In her new book, Don’t Bring it to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success, Sylvia explores what happens when patterns originally created to cope with family conflicts are unleashed in the workplace.

As she explains, patterns from childhood translate into characters familiar to anyone who has ever worked in an office. That’s the guy on your team who never stops complaining. The manager who steamrolls his ideas and never listens to others. The co-worker in the next cubicle you can hear on the phone all day, spreading gossip and rumors. The Board member who always challenges yet never adds anything useful.

But start to understand how past family life and work behaviors connect and you’ll know where performance problems originate and conflict starts.

In this week’s Working Week, Wayne finds out from John Man, author of Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan, how he did this and what lessons he can teach us about the nature of leadership.

First and foremost, John says, we need to forget the myth that Genghis Khan was nothing more than a murderous tyrant who got his way through sheer terror. In fact Khan was a leader of exceptional vision and modernity and arguably the greatest leader the world has ever seen.

What made Genghis Khan so great was partly an overwhelming sense of destiny, a belief in his own “divine” purpose that meant his ego never got in the way of his mission. But more than this, he listened to advice, was open to criticism from both family and associates and wasn’t blinded by ideology.

Pragmatic rather than dogmatic, he used talent wherever he found it and promoted on merit – some of his key lieutenants were Chinese or Muslim – and was able to look beyond conquest to the idea of government. He also understood his own limitations, notably that Mongolians had no written language – so he imported one.

Of course, nobody is arguing that someone who wrought such devastation is a role model, but his ability to galvanize those around him, execute a clear strategy and make the best use of the resources on offer, he certainly has plenty of lessons to offer today’s hard-pressed executives.

Over the years Peter has worked with thousands of individuals and business leaders seeking personal and professional meaning in their lives. His research into human consciousness and the subtle energies of plants and homeopathic remedies has been published globally.

As Pauline explains, the model we have followed for business for the past 200 or so years has predominantly been a masculine one. Despite the ever-changing nature of work, men’s roles in the generation of wealth and prosperity and in how decisions are made have changed very little.

For women, however, there has been a massive shift in the past 60 years. And while working patterns have changed the way women are valued and perceived, business has not always made the best of what is truly “feminine”. Traits perceived as “feminine” (ones that tend to use the right side of the brain) – altruistic, consensual, people-oriented, emotionally engaged, open, co-operative and so on – have often been seen as “softer” or deemed less valuable than the “hard” elements of commerce, profit and loss.

With the effects of this aggressive, risk-taking, masculine mind-set now all-too obvious, Pauline argues that the recession gives us a chance to promote more consensual ways of working as a way to help us get us out of the mess we have got ourselves into. If we are going to manage our way to survival, gender communication and collaboration are what counts, and co-operation (rather than competition) is going to be essential.

Dr Datta is Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology at INSEAD and the faculty director of elab@INSEAD, a center of excellence in the digital economy. He is also the co-author, with Matthew Fraser, of the evocatively-titled new book Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom. The title, if you were wondering, was inspired by a Facebook feature which lets you throw virtual objects at your friends.

Social networking is a global phenomenon that is no longer just a gimmick for teenagers. And just as online social interaction has become an indispensible part of daily life for millions of people, so it is inspiring new ways of doing business as well as different ways of interacting with employees.

As Dr Datta tells Wayne, all this is already starting to have far-reaching consequences that none of us can afford to ignore.

Since many of those responsible for the financial disaster have MBAs from top business schools, what does that say about top business schools? Are the teaching the right things or does the whole basis of the modern MBA need to be re-examined?

As Professor Starkey points out, it certainly appears to be the case that the MBA is rather one-dimensional. Is putting economics at the heart of the MBA is such a good idea when a sense of history and learning from the past seems to be so blatantly missing? And likewise, we ought to ask why those much-vaunted MBA case studies failed to raise any alarm bells about the unfolding financial melt-down?

Finally, what about globalisation? How can the MBA respond to the shift Eastwards of economic power and influence and how can it respond to entirely new ways of thinking about business management?

They discuss the role social networks will play in our careers in future, how it impacts our reputation and how the vast majority of successful companies around the world today are working collaboratively.

Penny also argues that social media will also allow companies to transform their business processes and cut costs, bringing about profound changes to supplier networks and the way that we all work.

As Robert points out, in the 1950s, the car industry epitomised what was good about US business. Now they epitomises everything that has gone wrong, with a loss of leadership, innovation and direction and CEOs who he recently described as colossally overpaid, professionally incompetent and hugely conceited.

But is this a failure of individual leadership or a systemic problem? And what – if anything – can be done to save this iconic part of U.S. history?

While stationed in Germany in the early post-World War II years, Hal Bolton was profoundly affected by devastation left in the wake of war. Subsequently he forged a successful business career and travelled to many parts of the world advocating nonviolent solutions to conflicts.

In his book < href="http://dragonsteeth.net/" target="_new">The Dragon’s Teeth, Hal examines the pervading influence of war myths in the business world. He argues that many companies like to portray themselves as embattled communities, caught in an endless war of cutthroat competition to bolster the bottom line.

As Hal tells Wayne, this “business-as-war-game” myth which views competitors as the enemy means that any strategy that helps “our” team win is acceptable. Then there’s the “entitlement myth”, in which maximizing self-interest is the whole game. There’s the “corporate ladder” myth, in which getting ahead is what counts. And there’s the “management myth” which fosters the idea that management’s duty is to maximize self- interest.

All of these lead to the big one –the “corporate myth” – in which corporate interests take priority over human- scale considerations. This manifests itself in the violence evidenced in outsourcing, layoffs, loss of health benefits and family leave, frozen wages, cutthroat competition among managers and CEOs, buyouts, closures, megamergers – even child sweatshop labor – all of which has plummeted society to a nadir of confidence.

But changing these myths that have allowed war to ride roughshod over society for too long by changing awareness in the workplace will ripple out to society at large as workers and management seek ways to build profit and peace, individuals and corporations intent upon serving society rather than exploiting it.

Hal Bolton was manufacturing supervisor and CEO of Dahlstrom Manufacturing Company, a multinational corporation, for fifteen years, Later, as a consultant in organizational transformation and process improvement, he guided transformative processes in companies and multinationals, communities, educational institutions, and not-for-profit organizations.

He also spent fourteen years as management cochairman of the Jamestown Area Labor Management Committee, creator of the prototype for community labor-management organizations in the United States and abroad.

Over the years Peter has worked with thousands of individuals and business leaders seeking personal and professional meaning in their lives. His research into human consciousness and the subtle energies of plants and homeopathic remedies has been published globally.

