I recently read Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. I don't normally go in for horror or zombie stories, but this is a funny, clever and thoughtful commentary on our times. The book is written as a series of transcripts of interviews with people who survived the "zombie war," modeled on Studs Terkel's work. Imagine my surprise to discover that World War Z has a workforce development chapter.
After America was devastated by the zombie war, a "Department of Strategic Resources" was created, charged with rebuilding the nation's infrastructure. The first head of the Department remembers some of the major workforce challenges they ran into:
To be perfectly candid, our supply of talent was at a critical low. Ours was a postindustrial or service-based economy, so complex and highly specialized that each individual could only function within the confines of its narrow, compartmentalized structure. You should have seen some of the "careers" listed on our first employment census; everyone was some version of an "executive," a "representative," an "analyst," or a "consultant," all perfectly suited to the prewar world, but all totally inadequate for the present crisis. We needed carpenters, masons, machinists, gunsmiths. We had those people, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were necessary. The first labor survey stated clearly that over 65 percent of the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation. We required a massive job retraining program. In short, we needed to get a lot of white collars dirty.
Even zombie story writers understand the importance of investing in workforce development.
The growth of international trade in the current era of globalization has created a boom for shipping and ship builders, not to mention the growth of a wide range of related jobs. Just last year the three biggest ports in the U.S. (Los Angeles, Long Beach and New York/New Jersey) handled ships carrying nearly 21 million shipping containers (TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent containers, as they're known). Add to that all the ships carrying oil, grain, lumber and other non-containerized cargo, plus the booming cruise industry, and you've got a lot of ships sailing the high seas.
Have you ever wondered what happens to those ships when they're too old to run? If you haven't asked, you should, because the answer is fascinating.
BBC reporter Roland Buerk describes a little-known corner of the global economy in his 2006 book, Breaking Ships: How Supertankers and Cargo Ships are Dismantled on the Beaches of Bangladesh. He explains how those ships are bought by Bangladeshi businessmen, run aground, and taken apart by an army of laborers using simple hand tools and machines, and the strength of their backs.
Big seagoing ships, it seems, have a useful life of about 25 years. After that, insurance companies won't insure them. Demand for steel in Asia means the component parts of the ship are too valuable to just toss them into some oceanic scrap heap.
Breaking Ships follows the dismantling of the oil tanker Asian Tiger over six months in 2004 on the beach at Chittagong. Through the book we meet many of the workers, from Captain Enam Mohammed Chowdhury, an expert in running ships aground, to "cutter" Mohammed Yunnus who works with a team of men who cut the hull into tabletop-sized steel plates with hand-held blowtorches. We follow foreman Mohammed Abdul Hakkim as he travels back to his home village in Bogra, in far northwest Bangladesh, to recruit laborers. We watch a propeller cutter team led by Mohammed Motin as they carefully break up the propeller with two sledgehammers and a hand-held chisel. It's delicate work, as the propeller is made up of a highly valuable metal alloy. We briefly meet South Korean buyer W.K. Chung, who travels regularly to Chittagong in search of used propellers for new ships under construction. And we meet the family of Mohammed Mohsin, whose father bought the first ship for scrap, and grew his PHP Group company into a corporate empire.
Everything from the ship is taken apart and sold. Furniture, fire extinguishers, life vests and lifeboats, cables and wires stripped by children, they're all bought by entrepreneurs who set up stalls along the road from the Chittagong beach for resale. Steel plates are melted down at nearby factories and rerolled into rods that will be used on construction sites throughout the country. But before you get the idea that this is some kind of recycler's dream, Buerk describes working conditions on the beach:
The air is regularly filled with the smoke from polluting fires as oil, plastics, PVC, and other unwanted substances are burned off. The men working on the beach and the people living nearby are being exposed to these substances continuously. The world's shipping industry and the fortunes of the yard owners rest on the men's willingness to take the risk of injury or death for just a dollar or so a day.
Not only this, but as the Asian Tiger is being dismantled, all along the beach other cargo ships, cruise ships and tankers are being taken apart as well. This is big business.
For the most part, Buerk avoids the pro- and anti-globalization rhetoric a book like this could engender. He simply describes how dismantling these ships creates business opportunities and desperately needed wages, but at a high price in worker deaths, injuries and sickness. He alludes to the environmental damage being done, but doesn't explore it in detail. His story focuses on the people.
The book is filled with photos showing the workers, the ship and beach. Reproduced in black and white, they're not the best you've ever seen, but I won't soon forget the image of fifteen men in nothing more than long-sleeve shirts and lungis (a men's sarong) carrying a 1,700 pound steel plate on their shoulders in the pouring rain, barefoot. That and the stacks of hundreds - perhaps thousands - more steel plates piled up behind them, all waiting to be moved.
