|
|
SUSTAINABILITY, EQUITY, DEVELOPMENT SOMETHING ELSE: Survival Is Not An Option CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Workforce Development in the 21st Century
Web Site Home
|
The Blog |
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY
|
Maturing your relationship with your motivation for leading the LDP will involve
inquiry. You
are too intelligent and too slippery for me to nail this for you. You and only
you can crack this open. What Julie said about her department was a perfect
opening, perfect, for distinguishing existence systems, and what Eric said about
the shop was a perfect opening for illustrating the given way of being. The
room gave you opening after opening and opportunity after opportunity. You
missed them all. Why don't
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything?
If it works as well as prohibition, in five years Americans would be the
smartest people on Earth. Before I
was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there -- I always
suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being
shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. When your
time finally comes, God will not look you over for degrees or diplomas, but for
scars. The key
to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our
awareness.
What is education, or better, what is the purpose of education? Globally commonalities exist. Around the age of four to six, children leave the home to learn a core set of concepts and principles. The material consists of language skills written and oral, calculations (arithmetic), social studies. a taste of science suited to the culture, and massive amounts of socialization. The interaction with similar aged peers prepares them for adulthood. Children learn what works and does not work in a classroom, on the playground, on the bus, or in the village. One could call the first six or seven years a "critical core" without which an individual's ability to function in society suffers. Even the most "primitive" tribes have a process by which children become adults. The formal process (usually government funded) occurs at schools and is called "education." Education in general refers to the crafting of character morally, intellectually, and socially. That education crafts "character" is of paramount importance. Why pay to become a mechanical engineer at Princeton instead of going to the local state school? Why go to a ridiculously expensive place like Dartmouth or Tufts or Harvard? Does the Stanford engineer have something the University of Alabama engineer does not? I assert they've received similar training. The differential equations associated with heat transfer are the same at both schools. Carefully watch the face of an MBA graduate from Sloan, Wharton, or Kellogg when a colleague mentions he got his MBA at the University of Phoenix with web based courses. Are they being snobs? Consider that in many cases the name of the institution on the pigskin carries more weight than the field of the diploma. Why? The 21st century cries for us to deepen our awareness of what both children and adults require to achieve a quality of life in our society and effectively produce for their employers. Ineffective employees, ultimately, produce ineffective enterprises. From the 50s through the 70s The Cold War and a semi-miraculous era of enlightenment resulted in the United States making an unprecedented and extraordinarily productive investment in education. It transformed us into a super power. The investment started to atrophy in the 80s and has been ever since. Now the United States is falling behind regarding the productivity of its workforce when measured against that of other nations. Fully addressing the topic is beyond the scope of this publication. Plenty has been published and continues to be published. Robert Reich's The Work of Nations, written a decade and a half ago, provides an elementary overview of the concepts prerequisite to grasping what is happening in the global knowledge economy and its hunger for knowledge workers or "symbolic analysts" capable of working with new concepts and ideas and performing tasks that cannot be automated. Of equal importance, but woefully under-appreciated and under-compensated, are the technicians who translate the designs and ideas (or rather, repair them) into practical application in the workplace. Repetitive tasks that can be performed by programmed machines or easily followed by slave wage labor will be performed in these ways. Organized labor still struggles with this new reality. Efforts to raise wages above the value of the labor defy economic physics, and the solution involves raising the value of the labor the American worker can perform, and this involves not only addressing the quality of our k-12 and higher education systems, a topic many believe they understand, but also providing a mechanism for the ongoing upgrade of the already employed workers who must keep pace with advances in technology and the global economy in general. What are these mechanisms? Who trains the already employed worker with a full time job? In theory, large organizations create training departments and hire training staff to conduct courses custom designed for the context of their operations. In practice, some do and some do not, and those that do operate with varying degrees of effectiveness. As the size of a company drops, its ability to staff a training function also drops, and SAIAT's experience is that companies with less than 200 employees rarely have dedicated training departments. How do they train their workers? When Microsoft shifts from 2000 to XP to Vista, etc., who teaches the workers when the company "finally" bites the bullet and upgrades? Anyone? Quite often, not. It "just happens" and employees struggle for weeks or months, productivity dropping for a period of time, as the new system is assimilated. In certain areas, information technology being a good example, demand for such training grows to a level that can sustain For-Profit training organizations like New Horizons or the University of Phoenix, but where demand is not sufficient, either the training becomes cost prohibitive or it is simply not performed at all, and employers absorb the hit by "on the job" training that essentially tosses the employee into the