Tag Archives: Careers

The Real Leadership Challenge Of 2020? Creating Cultures Where Everyone Feels They Belong

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We’re midway through 2020, and suffice to say, the year hasn’t gotten off to a great start. But as we look ahead to the next two quarters, leaders across every sector know that while the immediate crises may have abated, the tough work remains to be done.

Now, leaders are not only tasked with trying to stabilize their operations and drive growth, but they also know that in whatever form they seek to rebuild their organization’s culture, it must be with a committed effort toward diversity, inclusion and equality.

It shouldn’t take social movements like #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter to awaken a collective consciousness around long and justly held grievances or systemic biases, and reactionary responses or promises that pay lip service to the problem as opposed to doing the hard work to forge sustainable and systemic solutions don’t help.

Let’s face it: Despite millions of dollars and years of effort to address diversity and inclusion, most organizations haven’t moved the dial far or fast enough. What’s needed is a different approach. So, as we head back to the drawing board, we’d be well served to change course on a few fronts:

1.   Stop Framing The Issue As A Problem

For too long, we have framed the issue of diversity and inclusion as an intractable problem, debating whether quotas are right or targets are fair. Instead, we need to reframe it as a catalytic, powerful solution, focusing on the competitive advantage our organizations stand to gain if they were made up of truly diverse workforces.

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The Digitization Imperative

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  By Ram Charan

The Covid-19 crisis isn’t behind us yet, but companies have to start putting the economic pieces together for their business to not just survive but also build a new future. At this point, there are three priorities most companies should act on with great haste: employee safety, cash management week by week and a digital connection with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners. Missing any of the three could seriously jeopardize the continuity of the business.

Companies that are not already on their way to being digital have to realize the urgency. It’s not just digital giants like Amazon that threaten their future. It’s also legacy companies that are becoming digital. In the pandemic, they’ve been able to adapt more quickly. And, under normal circumstances, they can gain share very fast.

Maybe you’ve come to terms with the fact that you must become a digital company. But you’re convinced that this is not the time to act. You have to realize that waiting for stability is a luxury you can’t afford. Really, there is no need to wait.

Talking to a number of CEOs, I have learned that there are myths about what digitization costs, how much cash it will use, and how long it will take. Business leaders don’t think they can show a clear return on their investment. Besides, they’re convinced that people in the organization will resist it.

Well, that’s no longer the case. You can now pick the most urgent, most critical tasks—the ones that will help you get cash, increase revenues or connect with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners—and achieve them in bite-size portions. You can see benefits in weeks or months, not years.

 

Here are some examples:

• Dynamic pricing. It is a necessity when uncertainty is here to stay.

• Collection of receivables. The collections process is critical to liquidity.

• A continuous connection with customers. You will need this to help you pick up how their behavior is changing, how demand is shifting and what the voice of the customer is. It will help with forecasting, with impacts on inventory and cash flow.

• A single source of data. Data-based decision-making, whether or not it’s automated, is now an imperative. But it is difficult to use data for decision-making if it is spread across many silos; it is highly inconsistent, and managers don’t trust it.

A number of small vendors now exist that can do projects like these for you in less than 90 days for less than $400,000.

Make your own list and take one or two tasks at a time. Then, reach out to small vendors (UST Global and Altimetrik are two I’m familiar with). Define your tasks clearly and precisely, just as you’ve done with outsourcing, facilities construction or other turnkey projects.

You might not realize that digital giants like Amazon all began using digital technology for one task at a time. They used small vendors—and still do—because they are fast, they cost less, and they take the project to completion. They become partners in operationalizing it. You focus on what needs to be digitized and why, and how it will create revenues, cash, margins, customer satisfaction or speed. The vendors focus on giving you the relevant digital platform or digital apps.

When it comes to organizational resistance, that is unlikely to exist anymore. If someone does resist, you have to deal with it right away.

One more thing: don’t be put off by terminology and tools with which you’re not familiar, like algorithms and big data. Algorithms—the mathematical rules by which data is processed—have been around for hundreds of years. Roughly two dozen of them are used for common tasks and are readily available.

So, take the mystery out and take on small turnkey tasks that can build your business and ensure its continuity.

