Earlier this week I was accepted into as a Fellow in the StartingBloc Institute for Responsible Leadership.
StartingBloc is a national educational non-profit organization working to advance responsible and sustainable business practices by developing the next generation of innovative young leaders. This is accomplished through the Institute for Responsible Leadership, a training program during the Spring semester consisting of 4 daylong Saturday training sessions. The Institute trains outstanding young leaders from across the country to be responsible and engaged future civic and business leaders. By working with the leading business schools, StartingBloc is able to provide a business education to undergraduate students and young leaders seeking to excel in their careers and professional lives following university.
I will complete a business leadership training program focusing on cutting edge topics at the intersection of business and society. Fellows are provided with the training and skills necessary to become leaders and agents of change within their future companies, organizations, and communities. Four key areas of training cover 1. Sustainability 2. Corporate Citizenship3. Social Entrepreneurship4. Global Economy
I am really pumped because I will be attending these sessions at the following top notch business schools:
-Yale University School of Management
-Columbia Business School
-The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
-New York University Stern School of Business

I will be sure to blog each of these topics as they are sure to be thought provoking and mind expanding.

It's YOUR Education!

Consider this quote from Tom Peter's Blog:
"Whatever be the qualifications of your tutors, your improvement must chiefly depend on yourselves. They cannot think or labor for you, they can only put you in the best way of thinking and laboring for yourselves. If therefore you get knowledge you must acquire it by your own industry. You must form all conclusions and all maxims for yourselves, from premises and data collected and considered by yourself. And it is the great object of [our educational institutions] to remove every bias the mind may be under, and to give the greatest scope for true freedom of thinking."~Joseph Priestly (1794)
I think that this quote is amazing and gets right at the heart of what the education system is supposed to do. The purpose of the educational system ideally should be to facilitate the desire of the student to learn not to impart knowledge. I suppose that is what college is all about, but I don't think that the elementary and high schools do a good enough job of stressing this point. Consequently, when students get to college they are not ready to think on their own, develop their own thoughts and hypothesises and opinions. Some students come around, but I see far too many in college just seek knowledge because they will be eventually evaluated on their knowledge of it. Still there is no altruistic desire for knowledge (for the most part) in today's college graduates.
Tom's comments section are chock full of different views of the quote.

Economics and Religion, Connected More Than You Think

I am hopelessly behind in my periodical reading. I took some time this Christmas break to catch up and I came across an intersting article in the December 6, 2004 issue of BusinessWeek. The article was entitled "Economists Are Getting Religion".
Although Adam Smith delved into religion in his 1776 work, The Wealth of Nations, comtempory economists have undertaken the study of religion related to economics. Modern economists have defined the "Faith Market" as the various faiths as the 'producers' that tailor their products to choosy 'consumers' (the adherents). Producers of religion compete for "customers" seeking converts, drawing members from other congregations, and combating the pull of secular society.
Just as economist favor free trade, they also favor the free trade of religion. Moreover, the United States was the first free market for religions. For this reason, according to experts, the United States has been largely spared from religious extremism. Laurence Iannaccone from George Mason University recalls that in The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote that competition among faiths would make religions "free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism."
I think it is safe to say that Adam Smith was on to something when he wrote The Wealth of Nations. In the pluralistic religious environment of the United States we do not exprerience such intense fanaticism like we are seeing in other parts of the world today. Maybe as the countries that are experiencing such extremism begin to open their markets they will also open their "religious markets" and the suicide bombers and the like will end once and for all.

I just finished Lucky or Smart? by Bo Peabody. It is a fantastic book and a very quick read about whether you need luck or smarts to succeed in entrepreneurship.
Bo writes:
Luck is a part of life, and everyone, at one point or another, gets lucky. Luck is also a big part of business life and perhaps the biggest part of entrepreneurial life. At the very least, entrepreneurs must believe in luck. Ideally, they can recognize it when they see it. And over time, the best entrepreneurs can actually learn to create luck.
Most importantly he writes that in entrepreneurship it is critical to be smart enough to know when you are getting lucky!

A New Year's Resolution, Full Engagement

It was two days before New Years, there were eight inches of fresh snow on the ground, a log in the fire, and I was just about finished with The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr. Here is a brief description from the book:
We live in digital time. Our pace is rushed, rapid-fire, and relentless. Facing crushing workloads, we try to cram as much as possible into every day. We're wired up, but we're melting down. Time management is no longer a viable solution. Managing energy, not time, is the key to enduring high performance as well as to health, happiness, and life balance.
The book goes on to describe how through research of the world's top athletes we can learn how to manage our energy with very defined rituals where we take time to rest and recoup physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
With this said I have made the following resolution to not manage my time better but manage my energy (in all its forms) in such a way that I can be more effective and "fully engaged".