The eWorld Radar

Worker as athlete

The new normal dictates that we in the West will need to work harder to maintain our quality of life. Improving worker performance will be an ongoing exercise; much like athletes continually striving to improve their PB (Personal Best).

And what the workers will be judged on is changing as well. Intellectual capital and relationship capital will become increasingly important in the digital economy.

Thus the role of HR moves from ensuring people are sufficiently trained to be competent enough to fulfil their role to performance coaches focused on driving the work force to world class mastery.

Engagement will be a major theme. Keeping staff engaged won’t be the issue. Disengaged athletes will just be left behind and if they don’t step off the track they will get run down eventually. So that is self managing.

The challenge is how the HR function will improve its engagement with the workforce to create the intimacy needed for a coaching role and to have the influencing and technical skills to drive the ‘athletes’ towards mastery.

Sooner than you expect, you will be managing a stable of top flight athletes. All of whom are high maintenance. And given their new found discipline, when they come looking for tea and sympathy, biscuits will definitely not be an option.

Ade McCormack

The Inverse Peter Principle

You may be aware of the Peter Principle (more accurately a hypothesis) which suggests that people will continue to be promoted until they reach a position where they are in effect incompetent and thus do not rise further up the organisational hierarchy.

In the digital economy, this is unlikely to hold true because there will be no hierarchy. There will be experts and there will be those that align this expertise with what the market needs. The latter being an emerging 21^st century expertise domain.

This poses a problem if you are not an expert. In other words this is a problem for most of us.

Leaders who are used to setting the vision will be replaced by leaders who can infer the vision based on environmental factors including their access to expertise.

Managers who are paid to goad, charm and bully the workers into doing what is best for the company will no longer have a role where the workers are more motivated and passionate about what they do than any administrator.

Workers who operate in the traditional factory mode of doing the same stuff day in day out and whose thinking extends no further than lunch options will simply not be required. Unless they occupy niches in which there are no economies of scale on which to base the necessary investment in automation.

Thus career job number one is to reinvent ourselves as a genuine expert through acquiring the necessary skills and experiences. And to then alert the world to the new you. This may give rise to the digital economy Inverse Peter Principle, ie a race to genuine competence.

Ade McCormack

Industrial recruitment

It is a tenet of the industrial era that a focus on process and automation will improve output and maximise profits. The natural high cost of entry enabled the big to get bigger and dominate their markets as we have seen in mature sectors such as finance, retail and energy.

Recruitment is a little behind the curve as it is a very young industry. However the industry does have its giants and these are well represented on most high streets. What I find disturbing is their industrial approach to recruitment. Process seems to trump service.

The model may well work for McDonalds but not so for recruitment agencies. A transactional approach when dealing in a person’s career is insensitive at the very least.

My bigger concern is that these transaction-recruiters are seeping into the ‘less evolved’ agencies and thus blunting their service proposition.

Perhaps there is an element of natural selection taking place. Those recruitment companies that adopt transactional practices will gravitate to the high street where they will be eaten by the big boys. Those players that shun this approach and focus on a more personalised service will out manoeuvre the dinosaurs and thus enjoy higher margins.

So a low value approach will attract low grade candidates and low margins, which is okay if you can get the volume and stay in play despite the globalisation-induced margin tailspin. And similarly the personalised recruiters will attract the best candidates and the highest margins and will not be exposed
to commodity pressure.

Thus only one approach lends itself to the digital economy. For some its time to rethink recruitment.

Ade McCormack

Empower your ‘bad-job’ workers

In a hyper competitive market, where customers look at the price tag before they look at the offering, it makes sense to keep your labour bill as low as possible.  And so where you cannot ‘automate out’ the labour you simply minimise the investment in those workers that take up the so called ’bad jobs’.

Well according to the Harvard Business Review this approach to worker investment is flawed.

Zeynep Ton, visiting assistant professor in operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management suggests that retailers can break the low-price low worker investment link by adopting the following practices:

• Reduce the catalogue of items sold. This reduces complexity both operationally and in what workers need to get to grips with.
• Rather than flexing the workforce in line with demand, cross train workers so that they can be reposted as required. Thus there are less clueless temp workers damaging the brand.
• Apply lean principles to eliminating waste so that worker productivity is maximised.
• Empower employees to make real-time decisions, which translates into better customer service.

