How many of you enjoy your jobs? Good for you if you say "I do!" However, you are part of the dying breed in America these days. The relatively young executives in a lot of large companies would like everyone to believe they are doing their best to make work environments better. That is great news! But there are a few things I have learned so far in life though. One, talk is cheap. Two, put your money where your mouth is.

I have not seen their talk actually being applied. No, really, I don't see work environments getting better, I don't see people getting happier with their companies and I don't see people staying at companies as long as they had in the past. Below I have included a link to a good archive from the PBS Nightly Business Report backs up my statements.Commentary: A Profile of the American Workforce

Am I saying that Americans have the right to slack off at work? Absolutely not! So what is my solution? I can't honestly tell you what my solution is. But I can tell I am slightly nervous as to direction we are heading now. Some people say we are at the pinnacle of a society. Others will say we are in the midst of a correction. Still more will say that America has its problems but is the best country in the World to live in. I cannot confirm nor deny any of these statements. I have not lived in every country and I don't take other peoples statements at face value.

What I have seen is what is described in yet another article from the Night Business Report (Reeling Retirees Back To Work). We are losing our top decision makers, creators and scientists. We are focusing on people that have gone through our education system and gotten all their degrees rather then how much success they have achieved. Funny at it might be but the country was not built only by people with degrees if they were lucky enough to be educated at all. A lot of our top leaders and founders of companies where educated by the school of life. It is ironic that, short of creating the next ING, Thomson or Microsoft, you will be hard pressed to reach a top level leadership position.

Is there a correlation between the increased amount of education and the depreciating level of quality leaders? Will we replace our top engineers and scientists in the next 10 years? Will we just outsource our intelligence to India, China, Germany or other countries instead of fixing the problem with education here? Will we improve job satisfaction and pay? Will we value the people that "do" more then we value the people that say they can but don't?

Answers to the questions above would be assumptions or best guesses. However, thinking about these questions and asking more is a healthy exercise. Let's all remember that "too many cooks spoil the soup."