Nine Shift

Tell your Chicago colleagues and friends!

A new all-day seminar version of Nine Shift will premiere in Palatine, Illinois (suburban Chicago) on Wednesday, November 1. The program is sponsored by Harper College and open to the public. The theme is work and organizational implications, relevant for those working in both the private sector and nonprofit sector.  Email an Chicago colleague or friend and tell them about it! More information from Mark Mrozins at Harper College at mmrozins@harpercollege.edu  or me at draves@lern.org

Photo is of me and Robert Hartt, a real estate executive with Ashforth, Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut. Bob had me do 3 Nine Shift presentations before 280 business people last week in Connecticut.

UPCOMING EVENTS:
* Thurs. Oct 5, California State University, Long Beach, all day for faculty
* Thurs, Oct 12, Cushman-Wakefield corporate retreat, Phoenix
* Wed Oct 18, North Carolina Continuing Education Association, Raleigh
* Wed Nov 1, All day Nine Shift seminar, Harper College, Chicago

High-tech garbage leads the way

I love it. One of the biggest changes of the 21st century gets going - - with garbage.

In 2000 I heard British Telecom's Peter Cochrane say that in 2010 objects would communicate. Light bulbs will have chips saying when they need to be changed.  Refrigerators will have chips alerting repairmen when the appliance is about to break. Etc.

So this month it all starts to happen - - but with garbage. The BBC reports  The garbage bins in the U.K. will start to have chips on them.  When the bin is put into the garbage truck, the chip weighs the garbage in the bin and identifies the address.  Why? Because the government wants Brits to recycle more, and will start charging garbage by the pound in order to encourage more recycling and less garbage. OK, so maybe garbage isn't the first object to communicate.  Now you get to tell us about other "objects that communicate" already. Go ahead : :

Mayor a lawbreaker: no lawn

In Salt Lake City, it is illegal NOT to have a lawn.
And the Mayor of Salt Lake City is breaking the law.  He has no lawn.

Drought ravaged as the city is. As a desert, Utah has no natural lawns.
Yet it's still the law: you have to have a lawn. See story if you wish.

As we move out of the Industrial Age, more and more laws will become obsolete. The Lawn Law is one of the more outrageous and out-lived-its-usefulness law around. Lawns demand oil guzzlling mowers, get chemicals dumped on them, cause noise pollution, create run-off into lakes and streams, and are an unnatural monoculture. Oh yea, and they waste valuable water.

Lawns are just one outmoded law. In my town, it is illegal to email a business associate from home without a permit (I have a permit! Cost: $35).  Got any other outmoded Industrial Age laws you want to share with us?

When the people move faster than govt

The 12th largest producer of green house gases in the world has decided to reduce those emissions.

That's how the BBC phrased it.  It sounds different than how American media phrase it, doesn't it? "The 12th largest producer" is of course, California.

A Republican governor challenging a Republican president. 100 years ago, the federal government started moving forward into the 20th century, but not fast enough for the general public. By 1910 the public was ahead of the president (Taft) and he was defeated in the 1912 election by someone who would move the country into the 20th century much more quickly.

We may be experiencing that again.  People and local/state governments moving more quickly into the 21st century than the federal government.  What do you think?

Happy autumnal equinox

Today is not just the start of fall, but the autumnal equinox.  From the equator to the north pole, the same number of hours of daylight today.  From here til March 21, the further south you are, the more hours of daylight.

Do women make better mothers?

I am going out on a limb on this one and say "yes."

One of the big heated Us versus Us battles going on right now is over the balance between Nature vs. Nurture in gender, or more accurately Neurology versus Changing Behavior. 

The parenting issue (just one example of the Neurology vs. Behavior gender debate) is not whether men should help out more at home, and with the kids. We can all agree on that. But the extremes of the debate have risen to the level that indicates that men can and should be as good at mothering as women.

Personally, I do all the vacuuming, most of the grocery shopping (hope my wife isn't reading this), laundry, and cooking of suppers.  And I was there at home every day at 3:30 pm when our son came home from school.  I also made him breakfast every day for six years, and did half or more of the taking to school.  I maintain my french toast is superior to my wife's.

