Diversity, innovation, six sigma, decentralisation, Jack Welch’s 70/20/10, Kai-Zen, Feng Shui. All of these (and others) are strategic focus areas that most companies have invested large amounts of resource and energy into with the intention of creating a distinctive value proposition. But the significant focus of the day has shifted and thanks to ‘The War for Talent’ - a well-written research document - ‘Talent’ has taken centre stage on the organisational agenda of precedence.

In a globalising world, with a shortage of numbers in the developed world, and a shortage of skills in the developing world, it’s right to ensure the attraction and retention of the best possible people inside of an organisation. Along with this and its associated challenges is the emergence of a new ‘kind’ of worker. From a values perspective they have been described as Generation X, with Generation Y following on their heels. A fundamental building block in engaging with the skills shortage crisis, is understanding these generations - specifically their value system and worldview. The challenge lies in building the best possible model to ‘attract, recruit and get the best from them’.

What then, is the younger set of today looking for? Insightful observations that can act as signposts include:

Work - Life Integration

Boomers (age 40-60) entered a working world with no mobile or wireless anything. Work and home were quite separate and seeing them as such is an easier concept for Boomers. For Xers (age 20-40) it’s very different. Work and home have merged. Ricardo Semler in his book, ‘The Seven Day Weekend’, asks, “If I send e-mails on a Sunday evening, why can’t I watch a movie on a Monday afternoon?” Why not indeed?

Work-Life Integration and not Work-Life Balance: today’s younger set wants an environment that understands this challenge and gives them space to solve it for themselves.

Outputs Driven Environment

In order to effectively integrate work and life, you need flexibility of time and space. “Tell me what you want from me (the output) and not how to do it (the input).” Of course not all work processes lend themselves easily to an outputs driven environment. An outputs driven environment must be seen in the context of and as an enabler for work-life integration.

Loyalty

Quite simply loyalty is not a familiar concept for today’s younger set. The nineties saw companies driving efficiency and downsizing was part of this streamlining. Xers watched their parents who had given their lives to a company lose their jobs overnight. They arrive at your business and don’t expect you to commit to them for the long-term. In return, their message to you is you shouldn’t expect anything different from them.

Their longevity mantra is ‘no shorter than three, no longer than five’, yet most organisations are built around a far longer retention cycle. Today’s younger set are leaving for opportunity to increase the number of pages on their CV in the ‘work experience section’. From their perspective, it ensures advancement. So abandon the idea of long-term retention. Rather get the most out of them during their tenure.

This skills shortage we’re faced with isn’t going away in the short-term. However we can manage our response and influence the environment around us but it’s going to mean changing how we see the world and embracing a new way of going about our business. Today’s young people do represent amazing talent. If your strategy thus far has been to wait for them to grow up and become like you, you have a long wait ahead of you.

Barrie Bramley is a founding partner of TomorrowToday.biz and works in our ‘future of work’ research team. He is a strength-perspective evangelist and invites you to engage him in further conversation.

In a world that is getting ever smaller cultures collide with increasing frequency. In this world of radical indeterminacy, paradox, diversity and acute uncertainty, leadership needs to transcend local context. In short, the ‘global leadership’ template is being re-written. Relying on what has worked in the past will be the surest recipe for failing in the future and avoiding this fatality requires a radical overhaul of our understanding of the context, task, challenge and measure of the corporate leader. Or in the words of Kenichi Ohmae in his book, The Next Global Stage,”Over the last two decades, the world has changed substantially. The economic, political, social, corporate, and personal rules that now apply bear scant relation to those applicable two decades ago. Different times require a different script.”

Here are just four trends that are changing the face of business and therefore leadership which require our attention when it comes to developing corporate leaders.

# 1 The move from a closed / centralised way of operating to one that is open / decentralised. This movement is evident at a political, economic, structural as well as social level. Central to this change is the issue of control. Perhaps the biggest lesson for those preparing for leadership is the new reality that they are not in control. Old models of command and control when it comes to the corporate leader of the future are just that – old. Learning how to evoke order without control is the next big challenge for leaders everywhere.

# 2: The move from strategic planning to strategic thinking. In a world where tomorrow does not resemble today, where predictability gives way to uncertainty, the need for flexible, future-focused strategy trumps the reliance on detailed strategic plans. How many corporate strategic plans would have to have been shredded in the aftermath of 9/11? Most corporate leadership meetings that I attend are still dominated by operation concerns. Strategic issues, and by strategic I don’t mean simply taking last years financials and adding 10%, are seldom entertained. Savvy leaders learn that posing the right questions becomes more important than having the right answers.

#3: The move from ‘right- wrong’ scenarios to those of ‘right-right’. Future leaders will be required to navigate in a sea of paradox. The paradox will be increasingly experienced at multiple levels, including personal, cultural, structural and generational. The only way to lead through paradox is to construct helpful frameworks that allow for a deeper understanding of the paradox at work. Without understanding there can be no real respect and therefore no authentic relationship. Future leaders will have to learn to lead in a pluralistic context in which they are able to invite the best out in others rather than simply impose their mindset and way on others.

# 4: The move from external to internal. Future leaders will be expected to display a high degree of self-awareness, pay attention to intuition and be comfortable with reflection. Leadership is about character – who you are matters most. This is increasingly the focus of attention in of much of the contemporary writing on leadership yet the problem is, corporate programmes and processes to develop leaders are not designed with this end in mind.

Until we change this, as well as pay close attention to the inevitable pull of the future, we will fail to produce the right kind of leaders capable of leading in the uncertainty of tomorrow. We need companies that are willing to challenge assumption around the development and practice of leadership and who are willing to learn from the future rather than the past.

Keith Coats is a director of TomorrowToday.biz, a dynamic organisation that helps companies identify the mega trends that will impact the people connected to their business – employees, customers and partners.  Keith is a recognised expert on leadership development and a gifted facilitator, executive coach and futurist.

