The Skills We Forgot To Teach
In this Forbes article, The Skills We Forgot To Teach, Forbes Councils member and GLSS + Kure Founder & Chairman Karlo Tanjuakio explores the critical need to balance efficiency with ethics. Initially drawn to efficiency as a tool for control and productivity, the author later realized that efficiency without ethics often leads to harm, not progress. Examples such as hospitals streamlining paperwork while delaying patient care or corporations automating layoffs show how systems can scale the wrong outcomes. The missing link, the author argues, is the ethical compass—teaching young people not just how to be fast or effective, but how to ensure their improvements serve humanity, not harm it.
The article highlights powerful student-led examples from Waipahu High School in Hawai‘i that bring Ethical Efficiency™ to life. One student tackled teen obesity by linking stress to eating habits and designing structured meal interventions that led to dramatic drops in both BMI and stress. Another student used glucose analytics to create culturally relevant, personalized diabetes care for Filipino adults, significantly improving blood sugar control. These projects didn’t just improve individual lives—they demonstrated how empathy, systems thinking, and data can combine to address root causes in meaningful ways.
Ultimately, the article argues that we must move beyond teaching students to perform and begin teaching them to lead with purpose. Ethical Efficiency should be foundational, not optional. As future leaders, today’s students will inherit systems that need transformation. If we equip them with both the skills and the conscience to do so, they won’t just improve the world—they’ll elevate it.
True leadership doesn’t start in a boardroom. It starts in a classroom when a student is given the tools to transform the world around them. Efficiency is what gets us moving. Ethics is what keeps us moving in the right direction. Ethical Efficiency is what empowers the next generation to turn pressure into purpose and problems into prosperity. - Karlo Tanjuakio, GLSS + Kure
