The Productivity Impact of Engaging Your Workforce

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Mike Marker and featured at the Organizational Excellence Journal‘s website. In it, he suggests “nine simple ways to positively affect engagement.” To read the complete article, check out others, learn more about the Journal’s resources and activities, and sign up for email updates, please click here.

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In every issue of the Organizational Excellence Journal, we answer a question one of our readers or our editor asks on an important topic. In this issue, Mike Marker, Senior Management Consultant in Sinclair Group’s Organizational Excellence Practice, answers the following question.

Q: How does engaging employees affect an organization’s productivity and profitability?

A: There are nine simple ways to positively affect engagement. But here’s a little background. Although the concept of employee engagement has been around for a while, it has taken on different forms, and people often refer to it by other names: “participation,” ”involvement” and “commitment” to describe a workplace culture that considers maximizing the talents of a work force for better job satisfaction and business performance. The terms and strategies have changed as companies have come to better understand what employee engagement is and how to achieve it. Likewise, the objectives and tactics have evolved.

In the early ’70s, the Procter & Gamble (P&G) company employed strategies to build “employee commitment” within its paper products division and held that the high performance work system concept used in their manufacturing plants gave them a competitive edge. This work system provided employees with a full range of communication on work unit performance, included them in operational decision making, and provided them with greatly broadened work roles and responsibilities. Years later, David Swanson, P&G’s Vice President of Manufacturing Operations, stated that their high commitment manufacturing plants were 30 to 40 percent more productive than their traditional counterparts.

In “Ideas the Welch Way: How Healthy is Your Company,” (in the September 29, 1986 issue of BusinessWeek) the magazine asked General Electric CEO Jack Welch to identify the three best measures of a company’s health. Welch cited employee engagement first, customer satisfaction second and free cash flow third.

All organizations are interested in tapping into their employees’ capabilities. Effective leaders have learned that traditional or control leadership practices don’t lead to high levels of performance. They have learned what is important isn’t what your people do while you’re supervising them but what they do when you are not there.

Effective leaders have also found that soft or laissez-faire practices do not produce consistently good results. What they found is that their organizations need leadership practices that promote accountability, initiative taking and ownership of the work. It’s also important that leaders communicate positive regard and respect to employees, that they appreciate and value subordinates’ skills, knowledge and ideas.

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To take a self-assessment survey and find out where you stand on a variety of crucial categories like change management, employee performance, knowledge management, employee relations, safety practices, energy level and more, please click here.

We will email you two reports — Your organizational profile and a Predictor of Success Scale. We’ll also send you our Leading From Commitment® White Paper and provide a consultant to share ideas for performance improvement based on the findings in your assessment reports. There is no charge or obligation for this meaningful analysis.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Mike Marker is a Senior Management Consultant in Sinclair Group’s Organizational Excellence Practice.

 

Why I’m a listener: Amgen CEO Kevin Share

Here is a brief excerpt from an interview of Amgen CEO, Kevin Sharer, during which the biotech giant’s chief executive describes the epiphany that made him a better listener and explains why listening is a survival skill for leaders and organizations. What follows is an edited version of the full interview, adapted from a conversation with Thomas Fleming, a member of McKinsey Publishing based in the Chicago office.

To read the edited version, watch a video of the conversation, check out other resources at the McKinsey Quarterly‘s website, and sign up for free email alerts, please click here.

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For most of my career, I was an awful listener in almost every possible way. I was arrogant throughout my 30s for sure—maybe into my early 40s. My conversations were all about some concept of intellectual winning and “I’m going to prove I’m smarter than you.” It wasn’t an evil, megalomania-driven thing; it was mostly because I was a striver, I wanted to get ahead, and getting ahead meant convincing people of my point of view.

The best advice I ever heard about listening—advice that significantly changed my own approach—came from Sam Palmisano [President and CEO of IBM from 2002 to 2011, and now chairman of the board], when he was talking to our leadership team. Someone asked him why his experience working in Japan was so important to his leadership development, and he said, “Because I learned to listen.” And I thought, “That’s pretty amazing.” He also said, “I learned to listen by having only one objective: comprehension. I was only trying to understand what the person was trying to convey to me. I wasn’t listening to critique or object or convince.”

