Nine Shift

NineShift time warp: Time speeds up, slows down

It seems that too many people still do not see how fast things are changing.

In talking with several planners, one at a major decision maker at a huge university, the focus is on the next year, the current budget deficits, and using the past to predict what the next ten years will be like.

So wrong. Between 2000 and 2020, time both speeds up, and slows down.  On the one hand, the next decade will go quickly.  On the other hand, 2011 will be so different from 2009 that this year will seem the distant past in just 24 months. 

For example, 12 months ago would you (or anybody, including the most optimistic train advocate) predict that funding for trains this year would be $8 billion?   Would anyone two years ago predict that MSNBC would say in 2009 that telecommuting is "the mainstay of corporate America"?     That online grocery services with home delivery would be revived.   That the iPhone would be invented. On and on.

There are people whose job it is to plan for their institutions or states for 2020 and 2030.  This is both so close, and so far away, that planners need to think big and wide and dream huge.  Because the Industrial Age is now crumbling so quickly that the new infrastructure for society has to be planned and built soon, like before 2020.

General Motors: Biggest lie of the year?

It's early, but already we have contestant for the biggest lie of the year 2009.

No big surprise: General Motors.  According to The New York Times last week, "General Motors vowed on Wednesday that its latest request for federal aid would be the last." 

Actually the sentence continues after the word "last" to say "it would need to carry it through the biggest reorganization in its history."  If "reorganization" is another word for "collapse" or "demise" then fine, otherwise, two big lies in one sentence. 

The bigger question is how long the American public is willing to throw money down the dark Detroit hole and how many billions the U.S. is willing to throw down before the federal government gives up and writes off its own self-created toxic asset.  Your guess?

New high for readership of NineShift blog

Friends, we just went over 100,000 page views for the blog.  And more than 800 comments have been made.  Readership now over 2,000 a month; or over 67 per day.  Latest coverage of NineShift from an Australian blog that carried four NineShift stories this week.  Thanks for all your support!

Last cell phone to get radio

Julie tells me I have the last cell phone that still gets radio.  Nobody else wants to listen to radio on a cell phone.  It has served well listening while waiting for planes in airports, or walking in woods out of cell phone range. 

But Julie is replacing it with a BamaBerry this week.  The old cell phone with radio kinda like the steam powered car and silent movies of 100 years ago.  A transitioning and transitory invention between the two ages. 

Question: do you think regular airwaves radio (called "wireless" 100 years ago) will disappear as well?

Breaking news! High speed rail gets first big funding!

   High speed rail advocates went to bed Thursday night chagrin, and woke up Friday morning ecstatic as Congress overnight tripled high speed rail funding to $8 billion.

  

It's a start. That's what we need. Up to 23 states would like some or all of that money. Just the California High Speed Rail Line needs $10 billion in federal monies.  But as soon as one high speed rail line is built, ridership will zoom on it, and the demand for more federal funding will grow. Thurs Feb 12, 2009: a big big day in the history of the 21st century!

Time to write Sen Arlen Specter (R-Pa), Sen Olympia Snowe (R-Me) and others and say thank you to them for boosting high speed rail funding.

Photo: Click on it to enlarge it. This map identifies the 11 rail corridors that will get built first.

Is the higher education model broke?

"We may be getting to the point where there will have to be some basic change to the model."  President Mark Yudov, University of California, New York Times, Nov 3, 2008.

Is the higher education model broke?  Let us count the ways.

Endowments have been skyrocketing (will resume skyrocketing after the recession).
Endowments last year totalled $300 billion. 
Total student/past loans were $150 billion.
Meaning colleges could pay off the student loans for everyone in the whole country.

Student tuition keeps rising as a percentage of institutional income. While colleges pocket money in endowments and buildings, they make students pay more than they can afford.  If the price of milk rose like college costs over the last 30 years, a gallon of milk today would cost $15.

Plus:
-Too many costly obsolete buildings.
-Some 50% of higher ed expenditures is reportedly in overhead.
-Faculty do not work from home, so productivity is down 25% while office costs go up.
-Not enough classes are hybrid, so classroom space is not well utilized.
-Faculty only teach 55% of their paid time, spend too much time in meetings.
-Then there's parking lots, sports, lawn care, janitors, dorms and dining rooms. Let me guess: over half of higher ed expenditures have nothing to do with learning (what's your guess or numbers?)

Is the higher education model broke?  And how would you fix it? Tell us your thoughts now.

Five learning habits that hurt women

In a premiere, Julie Coates and I introduced innovative ways to help women learn more in school and college.

The problem is not at all about graduating. The problem is about learning. And about learning habits that will help women succeed in the work force.

Here's what Hannah Seligson, author of New Girl on the Job, says women learn in school that hinders their success in the workplace:
* Perfection. "Women are more likely to define competence as perfection."
* Lack of priority. Everything is important to women, but not to employers.
* Too detailed. Women focus too much on details.
* Failure seen as bad.
* Work martyr. Last one to leave the office. 

Now in school/college, these learning habits are rewarded. Women get A's and A+ for them. But in the workplace, they hinder productivity, profitability and women's careers.

Julie Coates, my amazing co-author, found a study confirming one of the female learning habits. A study in Israel found that females studying math preferred lower level courses where they could great grades, to much higher level courses where they would learn more, but not get as good grades.

And she cites a Wake County, NC, school district that tried to remove attendance and good behavior from grading. The parents of girls protested strongly.  Next check out our post from Jan 23 on the four ways to help women learn more.

Is the government investing or just spending?

Our first NineShift prediction of 2009.  An investment, we would all agree, is something that provides payback 20 years or so from now.  But there is still no majority opinion about what constitutes "investment" for society in the 21st century.

Other spending, which gets us nowhere, is not investment. It is just spending.

Question for you:  how much of the forthcoming infrastructure and stimulus funding plan do you think will be "investment," and how much just spending?

Here's our guess:  10% for investment.  And we would be extremely happy with that!  Now tell us your guess.

Secret Revealed! How to Become a Futurist

People have called me a futurist, even a visionary. They marvel at how NineShift can predict the future.
Now I will reveal my secret. So you too can become a futurist.

Here's the secret: Every year, right about now, I go to the public library and find out what happend 100 years ago in the upcoming year. Then I predict the same thing will happen again 100 years later.

Having just read all about the year 1909, you can now go ahead and ask me about what will happen in 2009.

Photo: Me receiving my crystal ball and futurist certificate from the master himself, when I was living in Kansas.

Bring NineShift to your organization!

"I'd trample my grandma to hear Draves speak."  Phil Housel, Kerrville, Texas.

Bring NineShift to your organization!

* Keynote your next conference
* Facilitate strategic planning with decision makers
* Speak at business events
* Present for staff development days, and more!

Just email William Draves directly at draves@lern.org