Zane Safrit

Employee Engagement: Going, Going ...

American corporations borrowed more in the years following the Financial Crisis than ever before. Debt was dirt-cheap even for the riskiest borrowers, and they went out and sold bonds and borrowed from banks, and blew the proceeds on funding operating losses, buy each other out in a record-breaking wave of M&A, and buy back their own shares. And not enough went into productive investments that would help their businesses grow and thrive. via wolfstreet.com

Gone.

Instead of using dirt-cheap debt to invest in employees (salary and benefits and healthcare and pensions), training, innovations ... too many companies invested in their shareholders' good fortunes. That's why no matter how many millions are spent on 'employee engagement' programs and trinkets and consultants the amount pales to what's invested in stock buybacks, M&As that bring wealth to everyone but employees and customers, basically everything and anything but that which would help their businesses grow and thrive.

Despite the many corporate memos and happy-talk slogans the employees see, they understand. And they, we, have no confidence in the future. That's why no one's investing in the future with either effort or consumer purchases. That's why the markets are stalling, demand is dying and employee engagement is going, going ... gone.

Fined $31 Billion in 6.5 Years. Name This Bank.

Every so often I like to raise my head up and look around my surroundings. It's always interesting what I find, sometimes inspiring and causing me to hope. Other times, not so much. Here's one of those 'not so much' moments.

According to this article, here are a list of the fines this bank has paid since December 2008.

December 11, 2008: SEC forces [Mystery Bank] and UBS to buy back $30 billion in auction rate securities that were improperly sold to investors through misleading information. Note: I assigned half of this amount or $15 billion as this bank's fine.

February 11, 2009: [Mystery Bank] agrees to settle lawsuit brought by WorldCom investors for $2.65 billion.

July 29, 2010:SEC settles with [Mystery Bank] for $75 million over its misleading statements to investors that it had reduced its exposure to subprime mortgages to $13 billion when in fact the exposure was over $50 billion.

October 19, 2011:SEC agrees to settle with [Mystery Bank] for $285 million over claims it misled investors in a $1 billion financial product.  [Mystery Bank] had selected approximately half the assets and was betting they would decline in value.

February 9, 2012: [Mystery Bank] agrees to pay $2.2 billion as its portion of the nationwide settlement of bank foreclosure fraud.

August 29, 2012: [Mystery Bank] agrees to settle a class action lawsuit for $590 million over claims it withheld from shareholders’ knowledge that it had far greater exposure to subprime debt than it was reporting.

July 1, 2013: [Mystery Bank] agrees to pay Fannie Mae $968 million for selling it toxic mortgage loans.

September 25, 2013: [Mystery Bank] agrees to pay Freddie Mac $395 million to settle claims it sold it toxic mortgages.

December 4, 2013: [Mystery Bank] admits to participating in the Yen Libor financial derivatives cartel to the European Commission and accepts a fine of $95 million.

July 14, 2014:The U.S. Department of Justice announces a $7 billion settlement with [Mystery Bank] for selling toxic mortgages to investors. Attorney General Eric Holder called the bank’s conduct “egregious,” adding, “As a result of their assurances that toxic financial products were sound, [Mystery Bank] was able to expand its market share and increase profits.”

November 2014: [Mystery Bank] pays more than $1 billion to settle civil allegations with regulators that it manipulated foreign currency markets. Other global banks settled at the same time.

May 20, 2015: [Mystery Subsidiary], a unit of [Mystery Bank] becomes an admitted felon by pleading guilty to a felony charge in the matter of rigging foreign currency trading, paying a fine of $925 million to the Justice Department and $342 million to the Federal Reserve for a total of $1.267 billion.via wallstreetonparade.com

That totals $31.5 billion.

As this is sort of a game, just like it's sort of a game the SEC plays with this bank, I'll entice you with But, wait there's more!

This bank  received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history: $45 billion in equity infusions, over $300 billion in asset guarantees, and over $2 trillion in low-cost loans from the Federal Reserve. link

Reading the above sentence again today brings to mind words like: criminal enterprise, global money-laundering operation, and 'how-the-hell-do-they-do-it.' What words come to your mind?

But back to the game ... Fined over $31.5 billion in 6.5 years and receiving oh, let's round it off to $2.4 trillion in taxpayer, yours and mine, bailout funds ... can you name this bank?

Listening ... It’s Also a Power Play

While listening is considered polite, thoughtful and empathetic, it's also a power play. Leaders who listen are in a position to exert their influence and shape positive outcomes. - From an uncorrected author's proof of Charlene Li's The Engaged Leader - A Strategy for Your Digital Transformation.

Even if the final edition of her book edits this entire passage from its pages, it's still true.

So you wanna be a power player? Then listen up.

Oh. I almost forgot. Ms. Li had one more thing to say on this listening thing.

And they can't defer this to anyone else.

That means you. 

More Companies Are Investing in Training

About half of businesses say they plan to train new hires this year, up from 39% in 2013, according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.

"Training budgets that were diminished or nonexistent during the recession are starting to make a comeback," says Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder and author of The Talent Equation. The firm surveyed 1,025 employers in computers, healthcare, manufacturing, engineering and finance — fields with many open skilled positions. via www.usatoday.com

 That's good news. 

Investing in training is one of the 5 Ways to Keep Employees Happy and Engaged in Tough Times.

Use a slow time to be creative. Look for ways to develop skills that staff have an interest in, but did not have the time to focus on before.

That would help narrow the skills gap that so many company leaders complain is still growing. I bet that opinion is strongest in those companies who chose to not invest in training for their new hires. That was 61% of the companies in 2013 ...  What you put your attention on grows stronger in your life. What you fail to invest in grows stronger too.

Investing in employee training ( investing in training new hires is a start ) addresses four of the twelve statements that comprise Gallup's Q12 survey measuring an employee's engagement level.

• In the last year, I have had opportunities at work to Learn and Grow.
• In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about Progress.
• There is someone at work who encourages my Development.
• I have the Materials and Equipment I need to do my work right.

The good news, again, is that ... more companies are returning to the basics of investing in their most important asset, their most important investor, their most important customer. Maybe this renewed investment in their most important asset will help generate a positive ROA, Return on Assets. For about 40 years, public companies had generated a negative return on assets which may be why a recovery has been ... so slow. Chicken do come home to roost and so do gaps in job skills.

Again, the good news is that companies are increasing this interest and their investment, or at least planning to do so in the 2014.

Here's to the future when companies investing in their employees, in their training, is not newsworthy.

Which Countries Are Most Welcoming...(Why?)

via twitter.com

Interesting.

I would love to see maps overlaid on this one that show:

* economic growth
* income inequality
* military budgets as percentage of GDP
* wealth distribution among the population

There are more (education, job creation, healthcare metrics), but these are the primary ones.

Is 2014 The Year Your Disengagement Bubble Bursts?

A few bits of data on employee turnover caught my attention. They don’t answer those questions in the title. But they do highlight the challenge that any meaningful answers must address.

A vast majority of North American employees plan to pursue new job opportunities in 2014, according to a poll by Right Management, the talent and career management experts within ManpowerGroup. Eighty-three percent of the nearly 900 workers who participated in the online poll say they intend to actively seek a new position in the New Year. - Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2013.

Then in December I read this:

In 2013, 86 percent of people were in a job they didn’t like, and 55 percent planned to look for a new job that year alone.1 The cost to employers of shuffling those people around the economy is staggering. If only 10-15 percent of the workforce changes jobs (the annual estimate is 13 percent), it costs American businesses a mind-boggling US $2 trillion a year just to replace them.