They discuss job-hunting strategies for the downturn and explore the future of education and how on-line technologies are transforming the way we learn.

Dr Wilen-Daugenti has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University and adjunct professor for MBA programs for San Francisco Bay Area universities. She was awarded the San Francisco Women of the Year award in 2002 for her outreach and support for women in business and technology in the Bay Area.

The word which pops up frequently here is “relationships” – their quality, longevity and the trust they engender. And in bad times, relationships gets tested more and any flaws will be quickly exposed.

They also explore how consultants make assignments work, what makes a good consultant and the differences between working in the public and the private sector.

At the heart of this approach is the belief that workers will try harder and be more enthusiastic about achieving workplace goals if they can obtain instant rewards for their efforts.

As Brooks explains, this somewhat unconventional approach to reward and motivation is actually based on sound behavioural research – any human activity that is positively reinforced will be repeated.

His approach to employee motivation in the workplace involves four major themes: immediate recognition, relevant incentive rewards, accountability and the behavior-changing power of intermittent positive reinforcement. It’s also based on money, not merchandise – because money equals choice and can also be broken into small amounts.

It’s certainly a novel approach, but with a third of incentive programmes actually decreasing performance, it’s one that certainly shouldn’t be ignored

Employee ownership can be a tough proposition. But if you have really want to empower employees and push decision-making down to the grass roots, creating a decentralized, network-based company that values input from everyone, it is a model that can deliver tremendous benefits.

As Mary Ann explains, the employee involvement that characterizes companies with broad-based ownership tends to result in greater transparency and open-book management. And the knowledge that every individual can influence the direction of the company also produces a different dynamic, often with very high energy levels.

To disseminate the message about employee ownership, a new project has been launched by the Foundation for Enterprise Development, the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education and the Foundation for Enterprise Development and the Employee Ownership Foundation.

Between them, these institutions have created of a Curriculum Library on Employee Ownership which represents the largest collection of university teaching materials on employee ownership—including such areas as broad-based equity compensation and shared capitalism. The library is at
CasePlace.org.

To explore the impact and role of generations in the workplace, Wayne is joined by
Graeme Codrington. With a CV that includes chartered accountancy at KPMG, IT boom entrepreneur, youth worker, consultant, professional musician, futurist, best-selling author and professional speaker, Graeme is a visiting professor at four business schools, as well as one of the founders of futurist consultancy TomorrowToday.

As Graeme explains, it’s too simplistic just to say that they key to understanding generational issues is to say that “people are different”. Instead, you need to look at the different value sets that each generation have developed – often shaped by the context and events which occurred during their childhoods.

This also explains why different generations have such different styles of communication – and find it so hard to co-exist in the same meeting, let alone the same office. When Baby Boomers prefer face-to-face meetings whilst Generation Xers prefer to text or email, it’s little wonder we have communication breakdowns!

Each new generation entering a new lifestage brings this generational valueset with them, and redefines the lifestage they’re entering. All of which has very important implications for how organisations motivate, attract and retain them as staff and business partners.

Which is why Wayne is joined for this week’s Working Week by Jennifer Openshaw, who is CEO of the website Weseed.com, which demystifies the stock market by helping people share what they know and make smart investing decisions based on the collective wisdom of the community.

Jennifer’s mantra, as she explains to Wayne, is to “invest in what you know”, be that what you know through work or through the things you are passionate about or interested in.

And while this might seem like a strange time to be talking about investments, the fact remains that it’s in a company’s best interests to have financially literate staff. As Jennifer points out, people who have financial worries are more stressed and less productive than those who aren’t.

That’s something that UK retail giant Tesco – the largest private-sector employer in Britain – is well aware of. Just this week, it announced that it is distributing financial educational guides to all its 280,000 employees. It will also run a series of hour-long briefings in head offices and distribution centres, where hundreds of staff will be taught how to manage their money better.

A graduate of Stanford Business School, Kathy co-founded Circles in 1997 to address the needs of time-starved professionals and corporations that rely on these professionals as high-value customers or employees. Two things she didn’t learn in school: the “power and importance of good decision making” and the “complexity in managing an organization full of people.”

October was National Work and Family month in the U.S, but as we all know, time seems to be even more at a premium now than it ever has been. Yet time starvation leads to stress and a whole host of other undesirable symptoms, not least of which is that individuals tend to become less productive and more likely to get sick.

For those who still think that work-life balance is nothing to do with employers, Kathy has a simple response. All companies employ people and if they are not able to create an environment that acknowledges that individuals have lives and issues outside of work, the entire company will suffer.

So what practical steps can companies do to help their people mange their lives better? And what role can HR and line managers play in this? Listen on to find out.

He tells Wayne how this impacts the workplace and what the implications are for management thinking.

As Crawford freely admits, this is question that is particularly relevant to a low-cost airline, a sector that he says is going to see a significant contraction as the economy slides into recession. It’s also one that is not renowned for looking after its people – something he says is a mistake. Because companies that have always sought to engage and motive rather than coerce and control are going to be far better prepared to confront the challenges that the next few years will pose.

As far as bmibaby is concerned, Crawford’s recipe for harmonious staff relations is simple. A collaborative, non-silo mentality, open and honest communication between management and staff plus a willingness on the part of management to listen to what staff have to say in all areas of the business can reap enormous benefits.

The signs of a healthy, engaged workforce are obvious, Crawford argues. Do individuals come across as actually wanting to be at work? Is there a buzz about the workplace? Are staff open to ideas, keen to listen. Does the business give the impression of moving forward, or is everything all a bit flat?

He is also a great believer in hiring people who are flexible in their thinking and always looking for new solutions. That means not just employing people from the airline sector, but people with different backgrounds and from smaller companies who can often offer a whole new perspective.

And as far as the airline industry is concerned, survival isn’t just about cutting costs. In fact cutting too much is just going to alienate that shrinking pool of potential customers. So treat passengers with respect and get the basics right. Clean, tidy, comfortable aircraft with cabin staff who actually want to be there.

According to the US Department of Labor, three-quarters of illegal drug users are employed and almost eight out of 10 who abuse legal drug, including alcohol, are also in work. This estimated cost to the US economy of substance abuse is a staggering $246 billion.

As Gus explains, one person with a drug or alcohol problem at work affects about 10 others around them. So what are the warning signs to look out for? And if an employee does have a problem, what can their co-workers and employer do to help – and what should they avoid doing?

While increasing numbers of women have moved into the middle ranks of management over recent years, this hasn’t translated into more women at the very top of organisations.

According to Myra, the problem is that models of effective leadership are still based on men and the types of talents that they bring to such positions. Women are just not seen as credible leaders. Indeed, both men and women view women as being less confident and thus suitable for leadership roles.