However, my wife discovered one of our children with a disability at least two years before I recognized it.  She knew when a child was having trouble in school, and did all the help with homework and tutoring.  And of course, when one of our kids was sick they always went to her.

Some dads are better moms than women. But the majority? I doubt it. And I'm not sure we want guys babysitting anyway.  Two other observations before you destroy me with your comments.

* This seems to be an issue with the Boomer generation, and not so much with both earlier generations and with later/ younger generations of women.

* This seems to be an unresolvable issue, and maybe moot.  100 years ago everyone debated (and passed laws) whether autos should stop and pull over over when approaching a horse and buggy. They never resolved that issue.  It, of course, just went away.  OK, now your turn. Feel free to blast away.

What's your college drop out reading?

This week I join millions of parents of college stop-outs.

This week 2 million smart boys do not go or return to college.  As a parent, I've found I am both proud of my son's academic achievements. Yet like other parents we are reluctant to talk about the stop-out status of our sons.  A colleague recently confided with me about his unforeseen and sudden new status, and "confided" is the key word.

In our case, our son got As on his tests, but the college unbelievably doesn't count tests (which are gender neutral) as part of grades. The professor wrote our son knew the material on his evaluation, but apparently knowing the material doesn't matter either. Anyway,

So one day this summer I walked into the house and found my son sitting in my wife's reading chair with Winesburg, Ohio (Sherman Anderson) and Mice and Men (John Steinbeck). Both books are on the top 100 novels of the last century list.  Does this sound like the readings of a college drop out? 

If you know a college stop-out or drop-out, tell us what he or she is reading or doing. You don't have to mention names.

What I read this summer

I read fiction regularly - - one book a year, in summer.

This year I read both The 42nd Parallel and Big Money by John Dos Passos. Fast moving, engrossing stories. But most importantly, they conveyed the emotional ambiguity and wandering taking place 100 years ago as people transitioned into this unfamiliar industrial age where traditional values and morals and behaviors had just been thrown out the window.

The three points I got from the books:
1. The new materialistic urge to make money, and what that did to relationships and people. We take it for granted now, but it was quite a new phenomenon then.
2. The working man and women's struggles  to deal with the  injustices of the new order, trying to get decent wages, health and so on. And the frustration,  lost battles, ostracizing.
3. The emotional wandering among so many young people. With the old rules and roles gone, many people were without a moral or value compass. Not in the crime sense, just in the "where do I fit in" sense.  Passos portrays this emotional weightlessness so well. 

Books on the top 100 novels of the 20th century list.  I recommend both. Great reads.
(photo of John Dos Passos)

Adults shocked by new text mess study

Adults the world over are still reeling from two new studies on teens' use of grammar in text messaging.

Both studies indicated not only did teens use proper grammar in text messaging, but that text messaging might actuall increase their grammatical abilities.

One of the studies, by a Swarthmore professor, was too dense for me to understand, so forget it.
Here's a story on the other study , done by professors at the University of Toronto, in plain English.

Parents of course are outraged. "Everything we say the kids are doing wrong turns out to be right, and I can't stand it," sputtered Bonnie Boomer of Birmingham.  And media spokesperson Harold Honnold of the Heritagetown Herald shouted in capital letters in his email, "How can I run a newspaper with this kind of news?"   Professors of English have promised protest strikes at several universities and kindergartens.  You can vent your outrage by posting a comment here.  Feel free to request a sympathy card.

Who is Shawn Fanning?

Quick question first:  Who is Shawn Fanning? 
(clue: in 1999 he was an 18 year old college drop out)

Now the story.  Some 30 years ago a number of kids started "free universities,"  where anybody could teach anything. This was heresy. Free universities were attached by the media, by universities, and by adults. 

Then in 1978 the first president of my organization, Dennis DuBe, wrote me to say "The revolution is over. And we won."   I had no idea we had won, but Dennis was right.  Today anyone can teach anything, and it is a widely accepted principle. 

Last week the music revolution was over (see Sept 7 post). And the kids won. My son knows who Shawn Fanning is. Click here if you don't.