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.

Examples of Tremendous Business Leadership

I came across a fantastic post today that provides excellent leadership and company case studies. Here are some of the headline learning’s I’ve taken from this article:

- reward your staff during tough times: During 9/11 SouthWest announced a $179.8 million profit sharing payment to employees.
- Be human, approachable, genuine and transparent: Toyota’s CEO Jim Lentz appeared on a Digg Dialogg (an often hositle forum to corporate companies). The questions were asked in order of votes made by digg members, and none were filtered.
- Be humble and challenge the “nasty” stuff about your industry even if it means retaliation by the established players. Consumers will appreciate the honesty and reward you
- Don’t pay yourself excessive salary. Jim Sinegal CEO of Costco figured he shouldn’t be paid more than 12 people working on the floor. See also my colleague Graeme’s post A Radical Proposal for Executive Pay
- Trust your staff – At a time when the idea of “business blogging” was brand new (and usually feared), IBM encouraged their 320,000 employees to start company blogs. IBM leadership drafted a corporate blogging policy that encouraged employees to be themselves, speak in first person, and respect their coworkers.
- Perhaps the simplest but most powerful… always listen first, and speak last.

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Managing Today’s Younger People

Management in today’s organisational environment is no easy endeavor. The number of new elements that need to be negotiated and integrated in order to develop an effective management style are numerous as they are unchartered. The environment in which we work has shifted dramatically in the past 10 years. Business ‘how-to’ books are barely keeping pace as fresh challenges surface and new thinking emerges around how to survive and thrive as a manager.

Because of my business focus within TomorrowToday, I often encounter baby-boomer managers struggling to adapt to and accept the increasingly larger number of Generation X (and smattering of Generation Y) found within the workforce. Mostly it’s the vast difference in world view and value system that’s causing the angst. Boomers have done a fantastic job managing boomers. They’ve created systems, processes, management styles, reward philosophies, motivation programmes, etc that have resulted in tremendous growth and increased efficiency. As this younger group have entered the work force, they’re simply not responding and engaging in ways that Boomers have become accustomed to.

A large part of my work is assisting both of these groups (Boomers and Gen X) to appreciate their own and each other’s world views, as together we navigate this New World of Work. It’s key for all parties NOT to adopt a ‘wrong/right’ filter in this debate. Attempting to place a wrong/right label on either group just escalates the tension and ultimately never finds a resolution. I’ve found it far more helpful to frame this engagement as a ‘war of two wisdoms’. Baby-Boomer wisdom has got us here, and Gen X wisdom will take us forward. Because the ‘gap’ between these two generations is, at times fairly large, it’s critical that these two wisdoms are intentionally integrated into each other in order to avoid simply letting ‘nature’ take its course, as we wait for the younger lions to force the older lions out of the pride. This scenario, in my mind, will leave much destruction and wasted time and energy in its wake. … Continue Reading

School sport as an indicator of Talent

Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers has been one of my break-through books of 2009 in the area of ‘Talent’. If it does anything to the reader, it will surely have them asking deeper questions around what talent is and how we should be assessing for it? It did at least that for me. I’ll confess right up front that I am a Gadwell fan. Yes I have read the critiques on him, and whatever you might say of him, he does one of the best jobs taking some very complex ideas and packaging them for the less educated, complex and deep, like me (and you if you’re honest).

The Wall Street Journal blog has a great article that plays in the ‘Outliers’ space, called Economists Link Athletics to Success in School, Job Markets. Wharton economist Betsey Stevenson has drawn a link between young women entering sports in high school in the US (a law change in 1972, significantly changed the ratio’s of young women in high school sport) and an increase of female college attendance and female labour-force participation.

This article adds, in my mind, to the increasing body of evidence suggesting that how we spot ‘talent’ is more complex than a battery of psychological tests, academic results and personality profiling (no matter how sophisticated they seem). There may be many other, far more robust indicators as to someone’s future value that we don’t know how to interrogate, have forgotten about, or are just not courageous enough to explore?

Title IX’s most pronounced effect was on athletics. Girls’ participation in high school sports went from 1 in 27 in 1972 to 1 in 4 in 1978. But it’s effect wasn’t uniform because states where boys’ participation in athletics was high were forced to increase girls’ participation the most. Ms. Stevenson was able to use the variation between states to tease out the effect of girls participation in sports from other factors. That allowed her to see how playing sports affected girls’ success later in life.