That was an epiphany for me because as you become a senior leader, it’s a lot less about convincing people and more about benefiting from complex information and getting the best out of the people you work with. Listening for comprehension helps you get that information, of course, but it’s more than that: it’s also the greatest sign of respect you can give someone. So I shifted, by necessity, to try to become more relaxed in what I was doing and just to be more patient and open to new ideas. And as I started focusing on comprehension, I found that my bandwidth for listening increased in a very meaningful way.

The cultural environment, of course, is going to define every aspect of communication. If you’re in a fear-driven, toxic environment, listening is going to be almost impossible, and I’ve been in places like that. Being the CEO, however, means that you can define the culture by whom you pick for positions under you and by the standards you enforce. I’ve always tried to emphasize an environment of partnership, teamwork, trust, and respect—and anyone with a bullying tendency, we fire. Of course, it’s not perfect; we’re human beings. But we try hard to have every aspect of our culture and of the way we operate encourage the sharing of information—to listen to the facts, listen to the logic, and draw well-formed conclusions.

 

Just Start: A book review by Bob Morris

Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, and Create the Future
Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Kiefer with Paul B. Brown
Harvard Business Review Press (2012)

Why and how serial entrepreneurs thrive best in uncertain environments…and what lessons can be learned from them

Although there is much to be said for the value of Steven Wright’s observation, “Early birds may get the worm but the second mouse always gets the cheese,” the fact remains that competition in today’s global business world has become more intense and less certain that at any prior time of which I am aware. Hence the appropriateness of the reference in this book’s subtitle to taking action, embracing uncertainty, and creating the future. With the assistance of Paul Brown, Leonard Schlesinger and Charles Kiefer introduce “a step-by-step proven journey [by which business leaders can] navigate through uncertain environments. And as the results of recent research conducted by reputable forms such as Gallup and Towers Watson clearly indicate, an organization’s workplace is one of them: On average, less than 30% of the employees in a U.S. workplace are actively and positively engaged. The others are either passively engaged (“mailing it in”) or actively disengaged, undercutting efforts to achieve the given objectives.

Throughout the course of their lively and eloquent narrative, Schlesinger and Kiefer achieve their own objectives which include explaining how to

o  Use predictive reasoning to prepare for an uncertain future
o  Use initiatives to determine what works, what doesn’t, and why
o  Why desire has “overwhelming importance”
o  Determine what is – and isn’t – an acceptable loss
o  Build on what you learn from both successes and (especially) setbacks
o  View the future as a continuum
o  What “creaction” is and how to maximize and leverage its advantages

Most of the best business books are research-driven and that is certainly true of this one. As Schlesinger and Kiefer explain, they share in this book was revealed during decades of refining a method that is much easier to describe than to execute: Summon sufficient determination to achieve the given results (whatever they may be) and then (1) act quickly with the means at hand, (2) stay within the range of acceptable loss, (3) get others actively and productively involved, and (4) evaluate the results and build on what has been learned from them. This is almost the same method followed by Thomas Edison and his colleagues in their research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

As for the term creaction, it is a word Schlesinger and Kiefer created (creacted?) by combining “creation” and “action.” That is, “it boils down to this: the future may or may not be like the past, but you don’t have to a spend a lot of time wondering how it will play out if you plan to shape (i.e. create) it.”

I commend Schlesinger and Kiefer for their skillful use of several reader-friendly devices in Chapters 1-9, notably the “Just Start” exercises and the end-of-chapter “Takeaways” sections. These will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points in weeks and months to come. In the Epilogue, they provide FAQ material and I presume to suggest that it be read first, even before the Introduction, before diving into the abundance of information, insights, and counsel. Why? It provides a brilliant overview of why and how results-driven, serial entrepreneurs thrive best in uncertain environments…and what lessons can be learned from them.

Jane Stevenson: An interview by Bob Morris

Jane Edison Stevenson is Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services at Korn/Ferry International, where she co-leads the firm’s Global CEO Succession Practice.  She is located in Korn/Ferry’s New York and Atlanta offices. Previous to Korn/Ferry, she spent a decade as Global Managing Partner with another global leadership advisory firm and prior to that, helped to build several boutique search firms into competitive brands.

