You’re going to have to change your management style

I spend a large part of my year in conversation with managers working hard to try and understand today’s younger workforce. The pain they’re feeling is palpable. The evidence of change is overwhelming. Making the necessary changes, at times, seems impossible. The hope is that the challenges are being interrogated and slowly but surely acted on.

Business Week has a great article called, Working with China’s Generation Y. It’s a well written article that does a fantastic job describing a younger workforce entering today’s business world in China.

In urban China, Gen Y is a group of exceptionally talented people. No other generation in Chinese history has received such high-quality education for so many people. Chinese Gen Ys are single children born under China’s one-child policy. According to studies such as those by Posten and Falbo of the Guttmacher Institute, China’s solo children perform significantly better academically than peers with siblings. These single children have grown up in traditional extended families (including four grandparents and two parents), under pressure since kindergarten to pass entrance exams. This means that the child’s educational performance has been a top priority for six adults.

The article describes the different approach of this younger set and the challenges that face today’s managers (Baby Boomers and Generation X).

For Gen Y, the good boss is like a kung-fu master who stays in the background, teaching through small hints. The good boss is highly available to his employee and has trust in them. He is balanced and nonemotional. He knows how to share his skills without talking much but rather expresses himself in the right dose, at the right time and place. It is not about telling workers what to do but waiting for the right time to drop by their desk and ask: “Have you asked yourself X? Perhaps you might have tried Y?” Difficult to achieve? Yes, but it is important to show Gen Y why they should respect their boss—and then they will.

I often get the sense that the current set of managers are caught between the reality that they will have to adapt their management style, but also hoping (pleading) that this younger set will do the the adapting, instead of the other way around. Attachment to ‘how it’s always been done’ is a powerful anchor for many managers not wanting to do the work required to make the necessary changes.

Bottom line is that change is required in order to ensure a successful business into the future. It may take some time, but it will have to happen. Today’s younger set will not, and can not change sufficiently. For one, they don’t have a view of ‘how it’s always been done’. They only know who they are, and are going to need those older than them to do the shifting.

What if a Board Meeting was like the State Of The Union?

Thinking About Thinking suggests that if board meetings looked like a state of the union, the agenda would play itself out like this:

“The CEO would make his way to the board room through a processional in the company’s hallways, flanked by clapping employees, shaking hands and giving thumbs up to the staff along the way.

The meeting would start with the CFO announcing the entrance of the CEO, and all board members standing and applauding.

The CEO would stand at the head of the table, with the CFO and CTO sitting in oversized chairs on a raised platform behind him.

All powerpoint slides and the projector would be replaced with a teleprompter.

When the CEO talked about cutting spending, lowering the burn and a hiring freeze, investors on both sides of the table would stand up and applause.

When the CEO talked about changing the healthcare plan to cover all employees and shareholders, the investors on the left side of the table would stand up and applause while the other investors sit stoicly.

Thereafter, the CEO would have to remind all investors that their job is to represent the shareholders, not their own partisan interests.

Rather than talking during the meeting, the CTO and CFO would convey their opinion by smirking, giggling, and giving standing ovations as the CEO spoke.

Meanwhile, outside legal counsel, sitting in the first row facing the CEO, would never applaud and would be generally expressionless throughout.

At the appropriate time, the CEO would give a carefully calculated shout out to his wife who is sitting at the outer edge of the board room next to some carefully selected key partners and customers.  She waves at the mention of her name.

The CEO closes the meeting by saying God Bless this company.”

Nice one : )

Rethinking Marketing and the age of consumer capitalism

In this months Harvard Business Review, Roger Martin writes that “modern capitalism can be broken down into two major eras. The first, managerial capitalism, began in 1932 and was defined by the then radical notion that firms ought to have professional management. The second, shareholder value capitalism, began in 1976. Its governing premise is that the purpose of every corporation should be to maximize shareholders’ wealth. If firms pursue this goal, the thinking goes, both shareholders and society will benefit. This is a tragically flawed premise, and it is time we abandoned it and made the shift to a third era: customer-driven capitalism.

I couldn’t agree more. Information is power and information has now passed into the hands of the consumer. Never before have customers been able to find information on available products and services easier and quicker, and with the rising power of peer reviews brochure style marketing is fast becoming obsolete.

In the new world of work talented companies will rethink marketing. The role and function of marketing will change quickly. Customer experience will be placed at the top of the strategic agenda at board meetings and the CCO (Chief Customer Officer) will become as important if not more important a role as the CFO. Companies that fail to identify this shift and implement these strategic changes risk ending up on the dust pile of corporate dinosaurs.