Source: Chief Executive

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Seven Ways Leaders Can Prepare for Post-Pandemic Times

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by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

Avoid knee-jerk reactions when creating a plan for the future.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” This opening line from Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities captures the contradictory times we live in. It also describes how organisations may react to the coronavirus pandemic in very different ways.

Take fictional Company A. When the pandemic occurred, fear permeated its top echelons. For years, its leadership had bought back shares to improve its financial metrics and warrant fat bonuses for executives. This reduced its financial leeway, prompting the CEO and the CFO to go on a major cost-cutting spree, including the cancellation of all training and development activities. They also used the turbulent economic environment as an excuse to lay off many employees they didn’t like, without any explanation. In light of these actions, a doomsday atmosphere prevailed.

At fictional Company B, senior executives reacted very differently. Granted, with the lessons learned from the last recession, they had created strong financial reserves, which enabled them not to lay off anyone. Instead, they eliminated overtime hours, put in place sabbatical programmes and made use of government support schemes. They instituted a salary freeze and downsized their own remuneration. Knowing that recessions offered exceptional opportunities to pick up high-quality talent, they kept their eyes open. They would not fall into the trap of having a shortage of people with key skills. Although it would have been easy to cut training, top management decided to keep key elements of it to better prepare its workforce for the future. Continue reading →

Pay Inequity Is Still A Thing—And It Matters

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By Maria Colacurcio

In recent years, gender pay equity has become a topical discussion amongst the global workforce. Hollywood actresses and Olympic athletes have shared their stories of unequal pay for equal work; and there has been a slew of class-action suits and corporate scandals revealing discriminatory pay practices. As a result, investors, customers, employees and the law are all calling for progress on wage equality.

Is progress being made? It’s hard to say, but it is probably nowhere near enough as is needed. Some attribute this to the “pipeline” issue. That is, men and women freely choosing entirely divergent professional paths. The theory goes that men choose careers such as investment banking and software engineering and women choose professions such as nursing and teaching whose pay rates have been set (lower) by the natural market forces of supply and demand (or perhaps because of the long history of putting less value on women’s work). But if you look at computer programmers, women used to dominate the industry, then men flowed in. The pay automatically increased and the profession was viewed as more desirable. By contrast, as women flow into historically male professions, pay actually drops.

Some companies have made attempts to address the pay equity issue, but they’re often employing outdated approaches or third-party consultants. Reliable, scalable and accessible solutions have been limited. As a result, many companies have shied away from the issue of pay equity altogether, viewing it as simply too burdensome to tackle. Such lethargy produces pay practices which only perpetuate the gender pay gap. Unfortunately, women (and other underrepresented groups) can be faced with an uphill and solitary battle on the journey to equality.

Any effort to eradicate pay disparity in the workplace must be vigorously supported by the CEO, the leadership team and the board. If a board of directors or CEO is not genuinely dedicated to such an effort, then that effort will not happen, or will eventually fail. As a CEO, why should this be top-of-mind for you and your team?

Well, at a very fundamental level, it’s the right thing to do. When companies commit to equal pay for equal work, they send a powerful message to their current employees, future hires and their customers that they stand for something that is important to all, not just women. Additionally, having a fair and transparent pay process increases satisfaction and decreases turnover. A Gartner study revealed that there is a $16 billion cost for turnover in the tech industry alone.

If your organization does not yet have a robust and ongoing strategy for achieving pay equity, here is a step-by-step guide to help you check for pay disparities and commit to resolving them:

Step 1: You can’t stick your finger in the air as a gauge of pay equity. It takes asking the right questions and conducting detailed analyses. Make sure you have enough resources and technology in place to allow you to examine your data quickly and identify unfavorable trends.

Step 2: Shift the mindset from “protect and defend” compensation data to “find and fix” any gaps. This requires you to have the courage to share the results of your analysis in Step 1, but also the discipline to resolve any anomalies.

Step 3: Companies regularly ensure they are at market, so why not make pay equity a part of ongoing compensation benchmarking? Committing to regular and frequent pay analysis is the best way for companies to ensure they stay on top of this issue.

The CEO should be the catalyst for the organization’s journey to pay equity, but other key stakeholders such as the broader leadership team, the HR function, and middle managers are also key to success. There are many ways to fully involve these groups:

• Make it personal: Research has shown that the pay gap in groups of male managers who have daughters is smaller than amongst managers without daughters. This means that when an issue is personal, behavior changes no matter the gender.