pool to sink some, swallow water, make mistakes, but learn and keep learning, and lacking any alternative, employers tolerate the learning curve until mastery occurs. The Southern Arizona Institute of Advanced Training (SAIAT), using a modest subsidy, provided the "nook and cranny" training to deliver highly customized skills that filled gaps that naturally open in the workforce system of a community as technology and methodology advances. A For-Profit training institute only fills gaps that generate a sufficient rate of return. Without a SAIAT in the community, the gaps go unfilled. The concept is not that difficult to grasp, and many communities have created the SAIAT functionality as part of their workforce development and economic development programs. Albuquerque created an independently operating wing within its local community college. In Tucson, Pima Community Colllege CLAIMS to provide this function, but it does not, insisting (just like any For-Profit organization) that its business training operations generate the same rates of return. When the small Tucson businesses see the price, they decline the product, preferring to go without. I have seen this over and over again. Distinct from education, training is the surgically precise delivery of specific skills to meet a specific context inside the business case of an individual customer. Education and training have different semantics. Training can educate, and education can train, but they are fundamentally different. The existing conversation is obsolete. The Higher Education Act of 1965 created the notion that everyone deserves an education. Of course everyone deserves an education, but what education? We cannot send everyone to Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. We cannot make 1,500 institutions like these schools. Equally significant, the labor market does not call for such quantities of such workers. We have produced a "baccalaureate or bust" mentality in a world where many high school students know college is not an option, and we wonder why they stuff methamphetamines up their noses. Why learn algebra to stock shelves for Walmart? I am not the bleeding heart Democrat that wants the country to finance every child through a bachelor's degree. Cutting to the chase, the distinction between education and training has not sufficiently developed, and its development would introduce a greater appreciation for, and more significantly, the genuine legitimization of vocational or vocational like programs that lead to outstanding career opportunities that do not require four-year degrees or even necessarily two-year degrees. "Baccalaureate or bust" has to go. Addressing reality (again), we do not have the resources to send everyone to college. Instead of excluding them economically, we can and must craft alternate paths that lead to gainful employment. We can do it, and many efforts (JTED) have already started in this direction. SAIAT offered training distilled. SAIAT had nothing to do with education, offering one and two-day long (typically) courses in specific soldering techniques, using computer applications, installing various types of cable into residential and commercial buildings, and so on. SAIAT taught a clerk how to format a table in Word. SAIAT met with a customer and asked detailed questions to customize booster shot delivery of highly specific skills. Degrees, diplomas, and grades had no relevance. Can the clerk format the table or not? Can they use Fireworks to create mouse-over image swaps or not? The difficulty and depth of the material varies from the mundane to the very sophisticated. SAIAT has flown instructors into Tucson from around the world. Cigar Man said, "Take comfort in the fact that you never stood a chance." Some community leaders address reality. Suzanne Lawder of Goodwill Industries provided gainful employment and health insurance for disabled workers that were otherwise virtually unemployable, crafting tasks they could productively perform, such as the assembly of items into boxes to be packaged and mailed. She provided real people in hard times a life raft and rope that led to gainful employment with benefits. Dr. Vaughn Croft set up career shadow events where sixth, seventh, and eighth graders visited REAL work places to talk to REAL employees earning REAL wages with futures. The employees told straight and smart REAL stories about how one obtained the positions they had. My cousin John barely made it through high school. College occurred as ludicrous. John would not read David Hume. John did know something about reality. He knew how to cut grass and trim shrubs. He got good at it. People noticed. He had to hire help and show them how. He had to hire an accountant. He had to get an office. He had to get more equipment. He did not attend college. He has not read Faulkner, Descartes, or Plato. He has never seen a differential equation or a line of code. His house lists for more than five of mine. Employers cry with empty slots (machinists and many others) because our youth are not shown the paths to such jobs in a manner they can understand. Low SES does not mean stupid, but it often means unaware. Generalizing, low SES meant few resources, limited confidence, and a skeptical perspective on possibilities. An optimal workforce development system would start to interact with students as early as sixth grade, not forcing them into grooves with no escape, but with a constantly changing menu that adapts to the student's performance and preferences during progress. In the 21st century, an entire class of occupations is growing which for purposes here we'll call "technicians." They are the street savvy workers that have to make the products produced by the Ph.D's and the engineers actually work. We have not sufficiently legitimized these occupations which results in shortages. If my laptop has an issue, a computer scientist is the LAST person on the planet I would want to go near it. The person I call if I have a computer issue has no degree or even a certification. Rather than remain a woefully underpaid grunt, he formed his own business and now makes a fortune. We see the word "technician" emerging in many fields. Medical technicians, automotive technicians, computer technicians, and many others have become critical to our economy. Our education system must address the need for technicians and the ways to produce them. Our system commits a crime when someone fully capable of learning to be a medical technician adeptly performing echo-cardiograms ends up spending his life as a greeter at Walmart. Some of the simplest points to be emphasized:
The communities that implement a mechanism for offering employer demand driven customized non-commoditized training services will have a competitive advantage over those that did not. I created this hybrid. Tucson used it. TREO destroyed it so they could pocket its funding. So what happened, rubber on road, street smart day-to-day, at SAIAT? On March 23, 2007, thirteen employees in room 104 participated in Six Sigma training. SAIAT recruited and paid this instructor. On March 12, 2007, thirty three employees gathered in room 105. Here, however, our client paid the instructor the $15,000 per day to conduct the program. SAIAT furnished a single computer, a projector, two easels, a whiteboard, and made extra copies of some handouts. From March 24-26, four Tucson Water employees participated in ArcGIS Level 2 training. Tom McConnell, one of SAIAT's best subject matter experts, taught the course and SAIAT paid him. On April 2, fifty seven employees packed room 106 for extremely high end material on the grounding and shielding of electronic systems in accordance with very exacting military standards. This instructor flew from New York and was paid $45,000 to conduct the intense, two-day 7 AM to 5 PM program SAIAT's client hired the instructor directly, and the payroll of the participants in the room for the day topped $20 grand. Both hot breakfast and a high quality lunch were catered. They needed high speed internet wireless to everyone in the room, 57 people, at no charge. They needed a customized workstation for the instructor, high quality projector, two cat 5 cables, two portable white boards, three long tables in the front left corner with sufficient power for five custom built proprietary workstations tied to proprietary instrumentation boxes that required 24-hour lock down with motion sensing security protection, five easels, a screen, and a DVD player. During one class the instructor's laptop locked up. Did we have a machine he could use? Yes, but the files needed for the class were in the messed up machine. At SAIAT, your humble blogger could fire up the bad boy in safe mode, transfer the files to a flash drive, and then dump into our good box so the course could continue. Try that at the Doubletree. On Tuesday and Wednesday, May 1 and 2, 42 highly paid engineers packed 7 each around six customized pods each equipped with laptops that fed a separate monitor at the front of the pod so the other six could watch what the laptop operator was doing able to take notes without cramming around the laptop. Instructors at the front ran three separate applications each projecting onto a separate screen with their own machine and projector using high speed Cat 5 while the laptops connected using the wireless.
SAIAT began as a $1.2 M organization initially receiving the majority of revenue from government funding both directly and in the form of payment to conduct workforce development programs. This occurred during the period from its inception in late 2000 through the summer of 2003. Funding for workforce development programs declined dramatically in 2003, and SAIAT lost political support during this same year, resulting in slashed public funding for the organization in FY 2004. The organization lost $360,000 that year. Dramatic reorganization and a shift in focus restored viability to the organization at the reduced funding level of $250,000 per year. This model worked, and the company could operate indefinitely at this funding level, generating the additional $500,000 to $550,000 on its own to support its reduced $750,000 to $800,000 operating budget. Had the $250,000 funding continued, what I assert should have happened, the organization would grow as its business expanded, with the SAIAT portion climbing 10% or perhaps even 20% per year, providing the means to enhance outreach efforts. At the end of FY 2006, the company had accumulated significant capital poised to strike when the appropriate investments were identified to further promote the development of the local workforce, whether this would be a facility expansion serving Marana and/or Oro Valley, additional computer labs, or what I was really starting to seriously consider, a server farm on our high raised floor, video-conferencing, internet training services, web based training, the list went on. We were preparing for that. Those starting from scratch should learn from our mistake of starting so large. 17,000 square feet was ridiculous. Start with 5,000 square feet or so, three classrooms with one dressed to the nines with computers. It needs a good server and wireless internet, but Cat 5 should be everywhere. MSDN is worth it, but not imaging until you need it, which may never happen. Stay away from Vista until 2009, and yes, all machines should have XP Professional. Home editions are for homes. Forget Mac. The top executive and sales person require laptops, but no one else, and this is the ONLY purchase where the extended warranty they push is actually a good idea. Cancellation policy is absolutely vital. Screw it up and you are dead. Local subject matter experts will try to run around you and cut you out if you do not get them to understand the short term gain created a larger long term loss. Make them understand you will never use them again if they do this. This issue rarely exists for SME's you flew into town. Radio is as worthless as the yellow pages. Email is fantastic if properly managed and staff needs to be able to modify website content without the webmaster. You do not need a controller but do need either a good bookkeeper or an Operations manager who can handle the books. You cannot do the books. Watch the monthly bank statements yourself and check balances online. Give credit cards to the director, top sales person, and operations manager. Know the financials better than the person keeping the books and each close involved a meeting. If they produced ridiculous numbers except for perhaps the first one or two times, relieve them of this responsibility.
