Whining, Moaning, and Achieving: Dealing with frustrated talent in the workplace

In sessions that we conduct on Talent management with both those who lead talent and those who are considered talent everything goes brilliantly until the end of the day when we ask: “So, what are you going to do now?” At this point there is generally a throwing up of hands into the air and a frustrated whining sessions begins. What it basically boils down is the passing of the talent ‘hot potato’ from one person or group to the next. Executives say HR has strategies in place, HR says it is the role of line management, line management says that they are disempowered by top-down processes or too busy with operational delivery to do anything differently…

As we facilitate these sessions we come in first hand contact with the frustrations that sit in this space. This article briefly deals with the conversations and frustrations most commonly raised. It will then propose options and actions that should be considered by the various stakeholders in this dynamic, from executives and other leaders right down to the talent themselves.

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Defining Talent – objective assessment in the War for Talent

Raymond de Villiers, director of Talent at TomorrowToday.biz, asks corporate leaders to define talent. Its not good enough to answer: “I’ll know it when I see it”. Raymond then provides a framework for understanding who is talented, how to identify them, and what will engage them most effectively. This is one of the most important articles you will ever read on the issue of Talent.

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The Economic Consequences of Crime

I receive a weekly newsletter from an economist. This week he applies the principles of economic theory to crime. In so doing he points out the beneficial aspects of crime for the country, along with some not so obvious negative consequences. If you enjoyed this type of application of economics then you will probably also enjoy ‘Freakonomics‘ by Levitt & Dubner.

I have posted this essay on on our blog in light of much of the debate currently circulating around SA, crime, & the blogosphere.

The Economic Consequences of Crime
Weekly Comment by Dr Cees Bruggemans, Chief Economist First National Bank
5 September 2006

It is a popular notion that crime undermines economic growth. Perhaps reality is more complex than that.

Firstly, crime is a form of self-employment or self-help (also known as proletarian shopping). It directly levies a social tax on the community through the actions of possibly hundreds of thousands of people.

Whereas taxation is popularly depicted as highway robbery, taking from the well-off and distributing among the poor, it does so efficiently at very low collection costs, with at least a partial sense of universal agreement among the victims that any good will come of it (if the state is efficient in using the resources so collected and enhances the general welfare over time).

Not so crime, which in essence is also a Robin Hood activity, but a totally inefficient, often utterly destructive and devastating one.

But whereas the actual crime of stealing doesn’t add economic value, many of the consequences most certainly do (as yet another, mostly unremarked, form of ‘creative destruction’).

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Gamer stats – They’re not what you’d expect

A recent survey published by the Entertainment Software Association entitled “Essential Facts” deals with sales, demographic, and usage data within the gaming industry. The full report can be downloaded from 2005 Essential facts. Some of the numbers the report returned are not what you would expect.

- 75% of heads of households play games

- The average age of gamers is 30

- 19% of Americans over 50 play games

- The male / female ratio is 55% male & 43% female [allowing a 2% error margin in the survey]
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Alumni Talent: How losing the retention battles can help win the talent war

At the moment, one of the pains in the Human Capital side of business is the ‘War for Talent’. With the global village increasing the mobility of our top employees, and the increasing skills shortage in certain key areas Organisational Talent is a commodity as valuable and desirable as gold. However, the more Baby Boomers try to do the things that made them loyal to the company the more their young talent seem to bolt out of the door.

Today’s young talent are seen as arrogant ‘snots’ who refuse to earn their keep and patiently work their way up the corporate ladder. It is nothing like the ‘good old days’ when talent understood that they were being groomed for greatness, and they just needed to wait their turn. On top of all of this the market is competing so aggressively for these individuals that it would be unrealistic to expect them not to move for the types of salaries and opportunities they are being promised. There must be another way to get what we need out of these stars.

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The Gamers are Coming…and they’re changing the world!!!

In the opening lines of the original Star Trek series captain James T. Kirk introduces the episode with the phrase “Space: the final frontier”?. Today there is a new frontier being crossed by society. A frontier no less foreign, intimidating, and in some people’s minds, no less fictional than Star Trek’s galaxies – this new frontier is the world of the Gaming Generation.

