Key Leadership Skills in the “Human Age”

The ManpowerGroup recently published a report on How to Navigate the Human Age. Not surprising, an incredibly important element of their findings is driven by the fact that as the world gets smaller and more integrated, our business strategies and challenges are shifting from local and domestic issues to ones influenced by global activities.

Their findings indicate the world is upside down. Things like qualified human talent, which seemed to be abundant in years past is now scarce, and information which used to be elusive is now readily available and everywhere. No wonder businesses are looking for "new models" for addressing these significant changes. What do these increasing inverted trends and influence of world events have to do with the way we lead our organizations? Here are a few key findings from their research. You can read the entire report here.

Organizations Need to be Strategic About
Emerging Markets – Not just in the neighborhood, but around the world
Impacts of Globalization – Not just in business but politics, economics and social issues
Sustaining Talent – Workforce planning, recruiting, stretching, engaging and retaining
Technology – Embrace advancements for "better mousetraps" as well as resource savings
Sustainability – Do what’s right for social, economic and environmental impacts
Data Management – Lots of data everywhere; be ready to manage it and comply with privacy regulations

Organizational Structures and Systems Need to Address
Proper Workload Balancing – Full-time, part-time, contractor, outsourced, robotics (Yes! Robots!)
Fluid Workforce Management – Grounded in proactive, innovative and flexible systems
Collaboration – Embrace horizontal work models to leverage talent and development opportunities
"Glocal" Mindset – Operate with local conscious within a structure of dispersed locations
Alliances – Partner with government and training institutions to advance curriculum and skill sets

With these shifts in organizational focus, leaders of the future will need to update their competencies to include:

• Demonstrating Adaptability – The report re-emphasizes what we’ve been saying for the past several years. Everyone, especially leaders, needs to be adaptive to the fast pace of change and the ambiguity that this speed brings. Individuals with a preference for lots of details and methodically dotting of all the "I’s" and crossing all the "T’s" may find themselves frustrated and stressed if they can’t transition their styles to accommodate the needs for faster business decision making.
• Managing and Analyzing Data – So much data is readily available; getting comfortable with the balance of how much is enough, and what to do with what you have will be critical.
• Thinking Strategically about Sustainability – Employees, candidates, vendors, customers, all organizational stakeholders are raising expectations for how "responsible" a business should be when it comes to social, economic and environmental issues. Incorporating an element of sustainability into your decision-making model is a must.
• Collaborating – Leaders will need to not only build teams internally to collaborate on innovation, but they also must have the attitude, communication and presentation skills to motivate all types of partners to work together. Leaders with a command-and-control style will be well served to work with a coach on shifting to a style that incorporates partnerships and alliances.
• Innovating and Creating – The workplace of the future needs to be built on a culture that encourages and rewards "dreaming," "playing," and occasional failures. Organizations will need to keep reinventing themselves if they are to survive – maintaining a competitive edge will be impossible without fostering new ideas.
• Mentoring – Leaders can best pass on knowledge and experiences through stories. They’ll need to connect with their leadership development programs and invest in spending time with future leaders. In addition to the capacity to mentor and coach, organizations will be well served by establishing executive coaching programs in conjunction with a leadership development curriculum, in order to nurture the professional and business development capabilities of talent in the leadership pipeline.
• Workforce Planning - More than ever, organizational leaders need to be aware of the competencies required for the future and lead efforts to develop internal talent with those skills, as well as create a pipeline (internal and external) for attracting and retaining those talents. The old cliché "organizations are only as good as their people" was never so appropriate.
• Leveraging Technology – Leaders may not have to know how all the bells and whistles work, but they do need to be able to envision how technological changes can be utilized to improve competitive advantage, save time and money, and respond to the sophistication of their customers.
• Embracing Differences – Leaders set the tone in their organizations for cultural norms and philosophies. As the workplace expands, employee expectations, traditions, religions, ages, gender identity, etc. will continue to diversify. Global leaders will need to demonstrate their commitment and dedication to respecting all kinds of differences in the workplace and weave that value into everyday expectations and practices.
• Managing Time and Stress – Since the world isn’t going to slow down, leaders need to become experts at managing time and stress. Competencies such as delegation and practices such as meditation or exercise programs promoting wellness should be encouraged to help leaders sustain their energies and capacities for the speed of business.

So What’s Next?