It’s from Chuck Blakeman’s excellent book, Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea, Page 48. Chuck cites sources for much of his data in the book. But I can't find it. I'll ask him. But, I trust Chuck and the figures in that paragraph sound right.

The numbers point to a huge bubble getting ready to burst.

13% of all workers will change jobs in 2014.

83% of American workers are looking to change jobs in 2014. However, that's based on a survey of only 900 employees.

86% of American workers last year said they didn't like their job. I doubt much has changed on that one in the first seven days of 2014. Don't you?

70% of American workers are sleep-walking through the day. The more clinical term is disengaged emotionally and intellectually with their work responsibilities.

Those figures show a bubble of discontent that's bound to burst some day. And when it does it will spew, ahem, disruption throughout the economy. Much of that spew will be in the form of costs: hiring, training and new desks and unhappy stakeholders.

You're an above average leader at an above average company. Right? But let's use the average percent of employees who are expected to change jobs. 13%. Can you afford 13% of your employees to leave?

Maybe you're thinking Let 'em go. If they're sleep-walking let them sleep-walk somewhere else. You might think you're holding aces in this gamble. Your peers and competitors offer nothing better. Just like you they chose to ignore their employees and their achievements in a meaningful manner. Your reviews emphasized weakness. Maybe you thought that’s the path to betterment or maybe you thought that’s good way to avoid bonuses or raises. You avoided investing in training and updated resources to help them reach their goals and showcase their strengths and accomplishments for their peers and even you.Their workforce is just as disengaged, you might say. Statistics are on your side you say. Your employees know they cant leave because the cubicles aren't any better in the other companies. So far, you've been right. The one thing keeping your employees at their desk is they know it's no better any where else.

Granted, withholding that investment is what’s inspired only  30% of your employees to care. It's why goals are rarely reached if anyone even knows about them. It’s why your bosses are always, well, impatient.

But, it's your company and your competitors do the same so hold on to those aces of disinterest and lack of investment. It’s worked so far and why mess with success, even its paler imitation, right? Your employees aren’t going anywhere, there's nowhere for them to go.

Someone once asked a boss, What if we train our employees and they leave? That very smart boss said What if we don’t and they stay? That's where you are, comfortable with middle-of-the pack results, deaf to your bosses demands and who cares about the employees. Cool.

But, what if you did invest in their training? Just, what if. This is just a blog post and I'm not wearing pajamas while I write it so have a little fun and consider the question. What if you recognized their achievements?

You clenched, didn't you, at that mental picture where you're...ewwww... recognizing someone for something good they did.  It’s change. Change makes everyone clench tight. But what if you discovered their strengths? Maybe even celebrated them?What if your employees then showed up for work engaged and excited? Who knows? It can happen. Their bar of expectations have been set so low it’s easy and inexpensive to exceed them. The big challenge is consistency. And the bigger challenge is that first step.

What if your revenues grew faster than your industry peers? Or your cash flows? What if your Earnings Per Share grew faster and your customer churn rates dropped? What if your sales conversion rates rose? That's what happens when you recognize your employees in ways that are meaningful to them. That's what happens when your employee engagement levels are superior to your competitors.

Now you’re in uncharted territory. Happy territory, but still uncharted. Now, they’ll stay because they want to not because they see no other options. Now, you’re out front, the leader of your industry pack. Their expectations of you just rose. For some people that’s distracting.

Would that be distracting for you? How disruptive to your comfort level would it be if everyday your employees barged into your office and said things like:

I'm so excited!

Another customer just gave us a testimonial!

We rolled out this new product in half the time it took us the last time! And there's no blowback from the customers!

We just had a great meeting with [that other department] and we've got a plan!

My close ratio went from 50% to 80%!

One day a new company who understands the power of employees will pierce that comfortable and warm little bubble of disengagement you've built. The sound of employees leaving and left will be deafening.

Why not be that company? No not the one with the sucking sound rushing through the hallways and overturning desks. Be the one the pierces the disengagement bubble of your competitors and let the sucking sound rip through their hallways and deliver the stars to you.

It's the new year. Make it a happy one.

30-Hour Work Week: Here's Why It Works

Part-timers are more productive hour-for hour than full-timers. Sick leave and absenteeism are often caused by working long hours and juggling paid employment with domestic responsibilities. Sick workers are less productive than healthy ones. Unscheduled days off are bad for the employer's balance sheet...30-Hour Work Week: The Key to a Healthier Economy

Tired workers, beaten mentally and physically, by the demands of 50, 60, 70 hour work weeks on top of 1-2 hour commutes and the need to be available even outside the office...start making bad decisions. It's not rocket science. Tired, sleepy drivers show the same reflexes as drivers whose blood-alcohol qualifies them as ...drunk. This truth applies to any profession, vocation, avocation.

If the cost of a mishire is 2-3 times their salary, rising higher as their titles rise, what are the costs of a series of small mistakes with customers, done dirt cheap as a favorite band of mine sang.

The results of a not-so-recent study of Boston Consulting Group's high-paid consultants was discussed in the Harvard Business Review article Making Time Off Predictable and Required:

Indeed, we found that when the assumption that everyone needs to be always available was collectively challenged, not only could individuals take time off, but their work actually benefited. Our experiments with time off resulted in more open dialogue among team members, which is valuable in itself. But the improved communication also sparked new processes that enhanced the teams’ ability to work most efficiently and effectively.

I'm thinking BCG knows a thing or two about measuring results.

Ever tried to have open dialogue among friends, family or team members if everyone is exhausted and stressed, sustained with adrenaline, fear and caffeine? Not good.

Open dialogue is how you engage stakeholders in creating sustainable solutions, in finding ways to undo those dirty deeds done dirt cheap to your customers, to your employees. Open dialogue is possible only if you offer a sustainable work schedule, giving everyone time to refresh and renew.

I had the great fortune of working in three successful companies built around a 30-35 hour work week. Each of them competed against larger, richer companies, with ad budgets usually larger than our total revenues. We won, each time. How? Working a 30-35 hour work week was the key. We made good decisions with good open dialogue. We made them sooner and without the too often pre-requisites of bad decisions made with poor data, iffy logic and confused agendas that rise in minds and bodies tired and stressed. Giving an extra hour or two to rejuvenate meant any stresses from a very focused, very engaged workday, were resolved sooner, easier without the accompanying baggage and the need for more meetings to discuss yesterday's problems or unproductive results or bad behavior.

Besides having clearer minds, minds pro-acting and not reacting, minds and emotions seeing opportunities and not threats or fears, we had more minds offering more solutions. And more hands to execute the solutions. And more lives to celebrate our shared result.

As the Inc article points out:

When some people work 40-plus hours and others can't find work at all, that's a recipe for social inequality and conflict.

In large cities, it's easy or easier to ignore this point. The enclaves of the fortunate and unfortunate are large and largely separate. But in a small town, when you see your neighbors as co-workers and colleagues,  or not, it's not so easy to avoid this issue. As one of those companies grew to employ nearly 700 people then every day was a celebration of our successes.

One more point and this is key. That company with 700 employees? Working with a 30-hour work week, we needed 7 years to reach that number. When management changed and the philosophy changed from work smarter and happier together to work longer and protect your silo and its leader...only 2 years were needed to unravel that success resulting in hundreds of employees being dismissed.

 

3 Places Where Jobs Are Hiding

There has been some talk about the jobs, job reports, and the numbers used to count and report them, respectively. ( I wrote about them on  September, 2012 and February, 2012. Nothing's changed since those earlier posts) A theme runs through these conversations. That theme is Where are the jobs?

I did a little searching and found 3 places where jobs are hiding.