To make maters worse, making it to the top remains very much a political process – one in which women usually loose out.

Even worse for women is the fact that if they instead act more passively in an attempt to be more palatable, they are then considered to not be competent enough for leadership positions.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and Sarah Palin’s nomination have both illustrated the strong negative reactions that women evoke when they dare to aspire to leadership positions typically held by men. Both have been subjected to a type of harsh criticism that one rarely sees leveled at men. Moreover, this criticism frequently spills over into personal realms that have nothing to do with their capacity to lead.

So given these deep-seated cultural attitudes, how do we get more women into leadership positions? Myra argues that what we really need to do is to rethink how we select leaders. Rather than looking at “who” they are, we need to examine how they behave and what they actually do. In other words, we need to re-asses our ideas about what leadership actually is. Which given the type of aggressive male leadership ‘enjoyed’ by the financial giants whose collapse has precipitated the current economic crisis, is probably no bad thing.

Myra White teaches managing workplace performance and organizational behavior at Harvard University and is a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of Follow the Yellow Brick Road: A Harvard Psychologist’s Guide to Becoming a Superstar, a book based on her research into how over 60 well-known people became superstars.

Although Wayne describes himself as a GOOF – that’s Gladly Out of the Office –
James insists that he is indeed a moofer (MOOF = Mobile Out of Office) – since he is not constrained by being either in or out of the office.

Moofing, James explains, is more a state of mind, rather than a place or activity. Technology isn’t really an issue any more, so where and how you work is more about attitude rather than practical constraints.

Yet too many workers and companies are still stuck in the past, assuming that 8am-6pm in the office is always best for the company and the employee.

James argues that many workers – and the overwhelming majority of so-called knowledge workers – can deliver great work almost anywhere, depending on the demands of work and life and assuming they have the technology and creativity to explore the possibilities.

Nevertheless, there’s no perfect solution for flexible working – the office has strong advantages, as do other locations, depending on the situation.

Mobile working is a rolling snowball and businesses can not afford to ignore its impact. The best talent will move to companies that recognise the demands of new workers, while the productivity gap will continue to widen if current practices exist. It’s time to MOOF with the times!

But rather than turning to a consultant to tell you what your problem is, have you ever thought about bringing in an interim manager whose remit is to provide solutions?

This week, Wayne discusses interim management with Philip Griffiths from recruitment consultancy FSS, who specialise in interim and retained search recruitment across banking & finance, commerce & industry.

Philip explains the ins-and-outs of interim management, how they differ from consultants and other temporary staff and what sort of people make good interim managers.

This week, Wayne talks to Kathleen Paris, author of a new book, Staying Healthy in Sick Organizations, the Clover Practiceâ„¢, which sets out to show you how to survive professionally and emotionally in work environments that are more likely to be sick than healthy.

It’s Kathleen belief that even in a high-stress workplace, people can feel peaceful at the end of the day. And even in an organization that is managed on obsolete principles, people can maintain their integrity and honor.

How? That’s where the three leaves of the clover come in. Tell the truth – even if it isn’t convenient. Speak for yourself, and recognize the interconnections and interdependence that influence our success as well as our problems.

These principles are simple, but not easy to live. If peace of mind is the aim, we need to be truthful even when it’s not convenient and even when we don’t look too good. White lies even compromise our integrity and the degree to which others trust us. This doesn’t mean we say everything that comes to mind. We don’t have to share our opinions on everything. They are just our opinions, after all.

Talking to others about how things look from your perspective based on what you have heard and seen and experienced is a much better way to be heard than telling people they are uncooperative, clueless, unprofessional or incompetent. If you make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and are willing to entertain other views, you are more likely to be heard.

Remember, in any work situation, there are as many ‘truths’ as people in the room.

Interdependence is critical because our personal success at work depends on others in the same organization being successful. No one succeeds alone even if they think they do. Organizations aren’t machines, they are living fabrics. What happens in one part of the organization affects many other parts of the organization. And when we wake up and see these connections more clearly, we can choose different behaviors which can ultimately mean less conflict and stress and more peace of mind for us

Finally, Kathleen says, while this works for most organizations, there are some that are so sick that they make those who work there ill. In which case, the only sensible option is to leave.

Because as the Baby Boom generation of senior management heads off into retirement, the curious lack of urgency about retaining the knowledge that underpins organisations means that many are likely to suffer an unprecedented loss of skills and experience unless they get better at managing the transfer of knowledge from one generation to another.

From Dan’s perspective this is an ever-increasing problem. Worse, the higher up one goes in an organisation, the less people are prepared to share what they know – or admit what they don’t know. And if the people at the top don’t have any great sense of urgency about the problem, what hope is there further down the food chain?

To make matters worse, Dan says, individuals are moving from company to company far more frequently than used to be the case. This mobility, and the fact that in many workplaces, as many as four generations work side-by-side means knowledge is just not getting filtered throughout the organisation.

So how do organisations capture knowledge? First, its vital to persuade older, often very senior, staff that knowledge transfer matters.

Then you need to get HR folks more involved round the top table. And they need to ask themselves some important questions before they set out their case. Things like:
what results do we want? What behaviours will get those results and what knowledge, skills and attitudes will give us those behaviours?

Dan tells Wayne about the detailed process that lies behind the creation of a corporate uniform and how they can inspire loyalty and reflect positive brand values.

Sean is (among many others things), a founder member and an Honorary Vice President of the Association for Coaching, based in London. He is currently working on a new book, Rebel in a Business Suit.

The old ways of business leadership are changing, Seam explains, and leaders need help. We are moving away from the old age energies (competition, dominance, power through intimidation or subjugation, the cult of the ’self’) which have served to develop our physical and mental powers through technology to a new age of energies (connection, co-operation, power through collaboration and the global community) which are about our growth as individuals and communities.

What this means in the workplace is that tech-savvy knowledge workers are no longer responding to ‘command and control’ management. They are looking for more meaning and purpose in their work and not just a job. They have less interest in security than in personal mobility. And jobs are no longer jobs – they are contracts.

This change in values has brought a revolution to the modern workplace. Today’s employees are rebels looking for networking, collaboration, appreciation and communication – and so managers need to change the way they operate in order to connect with and engage them.

Rather than the hierarchy-led process of the suit era, management must increasingly be about the exercise of “soft” power – communication, networking, collaboration and persuasion. It’s about developing emotional equity – collaboration and co-creation – in order to build engagement.

Listen to the podcast to find out more and discover some practical steps that organisations can take to meet this challenge.

