Key Trends Shaping The Workforce Of The Future

by Kevin Parikh

The workforce of the future has been debated for years but has never been such a hot topic as today, with the Covid-19 pandemic. It is no longer news that the face of the world and the way we do business has irrevocably changed. Instead of the slow and steady climb toward a borderless, digital society, global economies suddenly found themselves launched onto a new trajectory, forced to adapt to survive. We are watching the workplace and workforce of the future take shape, with changing roles, relationships and demands. There has been a rapid shift toward remote work, innovation and automation, enabled by the ubiquity of technology and the digital economy.

What will the future look like, and what does it mean for the workforce and youth of today?

The workforce of the future will be distributed and transboundary.

Advancements in digital and unified communications, allowing for real-time audio and visual connection, have made it easier than ever to work remotely and efficiently from anywhere in the world without compromising the quality of interactions. In fact, at the advent of the pandemic, many white-collar companies around the world were able to make the work-from-home shift almost instantaneously.

According to a survey of roughly 1,200 chief information officers across different industries around the world conducted by Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), 72% of the workforce is remote, and it is expected that the share of the workforce permanently working from home will double to 34.4% in 2021, from 16.4% before the pandemic.

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To see the future more clearly, find your blind spots

by Eric J. McNulty

After being bombarded with disruption in 2020, executives can better prepare for the next crisis by considering new perspectives.

It was the year we saw it all. And 2020 was also the year we didn’t see it all coming. Wildfires. Floods. So many storms in the Atlantic that meteorologists had to resort to the Greek alphabet to name them. Global protests over racial and economic inequality. And, of course, the pandemic.

What is surprising is that we were surprised. In a recent PwC study, 69 percent of responding organizations had experienced a crisis in the past five years and 95 percent expected to face one. We all watched Australia aflame in the months before the pandemic. California, too. It was only three years ago that multiple storms rattled the Gulf Coast in the United States in rapid succession. And climate watchers had been predicting that there will be more of these severe weather events in the future.

And the pandemic? Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, H1N1 influenza in 2009–10, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), first reported in 2012, and the Ebola outbreak in 2014–16 foreshadowed that a deadly, global, infectious disease outbreak was overdue. I warned about MERS, and public health risks in general, in this publication in 2013. It was not the most shared article of that year. Not by a long shot.

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How Companies Will Stand Out Post-Pandemic

by Ulrik Juul Christensen

(Hint: It’s Not AI.)

In a post-pandemic world, companies undoubtedly will turn increasingly to advanced technologies — artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and automation — to accelerate growth and improve profit margins. Such an arms race, however, will not be sustainable as even the latest technology will eventually become commoditized. Instead, the true point of differentiation will be well-educated human capital deployed dynamically to tackle challenges so complex that AI and automation will come up short.

To be clear, technology will be the foundation of digital transformation. As two experts from the World Bank wrote in Harvard Business Review, “Increases in efficiency brought about by digital technology can help businesses expand. Digital platforms can create entirely new occupations and jobs.”  Yet that opportunity will not be realized unless people are well-educated, not only when it comes to job-specific technical competencies, but also in 21st century skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, as well as character traits of leadership, ethics, citizenship, and grit.

Based on conversations I’m having with business leaders across multiple industries, and even what I see in our own company, I believe the key to future success — through this decade and beyond — lies in learning engineering. Essentially, that means offering the right learning opportunities to build relevant skills and ensuring that people take advantage of learning and development (L&D). As a chief learning officer (CLO) told me recently, “The pandemic has exposed the fact that L&D is not a ‘nice to have’; it is a ‘need to have.’”

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Seven Building Blocks for a High-Performance Sales Culture

By Neil Zaman

While there are certainly many opinions on how to build successful teams, here’s one roadmap for constant improvement based on the Triangle Model. When followed, this model can lead to increased innovation, improved individual satisfaction, more effective communication, better decision making, and higher quality execution. And what sales team can’t use all those?

Below are seven key principles for building out a team – with explanations of how these principles can help an organization up the ante.

 

1. Trust
Trust is the foundation on which all successful teams are built, and that requires an unwavering belief that everyone is driving toward the same strategic goals. This is the most critical component when building a high-performing team.

