I was moderating a panel on leadership for a client of mine and received the bios of the three very accomplished executive panelists. All three bios were simply a list of credentials— impressive credentials, but that was it.
There was nothing human. Nothing personal. Nothing that gave the audience any understanding of their thoughts on leadership or success. This robotic resume in prose form is all too common, and it erases our most valuable asset: our humanity. Especially in our digital world, being yourself—your unique, human self—gives you a distinctive competitive edge.
Yet somehow we have been led to believe that at work, we must diminish our humanity, behaving (and appearing) like robots who are prized for their automation and conformity. When we get to the office, we leave our true selves at the door, ramp up our “work” mindset and keep our human traits muzzled until we leave for the evening. The belief that we need to be as efficient as an LED bulb and as knowledgeable as Wikipedia, as productive as an assembly line and as human as a doorknob, might have worked in the industrial age, but we have been in the relationship economy for decades.
Today, we can’t afford to forget the one ingredient that’s essential for business success— humanity. After all, relationships are the currency of business. More than ever, business is a truly human endeavor. Continue reading →
By Susan Lund, James Manyika, Liz Hilton Segel, André Dua, Bryan Hancock, Scott Rutherford, and Brent Macon
The US labor market looks markedly different today than it did two decades ago. It has been reshaped by dramatic events like the Great Recession but also by a quieter ongoing evolution in the mix and location of jobs.
In the decade ahead, the next wave of automation technologies may accelerate the pace of change. Millions of jobs could be phased out even as new ones are created. More broadly, the day-to-day nature of work could change for nearly everyone as intelligent machines become fixtures in the American workplace.
Until recently, most research on the potential effects of automation, including our own, has focused on the national-level effects. Our previous work ran multiple scenarios regarding the pace and extent of adoption. In the midpoint case, our modeling shows some jobs being phased out but sufficient numbers being added at the same time to produce net positive job growth for the United States as a whole through 2030.
The day-to-day nature of work could change for nearly everyone as intelligent machines become fixtures in the American workplace. Continue reading →
People often ask me what’s the most common issue I’ve seen in four decades of executive coaching. The answer is easy: inadequate preparation for leadership.
Too many “leaders” reach their positions through attrition. They’re shifted into leadership roles because somebody else retires or otherwise moves on. They may have been competent in sales or engineering or some other role, so it’s assumed they can lead. But they often can’t.
An instructive example comes to mind. Frank, a new client, invited me to his office. He had just become CEO of a global energy firm. The founder, in his mid-80s, had finally decided to “step aside.” (He couldn’t bring himself to use the word “retire.”)
Here’s our conversation—
Frank: “I want you to write a speech for me.”
Rodger: “I don’t write speeches anymore.”
Frank: “But you can do it, can’t you?” (He knew I could do it, because earlier in my career I wrote speeches for presidential cabinet officers, U.S. Senators, and others.)
Rodger: “Yes, I can write speeches. But that’s not what I do now. I coach people on leadership and performance issues.” Continue reading →
By Helen Pitcher OBE, Chair of Advanced Boardroom Solutions
With more women as board chairs, business can better serve society.
Companies should benefit all their stakeholders. This is increasingly on the minds of regulators, activists, politicians, pension investors and individuals of this world. As Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of Blackrock, wrote in his 2019 Letter to CEOs, “society is increasingly looking to companies, both public and private, to address pressing social and economic issues”.
If we want boards to deliver benefits for a wider stakeholder group – and stop focusing on short-term profits – we need to shift the dial on women becoming chair of these boards. Failing that, the corporate landscape won’t change.
While there are excellent male chairs, too many are products of the old boys’ network. These men pay scant attention to their increasing accountability towards stakeholders beyond their shareholders. In the United Kingdom, the days of the Financial Reporting Council (the watchdog for auditors, accountants and actuaries) are now numbered after it was embroiled in one controversy too many.
Why more women chairs is a game changer
McKinsey & Company has a long history of published reports that have established the business case for diversity. Organisations with greater gender diversity outperform others, typically have a healthier risk profile and make better investment decisions. All of this generates greater client and customer satisfaction.
Based on peer-reviewed research, surveys and anecdotal evidence, we now know what makes an effective board chair. Beyond the obvious group of traits including integrity, personal strength, courage and intelligence, the critical skills are:
an ability to influence others without dominating
an engaged vision of the future
strong emotional intelligence
coaching skills.
If we schematise the skills of an effective chairperson, it may look like this:
At the base of the pyramid lie the rules-based, measurable hard skills. While they are necessary, they can be taught and learnt.
At the top of the pyramid, we find the intuition-based soft skills that require a high emotional quotient (EQ). Those skills can only be developed through experience, practice and internal focus.
EQ & soft skills are more often associated with women than men. Though differences between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ traits have little bearing on the attributes of individual men and women, research does not support the notion that men are somehow better suited to the chairperson role.
It should be clear that women are just as capable as men in directing and chairing our companies. Furthermore, they have as much right to succeed, and fail, as their male counterparts do. Our reservoir of chair talent is not so great that we can afford to ignore 50 percent of the potential candidates.
