Monday, July 26, 2010

IS YOUR KID'S TEACHER AN IVY LEAGUER?

“My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.”

 Woody Allen

In the great debate about the deteriorating quality of American public school education, the quality and talent of America’s educators is often questioned. The answer to the headline question – is your kid’s teacher an ivy leaguer – is likely NO. Ivy Leaguers are meant for more prosperous careers. They are not only the best and brightest but also among the nation’s wealthiest college students. Many go on to top business and law schools, become captains of industry and our leading politicians.

Teachers more typically come from state colleges and universities. They are underpaid, overworked and much maligned. The quality of their training is questioned; as is their effectiveness.

I recently was introduced to a contemporary who had just retired from a 30 year teaching career. What an eye opener. Imagine, if you will, heading out for work every day with an absolute requirement that you be “ON” at 7:30. By ON, I mean ready for anything. Forget that long walk with your dog. Skip the trip to the gym. That third cup of coffee will have to wait until after 3rd period.

No matter if you are just too tired, too bored or just fed up. There is an honor student wanting to show her prowess; a malcontent disrupting your class; or, worse, a physical threat that must be contained.

Meanwhile, we read news reports almost daily that tell us about deteriorating student performance and Washington’s plans to reverse that course. Billions have been spent but the news keeps getting worse anyway.

A career in teaching is both physically and emotionally challenging. Why would an Ivy Leaguer want that job when a more luxurious future awaits elsewhere?

Teach for America.

Ignoring the national debate and foregoing government funding, a non-profit organization called Teach for America (TFA) has been working for the last 20 years to solve to improve education from the front lines.

Recently, the NY Times published an article about how difficult it is for graduates of Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth to be accepted by Teach for America. With only 4500 openings, less than 10% of applicants are admitted. Imagine if you will, America’s best and brightest college grads going into the teaching profession.

TFA doesn’t just drop these young recruits into the classroom. It provides a five week summer course in classroom practices before assigning its graduates to teach in inner city and rural schools. The organization sets goals for its teachers and assigns Program Directors to follow up and monitor the members of its “corps”. According to Education Week magazine, each of TFA’s corps members is expected to achieve at least one of the following goals: “…move student learning forward at least 1 ½ grade levels, close achievement gaps by 20 percent, or ensure that 80 percent of students have met grade-level standards.”

But, this blog is not about education; it’s about leadership. What struck me about the Times article was the number of Ivy League grads who applied. Eighteen percent of Yale and Harvard undergrads applied. Those rejected had to settle for alternatives like becoming a Fulbright Scholar, attending University of Virginia Law School or teaching at their alma mater.

TFA’s founder is Wendy Kopp who proposed the creation of Teach for America in her undergraduate thesis at Princeton – and then followed through upon graduation!!

So, when we ask the question that serves as the theme of this blog – Who Will Lead? – we need look no further than Wendy Kopp and the 4500 college grads who, this year, will dedicate their considerable intellect and energy to the task of improving student achievement throughout the United States.

Each sacrificed other opportunities to become teachers. Each dedicated themselves to making a contribution. Each of them will lead.

Monday, July 19, 2010

CAPTAIN BILLY AND THE BOUNDARYLESS ORGANIZATION

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

---Jack Welch


Long time GE Chairman, CEO and visionary, Jack Welch, coined the term “boundaryless organization”. When he began his tenure as GE’s top dog, he began to define a new culture to break down GE’s bureaucracy. In his alternative universe, GE would be boundaryless, an organization that is not defined by, or limited to, the horizontal, vertical, or external boundaries imposed by a predefined structure.

It’s a wonderful concept and many a corporate leader has striven to achieve it. Few have truly succeeded.

I never had the privilege of working for Neutron Jack. I learned about the boundaryless organization from Captain Billy.