Ms Stevenson is known for her strong global relationships in Fortune 500 C-suites, and among boards of directors.  She has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of the “100 Most Influential Search Consultants in the World,” and is frequently consulted by Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, and The Wall Street Journal to discuss trends and issues related to governance and innovation.

With her co-author Bilal Kaafarani, Ms. Stevenson wrote business bestseller Breaking Away: How Great Leaders Create Innovation that Drives Sustainable Growth, and Why Others Fail.  Breaking Away was released by McGraw Hill last spring and defines the world’s first innovation framework, linking the importance of innovation, leadership and growth.  In addition to the USA, Canada and the UK, the book was just published in Turkey, and will be coming out in China this fall.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of her. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing Breaking Away, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth?

Stevenson:  Probably my father, John D. Edison.  He is the most selfless person I know, and early on, he taught me two profound lessons:  happiness is a decision, and life is a series of trade-offs – always understand what you are trading for what you are getting.  He also taught me that to keep growing you have to “get comfortable being uncomfortable.” He is 75 years old now, and is still evolving and growing every year.  For example, he just published his first book a few months ago, God:  Grace and Deception.

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development

Stevenson:  That is a tough question.  I have been blessed to work with many great people, who have both impacted and inspired me.

•  My first boss in the executive search profession, Gerry Reynolds not only saw my potential, he also helped me to believe in myself.

•  My friend and mentor Gerry Roche, encouraged me to develop high trust relationships that bleed from professional to personal.

•  There are a number of top women whose friendship and counsel has had a profound impact on me as we have shared our journeys.  In particular I would mention Adrienne Fontanella, Angela Ahrendts, Judith Glaser, Cynthia McCague, and Melanie Kusin, but there are numerous others as well.

•  My co-author Bilal Kaafarani has been a key partner in my current journey, challenging my thinking and providing key insights for the future.  He convinced me that we needed to write Breaking Away, to share our experience “in the trenches of innovation leadership” with others.

Partnering to develop and share the Breaking Away innovation framework has forever changed my outlook on the future.

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course that you continue to follow?

Stevenson: The epiphany that comes to mind happened shortly after my son was born 14 years ago.  I can still see the room I was in and how the sun fell on the floor around me at the moment I realized I might never get over my insecurities, and that I was going to have to decide whether I would allow them to define my life, or whether I would decide to “play full out” anyway.  I decided to play full out.  That decision has empowered me to take on many new challenges, like writing a book on the importance of innovation leadership and sharing a framework that can open up new possibilities for today’s leaders.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education proven to be invaluable to what you have accomplished in your life thus far?

Stevenson: Your question makes me laugh because, in matter of fact, my undergraduate education was in elementary education.  Apart from my practicum teaching for six months, I never taught a day in my life, as I was immediately drafted into administration and leadership.  That said, perhaps the most valuable gift of formal education is to teach us how to learn and to stay open to new truths and insights.  In that case, my formal education has definitely served me well.

Morris: What are some of the most common misconceptions about executive search that in fact is true?

Stevenson:  The most common misconception is that we are trying to find jobs for people, when, in fact, we are hired by the corporation to ensure that they make the best leadership selection (from either inside or outside the company) for the role at hand.

Morris: When interviewing candidates for C-level positions, which tend to reveal the most valuable information, the questions they ask or the answers they offer in respond to the questions asked of them? Please explain.

Stevenson: Both.  Interviewing C-level executives is as much about learning who they are as people as it is about what they have accomplished.  The questions they ask give us important insights into the way they think about things and what their priorities are.  Their questions can give us a good sense about their motivators as well.  Both in asking questions and in hearing the questions that are asked, our job is to understand whether the fit is one that will have the strongest odds for success.  The more we can get behind a candidates questions and answers, to understand his/her value system, motivators, ambition and ability, the better job we will do of assessing whether there is a good fit.

Morris: Percentages vary somewhat but the results of dozens of major research studies suggest that during face-to-face contact, about 80-85% of the impact is determined by body language and tone of voice. What are your thoughts about that?

