college themselves.
This is where student loans come in. All across the nation, college financial aid offices are advising students to secure student loads. But most of these students are young and have not had any experience with loans. They quickly get in over their heads. Nearly 2/3 of students wind up graduating college in debt. Most owe over $20,000 in loans. Many owe over $50,000 and some students owe nearly $100,000 (if they go from undergraduate to graduate, law or medical school).
This is a serious problem. Students are graduating deep in debt.
Worse, shortly after graduation they have to start paying back their loans, but this is when they are least able to do so. After all, your first job after college normally is not a high paying job (even for highly paid fields). So students graduate with debt, just as they are trying to buy cars, buy houses, start families and do many other things that incur additional debt and expenses.
To add insult to injury, students often have to take more classes than they used to. High schools are turning out students who are not at all prepared for college level work. Close to half of our students require some remedial work in mathematics, reading, and writing. Those remedial classes have tuition, but they do not count towards degrees. This adds a year or more to an undergraduate program and it incurs more tuition, fees and textbook expenses. That is a problem, however, that needs to be fixed at the high school level.
So, what are we to do at the college level? The solution is not to simply force colleges to lower tuition. After all, tuition was raised not out of greed, but as a way to fund the college after state funds and endowments dried up. If states were to fund higher education at the rate that they used to, then tuition would drop. As for textbooks, I’ll leave that to a later post.
What is clear to me is that something needs to be done. We are doing our students a disservice if they are graduating deep in debt. Perhaps our financial aid offices should be working to help students find part-time jobs to fund their education. Perhaps there needs to be more direct government assistance to students in the form of grants.
It is hard to say just what needs to be done. But I see the cost of college getting higher and higher. In fact, it is high enough now that I think that I’d have had trouble affording it and I seriously doubt that I’d have been able to afford graduate school.
There is not an easy fix to this problem. Any fix would require a cohesive and comprehensive plan.
And I simply don’t see that happening.
Your comments—priceless
Wordless Wednesday: shattered markets – shattered dreams
October 29, 2008 by Miki Saxon
Wes Ball: Why selling sub–prime mortgages worked so well
October 28, 2008 by Miki Saxon
By Wes Ball. Wes is a strategic innovation consultant and author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success (Westlyn Publishing, 2008) and writes for Leadership turn every Tuesday. See all his posts here. Wes can be reached at www.ballgroup.com.
Is there really a lending problem? I know several people who doubt it.
One is a local car dealer. He was almost dazed as he related a story to me about selling a used car to a woman who had a bankruptcy five years ago. He sold her a nice car for $27,000. She did not have the first payment she needed to make the deal. Three banks (Bank of America, Citizens Bank, and one other I can’t recall) all offered her a loan for $32,000. That’s on a car that would only give her $22,000 on trade-in, if she sold it back one week after consummating the deal.
I also know another young couple who just purchased a $19,000 van. They had no problem getting a loan despite the fact that they have very low income. The rate was 18.5% – about three times what should be available. When an older and wiser friend challenged them that they could not afford the payments needed, they said, “Well, they must know what they are doing. They offered the loan to us.” The friend helped them sell the car, pay off the debt they still owed on the van, and get them into something they could afford.
So what’s wrong with these scenarios?
In the first case, at least one of those banks is in the midst of getting a getting an infusion of taxpayer cash from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, because they lost so much money on poor-quality loans. In the second case, the justification for making a really bad decision was that the blame was really on someone else. Worse yet, someone helped them get out from under the burden, but it is obvious from talking to them that they really don’t understand what was wrong with their decision.
We’ve just gone through the scariest financial event in my lifetime, but we aren’t through the consequences of banks, mortgage companies, investment companies, investors, consumers, and the U.S. government all thinking they can get away with making really stupid financial decisions because the blame can be cast upon someone else. It’s like watching three year olds pointing fingers at each other and expecting mom to “buy” it.
What is it going to take for us to finally understand that it doesn’t work to either expect someone else to make things right for us when things go bad or to do things that enable those persons making bad decisions to go on making bad decisions?
