Next Generation Next Destination

REFLECTION - LOOKING TO THE NEW YEAR

It’s a time for reflection.

At the close of a very challenging year for most people, with a deeper sense of uncertainty for individuals and organizations than we can remember in the past, we look forward to positive change in the next few years, including the hope that firms will not be short-sighted and put themselves in a future hole by neglecting their strategic talent management and professional development responsibilities. These are crucial investments, not just nice to do but rather need to do. The new normal won’t be the old normal. Will you and your organization gain the competitive edge with your people and your clients?

 

Wishing you, your families and your colleagues good health, peace, fulfillment and joy in the New Year!

-- Optimistically,

          Phyllis

 

Phyllis Weiss Haserot     www.pdcounsel.com

TRANSITIONING: A TALE OF MUTUAL MENTORING

For further evidence that many Boomers are not afraid to jump into the technology and new media world, we have the story of James R. Gaines, former top editor of Time and People magazines who joined FLYP in the summer of 2008 at age 61. FLYP is an online digital publication that combines text with Flash animation, motion graphics, streaming audio and video to do what he has always done - tell stories.

In his article in the New York Times "Preoccupations" column ( November 29, 2009), Jim Gaines talks about his mutual learning relationship with the staff of FLYP, several decades younger than he. Here are some of his thoughts about the age and experience gap.

*  Gaines figured the staff members, recently out of college, would be lucky to work with him and learn from his experience and achievements, but the opposite turned out to be true for him.

*  He feels lucky to be working with them, and they have been quite patient about helping him understand all the technology and software applications. "...I learn more than I teach most days, which is both humbling and thrilling," he wrote.

*  He is dealing with the paradox of wanting to be a colleague but knowing his role as boss: "to sustain, provide and sometimes to teach, but not necessarily be a friend." It's analogous to his role as parent at home. 

Gaines decided to ask his young staff members what they think of him and the distance between him and the staff. Some of the responses he got include:

*  "I don't ever think about Jim's age until someone in the office brings it up" (usually over some digital gaffe). 

*  "We're a small team where we can't get hung up on who is guiding who. New media isn't about who has the longest resume. It's about who has the best ideas and who can implement them the most creatively. That's something age can't really teach you."  [I comment here that this is at least partly true in many industries and fields.]

*  They are impressed with his enthusiasm, and it reinforces their excitement for what they are doing.

Gaines points out that his and their enthusiasms differ from each other. He remarks on how strongly the staff reacts to things - positively or negatively, what he sees as youthful extremes of emotion. But he is thrilled with the relationship. He concludes," The young people I work with now will be settlers of that [digital] frontier, and I can't think of anything I would rather do than help them get there."

This story illustrates an excellent example of mutual mentoring, where mentor and mentee roles shift back and forth as appropriate. It becomes a comfortable process that benefits both parties or a group.

It's one type of what I call "3rd Wave Mentoring." I will be presenting a webcast for the West LegalEdCenter on this new wave of mentoring (including mentoring circles and other networked approaches) on December 16th. Contact me at pwhaserot@pdcounsel.com for more information.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot      www.pdcounsel.com

GETTING BUY-IN AND LOYALTY FOR THE INSTITUTION

Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president was the interview subject of the New York Times "Corner Office" column (Nov. 1, 2009) discussing her approach to leadership. What I took from her remarks, though coming from her experience in academia, was some advice for generating buy-in to an organization's overall success by practice group and business unit leaders.

Gilpin pointed out that one of the key reasons for leader communication frequently and repeatedly is so people will not feel a sense of mystery or suspect what a leader is up to. She said that by reaching out and listening, the leader not only can understand how others see the world, but also by having them feel listened to, they are more likely to 

CROSS-GENERATIONAL COMMUNICATION: GEN Y AND NONVERBAL CUES

My August monthly Inter-Generational Relations e-Tip was a checklist of differences in and perceptions about communications styles among the generations. (E-mail me at pwhaserot@pdcounsel.com for a copy and/or to be put on the subscribers list.) On a related point, in a fascinating article on the "Taste" page of the Wall Street Journal (August 28, 2009) ,Mark Bauerlein makes a powerful case for the need to bridge the gap between the Gen Y/Millennial texting culture and use of what anthropologist Edward T. Hall called "the Silent Language," nonverbal cues or body language and voice tone. Mr. Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University.