Stevenson:  Communication is achieved through a combination of things:  choice of words, affect, body language, tone of voice, choice of dress, and last, but not least, how they shake hands. You can learn a lot about someone based on a handshake. I’m not sure I could put a precise percentage on each factor, but I will say that I am more interested in intuiting “who” the person is than I am about the words alone.

Morris: In your opinion, what is the single greatest challenge that CEOs will face during the next 3-5 years? Any advice?

Stevenson: Actually, I think there are two: the changing “rules of engagement” to capture the hearts and minds of your customers in a digitally-driven world, and the desperate need for innovation and growth.  In some ways, I think the two are intertwined. We live in an age of unprecedented access, interaction and connectivity.  The question is:  How will you use that to your company’s advantage?  How will you be the beneficiary of the digital revolution, instead of having it define you?  This is a big question for companies in all industry sectors.  One of my friends refers to it as learning to “speak social”.  The speed at which things are changing is directly influenced by new levels of access and interactivity.  This creates a natural tendency for us to speed up, moving faster and faster and faster….Not a good move.  The best thing you can do is to stop, look and listen, then assess what will drive the most productive and strategic results and play there.

The ability to step back and understand how to use these new “rules of engagement” to advantage, will require innovation, and will create opportunities for growth.  Advice?  The secret weapon will always be your people.  The CEO’s who understand the power of people, and who are committed to fully utilizing people’s diverse capabilities, will ultimately win the race.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Jane cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites

www.Breakingawaythebook.com
www.janestevenson@kornferry.com

The Future Is Better Than You Think – It Will Be a Future of Abundance, say Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Let’s take a hopeful break.

“Because we’ve never seen it before, exponential change makes even less sense. “
Abundance

I am immersed in the book Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamindis and Steven Kotler.  It is a surprise to me that I am.  My nature is to be somewhat negative, a borderline pessimist.  The authors tell me this is not entirely my fault.  We evolved this way.  Our brains require attentiveness to danger, and so we see danger before, and more often, than anything else.  We are not attuned to see the possibilities.  We are attuned to see the dangers.  Before, fear kept us alive — fear is what we look for, what we (think we) need.

But, the future may just be brighter than we had realized – better than we think.  Part of the reason is the pace of discovery. And even though it appears that innovation has “slowed down” dramatically, the reality is that it has slowed down only “recently.”  But, over the longer haul of the last few centuries, the pace has been breathtaking, leaving us panting to keep up.

In Abundance, the authors quote Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants:

Waterwheels were not becoming cheaper every year (five hundred years ago).  A hammer was not easier to use from one decade to the next.  Iron was not increasing in strength.  The yield of corn seed varied by the season’s climate, instead of improving each year.  Every 12 months, you could not upgrade your oxen’s yoke to anything much better than what you already had.  (that last line is my favorite line – R.M.).

But now, my modern marvel, my iPhone, is practically a dinosaur.  My wife’s is newer, better, cooler than mine, and my son’s is newer, cooler, better, and “stronger/faster” than hers.  (My next new one is coming soon.  It’s my turn again on our family plan – I can’t wait).

Today, I learn about a book, and I order the sample pages immediately on my Kindle App for my iPad.  (Just now, I interrupted my writing of this blog post, clicked over to Amazon, and ordered the sample pages of What Technology Wants.  When I open my iPad in just a few minutes, they will be there).

And that’s just the small corner of my world.

Every day, if we can avoid the polarizing political fights that we see and hear every day, there is some new breakthrough to read about.  We really do feel like the breakthroughs are coming – against Alzheimer’s; some kind of clean energy solution; so many more.  (No, I’m not as confident that the Dallas Cowboys will return to their glory years anytime soon.  There are some areas where the deck may simply be stacked against that “better future”).

The Extreme Future will indeed be good, wonderful (i.e., filling us with wonder).  Our need is to become just a little less fearful, and a whole lot more fearless.  “Fearlessness is like a muscle:  the more we use it, the stronger it becomes.”  (Abundance).