Isn’t it time that we let people take responsibility for their decisions?
If people want to have the freedom to make decisions for themselves, shouldn’t they also be required to take the consequences of those decisions?
Your comments—priceless
Guy up for the week
October 27, 2008 by Miki Saxon
I thought you might be up for some fun today and one of the most fun things I do is read is Guy Kawasaki. This weekend I ran into two interesting bits, an interview and a column in Always On.
The interview brought something forward that I think is very important, especially given the current economic times.
When talking about his new book, Reality Check, and who makes the best venture capitalist, Guy downgrades MBAs and those who haven’t had operating roles, saying
“Consulting, investment banking and accounting do not provide you with “on the firing line” experience. You’re always the “outside expert” who zooms in, interviews a few people, creates a PowerPoint presentation and then tells people what they should do.
Unfortunately, analysis and ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. A consultant can tell you to reduce your work force by 10 percent, but figuring out who to lay off and looking people in the eyes when you do it is much harder.”
No kidding. A lot harder.
This is important advice for regular business folks in companies of all sizes, not just entrepreneurs, to keep in mind when looking for help in solving difficult situations. In fact, pretty much everything Guy says can be applied with minimum tweaking to any size company, so read the interview and reap the value.
Guy also says that entrepreneurs, like ‘leaders’, aren’t recognizable up front and that the real proof is in the results.
Now for the fun.
Guy considers it “irrational to base one’s mood on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). After all, (a) what does that have to do with the real world? And (b) it reflects the buying (and selling) decisions of the same investment bankers who got us into this mess.”
So he created a more rational way to measure the health of the economy. Here are three of the 11 measures that make up the GIA (Guy’s Index of Absurdity).
- Venture capitalists attend board meetings via WebEx rather than Gulfstream.
- Pierre Omidyar [eBay founder] starts selling stuff on eBay.
- Men can speak at Blogher as long as they pay for the time slot.
Enjoy; reading Guy is a great way to start the week.
Your comments—priceless
Quotable quotes: the definitive word on leadership
October 26, 2008 by Miki Saxon
Jim Stroup writes an amazing blog. He reads widely, thinks deeply and writes superbly—of course, it doesn’t hurt that we hold similar views on the subject of ‘leaders’.
Last Thursday Jim wrote Clarifying leadership and supplied me with my quotes for today.
The first is from Peter Drucker, who said,
“Leadership is all hype. We’ve had three great leaders in this century – Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.”
Jim considers this the most sensible thing Drucker ever said about leadership and I agree. Jim goes on to say,
“He was right. Those guys had it all: vision, oratorical ability, relationship building skills, charisma, relentless focus, outside the box thinking, follower-attracting magnetism…Moreover they had the unconstrained maneuver room to give their leadership the untrammeled free rein that the modern movement’s gurus also insist is vital.”
Hmmm, free rein. Isn’t that what deregulation gave our fearless ‘leaders’ on Wall Street and in corporate America?
Your comments—priceless
Boards, activists, CEOs—who’s your daddy?
October 25, 2008 by Miki Saxon
What a difference a year makes. Last year Wall Street Journal columnist Alan Murray wrote Revolt in the Boardroom: The New Rules of Power in Corporate America
. (Excerpt) detailing the war between Boards, shareholders and CEOs.
He remembers the time when CEOs were all-powerful autocrats running top-down organizations under the auspices of Boards comprised friends and colleagues. The came the revolt and CEOs started being dumped right and left.
How large was the turnover tally last year and was it really that different from what it used to be?
Generally speaking, prior to the 1990s CEOs weren’t fired. During the Nineties Boards ousted a few high profile cases, such as GM, IBM, American Express, but by mid-2000 things really started changing and have continued apace—663 in 2004, 1322 in 2005, 1478 in 2006, but ‘only’ 1,356 2007.
Of course, not all were fired, some retired, some took outside offers, but a great number left by, or just before, Board request and some left in a very public perp walk.
By the time the book came out, six years after Enron, most of us thought we’d seen the worst; we believed that governance had changed and that Boards and investor activists had tamed CEO ego.