Generation X and the Millennials are the first generations to have grown up in the computer game era. In the past games were events; everyone would gather around and block off an evening or significant amount of time to play Monopoly, Risk, Backgammon, or cards. The game was played at a time set aside specifically for it. Today’s youth come home and turn on the TV to play on their Playstation, not watch TV. When they stand in queues they have games on their cellphone or iPod to keep them busy. At the end of the year when Sony releases the PlayStation 3 it will be the most powerful computer in the household. In short, games and gaming pervade almost every sphere of their lives, not just the odd Friday evening put aside for a social gathering.

This shift has built gaming into the DNA of the Gaming generation. Their values, worldview, and lifestyles are affected as they look at the world very differently to those non-gamers they share the world with. These changes need to be understood & engaged with as we become the colleagues, friends, bosses, and parents of this group. World of Warcraft [one of the most popular games on the internet] wizard Helen Cheng says that many players spend more time playing the game than working at their regular jobs.

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Cross-roads or Crucifixion: A generational view of the Life Insurance Industry

Anyone involved in the life insurance industry knows that it is an industry in crisis. The industry is at a point in its lifecycle where every facet is being tested and prodded. The traditional modus operandi is under attack and the future is far from rosy. In trying to understand the current scenario, it is helpful to examine how we got to this point in order to appreciate where we are going. Generational theory provides a useful framework for this evaluation.

The life insurance industry has four generations that it is either servicing or selling to. These are the Silent generation, the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the Millenials or Generation Y.

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Cryonics founders cremated

This article was posted on www.iol.co.za sourced from Ananova.com

These people were frozen while they waited for medical science to discover two things:
1) How to cure the disease that killed them.
2) How to resuscitate people who have been cryogenically frozen.

As I read the article I wondered if the son ever thought that by the time they had discovered the solutions to these two things they will probably also be able to deal will a little temporary defrosting. And as he realised that….how much of a prat did he feel like for pushing the ‘Ignite’ button

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Office Pirates – Dilbert for X’ers

Here is a great article from the 9 March 2006 edition of New York Times. Once you have read it you may want to visit officepirates.com. Just in case you were wondering…I don’t think this is just for men. Office Pirates is a great place for anyone who has ever been stuck in the corporate ‘hamster wheel’.

Yes, an Escape From Stifling Cubicles and a Clueless Boss
By Virginia Haffernan
Published: March 9, 2006

The fact that America’s baby Einsteins cruise through superenriched childhoods and rockin’ luxury college years only to land in the stifling taupe of office cubicles in the prime of their lives is the master joke at the center of Office Pirates,
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Let’s have a drink together….from opposite sides of the world

The latest edition of New Scientist magazine has an article [read it online here] on glasses that have been invented by MIT that allow lovers to drink together from remote locations.

The glasses are fitted our with LED’s, liquid sensors, and wi-fi connectivity. When one person picks up their glass, or fills it, the LED on the other person’s glows a particular colour. When they drink, another LED indicates this activity. Besides the various other applications in fields like medicine the scientists say the ‘wireless’ glasses “help people feel as if they are sharing a drinking experience together”.

In a recent Business Week podcast the journalists were talking about the advent of ‘Post-Geographic Man’. They spoke of global virtual teams where members had never met personally. What struck me in reading the New Scientist article was the reality that this type of tool becomes a real technology enabler of post-geographic connectivity….bring on the Connection Economy!!!

Has Google sold its soul?

So has Google’s purchase of AOL for $1Billion brought it it into the fully capitalist fold, thereby undermining its “Do No Evil” motto? Matt Asay would have us believe so in this post at InfoWorld’s blog.

December 17, 2005
Google sells its soul for a mess of pottage

So, Google got the Time Warner deal. For what? $1B and its soul, according to the New York Times:
Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before.
The lesson? Never, ever trust a capitalist who pretends to be otherwise. “Do no evil” was a catchy slogan for Google, but one that it was willing to sell for a few bucks.
For all those who thought Google was somehow different, I’m sorry. I can hear your idealism dying from here. For those who knew better, there’s not much to cheer about in this, is there? Google has just opened the floodgates to a very profitable, “happy to do evil” business.