• Make it a leadership issue: If you have a gender pay gap, it is a failure of leadership. Leaders have a role and responsibility to address this. As CEO, you must communicate with HR and managers, articulate the philosophy and strategy to achieve equal pay, and make sure to constantly share metrics and progress with managers and HR, so they can share with employees and external audiences. Commit to a quantitative approach to decide how pay is determined, setting salary ranges for each role, and then make these ranges available to your employees and recruits.

• Make it inclusive: It is not solely an issue to be discussed at a women’s leadership meeting. Make it a key agenda item for your next board meeting and your executive team meetings.

A good first step to kick-start this journey is to run a pay equity analysis leveraging a trusted solution with a vetted methodology. By utilizing a data-science powered software solution, you can determine where there are unexplained pay gaps and where you may need to employ remediation tactics to preserve your company’s culture and maintain legal compliance.

Source: Chief Executive

 

The real ROI on leadership is impact

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By Dr. Teresa Ray, PCC

Organizations spend a lot of time discussing the return on investment for every effort they undertake, and rightfully so. Being a good steward of your resources is important.

The difficult truth, however, is that some initiatives like leadership, development and growth don’t have a measurable return on investment.

Measuring leadership investment is like attempting to catch the wind in a jar — you can’t. However, you can see, feel and measure the impact the wind has on the surrounding area. When you consider what it means to be a leader, you shouldn’t be looking at the return on investment but, rather, the return on impact.

Understanding Your Impact

What would those who work with you really say about their experience? Would they describe you as a good leader — or a great one? Would they spend more time and energy talking about you, or talking about the impact and influence you’ve had on others?

Good or bad, leaders always leave something behind, but it’s my experience as an executive coach that most leaders struggle to answer even the most basic questions about the impact they have. Often, this is because they’re unsure about the legacy they hope to leave or they misjudge the scope of their impact. Published in the journal Organizational Dynamics, a review of multiple studies “consistently found that women leaders under-estimated (i.e., predicted lower) how others viewed their leadership behaviors.”

Without knowing what you hope to leave behind, you fail to give yourself a target. So how do you define your target? It requires self-reflection, self-awareness and an understanding of the type of impact you want to have on others.

Type 1: You impact people on an individual level.

One leader I worked with described her passion for helping others to grow. She strives to add value to the careers of those around her by identifying skill gaps and then invests time in influencing, coaching and growing others. If you asked those around her, they would each tell you exactly how they are better at their jobs and on their teams because of her influence. The key to this type of impact is that it’s individual. She isn’t simply hoping people share her vision. She looks at an individual and determines exactly how she can help them.

Now, you might be thinking that this type of impact requires quite the time commitment. Here’s where I’ll challenge you: Leadership isn’t about you. If you’re leading others, it’s all about them. If you can’t find time to connect, you should examine what’s getting in your way.

Type 2: You impact your team by sharing your unique skill set.

A lot of leaders fall in this category. They focus on growing others in very specific areas, usually defined by what they themselves are skilled at. Examples include effective communication, client or project management, sales, meeting or presentation skills and ethics and integrity.

These leaders are known for their own expertise in these areas and they are always watching for ways to influence and impact others in the same areas. When I talk with the colleagues and employees of these leaders, they each describe how the specific skill they gained by working with their leader has impacted their career.

Type 3: You impact the overall company culture.

In this case, the leader demonstrates the power that comes with remembering there is a heartbeat behind every name tag and a person behind every employee ID number. These are the leaders that influence and impact organizational culture. These leaders show kindness and are considered great listeners. They lead with a coaching style of leadership and carve out time with others. These leaders are beloved by their colleagues and employees. Even after they’ve retired or moved on from the position, employees will describe how they carry the behaviors forward. As one employee I encountered put it: “I stop and listen to my people now and avoid jumping to conclusions because my former boss was a great listener and always had time for me.” Another said, “I learned to ask great questions and allow my employees to think through problems and solutions because I worked for someone who allowed me the space to problem-solve and think out loud without judgment.”

Leaders always leave something behind, good or bad. So, if you haven’t spent time thinking about your legacy as a leader, please do. Sit down in a quiet place, consider the type of impact you want to have and write out your goals. In other words, define your target, so you can achieve a positive return on impact.

Source: Forbes