growingbusinesslink

Have You Talked to Your Chief People Officer Lately?

2008-07-10T13:50:00-05:00

If you want the people in your organization to have long, productive tenures, youve got to consider how dramatically the workforce is changing and how you can apply lessons from consumer products to your objective of keeping them productive and profitable over much longer periods of time. If you have, then you may have gotten an earful about why your company isnt keeping its employees as long as youd like. If you havent, get ready for an earful! Six key workforce trends are about to make a big impact on your company (if they havent already): Shrinking pool of skilled labor Changing family structures More women entering the workforce than men Men admitting to work-life balance problems and historic dissatisfaction levels Generations X and Y placing equal value on work and home New workplace technologies that work so well youve got to change Men and women are equally fed-up about the choices they are forced to make to find success advancing the proverbial corporate ladder. How many more will continue to flee from the organizations to try and build lives that do have significance personally and professionally? Learn how to implement an elegant framework that considers the four dimensions of individual careers: Pace, Workload, Location and Role in your company by following our posts over the next few days and attending our first GrowingBusinessLink online learning program: Mass Career Customization. Register at the Oracle Featured Resource Center and be sure to receive an invitation to this signature event featuring Cathy Benko, vice chairman and talent officer for Deloitte and architect of the firms own efforts at career customization across large groups of employees. Shell share first-hand tips on how to build a framework that boosts recruitment and retention and offer insights on how your own career can benefit.

No One Can be a Leader Without Followers

2008-07-07T15:50:00-05:00

What characteristics make a great leader? Can someone who possesses strong technical and strategic skills but is a weak communicator be an effective leader? One can lead a project, a market, an industry, but to effectively accomplish those goals, one must first successfully lead people. How is that done? By building a tremendous set of technical skills? Developing significant core competency muscles? Being the best marketer, scientist, operations manager? Yes and no.

Quantified Results for What Was Once Considered a “Soft Skill”

2008-07-02T02:23:00-05:00

Whats preventing your company from reaching the next level? Diagnosing that organizational challenge surely requires equal measures of tenacity and patience. But getting to the underlying reasons that might explain why your organization isnt consistently reaching its full potential demands a fresh look at individual leadership at the top of the organization. The critical nature and organizational multiplier effect of executive-level leadership often drives or drains investments meant to lift business performance, and behavioral science has pointed to the role so-called emotional intelligence plays in leaders decision-making. But a richer body of knowledge—one that recognizes Conscious Leadership as a critical indicator of business performance and organizational capability—is now emerging and revealing how negative behaviors and deeply ingrained individual belief systems inhibit productivity on a scale not previously explored. Even more far-reaching are the strategies and insight that Conscious Leadership presents to significantly improve engagement, retention and performance.

Innovation Becomes a Science?

2008-06-30T20:00:00-05:00

Its become leadership mantra What matters, gets measured, and in todays world demanding innovation at hyper speeds, is it any wonder that the focus of most senior operations and general management leaders is how to integrate the Holy Grail of Six Sigma into every crevice of profitable operations. But isnt the question of which comes first: the productive operation or the cultural change really at the heart of predicting success? The members of this community face this question every day. Is driving vision and values the most important thing you do every day? Wed love to hear examples from the group about how youve tackled this very real dilemma is it cultural change first or is it the power of Six Sigma/LEAN operations that propels your business forward in innovation? Great tools are available to measure cultures of innovation. For a look at how Googles analytical approach benefits the vision read A dark art no more on Economist.com. One of my fellow ExecuNet members pointed out in a lively discussion the other day that she hadnt yet experienced an organization where the leadership stayed the course aligning culture and performance. In my opinion, this insurance executive said, only leading-edge and financially-fit organizations are not so focused on the short-term financial gains of abandoning Six Sigma commitments, but on how Six Sigma better positions them for the future. It takes solid financial performance BEFORE you can have the culture and the operations in sync? Do you agree?

Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

2008-05-29T19:29:00-05:00

Is your glass half-full? I’ve been curious about the role optimism plays in leadership, and I am always on the lookout for research that examines whether successful leaders see the glass as half-full. Many of the related surveys I see query optimism about external conditions, particularly the economy. ExecuNet even conducts a monthly Recruiter Confidence Poll that measures something relevant. (By the way, 66 percent of search consultants are confident/very confident that the executive market will improve in the next six months up from 61 percent in April and 52 percent in March.)