* CORPORATE BALANCE SHEETS

Over $2 trillion in cash...cash...C-A-S-H...is held in corporate balance sheets.

Business Insider. Their title says it all. The $2 Trillion Corporate Cash Hoard is Only Getting Bigger.

BC Capital Market's Myles Zyblock notes that because corporate profitability has been so high, corporations have been able to generate more than enough cash flow from operations to finance all of their capital expenditures.

"From a flows perspective, capital expenditures are being surpassed by internally generated cash flows at a quarterly annualized rate of ~$200 billion," writes Zyblock.  "Thus, companies are still adding significantly to their $1.9 trillion cash mountain."

Wall Street Journal.  Their title takes the conversation one step forward. Companies Shun Investment. Hoard Cash. (Apologies for this link, possibly. The first time I clicked on it, I saw the full post. Thereafter, I saw only an ad to subscribe. Maybe, WSJ is shunning word-of-mouth, hoarding cash.) 

Companies are not investing in jobs, technology, innovation.

* RISING DISPARITY BETWEEN CEO PAY & EMPLOYEE PAY

Baltimore Sun. 

The executive pay data disclosed this year by the Baltimore region's 20 largest publicly traded firms in terms of revenue offers plenty of fodder — as it does every year — to feed the ire of workers whose paychecks barely budge, if they budge at all.

A dozen CEOs saw double-digit increases in annual compensation. And Mayo A. Shattuck III, who retained his spot at the top of the list in his last year running the then-independent Constellation Energy Group, received a nearly $17.4 million package in 2011 — up from $15.7 million — as the Baltimore company turned in its second straight year of multimillion-dollar losses.

AFLCIO. I liked the title: Trends in CEO Pay. Neutral sounding. 

The average CEO pay of companies in the S&P 500 Index rose to $12.94 million in 2011.[1] Overall, the average level of CEO pay in the S&P 500 Index increased 13.9 percent in 2011, following a 22.8 percent increase in CEO pay in 2010.

Note: I thought if I included a link from the WSJ (to an article you have to pay for...) then I should include a link to a union site for an article that's free to read.

* DECLINING MEDIAN INCOME.

NY TIMES.

The income gap between the wealthiest 20 percent of American households and the rest of the country grew sharply in 2011, the Census Bureau reported, as an overwhelming majority of Americans saw no gains from a weak economic recovery in its second full year.

All households in the middle of the scale saw declines, while those at the very bottom stagnated.

FIREDOG LAKE.

Median income has been falling for TWELVE YEARS. Throughout that time, Americans have been getting poorer in real terms. By contrast, the US gross domestic product for 1999 was $8.7 trillion, while in 2011 it rose to $14.4 trillion. Workers did not see any of the benefits of the nearly $6 trillion in gains; in fact, they lost ground.

Note: That's why the markets are at or near all-time highs. That's why a crash is coming soon. Maybe, not a crash, but a great big correction. Why? declining median income means declining disposable income which means declining spending which means declining customers demanding a declining number of products and services.

CONCLUSION

Customers create jobs, creating sustainable growth rates for wealth. Hoarding wealth, rewarding only the CEO for creating the wealth that's hoarded, doing so at the expense of the real job creators in this country, us customers, is short-sighted.

But these are the places where jobs hide.

POST SCRIPT

As I finished this post, I noticed the downward flow of economic benefits of our economy. They trickled-down on the homes and lives and health of those whose jobs the products and services measured in the Gross Domestic Product.  This is the trickle-down economy, where: 

tax breaks or other economic benefits provided by government to businesses and the wealthy will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole.^[1] The term has been attributed to humorist Will Rogers, who said during the Great Depression that "money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy."^[2] The term is mostly used ironically or as pejorative.^[3]

Polite company, think-tanks and talk show hosts and paid spokesmen, refer to trickle-down economics with the Orwellian term of supply-side economics. Get it? There is no supply, it's all been hoarded. Those who were allowed to accumulate a bit more promised they would reward that trust...letting some of their accumulated wealth trickle-down on the rest of the economy. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Hoarding is supply-siding. Hoarding creates jobs. Judging by the economy's widening gap separating the wealthiest from the rest of the country, I guess they're still in the process of hoarding.

Job Reports, Damned Job Reports and Statistics

Reading the recent jobs reports I was reminded of a  quote from Mark Twain and possibly the British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. It goes like this:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

ADP released its jobs report for the month of August. It reported 201,000 jobs were created in the month of August. Great, I thought to myself.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its jobs report for the month of August. Their statistics showed:  

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 96,000 in August.

That BLS report for August also said unemployment dropped by .2%.

Sounds good, right? Then they ruined it with this:

Both the civilian labor force (154.6 million) and the labor force participation rate (63.5 percent) declined in August.

How does labor force participation rate decline and the unemployment rate decline in the same month?

How do you subtract and end up adding? How does labor force participation rate decline in the same month that unemployment numbers drop?

Here's where we get back to the original quote of lies, damn lies and statistics. The unemployment rate reflects only those who file for unemployment benefits. If you file, you are considered unemployed. If you don't, say if your benefits have run out, well then you're not unemployed. So you can be unemployed but not counted as unemployed. Instead,  you are part of the labor force non-participation rate. That's a rate no one talks about.

Back to ADP's jobs report, I have a few questions:

• Who created all those extra jobs? 114,000 to be exact.
• How did they do it?
• Why were their numbers not included in the BLS report?
• Do they even use the same criteria to define a job?
• Why was their report, a bit more positive but not nearly positive enough, buried in the news about jobs last week?

Could you run a company with confusing, conflicting reports like these? Our country is no more a  company than its companies are citizens, my friends.  But you get my point.

• How do you find a solution to a key challenge if you refuse to share a common definition of that challenge, the terms used to discuss it and the metrics used to measure your progress, or its lack in the case of our economy?

• What if you refuse to measure and report statistics in a consistent manner across the company?

• What if you just refuse to share all the numbers with the other departments in your company?

Well, then you have an economy like we have and a series of monthly jobs reports that collectively appear to be lies, damn lies and statistics. But, we just don't know which is which.

I regularly miss things, obvious and sublime. What am I missing here?

 

19 Business Experts and Their Solutions for President Obama

We're in the early days of 2012.

And 2012 is an even-numbered year, evenly divided by 4 and with a leap day, February 29, too. Add all that up and we're in campaign season now. Wherever we live, work and play those campaigns are coming to our hometown or radio or tv or website or podcast or favorite social media tool.

We in Iowa just survived the Iowa Circus Caucus.

Like a moth to a flame I am drawn to politics, well political news. A political junkie, maybe.

But I'm recovering. Now I'm in a love hate relationship. I love the stories. They amaze me...On the other hand, they've become so amazing, on a bi-partisan basis, that I hate 'em.

That drove me to wonder:

• Where were the solutions?
• Was anyone talking about the solutions?
• Was anyone in the media pressing candidates and office holders for solutions as opposed to pressing them on their political posturing?

The answers to those questions in order are:

• Nowhere
• No one
• Nope.

Rather than be victimized by that group and its conversations and my flame-loving personality for that group and its conversations....I started to look for solutions.

Outside of politics. Crazy, I know.

Then I thought well, why don't I ask experts what their solutions are for the challenges we face as a country. You see, I interviewed business experts on my radio show. You can listen to these conversations here, read the transcripts of those conversations there.

One show, I finally asked an expert something to the effect of

Let's imagine President Obama invites you to the White House. He's heard our conversation, read your book and wants to learn more. What are three things you could tell him to fix x or solve y or improve z.