Manage passwords carefully. If you are very small err on the side of less security, not more. Everyone says different, but let someone else play security nut and get locked out of his own system. Understand every password in the institution. OK, great, you knew your password, but did you have the administrator password, not just the operating system, but all centralized applications. Do this everywhere. You sure about the admin password for Quickbooks? Sure? Host your own email, and yes, you need a firewall and virus protection. Do you know your IP addresses? No, you cannot afford a network administrator and you cannot afford IT professional rates. Figure something out. I did, and his name was Chris. You will have to get a Chris and know enough yourself to fully leverage his expertise on a budget of two to three hundred a month. If you are not IT savvy, don't even think about running a place like SAIAT unless your funding for tech support is four digits a month, and the first digit is not a one. For customized programs operate on course granularity and for public enrollment go with individual tuition and with individuals dollars are up front. Remember cancellation policy. For both clients and SME's go net 30. A hungry SME is a red flag. A greedy SME is redder. Only at the last, last, resort do you interact with the greedy. In this business, folks that operate strictly by phone and won't interact via email are problematic. They are hiding something, especially if the communication involves money. Be very clear and insure employees are clear that every email is cc'ing the Arizona Daily Star, New York Times, National Enquirer, and Michael Savage. Catering is super important and easier to screw up than you think. DON'T. People are very emotional about food. Water is also important. Buy it in bulk and sell it by the bottle. Do soda too, and way more diet than regular. Have a vending machine, a microwave oven, a public phone, and a lobby television showing what events are where. Someone looking disoriented is seeking the restroom. You will need bulletproof copier services and be sure the charges are made clear on the signed event confirmation sheets. Place key codes on the machines or customers will make their own copies without telling you. Tie copier charges to the course event, not the customer name, and record the name of the requester. Every room should have a satellite linked clock. They are cheap and loved. Master the event confirmation sheet. It is your contract. Buy light but sturdy furniture that is easy to move. Heavy furniture will make you think like a community college and slit your throat. Watching a community college try to dance is funnier than watching drunk aliens. Expect tables to be moved every night. Everything, and I mean everything, should be easy to move, and in the ultimate SAIAT even the walls would move to customize size for each event. If you bought chairs without wheels, resign at once and replace yourself with anyone. They can't possibly be as stupid. Computer labs are computer labs except when they aren't, and they aren't if no computers are in them. Speaking of computers, NEVER buy from a brand name except your two laptops. Go ahead, buy from Dell, Gateway, HP, whatever, and learn the feeling of paying $200 for a $25 part. Most people haven't figured this out yet. Have someone who has mastered the craft of building workstations build them for you with off the shelf components that are cheap and easily replaced. Oh, have plenty of switches and Cat 5 cable of varying length. Some folks either don't have wireless, or it is too slow for the stuff like a VPN into their own sites. Certificates are always important for public enrollment and rarely important for customized. Ask the customer every time. Instructors will not know how to work the projector or bring their own markers. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is after your money. Examine all invoices carefully, especially the catering and any equipment leases. When crafting customized programs the most important information up front are the number of days and the number of participants. Until you know these, conversations moving forward can be problematic and frustrating. Lock the number of days first and then scale the conversation regarding number of participants and the location. Try to find out if the client is working with a budget and if so try to learn what it is. With the SME's, always talk bottom line, especially the ones flying in from out of town and staying at hotels, and don't forget courseware. Did I mention software and cancellation agreements? A client will call to cancel an $18,000 event right about the time the $14,000 expert boards his plane for Tucson. Leadership rules. Management is dead. SAIAT is a 21st Century Knowledge Organization "where the work is open-ended, creative, individually styled, and highly demanding of a sort that cannot be standardized or planned in advance" (Bell, 1973). (The academics saw this stuff coming.) Knowledge