Leadership is ultimately about ensuring the survival and vitality of one's enterprise.

I thought about the leadership imperative one recent Indian summer morning as I was reading my local newspaper, The Oregonian, while having some work done on my car. A front-page article caught my eye ("If they finish high school, they stumble in college--Business leaders say Oregon's average schools and student success aren't good enough, but politicians say reforms may be too costly"). Here are some of the unhappy findings reported in that article. In Oregon, for every 100 students entering the ninth grade:

* 69 graduate from high school four years later. (US average is 68)
* 33 graduates go off college (US average is 40)
* 23 of those college students return for a second year (US average is 27)
* 15 of those attending college graduated with either a two- or four-years degree earned within six years. (US average is 18)
(Source: "The Educational Pipeline," National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, April 2004.)

If you think these data are anomalous just to Oregon, think again.

A Problem of National Proportions

Research from Deloitte Consulting indicates that across the United States only 72 percent of Caucasian students-- and just over 50 percent of African-American and Latino students -- graduate from high school. Of those who do complete their diplomas, Deloitte estimates only 32 percent of white high school grads -- and less than 20 percent of African-American and Latino graduates -- have the qualifications necessary to continue their education at the college level.

This is pitiful, but all the more troubling when one considers that 85 percent of jobs today require education beyond high school (compared to 61 percent just 15 years ago) and that 60 percent of future jobs will require training that only 20 percent of the current workforce possesses.

For public CIOs concerned with access to future sources of science and technology know-how, the troubling reality is that U.S. students have fallen far behind their counterparts in much of Western Europe and in advanced Asian nations like Japan and South Korea, according to BusinessWeek. In a speech delivered at Harvard University on March 6, 2006, U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker noted that the United States now ranks 25th in the world on math and science testing results. America is no longer a world contender

In recent years, the U.S. has compensated for its failure to adequately educate the next generation of its own students by importing brainpower. Our ability to continue to cover this competency gap may not be so easy in the future as improving economies in Asia, central Europe, and Latin/South America allow foreign students to "stay home." All of which makes me very anxious, because the renewal of our public enterprises in the future very much depends upon a talent pipeline that appears to be getting thinner in terms of volume, velocity and value.

Leaking Talent ...

Public enterprises face a challenge from the other end of the talent lifecycle as incumbent workers queue up for retirement. This brain drain/human capital deficit is well documented, driven by the first wave of retiring Baby Boomers. The predicament can be illustrated by a few projections:

* In the federal government today, there are more employees in their 60s than in their 20s.
* Nearly one-half of all federal workers are eligible to retire within the next five years, including two-thirds of supervisors and managers.
* At the state and local level, the problem is only slightly less daunting where just under half of the workforce will be eligible to retire in the next 10 years.
* The hardest hit will be the state of Washington, where 64 percent of state government's workforce will be eligible to retire.
* Compounding matters for many governments are the hiring freezes and downsizing initiatives since 2001. The reservoir of future leaders, managers, and