CAN WOMEN LEAP HIGHER UP THE MANAGEMENT LADDER

“For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men.” Written by Isabelle Allende, world famed Chilean author.

Author: paal / Paal Leveraas; CC BY 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

I was recently invited to do a presentation to a group of women managers involved in a Leadership Acceleration Programme (LEAP) that had been built to help create a workplace environment that would enable them to compete more effectively for increasingly more senior management roles, in their large global company.

The issue they were trying to address was mainly based on the fact that whilst they did already have women in about 30% of their management population, the majority of these were in first level management roles, and the percentages diminished rapidly the further up the ladder one travelled.

Author: SOIR; CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

I have generally been against mandated gender equality programmes and particularly against externally enforced quota systems(see “Stupid work fads” posted 5 September, 2011), but as this programme was more focussed on working towards trying to level the playing field, I agreed to participate.

In my presentation on “How to manage your career” as well as my generic “3 golden rules” of career management that I always stress of “don’t do a job you hate, don’t work for a boss you can’t respect, and don’t work for a company you can’t be proud of”, (see “People join companies but leave managers” posted April 8, 2013), I also covered some areas that I felt would be specific to their situation, and those that I feel that men on a management ladder tend to do better than the women with whom they compete.

Two critical ones were:

1. Find a champion

I have generally found that successful male executives have had a champion during critical times in their career. I believe that having a mentor is important, but even more advantageous is having a champion in a very senior role in the company. Someone who can, and who will, help to accelerate a career is a serious asset. From my own experience, I have seen a fairly competent, but not necessarily world shattering, manager move in just a decade through the ranks of country manager to regional President to company CEO. This was because of the then current CEO championing his every move into his own successor role, forgiving his transgressions and failures along the way, because of the champion’s unfailing belief in his own succession plan. In my own early career, I have had a boss who stepped aside so I could climb past him because he believed I would make a better CIO than would he, thus launching my management career. Later on, I was fortunate to have a President of a global company who believed that I could be more than a small country CEO, and started to build my broader experience with some critical and highly visible global projects.

Author: François Fénelon (1651-1715); via Wikimedia Commons

2. Build a brand

Men have long understood that it is important to build their brand and reputation, in much the same way that successful companies do for their products. This means that it is not enough to be a successful manager, it is also important to be seen to be a successful manager. This cannot be achieved if you are seen as just “blowing your own trumpet”, but building one’s reputation is a critical part of career progression, and you can rarely do it just through self-promotion. You achieve it by doing your job well and then by doing more than the current role demands. You can help build your brand, for example, by becoming a net contributor of talent for your whole organisation, rather than trying to hold on to your best people to fuel your own immediate success. The more people from within your own organisation that can move on to senior roles in your company will help to build your reputation as a skilled and capable people developer and manager, as well as spreading your own “acolytes” through the organisation. You can also help to build your brand by becoming a spokesperson for your company in areas that will give you not only visibility, but that will also establish you as someone who can represent your company well to the outside world. As most people, including senior executives, fear public speaking more than death, it is usually not hard to step into a role such as this (see “How to give a great speech” posted 21 March, 2011 and “How to really give a great speech” posted March 24, 2011).

I believe that the business world cannot continue to protect the upper echelons of management as a predominantly male bastion.

When it comes to education, in the UK, 45% of eligible women will attend university versus 40% of eligible men, women now make up over 55% of university attendees and outnumber men in most courses including law and medicine, as well as outnumbering men in the number of graduates that achieve upper honours degrees by 64% to 60%.

In the US, whilst 46% of eligible women will go on to college, only 36% of men will do so. Based on current attendees, by 2015 women will represent over 60% of Bachelor’s and Master’s degree graduates and 58% of PhD’s.

The reality is that we all need to face up to the fact that women in the business world are here to stay and that the companies who are quick to take advantage of this simple fact and the advantages that women can bring to management roles, will be the ones who benefit the most quickly.

Author: Asa Mathat / Fortune Live Media; CC BY 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

TO FIND TRUE LEADERSHIP LOOK BEYOND PRESIDENTS AND CEOS

Most people when considering the subject of leadership tend to look to the examples of some CEOs such as Steve Jobs of Apple or Jack Welch of GE, or great national leaders such as Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore, who built one of the wealthiest nations in the world on a small rock just south of the Malaysian mainland, or Winston Churchill who lead Britain during the Second World War.