Her conclusion: A 10 percentage-point rise in girls’ participation in high school sports leads to a 1 percentage point increase in female college attendance and a 1 to 2 percentage point increase in female labor-force participation.

Maybe athletics should be added to reading, writing and arithmetic.

Maybe indeed…..

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 : )

How to keep your staff as the recovery begins

The UK is officially out of recession, as are most countries around the world. You couldn’t call it “bouyant” yet, but the recovery has started. Over the next few months and years, it will gain momentum. One of the unintended consequences of the recovery will be that many companies will lose their best staff. We have spoken about this before.

In reading an article from Deloittes again, I thought that it would be worth repeating the advice they gave for how to stop your best staff leaving in the next year.

When economic conditions improve, a certain amount of voluntary turnover is inevitable. But if addressed early and managed correctly, the turnover doesn’t have to be debilitating. Here are some small steps to consider taking now to avoid big problems later:

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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.

Talent is a Four Letter Word

The title of this post comes from a reply to a tweet I once posted:

Does anyone have a better word for ‘talent’? Does business really think it’s a big issue? Is there some other ‘thing’ we should be noticing?

Free video course on Managing Generation Y at work

In December 09, Graeme Codrington recorded a series of short videos on Managing Generation Y at Work. This was done with Success.tv in London. These videos are now available for free:

The videos are:

• The New World of Work – an introduction to what we do, and the concept that drives our thinking
• The New Generation
• Managing Young Talent
• Personalising the Workplace
• Managing Meetings in the digital age

Feel free to use these videos in your companies. But, if you’d like more details or have one of our team speak live at your next event, why not contact us and make a booking enquiry.

Tesco, a talented company

I’m always on the lookout for talented companies and I think I found one on my doorstep. The company’s name is Tesco and earlier this week I gave our Mind the Gap presentation at their marketing team away day.

I’m a fan of Tesco (and have written several blogs on the company see TPF has lift off and Tesco trains their staff in generational talk) mainly for one simple reason the customer service and experience I receive when shopping there. I love the fact that they have a stated policy of never having more than two people standing at the checkout. As soon as there is a third person, a new checkout is opened, and this policy works! From the Tesco Express around the corner from where I live, to their megastores I have seen it in action without fail. It is a simple policy but its execution is genius and it keeps me going back to Tesco because I hate wasting my time standing in lines, who doesn’t!

Recently I wrote an article called the Talent Reboot and argued that companies need to be focusing on creating talented companies (by creating talented tribes) rather focusing on individual talent (as banks do). It was therefore great to find in Tesco an example of a talented tribe in action. Carolyn Bradley , Tesco’s marketing director, did a great presentation using Tesco TV adverts (from as far back as the seventies) to bring to life the history of the Tesco brand. It was amazing to see the innovative initiatives and strategies that Tesco has launched since the early 1970’s to grow its market share to nearly twice that of it’s closest competitor. What was more impressive was that this growth has been achieved during at a time when Tesco’s competitors market share has remained relatively stagnant or even decreased. But it was by observing the marketing team in action at their away day and later at their office, that it became apparent that there is more to Tesco than innovative ideas, they are been building talented tribes.

The team spirit I observed at their away day was amongst the best that I have ever seen. I was privileged enough to be given a tour of their very unassuming head office and treated to lunch at the staff canteen (I had a very tasty Cumberland sausage and mash). I was able to see how each marketing team had decorated their cubicles with Christmas themes, building mock chimneys for Santa and using fake polystyrene snow. The finance team won the best and most imaginative design supporting the belief that within each accountant there is a creative marketer waiting to break free. The marketing team at Tesco is clearly talented and full of energy. What I observed at Tesco is very similar to what Zappos, America’s most successful online shoe retailer has achieved. Zappos is often used as a case study of a company that has created talented tribes. At Zappos teams dress up to celebrate events, decorate their team areas and are passionate about what they do – customer service.

What Tesco and Zappos appear to have in common are talented tribes and huge commercial success. They are clearly getting the ingredients right and I plan to follow their stories a lot closer.

The Talent Reboot

THE WORD “TALENT” HAS GIVEN BUSINESS A BAD NAME!