“For most of history, if your dad was a baker, you were a baker,” wrote Kevin Kelly.  But today – well, today, the average young adult has a job that he cannot even make his grandmother understand, much less is he working in the same job as his dad or grandfather or great-grandfather…  In fact, today, it is as likely to be the “she” who can not explain to grandparents what her job entails.  It is simply too far outside of their context.

On some days, I speak to retired people, many of them in their late 80’s, and up.  I asked a recent group how many of them had a Facebook page.  Not one!  Then I asked how many of them had ever looked at a computer screen or a smaller screen at anyone’s Facebook page.   Again, not one.  I told that to a man who is still learning to live with the new technology, and he described how his 7 year old picks it up faster than he does.

Yes, they do.  And with the new tools of today the new breakthroughs will come at an increasingly fast pace.

Just consider (again, from the book, Abundance):

Twenty years ago, most well-off US citizens owned a camera, a video camera, a CD player, a stereo, a video game console, a cell phone, a watch, an alarm clock, a set of encyclopedias, a world atlas, a Thomas Guide, and a whole bunch of other assets that easily add up to more than $10,000.  All of which come standard on today’s smart phones, or are available at the app store for less than a cup of coffee.
If the Bible tells us, “where there is no vision, people perish,” then the inverse is also true:  “where there is vision, the people flourish.”  

Tomorrow could turn out to be just a whole lot of fun.

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By the way, Dr. Peter Diamandis, one of the authors of Abundance, is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation.

Why Is Literary Fame So Unpredictable?

Illustration courtesy of Bettmann/Corbis

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Tom Vanderbilt and featured in The New Yorker magazine To read the complete article, please click here.

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In 1929, the readers of the Manchester Guardian were asked to opine on the “novelists who may be read in 2029.” Sitting at the top of this century-hence summit of popularity was John Galsworthy. Granted, he has his partisans, and there are still some years to go, but he’s hardly the thing, even the Penguin Classic thing, that one sees clutched on the morning F train. It’s not that Guardian readers were being particularly adventurous; Galsworthy was a preëminent dramatist (a sort of wintry conscience of the Edwardian age) who sold heaps of copies in his day, and The Forsyte Saga — the one title you’ve probably heard of and not read—earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1932.

History seemed to be on his side, but even in the late thirties, Galsworthy’s reputation was already on the wane. George Orwell—who, in his essay Bookshop Memories, coined the memorable phrase “Galsworthy-and-water stuff” to refer to the “average novel” (the sort that people always annoyingly seemed to be buying in his dusty bookshop)—makes a Galsworthy-sells-out argument, “Much of Galsworthy’s later writing is tripe, but some of the early plays and novels… do at least leave behind them a kind of flavour, an atmosphere—a rather unwholesome atmosphere of exaggeration and pity, mixed up with country scenery and dinners in Mayfair.” But, Orwell argues, Galsworthy’s “private quarrel with society came to an end,” and it became “obvious that he was in no essential way different from the people he had made his name by attacking.”

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I have subscribed to The New Yorker since high school and consider it to be the single most entertaining as well as the most informative magazine that has ever been — and will ever be. I urge you check out its especially attractive subscription rates by clicking here.

Digital disruption: Are you prepared for takeoff?

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Michelle Hernandez and featured online at the Deloitte website.

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Still trying to determine your company’s approach to digital? If so, this infographic is for you.

The digital disruption cannot be ignored. New technologies are playing a critical role in the success or failure of today’s business, and they’re allowing companies to engage with key stakeholders like never before — from connecting customers, to empowering employees, to reinventing business partner relationships, the opportunities are endless. If you’re still not convinced of the importance of digital, just take a look at these stats:

•  4.8 billion people worldwide own mobile phones.
•  By comparison, 4.2 billion people worldwide own toothbrushes.
•  By 2014, mobile Internet use is estimated to surpass desktop Internet use.
•  77% of consumers interact with brands on Facebook.
•  In 2015, m-commerce is predicted to reach $163 billion.

Given this rapidly changing landscape, companies need a digital strategy for all facets of their business — B2B, B2C, and B2E. Not just to layer new technologies over existing operations, but to innovate how work gets done in an untethered mobile world where business is social. Digital behaviors are changing the face of business as usual — don’t get left behind.