Are you working for a TALENTED COMPANY, or do you know of examples?

I’m on a quest to find companies that are extraordinary, companies that not only achieve good financial results but also contribute positively to society as a whole. I’m intrigued at how many companies have fallen down in the past few years because a number of very talented people have been behaving badly – think Enron, the financial crisis, Bernie Madoff, Lehman Brothers and the US motor industry to name but a few. Companies have wrongly convinced themselves that they need the best of the best, the most talented people, to succeed and they have been rewarding their “talent” excessively. This has resulted in a bonus culture that is eating away at the fabric and moral code of business.

Rather than build a business around star individuals I believe that companies need to be building talented systems processes and cultures. They need to be focusing on building the star company. I’m currently conducting research to form the basis of a new book about talented companies. if you know of or work for a company that has talented structures, organisational designs, cultures, systems and corporate DNA I’d love to hear from you.

Five upcoming changes in the way we work

Tammy Erickson, Harvard Business Review contributor and author of multiple books, including Retire Retirement and Workforce Crisis, has written about the five key changes she is expecting in the workplace in 2010. What do you think? Do you agree with her?

1. Two-job norm — More people will maintain two sources of income than ever before. Instead of relying on the onetime holy grail of employment — a salaried job with full benefits — workers will create a series of backup options. For many, especially those in creative or knowledge-based work, this is likely to include becoming entrepreneurs. A second job or even a small entrepreneurial venture provides a safety net, giving workers a small measure of control over their fate in an increasingly unstable environment.
2. Less “off hours” work — Recession-management approaches that made full-time employees take a day a week “off” planted some new questions in the minds of employees who had been working virtually 24×7. What is a “day?” Eight hours? Twenty percent of the time I normally work each week? For many, these questions lead inevitably to: If they only want me to work four days a week, why am I working more than 32 hours? Many companies have come to rely on very long work weeks as staffing cuts lead to more work for the remaining individuals and technology facilitated round-the-clock work. I expect to see more push back this year — in part because many individuals will be spending time advancing their second work option.
3. Competition for discretionary energy — Engagement has been a hot topic in talent management circles for the past decade. But its benefits have focused primarily on attracting and retaining employees. Increasingly, managers’ focus will shift to competing for an employee’s discretionary energy — competing with other priorities in the employee’s life, including other options for work — but also competing against employees who are only “going through the motions.” More and more of the work in today’s economy cannot be done rotely — success requires a spark of extra effort, creativity, collaboration, and innovation.
4. More diverse arrangements — By now, most companies have put a variety of flex work options on the books. In 2010, I believe these arrangements will begin to take hold in significant ways, driven by employee preferences, facilitated by new technologies, supported by new managers who themselves are more comfortable with virtual work.
5. Transparent, “adult” arrangements — My favorite change is the growth in what I like to call “communities of adults” — a philosophy of recasting the employment relationship from one of paternalistic care to adult choice. A simple example is offering a menu of benefit options and letting employees choose those that work best. Further along the spectrum would include encouraging employees to “own” their own feedback process or even set their own compensation levels. These sorts of changes won’t settle in this year, but they’re coming. I expect we’ll see more examples as the year progresses.

Source: HBR blogs

S+B’s Best Business Books of 2009

Booz & Co’s Strategy + Business ezine is one of my favourites, and one I always make time to read. Last week’s edition looked at the best business books of 2009, selected by their top team, and helpfully categorised.

If you want to read their reasoning, and some excellent background comments, start here. All I am going to do is list the books (and make it easy for you to buy them – choose from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net – for South Africa):

… Continue Reading

After Shock: the five trends disrupting business in the next 5 years

Updated in March 2010 (now with an added Executive summary in the PDF format)

Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.

As the world slowly emerges out of recession over the next few years, it will become increasingly clear that this was more than just an economic downturn. Disruptive forces are significantly reshaping the world of work. Some of these changes have been brewing for a decade or more – and now this recession has exacerbated their influence and speeded up their effects. Companies that have survived the downturn need to shift their focus to surviving the upturn. We are not ever going to “get back to normal” – a new normal is emerging for everyone, everywhere.