The 15th September 2008 is a day that shall remain etched in the annals of corporate history. It’s the day that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt lurching the world economy into the biggest financial crisis since the 1930’s. On that day and ensuing months it became clear a number of very talented individuals had brought the world to the brink of financial disaster. It’s a day that talent gave business a bad name. But there is more to the new talent challenge than just the financial crisis. Over the past decade consultants have been convincing companies that there is a “war for talent”. In this war, you have been told that talent needs to be given what it wants and that companies need to go to extraordinary lengths to provide talent with all the flexibility and freedom it desires. Nowhere has the war for talent been more ferociously fought than in the corridors of the financial monoliths. Banks, investment houses and insurance companies have hired and rewarded the very best. In return the brightest of the brightest have devised very clever and innovative financial instruments that brought the world to the brink of collapse. The reasons for the financial crisis are complex, needless to say. But what if the crisis happened not in spite of talent but because of it? What if companies have been using the wrong strategies and tactics to fight the war for talent?

This article argues that talent is crucial for business success, but that the current focus and direction being taken is detrimental to businesses and society. A paradigm shifts is required. We argue that the new talent focus needs to be built on creating talented companies, not creating talented individuals.

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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:

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25 “talented” people behind the meltdown

I’m currently researching and writing an article called “Talent has given business a bad name” and came across a really good article in The Guardian In this article Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who led us into the current crisis. Most of these individuals were the top of their class, hand picked individuals – talent who got it wrong! People like Andy Hornby, former HBOS boss so highly respected, so admired and so clever – top of his 800-strong class at Harvard – but it was his strategy, that got HBOS in the trouble destroying billions of pounds worth of wealth and thousands of jobs. The article by Julia makes a for a compelling read and names and shames a number of high profile business people and politicians

You can read the article below or click here to read article at The Guardian
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To degree or not to degree, that is the question!

We’ve been noticing a distinct shift in the perceived value that a university degree brings. It’s largely accepted that a degree from an university, especially an ivy league one such as MIT, Harvard or INSEAD can improve expected earnings significantly. This has resulted in a seemingly all out onslaught by young people to get degrees, to the point now where getting a university qualification does not provide the competitive advantage it offered ten years ago. With so many new graduates, instead of providing enhanced opportunities, degrees have now become minimum entrant criteria for jobs at large corporations. And don’t stop with one degree, today’s graduates feel greater pressure to further their qualification with MBA’s and PHD’s. 78% of students are concerned about getting good qualifications. To put this into perspective, that’s more pressure than they feel to have sex, fit in or taking drugs – combined!

The Telegraph has an interesting article on University: was it really worth the effort? and an interesting website called notgoingtouni is encouraging school leavers to pursue apprenticeships as a viable alternative. When one considers the success of people like Bill Gates and Richard Branson who never got degrees you do have to stop and reflect on whether or not university is the best route to ensuring a bright future especially when the Office for National Statistics revealed that 746,000 18- to 24-year-olds are unemployed – a record rate of 18 per cent. It is thought that about 100,000 of those are university-leavers who, despite their degrees, cannot find jobs.

You can read the whole article from The Telegraph below or click on the link.

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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.

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Office Technology, Boomers and Generation X & Y

For most Boomers (born 1950s and 60s), the office had the best technology – much better than they had at home. I started work at KPMG Johannesburg in the early 1990s, when they had just imported over 100 Apple System 7 “luggable” computers. This gave KPMG more computing power than the USA government had at the time (they needed special US Senate approval for the purchase)! I was a techie nerd as a kid (from my awesome first Atari 800SX, with green screen, to my AT computer in the early 1990s).

But I had nothing at home to match what I had available to me at work. And that’s not to mention the fax machine, the photocopier, the mainframe, the telex (OK, I’m not that old, but it’s the concept that’s important here), and other amazing technology available at the office. And the most up-to-date software too. I used to try and book an Apple out every weekend, and take it home with me to play on.

But now times have changed. Most of today’s young people come to work everyday, completely frustrated and irritated by the out-of-date technology available to them. Their office has worse technology than they have at home. And, even worse, restrictive IT policies mean that they can’t bring technology from home to the office, as they’d like to. IT requires them to use Excel and Word, when they’d prefer to use Google Docs. IT restricts their ability to load apps onto their machines – little programs that would help increase their productivity and efficiency. And, if they’re Apple fans, tough like if the company has chosen a PC platform. Standardisation trumps productivity and enjoyment!