Author: Hamilton83; CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

I have long believed that Steve Jobs was a great gadget designer who took on mythical leadership status on his death, but who had always really been an erratic, despotic and egomaniacal CEO. (see “Are Fanatics or Fools the problem” posted April 23, 2012), and that Jack Welch had great success at GE, but gained fame more as a published celebrity than as a great leader.

Author: matt buchanan; CC BY 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

Lee Kwan Yew had a dream about what Singapore could become and was able to get the people of Singapore to believe in that dream as being their own, but drove his people through edicts, and control of every element of the people’s lives, including at one point dictating the allowable length of their hair, and Winston Churchill had circumstances dictate his situation when Germany declared war in 1939.

Whilst I do admire many elements of what all these men achieved, when it comes to defining true leadership, I prefer the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French Pilot and writer (1900-1944) who said “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood, and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”.

That is why I believe that to find true leadership, one has to look beyond most CEOs and Presidents, to people who because of their vision, commitment and courage, even in the face of death, were able to build a following who were also prepared to risk everything to achieve the dream that their leader had presented.

Here is my nomination for the “Great Leadership Award” during my own lifetime.

Malala Yousafzai … A leader at 14 years old

At the age of 11 Malala started writing a blog for the BBC about life under the Taliban in the Swat Valley, and about her dream and vision for promoting education for all girls in Pakistan. As she rose to prominence, she began giving press and television interviews, with the NY Times filming a documentary on her life and her mission to ensure all girls had a right to be educated. In October 2012, when she was 14, Taliban gunmen tried to assassinate her while she was returning home on a school bus. She was shot in the head and neck, and after treatment locally, was airlifted to the UK for intensive surgery and rehabilitation. She has now been released from hospital and she has vowed to continue her fight despite the on-going Fatwahs being issued against her.

Author: Carlos Latuff; CC0 1.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

She has been nominated for the International Children’s Peace prize, the National Youth Peace prize, Game-changers 2012, Time Magazine’s person of the year and is the youngest person to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. Schools have been named after her. Former First Lady Laura Bush, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and a legion of celebrities such as Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Tina Brown have launched and endorsed a campaign to raise money to provide education for all girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On 15 October 2012, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, launched a petition to the Government of Pakistan in Malala’s name, the main demand being that there be no children left out of school by 2015.

The petition contains three demands:

-We call on Pakistan to agree to a plan to deliver education for every child.
-We call on all countries to outlaw discrimination against girls.
-We call on international organizations to ensure the world’s 61 million out-of-school children are in education by the end of 2015.

John Quincy Adams said “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

I believe that by any definition, Malala Yousafzai has exhibited all the true characteristics of leadership that we too readily attribute to people who have been elected to public office (mostly with only a small majority), or those that have fought their way to the top of a corporation, generally measuring them by financial and share price growth.

The dictionary defines Leadership as “a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. The leader may or may not have any formal authority, but traits include situational interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and values, charisma, courage and determination and intelligence, among others.”

I believe that a leader not only has to have a clear vision, but must be able to share that vision with others in a way that will make them willingly follow, and that a leader is someone who steps up in a time of crisis, or to right a human wrong, without any regard for personal safety or personal gain.

In this respect, I believe that Malala Yousafzai has the right to step up beside the likes of National leaders such as Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi, and definitely has as much right as those CEOs that some tend to elevate to Leadership status such as Steve Jobs and Jack Welch.

As was summed up by one of Malala’s classmates “Every girl in Swat is now Malala. We will educate ourselves. We will win. They can’t defeat us.”

For me, that’s a real sign of true leadership.

A DUMMY’S GUIDE TO OFFICE POLITICS

“The person who says “I’m not political” is in great danger, as only the fittest will survive, and the fittest will be the ones who understand their office’s politics”. Jean Hollands (US Trainer and Coach).

Politics in the workplace is a fact of life in most companies and, even if you do not want to take part, it is important for your own survival and success that you are aware that it exists, that you can recognise the players, and that you understand how to navigate around it.

William Shakespeare, in Henry the Sixth, wrote “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. Whilst I do not advocate wholesale slaughter, I do believe that as a manager you would be well advised to be able to identify and weed out the politicians. Leave the lawyers alone as you may actually have need of them, whereas politicians are dispensable.