Asking that question is tricky, sadly. Asking business experts to share their ideas on how to fix national problems.

Each guest ventured forth with their ideas and perspectives. All were great. But with each one I noticed a hesitancy, a nervousness. That's sad, I understand it.

But it's discouraging to hear anyone be reluctant to share their ideas on how to make our country better. We have betrayed our selves and our families and neighbors when we delegate that conversation to professional politicians of any stripe. We relegate ourselves to being victims when we refuse to volunteer any ideas or engage in conversation on how to solve our nation's challenges.

Sure, these conversations can get...uncomfortable. But that's because we're so out of practice. The result is, that for our convenience....those  conversations to discover and refine solutions, solutions that can unite us in moving forward, have been co-opted by those whose voices are loudest, whose reactions are the most abrasive or abusive, and whose solutions represent their quest for a public forum, a stage, a base of power or a money from speaking or being a media personality.

Back to the point. Below is a list of those experts where I asked the above question and where they shared their thoughts. The link takes you to my post where I transcribed just this question and their answers. And with each such post is a link to the radio show and the complete transcripts of our conversation.

Check them out. See if these solutions make sense. So far, they all did for me. Think about your own solutions. Talk about them with others. Listen to theirs. Share your thoughts here or there or somewhere. See if a year from now we all have better skills to discuss and debate ideas from the basis of seeking a solution for our shared challenges.

Jim Clifton, author of The Coming Jobs War

Julie Steelman, author of The Effortless Yes! Demystify the selling process and discover: Your selling archetype,your natural asking style and your bankability

Tom Rieger, author of Breaking the Fear Barrier: How Destroys Companies from the Inside Out and What to Do About It

Jeffrey Phillips, co-author of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowd-Sourcing: Advice from Leading Experts

Richard R. Troxell, author of Looking up at the Bottomline: The Struggle for the Living Wage

Dr. Hal Gregerson, co-author of The Innovator's DNA - Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators

Sam Harrison, author of IdeaSelling: Successfully pitch your creative ideas to bosses, clients and other decision makers

Rajeev Peshawaria, author of Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders: The Three Essential Principles You Need to Become an Extraordinary Leader

Elizabeth Doty, author of The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul

Peter Sheahan, author of Making It Happen: Turning Good Ideas into Great Results.

Josh Linkner, author of Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

Sybil Stershic, author of Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care

Doug Mitchell, author of The Multi Thread Marketer: How to Hire One or Better Yet Be One 

Scott Gerber, author of Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke

Joan Koerber-Walker, CEO of the Arizona BioIndustry Association

Paul R. Williams, author of The Innovation Manager's Desk Reference

Bill Davidow, author of Overconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet

Derek Irvine, co-author of Winning with A Culture of Recognition: Recognition Strategies at the World's Most Admired Companies

Brad Szollose, author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia - Multigenerational Management Ideas That Are Changing the Way We Run Things

 

President Obama: 3 Steps to Win the War on Jobs...Before It's a War.

Jim Clifton, CEO of The Gallup Organization and author of The Coming Jobs War, joined the show recently.  

From the book's website comes this truth, obvious for a growing number of adults around the world:

What everyone in the world wants is a good job.

In a provocative book for business and government leaders, Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton describes how this undeniable fact will affect all leadership decisions as countries wage war to produce the best jobs.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can our transcripts of our conversation here:

• Part One

• Part Two

• Part Three

I thought he would be a good person to ask how do we create jobs, achieve victory before war in this case. I asked him:

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama has some interest in creating jobs now. And it's an interest he may pursue with some conviction in the face of resistance. He picks up his Blackberry and calls you.

Jim, he says, because he's the President.

Some of us here in DC have heard that there may be an unemployment problem here in the US, outside the Beltway. And some of us see job creation as a key aspect of our national security. But we still have this problem.

We want to hear your thoughts, maybe 3 things that we as a nation can do to avert the danger that has not yet come, win this war now before it becomes a war, and create good jobs on a sustainable basis for the next 30 years.

What do you tell him?

And he answered:

Well, I’d say he’s got to focus every decision, every policy he makes, on small to medium-sized businesses. I’m going to call them ‘business builders’. Now, we’ve got a lot of people that need to be taken care of from the aging to unemployed to union workers and all that kind of thing. If he doesn’t consider business builders in every decision that he makes and he doesn’t lighten their saddle rather than make it heavier, we have no chance at all. We will not have sustainable growth with ‘shovel jobs’ or by propping the place up.

We have to have organic job creation that comes from startups and shootups. Or we will not retain our leadership of the free world. That’s first.

The 2nd thing is that the emphasis has gotta be put on entrepreneurship not innovation. And we’ve got to develop all of those sciences. Put your billions into that not innovation. We’ve got enough innovation. We’ve got innovation on the shelves all over this country.

But, the 3rd thing is we gotta make it intentional that cities are the places where these chicks can hatch because that’s where all the variation is.

Those would be the three things right now that would come out of our conversation.

And I appreciate this conversation very much.

Thank you for that. Your answer was very concise. And it’s music to my ears when you talk about the role of small business in creating jobs andcommunities and sustainable economies.

Want more from Jim Clifton?

Visit the Gallup Organization's website. Their researchers, authors and Mr. Clifton, all speak from the same page.

Buy his book.

**********

Some may say this is inappropriate.

This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.

I disagree. As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.

I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis.  That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion. We...are the only ones with vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.

President Obama: 3 Steps to Get the Sales We Want & Need to Grow this Economy

Julie Steelman joined the show this week. Julie's the author of The Effortless Yes! Demystify the selling process and discover:

• Your selling archetype
• Your natural asking style
• Your bankability

Julie Steelman’s credits read like a Who’s Who of big-name corporate giants with Apple, Microsoft, Toyota, CBS, Sony Studios and Universal Pictures in her rolodex. She has generated over $100+ million in sales during her 30 year sales career. Julie is known as The Entrepreneur’s Selling Mentor.

Now retired to her personal paradise in Hawaii, living debt-free, Julie developed the easy-to-master “Effortless YES! Selling System”™. She spends her time helping business owners overcome their aversion to selling in an honest, transformational and interactive style.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read your conversation here:

• Part One

• Part Two

• Part Three

It made sense to me to ask her how our country could generate more sales. You see, sales are the driver of our economy and the source for new jobs. So, I asked her:

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama has a few moments. He’s found your book. He picks up his Blackberry and calls you.

Julie, he says because he's the President.

We can't seem to get companies to say, effortlessly or not, to buying into our economy.

And they're not getting customers to say yes, in any way, to buying. What do I need to do to entice you to leave Eden and come to DC, an eden of its own sort, I guess.

We want to hear your thoughts, maybe 3 things that we as a nation can take to find a way to demystify our selling process, find our selling archetype and get the sale we want, we need and grow our economy as fast as we'll ever need.

What do you say to him?

And she generously answered:

Well, there’s no big question there!

I’m actually going to refer to something you said Mr. Obama that was in your inaugural speech. You said:

Our society was founded on the idea that our products and services as businesses would serve the common good.

And what I’m going to tell you Mr. Obama is we have forgotten about that.

The first thing we could do to fix it is to shift from putting profit over purpose. And instead put purpose over profit.

You’re going to make your profit. Don’t worry.

The companies are going to grow. Don’t worry.

But what we’ve done is create a society of overly skeptical consumers and they’re not willing to buy and do business with companies that they don’t trust any more.

That’s the first thing.

The 2nd thing is we need to find a way to have CEOs paid really well, but no longer take salaries and have golden parachutes when companies are not making a profit. That cant be the way it works anymore. Sorry, everybody. Do you trust a CEO that does that? I don’t think so.