Understanding the forces that are driving this disruptive change will give an organisation the insights needed to adjust their systems, structures and methods and gain a significant competitive advantage in the next 3 to 5 years. It will also set them up for longer term success in the next few decades. It is therefore essential to provide not just senior leaders, but all staff throughout your company, with a framework of thinking about this “new normal”. You want them to work together to take advantage of the opportunities that will emerge.

There are at least five key drivers of disruptive change that every organisation in every industry and sector needs to track. These are the T.I.D.E.S. of change. (It’s a corny acronym, I know, but hopefully it will help with both remembering the framework, as well as making it easy to use on a regular basis in team meetings and informal conversations throughout your organisation). Here then are the key drivers of disruptive change in the next decade, and some questions to ask yourself and your teams as you plan to respond to them:

… Continue Reading

The future for banks and a better way to pay bankers

POSTED 10 November 2009; UPDATED 11 November 2009

One story is going to run for the next 3-5 years at least: how to fix the banking system. The big media headline grabbing story is how to regulate bankers’ pay. It appears as if bankers don’t know how much their image has been tarnished, or how important trust is in their business – at least if their announcements of monumental bonuses to be paid out at the end of 2009 is anything to go by. The spoof magazine cover in this picture is just one example of how bankers are now less trusted than estate agents! (OK, that’s unfair on agents).

Whether or not they actually go ahead with this is irrelevant – the fact that they might have is enough. Change must come to banking and financial sector. It will come in the form of greater regulations in the background (linked to Basel II and other related legislation that will be coming). But in the glaring public eye, bankers’ remuneration is a key issue that will need addressing.

The CEO of Booz & Company wrote a great piece for their latest S+B ezine. Read it online here, or an extract below. Then, they followed that up with a further article about how banks need to change – read it here or an extract below.

… Continue Reading

Good to Great… to Gone!

Jim Collins got it wrong. Not totally wrong, but wrong enough that we need to be careful (as always) about who we listen to when designing companies for future success. Too often, leaders take a shortcut and blindly apply models they find somewhere else, without doing the work to adapt it to their culture and context.

Jim Collins is, of course, the international superstar guru author of “Built to Last” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk), “Good to Great” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk) and most recently, “How the Mighty Fall” (buy at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk). His first two books are the two best selling business books of all time. His latest is bound to follow suit.

I have to declare that I am not the wildest fan of Mr Collins. I have read too many reports from the research teams that have worked with/for him, and are very disgruntled at how he has used their work without giving them any credit. I also received my copy of “How the Mighty Fall” yesterday, and was amazed to turn to the back cover of the book and see a single quotation, made by none other than… Jim Collins. I’m still to read the book, but I wonder if “hubris” and “arrogance” are possible ingredients in how the mighty fall? (Certainly “humilty” was a key element of his “Level 5 Leadership” principle). I’ll say more on this at the end of this (long) post… (But, then again, maybe I’m just jealous).

That personal comment aside, though, the question nevertheless remains: Are the models Jim Collins presents worth following? This is especially important since two of his “Good to Great” companies have recently gone bankrupt, and on average the whole lot have performed WORSE than the general stock exchange index over the past year or so of the recession. Are the principles in Collins’ books eternal? Or do they belong to an era that no longer exists?

… Continue Reading

A Talent Exodus ahead? Surviving the upturn

I am becoming increasingly concerned for my top corporate clients. As we rumble past the bottom of the business cycle and begin the long upwards climb towards recovery, many companies are starting to congratulate themselves. “Well done, we survived a Great Recession”. But I fear their celebrations may be premature.

Of course, the recovery will be slow, and that’s a factor to be considered when doing projections and budgets for the year ahead. But my fear is about their people. Readers of this blog will probably be in agreement with one of our key beliefs at TomorrowToday: people are central to both the long-term success of an organisation as well as its competitive advantage.

If that is true, then companies will be in significant trouble if they lose (or get rid of) their people. And that’s the problem I see brewing. Companies have had some tough years recently, and have asked a lot of their people. And, in return, they haven’t really been treating them well. Some leaders have even said this out loud: it’s great that the job market has turned in the employer’s favour again, and our people have nowhere to go… we can treat them how we like now. OK, maybe that’s a touch overstated, but I know of many companies where that sentiment is true.

And it isn’t going to last. Sometime soon the head hunters are going to start up again, and the phones are going to start ringing. And when they do, I fear that many corporates are going to see a talent exodus. They haven’t done anything these past few years to show loyalty, or go “above and beyond” for their staff, so now they’ll reap the whirlwind.