Author: Tohma; GFDL license; via Wikimedia Commons

Here are the major types of business politicians and how to recognise them:

- The Friend. This is one of the most insidious as they will befriend you and build your trust in them, but they will be trying to destroy your reputation and status behind your back at the same time as they are declaring their undying commitment to you. They will be positioning themselves to others as “I am his friend so I know his strengths and weaknesses ……”.

via Wikimedia Commons

- The Enemy. These are the easiest to handle as their antagonism is open and full on. Unlike the friend who is stabbing you in the back, this type will openly be trying to stab you in the front, so at least you will have no trouble to see them coming.

- The Gossiper. This is the one at the water cooler or coffee corner who knows all the juicy gossip about everyone else. They know who is a secret drinker, who is having an affair, who has a gambling problem, who is having marriage problems and what is going wrong in the company. They have little care about the truth of what they are saying, as their only intent is to undermine confidence, and will cover themselves by saying things like “I am not sure if it is true, but I have heard that …..”.

Author: Rebecca Kennison; GFDL and CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

- The Yes-man. S/he will agree with everyone about anything and everything that you are saying, to try and ingratiate themselves with you, and to gain a position of being supportive and collaborative, but they will ultimately pursue their own agenda items. Be suspicious of people who never disagree with you as no-one can be right all the time.

- The Shape Shifter. This person will agree with whomever they have had their last conversation, and will shift sides as needed, as the need to seem to actually have an opinion dictates. They will agree completely with you on an issue, give their commitment, and then will go away and do something completely different.

- The Trouble Maker. S/he just loves to play the political game, and will go out of their way to create issues that don’t actually exist. They will turn people against each other just for the power of being in control and the sport, and for the fun of watching people get angry about things that really don’t matter.

- The Hard Worker. If someone is always telling you how hard they are working, the chances are high that they are not. True hard workers just focus on getting the job done. You need to measure people on their ability to deliver results that are reasonably expected of them, and the quality of how they do so. I would rather have someone who works a normal week and gets things done, than someone who works twice as long and keeps telling me how hard they are working, but never quite delivers on time or with quality.

- The Unionist. This person will stir up those around him on pretend issues like the ergonomics of the chairs, the lack of choice in the cafeteria and the degree of softness of the toilet paper. Their only objective is to try and turn people against their manager and the company.

- The Altruist. This one will never have a problem themselves, but will only raise issues that they say that they are bringing to the surface because of their concern for someone else in their team who is not coping. This enables them to stick the knife into that person while positioning themselves as someone who cares about others. They don’t.

- The Bad Apple. S/he may have identified a real issue, but rather than bringing it into the open, will spend time, energy and effort in infecting and poisoning others until the issue takes on an enormity that it didn’t deserve, and which could have been quickly resolved had it been raised early enough.

Author: Janine Pohl; CC BY-SA 2.5 license; via Wikimedia Commons

As much as possible, you should try and work hard to stay out of the political games that are played by others. Total avoidance may be hard to achieve, but you should at least try to sidestep obvious political situations.

- Don’t indulge in gossip, no matter how juicy it may seem, particularly during coffee, cigarette or lunch breaks where the gossipers seek out an audience. Instead, take steps to ensure that you have the best information available about what is really happening in the company.

- Don’t take sides in office political issues. If you do have a problem, or if you see a serious issue that needs resolution, try and resolve it by talking to your boss. That is one of the tasks in their job description.

- Doing a great job speaks for itself, and ultimately will win against people whose only skill is to schmooze the boss. If you are in a company where the politicians keep winning out, you should seriously consider taking your skills elsewhere, where competency and professionalism are traits that are truly treasured.

- Think before you act. Be conscious of company culture and the way that things get handled and resolved. If someone attacks you by gossiping or spreading rumours about you, remember that revenge is like biting a dog because it bit you first. If it becomes serious, try and find out what is bothering the attacker, and if you can’t resolve it face to face, take it higher. However, if you do escalate, you must be sure that you have all the facts right before you do.

You should also remember the wise words of Larry Hardiman who said “The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’ meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’ meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.”

IF YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOU HAVE ALWAYS DONE …..

Most people do not want change; they just want things to get better.

