The Cox School of Business and the Bank of Texas Business Leadership Spotlight series hosted one of the most distinguished guests of the year: Fortune magazine senior editor-at-large Geoffrey Colvin. Colvin gave a lecture and students, faculty and members of the Dallas business community were also able to ask questions afterwards.
The lecture began after introductions from Kevin Knox, assistant dean of external communications for Cox, Fred Ball, Chairman and CEO for Bank of Texas, and Fred Perryman.
Colvin began his lecture by reading several headlines from the day’s local newspaper. Colvin said that all of the articles and headlines addressed current business and global economy issues. In particular, the immigration rallies can be directly related to American businesses.
“More and more Americans are feeling competition for jobs,” Colvin said. “This is mostly due to a change in the global economy.”
In addition, Colvin stated that outsourcing is becoming more popular because huge amounts of work can be done anywhere in the world.
“We are losing manufacturing jobs simply because it is taking less people to make more stuff,” he said.
Colvin also related specific situations to the broad topic of the changes in the global economy. He explained that people, culture and relationships are some of the main sources of an organization’s competitive advantage. This is surprising simply because companies don’t take into account other sources, such as patents.
More importantly, Colvin stated that most people and companies are in the same business.
“We are all in one business,” he said. “We are concerned with attracting, developing and evaluating people.”
However, evaluating people can become a problem. Failure to act on such evaluations can eventually “poison an entire organization,” Colvin said.
Colvin then moved into talking about younger generations in America. He claimed that the best young workers are looking for organizations that are successful, offer trust and are trusted by others, and have a sense of purpose.
In addition, Americans can respond to this global labor change by bettering education at a younger age. Colvin believes that by improving K-12 education, the United States can change problems it has had before.
Although Colvin is aware of the problems we are experiencing on a national and global level and some solutions, he is still skeptical of the future.
“The economy is changing so fast that I hesitate to even look a year into the future,” he said.
Colvin has worked with Fortune since 1978 and is the moderator for the Fortune Global Forum. He also co-hosts “Wall $treet Week with Fortune,” which reaches the largest television audience of any business program in America. In addition, he broadcasts daily on the CBS Radio Network.