Follow this link for some great comments & conversation InfoWorld Blog

Failing your way to Innovation Success

What do the Jacuzzi, Champagne, Post-It notes and Viagra all have in common? They are all innovations that were failures at what they were originally designed for. They are also products that succeeded precisely because of this failure.

A recent survey identified ‘Innovation’ as the leading global strategic driver of 2005. Everyone wants to innovate. However, it has now become one of those words built into corporate values and strategies because of the need to “keep up with the Jones’s�. Few organisations understand the theory that supports innovation, and even fewer are prepared for the cost and implications of truly striving toward innovation. The reality is that innovation is always partnered with failure, but the word “failure� is never seen on the list of a corporate’s values. Kettering of GM fame called failure: “one of the greatest arts in the world�, and Thomas Watson snr of IBM maintained: “The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate.�

One of the problems that affect failure is the perception that failure is always a costly exercise and this is especially true if organisations don’t learn from failure. However, if structures are put in place that allow failure to be analysed, then it becomes an intangible asset that can be harnessed. There are a few things in your world that your competitors can never copy, and your failures fall into this category. Your failures are uniquely yours, so why not benefit from them?

How can failure help achieve innovation leadership?

1) See failure as an investment
Thomas Watson jnr was known as a supporter of people with unconventional ideas during his time at the helm of IBM. One of his vice presidents who had just lost $10 million on a ‘wild duck’ scheme was called to Watson’s office. Expecting the worst, the VP came with his resignation typed up and ready for submission. When he offered it to Watson it was rejected with these words: “Why would we want to lose you? We’ve just given you a $10 million education.�

2) Analyse failure and learn from it
Most people had a childhood experience where they tried something risky that failed catastrophically. Their parent’s response was: “I hope that you never try anything so stupid again!� We have brought this mindset into the corporate sector and when someone fails, we rarely stop to analyse and learn from the failure because we are in such a hurry to get away from the humiliation. It is at this moment that we truly fail, because the only true failure we can experience in innovation is that of not learning from what has gone wrong before.

3) Create safe space to share failures
3M has its legendary ‘Failure Forums’ where people who have tried and failed at something, gather to share their experiences and the problems they have faced. The Game Changer programme instituted in Royal Dutch Shell, under the oversight of Gary Hamel, is another example of this type of environment. One of the learnings that came out of this process was the realisation that many ideas came from employees who were not previously viewed as innovative or creative. The key was that the creation of a safe environment gave people the confidence to share ideas. Employees who had been inhibited were now able to contribute and collaborate in innovations that drove company success.

4) Focus on increasing the quantity of ideas generated, not just their quality
In comparison to their contemporaries Picasso, da Vinci & others like them had a similar ratio of success in the ideas they produced – the difference was, they produced more ideas. This meant that they had more successes and failures than their peers. Creativity and Innovation are not only the products of idea quality, but also idea volume. In the corporate world this means that we should not only be managing people toward the generation of quality ideas, but also aim for the generation of a high number of ideas. There is, however, a rider to this point. If organisations aren’t prepared to spend time and energy analysing and learning from failure then failed ideas will in fact erode value rather than create value. In this scenario, there isn’t sufficient capacity in the organisation to effectively absorb the implications of failure, and it would, instead be safer for the organisation to drop the illusion that they can be innovative.

5) Distinguish between excusable and inexcusable failure
In emphasising failure’s positive contributions to innovation, there is the danger that we may be left with the impression that it has been glorified beyond reason. This could not be further from the truth. The final point on positively harnessing failure is that all failure isn’t equal. Steve Wosniak, of Apple Computers renown, maintains that every failure contains information which if not learned will result in failure again and again. This type of failure is inexcusable failure. Excusable failure is restricted to being the first person in an organisation to fail in that manner – repetition of that same failure in any form, by anyone else in the organisation, is inexcusable. In such a situation, both individuals need to be taken to task. The first, for not sharing the learnings from their failure, and the second, for not taking the time to research and investigate their project and discovering the previous failure.

Edison’s attitude to “failure� is salutary. When asked why so many of his experiments failed, he explained that they were not failures. Instead he claimed, each time he had discovered a method that did not work.