They explore the links between employee engagement and social, sustainability and green issues in the light of the fact that notions of good corporate citizenship and social responsibility are increasingly framing consumer – and employee – assessments of brand identity and reputation.

As Shari points out, employees tend to be ahead of their managers when it comes to their concern about sustainability, with nine out 10 linking their company’s brand perception with the way it addresses its environmental and social impacts.

But while employees may be keen to decrease their company’s negative impacts and boost its sustainability, they often feel that their employers don’t share the same concerns. So what can organisations do on a practical, day-to-day basis, to address this?

The age of 24/7 connectivity and constant demands has lead to frantic multi-tasking and fire-fighting. The result: lots of activity, a loss of focus and not much achievement. So what can we do about it? How can we learn to focus better?

That’s the big question Wayne tackles on The Working Week this week as he is joined by author, screen writer and creativity guru, Jurgen Wolff, whose new book Focus: The Power of Targeted Thinking, spells out how to achieve a state of flow that can lead to maximum achievement in minimum time.

Jurgen is the editor and publisher of the creativity e-bulletin, Brainstorm and writes a monthly column for Management-Issues.

They explore some powerful time management techniques which work for everyone – not just left-brain people who are already organized and see things in an analytical way – and that age-old question, how to overcome procrastination.

Finally, Jurgen tells Wayne about the alter-ego strategy – a kind of method-acting for managers. But if you want to learn about that, you’ll need to listen to this weeks’ show.

To explore why this is, Wayne is joined this week from the UK by Jo Sellwood, who is a managing director of specialist HR recruiter, Strategi Search & Selection.

They explore what it is about HR that makes it so easy to stereotype– although there’s a thin line between stereotyping and accurate observation.

Is it, Wayne wonders, the sort of people who are recruited into HR? Or is it, as JO argues, that HR folks need to “put their business hats on” and prove to colleagues in other functions that they understand the organisations within which they work.

According to Jo, critical skills for HR professionals are relationship-building and influencing ability – and they’ll need both in spades if they’re going to start to repair their reputations.

As Peter tells Wayne, spiritual intelligence has nothing to do with theology or religion. Rather, its about being aware of how and who you are in your dealings with yourself and others and uncovering a deeper part of yourself that help you focus on your attitudes, behaviours, feelings and emotions.

Self-awareness is one of the most important qualities that effective leaders and manager can possess, and so asking others to hold a mirror up for you lets you see the flaws and blind spots that keep you from creating effective relationships at work can be a hugely valuable exercise.

And since so much of our time at work is spent interacting with others, creating positive workplace relationships that are based on trust and respect is fundamental.
That means understanding how to deal with anger, change and the divergent views of others – and how to be a business person and a human being at the same time.

They explore what can be done to help and support managers in the 21st century as well as how management development and training initiatives can address specific skill-gaps.

They also discuss what direction business education will move in over the next. Will MBAs remain as popular as they are today, or are they losing their relevance as the workplace changes?

Ruth joined the Institute from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, where she was also chief executive. She previously served as chief executive of Investors in People UK, HR Director for the NSPCC and a business development consultant with Coopers and Lybrand. She is a FCIPD and an OBE.

As Wayne finds out this week, whatever else they do, the most fatal mistake an organization can make is simply to try to ignore what people are saying about them online.

Wayne talks to new media expert, John Havens, who is VP of business development at BlogTalkRadio and co-author, with Shel Holtz, of Tactical Transparency, which explains what corporate transparency really means in the Web 2.0 world.

Wayne and John discuss the business rationale for transparency and explore the risks inherent in maintaining a non-transparent relationship with constituent audiences.

The explore how organizations can effectively communicate transparency and hw they ought to engage with boggers even when they are hostile and negative.

As John points out, whatever some executives might think, bloggers didn’t invent disgruntled customers. Moreover, responding to them with silence is just saying publicly that you don’t care about your customers and that they’re not worthy of any of your time.

Max works as a strategic adviser for four of the five most admired companies in the world and is a well-known speaker on subjects including innovation, engagement, human potential, customer experience, marketing, team building, and competitive advantage.

His latest book, The Truth about Innovation, offers the guidance managers need to overcome the innovation-related problems that they all face and at the same time improve their managerial effectiveness.

They talk about why it can take so long for a new manger to make a difference in an organization, why just changing things is not necessarily guaranteed to deliver progress and how organizations can switch from inertia into “innovation mode”.

They discuss what management development is – or ought to be- and what role business schools can play in it. In particular, they explore the vexed question of whether leadership be taught – and if so, how?

As Wayne finds out in this week’s Working Week podcast, in a climate where business leaders are increasingly concerned with the people elements of their businesses and differentiation, personal branding is becoming increasingly important.

Wayne is joined from the UK by Lesley Everett, an international authority on personal branding, conference and keynote speaker, author and columnist.

Lesley Everett is also the author of Walking TALL – key steps to total image impact. An executive impact coach, she helps individuals to increase their gravitas in the workplace with a clear and congruent personal brand.

As she tells Wayne, in the new world of work, your reputation, or personal brand, is the currency that sets you apart. But they key to having a positive personal brand isn’t image – it’s authenticity. While image is important in making a positive impact, it is meaningless without substance to back it up.

So while your brand is an effective means of increasing executive presence, confidence, personal impact and motivation, it is also the way that you communicate to your colleagues – and the world – exactly what you stand for.

After years of downsizing, outsourcing and corporate greed gone wild, today’s workers simply don’t believe that their employers value them. And as new generations enter the workplace, this belief is only getting stronger.

As she says in her book, “after many decades of being fat, dumb, and happy, American businesses and American workers have been forced into a change. In a relatively short time, fat has morphed into thin and happy into frightened. Prolonged fear does not bode well for future success.”

It follows, Judith argues, that employee’s perceptions and feelings have a direct impact on their productivity, leading to the state of affairs in the U.S. where a huge proportion of workers are either actively looking for new jobs or going through the motions at their current jobs.

These vulnerable and resentful feelings amount to a wholesale “psychological recession” which is taking a real a toll on organizations’ bottom line. And unless organizations face up to the problem, it is only going to get worse.

Judith is a writer, speaker and management consultant whose clients have included IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Johnson & Johnson. Prior to forming her consulting business in 1983, she was a professor and associate dean at the University of Michigan. She also served as a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

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.

Gautam is based in Hyderabad, where he is a Senior Consultant at Tvarita Consulting as well as a prolific blogger.

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.

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?

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.

Wayne is joined by The Boss Whispererâ„¢” and author of Taming The Abrasive Manager: How To End Unnecessary Roughness In The Workplace, Dr Laura Crawshaw, whose mission is to help abrasive bosses to rein in their aggressive workplace behaviors.