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:

The Economist BIU found that Generation Y include approximately 80 million individuals born between 1982 and 2001 in the US alone. The millennial generation outnumbers baby boomers today, and its ranks will continue to grow in influence as the majority of Gen Y reach adulthood in the next decade. Largely as a result of the Baby Boomers, executives overwhelmingly agree (81%) that each generation has specific work and marketplace needs, but they are split on which demographic group should receive the greater share of market investment. A surprising 42% believe that a bigger share of investment in marketing and service should go toward catering to Gen Y, while 39% favor older consumers. As a result of this split, the research found few companies have cemented their approach or yet implemented a strategy.

The survey found that 75% of companies believe that in the next three years they will need to have a Gen Y strategy in place, with 30% expecting a major impact that will lead to change across the organisation, and 45% expecting a more modest impact. Despite this, 54% of respondents say they have yet not set their strategy for targeting, attracting, or retaining Gen Y, while 32% say they have done so. For example, most companies have not kept pace with the Gen Yers’ preference for interacting through newer, community-based technologies, as most firms continue to rely on telephone, email and store/office-front points of contact.

The research found the proliferation of blogs, podcasts, videos, chat rooms, social networking sites and other online interactive communication has changed the corporate-customer relationship. In the past, customers tended to go directly to the company to enquire about a product, make a purchase or raise a complaint; today they increasingly go online. On the web, they learn, shop and share their experiences, both positive and negative. The survey identified key features and motivating factors that companies expect to resonate with Gen Y, which revolve around issues such as convenience, customisation, and community. For example, when it comes to purchasing products and services, corporate reputation and brand are less important with the Gen Y than peer recommendation and viral marketing (such as online promotional communications passed from one customer to another). Moreover, respondents say it is convenience more than price that drives millennial purchasing decisions. Others include “fast, reliable service,” “frictionless interaction,” a “tailored approach,” “honesty and trust” and a “personal touch”.

Three key findings emerged:

1. Investment strategies are shifting to favor Gen Y: companies are debating heavily whether to invest more in catering to aging baby boomers versus next-generation consumers, with 42% saying they should tilt toward younger customers, while 39% would shift toward Baby Boomers and Generation X.

2. The time to act is now: most companies (54%) have not yet set their strategies or marketing for Gen Y, even though they overwhelmingly agree that such steps are needed, with 75% saying Gen Y will impact their organisation as consumers in the next three years.
3. It’s an Enterprise 2.0 world: Most companies have a sophisticated understanding of what it would take to adapt, but are not ready to change their customer engagement model by leveraging social networking, peer marketing, better online support, text messaging, and blogging.

The report highlights the urgent need for businesses to invest in new modes of customer communication and to tailor their approaches to match customer preferences. The research is part of an ongoing set of thought leadership initiatives by Genesys designed to help leading enterprises respond to key challenges they face and enable them to improve the overall customer experience.

A complete copy of the research is available upon request by going to http://genesyslabs-registration.com/?p=ECGG to register and download, or email press@genesyslab.com.

Happiness at Work – ‘Flowing’ in your job

This year’s Wimbledon men’s final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was riveting. The energy and discipline of both men was tangible. They were stretching themselves to the limit, giving it all they had. In subsequent television interviews, both men spoke about their preparation and the passion they have for their sport. They love winning but, more than that, they simply love playing the game.

American swimmer Michael Phelps’s performance at the Beijing Olympics was also mesmerizing. His focus, passion and energy as he swims are obvious to any spectator. He is disciplined and loves what he does. When he swims, the world around him seems to disappear as he focuses on the task at hand.

Most sportsmen display passion and disciplined concentration. If cyclists, runners, tennis players, golfers and swimmers feel this way about their jobs, why can’t people get that in their normal day jobs too? Why is the sporting world any different to the business world? Is that feeling reserved for sports people only or can other professions such as nurses, lawyers, accountants and secretaries feel focused, inspired and energized by their jobs too?

Flow – it’s what many sports people experience

When Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Michael Phelps engage in their sports, they experience what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘Flow’. People talk about flow often in the sporting environment but less so in the work one.

Flow is optimal experience. It is being on the ball, in the zone, in the groove. It is the deep enjoyment that comes from being so fully involved in something that nothing else seems to matter. You lose track of time. You are completely absorbed in the activity and enjoy the journey because your body and mind are stretched to their limits, but within the bounds of capability.

Many people long to experience flow at work. In the 21st century working world, the opportunities to experience flow are rare. Many employees work with listless compliance and resigned acceptance of the status quo and miss out on the satisfaction that comes from being enthralled by a task.

Flow does not have to be winning a gold medal at the Olympics. You can experience flow when you read a story to your child at night, when you have a conversation, write a letter or prepare for an exam. It is within the reach of everyone yet we ignore the possibility of experiencing it regularly at work.

Why we miss out on flow at work

It is difficult to experience flow at work for two main reasons:

1. The traditional work environment has been designed to get the most out of people, not the best out of them.

Traditionally work has not been designed for people. In the past, work was labour intensive and focused on industrial mass production. Companies needed people’s hands, not their minds. For many years, companies have not needed to tap into the relationships, innovation and creativity that flow creates.

2. The pace of our lives feels like we are in permanent whitewater

One of the prerequisites for flow is disciplined concentration. Our current work environment inhibits flow because we have little time to concentrate on one thing. We are encouraged to be multi-taskers.

A survey by The Net Future Institute showed that most people do their best business thinking while they are in their home or commuting to and from work. This is the only time they get to be still and think properly.

Everyday, employees are overwhelmed by emails, voicemails and endless meetings. There is no time for focused concentration because they are too busy reacting to the demands of the present. We are enslaved by our inbox. We are easily distracted because everything else is urgent. This limits the opportunities for flow.

Why do leaders need to bother about flow?

Many leaders do not feel it is their responsibility to make their employees feel motivated and happy. But the undeniable fact is that happier employees are more productive employees. Innovation, creativity and strategic relationships are vital for competitive advantage in the 21st century and they thrive on flow.