This doesn’t make sense. If you can’t keep ahead (or even keep up) with current IT specs, then the least you should be doing is allowing staff to use their own technology. I know IT will faint and give 100 reasons not to do this (their starting point will be “security concerns”, I’ll bet). But IT should not have the final word here. There are other considerations, including the motivation and engagement of your staff, especially your top talent, productivity and efficiency, and the reduction of costs (why not let staff use their own technology and give them a small personal budget to get what they want for themselves).

Millennial Muddle

Kids these days. Just look at them. They’ve got those headphones in their ears and a gadget in every hand. They speak in tongues and text in code. They wear flip-flops everywhere. Does anyone really understand them? Only some people do, or so it seems. They are experts who have earned advanced degrees, dissected data, and published books. If the minds of college students are a maze, these specialists sell maps, so says Eric Hoover in his recent article in The Chronicle called The Millennial Muddle

The article covers the thoughts of leading authors, covering issues they agree on and disagree. It’s lengthy but well worth the read.

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Halliburton, rape and mad Republicans

I cannot tell you how much I wish I was wrong. A large part of my job is to try and track trends – especially those issues that will shape the new world of work. Every now and again our team at TomorrowToday gets to check in and see whether we were right or not. Obviously, we want to be right – our reputation and ability to get work from clients depends on it.

But, today I wish I was wrong. You see, in April 2005 I did one of the most in-depth pieces of investigative journalism I have ever done, and put together an article entitled: Would You Work for Halliburton?. It’s worth a read – as we chronicle the nasty habits of this nasty company. In the article in 2005, I suggested that Halliburton would have trouble hiring the right kind of people to turn their company culture around, and that the future might be bleak for them.

It turns out I was horrifically accurate in this assertion.

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Don’t miss the 7th annual Loyalty World conference

We’re very excited to announce that TomorrowToday has teamed up with the talented team at Terrapin and Dean van Leeuwen (Co-Founder of TomorrowToday UK) has been asked to present at the prestigious 7th Annual Loyalty World Conference in London on the 4th of November. Along with a number of other distinguished speakers and industry experts including Luke Johnson Chairman of Channel 4 and Risk Capital Partners, this is a unique conference designed to assist you in understanding all the complex elements that go into designing a successful loyalty strategy. The economic crisis is forcing a change in customer attitudes and priorities. The age of consumerism is all but over and people’s buying habits are changing.

Dean will be presenting Mind The Gap – focusing on how we can use people’s values to build stronger customer relationships and hence greater loyalty. He’ll also be showing the audience why it is we don’t always understand people older or younger than ourselves and why achieving customer loyalty often feels like trying to herd cats!

For more information and to register for the event please visit the Loyalty World website

His finest hour

One year ago, Gordon Brown was being hailed by many as the saviour of the world’s banking system. On October 14 2008 Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary of the time, announced a rescue plan for America’s stricken banks. Germany, Italy, France and Spain had just done the same. All the initiatives had something in common: they looked very similar to the move announced a week earlier by the British prime minister, says George Parker of the Financial Mail.

It intrigues me that this is one of the political PR gaffs of the decade. On the face of it Gordon Brown may have saved the world for the brink of a financial catastrophe. Time will tell… Yet he has been unable to capitalise on this and be seen as a leader who acted decisively. Part of the problem is in Mr Brown’s behaviour. Finance is his natural habitat and it is even argued that, at the time of the crisis, he was more interested in settling long-term questions of financial reform than the nitty-gritty of winning a general election.

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Marcus Buckingham takes aim at women

The guy is no fool.

Marcus Buckingham, author and strengths uber-guru, knows what he is doing. He first shot to prominence with a series of books about personal strengths. I think that his book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths” (also sold under the title of “Strengths Finder 2.0″ – see Kalahari or Amazon to buy it) is one of the best personal development books ever written, and I regularly state in my seminars that I think everyone in the world should read it.

Now, he has released his latest book, and it is aimed at the lucrative women’s market (and has gone straight to paperback, too). The book is called, “Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently” (buy it at Kalahari or Amazon). I managed to get an advance copy, and really enjoyed it. It’s typical of his style – maybe even more chatty than previous books. It’s simple, down-to-earth, but amazingly insightful. And I think it will fly off the shelves into the many women’s groups that meet around the world every day.

