In praise of Frank Glassner

Who? Frank Glassner is a corporate board consultant of considerable note. He is also a friend. I met Frank while on the board of New Century Financial Corporation. Prior to Frank I thought board consultants were a waste of time and money. My previous experience on other boards was that consultants offered little of value and were only hired to parrot whatever the CEO wanted to hear. Boy was I wrong. Frank was bold and brash and seemingly didn’t care whose toes he trod on.

His blog speaks of his boldness and opinions. His views on DEI must have come as a shock to many boards. I recommend his blog to all and encourage all to subscribe to it. When I told him of my experiences in today’s classroom he said that he had a forthcoming blog that seemed like I wrote it. I told him that every student printed and had abandoned script. I said that when I announced that my exams were essay, short answer and problems that 6 students immediately dropped. One student told me that she had never had an exam other than multiple choice/true false in her four years at the university. I told him that of the 53 students than only at most 30 showed up for the lectures. The others looked at the recorded lecture online. It was the virtual generation. Twenty seven never picked up an exam. Eleven never took a quiz. I put five words on the syllabus that students could not misspell or else I would take off points (capital, principal, receive, yield and guarantee). Students continued to misspell them throughout the course and complained that “this is not a spelling bee.” When I received the evaluations, only 24 of the 53 deigned to fill out the form – and the forms were sent online. When I was on the faculty, we had to hand out the forms during class, get a student to volunteer to take them to the office and then leave the room. Now it is done online but yet less than half bothered to respond. Of the 24, six hated my guts. That was to be expected. What was not expected was that only 10 said that I responded in a timely manner to emails while six said that my response was nonexistent. Yet going back through my files, I noted that I responsed to each email almost immediately and during the term only 8 students had even emailed me once. So WTF? There were some very smart students in the class but I was apalled by the lack of intellectual curiousity. What hath we wrought?

But here are some of Frank’s musings. His are a lot more wordy than mine and may be a bit more worthy as well.

https://compensation-in-context.ghost.io/?ref=compensation-in-context-newsletter

https://compensation-in-context.ghost.io/dumb-and-dumber-how-america-graduated-with-honors-in-the-death-of-excellence-and-became-a-nation-of-participation-trophies-scantrons-and-unparallel-parking/

https://compensation-in-context.ghost.io/dei-unraveled-the-rise-fall-and-reinvention-of-inclusion-the-veritas-view/

https://compensation-in-context.ghost.io/the-flying-homeless-how-prestige-disappeared-from-the-skies-and-so-did-everything-else/