Creating an environment in which flow can flourish takes a lot of work. But executives fail to realize that the pay off is worth it in the long run.

How can leaders encourage flow?

Leaders cannot force employees to experience flow at work. But they can create the environment is which flow is likely to flourish.

1. Leaders must become enablers, rather than doers.

A leader’s role is more than improving productivity, safety, security and compensation. The industrialist J. Irwin Miller said:

The truth of the matter in business is that you don’t do anything by yourself. You have to create an atmosphere in which people want to give their best. You don’t order anybody to do their best. You couldn’t order Beethoven to compose the Ninth Symphony. He’s got to want to do it. And so the head of a business is an enabler rather than a doer.

2. Ensure that all challenges are balanced with the capacity to act

If employees have the skills, but few opportunities to use them, they will feel bored. If they feel challenged but do not have the skills to cope with them, they will feel anxious. As a leader, you must ensure that the right skills are in the right jobs because flow occurs at the boundary between boredom and anxiety. Challenge and skills must be high and equal to each other.

3. Set clear, realistic goals

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes that most flow-inducing activities occur during goal directed activities bounded by rules. Employees want to feel part of a purpose greater than themselves but they also need a context or framework in which to work. They are more productive when they know the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ behind what they are doing.

Leaders should focus less on the ultimate outcome and more on the journey. Small, consistent, achievable steps towards the end goal are more likely to induce flow.

4. Create a mentoring environment that encourages immediate feedback

Authentic, constructive feedback helps employees learn, grow and enjoy their work. Research has proven that immediate and specific feedback is one of the best ways to improve performance. Once people start getting authentic feedback and feel as if they are developing their skills, they begin to feel as if the task is intrinsically rewarding.

5. Hire the right people in the first place

Employees are more likely to experience the joys of flow if they are doing something they are passionate about, talented at and which meets a need greater than themselves. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Companies can provide a flow-inducing environment, but if the employee does not enjoy the work or feel talented at it, neither they nor the company will experience the benefits of flow.

Flow brings out the best in people

Creative initiative flourishes in flow. Business needs this to survive and thrive in the 21st century. Think of the job types within your company that would yield better results if employees were in flow. Every company would do better if employees had the initiative, energy and focus of people like Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

As a company, it is your responsibility to create the framework and environment in which flow is likely to flourish. It is the employee’s responsibility to ensure their time, attention and habits are aligned to the vision that they have for their lives.

If management can provide an environment in which such experiences can flourish, the organization will run efficiently, and the staff will recognize that, instead of stifling them, the job supports their growth. If flow is absent, work turns into drudgery, and the worker loses his or her creative initiative.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Sources:

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning. Coronet Books 2003

A Crisis Needs a Reponse

As the current economic downturn unfolds, it is easy to focus only on short-term implications and make decisions that could cripple your organisation in the long-term. Crisis times can breed panic mindsets. In particular, companies are in danger of being short-sighted about how they manage their people during the downturn: across-the-board staff reductions, freezing all staff development, cancelling conferences and international team meetings, managers demanding more from already stressed staff while offering less reward and no security. These are just some possible responses. Some are reasonable – and reasoned. Most are not – they are reactions to crisis. The danger is that when trying to “cut out the fat”, it is very easy for the scalpel to cut away some muscle, too.
The crisis mind-set is understandable, especially in the financial services sector. Some of the world’s leading banking and insurance institutions have literally disappeared, and almost every industry is feeling the effects of a credit crunch and economic slowdown. Government attempts to rescue the world’s banking systems are only the end of the beginning. The next few years promise to be difficult indeed, with a significant increase in unemployed professionals, devaluation of savings and wealth – most importantly the pension and retirement savings of the soon-to-start-retiring Boomers – and rampant volatility, insecurity and uncertainty.
Yet, the medium term outlook is not as depressing as it feels. The financial industry crisis has not spread to full-blown economic meltdown. No major country seems close to collapse, and the government responses have been quick and intense. Of course, this is the bottom of the business cycle, but it is not the “new normal”. It may take a few years, but we will get through this crisis and emerge into another growth cycle soon.

Short-sightedness is Dangerous
The danger therefore lies in companies responding irresponsibly to short-term crisis without considering longer term repercussions. In a downturn, people and companies do not necessarily look for the cheapest option. What they really seek out is safety – absolute assurance that their purchase will give them what they are looking for. Your ability to offer a level of “safety” that exceeds anything offered by your competitors has very little to do with what you sell (largely because your competitors sell very similar products, with similar guarantees at similar prices in similar ways), and very much more to do with who you are. And this has everything to do with who you employ and how they represent you.
Now, more than ever, organisations need well trained, passionate staff, focused on delivering consistent, high quality service and products. In turbulent times, people matter.
Yet, just when you need them to be most passionate and focused, many companies are finding that their people are demotivated and distracted. There may be good and immediate reasons for this, such as staff layoffs which so often accompany an economic downturn. Or it could simply be a general downbeat sentiment, fuelled by a diet of 24 hour media coverage of failing banks, chaotic stock markets and rising inflation. And let us not forget that the youngest members of the workforce have only ever experienced rocketing boom times.
An absolutely critical component of any rescue and revival plan, therefore, is the ability of leaders and managers throughout the organisation to connect more effectively with the people they lead and the customers they serve. They need to motivate them to achieve the goals set by the company strategy. Understanding what motivates the attitudes and behaviour of these people is vital to business success - not only during the downturn, but also in preparation for when the economy picks up again.

