Next Generation Next Destination

2012 MARKETPLACE IS PREDATORS' PARADISE: BTI'S ADVICE

I recently attended a webinar by The BTI Consulting Group, Inc. providing an overview of corporate counsel survey results and advice for law firms desiring to compete favorably in what was called a “predators’ paradise” in the marketplace for services. In my opinion, the advice is relevant beyond the legal arena to any professional service or actually any business with which needs a strong client focus. So I offer this brief recap of salient points to my readers.  (For more details, contact me at pwhaserot@pdcounsel.com.) It is important information for members of any generation aspiring to attract and retain clients in the “new normal” economy.

• High client satisfaction rates are crucial to defending against predator competition.
• The more fronts  (practice or service areas) on which you can penetrate and serve the client, the more likely you are to keep the business.
• You must be strongly aligned with clients” marketplace objectives, thinking like them. Situation specific approaches garner higher fees.
• Start with identifying marketplace needs and work backwards to determine and develop what you will offer, with flexibility. The aim is to provide individual clients with semi-customized services and delivery, that is, customizing for each from processes and templates in place.
• Rapid change in external factors means processes and approaches may have to change every 18 months.  Firms that are static in their mindsets and offerings will only get commodity work, which pays on the lower end.
• Focus is critical. Have 5 or fewer strategic objectives in a 12-month period.
• Actively and specifically respond and anticipate clients’ changing needs and priorities.
• What clients said was most difficult to find is “commitment to help them” rather than focus on the service provider’s needs.
• The second most important goal for clients is to have providers who give the best value for the dollar. So they are looking for more value for less cost.

BTI’S ADVICE ON HOW TO THRIVE IN A PREDATORS’ PARADISE. 

BOOMERS PLAN ENCORE CAREER TRANSITIONS DESPITE TOUGH ECONOMY

According to a recent study, “Encore Career Choices: Purpose, Passion and a Paycheck in a Tough Economy,” Boomers have tempered their expectations, while at the same time retaining their unwillingness to give up on efforts to create a better world for succeeding generations. The survey was commissioned by Civic Ventures supported by the MetLife Foundation and conducted by Penn Schoen Berland. They surveyed Americans ages 44 to 70.

Here are a few key findings. To see more…

• The number of people in encore careers for the greater good is up, from 8.4 million in 2008 to 9 million in 2011.
• 40% of the 100 million Americans ages 44 to 70 are either in or interested in encore careers
• Half of the group surveyed says they are very concerned that the state of the economy makes this a difficult time to change careers. However, 25% of those interested in encore careers say they are likely to make the switch in the next 5 years.
• 73% of respondents are concerned that future generations of children will grow up to be worse off than people are now. And 70% say it is very important to them personally to leave the world a better place.

Do these findings resonate with you?

Would you be interested in joining a group to plan out your transition to your next career?

I can lead you to resources. 

Phyllis Weiss Haserot     www.pdcounsel.com

 

NEXT GENERATION CAREERS: WHY THEY CHOOSE TECH

Perhaps it’s no surprise that men and women choose to major in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields for different reasons. A study released this month (September 2011) called “STEM Perceptions: Students and Parents Study” by Harris Interactive for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide and Microsoft, has some interesting finding on the differences.

The women’s top reason for choosing a STEM major was intellectual stimulation, while men chose those fields for “a good salary out of school.” A huge gender gap was revealed in what led them to their interest. For 68% of the women in the study it was a particular high school class or teacher that they credited with turning them on to the subject. That was true for only 5% of the men. Their experience with related games, toys, books or clubs was a significant factor for 51% of the men but only 35% of the women.

These findings could influence the teaching of the different genders and suggest the importance of high school teaching to attracting more women to the STEM fields. A combination of intellectual stimulation, role models and a welcoming culture would be likely to attract and retain more women.

It is important that those role models and inspirational teachers be men as well as women. How do we make men more comfortable with “sponsoring” women in their field?

Your thoughts?

Phyllis Weiss Haserot   www.pdcounsel.com 

 

DO MERITOCRACY POLICIES WORK?

Sloan School of Management at MIT researchers found in The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations study that using a policy of meritocracy might do the opposite of expected results and result in management bias and disparate treatment for women and minorities.

Conventional wisdom suggests that if people perform better than others, they should be rewarded better. Instead, when study participants in what they believed was a meritocracy based company evaluated employees, they gave men an average of $50 more in bonuses than women in a study experiment. Further, women participants were as likely as men to discriminate against women according to the research reported in Human Resources Executive magazine (9/2/11). There was no evidence of bias when meritocracy was not mentioned. The study was co-authored by Emilio J. Castilla, an MIT/Sloan associate professor and Stephen Benard, an assistant professor at Indiana University. Castilla says the unequal treatment that he found in meritocracies could extend to minorities as well.