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.

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?

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?

That’s the staring point for Wayne’s conversation this week with Judith E. Glaser, author of Creating We and The DNA of Leadership and CEO of Benchmark Communications.

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.

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.

Her latest book, Measuring the Value of Partnering, examines how to accurately measure an alliance and why it is important.

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.

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.

The continuing male domination at top of organisations and the fact that so few women climb to the top of the career ladder is the subject of a new book, Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of our next Economic Revolution, by Alison Maitland and Avivah Wittenberg-Cox.

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.

As a former human resources director, Chris has some strong opinions about the bad press that HR departments seem to receive.

One of the problems for HR departments, Chris says, is that it is so hard to measure the benefits of much of what HR does.

But business IS people – in fact the only difference between many organisations – their key competitive advantage – is the people they employ, which includes their CEO.

But while people ought to be kept at the top of a company’s agenda, the fact is that many of those who run large organisations simply aren’t turned on by “people issues”. Why? Because they usually got to the top thanks to their specialist business, technical or financial skills, not because of their people skills.

dChris’ advice to HR professionals is to ensure that they make the ‘process’ side of their role as efficient and lean as possible. Then they can address the more intangible aspects of HR such as managing performance and developing talent.

Invincibelle is an organization that seeks to empower women to succeed in a multicultural world by creating a safe online community for women online and also organizing offline events.

Prior to founding Invincibelle, Deepika worked in Planning an Marketing positions in Fortune 500 companies. While she was there, she served on the boards of various professional organizations like NSHMBA (National society of Hispanic MBAs) and WIN (Women in Intel).

Deepika is currently working on her first book codenamed “Invincibelle Insights” that is based on blend of her experiences and more than 50 interviews of distinguished Invincibelle Guests – highly accomplished women who have succeeded in a multicultural world.

To help companies do just that, Best Companies (who also compile the Sunday Times “Best Companies to Work For” list) launched its own accreditation scheme in 2006.

The accreditation acknowledges excellence in the workplace and focuses on workplace engagement as an integral component of an organisation`s success, growth, and the bottom line.

Wayne gets the low-down from Jonathan on what organisations need to be thinking about if they are series about how they retain and motivate their people

The Accreditation developed by Best Companies is based on a star rating system where one star is first class, two stars are outstanding, and three stars are extraordinary. Organisational successes have been defined using data from the 2008 Best Companies to Work For survey which involved surveying over 140,000 employees from 558 companies.

The Best Companies survey is designed to measure employee engagement and uses 66 questions to gain a comprehensive view of employee engagement across eight factors. Every company that goes for Best Companies Accreditation is given a Best Companies Index score (BCI). This score (on a scale of 1 to 1000) is defined from employees’ responses to the sixteen key questions within the Best Companies survey. ‘Star Status’ is determined by the ‘BCI’ score and the specific cut-off points for One, Two, and Three Star Accreditation remain constant year on year.

Amid economic uncertainty and with fear of rising business costs, inflation and household debt, Jo argues that managers need to be more empowering – encouraging everybody in the organization to contribute – which means being willing to open their minds and innovate.

Bob is Bob Selden is head of the Australian National Learning Institute and author of a new book, What To Do When You Become The Boss.

As we all become increasingly concerned about the disengagement gap, Bob argues that many organisations are suffering from a widely-held fallacy that paying people more salary and perks will gain their loyalty, when all it does is gain is their compliance.

But equally, despite the obvious impact an ineffective manager has on an organisation’s profitability, many still pay little attention to training and supporting supervisors and managers, particularly in their first managerial role.

On the Working Week this week, Wayne talks to Paolo Moscuzza, an occupational psychologist and a Principal Consultant with the Business Psychology practice of UK-based ER Consultants, about the practical steps that organisations and recruiters can take to ensure that candidates chose them rather than someone else.

Among the things that employers often get wrong, Moscuzza says, are dragging the recruitment process out far too long – then wondering why a candidate has gone elsewhere – and burning their bridges by treating candidates as if they are doing them a huge favour by considering them at all.

And that’s before we even get onto the issue of retention – by which we mean rather more than sending your staff on the occasional training course in the name of “professional development”.

So if you feel your recruitment process is less effective than it might be and you retention stats could do with a boost, take 10 minutes out of your working week to listen to ours.

Marshall’s next book, Passing the Baton, will examine the problem of succession planning and the challenges of letting go and hading over the reins to new people.

As a recent article on Management-Issues highlighted, this is an issue that is rapidly becoming critical, with fully three-quarters of C-Suite executives in the U.S. – regardless of the size of their organization, location or industry – now viewing succession planning as their most significant challenge for the future.

But as Marshall explains, it isn’t just a problem for the U.S. Europe and Japan, with a more rapidly ageing force and fewer young people to replace them, face an even greater challenge.

And while demographics are less of an issue for developing economies such as India and China, the problem here is that there are more opportunities than qualified people to meet them.

Meanwhile, at the human level, Marshall and Wayne discuss the host of emotional and personal issues surrounding succession planning which makes so many incumbents disinclined to let go.

Bob is also co-author, with John David Mann, of a new book, The Go-Giver, a modern-day parable underlining the fact that generosity of spirit and giving more than you get can produce some very positive business results.

Bob discusses with Wayne how providing more in value than you take in financial compensation is the key to personal and career success and how good management can help instil this attitude in employees.

These are just some of the questions Wayne chews over with his guest this week, author Jim Kouzes.

Jim is the coauthor with Barry Posner of the landmark book, The Leadership Challenge, now in its fourth edition with over one million copies sold. He’s also an executive fellow, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.

We have known for more than 60 years that more inclusive and empowering types of leadership behaviour produces higher performance, yet as Jim bemoans, we still see bosses ignoring this.

So who is to blame? Certainly the business schools and training organisations need to work harder to bang home the message that certain types of behaviour produces higher performance, particularly since there is nothing complicated about it.

Essentially, Jim argues, there are four critical things to remember about leadership.

1. Honesty and integrity are the most important traits of a good leader.
2. The most effective leaders are forward-looking. They have a vision of the future.
3. The most effective leaders are team players. Tough-guy leaders may be effective in certain situations, but the evidence is that long-term, this is not effective
4. Enthusiasm is infectious. Leaders who are up-beat, energetic, optimistic and engaging get more out of those around them.

With a shrinking talent pool from which to pluck the leaders of tomorrow, Jim stresses that developing future leaders is a matter of rigorous training and development, not a question of finding the rare individuals with innate gifts.

And here’s a final thought. In order to become an expert at anything, research suggests that you need to practice at least 5,000 hours (over the course of 10 years.