workers are driven by internal commitment, strong identification with company goals, and intrinsic satisfaction from work (Kurda, 1992). Are they getting the job done or not? If they deliver including continuous improvement, your work is complete and you do more harm than good meddling in the way they organized to accomplish their accountabilities. Tell them what must be done and ask how you can help. For knowledge workers carrot and stick are obsolete and so are cement heads. You do not have the luxury of having staff that must be controlled. What inspires is the genuine experience of making a contribution and a difference for something authentically considered worthwhile. What will create a productive and unified team are the context, the relationships, and the support that come from authority, NOT COMMAND CONTROL. Office hours are eight to five except when they aren't and they usually aren't. Sometimes the operations coordinator stayed until seven, sometimes until three. Sometimes we closed the building at 4 PM, sometimes at 4:30 PM sometimes 8 PM. When we opened was more stable. Oh, and then we figured out we could save money by closing every other Friday matching the Raytheon practice. This kind of stuff drove Carol crazy at first but after awhile she got it. SAIAT was non-profit corporation that generated 2/3 of its budget on its own and used the 1/3 subsidy to meet gaps in local employer training needs that could not and would not be filled by any other training provider. Have a CPA and an attorney ready on an as needed per use agreement. Use the attorney as rarely as possible and the CPA once per year for the audit. Meet him a month or so before the audit to get a checklist for the bookkeeper and yourself. Both relationships are important. Don't assume last year's checklist will work this year. Make sure the CPA and the bookkeeper know each other professionally. Have a great board chair who understands a board and what it is supposed to do. Although dead, during FY 2007 I did have a strategic plan. The cement heads didn't think I had any idea where I was headed. I did, but it wasn't published. My strategic plan fully crafted in December for FY 2007 based on the slash in funding consisted of the following: 1. Plan
my own exit. I'm out of here. Announce in May for June 30, 2007. There were
many action items I will spare the reader involving IT resources, cell phones,
data files, documentation, and others. What lit my fire was the hybrid organization that made two-thirds of what it needed and used that other third to do heart rendering services for Southern Arizona businesses that no for-profit company would do. I liked helping Anne, Steve, Judy, Barb, Pam, John, and many others. My vision was not that complicated. SAIAT was a "Goodwill Industries" and a "Red Cross" for employers with difficult training challenges that could not be met by those organized for profit. My vision was a non-profit training institute with a heart for helping people and companies. SAIAT was not about its own profit. SAIAT was about increasing the profits of southern Arizona businesses. Let's look at TREO's blueprint for economic development. Turn to page 13 and look at the first bullet under item #2. I quote directly: Create an employer driven demand side workforce development initiative that identifies skill gaps and specific employer needs, then aligns necessary educational and training resources to fill those gaps. REALITY. How does one do this? So they want to identify skill gaps? How? How about a website? We tell all the employers in town to go to website and submit information specifying what their employees don't know but should. Better yet, have the website include all of the training providers in town and what skills they teach. We should advertise the thing to make sure everyone knows about it. Let's pay Bablove Ridgewood Workgroup $50,000 to develop this cool, blue streak we can pay Clear Channel $300,000 to plaster on billboards everywhere, "Training, Accelerated!" with the blue streak and Joe's face. What gaps? Let's be generous and grant them the ability to really learn the gaps. I will help us here by specifying real world gaps with real world employers with real world employees having real world salaries that need real world training to obtain real world skills. No cloth, no fabric, no ramping up with impossible to saturate positions and millions of dollars arriving later this year. Want to taste reality? - A
local web design place wants two gals trained on Javascript and the bridge
between Dreamweaver and Fireworks. They have eight hours, $700, and want it