Despite the results of his survey, Castilla says that businesses should continue meritocracy -- after all, when it's implemented correctly, it's effective. "Although our findings identify the potential side effects of certain meritocratic conditions," he says, "businesses shouldn't abandon efforts to promote workplace fairness and equality [based on merit]."

How can managers avoid being too subjective in their evaluation decisions? Will using hard numbers solve the problem? Will hard numbers present the complete picture of factors that need to be evaluated? In addition to training for managers, giving a voice to employees being evaluated should help to bridge the gap and lead to better results. Please share your thoughts.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot    www.pdcounsel.com   

 

PROGRESS-ENGAGEMENT-PRODUCTIVITY: THE PEP FORMULA

Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement in the workplace crisis is $300 billion in lost productivity annually.

Research by Teresa Amabile, a Harvard Business School professor, and Steven Kramer, an independent researcher, co-authors “The Progress Principle,” revealed the #1 factor that keeps people engaged in their work. It also revealed the disconnect with managers’ perception of the most important motivators. As Amabile and Kramer wrote in a New York Times Opinion piece, “Do Happier People Work Harder?” (9/4/11), “Conventional wisdom suggests that pressure enhances performance; our real-time data, however, shows that workers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do.”

From 12,000 diary entries kept by 238 professionals in seven different companies, the researchers discovered that the single most important factor engaging people in their work – by far - is making progress in meaningful work.

Apparently, most managers don’t get it. Amabile and Kramer wrote ”When we asked 689 managers around the world to rank five employee motivations in terms of importance, they ranked “supporting progress” dead last. Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivation well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.”

The catalysts for progress are: worker autonomy, sufficient resources and learning from problems. The researchers think that if leaders believe their mission is, in part, to support workers’ everyday progress, we could end the disengagement crisis that several studies revealed and increase the work force’s well-being and economic productivity.

The stats are there. How can we convince organizational leaders that the investment in “supporting progress in meaningful work” will have tremendous ROI in terms of productivity?  Please share your thoughts.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot    www.pdcounsel.com

 

DON’T REWARD DISAGREEABLE, UNPROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOR

“Rude People Earn More” was a grabbing headline in the Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2011 among many articles referring to a new study actually titled “Do Nice Guys – and Gals – Really Finish Last? "by professors from Cornell University, University of Notre Dame and the University of Western Ontario.

The big news, (or is it confirming what we suspected?) is that men who self-report that they are below average in agreeableness earned about 18% more than nicer ones in the research sample of over 10,000 people in a wide range of professions from 3 surveys over nearly 20 years plus a separate study by the three professors of 400 business students. “Disagreeable” women earned on average 5% more than “agreeable” ones.

The several articles I saw about the study didn’t define “agreeableness,” so I asked Assistant Professor at the Cornell Industrial & Labor Relations School Beth Livingston, who has been widely quoted in the articles, for the definitions. The study team defined agreeableness as “trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness. Disagreeableness is seen as the opposite, though variance suggests that it's rarely that straightforward,” said Dr. Livingston.

Previous findings by other researchers cited by the study authors concluded that:

• Agreeable people place greater value on their interpersonal relationships.
• Those individuals are more motivated to maintain relationships.
• They are more “prosocial.”
• They are more helpful and cooperative.
• As a result of all of the above, they are better liked by their peers than are disagreeable people.

Take-aways from the research:

• Agreeable people may be reluctant to be assertive in salary negotiations and leave money on the table.
• Males may think agreeableness doesn’t conform to societal and workplace expectations of masculine behavior.
• An organization’s compensation system may reward disagreeableness though managers may not realize it or the downside of doing so.

Distinctions to consider made by other professors and executives are between disagreeableness, incivility and disrespect. They may overlap on occasions but are not the same things. All of these may be perceived as unprofessional behavior.

I hope that the findings in this new study are considered beyond the catchy headlines, and that unprofessional and disagreeable behaviors are perceived as unacceptable and no longer rewarded. However, too much compliant behavior and modesty could be a detriment to the organization as well as an individual's positive leadership. It will be interesting to see if the younger generations make this culture change.

(This is my blog, so I can say I am especially pleased to see all the attention Beth Livingston, the youngest faculty member, teacher, scholar and collaborator, is getting. I recruited her a year ago to work with me on my consulting for the Cornell “generations initiative” for faculty and staff recruitment and retention, a project of the University’s Human Resources Department, and am thrilled with her contributions and commitment.)