The 3rd thing we need to do is invest in putting our workforce back to work. The whole crux around the 3 things I’m going to tell you to do Mr. Obama are instilling trust back in corporate America because there isn’t any. Financially, products or services or customer service. I’d rather buy a Mercedes than Cadillac. You’ve got to get our products back up to snuff.

We need to put, I think we’ve sold off too much of our industrial abilities and we need to bring it back here.

That was too much. I know I gave you more than 3 things. But, that would be my answer, Mr. Obama.

Thank you. I love all of them. Thank you for the 4th one, too.

Want more from Julie Steelman?

• Follow her on Twitter.

• Read her blog.

• By her book.

**********

Some may say this is inappropriate.

This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.

I disagree. As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.

I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis. That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion. We...are the only ones with vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.

Solving Minimum Wage Debate and Providing Affordable Housing

How Can We Solve the Minimum Wage Debate?

Richard Troxell Reveals How a Universal Living Wage Can Help Solve
Homelessness and Stimulate the Economy

Richard Troxell knows what it is to be homeless.

After serving his country in Vietnam, he returned home to an ungrateful nation. He was homeless for several years before finally finding work as a mechanic and a place to live.

Troxell, a relentless advocate for the homeless and author of Looking Up at the Bottom Line, serves on several committees and works with numerous charity organizations with the aim of ending homelessness. In 1997, he designed a formula to fix the Federal Minimum Wage, an idea that he believes will have as many benefits for the homeless as it holds for businesses and the economy in general.

Homelessness is a vicious circle, because in order to find a home you need to find work, but without a living wage job the work ends up not sustaining the worker, who again becomes homeless.

The problem is that in any city in the USA, the minimum wage isn’t enough to support a full time worker. Housing costs in major metropolitan areas are far beyond the reach of minimum wage earners, and once someone gets a job, they no longer qualify for support programs. So, it’s a catch 22 – if they find work, they still can’t afford to live on their own. So they stay homeless and accept whatever public assistance that is available to them.

But, what's important to recognize is that most folks want to work! No one feels good if they are not working.

Troxell’s solution is to replace the minimum wage with a Universal Living Wage, which would create a minimum wage that is proportionate to the living expenses of where the worker lives and works. Troxell’s formula is simple and it’s based on the concept that if people are willing to work a 40-hour week, they should at least be able to afford an efficiency apartment regardless of where they live. The formula includes three basic established ideas:

• Work a minimum 40-hour week

• Spend no more than 30% of income on housing

• Index the minimum wage to the local cost of housing, as set each year by the US Department of HUD (Fair Market Rents)

This is a win-win situation for both businesses and employees that can help start rebuilding the fabric of the American family. It first enables people experiencing homelessness to find jobs, housing and be able to feed themselves without any public assistance. This is huge. This will help reduce the economic burden on taxpayers, while at the same time it will stimulate the economy.

It adds consumer dollars to the economy, while simultaneously eliminating the need for tax dollars that were previously spent on supporting people experiencing homelessness.

Troxell also believes that businesses will benefit from the plan.

While the initial response may be to complain about having to pay workers more, the truth is that this plan will create far better retention rates for the business where they are employed. Businesses incur costs for high employee turnover, including retraining and productivity losses when a worker resigns, because they found higher paying work or are rendered homeless due to the low wage. What little extra they might pay in addition to the current minimum wage would be offset by higher productivity, higher employee retention and lower retraining costs.

Besides, what could be better for business and taxpayers than to introduce more consumers into their marketplace, while stimulating the economy naturally rather than counting on bailouts? The Universal Living Wage is a consumer-friendly, taxpayer-friendly, business-friendly idea whose time has come.

Yes, it has.

About Richard R. Troxell

Richard Troxell has become both a successful entrepreneur and a prolific philanthropist, and an advocate of the homeless. Today, he is the creator and Director of Legal Aid for the Homeless, and founder and President of House the Homeless, where he has daily interaction with the disabled homeless citizens of Austin, Texas. Currently, he sits on the Board of the National Coalition for the Homeless. His work has been recognized by the Pennsylvania Senate, The Governor of Texas, The United Nations, The Philadelphia Bar Association and countless others. His work is culminating in his drive to "fix the Federal Minimum Wage" as the National Chairman of the Universal Living Wage Campaign.

**********

I've had the pleasure, the honor really, to interview Richard Troxell twice.

You can listen to those conversations here and here.

You can read transcripts of those conversations here and here.

Why do I interview a passionate champion for the rights and needs of the homeless? The answer sounds callous. But 300-400-700,000 homeless are 300-400-700,000 individual resources we invested in with education and healthcare and military training and job-training with now outdated skills that now go...unproductive. By unproductive I mean their talents find no means of expression, no ways to give back to the economy. And their inability to generate baseline incomes for themselves means they have no means to...well, spend in our consumer-based economy. That's the callous side.

The other side is how does the economy with the world's biggest GDP and the greatest number of millionaires and billionaires create an ever-growing number of homeless? How many dreams are lost, how many entrepreneurs or doctors or positive community contributions are lost in the slow gradual slide to being homeless?

Conversation with Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup Organization: Part 1

From the site The Coming Jobs War:

What everyone in the world wants is a good job.

Today, this statement makes vivid sense.

In a provocative book for business and government leaders, Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton describes how this undeniable fact will affect all leadership decisions as countries wage war to produce the best jobs.

Mr. Clifton joined the show recently to talk about the book, his book, and what it means for us. You can listen here.

Mr. Clifton, thank you for being on the show.

Thank you for your interest in Gallup research.

Thank you for writing a great book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an important book and I hope lots of people buy it, read it.

The title in your book says this book is for every leader. I've said on this show that we're all leaders now in charge of creating our world, our community, our career and the jobs in those. But I think you have a tighter definition of leader. Describe the leader you had in mind as you wrote this book.

I’m not sure that people are focusing on exactly the right thing. I’m not sure they know how big this problem the problem is.

One of the things that Doctor George Gallup figured out was there was a pretty significant shift in the will of the United States. He referred to it as The Great American Dream. But it used to be to have peace, to have a family, to have independence, freedom, pray to the god you want and all that.

But, now it’s changed. There’s a huge sociological shift. Now, it’s changed to having a good job.

So, that means it’s your relationship with your family, your community, your country...all those things are driven more by a job than by anything else. That means we have to lead differently, not just you and me but the President of the US and everybody else.

The thing that’s interesting that we found in the World Poll was that now that the Great American Dream is now the Great Global Dream, as well. that’s why the book is called The Coming Jobs War.

There are 7 billion people in the world, 5 billion adults and when we poll those 5 billion adults 3 billoin of othem say they would like to have a good job, you know 30 hours ore more of interesting work. Now, of those 3 billion, when we ask them if they have one then only 1.2 million say that they do.

You see what I mean?

The need for a good job in the world is 3 billion. Yet, there’s only 1.2 billion good jobs. So, if you said describe mathematically or as specifically as you can how many more of these jobs do we need, then we need to find 1.8 billion.

The jobs problem here in the US is that it’s not just here. It’s exacerbated by the fact that the whole world wants a good job. It’s a global problem that we’re feeling here.

But the leadership issue is that we really got to develop the sciences and get a lot smarter. Otherwise, I think the whole world is going to come apart.

Coming back to that point you just brought up that there are 1.8 billion employable adults who want a good job and cannot find one. Your statistics here in the US show we have an under-employment rate of 18%. Now, if I’m looking at the math here the underemployment rate globally is 50+%.

