Despite all the economic gloom out there, the fact remains that many economies in the developed world face increasing shortages of skilled workers as their demographic chickens come home to roost.
But what does the situation look like from an Indian perspective? That’s the theme for this week’s Working Week Podcast, in which Wayne if joined from India by Gautam Ghosh.
As far as the talent crisis goes, Gautam explains that the problem in India is not that there is any shortage of applicants – precisely the opposite – but that the “employability factor” of graduates and young people is very low.
In particular, he says, organisations find huge problems with levels of communication skills. For example, highly-qualified software engineers may be great at writing code, but their lack of client-facing skills means that they face big problems at middle-manager and project-manager levels.
One reason for this is that Indian employers still place far too much emphasis on paper qualification and not enough on aptitude, ending up paying the price as a result through the need for extensive on-the-job training to boost certain basic skills.
And what of the economic climate? While the outsourcing and IT services sector is feeling the fallout from the downturn in Europe and the US, the domestic sector is still booming. In fact there seems little prospect of any sustained slow-down in India’s economic boom.
We all know that things are tough out there, but while the economy may be slowing, that doesn’t mean the world is about to come to an end. In fact, as Dan Bobinski tells Wayne in the latest Working Week podcast, a downturn can actually be a great time to take a risk.
None of which is meant to downplay the very real sense of worry and foreboding that many of us are feeling – an atmosphere which poses very real challenges to leaders and managers.
So what can mangers do in the current climate to keep their people positive and inspired? According to Dan, the key is to communicate a vision, mission and strategy and – critically – to listen. If there are problems, ask people how they think the organisation should get past them and move ahead. In other words, involve everybody in what the business is supposed to be doing rather than dwelling on what ‘might be’.
Remember too, as Dan explained in a recent column on management-Issues.com, that the unsteady times we’re experiencing now are no worse than any of our previous unsteady times - and companies that take risks during unstable times often come out ahead later on.
The same goes for individuals. Sitting in a corner during a slow or erratic economy and waiting for things to get better is probably not the best thing to. Sure you might not hear from as many critics, but your chances for future success are greatly diminished, too.
The bottom line, Dan stresses, is that we still have choices. An unstable economy may seem like a good time to hunker down and ride out the storm, but is that really the best choice for the long term? Ask yourself, would taking a few calculated risks now pay huge dividends down the road?
This week, Wayne talks to Harvard University psychologist and Management-Issues columnist, Myra White, about what it is that makes some people exceptional while others achieve only moderate success.
As Myra explains in her book
Follow the Yellow Brick Road: A Harvard Psychologist’s Guide to Becoming a Superstar, high-achievers have the same complex array of talents and weaknesses that everyone else has. But what sets them apart is that they know how to capitalize on their talents and minimize the potentially adverse effects of their weaknesses.
On top of this, they have a passionate commitment to their goals while understanding the process by which you build success. They know the right steps to take, and they are aware that no one achieves great success alone or overnight..
But as she also tells Wayne, being a superstar doesn’t necessarily mean making it big in business, sport or entertainment. It means excelling in whatever it is that you feel passionate about and realizing your own potential, in whatever field that may be.
If you manage someone who is abrasive, work with someone who is abrasive or – most likely – find yourself working for someone who is abrasive, this week’s Working Week is a must-listen.
With most of us likely to work for someone who is blind to the harm caused by his or her management style, Laura explains why abrasive managers resort to interpersonal aggression with coworkers, why they deny their destructive impact and what individuals and organizations can do to effectively get these bosses to back off and behave in a civilized manner.
As she also tells Wayne, abrasive bosses tend to be blind to the wounds they inflict because they lack the ability to read other’s emotions. But, she insists, they can be reined in and their behavior can be modified.
Why is there such a widespread perception that Generation Y is dissatisfied and unmotivated? That’s the starting point for this week’s Working Week, where Wayne is joined by Penny de Valk, the CEO of the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), the largest management organisation in Europe.
Born in New Zealand, de Valk moved to the UK ten years ago, prior to which she was Chief Executive of New Zealand’s Institute of Management in Auckland for four years.
Despite all the time and money organisation spend on recruiting them, half of graduates leave the firms that recruited them within two years. As Penny argues, this is partly because organisations are over-selling themselves and partly because they fail to provide the sort of learning opportunities, communication and feedback that Gen Y demands.