Phyllis Weiss Haserot     www.pdcounsel.com

 

 

PLEASE RESPOND TO OUR SURVEY ON PROFESSIONALISM

For mentoring that I do with students and professionals and a book I am writing, I have created a survey on professionalism through generational lenses.

 Please click on this link  http://surveys.verticalresponse.com/a/show/639502/979c3acc39/0 and take a few minutes to respond to the short survey. I will be happy to share results with anyone who asks.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts and valuable time.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot   www.pdcounsel.com 

 

FORMULA FOR CREATIVITY COMPETENCY IN LEADERSHIP

Beyond tinkering around the edges, creativity is needed to make significant business model changes that meet the needs of an uncertain, interdependent and nervous world.

In IBM’s last Global CEO Study, CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders around the world said that creativity is the number one leadership competency needed going forward. The increasing uncertainty and complexities in the world as we know it now is the reason these top managers give for that choice of top competency.

More than just tweaking of systems, answers on how to run, organize and develop business, deeper business model changes are needed. Leaders will have to take more calculated risks and develop new ideas. They will need to be continually innovating in how they communicate and lead.

More than half of the survey respondents doubt their ability to manage the complexity. (Do professional services firm leaders feel and admit this same doubt?)

So how will they do it?

Here’s the formula suggested for creative leadership success:

• Collaborating with customers and other stakeholders to integrate them into their core processes and co-create products and services
• Making strategic planning an ongoing process to respond quickly to market and other significant conditions
• Figuring out how to incorporate non-financial rewards to motivate personnel into the mix and strong focus on a “people strategy”

Source: Reported in Herman Trend Alert (August 3, 2011)

How many organizations are willing? Are they going to stop being primarily reactive and invite and listen to innovative ideas from stakeholders of various worldviews, generations, diverse characteristics and skills? Courage is needed to harness creativity.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot    www.pdcounsel.com

 

 

 

SAME OLD TUNE: SUCCESSION PLANNING STILL LAGS

Nearly one-third (31 percent) of companies with more than 1,000 employees said they don’t currently have a succession planning program at their organization. This was reported in a new Career Builders survey. 50 percent of senior management (CEO, CFO, Senior VP, etc.) and 52 percent of those in a vice president position said they do not have a successor for their current role.

Responses when asked what is lacking in their current succession planning program:

•     Not enough opportunities for employees to learn beyond their own roles – 39 percent
•     Process isn’t formalized – 38 percent
•     Not enough investment in training and development – 33 percent
•     Not actively involving employees or seeking their input – 31 percent
•     It only focuses on top executives – 29 percent

Managers also reported that workers’ awareness of and input on their own succession planning is important. Forty-nine percent of employers said employees don’t set up career paths with their managers with timelines and milestones.

Still a top HR priority. Still little positive action.

The neglect of career planning is going to bite as the economy comes back to life and people have more options.  High potential personnel will be waving bye-bye for the places that promise an appealing career path at any age.

 

 

LIP SERVICE WON’T RESULT IN A SUCCESSION PLANNING AND TRANSITIONING WINNER

The American Management Association (AMA) surveyed 1,098 senior managers and executives in December 2010, and released the results in late March 2011. 43% said their senior management team is “sporadic in its commitment” to succession planning, 34% said their team is “genuinely committed,” while 14% said their team just “pays lip service” to succession planning. So at least 66% are not “genuinely committed” and working on their succession plans for all positions that are critical to avoid business disruption.

 This is a critical issue for Fortune 500 businesses, where 1 in 5 executives are reaching retirement age with no named successor in sight. It is also critical for professional firms, whose main assets walk out the door every night, and not-for-profits and many other types of institutions as well as small business.

Why is so much succession planning talk just lip service? Why does a process so obviously an asset in avoiding business disruption and client defections so widely resisted?

There’s a lot of denial underlying the widespread inaction. To varying degrees I believe it’s about:

• Individual’s, particularly Baby Boomers now, fear of losing influence, clout with colleagues and clients;
• Fear of change of direction, personalities and policies;
• Reluctance to admit that talent will defect
• Unwillingness to confront mortality

Can you add other reasons?  Please do comment.

One solution is to establish an ongoing process for succession planning and transitioning as an institutional and cultural expectation. That becomes an integral part of the business model and is applicable to everyone. It’s not a personal judgment. It’s a business imperative and a foundation for sustainable success.

Enough of silence and lip service.

Submit your comments here. Thanks!

Phyllis Weiss Haserot     www.pdcounsel.com