As mentioned in previous posts, most organisations are in a ‘race to the bottom’. The winners will be those that can flourish when they get there. And they will be unlikely to achieve this unless they place great emphasis on their staff, new technologies and information management.

Ade McCormack

Talent – Just-in-time learning

The day of the multi-day residential learning experience has come to an end from a mainstream education perspective. The market increasingly has a role to play in this as does the worker.

The market is putting pressure on costs so anything that involves accommodation and travel will be unattractive. Also the opportunity cost of being away from the desk makes many managers reluctant to release their staff for extended periods of time.

Also the speed at which the market moves can often make classroom learning, particularly where it is knowledge-based, appear like an annual inoculation when what the learners really need is daily vitamins.

It would also appear that Generation-Ys much prefer their education bite-sized. The digital economy, with its real-time pace and volatile movement is forcing the rest of us to fall into line with this approach.

There are a couple of significant points that come to mind:

• The future of universities is in question.
• The school model is looking increasingly outmoded.

Isn’t it best to be taught how to learn at school? Should there ever be a business-critical need to know the outcome of Henry the Eighth’s six marriages the learner has the skills to find that out?

The convergence of social media, mobile and the Cloud looks set to shake up how we nurture our talent.

The death of talent?

It is claimed that the digital economy will eventually obviate the need for people. Why use a high maintenance sensitive carbon life form with undisclosed loyalties when you can use new technology for a fraction of the price and management overhead?

It’s a no-brainer. The race to deliver more for less is accelerating this.

But there comes a point when every organisation has basically automated everything and therefore the race to the bottom is over.

Therefore the only option is to start racing back up the value chain. And this is where people become important again. But this time the people are not compliant corporate cogs but highly creative artists; people who are a nightmare to manage but are in effect organic idea generators.

And once you start hooking these people up together using collaboration technologies you have an innovation engine that will differentiate your organisation from the rest.

So ironically in a digital economy people become more and not less important. But these people really are ‘talent’.

Mistakes versus Failure

Post industrial revolutionary Seth Godin wrote an interesting post recently on the difference between failure and mistakes.

There is something weak about failure and there is something apologetic about a mistake. And that’s perhaps why we tend to feel more comfortable about making a mistake than failing.

But according to Seth mistakes come about as a result of carelessness and easily avoided, whereas failure is taking an initiative to reach a goal which doesn’t work out.  

So we need to make less mistakes and fail more. In fact our tendency to avoid failure is an innovation killer. And our tendency to make mistakes is a good reason to replace us with a computer.

Click here to read Seth’s post.

 Ade McCormack

IT Demystified – Buzzwords - Knowledge Workers

Knowledge worker is not a new term but it is one that is becoming more refined each day.

Traditionally a knowledge worker was someone who used their head and not their hands. So if you had an office job, and latterly used a computer, then you qualified.

In recent years there has been a focus on automating humans out of the loop. Fierce competition from emerging economies is forcing organisations to drive out costs. And humans are costly.

So working at a computer processing information no longer guarantees you a place in the post industrial economy.

So the modern day knowledge worker is more than just an organic extension to a corporate process. They actually deal in what they know (knowledge) rather than what the computer offers (information) knowledge.

The game is to be able to do what computers cannot (yet) do. So the more you are able to apply your knowledge in a creative manner the more likely you are to remain in play.

Ask yourself the question, do people think of you more as a bank clerk (process-oriented) or Salvador Dali (creative). That will give you a clue as to whether you are a knowledge worker or not.

Ade McCormack

Towards a Digital Future

The rules are changing. Life in a post industrial economy will be different.

As with any revolution there will be winners and losers.  But don’t think you are safe if you are a knowledge worker or a technologist. 

If your role fits neatly into a job specification / repeatable business process then you should consider yourself ‘at risk’.

Artistry and influence will be key worker 3.0 competencies. Diligent work ethic on its own just won’t cut it.

Ade McCormack

PS. I've been short listed for the Computer Weekly social media awards (two categories):

• CIO / Director
• Best use of social media (individual)

Click here to look at the short lists and use your vote.

Talent scout or immigration control?

Recruitment seems increasingly more about ensuring candidates meet set criteria than on spotting rough diamonds.

In a post industrial world creativity is needed. And so the recruitment function needs to adjust its practices accordingly.