When laying out that foundation, begin by ensuring everyone is in a position that matches their skillset. If people are in positions where the opposite is true, the overall team trust will be on shaky ground.

Communicate with and learn from your employees and explain why you’ve strategically placed them where you have – reinforcing that you believe they can succeed in this role. Show employees you trust them by allowing them to make decisions, and back them up if questions arise. Employees will feel the trust and empowerment when they know you have their backs.

2. Vision
Once you are on your way to building out your team of strong contributors, you’ll need to share a clear, simple vision that is aligned all the way to the top-line corporate strategy. The vision should be lofty, but the most important part is that it’s actionable for everyone.

As an example, strive to delight customers – and talk about this all day, every day. This means the actions and decisions we make must be aimed at ensuring our customers are successful. Within the overarching vision, there can be several goals to support it, such as, “Improve customer support by X%,” or, “We plan to introduce a new product this year at a specific number of customer sites.”

3. Teamwork
Be mindful that some may feel isolated at work rather than feeling like part of a cohesive team. Highly distributed teams and improper positioning can cause challenges – as can a management team that doesn’t reinforce a team-centric mentality.

Drive inclusion by encouraging each and every team member to bring creative ideas to the table to solve problems or provide input for important decisions. Everyone has individual roles and responsibilities, but there’s usually some kind of crossover with other peers and cross-functional groups within the company. Facilitating crossover leads to a “we are in this together” sentiment.

Foster a team mindset within the organization by instilling incremental checkpoints to ensure you’re on the right track.

4. Empowerment
When you’ve completed the above steps, it’s time to let the team perform. Find ways to empower them so they can earn wins that pay off for the broader organization.

Team members are often more productive and perform at their peak when you get out of their way. It’s critical that team members have opportunities to grow and execute on their own. Be ready to guide, but first set the stage, agree on the goals, and let the teams and contributors establish their own success strategies.

5. Accountability
Bringing accountability to the table helps build trust and understanding within your team. Similar to building a trust foundation, accountability helps reinforce the trust that is already present.

To build accountability, establish clear goals from the top down that can be measured with each individual – and have regular check-ins to track key milestones. By staying on top of progress, you are avoiding surprise and establishing predictability. Demonstrating accountability when it comes to objectives – and being transparent about successes and misses – elevates the organization.

6. Execution
Building a high-performing team that drives innovation and growth is incredibly challenging, and I’ve found that pushing execution and follow-through is sometimes overlooked.

Instead of being paralyzed by planning and analysis, remind the team of your shared vision and push them to execute on it. Instead of complacency, develop an agile and customer-focused approach.

7. Reward
After you’ve built your high-performing team and are in a success pattern, don’t forget to acknowledge and reward your team members.

Money isn’t always the answer. Sometimes just giving someone the credit in front of a group can go a long way. With repeat successes, you can look at opportunities to expand your team members’ responsibilities and consider promotions. The recognition can be very motivating and fuels the continued success of the individual, the team, and the broader company.

Building a team and leading it to success requires a lot of steps. If any step within this model breaks down, the entire foundation can become weak – leaving you with lost opportunities.

Using this triangle model, you too can enable your team to succeed. You may want to put your own twist on the model so it’s true to your own leadership style. But always put your customers first.

Source: Selling Power

5 leadership tactics that build trust

by Amy Stanton

“It’s really not about being seen as the person in charge. It’s about learning how to communicate in a way that other people trust.”

You never master the art of leadership.

This is something that seems to be missing from the public conversation around how to be an effective leader. In the workplace, in the world at large, and even at home with family and friends. Leadership isn’t a destination, it is a process: a never-ending practice that takes years to develop, and at any moment can feel like a massive fail.

We all, at some point or another, forget how to be great leaders.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about leadership over the course of my career, it’s that the soft skills are what matter most. It’s really not about being seen as the person in charge, or dressing a certain way, or reminding the people around you that you’re the final decision-maker.

It’s about learning how to communicate in a way that other people trust.

Here are five small ways you can start doing that right now.

1. Change up your feedback style, so people know you mean what you say

If you say, “Good job” to every person you work with, for every single thing they do, those words are going to lose their meaning.

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