We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
Walter Russell Mead speculates in his post Occupy Management, on how primary and secondary education might be restructured after today’s massive transitions settle down.
He spends the first part of this post talking about the current turmoil in the public union sector. About halfway through the article he offers a view of the future that is not 19th century, Dickens-like deprivation.
What could arise? Continue reading “What might education look like in the future?”
Those would be the Victims, Nonbelievers and Know-It-Alls, according to G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louse Viton, in their Businessweek article, Three Types of People to Fire Immediately.
Those types of staff will slow you down, block innovation, and discourage the rest of your team.
Continue reading “What three types of people should you fire tomorrow morning?”
My tale on internal control done well and poor at two churches is now available in Kindle format at Amazon.
Price is $0.99.
You can read the book on your Kindle device, on any smart phone with a Kindle app, or on your computer using the Kindle-for-PC application.
At Amazon, search for my name, Ulvog, or the book title, Once Upon Internal Control.
Or click here to go directly to the book.
The rapid change affecting other areas of the economy is hitting primary and secondary education.
The Wall Street Journal had a long article recently: My Teacher Is an App
Nationwide, an estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, up 40% in the last three years, according to Evergreen Education Group, a consulting firm that works with online schools. More than two million pupils take at least one class online, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a trade group.
Continue reading “Radical change on the near horizon for education”
Not than anyone reading my blogs could do anything to influence what happens in China. However, we should pay attention because what happens there will affect all of us elsewhere.
Walter Russell Mead, at Via Meadia, is watching China, so it would be good to look at his blog, including a recent post, IMF: China Isn’t Ten Feet Tall.
The rapid growth of the Chinese economy, reported to be running at 9% for many years combined with the massive migration of people from farms to cities is astounding. If, or rather when, that massive growth slows the adjustments will be painful. Continue reading “Continue to pay attention to China”
(cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
A: Doing more with less. In other words, increased productivity.
On one hand, the unemployment rate continues very high, which means there are lots fewer people working. On the other hand, GDP has just passed the peak from before the recession, which means the size or value of the economy has recovered.
Check out this picture – Continue reading “Q: Why does it feel like the economy hasn’t recovered, yet the stats say it has?”
Bushels of corn produced on 1 acre of land has increased from about 26 in 1939 to 165 in 2009. Productivity has dropped in 2010.
A graph is better than the raw numbers.
Continue reading “Visual illustration of increased productivity of corn production in U.S.”
That is the opener of a superb post from Tom Hood, CEO of Maryland Association of CPAs.
By the way, his comments may be tailored to an audience of CPAs, but everything he says applies across the board to anyone in business, the nonprofit world, and even government.
If you want a curriculum of things to read and watch so you can get started on dealing with the radical change in the work world, check out his post Are you future ready? And other reflections & resources from the CCH User Conference
The radical rate of change around us is compounded by the power of artificial intelligence. The Economist magazine had an article last week on point: Difference Engine: Luddite Legacy.
For a long time, like since the start of the industrial revolution, mechanical tools have displaced muscle power. In recent decades and especially quite recently, we have seen lots of manufacturing move from higher-wage countries to lower-wage countries.
The disruption is spreading. (Hey, that’s the point of this and many other blogs.) The Economist article points towards the spread to knowledge workers. Continue reading “Another view of the radical change that will hit us down the road”
Did you ever think you would see this headline?
N.Dakota Oil Continues Exponential Growth and is on Pace to Become the No. 2 Oil State in January. That is a post from Mark Perry pointing out the dramatic growth in oil production from North Dakota sites.
Check out the graph to see the drastic expansion the last four years. In about 2008 oil production hit an inflection point. Here’s the basic shape of the graph: horizontal before 2008 and on roughly a 45° angle after that.
Continue reading “More oil drilled in North Dakota than California? Run that by me again.”
Previously discussed the mind-boggling improvement in productivity in egg production.
I’m a city boy and don’t understand farms. However, I have one last comparison.
Continue reading “Another farm illustration of improved productivity”
Those of us who’ve used computers for a while remember when we did our work at ‘dumb terminals’, which did nothing other than connect us to the mainframe. Often work was submitted in batch to a service bureau which processed all the transactions at night so we could get updated reports in the morning.
The pendulum then swung to having all the software and data in the workstation at your desk. That requires a far more powerful machine and eliminates reliance on the service bureau. The mainframe was less important in the era of distributed computing.
My friend John Bredehoft has a thoughtful post on the swinging pendulum in computing, What if you don’t know that you’re living in the cloud?
I am chuckling and getting a kick out of being alive in 2011.
Just downloaded two books, one is 1,100 pages long and the other 1,400 pages. I’m doing a technical review of a book and before lunch asked the editor for a copy of the prior year resource, which was in 2 volumes. The editor spent a few seconds uploading files to yousendit.com and an automatic e-mail went out saying it was available. After lunch Continue reading “It is a blast being alive today, or isn’t technology cool?”
Mark Perry at Carpe Diem is paying attention to the reshoring trend. Some recent posts:
Re-Shoring: Outsourcing To China Goes Into Reverse
Housewares company moves production from China back to the U.S. Specifically Union City, California. (California! 34 miles from San Francisco?)
Reason?