Clocking in at 160 pages, Breaking Ships is a quick read. Kudos to whoever decided to include an index, so often left out of nonfiction books these days. Read this book if you want to understand the workers and businesspeople engaged in the strange new economies created by international trade.
Debbie Weil thinks so, and she's written a good book explaining the whys and hows, The Corporate Blogging Book. The subtitle might be a little hyperbolic - Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get it Right - but she certainly covers the most important points.
Weil argues businesses should get in the blogging game, and she targets her book primarily at the CEO. After all, if the company is going to blog, the CEO has to sign off on it. She even devotes an entire chapter to tips to help employees convince their bosses to let them blog.
The Corporate Blogging Book assumes the reader is a business executive who's heard of blogging but isn't sure what it's all about. It opens with a forward by blogger and General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, giving Weil and her ideas about blogging some instant credibility in the business world. Then she goes on to answer her Top Twenty Questions About Corporate Blogging, where she covers the basics of what is a blog and why a company might want to have one (or several).
I've been blogging for a year and a half now and I've taught a couple of web 2.0 workshops, so I really appreciated the fact that Weil got straight to the naysayers and skeptics in chapter 3: Confronting the Fear of Blogging. She addresses many of the issues I've heard people raise, like It will take too much time; We'll lose control of the message; We might get sued. She treats them like the serious issues they are, suggesting practical ways to deal with them and sharing what she's learned from other companies' experiences. One very useful resource is the collection of blogging policies from companies like IBM and Forrester Research in the appendix. These examples show how companies protect themselves in the blogosphere and beyond.
Other chapters and bonus materials cover blog writing, design, tools and technology, and there's a decent glossary. Even if you've been blogging for a while, you'll learn something.
Is this book useful for nonprofit and government executives? Yes and no.
Many of the basics Weil covers are relevant to any blog. She addresses issues specifically of interest to any organization whose leaders want to learn more about blogging. But as public agencies and those who utilize public money and face sometimes intense scrutiny of our work, we have some additional concerns the for-profit private sector doesn't share. Our audiences and stakeholders are different in some important ways, so we may need to develop some of our own unique blogging and blog management techniques. Nonetheless, this book is a good place to start.
Who quits their job and why?
This book by consultant Leigh Branham is loaded up with some surprising facts about quitting:
Saratoga Institute (a subdivision of PricewaterhouseCoopers that provided data to Branham) estimates the cost of employee turnover to be 1 x the annual salary of that person. In a big company, that can be a lot of money. In a small company, the budget probably can't take that kind of hit.
Like so many business management books, 7 Hidden Reasons reads a bit like a heavily padded powerpoint presentation. But who would pay $25 for powerpoint handouts? Nonetheless, there's some good information in here.
Branham has read through exit interviews and data from and about people who quit their jobs, and sorted their reasons for leaving into seven basic categories:
Most employers, Branham says, believe their employees leave to make more money elsewhere. He found that's rarely the case. Instead, Branham says all these seven reasons generally can be traced back to one key incident on the job that shocked or deeply disappointed the employee. Like being refused time off, or being asked to do work that seems mundane or unimportant, or being chewed out in front of a co-worker. From that point on the employee starts to disengage from their job and employer. That employee may continue working for months or even years, but in a disengaged manner.
The important point I took away for workforce development programs is the importance of managing expectations on both sides of the employer-employee divide. When an employee has a shock that causes him or her to begin to disengage, it doesn't matter who was right. Perhaps the employer made the time off policy clear and the employee didn't understand it. Or perhaps the employer was violating the company's time off policy. What's important is that the employee has started down the road to leaving.
We work with people who may not have the best preparation for the workplace, so we may have to spend more time with them helping them to have realistic expectations. But the same is true on the employer services side - we need to help them develop realistic expectations of and policies for their employees.
The other major take-away from this book for our field is that surprisingly high number at the top of this post. If we compared our performance outcomes to the statistic that half of all American workers walk off the job within six months, would we really look so bad?
If the only time you think about truck drivers is when you're stuck behind one on the freeway, I'd like to recommend a book to you. In Uncommon Carriers, prolific author John McPhee turns his considerable talent to people who move the goods that make our economy run.
We may live in a knowledge economy, but we still have to eat. We clothe and entertain ourselves with goods no longer built in America, but brought here from places around the world. Our gadgets run on electricity, nearly a third of it generated by coal. This system works because of the people McPhee traveled with and writes about in this fascinating book.
Meet, for example, long-haul trucker Don Ainsworth.