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VWV Red Plug on Generation 2.0

VWV is an interesting company, that I still don’t know enough about. Take a visit to their web site to see some of the ‘interesting’ I encounter when I meet with their people (wherever they may be).

Tomorrow I’m spending the afternoon with them as part of their ‘Red Plug’. It’s an informal forum they pull together made up of clients, media, friends and other interesting people who don’t fall into those 3 particular categories.

I’ve got a slot at tomorrow’s Red Plug. Talking about Web 2.0 (whatever that is) and it’s impact on people and business. It’s a monster of a topic. I get to put my little bit forward. how I see it from this particular corner of the planet.

I’m going to test out the term ‘Generation 2.0′. I’ve borrow it from Gen X, who are often referred to as the ‘TV Generation’, simply because they were the first complete Generation to grow up with TV. Today’s younger set are the first complete generation to grow up being influenced by Web 2.0. I think it’s a fitting descriptor.

Of course you’d have to be at the Red Plug at VWV to hear some of my thoughts. Or perhaps another day over some coffee, a beer or a glass or two of red wine.

I’m looking forward to the afternoon. Fer sure!

[after the event] The session was tweeted by Bev from SimonSays Communications – click here for her tweets

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

Proof we had a Billboard

At the beginning of September I wrote of the billboard we got through a barter with INM Outdoor. Edward’s comment made me smile as he asked what we were doing with ‘old technology’ being a company that explores an emerging world of possibilities? Other than the fact that we swapped some of our time, for some of their space, there wasn’t really another reason for doing it.

We did all wonder what would come of our 2 weeks of space? We made sure the call center was open 24 hours a day and bought triple our normal bandwidth to deal with the large volume of e-mail, web and blog hits we were expecting. Of course none of that happened. Other than a supplier’s wife mailing me to say she’d seen it, I’m not sure we had any response. Doesn’t mean that there wasn’t anything useful about it? Just means we didn’t get to hear about it.

Anyway our 2 weeks are up on Peter Place, and I’ve been meaning to post a pic as proof that we did have one.

Check out the security we had on it : ) Electric and metal fence. Can’t be too careful with our well designed billboard.

Oh and that’s me, to prove I at least saw it.

The Proof is in the People

We in TomorrowToday have been saying for a long time that the biggest global strategic challenge is what has been called the, ‘war for talent’ – or what is essentially the attraction and retention of talent. There has been some earlier research on this but a recent global research done by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) titled, ‘Creating People Advantage; How to Address HR Challenges Worldwide Through 2015′ confirms it. The scope of the BCG’s research included 83 countries and markets, capturing along the way some 4,700 executive interviews on 17 topics in human resources management. The research outlines some 194 specific action steps associated with these topics and also included more than 200 follow-up interviews with senior executives worldwide.

Three strategic categories were identified concerning critical challenges facing HR into the future: Developing and Retaining the Best Employees; Anticipating Change and finally, Enabling the Organization.

Managing Talent is at the top or very near the top of the agenda in every region and every industry. Linked to this is the critical challenge of improving leadership development as well as managing life-work balance. Our approach in TomorrowToday has always been to see these as inter-dependent and integrated areas of concern – together with understanding global change and how to build adaptive organizations. The research makes the point that, ‘change should be hard-wired into an organization in a tangible and measurable way’. Of course this is easier said than done but this is exactly what we in TorrowToday are about and love to do. Get hold of the BCG research. It is well presented as it is divided into global regions and for HR Directors and Managers, it will prove to be a valuable resource when arguing your point…be that for budget allocation or the need to try new things!

TomorrowToday is getting a Billboard

TomorrowToday South Africa is getting a Billboard for 2 weeks in September. We did an exchange with INM Outdoor earlier this year. We did some work for them, and they’re doing some work for us. So a swap of sorts.

We’ve not had anything like this, and we’re looking forward to seeing what it does for business? We’re not even sure what we can expect? But we are excited, and it has been fun getting it all together.

It’s also been a great catalyst for us to get our international branding on the same page, and we’re starting this with look and feel driven largely by our websites. So by the time the billboard goes live we’ll have a new South African look and feel to our website, followed shortly afterwards by our UK office.

The billboard focusses on Talent and Leadership. In a business world with a changing worker (so called Talent) there has to be a rethink on how to lead. You can’t expect to lead a different group of people in same way. Can you? We don’t think so.

