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When I hang up my shingle for good, I want to leave behind a world where more people earn their daily bread in human-friendly workplaces where they are productive members of productive groups.

It would be great if I could leave a world like that for my grandchildren. I'll have to move fast.

The oldest, Theodore, is 13 and his brother, Diego is 11. They'll be in the workforce in less than a decade. Baby Banks is not a month old yet. I've got about twenty years before he shows up for his first real job.

Here are some things I hope the boys and their friends find when it's time to join the adult workforce. They're not in any particular order.

I hope they join a solidly successful company. Nobody wants to be part of a losing or even a mediocre operation unless they're meeting the challenge of turning it around.

I've just spent a year studying companies who have been successful for a long time. So I want the boys to join a company that stays with a strategy that works, until it doesn't anymore. Those are usually good places to work because you can develop your skills and relationships without having to chase the latest initiative.

I also want that company to be able to abandon things that are doomed or just aren't working. In the 1920s, Sakichi Toyoda sold the patent rights for the power looms he made to a British company and gave the proceeds to his son to start a company in the auto business.

Atkins and Pearce was already a century old when that happened. They're in the textile business. Most of that business is now represented by abandoned factories and mills throughout New England and the South. But they've adapted through the Civil War, the expansion of the US, the transition to the Industrial Age and from that to the Information Age.

I want the boys and their cohorts to join organizations where the top leadership is part of the team. I want them to be blessed with leadership more concerned with company results and caring for the people than personal publicity and wealth building.

I want the company to run lean, like Nucor. They're a technology leader in their industry, without a research and development department. And even though they out-produce US Steel, they do it with an HQ staff that's 95 percent smaller and a "personnel manual" of only five items.

• Know the job,
• Ask questions and experiment.
• Share what you learn
• Do what it takes to be sure something goes wrong only once.
• Let us know how we can help

The company I want the boys to join should be one that knows what to measure to stay on top of performance. Enterprise Rent-a-Car is like that today, with their ESQi system taking timely measures of customer service at the branch level, then tying what they find into bonuses and promotions.

I want the boys to become part of a company who ties everything together. Today companies like Ritz Carlton have connected the dots of recruiting, initial training, ongoing training, development, and performance management to form a line straight to the kind of results they want.

By the time the boys hit their first big job, I hope there will be more companies where coercion is not the mainstay of management practice. I want it to be a place where the people who will work for a boss have a say in who that boss will be and the choice will be made on factors that indicate a likelihood of success. But I hope there are less bosses than now, only as many as are necessary.

I don't want much, just productive and people-friendly workplaces for everyone.

Boss's Bottom Line

No need to wait. You can do things today to make your team a model for the workplace of the future.