I have come to the conclusion that quarterly reports, as they are presently practiced, undermine efforts to build a business in a sustainable way. Put bluntly, they promote short-term decision-making and strategic goals among directors and managers as well as for shareholders.

I spent the last weekend of August in England speaking at the Greenbelt Festival. During my session on "Leadership," a woman in the crowd presented a tough dilemma. She explained that her first day back at work following the weekend she fully expected "to be made redundant" (to be fired). "I manage seventeen people; what should I say to them?" she asked, then added, "I certainly don't want my anger at my bosses to affect their job performance."

Forty-three percent of workers who are dissatisfied with their bosses plan to change jobs within a year.

That result from a recent CareerBuilder.com survey ? called ?The Boss: 2004? - should not come as a surprise. Over and over again I find that much of a worker?s experience on the job hinges on the relationship with one?s immediate supervisor.

A rising number of men in their prime career years are dropping out of the workforce.

Of late I?ve been noticing more men who, after dropping their kids off at school, go back to the house. I thought it was due to the fact that I live in Northern California where gender roles are more in flux than in other regions of the USA. But a recent study conducted by Jay Stewart, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, indicates that male joblessness is a national trend. In 1967, 2.2% of men age 25 to 54 spent the entire year without working for pay or attending school. In 2002 (the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Bureau) that figure rose to 8 percent.