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

Preparing Workers for The Future

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to see and hear things that indicate business leaders and job seekers are both feeling confident about economy recovery efforts. This conclusion was further emphasized when I attended a recent briefing presented by Beth Herman, Regional Director for the Atlanta Metro Market of Manpower.

Beth was sharing the results of the Manpower 2nd Quarter Outlook Survey which indicated that for a sixth straight quarter, employers have a positive outlook for the period April – June, and expect a relatively stable hiring pace. That’s good news for everyone!

Along with Beth’s encouraging statistics, she passionately focused on this point, "There are going to be jobs, but the jobs are not necessarily going to need the same skills as the ones the job seekers left a year or more ago." In other words - it’s a different world, requiring different solutions! It’s the perfect time for businesses to be proactive in developing the systems to produce the talent they will need, and for workers to recognize that they "own" their careers, and therefore need to establish a plan for managing them. As with any change, both of these role shifts require a corresponding shift in mind-set and processes.

Demographics
There is no denying the facts: our workplace demographics are changing and will continue to impact our abilities to connectthe right people with the right jobs.

• How often over the past 6-8 months have you heard someone say, "Gee, there are a lot of people looking for a job. Why can’t I find the right person for my position?"
• How many articles are you reading about how to deal with the impact of multi-generations at work?
• How is your industry dealing with the aging workforce and the reality that 10,000 baby-boomers are eligible to retire each day for the next 19 years? Perhaps the recession has slowed the pace, but some day they will say, "Ok, I’m now ready to leave."
• What impact does the Center for Disease Control (CDC) falling US birth rate statistics, the lowest level since national data has been available, have on your future capabilities to develop and attract talent?
• How ready is your business to deal with the diversity of the changing workforce? Diversity beyond gender and race, including nationality, religion, sexual orientation, family definition, workplace flexibilities, etc.
• How is your business dealing with technology advancements and what they mean for strategies of globalization, workplace flexibilities, robots vs. humans, and competency skill sets?

Last month I was privileged to attend the Governor’s Workforce Investment Board meeting. I was energized to learn how focused our future-thinking leaders are when it comes to planning for the type of demographic changes noted above. They are already working to better align our workforce with government, education and business in order to partner on solutions for the future. Partnerships and collaborative efforts across industries, academic institutions and government agencies are being formed. How is your industry and your firm participating in these solutions? What steps can you take within your organization to prepare?

Workforce and Succession Planning
When it comes to getting a handle on what your firm will require in the future and where the pool of qualified candidates will come from, every business, big or small, needs a plan. The strategy for this type of work is built around Workforce and Succession Planning efforts.

Workforce and Succession Planning allows businesses to develop strategies that weave together talent, job skills and training. Approach them integrating the key elements and your ultimate plans will be stronger and more focused.

Talent

You know the old saying, "Every road will lead you somewhere; it just depends on what you’re looking for." So first step – get a handle on what you are looking for so you end up in the right place.  A major element of Workforce Planning is to understand the workforce you currently have.

• What primary skills and talents do they bring to the table?
• Who is currently in school or in training and will bring updated skills in the near future?
• Who is eligible for retirement and when might they exit the organization?
• What’s your knowledge management strategy and how does that tie in to succession and workforce planning, as well as training?
• What are the critical skills and knowledge you want to engage and retain to ensure minimal disruption of growth and continuity?
• What mentor relationships have you developed; and are you gaining the results you were looking for?
• What flexibilities, benefits, and recognition is your workforce looking for as they plan their careers?

Job Skills

In addition to being aware of the talents of your current employees and their future career interests, it’s also important to know what skills your industry will require in the future.

• What changes to your business model is leadership thinking and talking about?
• How will these changes impact the required work skills the business will be seeking in order to be successful?
• Where does your firm currently look for talent? Are these sources keeping up with your changing requirements? What new sources should you be building relationships with?
• What universities, technical schools, high school programs, etc. are focused on developing the talent pool your business will require? Are you working with them on the changing requirements for the future?
• How will technology impact your competency requirements?
• How does your competition recruit in the talent pool you are interested in and are you positioning your culture and benefits to win?
• What are those things about the corporate culture that need to be captured and passed along?
• Where are the gaps between the talent currently being groomed and the skill sets you will need to find in the future? What are your plans for closing these gaps?
• How will your recruiting and sourcing efforts change as greater and greater access is made to virtual employees – meaning they could be anywhere on the globe?

Training

Training comes in all shapes and sizes. One size does not fit for everyone, or for every situation. Being creative about how skills are transferred and applied is important.

• Understanding the impact of the slowing birth rate in the United States, what gaps might you encounter in the future and how can you minimize them?
• Would it be reasonable to offer training to employees you already know and value in order to prepare them for future positions? What positions would these include?
• How can you partner with economic development and academic leaders to ensure your talent requirements are known and being developed? Is this something your Chamber of Commerce could assist with?
• How can you partner with industry leaders to help employees get on-the-job or job shadowing opportunities to expose them to future talent requirements and the benefits of continuing education?
• What type of mentor relationships should be established in and outside of your firm?
• What incentives could you implement to motivate employees to learn new skills?
• What training and one-on-one coaching opportunities could you offer to assist with the development of skills such as leadership and supervisory skills?

So What’s Next?
I’ve written it before: the way we did business in the past is not what’s going to work in the future. We’re experiencing a convergence of technology advancements, globalization, more refined expectations of stakeholders, and a workforce that expects to work differently. Beth Herman’s presentation, which I very much appreciated, appropriately called where we are today The Human Age – unleashing human potential becomes the major agent of economic growth. Public, private and non-profit sectors are all beginning to wrestle with these issues. The ones that are paying attention are going to be the winners.

I believe the next step is to act strategically. Get involved with business associations that are partnering with education and government to get a handle on the rapidly changing needs of business. Assess your workforce and plan for how to ensure the right skill sets are available to you in the future. We’re all in this together and a collaborative effort will be necessary, especially in these budget strapped times. It’s imperative we get a handle on what’s needed and that we spend our limited resources developing workers for the jobs that will be waiting.

What are your thoughts about how to prepare for the future? What’s your firm doing? What are you personally doing to prepare yourself for the job you will be taking five years from now, that probably hasn’t even been thought of yet?  I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Imaging the Future of Work