If you’re a company that has done some good things for your staff, now would be a good time to remind them of that fact! And start your “employee engagement and retention” programmes in earnest!

It’s gratifying that I was recently sent some really good research from Deloitte that takes my gut feel fear and puts some solid research behind it. You might enjoy (or be scared by) reading these reports:

• Where Did Our Employees Go? Examining the rise in voluntary turn over during economic recoveries
• Heading Off a Resume Tsunami: Act Now to Avoid a Future Retention Problem or Worry About It If and When It Hits?
• Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Part 1
• Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Part 2
• Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Part 3
• Threading the Talent Needle: What global executives are saying about people and work

Pursuing the ‘Better Way’

There is always a ‘better way’ to do things. It is a mindset. What often serves as a roadblock in pursuing a ‘better way’ are the default setting within our organisations. Default settings dictate how we operate as a system and are learnt behaviours to secure reward, avoid conflict, create efficiencies, acknowledge status, maintain comfort, secure favour…in other words those things that shape the over-riding reality within the organisation.

The problem is that it is our default settings that inhibit or constrain an organisation’s ability to innovate and therefore adapt to changing realities. This can and usually does prove fatal. Developing the capacity to override the default settings becomes a necessary focus for leadership in times of change. Leaders need to create both the space and permission for their people to, ’see a better way’ and then develop supporting structures and processes that explore, nurture and grow alternative ways of doing things.

Following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon the American Jewish community responded to the crisis by raising $300 million to help rebuild the northern part of Israel. A normal reaction one might reason. A default reaction is what it was in the circumstances. One senior person in the Jewish network proposed a ‘better way’ to the challenge than the default setting that had been engaged. he proposed that the money raised should also be used to help rebuild southern Lebanon which had also been devastated in the conflict. His proposal recieved no support and a fair amount of push-back. In the end, much of the help given to restore southern Lebanon came from Hezbollah and so they were able to solidify its patron-client relationship with the Lebanese in this situation.

‘Better ways’ are often unpopular as they go against the grain, the status quo; they often create discomfort and challenge the conventional wisdom. That is exactly why we need them. Smart Leaders encourage ‘better way’ thinking and practice at both an individual and organisation level and in doing so invite feedback, reflection and experimentation.

It is an essential element in becoming an adaptive organisation. It could well determine whether or not you survive the future. And of course, today’s ‘better way’ becomes tomorrow’s default setting. Such is the nature of life!

Lessons from the Titanic

“Today the balance of advantage may be shifting…Governments have been rescuing companies they consider too big to fail… The recession is squeezing out smaller and less well-connected firms” says the The Economist in their leading article this week, titled “Big is Back”, The article argues that back in the 1990’s, with the advent of the internet, big companies were under attack by smaller nimbler companies and argues that now big companies are back in the driving seat. To support this notion, the article notes that between 1974 and 1998, GDP produced by big industrial companies fell by half between from 36% to 17%. This statistic is misleading as it has less to do with big companies becoming less dominant during this period and reflects more the shift away from an industrial driven world towards the rise of the knowledge companies such as banks and IT companies. During the same period the GDP contribution from knowledge based companies increased dramatically and today the knowledge sector now contributes 75% and 79% of GDP in the UK and USA respectively.

At the moment though there is a fascination with the BIG and a massive fear of their failure. This is not surprising. Big companies provide large amounts of tax revenues, employ large numbers of people and in many instances are the source of huge national pride. So the motivations and politics behind keeping flailing big companies afloat are huge. Governments are pumping billions into propping up big companies, their investment in them now is so huge that they can’t afford for big companies to fail. The question at hand now though, is this fuelling a virtuous or a vicious cycle. How much longer can this course of action be sustained and at what price will western governments continue to protect big companies? Western governments appear to be behaving more like the captain of the Titanic before it struck an iceberg – stoking the engine to get more power out of it and racing across across an ocean they know is littered with obstacles. There is now a danger of artificially maintaining companies that have become ineffective and inefficient in the new world of work. Let’s not forget that if big is back, a notion the article seems to support as a good development, then why is it that the economies that are rebounding fastest such as China and South Korea are those dominated by small companies?