That’s two hours a day – with time off for weekends – every day, for 10 years.

So If we want managers who are experts at what they do, we need to be developing them and helping them throughout their careers. Not just for an hour or two here and there.

Myra is the author of Follow the Yellow Brick Road: A Harvard Psychologist’s Guide to Becoming a Superstar, a book based on her research into how over 60 well-known people became superstars.

She is also CEO of Work Intelligence, Inc, which uses the latest scientific knowledge of human behavior to help businesses maximize employee and organizational performance and Behavior Scientific, a boutique firm dedicated to helping companies identify, hire and develop superstars.

Myra and Wayne explore the link between stress and burnout, and our growing reliance – or should we say “addiction” – on computers and communications technology.

Why do many of us send emails when a phone call or face-to-face conversation (remember those?) would do the job far better? Why have such socialable animals come to develop such an obsession with such anti-social tools? And what is this addiction is doing to the way we all react in the workplace?

With research published earlier this month confirming that most managers are deeply sceptical about the constant stream of projects, ideas and initiatives coming down from on high – believing most of them to be a complete waste of time – Charles and Wayne explore the whole phenomenon of “initiative fatigue”.

Why is it that organisations so rarely seem able to empower their people to finish what they started? And if you do feel you’re suffering from “death by initiative”, what can you do about it?

Kevin is the author of Remarkable Leadership and Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that provides a wide range of services, including training delivery and design, facilitation, performance coaching, organizational consulting and speaking services.

He tells Wayne that while retention seems to be a problem across the globe, the solution is essentially very simple: measure what motivates people to stay and address those issues.

And as a raft of research has shown, it isn’t money that persuades people to stay, it’s having quality managers, providing opportunities for accomplishment and recognising individual contributions – two of which don’t cost organisations anything.

That’s the starting point for this week’s Working Week, in which Wayne talks to Michelle Brailsford, a founding partner at at Jupiter Consulting Group, a boutique learning & development consultancy dedicated to adding life back into work.

As Michelle explains, the sort of skills associated with female right brain thinking – intuition, creativity and the ability to collaborate – are becoming as important in the business world as the traditional left brain, rational approaches usually adopted by their male colleagues.

And as women becoming more important in the global marketplace not just as workers, but also as consumers, entrepreneurs, managers and investors, this process of feminisation will only accelerate.

Michelle has also written a new piece for Management-Issues that should be required reading for any women hoping to climb the career ladder – The rules of the game for corporate women.

As she explains to Wayne, many women struggle with playing the corporate game because they have never been taught the rules. Yet they possess all the skills they need to succeed in the political arena and make a real impact at the top of their organizations without having to become a man in a skirt.

If the burden of electronic communication sometimes becomes just too much, you need to listen to the Working Week. Because this week, Wayne talks to Dr Monica Seeley, co-author of ‘Managing in the Email Office’ and an expert on email best practice and efficiency.

A Visiting Fellow at Imperial College’s Management School, Monica has conducted several research studies, including looking at gender differences in the use of electronic communications and the use of collaborative working tools.

She is also founder of Mesmo Consultancy, which helps organisations educate users to manage and use email more effectively to improve their business productivity.

And improve it they must, because as Monica tells Wayne, our addiction to our inboxes – plus the sheer number of unnecessary emails we are all sent – means that we are each wasting between seven and 21 productive days a year.

Listen on to find out how to regain control of the email monster and how to give yourself back some time to think, rather than click.

Dawna’s mission in life is to help individuals and companies master the invisible forces that drive achievement.

Her work through InSight Out Consulting merges extensive scientific research into the source of individual performance with twenty-five years of experience facilitating organizational and human dynamics.

She delivers customized learning lab programs to accelerate the high levels of self and organizational awareness required to produce natural innovation and creativity. Her personal growth programs focus on helping people reconnect to their innate superpowers and connection to each other and the world around them.

Dawna talks to Wayne about the disengagement gap and why many of the efforts of organisations to improve employee performance and productivity end up having exactly the opposite effect.

She argues that it is the talent and energy of individuals that increases performance, not managerial efforts and system to control them. Far too many management efforts actually inhibit individuals’ natural desire to contribute – and trying to suppress this just create disengagement and disenchantment. In short, organisations don’t have a real understanding of what it really takes to support performance.

Geoff’s research and scholarly activity is mostly in the areas of corporate social responsibility and business ethics with contributions in the areas of corporate philanthropy, corporate social disclosure, stakeholder theory and corporate social versus financial performance – in other words, the business case for CSR.

Geoff sits on the Editorial Boards of the “Journal of Business Ethics”, and “Business Ethics: A European Review”. He is a founding member of the UK Association of European Business Ethics Network (EBEN-UK) and was Chair from 2002 to 2004. As well as a being a member of the European Business Ethics Network, Geoff is also a member of the Society for Business Ethics (USA).

In their discussion, Wayne and Geoff explore whether businesses should create value only for their shareholders, or whether other stakeholders – customers, suppliers and employees – are just as important.

Geoff argues that many businesses are moving away from the “pure shareholder” model towards a more stakeholder-oriented one, and explains what steps the business education world is taking to mirror this trend.

In 1969, physicist Robert Beyster and a small group of colleagues founded Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), renting offices next to a ballet studio in a Californian village and surviving on a couple of consulting contracts.

He talks to Wayne about the early days of SAIC and how he turned a single-owner company into one owned by its employees.

By the time he retired after 35 years at the helm, Beyster owned less than two per cent of the company’s stock. But in the meantime, SAIC had become a Fortune 500 giant with 44,000 employees. In 2006, it had revenues of more than $8 billion

In some ways, he says, employee ownership has made SAIC a company of entrepreneurs. “Not just one or two at the top, but a company in which those who are motivated and capable can organize, manage, and assume the risk of different aspects of the company. In return they received not only salary, but ownership of the company.”

After retiring in 2004, Dr Beyster has continued to promote innovation and employee ownership through his Foundation for Enterprise Development and the Beyster Institute at the University of California in San Diego.

With more than 12 years experience in the exercise and sports science industry, Jon is adamant that some simple exercises and improvements in our diet can work wonders for our productivity.

And as he tells Wayne, a self-confessed caffeine addict, employers can also do much more to help their staff improve the way they go about their working days.

Vince has plied his trade as a manger in restaurants, then in television stations then for seven years as Regional Vice President of Sales for America Online. Now with his firm Middleshift, he helps Internet companies scale revenue by building advertising sales businesses and better integrating and empowering those in the middle.

But because his early days in management were marked with frustration, Vince came to learn that the answers were out there – but not in a form easily accessible to managers.