Spending so much time with texting and e-mail as well as Facebook from a young age, Gen Y has developed less skill than previous generations reading nonverbal cues and interpreting tone of voice, pauses, etc., that can be experienced in person or on the phone. (Gen Yers use cell phones more for texting than for voice calls.) It seems the lack of nonverbal communication experience would impede interviewing skills and negotiating skills. The primarily electronic communicators are missing expressive behaviors which transmit feelings, attitudes, reactions and judgments. This is even more damaging in cross-cultural circumstances, which becomes increasingly significant in a world of global economic and political dependency.

And many Gen Yers don't realize that others, particularly other generations, do see nonverbal meaning in behavior such as checkling e-mail, etc. during meetings and not looking at a person who is talking to them because they are multi-tasking.

While it may reduce tensions for other generations to realize that this behavior is not intentionally rude, but rather is just young people acting on what they know (or don't know), the fact is the latter tend not to be well equipped for negotiations, interviewing, navigating the "political" dynamics of the workplace, or even their own job interviews.

Employers and managers need to be sensitive to teachable moments and to provide training early on in what we might term "holistic" communications skills.

Please share your thoughts and experiences.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot   www.pdcounsel.com

COMMUNICATING/WORKING WITH CLIENTS OF A DIFFERENT GENERATION

Is age diversity causing a disconnect between you or your colleagues and your clients? In tough times firms scrutinize many significant aspects of practice they (unfortunately) overlook in better times. The impact of generational differences should be prominently on that list of items.

Firms should be careful to look at their succession planning through a generational lens as well.

Tensions among the generations in the workplace have been felt for a while - and firms have done little to achieve better harmony. But when it affects client relationships - as it very clearly can and often does - then it gets attention!

For more on what to look for, see my blog post on Legal Current.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot     www.pdcounsel.com

TRANSITIONING THROUGH CROSS-TRAINING

When I talk about flexibility, I mean more than flexible hours or location. Cross-training so that people can move from one role or specialty to another enables firms to be nimble and people to remain productive when the economy sours in their area of focus.

As we move toward the "new normal" and rethink business models, we ought to be thinking about whether individuals' roles have become over-specialized to the detriment of overall goals.

The Wall Street Journal Managing/Theory & Practice column (June 22, 2009) titled "Firms Shift Underused Workers" points out as a consolation of the economic downturn that employees are gaining new skills as they are forced or volunteer to be more versatile in order to retain their jobs. It says that this versatility is found most often in smaller firms, but there is no reason that cross-training couldn't be offered at any size firm.

A poll by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) in March found that 34% of 467 human resource executives reported that their employers had retrained employees for new positions in the last six months.

I believe that's a strategy that will pay off well for organizations in any type of economy and will appeal to Generation Y/Millennials who are drawn to lattice-type careers where they are continually learning new skills and becoming more valuable to employers.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot    www.pdcounsel.com

INVEST IN NEXT GEN X LEADERS NOW!

Many smart companies have not abandoned training in these tight economic times. They are betting that training and coaching the next generation in leadership skills will help them through the recovery period and give them an edge when competitors start building again.

True, many companies have cut training. A survey in December of 117 large U.S. companies by Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. revealed that 23% of respondents had cut training and 18% planned cuts in 2009. But others are investing in leadership development, which is gaining a growing share of training budgets. And that's a departure from the past according to Yaarit Silverstone, global managing director for the organizational effectiveness practice at Accenture Ltd. Cutting leadership training in past downturns had led to mid-level managers and top performers exiting when the economy recovered.

While business schools had been benefiting when things were booming, companies are sending fewer people to executive education courses. And rather than asking business schools to create custom courses for them, they are saving money by conducting the training in-house - either using staff or bringing in outside experts. Those employers want to be sure that the people they have are well prepared to lead during a recovery when they tend not to leave and afterwards. They are using both web-based and live training. For example, Canon USA Inc. is combining web tools and instructor-led courses to increase the training for newly promoted managers over the past efforts. Some of the attention is on strategic decision-making and influencing employees.

The focus on leadership development has been observed even in companies that are reducing headcount. And that is wise. For the immediate present the people remaining need to be more skilled to do more with less and keep clients satisfied and loyal.

For the future when the economy turns up, there may well be a leadership gap in numbers, since Generation X, who will need to fill the experienced Boomers' shoes as the latter leave the work force, is a significantly smaller generation. In general, they have not been trained with the same attention that the Boomers got coming up the ranks. And many Gen Xers have expressed less interest in taking on greater responsibility.

It certainly seems like investing in next generation leaders, to engage them in making them the best they can be, needs to be a high and urgent priority for any business that intends to survive and thrive now and in "the new normal."