Rather than continuing to bail out big and potentially ineffective companies, governments need to be removing the burdens and barriers which prevent entrepreneurs from starting businesses and turning small companies into big effective ones. It is on this last point that I do agree with the Economist

Challenges – and solutions – to Work-Life Balance

A recent report from the Corporate Executive Board was summarised by Brian Kropp on the Talent Management blog. Read it online at their site, or an extract below:

Challenges to Work-Life Balance
by Brian Kropp

The uncertain economic environment has placed tremendous personal and workplace pressure on employees. Corporate Executive Board (CEB) analysis has shown a drastic decline in employee engagement since the start of the economic downturn, with the number of disengaged employees having risen dramatically from 1 in 10 in 2006 to 1 in 3 in the first quarter of 2009.

With financial instability fueling growing demands in many areas of employees’ lives, it comes as no surprise that leveraging work-life balance practices provides employees with much needed flexibility and can greatly improve employee engagement overall. In this volatile economic climate, with downsizing and restructuring efforts having left employee morale low and workloads heavy, creating opportunities that can improve employee work-life balance can also have a tangible bottom-line impact for the business. Implementing effective work-life balance initiatives, however, can be challenging, and is directly linked to how well today’s workforce development executives can identify and provide the right mix of benefits that are highly valued by the workforce.

… Continue Reading

Affirmitive Action is Dead in South Africa – or is it?

Sipho Ngcobo wrote an interesting article on Money Web this last week, reflecting on the reality the African National Congress (ANC) faces around service delivery, or lack of it, in South Africa currently. He suggests that the pressure the ANC is under for 2011 local government elections and 2014 national elections will mean them compromising on affirmative action policies in favour of ensuring the right people are in the right places.

I do think he writes as more of a warning to the ANC to get it’s house in order than possibly the reality of what will actually happen. But I also do think that we need to appreciate that in emerging market economies this is a situation we’re all facing. It’s certainly not unique to South Africa.

As Ready, Conger and Hill point out in their Harvard Business Review article, ‘Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets’, there is a severe lack of appropriately qualified and experienced people to fill management positions (at various levels). In the four large emerging market economies, Brazil, Russia, India and China, there simply isn’t enough supply to meet the demand. In countries like South Africa we should appreciate that if these four power-houses are struggling, then it is appropriate for us to be feeling some pain.

In the Harvard Business Review article, they set out their findings in an interesting graph that shows supply and demand for management using a scale that goes from entry level, to middle management, to country leadership, and tops out at regional leadership. Their research suggests that:

• Brazil has no supply to meet the demand from middle management upwards.
• Russia is struggling to meet the demand in all four levels
• India is battling from the first level (entry level) upwards
• China is only slightly better off, but still struggling to meet demand from entry level upwards.

One should be cautioned against assuming that academic qualification equals appropriate skills for management. I mention this because when I bring up the Harvard Business Review article people often query the number of MBA’s in India and therefore the accuracy of the data? Education is but one element that determines management ability. Those who fill management positions will certainly confirm this.

Sipho Ngcobo, in my opinion, is on the money with the challenge that the ANC faces. What the ANC does to avoid this crisis will be interesting to learn from? When the pressure is on for delivery and performance, especially in emerging markets in a world with a skills crisis, a compromise is certainly worth exploring between affirmative action policies and ensuring the right bums are in the right seats on this bus called service delivery.

The cost of (dis)engagement

Research Works recently released a series of reports from the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health, a program of the American Psychiatric Foundation. Download them here.

Research Works found that about a quarter of all employees are “actively disengaged,” meaning they don’t care about about their jobs at all. These are the people who don’t make much of an effort to help a customer with a problem, or a colleague with an issue. Or do anything beyond the minimum required (or what they can get away with).

Twenty-five per cent! That’s an awful lot of employees just taking up space.

Culling information from a number of studies, the report found that about 20% of employees are “highly engaged” and about 55% are in the middle — meaning they work hard but don’t live and die by going to work every day.

The rest, about 25%, could be toxic to your company’s success.

How engaged are your employees? If you don’t know, it might be costing you money.

… Continue Reading

PodCast – Collaboration and Alliances

PodCast Update – Graeme Codrington interviews Dean van Leeuwen (Director of TomorrowToday UK) around his MBA thesis on collaboration and alliances.

Go for RSS feed

Go here for iTunes Feed

Sustainability – how to engage employees

by Ben Kellard, 27th May 2009
Reposted extract from: Forum for the Future

How can you embed sustainability in a way that motivates employees? It’s a challenge for many leaders faced with the question of how to maintain the momentum of their sustainability strategy, especially in a recession.

The case for using sustainability to motivate employees is compelling. There’s a strong correlation between activities which come under the umbrella of corporate responsibility and employee satisfaction and engagement, according to the latest Sunday Times Best Companies survey.