His book, Ignited, is a guide for managers on how to make their jobs less stressful, more efficient and ultimately more successful and rewarding – all ambitions close to Wayne’s heart.

Compounding the frustration many managers feel is the fact that the training and development they are offered is often either inadequate or just wrongly-focussed – spending too much time on the holy grail of “leadership” and not enough on the mechanics of what it means to be a manager on a daily basis.

All of which leads to that vital question – what is the difference between leadership and management?.

Yet as Vince points out, all the leadership training in the world can’t make up for a lack of real management skills – something that training managers and providers often seem to forget. So much so, in fact, that this obsession with leadership is slanting training priorities for the worst.

Steve believes we are now in an environment where skilled workers are being inundated with offers as soon as they put a foot out into the job market, making the battle to keep and attract talent almost unwinnable.

With employees increasingly aware of their value, managers and recruiters need to be wary of counter-offers all the way through the hiring process. And in such a febrile atmosphere, the danger is that we end up with a situation where workers are keeping an eye out for better offers from their very first day on the job.

A former New York City commercial banker, Cali believes that it is the fit – not balance – between work and life that really makes the difference and that there are countless work+life fit possibilities from which to choose between the extremes of “all or nothing.”

First, however, Wayne takes a brief look at the challenges facing HR as we re-evaluate the way we work in the 21st century and has a few words about Charles Helliwell’s ‘tough love’ response to a reader who says they hired an idiot as their replacement.

2:50 – Cali has been reading two articles on Management-Issues.com which caught her attention. The first reveals the workplace wish list of American employees while the second suggests that HR departments are failing to address the strategic or people challenges facing their organisations.

4:17 She suggests that one reason for HR’s woes is that there has been a real structural shift in what they (HR) are being tasked to do these days.

Meanwhile, the workplace wish list suggests that half of us are actively or passively looking for new jobs – a figure Cali says is about right based on her own experience of organisations.

4:50 – So why the discontent? Healthcare, salary and bonus are the top factors, while many people feel that they are working harder without seeing any improvement in their pay and benefits. So they will look elsewhere.

5:44 – Cali believes that flexibility and compressed work strategy is a career and business management strategy – it’s not a perk. It’s interesting that people do want this yet report that workload increases at the same time. They are looking for a way to put boundaries around their work and the rest of their life and for flexibility. People are really looking for a new way of managing work and the rest of our lives.

7:32 – Another point is that people feel that they are not being treated with respect. This is a key area in which employers can improve employee satisfaction. It also links directly to managing flexible working.

8:38 – Cali adds that the HR professionals’ workload has shifted significantly. HR needs to shift to being more of a strategy partner and HR professionals need to start being facilitators who can help to craft business solutions. This requires a different skills set and less focus on rules and regulations and being the monitor of all things policy related.

10:22 – The HR professional needs to use the talent management strategies to help companies to meet customer needs, deliver quality services and staying up on innovation. The talent management strategy is one way of doing this.

10:49 – Wayne wonders whether this means removing the metrics and measurements that HR has depended on until now.

11:07 – Yes, according to Cali it will require re-thinking everything from compensation to career pathing and recruitment and retention strategies. All the things that require standardisation and conformity like compensation bands to make them work.

11.45 - Finally, Cali addresses the issue of how you compensate a team where some people work from home a couple of days a week, others work as consultants, others in different time zones etc. And then how do you train managers to manage these types of teams. It’s a whole different way of looking at the workplace and it will require a revolutionary change with a more strategic approach from HR.

Lisa has three blogs – Management Craft, 2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough, and Chile Pepper High – and says that reading and writing blogs helps her stay fresh and current.

She is also the author of five books, including High Impact Middle Management and the most recent, Two Weeks to a Breakthrough, which explains how you can make major progress toward any goal in two weeks.

0:12 – Wayne Kicks off by highlighting two pieces of research on CEO pay, one of which reveals that American CEOs make in a day what their workers do in a year and the other which found that boardroom pay in the UK has risen by a third over the past year.

1:12 – Wayne moves on to two recent blogs by regular contributor Charles Halliwell highlighting just how poor HR departments are at addressing the strategic and people challenges facing their organisations.

2:22 – Wayne welcomes Lisa Haneberg who the brains behind www.Mangementcraft.com. Lisa has picked up on a piece by Brian Amble which looks at how to deal with crisis situations – and in particular, why you shouldn’t rely on the advice of so-called experts.

3.36 – Lisa agrees that experts cannot predict outcomes any better than novices. Intellectually we probably know that – but expert consultants DO have their uses, most notably in helping us to focus.

3:48 – The key issue for Lisa is that people need help with focus. That’s where the expertise of the outside person comes in. However, predicting actual outcomes is more questionable…

4:30 – Does this work on an individual level rather than on an organisational level Wayne asks?

4:53 Lisa – Lisa explains the `chaotic system` at work. People can be helped to be smart, and nimble as well as to build the skills that they need for the future – especially where dealing with change is concerned.

6.03 – What are the things that companies and individuals can do to build focus asks Wayne?

6:12 – Often we are not aware of change yet it’s important to notice when conditions are changing. The discipline of aligning and tweaking what we do through change is key Lisa explains.

7:26 – This ties into another issues, that of
the changing role of the HR function.

7:38 – Lisa says that she is getting a bit sick of all these “why HR is failing” articles – many of them do not move the issue forward constructively. The real issue is that most HR functions are not set up to be strategic power houses.

8:32 – Wayne agrees that HR should not be set up to be tactical and then receive flack that they are not being strategic enough.

8:43 – Lisa also points out that we also fail to look at the role of executive management teams. Often they are not willing to put muscle behind creating an engaged workforce and HR cannot do this if they don’t have the buy-in of the Board.

10:19 – So how can we look at research like this and gain something that will move the discussion forward asks Wayne?

10:28 – Well, these studies do highlight the issue and can be used as a catalyst. How are we doing for instance? Even printing out an article like this and sharing it with colleagues moves the discussion forward.

Wayne and Phil discuss how businesses today are often stretched across different locations and different time zones and increasingly communicate using online tools rather than face-to-face. All of which means that managers increasingly need to manage and motivate a team that often spans continents.

So if everything is more fluid, just do managers communicate and motivate in flattened companies? How can they maintain a work-life balance when technology means they are always available? And do they ever need to meet anyone in person again?

Welcome to the Working Week podcast by Management-Issues.com with the latest round up of news, views and opinion that have caught Wayne’s Turmel’s attention.

First up, Wayne has some bad news for organisations who are worried that their staff lack motivation. Because there may be nothing they can do about it.

