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I heard so many times over how a superior or manager got so ***** off when a staff missed something
on a simple reason of not being able to check the mail right away. It is a lame excuse that reflects basic skills you ought to have mastered already.
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Of course Gen Y is comfortable with technology. Their technology actually works. A Gen Xer remembers the days when it didn't.
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Can you improve your conversation skills? Certainly. It might take a while to change the conversation habits that ’s been ingrained throughout your life, but it is very possible. To not make this article longer than necessary let’s just skip right to some common mistakes many of us have made in conversations. And a couple of solutions.
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So the ever-popular belief that Gen Xers were born lazy and that ’s what has been holding them back in the workplace isn’t true? Shocking? It’s simply a numbers game. However, many believe and make a strong argument that plenty of decent jobs exist for Generation X out there.
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A new article by the Christian Science Monitor gets into the heart of women who "Opt Out" of the workforce. This article, entitled "The truth behind women 'opting out' explains this dynamic in a new light.
Much of the talk about women "opting out" to care
for their families is a myth, two studies report. "Women are not
increasingly dropping out of the labor force because of their kids,"
says Heather Boushey, an economist at the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in Washington, D.C. 
In a study titled "Are Women Opting
Out? Debunking the Myth," she finds that although there was a drop in
women's work participation rates between 2001 and 2005, it was largely
because of a weak labor market. Men's labor rates also dropped during
this time period.
So with skilled workers in demand, what is the key to re-engaging these valuable individuals who have so much to contribute?
There are many new options available for folks that want to obtain education without classrooms, travel and related expense. 
Online providers range from traditional degree programs to specialized firms offering industry-specific (and often accredited for CE) programs.
RedVector.com provides programs specific to the Architect, Engineering and Construction industry. WIth almost 1000 accredited industry-specific online learning programs it is the largest single repository of this AEC information in the world.
Education-advancement.com is one of the webs largest directories on online education offering degree programs. These programs are a great way to continue effectively and teach a new talent (skill) for development in your career.
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Mass production has begun on the delivery of a revolutionary learning product with a $100 price point, designed to educate youth in parts of the world that have previously been excluded from the "information age". The initiative called "One Laptop Per Child" in the US is hailed by educators worldwide that agree that the value of the benefits clearly justifies the cost. The device replaces textbook costs, improves the education of the future workforce, contributes to public welfare, and offers opportunities to conduct general government functions at lower transaction costs.
Last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Brazil will distribute the first batch of Brazilian produced laptops to school students in the country, as part of the international project A Computer Per Student. The project, aimed at providing low-cost laptops for children in developing countries, was proposed by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.
The non-profit group One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is in charge of producing the computers at a cost of 100 U.S. dollars. On Friday, Negroponte, also chairman of the OLPC, met President Lula to symbolically launch the program in the country. The computers will be distributed to students at primary and secondary schools, who will be able to take them home and use with their families. Initially, the computers will not be for sale in the country. The coordinator of the local government program Computers For All, Cesar Alvarez, will negotiate with the OLPC to have the laptops for sale in the country.
The OLPC intended to sell a million laptops in Brazil, but it said that orders have to reach up to 5 million units, from one or more countries, so that the production at such a cost is viable. Argentina, Nigeria, Libya and Thailand also plan to take part in the project.
NFL-style recruiting, training program allows company divisions to “draft” new hires
At Houston oil company National Oilwell Varco, Lindsy Williamson is the equivalent of National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell. Williamson, NOV's manager of university recruiting and retention, oversees the company's NextGen program that scouts engine
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The new graduate that just completed his degree in architecture, may be working at an Architecture firm today but may just be waiting for the right opportunity to come along in the rapidly growing and highly compensated gaming industry.
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Manufacturers say they face a shortage of highly skilled workers in a 21st century factory,
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A generation of workers can't get ahead - because aging boomers above them won't budge. Generation X, it would seem, is in danger of turning into the Prince Charles of the American workforce: perpetual heirs apparent awaiting the keys to the kingdom.
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More parents are leaving their children a new kind of legacy: No career footsteps to follow. "Going into
the same field as your parent is less common than it was" in the past, says Darrell Anthony Luzzo, president-elect of the National Career Development Association
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If you're a manager with people reporting to you who were born between 1964 and 1977 - or if you belong to that cohort yourself -- you probably already know all too well that Generation X, as it's often called, just doesn't respond to the same carrots and sticks that motivate its elders.
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This year's selection includes a duck, a wizard, a Nigerian prince and even a plumber. Aggregate (fictional) net worth? $111 billion.
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The Economist report "The Importance of Sex" points out how vital a role women play in todays economic picture. The increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main
driving force of growth in the past couple of decades.
Those women have
contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India. Good read. Might even change your perspective....
Do you agree?
A recent survey of employers and employees has found that women are more comfortable managing a workforce that works flexible hours, or from home. They were 50 per cent more likely than men to say they trusted their staff.
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Under an emergency ordinance, electricians may inspect their own work. Hey, what could possibly go wrong?
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Are you spending enough time and energy on the things that count in your life? Perhaps you feel tired
and exhausted because you spend all day working for your employer or taking care of your family. Perhaps you find that work is actually suffering because of an overactive social life.