When you see 9 point something unemployment, the way the US government counts that is in a very very limited way. Let’s say I come over and mow your yard and I’m an engineer. You pay me $20 and I work for 1 hour. The US government’s labor department counts me as employed. I’m not in the 9.1% unemployed.

Now, another thing is that if I’m so depressed, I’ve tried everywhere and I’ve knocked on doors everywhere and I can’t get a job and I give up? Then I’m not in that number either.

It would be a lot better if the US government would call unemployment what it is. It’s getting up around 20%. There’s about 150 million people who want work. You’ve got 20% of those, 30 million, it’s not that they want a better job or anything else, they don’t have full-time work.

By the way, out of that 30 million out of work when Gallup asked if they hoped to get a job 60% of them say ‘no’. That gets you 18 million. That gets you 18 million people that are in a state of mind that really the country’s never been in.

We’re really in a different state of mind than even in the Great Depression as well.

My friend, Erika Andersen coined a great phrase in her book Being Strategic. Her phrase is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. And she asks:

What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future?

What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this book?

Well, I think the US is a really dangerous situation. I think there are so few people who understand. Our picture of the US is going to change so much in the next 30 years from both job creation and GDP growth.

Right now, global GDP is right at $60 trillion. And we generate 15 of that. That means we generate 25% of the world’s good jobs. We really are the Roman Empire. The thing is our GDP is growing at such a tiny amount. Blended over the past 10 years it’s like 1.2%. China’s growing at a rate of 10%. Although we have 15 trillion of GDP, China only has 5 or 6, they will blow us away over the next 30 years.

And so, what most economists say is we’ll be at about $30 trillion in the next 30 years and they’ll be at $60-80 trillion. So, it means they’ll be the leaders of the free world and not the US.

That thought to me as an American and a lot of my friends is really quite overwhelming. And we can come back. We have in the past. That’s really what drove me to write this book.

Being the CEO of the Gallup organization, you know metrics are key. This next question shouldn't be difficult to answer. What metrics will you use to measure your progress towards this hoped-for future?

I would say GDP growth is really important. We really ned to get our GDP growth up above 4% fast, at least 3.5%. If you really want to win, it has to be above 5%. So, the single most important metric is to see GDP start growing.

But, here’s a really important one. For us to re-win leadership of the free world and I call it the playoff game of our lives then we have to export. We only export somewhere between $1.5 and $2 trillion a year depending on whose counting. But, that’s close. The only way that America can maintain its economic leadership of the world is to, we’ve gotta triple exports in the next 5 years. They need to go up 20 times in the next 30 years.

We need to have quality GDP growth. We can’t just sustain shovel jobs and those things like that. We need to have real entrepreneurs create real new businesses. GroupOn, Facebook are really good examples. But there are good manufacturing jobs, too. but they gotta have companies that sell stuff overseas or this isn’t going to work.

So, exports is a really important number to watch.

How and when did you reach this conclusion that we’re moving to The Coming Jobs War? At what point in your research did you see this?

We started right after 9/11. People didn’t know what was on the minds of 1.5 billion Muslims. So, we started doing polls in the middle east. We started to see that there was a hopelessness there that didn’t have to do with religion and hating American and hating our freedoms. You can find threads of that stuff in almost any society.

What we found was the desperateness economically. And then we started to wonder to scratch our heads and say:

“How come we’re just picking on these middle eastern, predominantly Muslim, countries? Why don’t we do all 160 countries? Why don’t we check with them all?”

I know that there are 200 countries. But we can get 98% of the population.

We all just stood around in silence. We were just sorta surprised. What the whole world wants is a good job. And that’s what really triggered this.

Fantastic.

What is the definition of a good job?

Well, a labor economist will say:

“30+ hours, with a paycheck from an organization for regular work.”

And they call it a ‘formal’ job; that’s a ‘good’ job. Now. And so, Gallup agrees with that.

We do think there is one step above that and that’s a ‘great’ job. that’s where it uses your strengths; it’s a place where your opinion counts; and where your boss actually cares about your development.

If you’ve got those going for you, then you have a ‘great’ job. And very few people in the world have that. that would be just 20% of the 1.2 billion or about 250 million people. It’s a very, very special life if you have a job that uses your talents and you have unlimited potential in how to do things and you have a boss that cares about your development...

Now, in listening to you and reading your book, you describe how in the next 30 years GDP could triple and our GDP rose 10% over the next 5 years then our unemployment problem would disappear. What am I missing?

No. Definitely. If we got, if we had GDP growing at 3.5% and we had exports doubling and tripling then we wouldn’t have a jobs problem.

But you also write that if the world's GDP were to triple there would be massive upheaval in the global economy. What would be some of that massive upheaval?

I don’t understand that question.

I think countries will be rocked if they don’t...the worlds’ GDP is $60 trillion. And if you average the best economist in the world, what we’re going to grow to over the next 30 years and that’s $200 trillion. So, what it means is $140 trillion in new equity, jobs, customers, markets coming into the world. Kinda like a rain that will fall across the whole planet. It’s going to fall disproportionately where entrepreneurs and job creators are.

Let’s take Egypt. Egypt thinks it has political problems. They don’t. They have a jobs problem. if they can’t that thing growing, you know where the whole country is participating in GDP growth then I think that they’ll have chaos and instability and revolution.

I don’t think any country is safe. I don’t think Great Britain is safe; I don’t think China is safe; I don’t think the US is safe, either. You gotta keep jobs growing or you’re going to have instability.

Now, where will these battlefields be in this coming jobs war? Where will the jobs be created and where will they be lost?

Let’s just stay with the US, right now. This is something very few people know. But all jobs are created in small businesses. I call them ‘startups’ and ‘shootups’. And startups, right now, we have about 400,000 startups a year; that needs to be a million.

There’s a lot of arguments about these numbers. People start up companies on paper without employees. We need, we need a million companies with one employee that start up every year. Right now, we’re cleaer down around 400,000.

Until people get up in the morning and say “Dammit. I’m going to start a company today.’ the US will not come back and we will lose our world leadership position.

There are 6 million companies with 500 employees or less. Those are called small and medium sized businesses. Of those, 5% of them shoot up. So, between ‘startups’ and ‘shootups’, the 5% in that 6 million group, that’s where all the jobs are created. There are no jobs created in big businesses.

By the way, of companies that have 10,000 or more employees, 10,000 isn’t very many, there are only 1000 of them in the US. There are very few big businesses. People are employed by small businesses. The general public, leaders in Washington, very few people know these facts.

So, when you say:

‘Where’s the battleground?'

The battleground is in small businesses. That’s why decisions have to be made by leaders, not just in federal government or state but also in city, that we’ve got to create an environment for small to medium-sized businesses.

If we’re not creating new companies, you have to have 100 start to get 2 or 3 Facebooks. But winning lies somewhere within that.

Beautiful. Thank you.

**********

Part Two of our conversation will be published Thursday, September 29.

Part Three of our conversation will be published Friday, September 30.

Immigration: Can We Talk?

Maybe, the better title is:

Immigration: Can We Stop Talking?

I find the current national conversation around immigration, immigrants, who's an immigrant and who's not, whose legal or whose not...to be, well, embarrassing. The last cogent, honest, thing I heard on Immigration came from Bill Murray's character John Winger in the movie Stripes:

Cut it out! Cut it out! Cut it out! The hell's the matter with you? Stupid! We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse...

As I let the rough draft of this post sit for a spell, I came across this:

Nation of immigrants is losing its mind over immigration. It's good. But I still think John Winger's is better.

Immigration is part of our foundation.

No. I changed my mind since I first wrote this a few weeks ago.