It’s exciting to peek into the future. The ManpowerGroup’s report offers this view by linking events around the world that impact, and will continue to influence, what happens at our business locations. From a holistic, global vantage point we can already see that individuals who have the capacity to lead others utilizing the competencies noted above will be highly sought after. In order to retain this talent, organizations will need to review and modify their practices to ensure the appropriate level of support, empowerment, and challenges are available for them

Getting your arms around the kinds of change that are on the horizon may best be accomplished by collaborating with external change experts who have an unbiased perception and the expertise to guide the exploration process to determine what is necessary to move from the current organization to the organization of the future. From a neutral position, they can assist leaders with the articulation of the future design of the structure and development and implementation of change initiatives to align the culture, practices and expectations with future success.

I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record: "Organizations cannot rely on the practices of the past to be successful in the future. Design is a signal of intention." But it’s true. It’s all going to be about change – time to get comfortable with it, in order to survive.

As always, I welcome your comments to my posting. Please click below to share your thoughts. If you found this article interesting and helpful, I’m very happy for you to pass it along to others. Have a great week.


This article was written by Deborah A. King, SPHR, CEO and Sr. Organizational Effectiveness Consultant with Evolution Management, Inc. Debbie and her team are energized about changing times and can help your organization navigate the individual, team and organizational journeys to the future. Contact us for more information; www.evolutionmgt.com or 770.587.9032.

IBM THINK: Forum on the Future of Leadership

Developing Creative Teams - The Art of Working with Others

This ASTER image uses short wavelength
infrared bands to highlight in bright pink
the altered rocks in the Morenci pit associated
with copper mineralization.
NASA/GSFC/ERSDAC/JAROS and
U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

The importance of team work and the ability to collaborate with others continue to be strong competencies successful organizations need to nurture.  With that as a background, I’m republishing this article which I wrote last year.  It is still very relevant and hopefully will spark some ideas for you about how to foster these capabilities within your own style, as well as in the work behaviors of those who report to you.　

Enjoy and Happy New Year!

When a team works well together it’s like viewing an inspiring piece of art. Unfortunately most business leaders report that rather than a creative team working in sync to innovate solutions, they are more likely to experience a lack of agility, creativity, communications, empathy and commitment. What are we missing in preparing employees for the real-life challenges of the 21st century?

IBM’s research last year, conducted with 700 Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) from around the world, Working Beyond Borders provides some insights to the disconnects we’re experiencing between our leadership talents and the needs of the changing workplace. Based on their findings, how we train our leaders hasn’t kept up with changing global business circumstances. They suggest a more strategic and integrated business approach needs to be developed and implemented to close the gaps between where our businesses are with leadership development and the future needs of a global marketplace.

Organization development efforts need to focus on addressing an integrated plan to re-tool and educate employees, providing:

• new leadership skills and experiences, acquired and applied at a faster pace
• a restated business protocol that embraces needed workplace flexibilities to connect people to information and each other
• an updated business culture that encourages and rewards creativity and innovation vs. demonstrated performance that follows a "play it safe" status quo mentality

So how do we get there?

Strategic Challenges to Overcome
The analysis of the data collected from the CHRO’s boils down to three key strategies organizations should embrace in order to be prepared to grow and thrive along with the business trends moving us to the future:

• Organizations need to get a handle on the talents and skills they currently have and compare those to a reasonable estimate of the workforce knowledge, skills and abilities they will need in the future. (If you missed my blog last week on Preparing Workers for the Future, you may want to reference it.  Preparing this will help to clearly define how various workforce needs will be staffed, i.e., full-time, part-time, outsourced, etc. This assessment will also help identify high-potential individuals ready and capable of succeeding in a robust leadership development program.
• As the world spins faster and faster it is imperative that organizations improve the intensity and speed at which employees can develop and apply new skills in a creative manner without fearing consequences connected to failure. This paradigm shift provides an opportunity for organizations to think outside-the-box when it comes to training methods integrating dynamic on-the-job project approaches such as: job rotations, mentoring relationships, creative problem solving assignments, and job shadowing opportunities. EMI has found that programs built from a competency-based training model are much more targeted and lead to a broader integration of job responsibilities. Reward programs that motivate and acknowledge creative solutions to problems further demonstrate a culture change commitment to innovation.
• Study after study continues to point to the need to build collaboration skills within our current and future leaders. The ability of individuals to work well with diverse groups, either face-to-face or through the technology advancements that connect us, is essential. Individuals with low Emotional Intelligence (EI) and underdeveloped capabilities to empathize and communicate with others while managing their own preferences will have a role; it just won’t be as a leader. 

