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| The Performance Report | Store | July 1, 2009 |
 | | | Are You Ready to Engage Your Employees?
In this engaging book, Intrinsic Motivation at Work--What Really Drives Employee Engagement (2009, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.), Kenneth W. Thomas shows us how we can (and must) address employee engagement. And let's face it, employee engagement is vital, since more is being required of workers than ever before!
Thomas gives the reader new insights and tools for engaging employees in today’s environment. He starts by giving general tips on leading for engagement, and then jumps into leading for meaningfulness, choice, competence, and progress, all of which are spokes on the wheel of employee engagement.
The tone and readability of this book makes the tools that Thomas provides even more accessible. This is a must-read for the new economy. Pick this book up right away—you won’t be able to help yourself from enlisting employee engagement as a critical tool for you and the people that you lead!
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| The two words "information" and "communication" are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.
--Sydney J. Harris
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| Go to the Front of the Line!
 | Increase Your Influence by Using the Multipronged Approach to Solutions
How do you surpass the roadblocks in your corporate strategies? How about people cutting in line, right in the middle of your career path? How can you ensure that your plans will succeed?
Make more than one plan, that's how.
Studies show that the use of four or more sources of influence in combination is ten times more likely to succeed than relying on a single source of influence. That being said, are you facing organizational issues or career challenges that seem to hang on, no matter how you try changing the force of inertia?
Change initiatives can be approached in a variety of ways, many of which are valid. The key learning here is to enlist more than one method. Perhaps you have a lack of accountability, consistently low morale, or a quality issue that seems to be endemic to the organization. Maybe you have been trying to get recognition or a new position, without success.
All of these issues can be most successfully dealt with by offering up more than one solution.
Don't know where to look for new potential solutions? You are probably just stuck in a rut. You have been using the same sources for a while; sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, keeping you waiting in the lunch line forever. Starting today, use a multi-pronged approach to your challenges.
Combine the multipronged approach with the following tactics, so you can move to the head of the line:
1. Enlist peer pressure and social support as your allies.
2. Change the work environment.
3. Take a cue from your first grade teacher; use rewards and
accountability.
4. Build personal motivation in others.
Implement these tactics to expand your toolbox of solutions. With this multipronged approach, you will make greater strides in each situation and in your career.
| | | |  | | The Horizon Ahead
 | The Necessity of
Adaptive Leadership
and Stewardship
in the New Economy
CEOs and executive managers everywhere have been practicing white knuckle management for over a year now. Your organization may have seen rapid and extreme changes in this time, and the tumult may not be over yet. Still, we all are looking ahead to what will happen when things cool off.
When the economy recovers and systems are flowing again, will we be back to “normal?” And what is “normal” these days, anyway? All indications are that the new normal may not look at all like what we are used to. Amongst other things, consumers are likely to remain thrifty and the new appetite for simplicity is not likely to fade away soon. This new paradigm will affect all of us, from small and large part and product manufacturers to service-oriented businesses.
With that in mind, management will take on a new feel. Like they say, you can never go home again. So let’s take a look at what your digs might look like from here on out:
An essential part of your role will be to foster new leaders. Instead of taking on all of the issues and challenges yourself, as a leader of the company, you will need to let a strata of problem solving, which you likely have been taking care of for a number of years, go to new leaders. Mobilize everyone to generate solutions. That is, share the burden. Why?
Because your input will be much better spent on looking ahead at what is coming down the road or making contingency plans for the next pot hole or construction zone. You will be best served by letting the new leaders take care of the daily challenges of your organization’s best practices while you focus on “next practices.”
How should the organization streamline the development process? Even more importantly, should it continue to develop the same products and services at all? Do our legacy partnerships still make sense? How can your organization answer current business needs in this fluctuating environment?
These are the “someday” questions that you probably never gave yourself time to address in the past. Now they must become part of your everyday work. So, get comfortable with the new normal by equipping yourself with the tools you need by becoming an adaptive leader and a new leader steward.
| | | | | | Ed Gordon, Global Workforce Guru
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Our author interview this time is Edward Gordon, author or co-author of 17 books, over 200 articles, and white papers featuring research, best practices, and case studies on myriad aspects of global workforce development.
Dr. Gordon's most recent title, Winning the Global Talent Showdown, confronts the reader with the current realities of the workforce training pipeline.
Dr. Gordon, an underlying premise in your recent work is that there is a worldwide talent shortage, accompanied by high unemployment rates, which are bound to increase. How can we have both of these forces working at the same time? Doesn't one resource fill the other need?
As you said, we are facing a talent shortage, not a labor shortage; we have a global talent shortage of many jobs, particularly in the areas of Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM areas) that will be vacant over the next decade.
Ultimately, the number of high pay jobs will increase from 63% of the total workforce to almost 75% of the workforce by 2020--That is IF we have enough people to fill the jobs. All of this change will be powered by technology.
So why is the talent versus opportunity gap increasing?
There are a few reasons:
Worldwide Generational Shift
As many as 79 million boomers are leaving the workforce. What are they being replace with, when we only have 40 million Generation X workers to do those jobs?
Decrease in Math and Science
Boomers took a lot of math and science in school. Many went into technical and skilled trades. Since then, interest in technology has faded. The "cool" areas of study have been leaning toward areas such as marketing, law, communications and journalism. High school completion rates have also dropped precipitously.
Shrinking Global Resources
Globalization is a talent safety valve that we can no longer count on. Workforces are shrinking all over Europe, and many of the degrees out of places like India and China have actually been granted from diploma mills.
The bottom line is that the labor market economy is far behind reality.
So, where is the upside to all of this?
Many communities are creating business/government partnerships to fix the broken training pipeline.
This year I plan to testify before congress on allowing businesses to depreciate their investment in training. Many trade and professional organizations are supporting this move. Can you imagine how that would change a corporate balance sheet, when training becomes an investment, not a cost to the bottom line?
Clearly, we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift with regard to education and training.
That's right. I'm proud to say that all of this is catching on. We can all look forward to big changes in the coming years.
| | | | | | Welcome to The Situation Room!
You are the Human Resources Manager for an auto parts manufacturing plant.
One of the line managers quit and you replaced him with an innovative thinker who has already come up with two efficiency ideas since he started, two weeks ago. Here are the details:
-You hired Jim in the hopes that he could help reinvigorate the team. There is a lot of cynicism on the floor, and Jim's attitude could help change the atmosphere.
-Instead of acting as a catalyst, the rest of the floor managers have not accepted Jim. His presence seems to antagonize them.
What do you do?
>Send in your solution!
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