With five kids, two of whom are teenagers, I worry a lot about their futures (and my future having to pay for all of them!). How do we provide a balanced life for them to be responsible, ethical and hardworking? How do we instill qualities like compassion, empathy, and drive in the generation that has it all and wants it all faster?
I understand leading by example is essential and probably being consistent in parenting is equally essential. I am so fortunate to be in a long-term marriage with lots of family support around us and I have the financial capabilities to provide well for these children. But in no way am I the norm.
Reality is most families have financial constraints, many parents are divorced or separated and many have loads of issues that make them unable to be the ideal parent. The odds against our children turning out to be what we all want is staked against them before they are even born and in most cases, under circumstances that they have little control over early on in their lives.

This week I had the opportunity to take the kids to see the last concert for the Spice Girls. During this intimate setting with 50,000 + of my closest friends I learned many interesting things.

1) I am getting very old. Three days later my hearing and voice have still not recovered
2) That kids see things through different eyes than I do
3) That I’m not the only crazy mom who would buy an ugly cotton t-shirt saying “You wanna be my lover?” for $50… they were sold out!

The different eyes was interesting as I said to the kids, “Did you see how classy Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham) was compared to the others? She seemed so put together, so classy, so perfect.” Their reaction was, “Oh mom, you don’t know anything,.. she is useless . She can’t sing, she doesn’t dance like the others and she has no fun.” Personally, I thought that some of the others were a bit trashy, but what do I know?

So am I supposed to be trashy, outrageous and fun to set positive examples for my kids? I hope not. I just say a prayer that during the next 10 years, while I have teenagers, I can survive.

Mega deals with Lexis Nexis announcing their Internet buy of www.choicepoint.com. Further clarification that Equifax and www.talx.com were a great fit and one can expect many more roll ups in the “data “ industry. With www.ibm.com / www.cognos.com , www.sap.com / www.businessobjects.com and www.oracle.com / www.hyperion.com all merging in the last 12 months, there is more confusion and lack of an industry giant entering the HCM Metrics space. We see this void being filled nicely by www.doublestarinc.com and www.infohrm.com, who both seem to be getting a lot of well deserved attention and traction.

Last year was a very quiet one on the HRO front with minimal new deals announced. www.accenture.com like the majority of them, seems to be experiencing a bit of indigestion. www.hewitt.com has made significant strides in fixing the broken Exult Model and the stock price has increased 25% in the last six months. FMR (Fidelity), who has been relatively quiet absorbing past deals, is back with a very powerful management team led by Industry Rock Star Patrick Goepel. In addition, they have hired some very big names and wonderful contributors to fill out their management team. Focused on growing the large HRO client list and entering the SME market will be challenging but if the last 12 months are any indication of what they can do, they have a very high probability of becoming the largest player in this space.

Speaking of Industry Giants – Terry Terhark ... CEO and Founder of www.rightthinginc.com, has just done such an amazing job of building an RPO power house and really help to define and build this industry. With minimal staff turnover they have nailed most of the larger RPO deals in the industry and even salvaged some of the ones that have gone bad. You cannot and will not find a more honest and down to earth CEO, who is so passionate about this space and damned smart, than Terry. His recent acquisition of Airs will give them the ability to not only offer RPO services but also recruiter training and education, tools and a slew of other products to their client base as well as upgrade them. This is a great move on Terry’s part.

Finally, it looks like the days of www.workstream.com - and we have grown to either love or hate them - has come to the next stage. With the pending acquisition/merger with www.empagio.com, it looks like they may have finally found a new home. It is a very interesting firm with a full talent management suite, coupled with a very stable and large payroll/HRIS business; they will be the first vendor to really have it all. The issue will still be execution on marketing, sales, and of course the integration of technology from a fairly old code base to today’s standards. Not impossible, just a lot of heavy lifting .