These challenges, deemed highly important by the CHRO’s, were also seen as ones that currently are beyond the capabilities of their firms to achieve. This acknowledgement provides a great opportunity for HR to collaborate with other C-suite leaders, as well as the business, academic, and consulting communities, to create practical solutions. Together, we can dialogue and work across silos to energize solutions that are creative and forward-thinking.

So What’s Next?
We’ve all heard the Confucius saying, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." That seems appropriate here. It can be overwhelming to think about the many changes involved with addressing the issues IBM’s research documented. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the first step -- acknowledging the need for a strategy that integrates solutions into an updated corporate culture and operational practices -- can be managed by breaking it down into workable pieces. Utilizing the skills of external expertise can allow the internal HR leader to actively participate in the collaboration and introduce an "unbiased" perspective to oversee the flow of the project.

Each section of the Insights from Global Chief Human Resource Officers Study ends with recommended questions to motivate thinking and planning. Here are a few to contemplate:

Matching resources to organizational needs:

• Which alternative work structures provide greater opportunity for efficient and more flexible deployment?
• How do you break down the organizational silos that prevent the best use of your talent?
• How can you reduce time to competence in your most critical jobs?

Cultivating creative leaders:

• How are you fostering creativity and borderless thinking among your leadership team?
• Are you radically rethinking leadership development to rapidly close the effectiveness gap?
• Do you integrate leadership development with emerging business opportunities to better prepare leaders for the future?

Fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing:

• What will you do to get multiple generations of employees to actively engage in online collaboration?
• In what ways can you explore, reward and integrate diverse and unconventional points of view?
• What novel techniques are you using to tap into the insights and ideas of employees around the world?

This is an important conversation for organizations to be having. I invite you to use this forum to share what your organization is doing to address these issues. Do you even see these as issues? How does creativity and workforce planning fit into your strategies going forward – or are you focused on something else?

Please click below and offer your comments. Also, if you found this blog sparked your creativity and interest to explore answers, please forward it to engage others who can partner with you. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Leadership Lessons

I’ll Take “The Workplace of the Future” for $1,000

Answer:  He will likely be your boss in three years.

Watson:  Who am I?

Last week many of us watched, and maybe even cheered for, contestant ‘Watson’, the IBM supercomputer on Jeopardy!  When it was all over and Watson won the $1 million prize, it was obvious that we had just witnessed a significant step in the evolution of robotic engineering.  The research that went into building and training Watson has dramatic consequences for the future of work, as well as education.  However, since Watson has a “statistical brain” and not an analytical one, probably those of us in positions managing Human Resource Departments or day care facilities are still safe; at least for today.

Technology Advances; Workers Remain Nervous

The Jeopardy! showdown pitted computer chips and bytes against brains.  Watson challenged two of the greatest Jeopardy! champions in history: Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings.  As I watched Watson win, I couldn’t help reflecting back on a Turner Classic Movie, Desk Set.  This 1957 classic comedy stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.  It‘s unique, being the first and only movie to examine the impact of the advancement of automation in the workplace, along with the fears experienced by the workers concerned about losing their jobs.  Ms. Emmy, the computer’s name in the movie, could have been Watson’s “grandmodel.”   

For IT and robotic engineering professionals, the accomplishments of Watson were certainly significant, but probably not a big surprise.  However, for those of us not as close to the progress and impacts robotics are having on our everyday world, this was definitely an eye-opener, leaving many of us with the question – “What’s next? Will a computer be doing my job in the future?”

According to Gerald Greene, a contributing author to suite101.com the contest was ‘an excellent’ test of the progress being made with artificial intelligence.  “Not only did Watson have to demonstrate a mastery over an incredible range of knowledge, he also had to correctly interpret nuances and subtleties in the English language.”  Watson, the supercomputer, is equal to 6,000 high-end desktop machines!  Apparently the breakthrough responsible for Watson’s excellent performance is a technology called “machine learning.”  

And as if that isn’t enough, there’s more.  Eduard Hovy, Director of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, whose work contributed to the development of Watson, recently shared with the Wall Street Journal that RACR (Reading and Contextual Reasoning or Reading and Contextual Reasoner – they haven’t decided on the name yet) will add a subtle but important difference to the next generation of supercomputers.  With RACR, the computer will be able to learn information and then perform reasoning functions.  Wow, and that’s going to be available in the not too distant future.  So what does that advanced technology offer to our businesses, as well as our children trying to answer the question, what job would I like to do when I graduate?