Younger – and Different

In particular, leaders need to understand that a younger generation of staff and customers, who have never experienced a downturn, have different expectations of the workplace and will respond to the stress of the current environment in different ways to older people. Not just because they are younger, but also because they have a different set of generational values guiding their attitudes and behaviours.
Today’s young people have different expectations of the workplace and different approaches to many issues critical to business success. For example,
• they communicate differently: they prefer short and sharp emails to long winded memos; they dislike meetings (and are easily distracted even when physically present); and they are comfortable using text messages for formal communication. It’s not so much that they are comfortable with technology – many older people are, too – it’s how they use the technology and what they are comfortable using the technology for.
• they need to know “why”: unless they have been given a reason to do something, they won’t be inclined to do it. This is a critical issue in difficult times – it may seem obvious to management that the strategy presented to the team makes sense and is appropriate for the situation, but has the reason why it will work been explained? The need for an explanation is something older managers don’t understand, and is a critical factor in younger people’s buying-in to a course of action.
• they need constant feedback: an annual review is insufficient – they want feedback at the end of every project, whether it’s a day, week or month long event. They also want a mentor or coach. This can make them appear insecure and lacking in initiative, and can be a cause for concern (and irritation) in their older managers.
• they need to grow and develop: in a world where there is no job security, today’s young people are passionate about developing their CVs and ensuring their skills are current and honed. It may be a paradox, but the more confident your people are that they could get another job somewhere else, the more likely they are to stay with you.
• they expect more control: they expect more authority and more discretion about how they spend their time at work.
• they are not offering what you want: most companies want talented staff, but by that they mean that they want their people to give consistent, superior performance towards the company’s objectives. That’s unfortunately not what talented people are offering. Instead, they want a workplace where they can be challenged and stretched, where they can exercise creativity and be included and involved in setting and achieving exciting goals. Finding the middle ground here is critical if talented staff are going to be retained and engaged in what they are required to do.
• They hate being bored or doing insignificant work: they need to be kept busy, and they need to know that the work they do makes a meaningful contribution.
• they have very different priorities: whereas older staff members generally see loyalty to the company as a given and don’t have to be asked to work overtime and put their employer first, younger employees are much more likely to prioritise family and personal commitments. They also want to have fun at the workplace – this might be easiest to forget during tough times.
Although the above list highlights issues that have been raised by a younger generation of employees and customers, especially applicable during tough times, many of them could equally be relevant to older staff and customers as well.
At a recent World at Work consortium, 88% of 3,000 employees stated that ongoing management of a multigenerational workforce posed a major risk to company growth and success. Acknowledging that different generations will respond and be motivated in different ways is key to developing a strategy implementation plan that everyone in your organisation can buy into and be passionate about implementing. This is one vital key to surviving the recession and emerging stronger when the upturn begins.

Dr Graeme Codrington is a business strategist, keynote presenter and thought leader on the future of work, and attracting, retaining and engaging talented staff and clients, across the generations. His inspiring keynote presentations and workshops get teams inspired to immediate action and long-term business improvement. Contact him at graeme@tomorrowtoday.uk.com.

I thought you might find the analysis of future trends at the “Future of Working” website interesting:

Gutenberg Take Two

It started with Gutenberg’s printing press, the ability to mass communicate information in the form of books and newspapers, a changing of people’s view of the world. Gutenberg is credited with enabling the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Protestant Reformation (Harry Ransom Centre, 2008). Once again the availability of information has taken on a new level fuelled by the Internet. It is providing mass communication between everyone on the plant. Today we are going through the same quantum of change as the world did starting in the 1400s with the advent of the printing press. Kevin Kelly predicted back in 1997 that this level of change will be “momentous” and explained how the underlying driver of this was communication;
“The great irony of our times is that the era of computers is over. All the major consequences of stand-alone computers have already taken place. Computers have speeded up our lives a bit, and that is it. In contrast all the most promising technologies making their debut now are chiefly due to communications between computers - that is, to connections rather than to computations. And since communications is the basis of culture, fiddling at this level is indeed momentous.” (Kelly, 1997, page 140)

So what is happening?

On the physical front we see;

• Broadband telecommunications, both wired and wireless, dramatically increasing the speed and number of data connections
• Social Networking Websites - MySpace, FaceBook
• Business Networking websites – LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing
• Business Collaboration Tools – 37Signal’s Basecamp, WebEx Connects
• New Information Repositories – Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, YouTube
• New transaction processing systems – eBay, PayPal
• Intelligent information retrieval – Google’s adsense, Amazon’s book suggestions

Observing changes in behaviour we see;

• The recognition of Digital Natives as an emerging group where “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors”. (Prensky, 2001, page 1)
• People around the globe are putting their details up on social networking sites and seeking out connections with current and former friends and colleagues. Donath and boyd join Kelly in commenting on how cheaper and easier to use communication technology leads to an “increase in available information and opportunities”;
  “We hypothesise that the number of strong ties an individual can maintain may not be greatly increased by communication technology… but that the number of weak ties one can form and maintain may be able to increase substantially, because the type of communication that can be done more cheaply and easily with new technology is well suited for these ties. If this is true, it implies that the technologies that expand one’s social network will primarily result is an increase in available information and opportunities – the benefits of a large, heterogeneous network” (Donath and boyd, 2004)
• Business network sites like LinkedIn and Plaxo not only provide an online contact list but are tracking the behaviour of people as they add contacts, update their profiles and post information. Plaxo’s calls this feature “Pulse”.