In order to make “Innovation� more than just a word printed on posters, mugs, t-shirts, and caps we need to develop a realistic corporate cultural dynamic that embraces intelligent risk and inevitable failure. Successful businesses in the future will be those that have a “Failure Centre of Excellence� ensuring that no failure goes unanalysed, un-learned from, or un-applied.

Google Book Search – Librarian Revolutionaries

I have just been playing around with Google’s online book search & it is awesome.

They have indexed the actual content of millions of pages of books. When you run a search it actually returns the book to you. You can then go to the physical page in the book where the info is and read a few pages before & a few pages after [I think it is a total of 15 pages that you are able to view per book per search]. They are basically in the process of making libraries redundant.
To get to these pages [still in development form] run a normal search in Google and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on the link that asks if you want to run the search in Google book search.

To quote Ace Ventura….”Yummy”

Business Benefits for a new type of employee

The Herman group send out a weekly trend tracker. This week’s deals with the new types of benefits companies will need to offer in order to attract Talent. You can sign up for the weekly newsletter here Herman Group Trends

Herman Trend Alert: Aggressive Benefits Will Woo Workers November 23, 2005

We have already seen the return of concierge services. This benefit will be offered by large companies with in-house and contracted services. National and local providers will sell concierge services to smaller companies, as well, challenging concierge firms to be more creative, stronger in their outreach, and more responsive to needs and opportunities of valued employees. This field will soon become even more competitive, including numerous home-based businesses.
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“How to get free food at Mugg & Bean”

Posted on behalf of Glenda & Nicky –

In CT, most times when we need to have a meeting, our place of choice is Mugg & Bean. However, after my experience today, I might think twice about going to have something to eat there.My colleague, Nicky and I decided to share those really nice beef and chicken pockets – Jean from Pretoria introduced us to it. Fortunately Nicky is watching her weight and didn’t want to eat all the pita. She carefully opened the pockets and removed the filling – and then – BANG – there it was – roasted to perfection – one big green fly.

Yuk!!! We were already half way through our meal and actualy didn’t know how many (if any) we consumed. Well, we certainly made our voice heard and stated that we weren’t paying for it.Now I’m wondering if a thousand apologies from M&B can erase the memory of that green fly nestled in the inside of the pita bread?? No, I think the memory will always be there – and we’ll keep the memory alive by telling the tale (for a long while) to whomever we have a meal with.So, a word of caution “Don’t go to M&B hungry and check your food before diving into it”

Here’s your chance to decide what’s on TV

London – A television drama set in Britain’s urban music scene aims to explore new territory in broadcasting by letting viewers choose how the plot develops.

The six-part Dubplate Drama, to be shown on Britain’s Channel 4 in November, will invite viewers to vote by text message for one of two possible outcomes at the end of each week’s 13-and-a-half minute episode.

The drama will be the first series to exploit viewers’ enthusiasm for audience participation, said youth marketing agency Livity, which is behind the show.

“We did a check around and there is nowhere in the world we could find where there has been viewer-led interactive drama,” Sam Conniff, London-based Livity’s co-founder, told Reuters.

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Piracy, the Digital Divide, & Improving Our ‘Lot’

Can the current licensing structures around software, etc actually make it impossible to improve your lot in life without risking HUGE fines? The following is an extract from a post on The GripeLine by Ed Foster.

“A few decades ago, a man could still ‘pull himself up by his bootstraps’ — meaning all it took was some hard work and determination to improve your lot in life. If you already had money and means, you could easily afford the tools and education that it required to move from one station in life to another. If you didn’t have the tools or the education, you could legally obtain them by borrowing them from a neighbor. Even the government was more than willing to give you a hand-up in doing what needed done.

Today it is not necessarily the case, especially in a digital world.
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Social Network Analysis

Check out this website for the International Network for Social Network Analysis

A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age

Every now & then a book comes out that corroborates certain facets of the TomorrowToday.biz message. Daniel H. Pink a former White House speech writer has recently released a book that he spent several years researching. The books deals with what he calls the ‘Conceptual Age’. If you read the paragraph below from the book review in The Futurist magazine you will hear echos of our message using slightly different words. These aptitudes are precisely what will bring success in the Connection Economy, and they are covered in varying degrees of detail in all of our frameworks.

