On a recent flight I was able to catch up on a few things and one of them was a recommendation from a good friend to check out Mike Rowe’s TED video on the the value of work (or lack thereof). I was excited not only because Dirty Jobs is a favourite show of my son and I, but I believe in what Mike does and portrays – the deep value of a days work. I and my colleagues write about social business, innovation, collaboration and so on and there is talk about ROI on workforces and bottomline. And of course those items are paramount for the c-levels who have to make these cap-ex decisions but often what is overlooked is not that we can do our jobs better, faster and so on but that we get a better value out of the 8 or 10 or 12 hours that we spend working each day.
When I go in to companies to talk about collaboration I talk to people who are passionate about what they do and about what their peers do as well. Good leaders see the benefit of the the next guy/gal before they see the paydirt for themselves. They see beyond that idea that they can do things faster or get more done – just to do more. They see how what social business software can do to allow them to get more value out the day.
And lastly he talks about the fade of focus on the trades. I see many roles in IT true trades so I thought I would drop a few links about what companies are doing to help build these IT trades w/o post secondary options needed:
IBM: High School program that allows students to leave with an AS and head out to a highly needed resource pool.
https://www-927.ibm.com/ibm/cas/hspc/Welcome/index.shtml
MIT WTP: MIT’s program to immerse women in tech
http://wtp.mit.edu/
These are just a few notable ones but there are technology tracks in HS’s all over the country.