Continue reading "Truck drivers and coal train conductors: old-fashioned jobs in a modern economy" »
Despite all that's been written about the federal faith-based initiative - both positive and negative - research is only just now beginning to trickle out on the effectiveness of services provided by faith-based organizations (FBOs). Charitable Choice at Work (Georgetown U. Press, 2006) is a new book by Sheila Suess Kennedy and Wolfgang Bielefeld that not only gives us objective data and analysis, but places the initiative in its historical and legal contexts. For a thoughtful, reasoned discussion of the issues and the facts, this book is a good place to start. Its focus on job programs is a plus for those of us in the workforce development field, but its applicability is much broader.
For starters, Charitable Choice at Work reminds us government contracting with religious organizations for social services didn't begin with the Bush administration or with its Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI). Federal and state agencies have a long history of contracting with Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish and other groups. Moreover, Charitable Choice originated under Clinton as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. So when President Bush says government discriminates against faith-based groups, he has to be talking about something else.
Most of the Bush FBCI has been enacted not by law but by executive order, and little of it has been tested for constitutionality. Supporters have argued that faith-based groups can provide more effective services at a lower cost - in part because of their purportedly large numbers of volunteers - and are more flexible and closer to the communities they serve. However, little research exists either to sustain or refute that view.
Kennedy and Bielefeld set out to begin that research. They analyzed data on contracting and performance of job training and placement programs in Indiana. Outcomes in these programs are relatively straightforward: Did the client get a job? Is the client working full time? How much is the client paid, and are there benefits? They also surveyed and interviewed managers at FBOs and in the government agencies overseeing contracts with FBOs. To just hit the highlights of their findings:
In comparing how Charitable Choice was initially implemented in Indiana, Massachusetts and North Carolina, Kennedy and Bielefeld found that our federal system has translated into wide variation on the ground. Indiana responded by developing a program to reach out to and train FBOs across the state. By contrast, Massachusetts officials reviewed the law, reviewed their record of contracting with FBOs, and concluded they were already in compliance and did not need to take action.
Kennedy and Bielefeld are professors at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Kennedy, a professor of law and public policy, has a somewhat unique perspective that informs this book. She once ran for Congress as an Indiana Republican, but she has also served as Executive Director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. Bielefeld is co-editor of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly and has written widely on nonprofit management.
One of the strengths of this book is that it takes both sides seriously and explains each from its own point of view. If we are to stop "talking past each other," as the authors characterize much of the debate on the faith-based initiative, Charitable Choice at Work can serve as a good starting point. However, the book also makes clear there are points on which the principles underlying faith-based social services will never square with the principles of liberal democracy.
The larger problem, Kennedy and Bielefeld argue, is that faith-based contracting has been sold as a zero-sum game where FBOs must compete with secular organizations for scarce resources. Instead, they say, we should be more concerned about the fact that job training, job placement and all the other social and human services making up our nation's "tattered safety net" are underfunded.
No matter what your opinion of the faith-based initiative, I think all of us in workforce development can agree with that.
I've just finished a fascinating book recommended by a Blogher reader: The Addictive Organization by Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel (Harper & Row, 1988). I found it while doing research on an earlier post about bad bosses, but this book looks at the organization more broadly.
I'm always interested in reading more on the field of what I call organizational pathology (recommendations, anyone?). TAO's subtitle says it all: Why we overwork, cover up, pick up the pieces, please the boss and perpetuate sick organizations.
Why do we, indeed?
Although TAO begins from the iffy "everyone's an addict" premise, it offers a useful lens to begin answering that question. Schaef and Fassel explain four ways in which an organization may be addictive:
In addition to describing the "symptoms" one might see in an addictive organization, TAO is peppered with good examples from Schaef's and Fassel's consulting work with companies, nonprofit organizations and even religious orders. As you read, you'll probably recognize people you've worked with or organizations you've worked for.
Whenever I see a leader go down in flames - Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Kenneth Lay, Dennis Kozlowski or William Aramony - my first thought is about all the people who worked for them and their organizations and made their nefarious deeds possible. These guys couldn't do what they did without a lot of help, and not since Nuremberg has "just following orders" been an acceptable excuse. TAO suggests some reasons why perfectly good, hard-working people might turn a blind eye to malfeasance, or even knowingly participate in it. For example, they might be co-dependents trying to "protect" a boss who's an addict. Perhaps they're addicted to the organization and the benefits it provides.
Schaef and Fassel recommend solutions that are definitely outside the mainstream of organizational consulting, centered around interventions that force the people in the organization to face their addictions and take responsibility for their own "recovery."
My major complaint about this book is one you may have read on this blog before: TAO is aimed at a white collar audience. Even though they provide some examples of pink collar co-dependent workers learning to stand up to addict bosses, most of the recommendations assume workers have more control over their day-to-day activities than many working class people do. Great for professionals, but what about the rest of the workforce?