The majority of people would like to have their life improve in some way; to have better health, better family relationships, better friends, a better job, a nicer living environment, be more loved, be slimmer, taller, better looking, less wrinkled, fitter and for most, to have more money.

But very few people seem to be prepared to accept that in order to successfully achieve anything in life, particularly in an ever-changing world, the first requirement is that they change something about what they are doing today.

Author: Felix Burton; CC BY 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) understood that “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

The reality is that this desire to not have to change anything is also true of many companies, particularly during times of success. Strangely, this is true despite the fact that business history is littered with the corporate epitaphs of companies that believed that they didn’t need to change what they were doing, and that all they needed to do was to hope things would get better and then people would just buy more of their products and/or services.

I have two such examples from my own personal career history.

International Harvester (where I worked 1966-1973), who invented a large part of the farm equipment and machinery which is still used today, and who dominated their industry for decades, came to believe that their customers would stay loyal to them even if they stopped investing in R&D. They embarked on a major cost savings programme to improve profitability, and their customers deserted them in droves when smaller competitors appeared who could differentiate themselves, even in small ways, from the then giant.

Author: Joost J. Bakker; CC BY 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

The same is true of Digital Equipment (where I worked from 1997-1984) who dominated large parts of the IT world with their range of minicomputers in the 1970s and 1980s. They would not accept that “people would want a computer on their desk or in the home”, despite the fact that the workstation revolution was happening all around them. (see “Hero to zero in the corner office” posted October 29, 2012).

Despite all the lessons available from history, I too often see this same sort of attitude today in some companies who appear to believe that their survival and success is now mainly dependant on them just being able to get through the current economic crisis. A belief that everything will return to “normal” when the crisis is over, and that this should happen fairly soon, as it has already been going on for 5 years since 2008, so can’t go on forever. Anyway the media do deliver to us the occasional hopeful sign.

Author: Slowking4; CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

However, I believe that this view that we are in a traditional crisis state, that has a beginning and an end, is a complete misunderstanding of the financial situation that the world is in today. I believe that we are going through a more fundamental shift in the economic environment, and that companies who cannot adjust to the new economic realities will not survive, in the same way that in the past we have seen companies die because they did not change to meet fundamental shifts in their industries. (see “Growing a new leg” posted June 20,2010).

In the Western economies we have built national, corporate and personal wealth on a belief in continual growth, and the availability of inexpensive capital to fund our drive for growth. Growth has been the major change agent for everything that was needed for success, and growth could disguise basic weaknesses in any structure whether at a country, corporate or personal level.

At a personal level, as long as we had a job, and our wages went up every year, we could build our future life on debt, as growth would guarantee our ability to manage it all and we could continue to survive and prosper.

Countries and companies were no different. Growth drove taxation to fund country administrations and citizen wealth, and hence loyalty, and growth drove companies’ profits to enable them to continue to drive growth, for business growth was the ultimate goal that forgave most sins and delivered success.

But today, in most countries, most industries and most companies there is neither the ready availability of inexpensive money nor economic growth, and I believe that those that are not fundamentally changing, but are just waiting for these to return, will continue to struggle for survival.

Author: Pictofigo; CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

Today, even if we want to stay the same, we have to make changes to be able to do so, because our only choice is to live within an environment that is driven and changed by others, or to make the changes that enable us to live within an environment that we have helped to create.

Companies that will survive this current revolutionary shift in business fundamentals will not only have to change the way that they manage their finances, but will have to change the way that they compete, find and keep their customers, satisfy their ecosystem, the way that they go to market and the way that they find, recruit, manage, motivate, reward and retain their people.

As is often attributed to Charles Darwin (1809-1892) “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

I have long believed that if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you already have, but I have now come to believe that you will actually keep getting less and less.

HR … DOES PERISH COME NEXT AFTER PARTNER AND PLAYER ?

I have long believed, written and spoken about the fact that HR organisations need to go through a major transition to be allowed to survive as a business unit, rather than just ending up handling administrative functions in a shared service centre in some low cost country. (see “HR … Polite to Police to Partner to Player” posted August 26, 2010).