Immigration is our foundation.

Remember? Our country was founded with immigrants seeking freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of destiny, freedom to pursue their happiness. For that pursuit in their home countries, our ancestors were kicked out. Kicked out of every country, decent or not.

Illegal Immigration was the Path

Our ancestors all came here illegally. They arrived without visas, without passports or IDs. There were no visas, no ICE, no Homeland Security, no fingers to be printed nor eyes to be scanned at ports of entry. There were no ports of entry. There were no H1B's...whatever. There were no no-fly lists.

So, before you cast a finger at those illegals or illegal immigrants look closely at your family tree. In there are your descendants. And one of them or two or more came here under terms that today would be considered illegal. And they had children, now known as anchor babies.

Ergo, that makes you, all of us, descendants of illegal immigrants and subject to deportation.

If we believe Rep. Louis Gohmert, R- TX, that makes us all descendants of terror babies, which makes our ancestors by default...terrrorists. See where this line of reasoning ends up?

(Aside: I can see some of those politicians screaming about the threat of terror babies being shocked to find out that they are the direct descendant of such an anchor baby. And then, seeing a knock on their front door by ICE.)

Oh, sure, the rules are here now. How convenient as the Church Lady would say. Now that WE'RE here...we make different rules.

JOBS.

You hear this claim that illegal immigrants are taking away our jobs.

Really?

Have you worked at meat-packing plant lately? Have you tried to live on the wages paid, sometimes not paid, for the jobs that are left for illegal immigrants?

Ask the farmers in Georgia how their farms ran when Georgia's anti-immigration bill went into effect?

Georgia's Governor Deal enacted the nation's toughest immigration law in the country. In May this year, he was very proud of his achievement, standing tough against the threat of illegal immigrants.

Two weeks later, that same governor was scrambling to review the provisions of his law that ultimately obeyed the more universal Law of Unintendend Consequences, ie, crops left rotting in the field.

As they say on Hee-Haw, Governor Deal....SAHHHHLOOT!

Yes, you'll read that replacement workers, ie, those with the right parents, refused to do the work.

Ok. THAT's WHOLE POINT! That's always been the whole point! Immigrants have always possessed high levels of motivation. Think about it. They left their home country to come here, not speaking the language, working in terrible job, living in crammed apartments for the opportunity here.

And that energy and enthusiasm are the marks of the entrepreneurial economy that has driven our country's growth for, oh, 200-300 years. Entrepreneurs aren't just Steve Jobs. Entrepreneurs are those who take their energy and determination and any opportunity and turn it into ...a business, a few jobs, and replicate this process millions of times.

Is it any coincidence that as restrictions are placed on immigration, legal or not, we see fewer and fewer jobs being created to replace the jobs eliminated by our corporate giants? In 1998, immigrants were running over 25% of the Silicon Valley businesses generating 16.8 billion in sales and 58,000 jobs. 1998. That was then. By 2009-2010, 52% of businesses created in Silicon Valley were created by...immigrants.

52% of a key economic driver for job creation was driven by...immigrants.

Let's go back to that earlier point about residents in Georgia would not do the work in the fields. Well, why should they? Why would we want them to? After our investment in their education through our public school system why would we want them doing manual labor? Seriously. To say Why yes, we want our children, after they graduate from high school, to work picking cotton...Ruhly?

Can we not expect a better return on our investment, as parents and educators and businesses, in their education than a career picking crops? If not, then our economy failed them. We failed them. Sure, sure, we all have personal responsibility. And we have a personal responsibility to generate a positive ROI from our investment of tax dollars in their education.

Immigration is our Brand.

America, that's you and me, the wretched refuse, the ones whose ancestors were kicked out of their country because they wanted a better future for their family, still, despite this last decade, the shining beacon of hope for a majority of the world. We were built on that promise. The most driven to succeed, the most creative, the most innovative...all sought refuge here, the opportunity here.

And we have all benefited from their success, our success.

Now. Where are we? Well, we're in the campaign season. Again. And politicians are playing the fear card and the other card to divide and conquer and reap the spoils of their efforts with votes and campaign donations and access to power.

Just remember, we're all descendants from illegal immigrants. That makes us children of anchor babies or terror babies. That means...

We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh?

 Our ancestors all came here under terms now known as illegal. That means that:

...our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse.

And, look what we've done with that opportunity!

 

Classroom or Work: Can we be extraordinary?

I understand that we need to get rid of bad teachers, who will be just as bad in small classes, but we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

Our children — even our children growing up in poverty, especially our children growing up in poverty — deserve to have not only an extraordinary teacher but a teacher who has time to read their work, to listen, to understand why they're crying or sleeping or not doing homework.

To teach each child in my classroom, I have to know each child in my classroom. We teachers need to bring not only our extraordinariness but our flawed and real and ordinary humanity to this job, which involves a complex and ever-changing web of relationships with children who often need more than we can give them.

I'm willing to work as hard as I can to be an excellent teacher, but as a country we have to admit that I'll never be excellent if we continue to slash education budgets and cut teachers, which is what's actually happening in California despite all our talk of excellence, particularly in schools that serve poor children. Until we stop that, we'll never have equal education in this country.

via www.latimes.com

I can't help but think with a few modifications this post could be written for leaders in any organization.

Change:

• child to employee,

• children to employees,

• classroom to workplace,

• teacher to managers and executives

• country to company

and you have a spot-on description for the challenges we all face at work.

Why?

Any thoughts?

Richard Troxell, What Are You Reading?

Richard R. Troxell is President of House the Homeless, an educational and advocacy group that was founded in Austin, TX in 1989. Their mission is education and advocacy surrounding all issues of homelessness.

Richard has been striving to end homelessness since he first saw it come into existence as a mortgage foreclosure preventionist in Philadelphia in the 1980s. His work has been recognized by HUD, Texas Governor Ann Richards, the Pennsylvania Senate and the United Nations. He has also received the Five Who Care Award and the JC Penny Golden Rule Award, among countless others. Having designed a paradigm change for homeless service delivery, he secured $100,000 from former Texas Governor George Bush for the jobs component.

He’s the author of Looking up at the Bottomline: The Struggle for the Living Wage, an intense personal, political, and educational guide through the last 30 years of homelessness in America.

Richard's an obvious leader. Obviously, I had to ask him:

Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that. I just quote him. You're an inspiring leader. What are you reading, serious or for fun?

And he generously answered:

I just put down John Grisham's Ford County: Stories. This was interesting to me. It was about Ford County in Mississippi where he immerses us in the workings of a small town. This was a series of short stories. That was fun.

I’m looking at Short Story Masterpieces with Faulkner and James Joyce, the classics. I’m having fun getting through there.

I’ve been looking at Doris Kearns Goodwin. She wrote the Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. It's a fascinating read. He had some really stiff competition as he headed towards his election. So, he made him his cabinet. He’d rather have them working for him rather than against him. They were the smartest people he knew. That’s call The Team of Rivals.

I’m working on American Lion which is about Andrew Jackson in the White House.

You mix these things with the daily newspaper and you see it going on.

**********

That reading list, that behavior, is common among leaders. They jump around a lot. The books on their reading list reflect a diverse set of interests and curious minds, minds always seeking to learn and learn from other experts in other areas outside their area of expertise.

That is how you create a culture of learning as Gary Harpst talked about in an earlier show. That culture of learning is critical if you want to continually learn new tools and resources and skills and master more talents. That is how you discover new solutions for the new challenges that your growth will bring.

That is also how you develop a culture of leaders. Learners are leaders. Reading is one way you learn. Reading what leaders read is one way you accelerate that learning, accelerate that leading for yourself and your company.