Jobs Beyond Borders

2008-05-07T14:25:00-05:00

It’s not news that companies are offshoring jobs to save money and India has become the biggest beneficiary; but research from CareerBuilder.com and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania reveals a lot more detail about why and what jobs are at risk and where they are likely to go. Based on a survey of more than 3,000 hiring managers/HR professionals and 6,700+ workers across the U.S., the research identifies the high-wage, high-skill jobs being offshored that were previously thought to be impervious to risk, and 69 percent of employers believe high-skill service positions are at equal or more risk of being offshored than low-skill jobs. Examples of jobs companies plan to offshore: Computer programmers Software developers Customer service Systems analysts Sales managers Graphic designers HR personnel General managers Marketing personnel

Economic Uncertainty Creating New Opportunities and Challenges for Corporate Leaders

2008-04-24T19:20:00-05:00

Thanks in part to an aging workforce and global economic growth, the demand for executive talent continues to increase while the threat of a recession looms.” says Mark Anderson, president and chief economist at ExecuNet. Despite evidence that the economy could continue to shed temporary and entry-level jobs, recruiting and retaining executive-level talent will remain a challenging priority for companies in 2008. Following a healthy 24 percent increase in search assignments in 2007, more than 70 percent of search firm and corporate human resource professionals believe there is a shortage of executive talent, and two-thirds (67 percent) say the war for executive talent has intensified over the last year amid increasing economic uncertainty. Highlights from the

China Most Likely to Succeed U.S. for International Assignments

2008-04-22T15:20:00-05:00

Research finds that China is poised to replace the United States as the most frequent international relocation assignment destination; meanwhile Singapore drops off the list and Germany emerges. In a presentation at a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) regional conference, Sue Evens, director of Cartus Consulting Services, identified the top three global mobility policy and program trends—assignment volume and destinations; demand for flexibility and emerging policy approaches; and talent management—and underscored the shift toward China as the primary location for international assignments. Driven by robust business growth and activity, China will outpace the United States in 2009 as the most frequented location, capturing 31 percent of international assignments, however the HR practitioners who responded to the Cartus survey indicated that China would present the biggest challenge for them. Among the chief concerns: infrastructure and security; living conditions; compensation and high costs; compliance; and cultural adaptation/language. 2004 United States.......34% United Kingdom....28% China...................19% Singapore.............19% 2007 United States.......30% China...................23% United Kingdom......8% Germany................5% 2009 Projected China..................31% United States.......25% United Kingdom.....4% India.....................4% Source: Cartus, 2007

Strengthen Your Niche-works

2008-04-15T15:00:01-05:00

Participation levels in leading social networks climbed in the last year, and Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, says there was a five-fold increase in online networking for wealthy over 55-year-olds. Follow the money to online social networks, as the latest Wealth Survey from the Luxury Institute revealed that 60 percent of wealthy Americans with an average income of $287,000/year and net worth of $2.1 million participate in online social networks, compared to just 27 percent a year ago. These affluent individuals are most likely members of 2.8 social networks, with roughly 110 connections, and membership in social networks increase with earnings: those earning over $300,000/year average participation in 3.4 social networks.

Democratization of Innovation is a Competitive Imperative

2008-04-08T19:04:00-05:00

Companies innovate by making incremental product improvements inspired largely by market research that looks to fill needs. New product development of the future, it can be argued, will actually be accomplished by communities of user groups feeding cool stuff they want to use into manufacturers who make it happen. And now, Denmark has become the first to say it will pay incentives to companies who align with their open innovators rather than in-house R&D to create new products. Expect EU partners to follow. Over the last 30 years, market-changing, mega-income producing new products have largely been created with a single market research method: find a need and fill it. Simple. Yes, but increasingly ineffective, says MIT/Sloan School of Management Professor of Innovation Management Eric von Hippel. His exhaustive study of multiple industries and innovations shows that in most cases, the truly ground-shaking product innovations come from the the most ignored part of the market curve: the user’s own invention. “All markets are small and uncertain at the beginning; users experience need well ahead of manufacturers and are usually ignored by companies because they are few in number,” Dr. von Hippel just told hundreds of global business strategists attending the World Innovation Forum in New York. Why? Because, Dr. von Hippel says, users innovate to develop something they can use the way they want to use it as opposed to companies who innovate largely when they see the potential to sell something. Products created this way include the heart and lung machine, the jogger baby stroller, the mountain bike, the Dyson vacuum cleaners, and endless software and IT systems.