Author: indo consultores; CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

I have based this belief on the fact that if HR organisations cannot transition from a “run the company” position to a more strategic “change the company” role, they will continue to come under pressure to do more and more with fewer resources, as companies drive hard to cut costs to be able to survive the new economic realities which we all face today. I have therefore felt that becoming an “HR Business Partner” is not enough, as a partner is someone who may be asked to help implement the strategy built by others, but an “HR Player” is someone who is actually an integral part of the creation of the strategy. This ensures that the strategy is built around people, and takes into account critical issues such as ensuring that the strategy is actually supported by, and synchronised with, the corporate culture, and that the skills and competencies needed for strategy execution can be developed and/or acquired.

I have also long believed that a critical element of any corporate success is the commitment to building “management as a profession” rather than just a vocational add-on, which unfortunately tends to be most prevalent in European companies today. A critical part of professional management is an understanding of how to recruit, lead, motivate, develop, challenge, evaluate, reward and inspire your people, in other words those areas of concern that are generally associated with HR.

I had therefore concluded that the stronger and more capable is the management of the company, the less does the company need to be dependent on an HR organisation to identify and take responsibility for human issues.

Hence my belief that for HR the future is to either transition to a more important strategic role, or just stagnate as merely administrators of payroll and personnel records, roles that could easily be outsourced or even taken over by a capable F&A organisation.

However, I recently had the opportunity to hear an exciting young man called Heiko Fischer speak at a conference in Zurich, who made me wonder whether I needed to add another word to my alliteration to make it “Polite to Police to Partner to Player to Perish”, and whether the true ultimate goal of HR is to make itself totally unnecessary, by making management more capable.

Heiko is the founder of Resourceful Humans Consulting and he believes that the word “perish” should apply to our traditional understanding of management as well as to HR. He believes strongly that companies that adopt the principles of resourceful humans can do away with both HR and middle management.

They believe (from their web site) ….

“ … to sustainably produce meaningful contributions for your customers in the 21st century marketplace, a few great leaders are simply not good enough. To succeed in such highly demanding environments you need a critical mass of great people who can all lead and innovate when needed. To that end the RH-Way combines a proven entrepreneurial management mindset with a shared leadership architecture from the Gaming Industry. The Way of Resourceful Humans helps you enable your people’s potential, by relentlessly structuring the enterprise around their desire to produce results.”

Heiko postulates that while we all want to live in a democratic country, we do not translate the core elements of democracy to the way we work, and particularly as companies grow. He believes that the key elements to building companies that can succeed through continuous innovation is firstly to understand that making a profit is necessary for a company to survive, but that contribution to the entire ecosystem of staff, customers, partners and community should be the primary goal, and if successful then profit is one of the valuable by-products.

My simplified interpretation, of his three critical elements (in the space available) are:

- Democracy. Note that he does not advocate anarchy nor the abolition of management, but that its function is to create the minimum structure needed for an environment where people can be successful through having a greater say in what they do and how they do it. He sees our current management structures as being like a hamburger where management is the oversize bun, and where the people are what tends to be a very small patty squeezed in between. Heiko feels that modern structures need to be more like a burrito where the wrap is very thin and the major part is the filling.

Author: Pete Souza; via Wikimedia Commons

- Information. We need to ensure that people are kept informed of what is going on in the company at all times so that they can manage their own behaviour and actions based on what is needed. His belief is that if you give people the chance to work as entrepreneurs within a company environment, they will do so, and they will work towards their own success and therefore that of the business.

- Gain sharing. His feel is that the way that we reward people today is all based on management handing out largesse, whereas a more realistic way to reward people, particularly in a networked environment, is to base it on company success, but on value and contribution to the team as viewed by their peers.

Heiko uses the example of the Starship Enterprise of Star Trek. James Kirk is the captain and sets their direction under their broad strategy of going “where no man has gone before”, but doesn’t spend a lot of time telling people what to do, as his team understand their roles and how and when to perform them. On top of that, no-one on the Enterprise has been ever known to pick up a communicator to talk to HR.

Author: McFadden, Strauss, Eddy & Irwin for Desilu Productions; via Wikimedia Commons

I am not yet a total convert to the concepts of “resourceful humans” as seen by Heiko Fischer, though I may not be a long way away. I do believe in simple, flat management structures and am an opponent of complexities such as matrix management (see “Stupid management ideas” posted August 29, 2011). I also believe that skilled management includes being very people focussed, and that many tasks generally seen as belonging to HR really belong with line managers. However, I will need to have some more discussions with Heiko Fischer to decide if I am really ready to add “perish” to my transition list.

