A poor attempt at humor by someone in the JPMorgan Chase marketing department led to my faceoff with the co-founders of the Rochester Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) on live radio. Chase’s tweet made fun of those who can’t figure out how to keep their bank accounts out of the red. In our debate, I maintained that people should take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions while the DSA crowd advocated that people are victims of marketing and should get some relief from those who impose unreasonable costs on them.
You shouldn’t be surprised that we didn’t reach agreement. But it was something that I said to the younger of the two that stopped him in his tracks (although we didn’t explore it). I am on record as predicting that Millennials will save capitalism (see The Fourth Turning: How Millennials Will Save Capitalism) and cited the Conscious Capitalism Continue reading “It All Started with a Tweet”
Have you ever repeated a phrase so often that you find you’ve forgotten what it means? In a group meeting this week, I referred to a company’s “mission” using a phrase that I’ve repeated for years. A new member of the group challenged me and threw me off balance. What I was really referring to was the company’s purpose.
Regular readers know that I am “old school.” As a hiring manager, I focused on finding talent not hiring for skills. “Skills can be learned,” I would say. “But, you can’t fix stupid.” That approach to hiring has faded away. We now focus on functional skills.
About every three months, I join a group of colleagues for dinner followed by an all day meeting. Our goal is to share best practices, bond with one another and have some fun. Nothing unusual about that, right? What makes it different is that there is no corporate sponsor. It’s an Ad Hoc group of people who share a profession and a common interest in getting better at what we do. Most of us hop into our car and head to a central location within an area bounded in the north by Toronto, the south by Pittsburgh, the east by Rochester and the west by Indianapolis.
We’re flush with new college grads this month. This crop has graduated into a rare economy – one in which employers are challenged by the dearth of candidates to fill the jobs they’re offering. Contrast that to ten years ago when even those with advanced degrees from top schools were kicked to the curb.