I’m sure we’ll post updates and results, if only to post our thoughts on the medium of outdoor advertising.

Watch this space…..

Motivation: Harvard’s ‘powerful new model’

Harvard Business Review’s ’summer reading’ (their big summer edition) has a big piece on motivation. This is obviously because motivation can take a big dip during an economic downturn, when the pressure is on and the incentives are low. They trumpet a “powerful new model” in a piece written by Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg and Linda-Eling Lee. Read it here.

Using the results of surveys they conducted with employees at a wide range of Fortune 500 and other companies, they developed a model for how to increase workplace motivation dramatically. The authors identify the organizational levers that companies and frontline managers have at their disposal as they try to meet workers’ deep needs.

Simply stated, their model suggests that we can learn from the neuroscience of leadership – using MRI scanners to see which areas of the brain light up to show activity and engagement – and says that there are four key drivers of motivation:

1. The drive to acquire – rewards and experiences
2. The drive to bond – building a sense of belonging
3. The drive to comprehend – work must be meaningful
4. The drive to defend – fair play for all

“By using all four levers simultaneously, and thereby tackling all four drives, organizations can improve motivation levels by leaps and bounds.” This is essential, as a recent Hay Group survey of more than 3,100 organizations found that 41% of employees felt demotivated by their managers.

Reporting on the HBR research in the FT, Stefan Stern says that the “powerful new model” doesn’t actually add anything to what we know already, and which was summed up in the iconic 1968 HBR article by Frederick Herzberg: “One more time: how do you motivate employees”. According to Herzberg, what really motivates people are their sense of achievement, recognition for their work, the work itself, responsibility, advancement and personal growth. Herzberg called for “job enrichment”: trying to make sure that people had interesting work to do.

Herzberg’s is probably most famous for this paragraph:

“If I kick my dog…he will move. And when I want him to move again what must I do? I must kick him again. Similarly, I can change a person’s battery, and then recharge it, and then recharge it again. But it is only when one has a generator of one’s own that we can talk about motivation. One then needs no outside stimulation. One wants to do it.”

So, yes, a nice summary of what motivates from the HBR. The problem is not in the model, but rather in its application. We know what to do as managers. We need to just jolly well get on and do it!

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

How to motivate talented people in tough times – a story from Time Warner

Harvard Business Press is releasing a well timed book called Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down by Sylvia A. Hewlett in October 2009. I’ve been able to gain access to an excerpt from the book which provides and example of what Time Warner is doing to keep staff motivated. It’s a great example of what companies can do during the recession to keep their talented staff motivated. Best of all it’s simple, costs little and is getting good results. You can read the excerpt below and look out for the book when it is published in October

Time Warner has embraced a high-level, high-touch, low-cost program as part of an overall effort to help raise morale and engage employees. The media company’s Chairman and CEO Jeffrey L. Bewkes hosts Skip-Level Lunches with small groups of employees from across Time Warner’s corporate offices in New York City. Approximately every four weeks, Bewkes sits down with ten to twelve individuals for a two-hour lunch, talks candidly about his plans for the organization, answers questions, and listens to employees’ thoughts and perspectives. Human resources and department heads choose the lunch guests. They select employees who do not report directly to the CEO and usually have little or no access to him. Although the guest list is always diverse—ranging from senior vice presidents to administrative assistants—attendees are typically high performers and high-potential employees. They are also seen as “connectors” and “influencers” — well-respected employees who are likely to share their lunch experience and the CEO’s perspective with colleagues.

… Continue Reading

88 years old and mayer for 30+ years

Today is Nelson Mandela’s birthday. An international icon.

But this is not about Madiba. He’s never been mayor. He has been President of South Africa, and leader of the African National Congress (ANC), but never Mayor.

This is a video interview worth watching about Hazel McCallion, who’s 88 years old and been mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada for 30+ years. She’s been re-elected 11 times in the 6th biggest city in Canada, and runs a city that’s debt free with cash reserves of $700 000 000.

It struck me while watching, that we’re a world that’s become so ‘young people focused’, that we so easily miss and don’t appreciate the value and contribution that ‘much’ older people do make, and can make in our private and public worlds.

So happy birthday Madiba and wow Mayor McCallion. Don’t stop teaching us. May we never stop learning from everyone we meet.