From strategy to delivery, Deloitte Digital’s fully integrated offering can help clients take advantage of the full transformative opportunities offered by mobile, social, and cloud on top of enterprise systems and analytics. Deloitte Digital combines the strengths of a creative agency, a leading IT consultancy and an industry-centric business strategy provider in one company and allows Deloitte to help clients unleash the business value of these emerging technologies.

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To read more, please click here.

About Deloitte

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited and its member firms. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

Five Minds for the Future: A book review by Bob Morris

Five Minds for the Future
Howard Gardner
Harvard Business School Press (2009)

On nurturing “potentials that are distinctly human”

I have read and reviewed all of Howard Gardner’s previous books and consider this, his latest, to be the most valuable thus far. In it, he identifies and explains five separate but related combinations of cognitive abilities that are needed to “thrive in the world during eras to come…[cognitive abilities] which we should develop in the future.” Gardner refers to them as “minds” but they are really mindsets. Mastery of each enables a person:

1. to know how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding;

2. to take information from disparate sources and make sense of it by understanding and evaluating that information objectively;

3. by building on discipline and synthesis, to break new ground;

4. by “recognizing that nowadays one can no longer remain within one’s shell or one’s home territory,” to note and welcome differences between human individuals and between human groups so as to understand them and work effectively with them;

5. and finally, “proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind,” to reflect on the nature of one’s work and the needs and desires of the society in which one lives.

Gardner notes that the five “minds” he examines in this book are different from the eight or nine human intelligences that he examines in his earlier works. “Rather than being distinct computational capabilities, they are better thought of as broad uses of the mind that we can cultivate at school, in professions, or at the workplace.”

The “future” to which the title of this book refers is the future that awaits each of us. That is, Gardner is not a futurist in the sense that others such as Ossip K. Flechteim, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Dennis Gabor, Alvin Toffler, and Peter Schwartz are. If I understand Gardner’s ultimate objective (and I may not), his hope is to help as many people as possible — regardless of their age, gender, and circumstances — to cultivate their minds by taking full advantage of any and every opportunity available to them; moreover, to do all they can to enrich and then sustain the same process of cultivation initiated by others.

Peter Jensen: An interview by Bob Morris

An authority on leadership and a renowned innovator, Dr. Peter Jensen is a pioneer in bringing the concepts of coaching and personal high performance to corporations worldwide. Jensen has worked with the best and brightest in Fortune 500 companies in eight countries applying his extensive understanding and realistic practices to the art of leadership. He knows firsthand what it takes to get the best out of people.

Peter has attended seven Olympics, assisting athletes and coaches in winning over 50 Olympic medals. His work with athletes provides an amazing laboratory in which to both observe and practice how to support and develop people who truly are striving to reach their potential while learning to manage intense pressure and high expectations.

Also a top rated instructor at Queen’s School of Business he combines a potent understanding of the fundamentals of effective leadership with new ideas and ongoing insights from Olympic coaches and athletes. He has a unique ability to bring practical clarity to complex concepts by illustrating their tangible application in the business world, and the power to invigorate audiences through his compelling use of humor, and personal experiences.

Jensen is the author of the best-selling book The Inside Edge, a powerful roadmap for using the mental preparation techniques of elite athletes to improve personal performance. His latest book, The Winning Factor, offers managers solutions from exceptional Olympic coaches on motivating, engaging and developing their employees. His work has been featured on ABC, CBS, CBC, and CTV and in a wide array of print media in North America and Europe.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of him. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing The Winning Factor, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Jensen: Probably my mother because she believed everything was possible so put no limitations on me.

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Jensen: Hard to single out one person but it was Kazimierz Dabrowski who first introduced me to the critical role emotion and imagination play in human development. He was the one who coined the term “third factor.”

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

Jensen: Again it grew out of my working/studying with Dr. Dabrowski. I was going through a difficult time in my life at that point and the timeliness of his concepts given the adversity of was facing really changed the course of my life.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?