And research from the Hay Group shows that highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30% and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues.
…

A good example of this is property company Gentoo, which launched ‘Gentoo Green’, an internal programme to engage employees in its sustainability vision and strategy. The programme was backed by the CEO and was supported by internal communications, champions, training, and opportunities for employees to get involved. This led to over 700 suggestions from employees about how to improve Gentoo’s sustainability performance, and it’s been estimated that the programme has already delivered half a million pounds in savings to the group in its first year.
… Continue Reading

HR 2018: Future View

What will human resources look like a decade from now? This is the question asked of HR Execs by Workforce Management magazine. You can read their full report here.

The headlines are fairly unsurprising. I really hope that HR is shaken up more than this in the next ten years. But, they are insightful in describing the current trajectory of thinking by the people in charge of HR at the world’s large companies:

• Collaboration will be key. The top-ranked prediction was: “There will be an increased focus on infrastructures — such as social networks and wikis — to support building strong relationships and collaboration.” (This is a topic one of our team members, Dean van Leeuwen, is an expert in, having completed an MBA thesis on learning about alliances from coral reef systems – see his presentation on “A Brave New World” that highlights collaboration is crucial to success in the next decade).
• The second-most popular choice predicted novel work arrangements: “The structure of work will become more adaptive, more informal and less focused on formal structure and static design solutions.”
• Expanded use of virtual teams of employees who communicate extensively through videoconferencing, e-mail and text messaging.
• The concept of “offshoring” will cease to exist.
• Millennials (Gen Y) will redefine jobs, doing work at home and taking home to work.
• The labor market will look more like eBay than Monster or Yahoo HotJobs.
• Companies will engage in “crowd sourcing.”
• An HR executive will become CEO of a Fortune 100 firm
• Leadership development will be critical
• “The strategic role of decisions about talent and how it is organized will increasingly be recognized as pivotal to sustainable strategic success. Leaders will be held accountable for the quality of those decisions.”
• There will be continued labor shortages, particularly in leadership positions.
• “Companies will need to balance the need for a unified global culture with local strategic and cultural differences and make core global values locally relevant and easily understandable for all employees.”
• The corporate social responsibility movement will grow stronger.

TIME magazine: The Future of Work

I think they do it every other year, and it makes a great cover. TIME magazine at the end of May 2009 was focused on the issue of ‘The Future of Work’. You can read it at TIME’s website, or below.

The article takes the form of ten short insights. The highlights for me are:

• Companies are going to have to become very innovative to create new types of perks, incentives and motivators for staff
• Boomers now definitely can’t – and won’t retire – as planned. We’ve been talking about this for some time, but now the reality is here. See our Prime Time presentation if you want more info.
• Gen Xers are coming into senior leadership – and it’s going to be different.
• It pays to save the planet. Again, we’ve been saying this for a while. But now it’s becoming a strategic imperative – see The Future is Now.
• We really do need to start working from home now. Enough talking about it!

… Continue Reading

Keeping it Simple

Reading Gillian Tett’s excellent book, ‘Fool’s Gold: How unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a catastrophe’ (Little, Brown 2009 – buy it now at Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net) reminded me of a memorable saying of the legendary Liverpool Football Club manager, Bill Shankly.

Shanks, commenting on the Beautiful Game once said, “It is a simple game made complicated by those who ought to know better”. I suspect that wisdom reflects much of the corporate jungle that we have created. Beyond the financial practices of murkey credit derivatives there is the complex HR web that is understandable to only a select few. I recall being asked to sit-in on a review process of a large SA blue-chip company as they unveiled their ‘Talent Management Programme’. The programme had been the careful design of a specially designated group and was the culmination of over a year’s endevour. As the graphs, flow charts, spiral graphs and every manner of powerpoint graphic unfolded so the comprehension (amongst the other HR practitioners present) evaporated. It was madness, incomprehensible madness. But of course to question, critique and point out the obvious would have been akin to career suicide. Not being constrained by such concerns, I of course did question, ask and critique. Naturally I have not been invited back.

The point is we continue to make simple things complicated. This is especially true when it comes to the central issue of people within our organisation. Quantum Mechanics teaches us that, when it comes to the very essence, the very construct of our universe, ‘relationships is all there is’. Trust is the foundation, the currency, of all relationships and it was ultimately the breakdown of trust that, according to Gillian Tett led to the current economic crisis we have now. Simple things made complicated. Simple things allowed to be obscured behind elaborate processes, policies, systems and structures. Just who are we kidding? It is time to get back to the ’simple things’. It is time to realise that to make organisations work well, we don’t need the elaborate, the complex…we need to understand and do the simple things well.    