At the society, economy and cultural levels we see;

• New Rules for the New Economy – Kelly wrote about the changes we are now experiencing back in 1997;
  “The advent of the new economy was first noticed as far back as 1969, when Peter Drucker perceived the arrival of knowledge workers. The new economy is often referred to as the information economy… I prefer the term the Network Economy because information isn’t enough to explain the discontinuities we see.” (Kelly, 1997, page 140)
  
  Drucker called them “knowledge workers” working in the “information economy” therefore following Kelly’s adaptation of Drucker’s terminology to create the label the “Network Economy” within this economy we may now be seeing the emergence of “Collaboration Workers”.
• Crowdsourcing – this is the phrase being used to describe open collaboration with anyone who wants to contribute. It’s best known example is Wikipedia. Tapscott and Williams in “Wikinomics” provides examples of this being applied to the commercial world, one of which is Goldcorp Inc;
  
  “In March 2000, the ‘Goldcorp Challenge’ was launched with a total of $575,000 in prize money… Within weeks, submissions from around the world came flooding in… entries came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants, mathematicians, and military officers… Over 80 percent of the new targets yielded substantial quantities of gold… McEwan [CEO Goldcorp Inc] estimates the collaborative process shaved two to three years off their exploration time.” (Tapscott and Williams, Page 9]
• Wikis in the Corporate World – Law firm Gilbert & Tonkin are using Wikis to share information in a new way. Bernadette Jew’s trip report on her overseas travel to China is an excellent example;
  
  “When Jew travelled to Shanghai earlier this year, notes from her meetings were typed directly into a wiki and G&T partners in Sydney read them and provided feedback directly onto the wiki. This saved them having to respond to multiple emails, or take phone calls. At the end of the trip Jew’s report on the trip was simply a link to the wiki.” (AFR, 2008)

At the personal level we see;

• Shift of Control – Rupert Murdoch spoke of a shift in control that young people want moving from the “god-like figure… above” to themselves;
  
  “What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel. Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it.” (Murdoch, 2005)
  
  As an aside, Murdoch’s understanding of these changes could have been part of the reason why NewsCorp moved quickly to acquire social network website MySpace. (NewsCorp, 2005)
• Personal Satisfaction and Fulfilment – Malone in The Future of Work highlights that the “real impetus” for change will also come from our noneconomic, personal goals;
  
  “New information technologies make this revolution possible. Dispersed physically but connected by technology, workers are now able, on a scale never before even imaginable, to make their own decisions using information gathered from many other people and places. The real impetus for the transformation in business will not come from the new technologies, however.” It will come from our innate desires – for economic efficiency and flexibility, certainly, but also from noneconomic goals like freedom, personal satisfaction, and fulfilment.” (Malone, 2004, page 4).

Source: http://managementmythbusters.blogspot.com/2008/07/framework-to-forecast-future-of-working.html

Picture this:

You don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn every morning.  You can have a lie in.  If you don’t feel like commuting into work, don’t.  Go shopping, go to the movies, visit a friend or do some housework.  Only work when you feel like it.  As long as you achieve the work results that are expected of you, your time is your own.  Spend quality time with your family and friends, finish your chores and admin, focus on your hobbies while delivering good results and advancing your career.  You have work life balance and the company also prospers.  Everyone lives happily ever after.

A fairy tale? Bliss?  Utopia?  This is a true story.  It is called a ROWE and it works at Best Buy.  ROWE is a Results Only Work Environment.  In fact, it works so well that Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who implemented the system at Best Buy, have written a book to encourage other companies to do it too.  Their book is called ‘Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It.’

It is not pie-in-the-sky stuff.  People are talking more and more about focusing on outputs, results only and giving the new work force the freedom and flexibility which they seem to crave.  In the new world of work, more power is clearly devolving from the organisation to individuals because workers control the most lucrative means of production – their brains.  Leading management thinkers have predicted that temporary networks of talented people to work on projects will be more productive than the hierarchical, command and control hierarchy that characterized the industrial age workplace.   If this is how the world of work will look, then a move towards a results only work environment could be very effective.

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes?  Look at these ten pictures on the Guardian’s website.

The net generation
The kids are alright

Nov 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition

WORRIES about the damage the internet may be doing to young people has produced a mountain of books—a suitably old technology in which to express concerns about the new. Robert Bly claims that, thanks to the internet, the “neo-cortex is finally eating itself”. Today’s youth may be web-savvy, but they also stand accused of being unread, bad at communicating, socially inept, shameless, dishonest, work-shy, narcissistic and indifferent to the needs of others.

 The man who christened the “net generation” in his 1997 bestseller, “Growing Up Digital”, has no time for such views. In the past two years, Don Tapscott has overseen a $4.5m study of nearly 8,000 people in 12 countries born between 1978 and 1994. In “Grown Up Digital” he uses the results to paint a portrait of this generation that is entertaining, optimistic and convincing. The problem, he suspects, is not the net generation but befuddled baby-boomers, who once sang along with Bob Dylan that “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is”, yet now find that they are clueless about the revolutionary changes taking place among the young.

“As the first global generation ever, the Net Geners are smarter, quicker and more tolerant of diversity than their predecessors,” Mr Tapscott argues. “These empowered young people are beginning to transform every institution of modern life.” They care strongly about justice, and are actively trying to improve society—witness their role in the recent Obama campaign, in which they organised themselves through the internet and mobile phones and campaigned on YouTube. Mr Tapscott’s prescient chapter on “The Net Generation and Democracy: Obama, Social Networks and Citizen Engagement” alone should ensure his book a wide readership.

Contrary to the claims that video games, Facebook and constant text-messaging have robbed today’s young of the ability to think, Mr Tapscott believes that “Net Geners” are the “smartest generation ever”. The experience of parents who grew up watching television is misleading when it comes to judging the 20,000 hours on the internet and 10,000 hours playing video games already spent by a typical 20-year-old American today. “The Net Generation is in many ways the antithesis of the TV generation,” he argues. One-way broadcasting via television created passive couch potatoes, whereas the net is interactive, and, he says, stimulates and improves the brain.

There is growing neuroscientific support for this claim. People who play video games, for example, have been found to process complex visual information more quickly. They may also be better at multi-tasking than earlier generations, which equips them better for the modern world.

Mr Tapscott identifies eight norms that define Net Geners, which he believes everyone should take on board to avoid being swept away by the sort of generational tsunami that helped Barack Obama beat John McCain. Net Geners value freedom and choice in everything they do. They love to customise and personalise. They scrutinise everything. They demand integrity and openness, including when deciding what to buy and where to work. They want entertainment and play in their work and education, as well as their social life. They love to collaborate. They expect everything to happen fast. And they expect constant innovation.