According to research from Cass Business School, levels of commitment and employee engagement vary greatly between nations and cultures and are closely linked to the overall happiness of a population.

01:22 – If you were never top in the class popularity stakes, check out Dr Rob Yeung’s advice to a manager who is not only feels challenged by the social demands of his workplace, but carries the biggest management cross of all – he hates golf.

01:47 – Wayne continues by looking at research from DDI and Monster.com which highlights that poor interviewers are driving away talent. Worryingly, two-thirds of job seekers report that the behaviour of interviewers has a direct impact on whether or not they will take a job.

02:41 – On a more light-hearted note, consultancy Croner have won this year’s Management-Issues annual competition for the most creative packaging of a gratuitously boring workplace survey. Take it away, Elvis….

03:09 – Wayne introduces this week’s guest, writer and speaker Laurence Haughton, author of It’s Not What you Say…It’s What You Do.

03:40 – Laurence explains the thinking behind the new Naked Strategy podcast which he and Max Mckeown has just launched on Management-Issues.com

05:27 – He then gives Wayne an up-date on the Chrysler story with the announcement of the appointment of CEO Bob Nardelli and the discussion around this news.

07:39 – Laurence believes that at Home Depot, Nardelli’s real problem was that he was not able to get enough buy-in.

09:31 – Laurence believes that there is a real benefit in having experienced a problem situation and that there is a strong probability that Bob Nardelli will have learned from his experience and will be able to apply this learning to the challenges ahead.

10:16 – Wayne asks about the challenges of a CEO changing sectors.

11:08 – According to Laurence every business has its own unique profile yet all face similar challenges. The ability to execute or to deliver is the same across all organisations. This is a transferable skill across sectors. General Electric, Home Depot and the automotive business share a commonality.

13:00 – Finally, Laurence has some thoughts on a survey which suggested that UK workers think their
managers are dithering and incompetent.

13:30 – He welcomes this open and frank approach and believes that in the USA people has been taught so much marketing clap trap that they never say what they are really thinking. In Australia, UK and Canada, people are more inclined to say what they think.

00:43: First up, there’s some friendly rivalry for the Working Week in the shape of a new Management-Issues podcast series, Naked Strategy.

Bringing together the unique talents of UK-based Management-Issues columnist and business guru, Max McKeown and, from California, writer, speaker, and management consultant, Laurence Haughton, the show is a bi-monthly x-ray for business leaders that sets out to shine a spotlight on the strategic issues behind the business news headlines.

01:19: Legislation in the UK to boost maternity rights for women has apparently resulted in women becoming less employable – especially where SMEs are concerned. Research by Citrix Online has found that more than half of employers believe the new rules are making some firms think twice when it comes to recruiting women.

01:50: Lest we forget, business runs on people skills, not just Blackberries. Whilst American workers have embraced wireless and remote communications technology, face-to-face, people-centred communication is still the key to building a successful business, according to workplace consultancy Randstad.

02:49:Finally, Wayne mentions the latest piece by Robert Heller, who asks a basic but rather fundamental question – what are companies for?

03:12: Wayne introduces this week’s guest, Andy Parsley of employee engagement consultancy, Green Lion.

03:15:Andy starts off by talking about Des Dearlove’s interview with Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard Business School which explores what business people can learn from the discipline of history.

04:00:Citing the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Andy says that the world is changing so fast we need to have an idea of what the future is going to look like “because we are going to have to live there – probably next week”.

Thus we need to have some sort of a sense of where we are going – which is what he has been trying to do with his understanding of the workplace.

05:29: He tracks back to the industrial revolution and starts the workplace journey at a time where getting technology from machines was the key source of competitive advantage. Then we entered a period in which the production line meant that process provided competitive advantage. Now, we live in an era where competitive advantage is gained primarily through information and technology.

06:37:Andy argues that managers are now moving into the next phase, an age in which competitive advantage will be driven by people.

07:36:Wayne wonders why do some managers still not seem to understand this.

07:20:Andy believes that one key issue is the lack of trust at work. He refers to an article on the site about how
managers are still suspicious of remote working despite the fact that people are generally more productive working from home.

He points to a comment by UK politician Boris Johnson, currently standing for Mayor of London, who believes that “our species yearns for the office”….and implies that working from home is the lazy option. Andy believes that this embodies dinosaur management thinking.

08:22:This point is highlighted by the fact that research shows that workers these days
don’t just automatically follow the rules. They rely on each other to get things done. Managers really must start to trust their people argues Andy as that’s the future of the workplace. This sums up people power over dinosaur managers, he believes.

09:21:Wayne asks about Andy Parsley’s forthcoming book on employee engagement which takes a holistic view on how to release people potential in the workplace.

Janet has worked extensively in theatre in the UK and has created leading roles in London, at the Edinburgh festival and for the BBC. Her ideas on voice and presentational teaching have been successfully applied in situations ranging from small group work in small rooms to large gatherings in vast auditoriums.

Janet Howd is the founding director of The Voice Practice and author of Breath of Life or Kiss of Death: Your Voice and Your Presentation.

00:54 – New research shows that many businesses are not measuring whether their training and development delivers any return on investment. As Wayne points out, what is the point of training and development if you cannot measure its effectiveness?

01:14 – According to research by Cranfield School of Management, eight out of ten British employers are now struggling to fill job vacancies with the shortages being especially acute in engineering and computing firms.

02:14 – Finally Wayne wonders whether you listening to this podcast whilst dining “al desko” – a new term to throw into those games of buzzword bingo highlighted in a blog by Bryan Alaspa.

04:19 – Kicking off their conversation, Janet Howd, stresses that the most important thing for a presenter is to think abut their audience. “What would I feel like if I was sitting in the audience having to listen to myself”? asks Janet. It’s a good tactic.

05:45 – It’s a situation where you are completely isolated. Even great actors will say that the most worrying thing is to stand up and have to be themselves.

07:03 – Wayne asks what are some of the things that business presenters can do to show empathy and limit barriers with the audience?

08:01 – Have questions that you can ask an audience. This tactic releases tension in the audience. Make a sound that is different to the sounds in the room. This helps everyone to feel more comfortable. Janet provides some examples

10:46 – People expect that if you have the authority to speak people will expect something a little bit heroic, even magical.

12:27 – Another piece of advice from Janet is that you have to stand up as tall as you can. Stand comfortably with your knees a bit slack. Imagine yourself in front of the best group of friends that you’ve got.

12:24 – Finally, Wayne asks about sit down presentations. Janet responds. If you are at a table – you need to sit taller. Think of the phrase “sit up and take notice.” If you are slouched over your notes, your voice will simply go into the table.