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

When the economy slows, it’s easy to ignore retention factors because management kids itself into believing that replacing people is no big deal.
But slow as it’s happening, the times they are a’chnging.
At least here and there, in companies that really understand the importance of attracting and retaining scarce talent.
“To reduce “female brain drain,” global companies such as Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hewlett-Packard, Best Buy and dozens of others are increasingly offering a variety of flexible work options.”
Don’t get me wrong. These companies aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their corporate heart or caring social …read more

Manhattan, home of Wall Street, financial sorcery, hyper-competitiveness—and tutoring for 3 and 4-year-olds.
This story is one of the saddest I’ve read lately.
That is an age when a child should spend time being a child, exploring their world, running around, creating imaginary worlds, friends, situations and enjoying unconditional love.
Instead, they are learning that to please mommy and daddy they have to get a certain teat result and get into a certain school.
…3- and 4-year-olds whose parents hope that a little assistance — costing upward of $1,000 for several sessions — will help them win coveted spots in the city’s gifted and …read more

Last summer I coined a term to describe those who are chronologically, but not psychologically, Millennials; I called them aMillennials and there are more around then you might think.
Today I saw a great story about two aMillennials who showed their leadership by taking the initiative and convincing their university to provide comparable classes at a prison.
Four years ago, in fact, Wesleyan balked at a proposal to install such a program.
Two students, Russell Perkins and Molly Birnbaum, who had volunteered in prisons as students, revived the idea last year when they were seniors and figured out a way to finance it.
…a …read more

Raising kids is about teaching values, among other things, but kids learn by watching more than by listening. “Do as I say, not as I do” just doesn’t fly these days.
Cheating is not only a good example, it’s a global one.
Everyone knows that cheating is wrong, yet in US surveys 64% of high school students say they have cheated, while 84% of undergraduate business students and a whopping 56% of MBA students also admit to cheating. Not only is cheating prevalent, parental action often condones it.
Since many of these same parents are leaders in the workplace, the results of a …read more

What do you do and where do you go when you leave a high-stress career that nearly kills you?
If your name is Tom Dunn and you spent 20 years, first as a defense counsel in the Army Trial Defense Service, then stints in Florida, New York State and most recently as head of the nonprofit Georgia Resource Center, you find a less stressful environment in which to indulge your passion.
You teach in a tough middle school in Atlanta, Georgia where “ninety-three percent of students are black and 5 percent Hispanic; some 97 percent qualify for free or reduced …read more

Neglect. Drugs. Abuse. Molestation.
Where do you go when those four words describe your parents and your home life?
Where do you sleep; what do you eat?
When you’re cold and hungry you do what it takes to survive, including stealing and selling whatever you can find to sell—including yourself.
And these kids are as young as 10 years old.
The NT Times ran a two-part series called Running in the Shadows about teen runaways. It should be required reading for every American (part 1 and part 2).
Children on Their Own
This is the first of two articles on the growing number of young runaways in …read more

Every day we make choices and, as kids, learning to make wise ones is one on the most important things that should happen as we grow.
But it doesn’t always happen.
The great thing is that you can change and learn to make good choices at any time in your life—it is an integral part of leading yourself.
One of the most important choices anyone makes is found in the people they choose to have as part of their life.
Although I could write my own ideas of what that means, I’d like to share something I received from a friend. I can’t find …read more

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

Last Friday I wrote Narcissism and Leadership and how much narcissism has increased over the last few years.
I’ve never understood the preoccupation with the glitterati, but I have wondered how much our celebrity-worshiping culture affects kids?
According to Drew Pinsky MD, AKA, Dr. Drew on radio and TV, and S. Mark Young, a social scientist it may be especially dangerous for young people, who view celebrities as role models.
“They are the sponges of our culture. Their values are now being set. Are they really the values we want our young people to be absorbing? … It harkens back to the question …read more