These patterns have important implications for the workplace. Employers who ban the use of Facebook in the office—the equivalent of forbidding older staff to use their rolodexes—show clear signs of being out of touch, he argues. Two out of three Net Geners feel that “working and having fun can and should be the same thing”. That does not mean they want to play games all day, but that they want the work itself to be enjoyable. They also expect collaboration, constant feedback and rapid career advancement based on merit. How they will react to being fired en masse as the downturn worsens remains to be seen, but Mr Tapscott suspects they will take it in their stride.

Two things do worry Mr Tapscott. One is the inadequacy of the education system in many countries; while two-thirds of Net Geners will be the smartest generation ever, the other third is failing to achieve its potential. Here the fault is the education, not the internet, which needs to be given a much bigger role in classrooms (real and virtual). The second is the net generation’s lack of any regard for personal privacy, which Mr Tapscott says is a “serious mistake, and most of them don’t realise it.” Already, posting pictures of alcohol fuelled parties, let alone mentioning drug use or other intimate matters, is causing a growing number of job applicants to fail the “reference test” as employers trawl Facebook and MySpace for clues about the character and behaviour of potential employees.

More optimistically, the Net Geners are much more positive than their predecessors about their family. Half of those interviewed regard at least one parent as their “hero”. Mr Tapscott believes the internet is producing an improved, more collaborative version of family life, which he calls the “open family”. Parents increasingly recognise that their youngsters have digital expertise they lack but want to tap, and also that their best defence against their children falling foul of the dark side of the internet, such as online sexual predators, is to win their children’s trust through honest conversation. Ironically, Mr Tapscott’s recommended “platform” for this essential social networking could hardly be more old tech: the family dinner table.

I am a big fan of Thomas Friedman.  He wrote the bestseller ‘The World is Flat’ and has recently published a new book called, ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’. 

Follow this link to an hour-long presentation by Thomas Friedman. I read ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ in two weeks so, if you don’t have time on your hands, I highly recommend you watch this talk.  It is a fascinating, thought-provoking study of petropolitics, climate change, globalization and other similar themes.

On Saturday, I went to the local shopping mall in Wimbledon, London.  The central heating was so hot that it gave me a headache and I started to sweat in my big anorak.  The temperature of the entire centre is regulated centrally.rent a car bulgaria  While in the hair salon, I noticed it was a little cooler.  My hairdresser explained why – the air conditioner was on.  So the mall turns up the heating and the individual shops turn up their air conditioners. I am now writing to the mall management to complain about the unnecessary waste of precious energy and that is thanks to the insight I got from Thomas Friedman’s book.  It explained the implications of a hot, flat and crowded world and it scares me.  It will scare you too.

Organisations get results when individuals, equipped with the right skills, are energized to do the right things at the right time. 

Keith Malo (Researcher at AchieveGlobal)

In the 21^st century, people matter.  In an economic downturn, people matter more than ever.

People matter because they put an organisation’s goals and strategy into action.  Ultimately people deliver results and they can get things done.  Many business leaders find this hard to accept because people are so difficult to understand and control.  But whether you like it or not, people affect your profitability, quality, customer service, productivity and economic resilience in a very big way.

When people are productive, they deliver results.  People will behave in a productive way if:

a. they know what you want them to do and why,       
b. they have the ability or potential ability to do want you ask and
c. they care about achieving the goal. 

You can’t control people but you can control the environment in which they work.  Behavioural researchers have proved the work environment plays a significant part in how people behave.

When implementing your plan of action for the tough period ahead, follow these steps:

1. Define your strategy.
2. What are the small milestones/steps towards achieving that strategy? 
3. Make sure that every employee has an answer to the questions that make up the Behaviour Equation.  This equation was designed by AchieveGlobal and has been used successfully in many global companies.  It goes like this:  Productive Behaviour = I Know + I Care + I Can

I Know

I know what you want me to do and why because I can answer these questions:

* What is the organisations purpose, vision and goals?
* What is my department supposed to do and how will that help the organisation be successful?
* How do my actions impact the department and organisation and help them to be successful?
* What are the new initiatives and how do they fit with the strategies to make us successful?
* Specifically, what do you want me to do and why is that important?

I Care

I care about doing what you want me to because I can answer these questions:

* Why does it matter to me?
* What’s in it for me?
* How are the values and beliefs of the organisation compatible with my own?
* How am I rewarded for doing what you want me to do?
* How will I receive promotions if I successfully do what you want?
* How closely is my performance appraisal aligned to what you say you want me to do?
* How is my department rewarded for my contributions?
* How do my actions help the organisation be successful?
* How and when will I be coached around these behaviours?

I Can

I am able to do what you want me to and I am rewarded for it because I can answer ‘yes’ to these questions:

* Do I have the necessary skills?
* Do the systems I work with permit or make it easier?
* Are our internal processes designed to permit or make the task easier?
* Do I have the aptitude to do what you ask?

As an employer, if you have thought through these responses carefully, your staff are more likely to give you the productive behaviour that delivers results for your business.

SOURCE:

This blog is based on ‘Inside the Mind’s of Corporate Leaders’ by Keith A Malo from AchieveGlobal

• Graeme interviewed for Management Issues podcast, on generational changes, the US election and managing young people. Listen to it here.
• Report back on sessions held at the Academy for Chief Executives.  Read it here.
• “Blanket advice ‘will not fill generation gaps’” on Citywire - read it here.
• The launch of Graeme’s new book in South Africa, “Future-Proof Your Child: Parenting the Wired Generation”.  Read it here.
• An hour long interview on ClassicFM with Dori-Anne Weill, on the launch of Graeme’s book, and how different generations deal with stress.  Listen to the hour long interview here.

Here’s a quiz: which of the following environmental terms resonates most strongly with consumers:

Don’t underestimate the power that the environment at your office has on the way people behave.