Why we don't have a debt deal

via today.yougov.com

Hat tip to Stowe Boyd at UnderPaid Genius

Update: I thought about this graphic some more.  What it shows is so simple, so clear.

It's what it doesn't show that is important, too. See it? See what's missing? 

• A leader.

There is no leader. A leader unites. A leader leads. A leader communicates a vision, a value, a direction, a goal and plan to get there. Everyone falls in line. We align with that vision, those values, that direction, that goal and plan and our roles in that journey.

Then again, leadership is deserved, isn't it? We get the leaders we deserve.

Deserve and then desire. Deserve better leaders, get better leaders.

President Obama: 3 Steps for A More Favorable Environment for Entrepreneurs

Scott Gerber is a syndicated columnist (WSJ, Entrepreneur, Inc.), a serial entrepreneur, author of Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke, and founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an advocacy group made up of many of the world’s top young entrepreneurs that works to help young people overcome the devastating effects of youth unemployment and underemployment by teaching them how to build businesses.

He recently shared an hour of his time on my radio show. We talked about his book  (great book!) and his thoughts on entrepreneurs and startups and the challenges faced for their success. You can listen here.

I asked him, during the show,  his thoughts on what steps could be taken to create a more favorable environment for entrepreneurs and startups. I asked him:

Imagination plays a big role with entrepreneurs. And we've reached the imagination moment in the show. President Obama's on line 2 for you now. He's leaving you a message inviting you to the White House. He wants your list of three things he can do right now to create a more favorable environment for entrepreneurs and startups and the jobs they create. What do you tell him?

And, as you'd expect, he offered a great answer:

I think number one is the ability to ramp up not just high growth entrepreneurship exercises but also small business exercises. You know, we talked a lot about building the next billion-dollar business which of course is going to have a tremendous effect if we can move the amount of billion-dollar enterprises in the US from where it is now to 3 to 4 times that....However, when you look at what is creating the most jobs is the top creator is in fact small businesses that hire 1 - 10 employees or 1 - 50 employees. So, we need to incentivize them more.

We need to stop bailing out big business and bailing out small business which unfortunately now is a big cliche, but it’s the truth.

The 2nd thing I’d say is we need to invest more time and resources into backing incubators and other startup accelerator programs. I think it’s time we put government dollars into real innovation and not just simply buzzwords like clean-tech. While clean-tech represents a massive opportunity, it can’t be the only thing just because it’s a hot word. I think you need to always be experimenting with many different pots and putting money into many different areas. I think that it’s time we figure out a way for government to support that level of entrepreneurship acceleration.

The last thing I would say is regardless of what’s going on right now in terms of budget cuts and obviously right now we’re facing deficits that are just insane... but, entrepreneurship education is truly something that I belive should not just be an afterthought. It can’t be just some one-liner in a speech. It has to be something that is real, something that is added to curriculum, something that the Department of Education is not only condoning but is bringing in top experts and figuring out how to replicate successful programs. We need to figure out how to teach people not just how to be employees but to rather teach them how to make a choice. On the college level we need to be sure that people are very much understanding that the paradigm shift we are seeing is here to stay and if we don’t educate properly we don’t begin to support people properly. Even on the kindergarten to grade 12 level we’re in for a long, long, haul that will not be pretty and will not make the US the greatest country in the world when it comes to innovation.

Want More from Scott Gerber?

Follow him on Twitter at AskGerber

Read the posts at Young Entrepreneur Council

Buy his book!

Read transcripts from our conversation here.

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Some may say this is inappropriate.

This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.

I disagree. As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.

I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis.That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion. We...are the only ones with vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.

Do These Add Up to 'Sustainable"?

Just curious.  If you add these up, what do you get?

I started mulling this over a few weeks ago. With so much news and so many stories available on a nightly basis that contain so many bits and drips of data, it wasn't so hard to find these points even as I grew tired of hearing their dismal stories. And with Evernote collecting them...and organizing them...is relatively easy.

The availability of all this data, even for an art major such as myself, and the ease of collecting it only highlights the challenge. That is answering the question:

Do these add up to sustainable?

And more importantly:

How do we change these numbers?

UNEMPLOYMENT.

Reported vs Real

The ranks of long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased to 6.2 million (from 5.8 million) or 45.1% of all unemployed. The underemployment rate or “real” unemployment rate (includes unemployed, marginally attached and those working part-time for economic reasons) was 15.8%. Crew of 42: A Blog of Black Members of Congress

UNAFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE

Health spending as a share of GDP is expected to grow from its 2008 level of 16.3 percent to an estimated 19.5 percent of GDP in 2017 (about $4.3 trillion). Overall, GDP is also projected to grow over this period (on average, 4.7 percent per year), but health care costs will grow faster than GDP. In fact, through 2018, health care spending growth is expected to outpace GDP growth by an average of 1.9 percentage points annually. By 2017, about 20 cents of every dollar spent in the U.S. economy will be spent on health care. Rand Corporation

Do you see your income rising by 6.6 percentage points annually? If you do then you expect your income to double in less than 10 years.

FEDERAL DEFICIT

It's rising as a percent of GDP, in dollar amounts, to heights second only to that of WW2. Link

WALL STREET

The DOW is at or near its all-time high. Link

CONCENTRATION of WEALTH

Corporations have  $1.9 trillion dollars in cash. Link.

In 2007, 35% of our country's networth was held by 1% of the population. Another 27% of our country's net worth was held by 4%. Add this up. 5% of our country's population owns 62% of our country's net worth. UC Santa Cruz (graphs)

Between 1993 and 2007, 50% of all the growth in the U.S. economy went to the richest 1%. Between 2002 and 2006, it was even worse: an astounding three quarters of all the economy's growth was captured by the top 1%. In 2007, this top 1% captured 20% of all the income in the entire nation. The top 10% corralled fully half of all the income earned in the entire country, as much as the bottom 90% combined. Only one time since 1913 has so much of the nation's income been seized by such a small elite. That was 1928, the year before the stock market collapsed, ushering in the Great Depression. - Link

The richest 20 percent of Americans saw their share of all Americans’ wealth increase by 2.2 percentage points between 2007 and 2009. The remaining four-fifth of Americans saw their wealth decline by the same amount. Common Dreams

DECLINING INCOMES

The increase in total private-sector wages, adjusted for inflation, from the start of 2001 has fallen far short of any 10-year period since World War II, according to Commerce Department data. In fact, if the data are to be believed, economy wide wage gains have even lagged those in the decade of the Great Depression (adjusted for deflation)....To put that in perspective, since the Great Depression, 10-year gains in real private wages had always exceeded 25% with one exception: the period ended in 1982-83, when the jobless rate spiked above 10% and wage gains briefly decelerated to 16%. - Investor's Business Daily

Think Progress

LOWEST TAX RATE for OVER 50 YEARS

Twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines....had just these twelve companies paid at the actual 35% tax rate the GOP is telling us they are chaffing under, the sum would have added a full 12% to the totals the United States of America’s treasury received through corporate taxes. Forbes

Taxes as a percentage of GDP are the lowest among OECD members, Taxes as a percentage of GDP were higher in the 50's. Forbes

Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found. Federal, state and local income taxes consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010. USAToday

 Growing Number of Children Living in Poverty, Homeless

Nationwide, 14 million children were in poverty before the Great Recession. Now, the U.S. Census tells us its 16 million - up two million in two years. That is the fastest fall for the middle class since the government started counting 51 years ago. 60 Minutes

So, again:

Do these add up to sustainable?

And more importantly:

How do we change these numbers?