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Earlier this month in Orlando the Learning 2006 conference , entitled "Learning in a Flatter World" explored the new dimensions of how people are learning today. In case you haven't kept up with the changes going on, here are just a few of the debates being engaged that will affect how we all learn in the future:
Think these will change how people learn? They already ARE !
Here's a mindmap of the opening session of this event:
Welcome to the future of sharing knowledge, the free (digital) press, and self-publishing, just as John Milton argued for 362 years ago and would have wanted it to be. He'd be pleased.
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The first wave of Baby Boomers turned 60 this year and as many approach the traditional retirement age of 65 they are finding that (a) they are still vibrant and don' t want to stop working; and/or (b) their life expectancy has been extended and they will be dead broke long before they are dead and gone.
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e-Assessment is increasingly being evaluated for use in assessing skill gaps. Cost effective and easy to deliver across a broad audience, e-Assessment promises a new way to gather essential data to determine the levels of learner knowledge as well as helping to gauge effectiveness of learning activities.
"Best Practices in e-Assessment" a paper produced by Nicole A. Buzzetto-More and Ayodele Julius Alade of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, MD, Download e-assessment_paper.pdf provides insight into the origins, evolution, and key concepts of assessment as well as illustrate some of the ways in which technology and e-Learning serve as the most promising mechanisms for satisfying assessment goals and objectives.
Various reports have been indicating that the U.S. is falling behind in the adoption of new technology. 
Analysts suggest that this growing disparity is in part due to government policies in other countries encouraging standardization, growth and delivery of services versus our laissez faire business model. This in turn has led businesses to be more willingly to invest in newer business ventures and technologies that capitalize on the more advanced technology.
These leapfrog nations could find themselves technologically far ahead of the United States as we continue to rely on legacy technologies and under-invest in the continued growth of critical infrastructure.
In an article written by Paul Gibler, he presents excellent background on this issue including study information from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that while the United States has the largest number of broadband subscribers at 49.3 million, it ranks 13th in broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
Here's my question. We know that our society is being increasingly dependent upon workers having increased levels of technology skills and "systems thinking" ability. Yet we're seeing significant shortfalls in teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and now evidence that we aren't keeping pace with the enabling technologies that other parts of the world that have recognized are necessary to compete in today's global market.
What then should be done to get the attention that's needed to get us headed in the proper direction?
Dave Bogg's wrote a recent article that introduced a paper on e_learning standards. Dave has done a consistently great job in educating the marketplace through his The Boggs e-Learning Chronicle blog In this article he cites the whitepaper, "The Present and Future of Standards for E-Learning Technologies". Anyone interested in online learning needs to read this.
A Child Development study found children of immigrants more likely to pursue math and science in college compared to peers from non-immigrant parents, with important implications for immigration policy; suggesting these students excel in their occupational and economic aspirations in ways that benefit the US workforce and economy.
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"In my case, training is easily the best benefit I can receive. I
’m 24 years old and have a very long future in technology ahead of me. Any training, certification or otherwise, I can get is like gold for my future.
So what do you feel is the best benefit your employer provides for you? Or, what benefit do you wish they would provide for you?"
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ICF has developed a list of seven Intelligent Communities. The list recognizes achievement by communities large and small in deploying broadband, building a knowledge-based workforce, bridging the digital divide, encouraging innovation and effective economic development marketing
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In spring 2005, the National Association of Manufacturers’ Manufacturing Institute/Center for Workforce Success and Deloitte Consulting LLP (Deloitte Consulting) developed the fourth iteration in a series of surveys designed to learn more about how manufacturers plan their human
capital strategies and the barriers they encounter in the process.
The new report "2005 Skills Gap Report – A Survey of the American Manufacturing Workforce" underscores and highlights that the situation is getting worse, not better:
Consider the following:
This shortage affects all of us. Remember that Manufacturing :
We are all affected when manufacturing firms suffer. If your business uses manufactured goods, or utilized manufactured components in the "solution" your firm provides, you ARE afected, and thus, are a stakeholder. This is not a simple proble, nor are the possible solutions simple or easy to come by.
To maintain an adequate workforce in a community there must be:
See it's just that easy....
Three are four generally accepted "key factors" to achieving greatness
Strategy – focused on customers, continually fine-tuned based on marketplace changes, and clearly communicated to employees
Execution – good people, with decision-making authority on the front lines, doing quality work and cutting costs
Structure – making the organization easy to work in and easy to work with, characterized by cooperation and the exchange of information and knowledge throughout the organization
If you were to look at the challenges associated with moving any organization forward, it involves getting into the mind and hearts of people and getting them to buy-in to the change effort, and empowering them to make the change happen, and taking ownership of the result.
Thus shared leadership is crucial to the success of most change efforts. People must be not just supporters of change they also need to be implementers. There needs to be a permanent rekindling of individual creativity and responsibility, a true change in the behavior of people throughout the organization.