Martin Ford, a contributing writer to CNN Money writes that “automation has been kept at bay for many lower wage jobs by a human worker’s unique ability to recognize complex visual images and then respond accordingly.  But as machines and robots grow increasingly dexterous and better at seeing and understanding the world around them – that will change.”  Already robots in Japan are able to autonomously pick strawberries, selecting only the ripe ones based on color.  

More Rapid Change

We have experienced a lot of change brought on by technology since the 1960’s, causing the work environment to evolve at a rapid pace.  And it is true that as some jobs become extinct, others are created.  However, it doesn’t appear that the ratio is balanced.

• Most companies no longer employ ‘real’ people to answer their phones anymore; it’s all automated. 
• We’re comfortable using ATM’s and directing our own on-line banking, no longer requiring banks to employ as many tellers per bank as they used to. 
• Airlines have embraced technology in such an aggressive way that we now book our own flights, check ourselves in, and print our own boarding passes.
• Most workers to do their own word processing, which has allowed the elimination of the jobs once offered by central word processing centers.
• And even our grocery stores are using technology to displace checker and bagger positions, by allowing us the privilege of using the self-check out computer equipment. 

Our economy has transitioned from a manufacturing-base to a knowledge-base.  So how does that influence the impact of these new technology capabilities on the way work will be performed?  When Mr. Hovy explains that the next generation to Watson “will be able to find answers to questions by understanding context and reasoning based on background knowledge, and be able to make more sophisticated decisions about which pieces of information are trustworthy by using qualitative ‘indirect measures,’ what does that mean to the jobs we now think of as stable? 

I’m not sure what it means other than change is traveling at light speed towards us and we have to be ready with strategic plans and actions to address the resulting impacts. If we aren’t ready with qualified employees to transition and successfully perform in this new environment, other leading technology countries will be there to offer the solutions.

So What’s Next?

Although we can envision a demand for some jobs related to the changing technologies, (see below) it’s safe to say that many of the jobs that will be required as computers like Watson evolve are unimaginable today. 

• Programmers who understand the new technologies such as machine learning, RACR and their next generations
• Project managers who are capable of leading technical teams with excellent people skills, mastery working with virtual teams, and methodologies to keep projects on time and within budget
• Robotic engineers who can integrate technologies and work processes to deliver quality outcomes in an efficient manner
• Educators to raise the bar for excellence with expanded curriculums in math and science

We are already reading reports of IBM’s success to partner Watson with Nuance Communications to “explore, develop and commercialize” the Watson computing system’s advanced analytics capabilities in the health care industry.  Can you imagine the ramifications for health care if robots begin to take the place of doctors, nurses and surgeons? 

There has also been news that the features of this type of technology will be useful in other fields such as government responses to pandemics, aviation safety, call centers, and terrorism risks.  As IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano said, “As exciting as Watson’s victory is, we didn’t invest four years and millions of dollars simply to win a television game.  We did so because this remarkable system represents the new frontier of information science.”

HR and OD professionals, as well as business thought-leaders and academic leadership got a taste of the changes coming via the Jeopardy! challenge.  So now that we’re aware of what’s coming, how can we prepare?  Here are a few suggestions:

1. Be aware of and stay informed to the progress being made with technologies, and the next generation of the supercomputer.  One article estimated the timing at about five years from now.  Naturally that won’t have an immediate impact on all organizations, but it will be a sign of what is to come.
2. Build a collaborative team of business leaders, HR and IT professionals to envision how robotic technologies could play a part in the evolution of your business and link with technology partners to build these into your operations and/or stay tuned to trends in those areas.
3. Identify and implement career paths to position employees for the next generation of jobs, especially for those envisioned as a possibility for extinction.
4. Partner with technical and university system leaders to build curriculums to prepare workers for the future and entice technology companies to locate and bring new jobs to your locale.
5. Embrace the new technologies of telepresence – communication tools that let people “meet” remotely with high-def conference rooms and robots.   This transition will help workers get comfortable with advancing technologies, as well as robotic interfaces.
6. Build a strategy to raise the awareness of your workers about advancing technologies and engage them in planning for how these technologies can be utilized in your operations.  This relationship can also be helpful to transition their thinking about what these changes mean to the competencies that will be required in the future.

What are some experiences or ideas you have to help organizations and leaders prepare for and embrace the next generation of Watson-type computers headed to the workplace?   As business professionals what do you think we should be focusing on to help with these types of business transformations?  I’m curious about how the ‘robot’ workplace of the future looks to you?  Please add your comments below.

Designing Watson