At the ripe old age of 23, I was Chief Engineer of the USS Alacrity, a Navy minesweeper based in Charleston, SC. Our Commanding Officer (CO) was a Mustang Lieutenant named Billy G. Taylor. Captain Billy, as he was called when he wasn’t in the room, was from Waco, TX and brought all bluntness and country wisdom that origin implies to the job of being the CO.

During a minesweeping exercise off the Atlantic coast one sunny afternoon, we experienced a bearing failure on the minesweeping cable reel. I won’t bore you with a technical explanation. Suffice it to say that it was a big honkin’ reel that let out and (theoretically) retrieved a cable that was about 6 inches in diameter and several hundred feet long. When a bearing fails, it’s not very easy to retrieve that cable. When we opened up the gearbox, it was clear that salt water had fouled the oil that kept this machinery working right.

It was also clear that the planned maintenance for the equipment hadn’t been done. As you can imagine, it wasn’t long before a young sailor appeared at my side to tell me the Captain wanted to see me.

Climbing the ladder to the Captain’s quarters, I got my all my arguments (some would say excuses) straight in my head. “What happened?” said Capt. Billy.
“Well, I don’t know, sir,” I started. “That equipment is the responsibility of the deck department and…” I didn’t get to finish.

“You’re the Chief F___ing Engineer. Anything on this F___ing ship with more than two moving parts is your F___ing responsibility.”

A boundaryless organization.

Six months later, we won the squadron award for engineering efficiency. I got the message!

About 20 years ago, global corporations began to eliminate layers of management. Information technology had enabled senior managers to get quantitative information about the performance of their companies. They no longer needed (or desired to have) qualitative information from their middle managers. It was the beginning of the evolution of the “big box” model. The term is more often applied to retail stores – as in Big Box Retail. However, it applies to many industries that pursue a similar management model.

Over a generation, sophisticated systems have allowed multi-billion dollar corporations to wring out much of the cost that used to be required to run a large enterprise. That same trend has reduced the level of service.

We can no longer go to a bank and expect branch personnel to serve all of our needs. They now refer us to the call center and the dreaded voicemail tree. Retailers staff their stores with people who can tell you where the products are located but rarely offer qualitative advice. Flight attendants deliver standardized service. Their authority to make the customer happy is limited by the cost structure that is imposed on them by their corporate masters.

Customers complain but they have only themselves to blame. As a nation of consumers we have consistently stated a preference for low price over good services.

For the 21st Century Corporation, what this inexorable trend has meant is that fewer and fewer managers understand the concept of the boundaryless organization. Ever wonder why there are so many choices on the voicemail tree? Because functional specialization drives down costs. You can talk with someone in customer service about the mistake the bank made. But, to get the credit to your account, you need to talk to someone in another department. No judgment allowed.

My point of reference is generational. I am a baby boomer. We grew up in a world where we were coached by our mentors to develop business acumen and good decision making skills. I wonder how the next generation will develop those skills. How will it be possible for them to run a global enterprise when their perspective is limited to the narrow function they have learned to manage?

Let me put it this way……
WHO WILL LEAD?

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Monday, July 12, 2010

Our Mission

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005)

I went to the “Un-college”. At least that was our joke at the time. It was a play on words from the popular 7-Up commercial. 7-Up, the Un-cola was an alternative to Coke and Pepsi. And the US Naval Academy was an alternative to a real college, it was the Un-college. So, despite my pursuit of a business career, I never studied finance, marketing or industrial engineering. In fact, I never even studied management.

At the Un-college, we studied Leadership. I don’t mean by observation or inference; we took college courses on the topic. That formative era in my life has provided me with a perspective I often find lacking in our institutions, in our sense of civic duty and, indeed, our approach to solving the multitude of strategic challenges we face today.

If I sound a bit pious or arrogant, I am sorry. But, the anger felt by Main Street for Wall Street, by Republicans for Democrats (and vice versa) or by labor for management has resulted from a lack of leadership in our institutions. At the core of this anger is the faith the citizenry placed in our so-called leaders.

