Category: Arizona Economy

Who you work with matters more than where

Sarat PratapchandranLeave a comment

Neil-G-pic (1)
Neil Giuliano

We live in a frenzied marketplace characterized by clutter, silos, toxic workplaces, overnight successes and a constant glorification of failure.
Former Mayor and a leader in the national LGBT movement, Neil Giuliano, gave clarity about work while addressing the ASU Lodestar Center’s annual nonprofit conference. Here is a reflection of his thoughts.

  1. Think about who you are working with rather than where. Every morning, do you want to go to work with individuals who won’t give you a chance to make a difference? If you are not accomplishing things together, even if you are working for a Fortune 100 company, you are not doing meaningful work. And, your job description won’t get you where you want to go. Reflect on this and I’m sure you will count just a handful of places where people mattered more than the job.
  2. Define yourself first or else others will define you. The only way to define yourself at your workplace is to do what you have to do and ask for forgiveness later. Great leaders  know how to set the tone and culture of an organization but there are just a handful around. So,  take leadership in your hands and do not allow tiny minds in big silos constrain you.
  3. Give time and funds to tinker. This will allow employees to bring in new ideas, improve efficiency and experiment with failure. You need to set apart some risk capital to innovate. Has any employer given you funds to tinker? Highly unlikely.
  4. Break down things at work and create substance. Stay focused and break down complex ideas into simple tasks as this is now the greatest trait in business. A car business owner told me last week that he is having a difficult time managing millennials who spend more time on their smartphones rather on the job at hand.
  5. Stretch, grow and take risks and do not let age constrain you. Even if you are 20 or 60, you need to work hard on constantly creating a better you. Be harder on yourself and make changes fast.
  6. In the end, take care of yourself and reflect again on who you work with rather than where. Leave the marketing and human resource folks to glorify the meaningless where.

Teach kids to convert information into intelligence

Sarat PratapchandranLeave a comment

Education should teach students to convert information to intelligence, said Jaime Casap, Google’s Global Education Evangelist. Casap was speaking at a recent kick-off event for the Arizona SciTech Festival in Scottsdale.

“The tools are all here and we do not need any further information. All we need is to convert this information into intelligence and do it well.”

Are our schools equipped to do that? Are teachers making efforts to teach a young generation to selectively use data, learn to interpret it well and actually use it in real life situations?

Education, according to Jaime needs to go through a radical design. “While we know that children learn in different ways, how do we make this happen?”

On a typical day, 1000 teachers quit the teaching profession in this country. There is a constant turnover of instructional leaders in middle schools and there is a crisis in educational leadership.

States like Arizona must “grow their own farms” to attract more high-tech industries, says Casap. “To do this we need to support incubators, offer tax breaks and interest rates for folks who want to stay here.”

“A quality workforce is what we need, not quantity,” he added. In the U.S. only 14 percent of students are graduating in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) fields. In China it is 42 percent while in Korea it is 32 percent.

We have only two options: either radically design education to fit the needs of the individual learner or stay with the factory model of the 1950s.

The choice is ours but time is not on our side.