The essential task is to motivate people fully to keep changing in response to new business challenges. There are a number of ways leaders can help get this process working:
Most managers underestimate the variety of tools they possess that can influence people during a period of change
Here's my question. Does your organization equip its leadership with the "tools" described above? How much better would your change efforts go if your team were provided these critical skillsets that are essential for any team to move beyond "stable state" and acheive the new potential that exists.
Ever get the impression that the majority of jobs that could be outsourced would end up in Asia? Might want to rethink that. According to a recent New Economist article entitled, "India's engineer shortage", there is a current and worsening shortage of resources in that part of the world that everyone thought had unlimited skilled talent, and an unmatched ability to produce talent to keep up with demand.
Clearly it begs a number of very obvious questions. One of the issues that outsource companies are reporting is high levels of attrition, which we know is not unique to outsource firms.
Here are some positive steps excerpted from "21st Century Workforce Challenges - Strategies that Work" that can help any firm do a better job of keeping a competent workforce intact.
Do you aspire to be a World Class operation? 
Managers today want, or should want, their organizations to become World Class. To some this may seem like a lofty, impossible, unnecessary goal but it is a goal that is essential to survival and success in today’s intensely competitive business world. Being world class requires applying the best and latest knowledge and ideas, and having the ability to operate at the highest standards of anyplace anywhere.
World-class companies create high-value products and earn superior profits over the long run. People who aspire to excellence often look to World Class companies for leadership models. Over the years world-class companies have been widely admired, been considered the premier institutions in their industries, and made a real impact on the world. But you need not be a 3M or General Electric to exbibit World Class behavior. Emulating the behaviors of World Class firms can transform ANY business, large or small.
Consider what characterizes a World class company:
RedVector.com, a well respected leader in the online education marketplace is an example of such leadership. One aspect in particular is the emphasis placed on Values. Values understood and lived by every member of the firm.
Here are some excerpts from RedVector's Value Statement.
Would you want to work for a firm like this? Would you continue to do business with a firm like this?
In a recent post by the Imaginary Diva entitled "AMERICA IS GETTING DUMBER", the author makes a compelling argument for why the education system of the United States needs serious reform.
I by the way, agree completely with her data and most of her logic. What was far more intriguing to me however, was a comment provided by one of this blogs readers on this post. The commenter picked apart the original post with some level of detail:
1. "Middle America" should be "middle America".
2. "werent" should have an apostrophe.
3. If you write "20 percent" to start you should keep it consistent. Don't spell it out in one sentence and then use symbols (%) in following sentences.
4. "Over one million children" should be "More than one million children" (and she did it properly for the first two points). Numbers shouldn't be described with "over" and/or "under".
5. "simply tasks" should be "simple tasks".
6. "Grade 9" shouldn't be capitalized.
7. "Deans List" should be "Dean's List".
8. "Ivy League School" should be "Ivy League school".
9. I'm pretty sure that "And accepted for my Masters / Specialization." isn't a sentence.
First of all, I feel it's a bit nit-picky to get into that level of scrutiny, lest the intent of the initial message be lost. Jim Barksdale, former CEO of Netscape once said, "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing", referring to maintaining focus on what was truly important.
Here's my question. Has the level of attentiveness to the manner in which we communicate today become a problem? In the example just cited, did imprecise language detract from the author's message? Is inexact language more readily acceptable today than it has been in the past? How do people that do not communicate well, affect the business environment?
If such a pattern, is in fact, representative of the way we communicate, perhaps this suggests a new group of job titles (it's a new time - so we need new titles) around the capability to refocus and improve personal communications.
What's the Value of Certification?
'Recently I was looking at a new workforce certificate website from RedVector 
I'm familiar with many certificate programs offered by various organizations, and think this initiative is another good step toward ensuring that the people we employ have the necessary skillsets and aptitudes.
Employees who take the initiative and become demonstrate initiative through certification activities are recognized for new skills and knowledge resulting in increased professional stature; often this becomes a marketable credential to an employer, prospective employer or client.
Employers benefit by getting an independent assessment of employee’s knowledge and skills based on a high professional standard as well as having a means to objectively identify skill gaps and training needs. For firms working in multiple locations, it may also help marketing of the firm by having a credentialed pool of qualified company professionals. Certificate programs can also help reduce the risk and cost of hiring new people.
The public also benefit from having more "calibrated" professionals from which to choose. Besides reducing the uncertainty of selecting a practitioner, they can rest assured that the individuals who have been through such programs subscribe to a higher set of standards than those "off the street" who have not gone through a structured standards-based program.
Commonly referred to as CRS (classroom response systems), this innovative concept has become increasingly popular on college campuses in the last five years. There are many different products available, but the over-arching concept is the same; students use hand-held clickers, similar to a t.v. remote, to respond to multiple choice or polling questions that the instructor posts as part of their daily lecture. The responses are gathered by a central receiver, tallied, and immediately projected back for all to see. With some creativity on the part of the faculty, this teaching-tool can be used to inspire class discussion, analyze the true level of understanding on a given topic, and review the previous day's material. But, more significantly, CRS systems draw in and engage the students who reside on the periphery of the classroom experience.
Think about the learners that, despite attempts to get them engaged, remain on the periphery. Consider what might be possible if you were to be able to bring them into the conversation.
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