Throughout our history, the little guy has always known that rich guys make the rules. American institutions have always attracted people and capital because the rules made it possible for everyone to have success and for many to become rich guys. How long can this continue? Will global investors continue to have faith in US investments in the face of a rising debt burden and a lack of transparency? Will America continue to thrive when its high tech manufacturers can’t find enough workers with the math skills to operate complicated machinery? Will we continue to lead the world in innovation while our grad schools are populated largely by foreign nationals?

Millions of Americans, who have done the right things, have been wronged. People who have worked hard and trusted government and their corporate bosses have been betrayed. Their jobs have been shipped overseas, our schools are deteriorating and our financial underpinnings have been undermined.

Last week was my inaugural of this blog, “Who Will Lead?” My mission is to look at the issues of the day, the contradictions and hypocrisy and ask that question – who will lead?

I hope to keep you entertained and perhaps to enjoin you in a dialog. I would also like to expand the audience. So, if you find something interesting or provocative, please click the button to “Follow” this discussion and tell your friends.

And, as you follow current events, ask yourself that question:

“Who Will Lead?”

Monday, July 5, 2010

STOP WATCHING CABLE NEWS NOW!

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.

Oscar Wilde
-- Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

This quote from the great Oscar Wilde tells us not much has changed in the last 100 years. Not much except the capacity of the pipeline delivering journalistic content and the financial investment at stake.

Pundits have declared the print media to be on its death bed and, indeed, one might have predicted it 25 years ago when industry consolidation began in earnest. Today, content is more often delivered to us by 24 hour cable news channels. The mega corporations behind it all – Time Warner, GE and News Corp -- are not in the game to win the Pulitzer. They are in it to make money.

When I was a kid, TV journalism was viewed by their corporate parents as a public service. Was that really the case or is just my nostalgic imagination? Would Wilde have said the same thing if he were alive mid-20th Century? I can’t be sure but it seemed to me that when the Greatest Generation was in charge of those institutions, they felt more responsible for the quality and accuracy of the content. They were among the leaders of our society and knew they had an obligation to its citizens. Perhaps that’s why we remember Cronkite, Huntley, Morrow and Sevareid so fondly.

Overwhelmed as we are by a constant barrage of infotainment, purveyors of cable news must attract viewers by being outrageous. Journalism is no longer about providing information for viewers to make intelligent decisions about issues that affect them. It’s about the battle – Republicans vs. Democrats, conservatives vs. liberals, red states vs. blue.

There is an essential laziness to this approach. Covering politics is easy. You just report what people say. What we want, what we need, what we are desperate for is reporting on policy not politics. But, that would be hard work. Imagine how difficult it would be for a reporter to research his or her topic, consult with experts reflecting a variety of opinions and provide a concise report on that topic. Why bother? It’s much easier to report what the politicians are saying about the issue.

This weekend, Fox News reports about Elena Kagan’s “unabashed liberalism” while MSNBC describes her as “Confident but still cautious. Smart and then some. Disarming. Knowing. Wicked funny.” Which of these comments informs us about her qualifications or her likely predispositions on matters that are important to us? Neither!

I could provide hundreds of examples but that’s not the point. I am here to report that I stopped watching all of them – Fox, MSNBC, CNN – about two months ago and I have not suffered from a news deficit. Indeed, I have used the time I normally devote to watching the news to finding the news. My Yahoo home page is now flooded with feeds from a variety of news sources. When you find one you like, you can get it delivered to your email or your cell phone. For me it’s the Wall Street Journal, the NY Times, Marketwatch and Barron’s plus newsletters from John Maudlin, Jeff Nichols, Dan Primack, McKinsey and PIMCO. For you, who knows? The Washington Post, USA Today, ESPN.com, People magazine. It’s easy to find something that suits.

So, take my advice and give up cable news. I guarantee you will be better informed and enjoy it more.