Doug Manning at Proactive Living quotes a study from the Us Department of Labor that says that there are more college graduates taking unemployment than high school dropouts. Although percentage wise, high school dropouts outnumber their college graduates, the stats point out to a myth about education: that you can buy your way to prosperity: This is a sobering new reality of the 21st century, one that is partially of our own making. We have successfully encouraged and enabled more young people than ever to obtain a four-year degree. However, we have done little to help them evaluate the commercial …
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Elder Sonny Diabo, (Mohawk, Kahnawake)The group I was working with in Montreal this week is assisted by the man pictured above, Sonny Diabo, an Elder from Kahnewake, a First Nation across the river from Montreal. Sonny is a marvelous and generous teacher, and is invaluable to the group. In the contemporary world, we don’t always get time to spend with Elders and so when I have the opportunity, I try to take advantage of it by asking about teachings in certain areas of my life that I am currently thinking about. Recently as evidenced here at the Parking Lot weblog, …
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George Nemeth got riffing on my post about project management as jazz and a really cool conversation evolved in his comments (scroll down). One of the comments from John Galt challenged the idea that strategy can be created in an emergent and improvisiational framework: The jazz metaphor is apt for improvisation. Not for strategy as we are speaking about it. One nice definition of improvisation in strategy is the act of �creating strategy as it is being implemented� or making it up as you go along. Now, classic strategy is a process for thoughtful managers in mindful organizations. Mindful � …
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Notes on Dreaming, inspired by the Sunday Open Space at gassho… In the Ojibway teachings I have received, all the animals at creation were given a gift. For humans, our gift was to dream. According to Elder Basil Johnston, although we can all dream, dreaming – more properly, visioning – is said to be most important for men. Women are said to have been given the gift of self-fulfillment through creating life but for men, we need to find self-fulfillment through a vision quest. And so, as has been the case from time immemorial, young men under the tutelage of …
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I’ve been an autodidact all my life. My learning programs have had little to do with what I was fed in school or in the approved training programs of the various places I’ve worked. In fact, when I was with the Department of Indian Affairs, I tried to initiate a new learning program to foster leadership. I advocated giving every employee their $800 a year training allotment and allowing them to spend it on whatever learning program they wanted. If employees chose to take the government sanctioned filing training, that’s fine. If people wanted to spend the money on a …