How to cut costs and keep your employees

The million dollar question I hear you sigh as you see the subject of this blog. Let’s face it, there are no easy answers, no silver bullets and certainly no one-size-fits-all approach to cutting costs and keeping a high people-morale during an economic un-boom, such as the one we’re wading through at the moment.

But there are some stories worth hearing, if not for anything but simply to celebrate that someone may be getting it right in their context. They know their people and their culture, and they’ve successfully created a solution that snugly fits both.

Click here to read a short article of some of these stories. The one that most impacted me was the ‘Ricardo Semler‘ type approach of the opening story in the article:

Go to the people and ask them! Sounds so simple. But so very difficult to execute.

The Budget 09 – what we really want is not what we really need

Alistair Darling will announce the UK budget today. What most people are looking for is stability, discipline, precision and control. Together with reliability and efficiency, these are precisely the traits that Max Weber, the renowned German sociologist, listed as the pinnacle of social organisation and the basis of excellence business structure and strategy.

It might seem strange to be referencing someone who has been dead for nearly a century on the day of arguably one of the most important budget speeches in the last hundred years. But both Weber and Darling illustrate why many companies are battling to deal with the recession and generate appropriate strategies right now.

The approach of most companies is based on a management style that is largely unchanged since “scientific management” was first developed by Frederick Taylor a century ago. At the zenith of the industrial age, the goal of management was to reduce waste, increase efficiency and develop the systems that have seen productivity rise year on year in industrialised economies almost unabated for a hundred years. One can hardly argue with this success. But is this the way forward?
… Continue Reading

Gary Hamel on Generation Y

Gary Hamel, the best selling author and global guru on innovation, has turned his attentions to the impact that the next generation of young people is having on the workplace. Hamel’s latest book is on the Future of Management, and he believes that the recession is simply adding force to some major changes already underway in the world of work.

This is from his blog on the Wall Street Journal website: Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0: A look at new ways of managing. Read it online here, or below.

… Continue Reading

You can’t sit this one out

Originally posted at TomorrowToday UK’s article library, and distributed in their March ezine

As the recession deepens, with customers dwindling and staff morale dropping, strong leadership is required. Too many companies, and the individuals in them, are falling into a trap of trying to keep their heads down and hoping the downturn ends soon. They’re trying to get away with doing what they’ve always done – but on a tight budget. They’re desperately hoping that wave after wave of cost cutting measures, while making no operational mistakes, will be enough.

But, this is no time for low cost business as usual. Equally, though, it’s not a time for panic or self-destructive short-term strategies. The world truly has gone mad, and sanity and reason seem to have fled. If companies want to survive this recession, and take advantage of the few opportunities it might provide, they have to be level headed and have a clear “downturn strategy” while focusing on a few key areas that can give them competitive advantage in rapidly shifting markets. This requires a new mindset with clear thinking and single-minded execution.

There seems to be too little of that going around at the moment. But the solutions are actually surprisingly simple.

… Continue Reading

Lessons from the best companies to work for in the UK 2009

Published yesterday in the UK Sunday Times, this article highlights a theme that runs through much of the work in HR these days. This article is linked to the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For survey. I am not generally a fan of these types of surveys, but this is worth a read anyway.

Strongly engaged staff aid business survival
Firms still making it their business to keep employees onside look set to ride out the gloom, reports Sue Leonard (March 8, 2009)

Are you worried about losing your job? You’re not alone. Fears about job security are rife even among employees within the Best Companies to Work For. Many feel on edge as a result of the current global downturn, which has already led to a dramatic rise in unemployment and seen household names such as Woolworths disappear from the UK high street.

Among all 997 companies entering this year’s Best Companies contests, staff scores for feeling their jobs are secure are down 6.2% on last year, from 72.5% positive to 66.3%.

The top two big companies and the top 10 mid-sized businesses show a significant fall of 5.3%, although with the positive score for job security still at 78.1% this represents a much healthier bottom line than the 66.3% achieved across all 997 companies. Among the 120 companies included in this magazine there is a 5.5% fall in the positive score for job security to 71.5%.