Jensen: I think formal education of any type can be an assist and a PhD has helped with credibility but I am also a believer in Mark Twain’s observation that you ought not let your schooling interfere with your education. Life can be a tremendous learning laboratory if you let it.

Morris: How do you define a “winner”? A “loser”?

Jensen: Only in developmental terms. Winning isn’t about the medal but about what happens to you in the achievement of that medal. If you will be nothing without a gold medal then you will be nothing with one. A loser is someone who lacks self awareness and self responsibility.

Morris: Of all the films you have seen, which do you think most effectively portrays great leadership in a competitive sports context?

Jensen: Probably Invictus, the Nelson Mandela South African rugby story.

Morris: Teamwork?

Jensen: it’s been a while since I’ve seen it so memory may be inaccurate but Hoosiers.

Morris: When and why did you found Performance Coaching?

Jensen: In 1991 because I saw a need for training in coaching in the Organizational world that paralleled the coaching development systems prevalent in the sport coaching certification programs that had been implemented in several countries at the time.

Morris: To what extent (if any) has its original mission changed since then? Please explain.

Jensen: Not so much changed as deepened and, to a small extent, expanded. We believe more strongly then ever that managers and leaders need to move away from constantly directing and supervising into developing. They need to take on the more fulfilling mandate of becoming a developer of people.

Morris: In your opinion, to what extent (if any) have professional sports been corrupted by greed? Please explain.

Jensen: There is no question that the pendulum has swung dramatically away from players as owned pawns that are used to generate huge profits for those who own them. Clearly the adjustment has led to some greed and entitlement in some athletes. Most people no matter where they work would take as a wage their market value. Many athletes can get that in today’s world. Is it greed? I suppose we would need to know what they do with their resources before we passed that judgment. They are privileged.

Morris: What do you regret most about organized youth sports programs for children up to the age of 14? Why?

Jensen: That parental involvement has run amok. Sport has tremendous developmental potential for young people when they are involved not just in playing but in working through the various issues that are bound to arise in a competitive environment.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Peter cordially invites you to check out the resources at his website:

HP, Adding Jobs, Cutting Jobs – But The Question Will Not Go Away, Where Will the Jobs Be?

News item:
“Hewlett-Packard to lay off 27,000 employees,” (John Naughton:  Can mighty Meg Whitman save HP from terminal failure? – Massive job losses have been announced at Hewlett-Packard. Now the ailing computer company needs to put a whole string of expensive mistakes behind it)

In her message she laid the bad news on the line. “At the end of 2009 we reported a workforce of about 304,000. At the end of 2010 we had almost 325,000 employees, and at the end of 2011 that number had ballooned to nearly 350,000. Over that same period we saw year-over-year revenue growth of 10% in 2010, of 1% in 2011, and, so far in 2012, revenues have been declining.
“We’re struggling under our own weight…”

New item:  c, 1999
Carly Fiorina is the first in a series of new leaders of HP who lead the company into acquisitions, and an increase in the number of employees to get the job done for the coming years.

In 1999 HP appointed a glamorous new CEO, one Carly Fiorina.

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Meg Whitman says “lets get rid of those jobs we’ve been adding”

So, Hewlett-Packard, beginning with Fiorina and all the way up to Meg Whitman, increased their employees, bought Compaq, gave birth to and quickly scrapped an iPad “competitor” (not so much of a competitor, it turned out), and now the company is in trouble.

And so it goes.

Of all the crises we face, the big one is this – there are not enough jobs.  And I’m not smart enough to figure out where to put the blame, or where to look for the best solution(s).

Yes, it is true that Meg Whitman was brought in to right a pretty precariously sitting ship.  But it is also true that her predecessors also sought the best for the company.  (one side note:  both Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman have run, unsuccessfully, for higher office, as Republicans).

And as company after company keeps trying to achieve or maintain profitability, as company after company seeks to enhance productivity, so that they can produce the same goods or products or services with ever-fewer workers, the overall employment picture keeps looking ever more dismal.