A group of social scientists, led by Philip Zimbardo, did an experiment in the early 1970’s.  They created a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University.  The cells looked completely authentic.  These scientists wanted to assess want makes prisons such horrible places. Was it the people that made it so awful or was it the environment that made the people become more horrible?

Zimbardo and his team hired 75 volunteers and split the people so some acted as prisoners and others were wardens.  Most of the volunteers described themselves as passive, self-controlled, happy people.  They were supposed to live in this prison for 14 days so that the scientists could monitor their behaviour.  After 6 days, the situation became so intense that Zimbardo had to call off the experiment.

The mock prison became so aggressive and it made previously controlled and passive people lose the plot.  They had to stop the experiment to avoid serious harm to the “prisoners” and “guards”.  The “guards” became increasingly abusive and sadistic and the “prisoners” were becoming more rebellious and unruly.

This experiment revealed some fascinating things about our character.  Zimbardo’s conclusion was that sometimes a situation is so powerful that it causes people to ignore their inherent predispositions.  Genetic predispositions and the environment in which you grow up form your character.  But, as Malcolm Gladwell says in his book The Tipping Point, ‘character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.  The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment.’

I can personally relate to this.  I consider myself extremely honest and so are my friends.  I live in Raynes Park in London and it is a short train ride to the Wimbledon Tube.  There are no barriers at Raynes Park and so it is easy to slip on the train without paying.  I am shocked that some of my honest friends have done this and it scares me that I have vaguely contemplated it.  Our environment – no barriers – has made a few of my friends behave in ways I would never have predicted.

So you never know how people will behave when confronted with a certain situation or when they are not able to control aspects of their environment.  Personality tests give you insight into a person but they don’t convey the full picture …

Of course, one of the issues is that America has not yet dealt with its racial history.  Even this morning, as Barack Obama’s landslide is now a reality, it is clear that he won less votes in the Southern States than any of the previous five Democractic candidates for President have done.  But that is another thought for another day.

This post is just to say: well done President-elect Obama!  Bring on the change.

Its also to say: we told you so.  I hope this doesn’t sound like many of the TV “political analysts” currently flooding the 24-hour news channels and sounding as if the results were assured.  But, its not easy being a futurist.  By the time you need your invoice paid, the future is not yet assured.  By the time your predictions come true, people have forgotten you made them.  So, unfortunately, we do have to sometimes say, “we told you so” just to remind people that we did actually spot the trends and call it correctly.

Those who know our work will know that even before Obama beat Clinton for the Democratic nomination, I was predicting a landslide win for Barack Obama.  Part of this prediction relied on the desire for change evidenced in all major democracies in recent months.  Part of the prediction relied on the fact that we have predicting some form of economic correction for some time (I wish we had been able to predict the timing and severity of the current downturn), part of it was that if and when the debate turned from international issues (America’s euphemism for foreign military interventions) to national issues (euphemism for America’s economy and self-interested self-interests), and another part was the impact of the generations (age) of each of the candidates on the voters, and a final piece of the puzzle was the new “Generation Y” voters who came out to campaign and vote in record numbers.

Obama by a landslide.  Not a surprise to us.  But certainly a relief that it is now reality.  America - the ever changing, ever adapting nation - is once again forever changed.

We’ve all heard the saying, ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’  In the modern world of work, who you know is more valuable than ever.

In your personal life – for example, your marriage - you will probably get more fulfillment and peace by having a quality relationship with one lifelong partner instead of flitting from one relationship to another.  We thrive on strong relationships with our friends and family.  They provide the support and love that is vital for our development and success. It does not work like that in business.  In the working world, the more relationships you have, the better.  In business, weak ties are a very good thing.  Quantity can be more valuable than quality. 

The strength of weak ties

Mark Granovetter is a highly respected American sociologist.  His research paper on ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’ is considered one of the most influential sociology papers ever written. 

Granovetter interviewed 282 blue and white collar workers in Boston.  He asked them how they got their current jobs and discovered that –

• * 56% found their job through personal connections
• * 19% found the job through formal means such as adverts and recruitment agencies
• * 20% applied to the company directly

Most of the interviewees got their current jobs because they knew someone, who then helped them get the position by putting in a good word for them, putting them in touch with the right people or working on their behalf from the inside. 

Granovetter also discovered that people who found their jobs through personal connections were more satisfied in their work than the others.  This makes sense because a personal contact will give you a realistic picture of what it is like to work at the company.  You then start off with realistic expectations and are more likely to be satisfied.

Now for the most fascinating part of Granovetter’s research.  Of the people who got their jobs through personal connections, 83% did not know the contact well.  56% said they saw the contact occasionally and 28% rarely saw the contact.  These acquaintances moved in different circles and so they provided access to new job opportunities, knowledge and people.  Granovetter’s sample got their strength from their weak ties.

The author Daniel Pink discusses the value of weak ties in his book ‘The Free Agent Nation’.  He gives an example of two colleagues, Ed and Jenny, who worked together for 5 years.  They formed a strong relationship because they saw each other every day.  When Ed left the company, Jenny was not a very valuable business contact because Ed was already familiar with her world. 

However, when Jenny left the company and joined another one, Ed’s connection to her became more valuable.  Their relationship was no longer as strong as it used to be because they didn’t see each other often anymore.  But, their connection became more useful from a business perspective because they now occupied different worlds.  Jenny met new people and was exposed to new information that Ed did not know.  This is why alumni networks at companies are such useful, powerful business tools.  Your power comes from what Pink calls, ‘lose, fluid, purposeful relationships’.

Relationships and the new world of work

The traditional world of work was labour intensive and focused on industrial mass production.   Companies needed people’s hands, not their minds.  This has changed - in the 21^st century, people matter more.  Today the playing field has been leveled and companies sell similar products and services to the same customers at similar prices, using similar marketing channels.  Differentiation now comes from who you are, not what you sell.  Companies need people’s strategic relationships, innovation and creativity more than ever.