… Continue Reading

Being a “Best Company to Work For” helps during a recession

Here’s an interesting piece of information:

According to the UK 2009 Best Companies to Work For survey only 37% of employees in three-star accredited companies – the top award for engagement – are worried about the impact of the current economic climate on their organisation’s future. The proportion grows to two-thirds of staff in companies that did not achieve the accreditation and over half in firms with one star.

Jonathan Austin, chief executive of Best Companies, said: “Those employees who feel involved and committed to their organisation feel more confident about their organisation’s future in these uncertain times – putting their companies in the best position to survive the recession.”

Of the 795 organisations that applied for UK Best Companies accreditation this year, 639 made the grade. Three-star status was given to 55 firms – including Nando’s, Pannone LLP and Office Angels.

Employee Engagement a key to success in a recession

I am not a big fan of “the best company” type surveys. They can be so easily manipulated and quickly become an end rather than a snapshot they’re supposed to be. Nevertheless, they’re out there, and they can give some insights into trends, so I do watch them. The Canadian “50 Best Employers” 2009 has just been released. It appears in the January issue of The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine and in La Presse, and represents one hundred and forty-five Canadian organizations registered to participate in the study. The results from this year’s study were based on survey responses from more than 115,000 Canadian employees, with additional input from over 1,200 leaders and human resources professionals.

The Executive summary is quite interesting and relevant:

… Continue Reading

Generation Y studied by Economist Business Intelligence Unit

One of the most common criticisms of generational theory is that it is nothing much more than pop psychology. While it is true that many people use generational theory in its crudest forms, applying it when all they know about it is what they heard in a one hour keynote session at a conference, this does not mean that the theory itself has no substance. It is also true that some people use it as a “blunt instrument” – applying it with no regard to other dynamics and segmentation models. Again, just because some people use it badly, doesn’t discredit the theory itself.

There are many formal research projects on generations, and almost all of them confirm the basic theory and its findings. A recent study now focuses on the younger generation, known as Generation Y. The global survey was conducted by the Economist Business Intelligence Unit and Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company. It looked at how consumers born between 1982 and 2001 will impact the customer experience, asking C-level and senior executives from around the world how they are creating a customer experience to attract and retain Millennials. Of the 164 executives who took part in the survey, 29% came from North America, 31% from Europe, 30% from Asia-Pacific and 10% from the rest of the world. Participants represented 19 different industries. One-third of respondents’ organisations had annual revenue greater than US$1 billion and just over one-half (51%) had less than US$500 million in revenue. Board members and CEOs comprised 30% of respondents. CFOs, CTOs and other C-level executives made up an additional 19%. The remainder was split among other senior and middle management functions.

The headline results and executive summary of the findings is very interesting:
… Continue Reading

Understand behaviour by understanding the brain

Do you have problems managing large groups of people?  I have a solution for you.  Read on.

There is limited space in our brains.  Our brains are similar to a Tupperware container  - you can only fit in so much.  There is a name for this – in cognitive psychology, they call it ‘Channel Capacity’.   You have different capacities to absorb and process different types of things.  You have an intellectual capacity, feeling capacity and a social capacity.   

The part of your brain that deals with complex thought and reasoning is called the neocortex.  Primates (monkeys and apes, including humans), have the biggest brains of all mammals and the neocortex is particularly large.  For years, scientists have wondered what determines the size of the neocortex.  Is it eating habits?  Is it intellectual ability?

A British anthropologist called Robert Dunbar discovered the answer – the larger the neocortex, the larger the social group in which the primate is able to operate effectively.  Humans have the biggest neocortex of all primates so we can operate better in larger social groups than say chimps or monkeys.

Dunbar’s research determined that the biggest group in which humans can cope effectively is made up of 150 people. 

… Continue Reading

Lucy Kellaway

If you’ve picked up a Financial Times, from time to time, you may have been introduced to Lucy Kellaway. I discovered her while wondering around iTunes looking for interesting PodCasts. And interesting is just one tiny word to describe my journey with Lucy Kellaway.

I know I’m opening myself to plenty by suggesting that she’s my modern equivalent to business that Luther was to the Catholic Church. She’s been a wonderful breath of fresh air, forcing me to be honest about business today. Forcing me to be honest as a consultant working with people who are ‘in there’ each and every day trying their best to make it all work.

Apart from finding the courage to find a way to invite her to South Africa, I’ve also spent a fair amount of energy and headspace wondering plenty about her philosophies around how business works?

… Continue Reading