Resources

Can three questions really change the world? Well, maybe. Let's think about it for a minute. One thing we know about schools is that nothing stays the same for long.  Each year brings the latest "best practice." Each week brings a new procedure and its paperwork. Each day, our students pose new challenges. Each hour, the media bombards us with news about the latest crisis. What might possibly help us keep our balance as the world shifts beneath us?

In a recent post on the Harvard Business Review blog, Why Haven't Managers Embraced Complexity, Richard Straub looks at what managers face as they recognize that management practices from past decades don't really fit today's challenges. Even the term "management" may be undergoing a shift - notice that the post is not about "managing" complexity.

With the economy in turmoil and no creditable analysis on where we go from here, a drastic shift might be right around the corner.  One might ask is this current economic dilemma based on lack of jobs, uncontrolled debts, or on goods and services being provided within global competitiveness.  Regardless of these or any other reasoning’s, there is a historic shift happening within the world economy that is affecting all of us from first to third world countries.

In a recent post on GOOD, Andrea Lo, founder and CEO of Piggybackr, talked about preparing today's youth to face the uncertainty of the world as they enter the workforce. She described a world where not only is it likely that there will be fewer jobs, but many of the jobs that will exist haven't even been conceived of yet. It was an interesting article, and she pointed to a number of organizations that are committed to helping students build skills to create the work of the next generation. And that is a GOOD thing. 

In the West, families and governments worry about the personal and economic issues of an aging population.  In India, the challenge is quite different, and the difference is both exciting and overwhelming. The population in India and the other BRIK nations is young and getting younger. You can feel the energy and experience the innovation that come with youth, but policies and practices stretch to meet the needs and match the passions of emerging leaders.