taught on their Macs in their office. Okay, Bert. A property manager wants to watch you hit the above pitches. The real gaps you will never find are listed above. Handle them. How does one find the experts? After finding them, how should they connect to the client without risking their cutting you out of the deal? What happens if one is heavy handed about this? Sure? Courseware? Software? Contracts? Food? Configuration? Did I mention cancellation agreements and confirmation sheets? Can one teach the two ladies for $700? People talk about workforce development. Regarding the soldering training, how does one obtain what equipment. Microscopes are required. What kind? Any books or pamphlets involved? The instructor has to be IPC certified. Can it be done for $1500? How does one get what the students will solder? Got safety? Can the soldering be done on just any surface? Got lights? What were K and I rushing to assemble just before a class in Chapter Seven? Moving to the third bullet, how to find a high end instructor for C# on a .NET platform? The client's place or somewhere else? The current machines have XP on 2.8GHz AMD dual core Athlons with a G of RAM. Will that work? Are the machines running XP or Vista? What does that mean? A LOT. Moving to the fourth bullet, who teaches street smart statistics to an ASQ exam? What do they charge? Can they do Saturdays? Textbooks or handouts? On Saturday, March 3, 2007 at 11 AM, I met Judy at a coffee shop in Oro Valley. Judy, almost 80 years old, was a master who had met the Masters in the Middle East. Judy had done postures in India, silence in Tibet, and had danced with the dervishes. She could, in fact, teach dances few have seen. Certain folks with a certain perception, and Judy was one of them, knew knowledge the mind could not think, consciousness beyond the limitations of thought and language. Judy had three PhD's (how many women did this in the fifties?) and decades of the real thing. We spoke for over three hours, and it was the richest and deepest conversation I have ever had in my life, even more powerful than the 1992 conversation with Marion. Judy could see the marrow in my bones and the root of my soul. Anyone who considered men spiritually superior to women had their head up their ass. The infinite was not gender biased. Exactly one week later, a certain set of folks with a certain perception gathered together at Judy's house to help pack up her things. Matt was leaving SAIAT, and Judy was leaving Tucson. At 1 PM on Saturday, March 10, 2007, a certain group raised small glasses of Larressingle and toasted Judy, a master, and bade her safe farewell. We hugged goodbye, kindred spirits, and I wished her a safe trip. My eyes welled up with gratitude for having had the honor and the privilege of having met and interacted with such a human being. Dancing differs from marching. Glenn Perry could march. Duane Vild could march effectively. When Duane voiced the opinion that I was inept, he was not lying. From his perspective, my fluidity and lack of structure looked like chaos and disorder. I have spared the reader most of staff drama, but suffice to say that to succeed at SAIAT one had to dance, not march. Marchers would not last. We were too fast. We all shared over a dozen hats that changed heads daily. An employee that remarked, "That's not my job" about something they were capable of doing and needed done might as well pack their bags. SAIAT had zero tolerance for phonies and even less for prima donnas. Our elected officials had created a non-profit 501 c3 organization to serve the community's customized business training needs, and we created an organization with a culture designed to serve this function. This customized work required financial support. Given our particular lease and facility, we required $250,000 per year. We made the other $1/2 M ourselves while providing extraordinary workforce development services performed by no one else. On Thursday, April 12, we had the first cement head free board meeting in over a year. What a refreshing experience. We invited staff to participate and everyone got to share their activities. On April 28, I received the fantastic news that certain efforts had borne fruit. The receptionist had obtained another position that would start health coverage on 6/1/2007, the day after SAIAT's coverage expired. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: THE BOARD: I cannot speak highly enough of certain board members without whom the place would have simply closed in 2003 or early 2004: Steven Juliver, Wayne Lundeberg, John Rix, Fred Orozco, Suzanne Lawder, Carol Somers, and of course, Vaughn Croft. Both board chairs found themselves having to devote extraordinary amounts of time trying to do the right thing for the community. Both Carol and Vaughn performed duties professionally and frankly, both were called far beyond the typical scope of work for such a position. The board members were not paid a cent. The 10 greatest experiences of my career as of departing SAIAT:
The 10 most terrifying and / or otherwise horrible experiences:
I'd changed the date on my letter of resignation from SAIAT almost a dozen times. Now the document would launch. I updated the date to May 15, 2007, effective June 30, 2007, just a little over six years with the organization. That summer TREO took all remaining funds. SAIAT closed in November. The press said nothing. |