MOVING AT THE SPEED OF SHELF LIFE

The dictionary defines shelf life as “the length of time that foods, beverages, pharmaceutical drugs, chemicals and many other perishable items are given before they are considered to be unsuitable for sale, use or consumption”.

Author: Jü (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

When it comes to “use” it appears that we now need to add humans to this list of perishable items with a shelf life.

I recently came across a series of discussions, amongst senior executives in the IT industry in India, on the shelf life of a techie, and there was general agreement that the current shelf life of a “techie” is about 15 years.

The Times of India led off the reporting of this discussion with:

If you have seen Skyfall, you will doubtless remember the 20-something Q. It’s the first time ever in a James Bond film that Q or the Quartermaster – MI6′s resident tinkerer who creates all the wonderful spy gadgets that Bond uses – is younger than Bond himself, much younger. So when Bond meets Q in Skyfall, he scoffs, “You still have spots (pimples),” to which Q replies, “Age is no guarantee of efficiency.In the world of technology, that’s almost a truism today. Youthful Qs are becoming the norm. Technology is changing so rapidly that older engineers must put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort into new learning and also to unlearn old ones. Otherwise, they are likely to find themselves less relevant.

“The shelf life of a software engineer today is no more than that of a cricketer – about 15 years”, said one of the senior executives of a European technology company with over 4,500 employees in India. “The 20-year-old guys provide me more value than the 35-year-olds do.”

Scary to think that one could be past their “use-by-date” as an individual contributor by the age of 35.

Some companies guide technical professionals towards taking on more managerial responsibilities over time. One Indian Head of HR for a large IT multinational says he “advises employees to map their career graph into a 5-5-5 formula, three blocks of 5 years each. In the first five years, the employee is a technical contributor. In the next five, he or she moves on to become a team leader or an architect, understanding the P&L (profit & loss) requirements of the company. Subsequently, the employee takes on much stronger leadership responsibilities, with technical skills upgrade”.

Great for those who are cut out to be in a management role, but what then happens to those individuals who are brilliant technically but have no desire to move into management. Firstly, there are never enough management roles for everyone, and secondly not everyone is suited to, nor desirous of, taking up the added responsibilities of leading a team. (see “To be or not to be … a manager” posted August 20, 2012).

Author: Wayiran (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

I have always believed that education is a journey rather than a destination, and I have no doubt in my mind that smart, sharp, young technical specialists can spend the time and energy needed to ensure that they stay up-to-date with changes in technology, even despite the accelerating speed of change.

I also know that most IT companies have courses available that enable technical people to upgrade their skills on an ongoing basis. Infosys, Indian IT giant as just one example, says that they have over 1000 courses that employees can choose from as part of their competence plan, but what hope do people really have if the people leading the major companies have the attitude that that most of their people are heading for the scrap heap at such an early age.

What I find most interesting however, is that very few companies appear to have the same requirements for testing and upgrading the shelf life of their executives, in the same way that they seem to do for their technical people. It appears that once you reach the heady heights of a management role you are generally safe, as long as you keep meeting your goals and don’t actually screw up really badly.

But the reality today is that the global business landscape is changing at much the same rate as the technology that it is built on. The emergence of new BRIC-like nations, new competitors, new business challenges, new business models driven by the internet and social media, changing expectations of the workforce, the upheavals in the economies of most countries creating new “economic realities” (see “Growing a new leg” posted June 20, 2010), means that the management skills and capabilities that were relevant for success 15 years ago (a la techie shelf life) are not necessarily all relevant today.

Author: Chafis; CC BY 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

I found it very telling that one of the Indian executives said “I can’t be just a manager, I have to be technically hands-on. If I have to have a conversation with my CTO, and if I say I don’t understand technology, then there is no conversation.”

More importantly in today’s ever changing business environment, I feel that he should be worrying just as much about being management-relevant as he does about being technically-relevant for his own survival and continued success.

As one of my favourite quotes from Charles Darwin (1809-1882) says so well “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

This is just as true today for managers as it is for technicians.