Picture HP over the last decade, or so.  You know exactly what they were engaged in.  They hired people; a lot of people.  In those interviews, and in those company orientation sessions, the HP officials would say, at the direction of their leaders, in one way or another:

“Come work for us and with us.  We are a great company, building a great future.  You will be a part of a company that is poised to even greater days ahead, and we need you to help make that happen.  And, this is a company that will treat you right, give you great opportunity to advance, and take good care of your needs so that you can focus on doing the best possible job.”

I suspect that speech was given over and over again.

And, it didn’t work out, and leader after leader was replaced, and now the new leader comes in, and gets rid of 27,000 employees {read that figure – 27,000 people who had been told that this was the company to build a future with!}…  And now, just imagine the morale of the folks who “survived” this current round of layoffs.

In The Coming Jobs War, Jim Clifton (Chairman of Gallup) quotes Nobel Prize-winning Economist Robert Fogel, writing:

“even if Fogel’s prediction comes almost true, it will be jobs Armageddon in America.  Its unemployment plus underemployment will rise to more than 40% (over the next couple of decades).  Leadership of the free world will not just be lost, but overwhelmed.”

I understand the argument.  A company exists to make a profit.  A company does not actually exist to provide jobs.  Jobs are among the tools companies have to make the products and provide the services that lead to profits.  And without a profit, there is no money to pay for the jobs.  And, if the work that is done by ten people can be done by nine people, and that enhances the bottom line in the profit column, then cut to nine.  (or, cut from 350,000 employees to 323,000 employees, HP’s current situation).

But…  but… what if every company cuts, and cuts, and then the total number of people who do not have jobs continues to grow?  Then, where will the demand be for the goods and services of these companies that are now so much more profitable?  Ultimately, the demand will dwindle, thus the profits will dwindle.  The cycle really is vicious, and painful to ponder.

(By the way, this loss of demand is behind Richard Florida’s call for a true increase in the wages of service workers.  He says that without an increase in service wages, demand will remain too low, and the economy will not return to what most of us would view as ”normal”).

Yesterday, there was an intriguing opinion piece in the New York Times:  Let’s Be Less Productive by Tim Jackson:  ”Has the pursuit of labor productivity reached its limit?“

Mr. Jackson basically argues that we scale back the move to doing more with fewer employees.  In some instances, he argues that scaling this back would greatly enhance the service we receive.  For example, we’ve all read about the pressure for doctors to see more patients per hour in the hours of their day.  This cannot be good for the quality of our medical care.

Here are brief excerpts from the Jackson article:

The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.’s and finance ministers. Perhaps forgivably so: our ability to generate more output with fewer people has lifted our lives out of drudgery and delivered us a cornucopia of material wealth.
But the relentless drive for productivity may also have some natural limits. Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work.

So, what is the purpose of this post?  It is to ask, again, as I have asked so often, where will the jobs be?  Jobs are threatened by automation.  Jobs are threatened by the focus on profits, thus productivity.  And, every time we turn around, the number of new jobs created comes up far short of the number of jobs that are being eliminated by these and other factors.

Thus, the need of the hour is the need for jobs.  There is a Coming Jobs War, says Clifton.  From his book:

The coming world war is an all-out global war for good jobs.
…what would fix the world – what would suddenly create worldwide peace, global wellbeing, and the next extraordinary advancements in human development, (is) 1.8 billion jobs – formal jobs.  Nothing would change the current state of humankind more.
The leadership problem is that an increasing number of people in the world are miserable, hopeless, suffering, and becoming dangerously unhappy because they don’t have an almighty good job – and in most cases, no hope of getting one.
A good job is a job with a paycheck from an employer and steady work that averages 30+ hours per week.

Though Clifton writes of a global need, it is clear that we face this challenge right here in our country.

Where will the jobs be?  On this Memorial Day, as we think about patriotism, maybe it would be a patriotic thing for our business leaders, the CEOs of companies, and the stockholders of those companies, to think, collectively, about what they can do in their companies to help move our country forward in this so very important way.

Where will the jobs be?  We need our best minds working on this.  Maybe nothing else is as important right now.

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Read the review of the lift on book by our bloggign colleague Bob Morris here — The Coming Jobs War:  A book review by Bob morris.

Read an interview with Jim Clifton about this book and its importance from Forbes here.