Many thought that it was a permanent shift in power away from CEOs, but it took only a year to show how inaccurate that analysis was.
It might be true when dealing with felonious intention, but when it comes to “maximizing shareholder returns” it seems like anything legal still goes.
But even slightly out of date, Revolt in the Boardroom is a good read—educational, entertaining and offering some unique insights into the corner office.
Your comments-priceless
What’s wrong with ‘leader’ and leadership
October 24, 2008 by Miki Saxon
I really dislike words that have no definition other than a different form of themselves.
Leader – a person or thing that leads.
Leadership – the position or function of a leader
Talk about something with no real meaning—except when looking at the man-hours spent teaching and writing about it or the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on acquiring it.
And I find the practice of identifying ‘leaders’ early in their careers particularly repugnant for two reasons.
1. The idea that you can identify future ‘leaders’ from their actions on the playground or in high school or during their initial working years is inaccurate at best and stupid at worst.
Those identified as kids are the ones who excel at getting noticed, love the spotlight, have a good story to tell and are typically attractive and mainstream. The nerds and misfits are rarely noticed as future ‘leaders’—think Steve Jobs.
Picking them out for special training during their first five years of work eliminates all those who work for bad bosses or for companies where entry level hires are grunts with no real responsibility.
Choosing them because they have an MBA is really ridiculous—all the degree proves is that they could afford grad school (either had the money or went into debt) and that they made it through. That’s it.
Further, the ‘early leader’ approach eliminates all those late bloomers giving them far less opportunities to excel.
The second reason is much worse.
2.Those ‘chosen’ start getting extra attention and mentoring from day one of being identified, so the traits that got them noticed get stronger. Stronger isn’t always better.
They are anointed, singled out for greatness, they are special.
Being special sets you apart; suddenly you’re better than the others and that means that there must be different rules for you because you’re special, better—and entitled. An attitude best summed up by Richard Nixon when he said, “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
And that sense of being anointed a ‘leader’ is partly responsible for the current debacle.
Your comments—priceless
Book review: Leadership From The Inside Out
October 23, 2008 by Miki Saxon
Leadership From The Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life is a second edition, published on the 10th anniversary of the original.
What Kevin Cashman writes resonates whether you’re running a Fortune 100 corporation, raising a kid, or struggling to live a decent life.
As Cashman reminds us immediately, “we are the CEO’s of our own lives,” so if you read the book forgetting what you do or what you earn and focus on increasing your value to YOURSELF and those around you the book has great value.
However, if you read it as another part of a to-do list on getting ahead its value substantially declines.
Leadership From The Inside Out addresses understanding, growth and change in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) as opposed to a set of steps and check-off points in how to be a ‘leader’.
Unhappily for some, Leadership From The Inside Out requires you to not only think, but think deeply. To gain real benefits from it you’ll need to mull, cogitate and then enable change in many levels of your MAP. Doing so is neither easy nor comfortable, but it is personally rewarding and extraordinarily valuable.
The book is still more valuable if you recast some of the thoughts to broaden its scope, e.g., where Cashman asks how authentic you are as a ‘leader’, ask yourself instead how authentic you are as a human being? How authentic in your other roles—parent, friend, spouse, teacher, landlord, plumber, etc.
The book is divided into seven ‘masteries’, they are
- personal mastery;
- purpose mastery;
- change mastery;
- interpersonal mastery;
- being mastery;
- balance mastery; and
- action mastery.
Cashman focuses on the fact that it’s not enough for you to master each of these, but that you must share them—passing them on to others within your world.
Although the book talks about executives, it’s not difficult to extend the intelligence to any level along with every-day life.
You always have to lead yourself, and you never know when you’ll have the opportunity to lead others, which makes the effort involved in truly utilizing what Cashman offers well worthwhile.
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CandidProf’s schedule requires reducing posts to every other week. Read all of CandidProf here.
Your comments—priceless
Wordless Wednesday: should we recycle…
October 22, 2008 by Miki Saxon
leaders, too?
See a tribute to the meltdown leaders
Your comments—priceless