This book may be one to add to your shopping list. Order it from Amazon here “A Whole New Mind”

The Futurist book review

Pink identifies six high-concept, high-touch aptitudes needed in the new era and devotes the bulk of his book to describing them and outlining specific ways for readers to develop them.
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To meet, or Not to meet…..?

Every now & then an internal conversation happens in TomorrowToday that reflects some of the difficulty of moving away from the traditional business structure into a virtual & connection economy one. A recent conversation that did the rounds concerned whether we should have any more JIMY [Jedi Master Yoda - more on that in another post] meetings this year. JIMY is the closest thing we have to a management meeting in TMTD.biz, and to be totally honest I don’t know what was decided [hence the first line in the email below].

In most businesses today a ‘meeting culture’ prevails such that you can only get your real work done after hours, when everyone is at home [or at their desk too]. In TMTD.biz we have the opposite reality – we have very few meetings [and still happen to run a dynamic & fast growing business]. But, every now and then we need to have conversations around our meetings, and this is one of them.

The conversation started off as an honest question about whether the last two meetings of the year were necessary. It was an enquiry into whether we would be meeting for meeting’s sake. The conversation wound its way around the team and my response is below [you are essentially seeing this at the same time as they are]. In a nutshell my response is that sometimes we should meet for meeting’s sake because it gets us together for together’s sake.

So what do you think?

__________________________________
THE EMAIL

Hey Everyone

I’m not sure what was eventually decided
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Extrapreneurship

An article in the Futurist magazine addresses an new way of developing / running enterprises that uses the best of the outsourcing trend, the connection economy, and connection technologies. The article ‘blurb’ says: “Information Technologies are toppling traditional hierarchical business-management systems. The new model for twenty-first century management will be extra-preneurship – virtual networks based on collaboration and self-actualisation that will add value to all current & future jobs…..”

If you would like to download the article click on the following link [be warned it is 3Mb in size] Extrapreneurship article [3Mb]. The article is 8 pages long with the following section headings:

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Young Entrepreneurs Drain Labor Pool

This newsletter was recently distributed by The Herman Group

Young Entrepreneurs Drain Labor Pool
August 24, 2005

Early indications suggest that the Millennial Generation, born after 1985, has a strong orientation toward entrepreneurship. They feel confident that they can achieve great results–at least earn a satisfactory living—by going into business for themselves. This population cohort is showing itself to be self-aware, astute, creative, and comfortable taking the risks involved with businesses.

This scenario is a good news—bad news situations.
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The Quillionaire – Innovation ‘Reality TV’ style

To read the original version of this post go to Innovation Tools – Case Study

Lights, cameras, action: Innovation ‘reality TV’ style at Quill Corporation

By Stephen Shapiro

Innovation — it’s the buzzword of the moment, and for good reason. In today’s highly volatile business environment, the need for companies to reinvent themselves repeatedly and rapidly is the only way to ensure long-term survival. Although many organizations recognize this fact, few can define what innovation means to them, let alone create a pervasive, innovative culture of their own.

The accepted notion is that sparking a culture of innovation would require hard work and a long time to produce results. I have found that sometimes the opposite is true; motivated organizations that know where they are going can move from bureaucracy to creativity with remarkable speed.
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Google’s recruitment – The way of the future?

Google’s results have exceeded analysts’ expectations every quarter since their IPO on the NASDAQ exchange. In their most recent results their success was linked to the increase in brand profile,despite 50% less marketing spend than their competitors. This was in turn linked to the consistent release of new technology, and this was directly linked to their recruitment activity. Put simply, Google’s management understand that their success is linked to their recruitment. Google’s recruitment activity is some of the most creative in corporate society. It is clearly one of the reasons for their success, but arguably also their ‘Achilles heel’ toward potential failure.

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You’ve gotta love the music industry……

The posting below is from the Gripeline weblog and was posted on Mon 25 Aug. If you want to see the original posting click on this link Gripeline Weblog.

This weblog provides regular updates of hassles consumers are having with licencing and service. It is very USA centred but is a wonderful portal of consumer militance…..viva la revolution!!!

Dumb DRM Gets Boost From Sony Music CDs

“For all their weeping and wailing about peer-to-peer piracy, sometimes it seems like the music industry giants are trying to discourage us from buying their CDs. That’s certainly the impression readers are getting from dealing with the copy protection scheme being used on recent Sony BMG Music releases.

