Functional illiteracy

Was listening to the Marketplace a production of American Public Media and heard a somewhat disturbing snippet on functional illiteracy. The piece is clearly consistent with challenges in Corporate America as much as the American Education movement.

Bad news for US competitiveness

A report out yesterday says 25% of Americans are functionally illiterate because teachers aren't being taught to teach reading. And that's bad news for the US economy. Hillary Wicai reports.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/05/23/AM200605236.html

It is rather strange to walk into organization these days where vendors present results and recommendations to business partners… where is accountability and ownership? It gets worse in the pseudo technical organizations. These are ones that are not really Engineering or R&D but supporting line functions through financial analysis, analysis of business drivers, etc.

I often wonder what causes this and the only plausible explanation that seemed to make any sense was… The financial measures we learn in B-Schools discount the intangible measures today’s managers and leaders reinforce the financial metrics of doing business a certain way? A culture of disconnect between measurement and management. The cause effect hypothesis starts with a manager who has a limited functional background develops an outsourcing plan to generate savings leads to hiring of individuals to manage projects with the outsourcing vendor and communication to business partners while discounting functional expertise.