If you are a manager and despair at the quality of people that fill your entry level positions, not their attitude, but their skills and basic education, prepare for it to get worse.
Perhaps instead of ranting and whining about America’s loss of global leadership we should look closer to home for the real cause—US education.
The ethnic groups with the worst outcomes in school are African-Americans and Hispanics. The achievement gaps between these groups and their white and Asian-American peers are already large in kindergarten and only grow as the school years pass. These are the youngsters least ready right now …read more

Three great interviews sharing what to do and one commentary on the opposite.
Do you long for simplicity, especially in software? Jason Fried built his company 37Signals because he hates complexity. Read more about his attitudes in Inc’s excellent article, you may be surprised.
Next is the story of and an interview with Steve Chang, co-founder and chairman of Trend Micro. Learn why two failed startups didn’t dampen his entrepreneurial fire and what drives him to innovate.
I love this interview with William D. Green, chairman and C.E.O. of Accenture. He tells his first training seminar as a manager where he was told …read more

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Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is Climate Change, so I asked Chris Blackman, who is a strategic consultant specializing finding both private and public funding in the green and clean technology sector, to offer her thoughts on a subject that enrages me every time it comes up—which is more and more often. The subject is the sacrificing of one limited resource for the sake of another.
From Chris…
Would you choose to go hungry and thirsty so that you could have energy?
That choice is the dark side of clean energy.
A ‘clean coal’ power plant uses tens of thousands of …read more

Company culture is a hot topic in the business press; CEOs are working to foster “cultures of innovation;” and culture is being lauded or blamed for a variety of happenings.
The bird’s eye view of what’s important in culture is as varied as the executives, academics, pundits, media and other experts who expound on the subject.
But what about the worm’s eye view—what do plain vanilla employees think and want? It’s important, since without them there is no company.
It used to be when I talked with people that it was easier for them to articulate the attitudes and behaviors they didn’t want …read more

I want to share three comments from Jeff Bezos today, because tomorrow’s post is about him.
They all focus on the financial side and point up the great difference between Bezos and many other CEOs when it comes to money and stock.
If Bezos is anything he is pragmatic and real—no BS. And that is just as true when he is talking about entrepreneurial topics as about his business.
The truth in this comment has only increased over the years and will continue into the future. “Good ideas will always get funded, so that’s not going to be a problem. But you will …read more

Monday I introduced Chris Blackman, who attended the AlwaysOn GoingGreen West conference for us.
I found her reporting of the attitudes toward implementing renewable energy into the grid in the face of entrenched interests disturbing.
Fungible Grids
Will the energy grid replace existing sources of power—oil, coal, gas, and nuclear—with renewable energy? Currently, our energy is finite and polluting yet highly efficient. And all of the players in the market, producers and consumers, recognize the need to overcome these limitations.
Solar energy accounts for only 0.003% of energy consumption in the US today and that is projected to increase to 2% by 2025. That …read more

Remember the old line “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach, teach teachers.”
It’s not true. Most people who go into teaching do it because they have a true passion—at least when they start.
But passion is hard to sustain when all you hear is that

you are too easy/hard;
you give too much/not enough homework;
you too often receive little-to-no respect from parents, kids, administrators and even your colleagues;
more time is spent on politics …read more

Each year AlwaysOn produces several high profile events. One is the premier technology event Stanford Summit that KG Charles-Harris covers for Leadership Turn.
But there are many types of technology; Going Green brings together those active in what is called green tech and clean tech. Those fields are of critical interest for many reasons, to I prevailed on Chris Blackman to attend and share her impressions with you.
About Chris
Chris is a strategic consultant specializing in the positioning of clients for the acquisition of capital – private and public sources of funding – in the green and clean technology sector. Chris is …read more

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