The political conventions are upon us and the rhetoric and hype is at an all time high. We hear talk about issues but how about this one

In roughly 42 years our county will be bigger by about 44% or 135 million people. That roughly equates to the population of Mexico and Canada picking up and moving to the US. Much of this growth is forecast to come from immigration and the children of immigrants. I know this is a hot button issue for many people but let’s not go there. Where I do want to go today is infrastructure and leadership.

The research indicates that assuming the same ratio of population to infrastructure that exists today, the United States would need to build and pay for 36,000 schools. We would need to develop enough land to accommodate 52 million new housing units, along with places for the people who lived in them to shop and work. We would also have to construct enough roads to handle 106 million more vehicles. In other words, there is some serious work to be done. Have you been in rush hour traffic lately?

What about the implications for business? How will you lead and supervise this increasingly more diverse workforce? I am not so bold to hope that this election will answer the issues noted above. I am bold enough to suggest that you must consider new approaches to remain competitive in this changing landscape. At FireStarter our team is looking at new ways to deliver programming to attendees who are more diverse every year. I don’t have the answers but I know we must look for them because what we are doing today may not serve us as well in the future. You owe it to yourself, your business, and your employees to analyze why you are successful and how you will be successful in the coming and changing America.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 2:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.