Today, I want to draw your attention to a short discussion of some key elements of being a leader in a volatile unpredictable time - being an Agile Leader. Necessarily this requires being able to distinguish between simple, complicated and complex decisions and the ability to use the appropriate process and style for each (or suffer very negative consequences. In this discussion, Trish Gorman of Columbia Business School summarizes her list of the 6 traits of an agile leader. One additional point that I would suggest, is to broaden the "awareness" attribute to include self and team as it is the foundation. Of course, we are biased as this is the core of our practice.
Contributed by alan on 28th of April 2020 07:29:07 AM
Hungry- a bag of potato chips is worth a lot, if you just got out of a big dinner at Morton's or Ruth Chris, there is little or no marginal benefit. In organizations, if you have a highly disorganized and unfocused hiring process, there is a huge benefit to simply implementing some basic systems for managing candidates, planning your talent and structuring your interview process. On the other hand, many organizations, especially those that have not had a hiring push recently, will not be fully conscious of their lack of basic processes or systems for this purpose.
Contributed by alan on 11th of March 2020 03:17:01 PM
In 2019, it was estimated that nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce is remote full time or nearly so. As the Covid crisis develops, we can expect a massive increase in the coming months and likely a faster shift and increase to remote. How long will it be until 50% of work is accomplished in home offices. Likely sooner that many of us think. Remote work poses many of the same management and leadership challenges, but in different ways - and it has some totally different concerns as well. As we move forward in 2020, we are building a way to better service organizations that need tools and assistance to deal with remote work issues.
Contributed by alan on 23rd of September 2019 07:39:37 AM
In order to secure a job offer, short-listed candidates usually pass through an interview process. The questions is - how good of a process is it? Well truthfully, what we see most commonly is they pass through a series of interviews with an informal processing of the information - but not really a clear process. The problem with non process-oriented interviewing is that it involves considerable subjectivity and activates a whole slew of human biases.
Contributed by alan on 28th of January 2019 12:09:02 AM
Invested in training new salespeople or reps, only to find that they achieved poor results when it came time to get to work (Knowledge is not necessarily power unless accompanied by the right capabilities).
Unfortunately, making bad people decisions is not uncommon due to the way most companies manage their talent acquisition processes. For a couple decades repeated studies have shown the exorbitant cost to these mistakes typically centering around 3 times the annual salary or between one hundred and two hundred thousand dollars each time. Many of the costs are hidden in the short term but they are still there. Some of the factors that contribute to this include:
Lying on resumes and exaggerating skill sets are prevalent - studies have indicated over 80% of resumes contain at least one significant lie.
Impressive credentials can create bias relating to overall qualifications or real weaknesses.
Most candidates have prepared well to sell themselves and it's not that hard to "perform" for 60 minutes but that performance may have little to do with actual job performance.
Background checks are not designed to uncover reveal character flaws
Often candidates with horrible track records but some good short term "performances" in interviews can get chosen. One key reason
For the last decade, most U.S. employers advise their employees to avoid true negative feedback during a reference check due to litigation concerns. Reference checks serve a role but a very minor one.
To ensure your search results in a high performer, most would agree, you need an objective assessment of the candidates ability to be a high performer. High performance is a function of a number of things including natural tendencies, motivational factors, task factors, decision styles, interests, tolerances, work preferences, other patterns of behavior (i.e. interpersonal factors) and for many higher level jobs, leadership effectiveness factors. All of these things can be measured accurately, related to the behavior of high, average and low performers in a similar job and used through a scientific assessment to determine whether a person will have a high or low probability of being a high performer.
Contributed by alan on 11th of January 2019 12:48:09 PM
Automation of work processes (whether through AI and machine learning and/or through physical robots) will replace many lower skilled workers but the jobs created will more than offset these. The key caveat is that these jobs will require the workers to excel at teamwork, adaptability and complex problem solving. The latter certainly involves some cognitive and quantitative problem solving but all three involve a heavy dose of social/interpersonal and personal effectiveness goals since so much of the problem solving will involve not just data from machines but input from people - customers, managers, colleagues, suppliers… These conclusions are based on studies sponsored by
Contributed by alan on 24th of October 2018 12:25:32 PM
The War for Talent has been talked about since the early 2000's but with the recession and slow growth, many industries didn't even perceive it, but heading into 2020, I think most will agree it is pervasive and real.
Causes include a combination of several factors including the following:
Contributed by alan on 5th of July 2018 01:24:55 PM
Shortages for quality people, rather than being highly variable, are now affecting nearly every industry and type of worker with few exceptions. From our experience in talking with dozens of HR/Talent organizations across the US each week, in figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and in a number of articles in the Wall Street Journal in the last 3 months, like today's article, In this job market, Quitters are Winning, the talent shortage (and from another perspective, Talent War) is here and here to stay.
Contributed by alan on 14th of February 2018 11:03:31 AM
If you ask a business executive, can you manage something without understanding it? Most will say, "no" or "not effectively" and many (having done this a number of times) will cite the aphorism, "you can't manage what you can't measure." Of course, understanding a situation and having metrics that inform you on it it, quite often do not always equate. Typically metrics are a necessary but not really sufficient part of the understanding. Understanding comes from inter-relating and processing the metrics in a meaningful way- thought, discussion, etc… are usually involved.