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Planes, Pains, & Automobiles: An Uber Travel story

On Saturday afternoon I dropped Mike & Graeme at the airport in Durban and went to meet friends for coffee because I still had several hours before my 6pm fight to Cape Town. At 4:30pm I returned to the airport to catch my flight hoping to beat the rugby hordes for a decent seat. I handed in the car and reported to the airline counter to check in. The friendly ground crew looked at me quizzically when I gave my flight time and informed me that I couldn’t be flying to Cape Town because the last flight had already left. I was sure they were wrong and fortunately I had the confirmation email on my cellphone. I called up the email and proudly showed them that I did indeed have a 6pm flight booked for the 18th. The stewardess took no pleasure in informing me that the flight I had booked was for 18 July 2005 and not 18 June 2005 – I am sure that I did see a little smile at my expense.
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Report on Millenials and the media

Follow this link to download a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation on the Millenial generation and the media Generation M & The Media The data is US focused but provides insight into all 8-18 year olds. The page has other useful downloads like an executive summary, powerpoint presentations, and videos of the presentations of the findings.

Read the media release for the report below:

“Media Multi-tasking” Changing the Amount and Nature of Young People’s Media Use

Bedrooms Have Become Multi-Media Centers

Kids Say Parents Don’t Set or Enforce Rules on Media Use

Washington, D.C. – Children and teens are spending an increasing amount of time using “new media” like computers, the Internet and video games, without cutting back on the time they spend with “old” media like TV, print and music, according to a new study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Instead, because of the amount of time they spend using more than one medium at a time (for example, going online while watching TV), they’re managing to pack increasing amounts of media content into the same amount of time each day. The study, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds, examined media use among a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 3rd through 12th graders who completed detailed questionnaires, including nearly 700 self-selected participants who also maintained seven-day media diaries.

The study – which measured recreational (non-school) use of TV and videos, music, video games, computers, movies, and print – found that the total amount of media content young people are exposed to each day has increased by more than an hour over the past five years (from 7:29 to 8:33), with most of the increase coming from video games (up from 0:26 to 0:49) and computers (up from 0:27 to 1:02, excluding school-work). However,
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Democratising Innovation

To download a free e-book from MIT on Innovation goto this link Democratizing Innovation by Eric von Hippel Chapters are as follows

1 Introduction and Overview
2 Development of Products by Lead Users
3 Why Many Users Want Custom Products
4 Users Innovate-or-Buy Decisions
5 Users Low-Cost Innovation Niches
6 Why Users Often Freely Reveal Their Innovations
7 Innovation Communities
8 Adapting Policy to User Innovation
9 Democratizing Innovation
10 Application: Searching for Lead User Innovations
11 Application: Toolkits for User Innovation and Custom Design
12 Linking User Innovation to Other Phenomena and Fields

Please come back and post comments on this page.

The Masters of Business Imagination Manifesto

I found this manifesto recently and thought it was worth sharing.

The current trend toward seeking out graduates in the arts and creative faculties for corporate roles will probably end up in the offering of degrees similar to this one. As Innovation moves up the corporate agenda we will need more and more application of business relevance to the exercising of our imagination. People who get ‘a handle’ on this skill first will be highly marketable, and sought after.

For more info on what it is like to be this type of person within a business environment contact Barrie our Chief Imagination Officer barrie@tomorrowtoday.biz.

For those who don’t have the time to read the complete article below, or if you are deciding whether to make the time to do so, let me help you out. The qualities of a Masters in Business Imagination [MBI] are:
* They see things differently,
* They spur creativity in other people,
* They focus on opportunities, not on threats,
* They have the ability to bring ideas to life,
* They have the skill to learn and unlearn knowledge, and
* They accept challenges with passion and enthusiasm.

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Sugar and Spice, and Biochemistry

Several big food and beverage companies are looking at a new ingredient in the battle for health-conscious consumers: a chemical that tricks the taste buds into sensing sugar or salt even when it is not there.

Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Campbell Soup are all working with a biotechnology company called Senomyx, which has developed several chemicals, most of which do not have any flavor of their own but instead work by activating or blocking receptors in the mouth that are responsible for taste.
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