I hate writing papers

Because they come out sounding like this:

"Almost every manager our group spoke to during our two-week tour reported that he or she was facing the following challenges:

• A lack of leadership abilities and management skills in the local workforce. Many U.S. companies and joint ventures expressed interest in installing Chinese management in their Chinese offices, but felt they could not find qualified applicants. The only candidates with leadership abilities were either expats, or Chinese nationals returning to China after earning an education, living, and working abroad.

• An inability to get employees to work effectively as a part of a team. Some managers attributed this problem to the first generation born under the one-child policy hitting the Chinese workforce, and the lack of team sports or team-based extra-curricular activities in the highly competitive Chinese schools and universities.

• An inability to retain employees. Most managers in China seemed to now realize that offering bigger and bigger salary packages to win employees or convince them to stay in their jobs is not sustainable, and these bidding wars are in fact part of the cause of high turnover rates.

Again, when I heard the China-based managers consistently bring up these themes, I was struck by similarities with the challenges that the human resources community has been facing back in the U.S. American employers are now seeing an onslaught of retiring baby boomers (a population of about 76 million), and a resulting lack of employee talent, especially leadership talent. This has left U.S. employers looking to younger employees and recent college graduates to fill the gap. This group (a population of about 80 million), dubbed "Generation Y" or the "millenials" by the media, has been broadly criticized for a lack of loyalty to organizations resulting in higher turnover, a lack of leadership and independent problem solving skills, and for being self-centered -- not being team-players. These problems are truly global business issues. The list of key human resources challenges on the desks of China-based managers, could almost be the same list found on the desks of U.S.-based managers."

I remember writing a paper about a Monet painting as an undergraduate. Why didn't I appreciate that more? Argh.