Invest in Character

You and Your Organization

Organizational values drive what an organization can credibly create. Pretending to be something you are not is neither honest, sensible nor feasible. Most people figure this out along the way and invest in becoming who they were meant to be. Investing in one’s own character is a good investment. Likewise, investing in the good character of leaders and team members alike creates value for organizations. They commit and they do not pander to political winds. Committing to values for yourself and your organization are not so different. People who have worked on their characters have prioritized what matters (and can be done well) over what feels good (or makes them “look” good). Not every good character is the same because individuals have different strengths and areas of influence and impact. This matters. Good people have different opportunities to bring good outcomes into the world.

Core Values are Critical to Organizational Success

Similarly, organizational values should be inherent in what can reasonably be accomplished over time, based on agreement and commitment. And just as individual character depends upon individual capability, so organizational values depend upon what an organization can credibly create, based on what they do well, not what makes an organization “look good.” The purpose and opportunities of the organization matter — a lot.

A Return to Fundamentals Values is Good news

Within this context, it is not a bad thing that so many U.S. companies have moved away from highly politicized, one size fits all “values” (DEI and ESG) and toward values more closely aligned with their individual businesses and strategies. The Wall Street Journal reported back in June on an unsurprising return to businesses doing what was best for them all along. The article described the return to core business values as companies “quietly ducking DEI to avoid backlash” but this may be overstating it. If you consider that somewhere between 75% and 94% of companies (depending upon the source) included some DEI acronym in their policies by 2024, there was likely a serious need to return to values that businesses can reliably be held accountable for.

Political Winds Blow, but Value Demands Consistent Approaches

This week, the WSJ editorial Board boldly declared that corporate flight from ESG is a juggernaut, adding that the return to business goals and away from goals that can only be described as politically motivated is good news for governance and stakeholders. Businesses need to commit to values they can achieve.

Politicized values are not real because, quite simply, because they are not realistic assessments by leaders of character about what organizations can actually achieve. A rush to pretend to be something you are not or do something you cannot is not honest, sensible or feasible. The sheer percentage of companies that hastily adopted DEI language after 2020 is evidence enough of a problem.

Tips for Refocusing on Organizational Values:

• Look at basics — what does the business do and how does it do it? What values need to be committed to in order to accomplish those goals effectively? Do organizational values relate clearly to the organization’s mission and purpose or is there a disconnect?

• Is there transparency, accountability, and pursuit of goals over time with report outs that are honest reflecting the good, bad and even ugly. This is evidence of leadership character (or the absence of it).

• Is there an attempt to use or to avoid language that has become politicized? The best language is the clearest about values, goals and results.

Education

Growing Concerns: Mismatch Between Training and Jobs

The Wall Street Journal predicts that 2026 will be the worse year in the past five for College Grads Employability based on employers ratings of the job market from fair to excellent. The bad news, of 183 employers surveyed, more than half predicted that the job market for college grads would be fair to poor. Reasons range from uncertainty among employers to jobs being taken by AI, but the outlook is not bright. Options for College grads include retraining or the long-time fail safe — more education in the form of graduate school. But which makes more sense?

Is Counter Cyclical Educational Enrollment Over?

A return to school is a predictable trend during economic downturns. Studies from downturns in the early 1990s, 2001, 2008, and 2020 all show this trend. Business school, law school or a graduate degree was traditionally seen as a hedge against unemployment in an unstable market. Economics explain this simply — the opportunity costs of education are low when jobs are more scarce. So it is the lack of availability of jobs that drives the return to education, with the hope of re-entry into the job market at a point of recovery at a higher salary level. This has been true of masters programs, MBA, PhDs and Law School. The jury is out on whether this is still a good bet, but I’ll be watching the numbers with interest. My suspicion is that success will be highly field and specialty dependent, and will depend also upon minimizing taking on debt, which remains a serious social problem and quality of life killer.

There are Opportunities in the Trades

While the jury is out on whether the trends toward graduate education will continue, we do know that we have massive needs in the trades. The WSJ reported today on the CEO of Ford’s remarks on the subject, which were very blunt about the opportunities for which we are not preparing young people.

The WSJ goes on to note that the imbalance in preparation versus need is staggering. “Only 114,000 Americans in their 20s completed vocational programs during the first 10 months of last year, compared to 1.24 million who graduated from four-year colleges and 405,000 who received advanced degrees. Yet recent bachelor’s recipients in their 20s were 5.6 percentage points less likely to be employed than those who finished vocational programs.”

We are Not Training for Job Opportunities

I have said before that Schools of Continuing Studies and other more practical training organizations have an advantage — they can offer in demand skills. The WSJ notes that “The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reported this month that one third of small business owners reported jobs they couldn’t fill, and 49% reported few or no qualified applicants for positions they were trying to fill. Twenty-seven percent cited labor quality as their most important problem.” In today’s education and employment marketplace, the one thing that is clear is that the old way of doing things needs to change.

Spaces of Opportunity for Education Providers:

• Anything “hands” on is more likely to be in demand and unimpacted by AI: Healthcare and skilled trades are particularly in demand.

• The NFIB called out the following areas as having serious labor quality issues: Construction, transportation, and professional services.

• Technology on which AI depends remains in demand including software developers, data security analysts, and data scientists.

Recommended Reading

• “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963

  One of history’s most persuasive calls to action to people of good character.

• In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies, by Thomas J. Peters, 2004 Eight principles for business excellence.

• Build a Business: Not a Job by David Finkel and Stephanie Harkness, 2025 A guide to scaling business through disciplines and organizational systems.

As always, I’d love to hear what you think.

Until next week,

Cindy