Time to accelerate the pace of change
As the leaders of our companies are called upon to strengthen their engagement with society and all stakeholders, we need to better understand and articulate what a chair role entails. The “job description” must move beyond the domineering CEO stereotype, with its descriptors of drive, ambition and ruthlessness.
The soft skills of facilitation, collaboration, listening, synthesising, defusing conflict and ensuring consensus are the hallmarks of a successful chair. At the other end of the spectrum, directive, overly assertive and antagonistic are the traits of an ineffective chair.
By acting as role models, women chairs can provide additional societal benefits. For instance, they can act as a driving force for empowerment and to promote the inclusion of a broader talent pool. In the UK, advocates of increased acceleration of women in chair roles are multiplying. They include existing female directors, the Women on Boards network, the International Women’s Forum (IWF), Men as Change Agents (MACA), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the Institute of Directors (IoD) and the 30% Club.
While the positive pressure for more diverse boards does show results, the action on women chairs is far behind. Too many active resistors – including old-style chairmen and nomination committees – continue to reinforce the false idea that chairs must have at least a decade of board work under their belt. Head hunters tend to say that female chairs are difficult to find, repeating a narrative they used before national targets were established for women on boards. The statistics show this is not true.
Stopping the erosion of trust in business
We need a strong push to free boards held hostage by reductionist thinking. According to research by INSEAD Professor Stanislav Shekshnia, only 20 percent of boards in the UK will be women-led by 2027. This is not enough. It is time to take action to accelerate the acquisition of more female chairs, right across the public and private corporate environment.
In the UK, the new Combined Code with its cap of nine years of service on a single board will create more churn. Investment companies must start asking mediocre chairmen to step down. Women need a greater number of enthusiastic sponsors and more board-level development. I challenge more female directors to aim for the top role.
Having more women chairs will help rebuild the trust in our corporate environment and foster businesses that deliver performance mixed with social and environmental benefits. It may just be the key to a new era of sustainable long-term profit.
Helen Pitcher OBE (IDP-C) is the chair of Advanced Boardroom Excellence, which works with board effectiveness, board evaluation reviews and coaching chairs, CEOs and NEDs. She is a graduate of INSEAD’s International Director’s Programme.
The percentage of companies that report being data-driven is shrinking. According to a recent survey, 31% of firms surveyed say they are data-driven. That’s down from 32.4% in 2018 and 37.1% in 2017.
Meanwhile, 87.8% of executives report having a greater urgency to invest in data-driven initiatives. So, marketers are talking more about data, but we’re losing confidence in creating a data culture. The same study showed that 93% identify people and processes as obstacles to forming a data culture.
I find that this is true in both the commercial and nonprofit spaces.
Nonprofits have historically been resource-deficient compared to their commercial peers, anchored by public perceptions of overhead and waning trust in philanthropy. Add to this a trend of weakening retention of those who contribute to nonprofits, and data regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Now is the time for nonprofits to commit to forging a data culture, which starts with instituting a data governance construct. Here’s how:
1. Stop talking about big data. In fact, wipe out every data-related buzz term from your conference rooms and planning meetings. If you ask me, there’s no greater buzzkill to strategy than buzzwords.
2. Consider data your biggest business asset. For nonprofits, this means the data you have on those who have engaged with you — volunteered or donated — is central to your organizational value. This asset can help you to centralize data governance to strategically drive marketing efforts.
3. Create a data strategy task force. If you’re going to create a data culture, you must first seed the culture among key influencers. Start with a cross-functional team that can work together to build shared practices for data.
4. Identify your data management practices. Many organizations do not have documented data management practices or business rules. Instead, the rules live in a single employee’s documents or, even worse, a single employee’s head. Proactivity in identifying data management practices will help you break down silos and extend the shared practices so that everyone owns the processes and approach.
5. Build a road map for data management optimization. With documented practices built collaboratively, your task force will also likely identify areas of need. Support their work by putting resources against the areas of need. In other words, reinforce the commitment to data culture by funding optimizations that are well-planned.
6. Make data strategy the hero. Avoid common pitfalls for strategic planning, like founder’s syndrome, “we’ve always done it that way” thinking and pigeon-holing data as a function of your IT team. When data strategy is the hero, strategic planning includes a collaborative discussion on what data you’re going to measure, where you’re going to store the data and how you’re going to use this data for future marketing efforts.
7. Share. Workplace culture includes company vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs and habits. If your pursuit and goal is a data culture, simply put the word “data” in front of each of those elements: data values, data norms, data symbols and language, data habits. This isn’t a one-time side project. Forging a data culture is an iterative, behavioral commitment that requires constant collaboration and sharing.
There are plenty of resources to help you on your journey to forging a data culture. A few of my favorite resources include the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), which offers a free benchmarking assessment (RKD Group is a member of NTEN); Bloomerang, which offers free resources ranging from webinars to guides to help steer nonprofit data management practices; and content by Tom Davenport and members of the Stanford Social Innovation Review team that regularly offers insights about data, analytics and innovation in nonprofit marketing.
By William Arruda
By Susan Lund, James Manyika, Liz Hilton Segel, André Dua, Bryan Hancock, Scott Rutherford, and Brent Macon
By Roger Dean Duncan