Phyllis Weiss Haserot    www.pdcounsel.com

COMBAT RISK OF LOSING BEST PERFORMERS IN DOWNTURN

A recent white paper released by the Human Capital Management Division of the IBM Institute for Business Value confirmed several things we already know in giving recommendations for how organizations should cope with the economic crisis.

*  Organizations are most in danger of losing their best performers.

*  "Stay interviews" and a clear performance management process should be adopted to combat this vulnerability.

*  Take care with voluntary attrition programs because they tend to target personnel with the most institutional memory and experience.

*  Critical informal social networks are usually affected when downsizing occurs, which hinders efficient operation of the organization.

Given these observations from experience in past downturns, organizations need to make informed, and not just short-term decisions about the costs of rebuilding resources they lay off, costs of lost productivity when training is eliminated, and what gaps will be created that impact their service delivery and competitive advantage.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot    www.pdcounsel.com

PERSPECTIVE, DEJA VU, GENERATIONS & ECONOMICS

Recently I was looking through and cleaning out old files and came across some quite intriguing articles from 1991-94 which produced a strong sense of déjà vu. One in particular that I will describe here with some key excerpts was an editorial from the National Law Journal on November 21, 1994 titled "Generation Gap."

 

It begins, "The law firm is a partnership of professionals, practicing a learned profession. But the spirit of cooperation, of all for one and one for all, that the term "partner" implies is becoming scarcer all the time." It then continues with references to bloodletting and firm dissolution that seem almost quaint given what we have witnessed since then and recently.

 

Continuing, "In a way, recent upheavals reflect a resumption of the 1960s war between the generations. The Young Turks, who were reared in the competitive cauldron of the 1980s, know little of the way it used to be. Giving little thought to who will support them in their old age, they stress the importance of such youthful traits as energy and physical stamina over the mellower virtues of wisdom and judgment...Still, elders, whether professors or law partners have much to offer. Outside the firm, their community service in the form of  board memberships and the like inevitably enhances at least the local standing of the firm. And they are much more likely to urge caution in the selection of clients and the handling fo ethically questionable matters." (My emphasis.)

 

Well, we certainly have seen such lack of judgment blow up in the last year or two, causing or adding fuel to a worldwide financial crisis and mind boggling corrupt practices. And the firms are suffering along and cutting headcount, often without a careful strategy for future needs.

 

The editorial concludes, "what makes the elders of the firm unpopular with their younger brethren may protect the latter's health and pocketbooks over the long haul. This used to be understood implicitly, and doubtless led to arrogance and indolence on the part of the wise men. Today, the sheer numbers of younger partners, reflecting firms' rapid expansion in the past decade or so, probably means that youth will have its way. But if it does, it eventually will face a chastening."

 

Deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra said. One thing that younger generations tend not to have is perspective. They have not experienced what happened before they came on the scene. While change can be a very good things and is, indeed, necessary to survive and thrive, perspective and a sense of history while making change can prevent some disastrous occurrences, such as making the same mistakes over again and expecting the results to be different. Isn't that the definition of "insanity"?

 

Phyllis Weiss Haserot       www.pdcounsel.com

DON'T STEREOTYPE THE GENERATIONS

I am delighted that generational issues are getting attention from people new to the topic. Generational challenges and improving the working relations among the generations has been a passion of mine for over a decade, so it's gratifying to see the interest build.

On the other hand, I am not happy to see people jumping on the bandwagon making blanket statements about generational cohorts as if one's date of birth automatically gives them a set of characteristics that they surely share with peers of their age. I am dead set against stereotyping. Some statements that particularly irk me are: "Generation X were the latchkey kids," as if everyone of that generation came home to empty homes and had to fend for themselves. And that "all Gen Y/Millennials have been coddled and over-protected." Another one is that "All Baby Boomers are going to retire in the next few years." Already it is clear that is not true. In fact there are Boomers as young as 47 years old today, and a large proportion in their 60s now had no intention of retiring anytime soon, even before they saw their nest eggs seriously diminishing in the financial market collapse.

I admit that in my passion for generational wisdom, I have come to filter much of what I hear and read through generational filters. But I am wary of the dangers of stereotypes. Everything is not a generational issue. When one was born is only one of the significant influences on personal behavior, attitudes and values. Typical generational attributes do not apply to everyone in a generational cohort.

Let's remember that while learning and understanding generational attributes and differences is very important for improving productivity, retention, leadership, succession planning and business results, we need to take the time to get to know people as individuals and respect their individuality, whatever generation they are.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot      www.pdcounsel.com