More power lies with the individual and you should take advantage of this.  Security is not a guarantee and you are in charge of your career.  Don’t become complacent and rest in the familiar, vertical relationships of the past.  Today, your power as an employee lies in your horizontal, reciprocal relationships with people across organizations and across functions.  You need to proactively manage your career by networking and developing a wide pool of diverse contacts.

Daniel Pink summarises modern business relationships in this table -

Connect with Connectors

Have you ever met someone who seems to know everyone?  I have a friend who is what author Malcolm Gladwell calls a ‘Connector’.  Connectors are highly networked and wield enormous social power because they link all sorts of different people together.  It is worth knowing one.

Invest in your career

Networking and building a pool of weak ties is difficult for some personality types.  Introverts prefer establishing deep relationships with a few people.  Extroverts have an inherent advantage in the new world of work because they are energized by others and enjoy building broad relationships with many people.

Even though it may be out of your comfort zone, it is important that you build horizontal loyalty with a wide group of people.  You can no longer rely on a single company to get you where you want your career to go.  It is so difficult to get noticed by a high-profile company when they have thousands of applicants for positions.  Who you know can put you on the top of the pile. 

Build your career by harnessing the power of acquaintances.  But don’t forget – be authentic.  It is easy to spot someone who is insincere and is developing a relationship purely for self-interest. 

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. 

Dunbar researched this in depth.  He studied primitive communities and noticed the average size of villages was 148.4 people.  Military organizations have admitted they cannot operate with more than 150-200 people.  If there are more, formal hierarchies and rules and regulations are essential in order to manage people properly.

Below 150 people, it is possible to operate in an informal way because people can regulate behaviour through mutual loyalty and direct contact.  If you have more than 150 people in a group, it changes the dynamics completely.  Relationships are a lot of work and big social groups can create an intellectual burden – you need to manage time and attention and consider personality types and communication abilities of others in order for interactions to be meaningful and mutually beneficial.

WL Gore is a highly successful, billion dollar company with thousands of employees.  They have a unique, informal management structure and have retained their small company camaraderie and ethos. 

Guess what?  At WL Gore, all factory and office groups never have more than 150 people.  The founder, William Gore said, ‘We found again and again that things get clumsy at 150 so 150 people per plant became the company goal.’

Consider how your company is structured.  Our neocortex is a limited size and can cope with a limited number of interactions.  If you make some small changes, you may notice some big results.

SOURCE:  The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Book Launch:

Future-proof Your Child by Nikki Bush and Graeme Codrington

Penguin Books is pleased to invite you to the launch of Nikki Bush and Graeme Codrington’s Future-proof Your Child, an essential book for 21st-century parents.

“Stop the world, I want to get off!” is the regular refrain of time-pressured parents today. “Give me an experience and I’ll promise you a relationship,” is the mantra of their children. The world has changed. The future has changed. Childhood is changing. Raising children has never been more challenging – or potentially rewarding.

Here’s a book purpose-built to help you take control.

Proceeds from sales at the event will go to the Play with a Purpose foundation. We’ll see you there!

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, 29 October 2008
• Time: 7:00 PM for 7:30 PM
• Venue: The Auditorium, Indaba Hotel, William Nicol Drive
  Fourways, Johannesburg | Map
• Refreshments: or add your own
• RSVP: Leanne, leanne.douglas@za.penguingroup.com, 011 327 3550

Book Details

• Future-proof Your Child by Nikki Bush and Graeme Codrington
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9780143025801
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

I’ve been reading a lot of commentary recently about how differently companies need to be targeting Gen Y (people born in the UK after 1988), both as an employee and consumer. The Harvard Business Review has great commentary on the subject, and I’ve just come across a good example by the The Economist who is targeting college students in the US using pizza delivery boxes. Pizzerias around college campuses received Economist branded pizza boxes detailing world production stats on the students favourite pizza ingredients such as cheese!

It’s novel, entertaining, educational and clever…all the things that Gen Y expect from a marketing campaign.

.

I love studying successful people.  I watch their body language in interviews, dissect their responses to complex questions, read their autobiographies and pour over commentaries about them so that I can copy some of their techniques and be successful too.

I have just read a transcript of an interview with Warren Buffett at the IMD Business School in Lausanne.

Warren Buffett is such a fascinating person because he is so clever, so rich, so wise and yet so very humble.

He was asked what is the definition of success.  His response hits the nail on the head -

I would say success… I’ll tell a story first.

There’s a woman in Omaha.  She’s in her eighties.  She’s a polish-jew, she’s a wonderful person.  She’s a friend of mine.   She told me, “Warren, when I look at someone, I am slow to make friends, because at the back of my mind, the question always exists - would they hire me?”

Now I would say this, if you get to be sixty or seventy, my own age, and if you have a lot of people who would hire you, you are a success.

And if you don’t have anyone who’ll hire you, no matter how rich you are;  no matter how many honorary degrees you’ve been given;  no matter what hospitals you are being named after you – you are a failure.

And it’s another way of saying that many people love you.  I have never seen anyone who has loved dozens of people, who is not a success when they get older.

I have seen a number of people who have all the ‘trappings of success’ by the world’s measurement.  They are rich and have their names on the newspaper and they isn’t a person on earth who loves them.  They can’t be a success.

If you have a lot of people who love you when you are sixty or seventy, then you are a very successful person.

In it he describes how if you want to catch a wild pig you lay down corn in the forest and over a period of time build a fence one section at a time until the pigs are happy to enter through a gate in the fence to collect their “free food”. Once inside the enclosure the gate is closed trapping the pigs, they run around madly for a while but then calm down and return to the food. It takes some time to hunt like this but at the end of it you have the whole herd captured and not just one pig.

The parable is an interesting one in our western society today especially with the current financial crisis. The fence can be equated to rules and regulations slowly encircling business. Norman argues that we must guard carefully not to fall into the trap of being so dependent on the government that we lose our sense of responsibility and even worse, the very spark of life. On the other end is