They also discuss how cultural differences impact management . Is it true, Wayne wonders, that UK managers are the worst in the world, as a raft of research has suggested. And if so, why?
This week, Wayne is joined from Dublin by Rowan Manahan, the creator of the Blog Fortify Your Oasis and author of the career management book, Where’s My Oasis?.
As a piece on Management Issues observed last week, it’s normally assumed today that switching jobs is the best way to fast-track your salary. But now new research has suggested that hopping jobs too often can actually end up damaging your pay prospects.
As Rowan observes, for people of his generation (the 40-somethings), it was normal to stay in a job for many years – even for the majority of a career. But now, it isn’t uncommon to come across candidates who have had five or more roles in the same number of years.
So what is the reason for this huge increase in turnover? Have many people job-hop because they’re a square peg in a round hole and how many because they were pushed? And what does this mean for the careers in the long term?
But equally, what should recruiters do when they come across a serial job-hopper – and how can employers reduce their involuntary turn-over rate?
Why do so many of us feel that our job sucks? Why do we start a job full of optimism only to have our hopes and expectations shattered after only a few months.
As Judith explains, work can quickly become a depressing parallel dimension when aspirations are not met – aspirations that are bigger than the box a job forces you into. And with the human brain spending 75 per cent of its time in a dream state – thinking about the future and planning next steps - meeting aspirations is a critical if organizations ever hope to inspire creativity, innovation and engagement in their people.
What’s more, a sense of happiness and optimism works wonders for the body, mind and spirit. So understanding this – and understanding how to create environments where employees bring out the best in one another - is vital for the evolution of any business.
This week, Wayne talks to author, consultant and business executive, Larraine Segil, about inspiring innovation through alliances and partnerships – both internal and external.
Larraine is the cofounder of The Lared Group, an international management consulting firm specializing in business relationships. She also teaches executive education at The California Institute of Technology, (Caltech), where she has presented a two day program on ‘Global Alliances’ for the past 23 years.
With all the factors involved - productivity, decision making, team performance, the number of new customers, and damage control - getting a precise measurement can be a complex and daunting task. Knowing which measurement to use, and at what stage of the alliance life cycle, is critical.
If you are confused about “web 2.0″ and its impact on business, then this week’s Working Week will prove illuminating.
Wayne is joined by Richard Buck, CEO of Eluma, a technology company which leverages the best aspects of social networking in order to provide users with the ability to collaborate with their most trusted source of information - their peers.
As Richard explains, Web 2.0 is all about user contribution. Where Web 1.0 was all about pushing content out to an audience, Web 2.0 is all about that audience creating its own content and participating with others.
Why does it matter? Because tools that help people collaborate and share information will have huge commercial benefits. But at the same time, they challenge the way that organisations operate both internally and externally.
Women make up half the workforce in the developed world and more than half of those with tertiary education. They dominate consumer spending decisions. Yet at senior levels, you would be forgiven for thinking that nothing has changed over the past fifty years. Women may hold the keys but men still control the locks.
Alison Maitland is a business writer and was a Financial Times journalist for 20 years. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, named as one of the top 40 women leading change in France, is a Paris-based management consultant who runs 20-First, a consultancy that helps organizations to become gender-bilingual. She also founded the European Professional Women’s Network more than a decade ago.
They join Wayne for this week’s Working Week to explain the compelling economic arguments for changing this state of affairs. As they tell Wayne, it isn’t a problem that just affects women. It’s a problem for the whole economy, particularly as organizations struggle to respond to the challenge of an ageing workforce and the demands of the next generation of knowledge workers.
Companies that really understand what motivates women in the workplace and the marketplace understand that men and women are not the same – and so they can’t be treated the same. Just as a company opening a satellite in a foreign country needs to learn its language and culture if it is to be successful, so organizations need to understand the different language, culture and attitudes of women.
Those employers who do optimize women’s talents will boost the bottom line – although taking action to achieve this will require sustained courage and conviction from today’s corporate leaders.
"The Working Week" is a weekly digest of news, blogs, and opinion from
the pages of www.management-issues.com. Each week, host Wayne Turmel will be joined by a special guest as he leads a spirited discussion on the issues that matter to people at work.