PEOPLE JOIN COMPANIES BUT LEAVE MANAGERS

“So many people out there have no idea what they want to do for a living, but they think that by going on job interviews they’ll magically figure it out.”
Todd Bermont, Dean of The Careers College.

Author: bpsusf; CC BY 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

Not so long ago I was asked to do a presentation and chat on “Managing your career, and how to get the most from a life of work” with a bunch of graduates from a number of different universities in Germany. As these were considered to be some of the best of their year, there was little concern amongst them about their ability to find an interested employer, and most of them actually already had job offers.

I started with my standard three rules being:

- Don’t do a job you hate. I find it amazing that many people will work for 5 days doing something that they hate, so that they can “live” for 2 days over the weekend. This means that they can spend about 70% of their life doing something they dislike, just to get the money to keep doing something that they dislike. At least if you do something that you love to do, there is a greater chance that you will do it well, and a greater chance that you will benefit.

- Don’t work for a boss you don’t respect. Your boss will control your entire work life and therefore your chance for success, learning and progress, so you should at least try and work for someone whom you believe is a skilled and capable manager and from whom you can learn.

- Don’t work for a company you can’t be proud of. It is not enough that the company has a good reputation for its products and services, it is also critically important that your values are a fit with the company’s values, and that the company has a high degree of integrity in the business world and in the community at large.

I went on to discuss topics like the importance of finding a mentor, mapping your career steps rather than leaving it to chance, that learning is a lifelong journey rather than a destination etc. etc. the usual stuff that I had been asked to cover by the organisers.

Fortunately I was the last speaker of the day, because while my presentation took just 40 minutes, the planned 20 minutes of Q&A turned into a 2 hour heated discussion. What really surprised me was that their criteria for job selection were mainly based on only 2 elements, being company reputation and the salary/conditions of the job. A few of them even mentioned the reputation for quality of the staff cafeteria as important. Many of those that had job offers had only met the company’s recruiters, being a mix of both external and internal recruitment teams. I told them that I felt that their selection criteria were too limited and that many of them were doing themselves a dis-service, particularly as these were graduates that technology companies in Germany were in competition to recruit.

So we spent some time putting together these 3 rules as a starter for proper job selection. I do not know how many of them followed through on these, but I hope that many did, as I have a strong belief that people join companies but leave managers.

Rule 1: You should not accept any job without having met and interviewed the person who will be your direct supervisor, as that person will have almost total control of your entire working environment, and if you do not fit well with them, as a “newbie” you will have limited choices. If this is not offered, you should ask for it, and if the request is refused, and it may be if they are recruiting large numbers, you should understand that you are being recruited as “cannon fodder”. If granted the interview ask questions like … what they expect of their people, how do they view/handle personal development, how do they measure performance, how do they handle mistakes/failure, are they interested in experimentation, do they mentor anyone and if not why not, how do they define autonomy, how do they handle performance reviews, promotions, pay for performance ?

Author: ThisIsRobsLife; CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

Rule 2: Find out every detail about the actual job that you will be doing. Just knowing that you will be writing software or doing customer hot-line support or pre-sales is not enough to understand how you will spend your time, even if you have done something similar in the past. You need to find out what level of freedom will there be, how is the job viewed in the company, are there examples of people who have moved from a similar role to a more senior one, how flexible are working hours, what are the full job requirements beyond the technical job description, what training is available beyond that needed to do the job, is the role part of a team or solitary, and finally can you meet someone who is doing the same job today ?

Rule 3: It is important that you get a strong personal feel for the company culture and values, beyond their market image and beyond the number of “Great place to work” awards that they have won. Such things as how were you handled at reception, what does the environment look like, is it made up of noiseless cubicles, is it all offices, how formal does it feel, how busy do people seem, how quickly do people move about, how happy do people look, what is company policy on such things as children, dogs and family involvement, how do people dress and does it suit your own style ? You should also ask specifically to see where you will actually be working.

Author: lizzielaroo; CC BY-SA 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

The important lesson is to arrive at the interview(s) not only strongly prepared to present yourself well to a potential employer, but also seriously well-prepared with the questions for which you need answers, to be able to make an informed decision.

I believe that any worthwhile potential employer should expect you to do this anyway.

“I do not believe that I have had an interview with anybody in twenty-five years in which the person to whom I was talking was not annoyed during the early part of the interview by my asking stupid questions.”
Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.