Great Teams Are About Personalities, Not Just Skills

by Dave Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

At the start of 2016 Google announced that it had discovered the secret ingredients for the perfect team. After years of analyzing interviews and data from more than 100 teams, it found that the drivers of effective team performance are the group’s average level of emotional intelligence and a high degree of communication between members. Google’s recipe of being nice and joining in makes perfect sense (and is hardly counter intuitive).

Perhaps more surprising, Google’s research implies that the kinds of people in the team are not so relevant. While that may be true at Google, a company where people are preselected on the basis of their personality (or “Googliness”), this finding is inconsistent with the wider scientific evidence, which indicates quite clearly that individuals’ personalities play a significant role in determining team performance. In particular, personality affects:

What role you have within the team
How you interact with the rest of the team
Whether your values (core beliefs) align with the team’s

(more…)

How will leadership change in the cognitive era?

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by Chris Cancialosi, Ph.D

Technological innovation is continuing to accelerate on a hockey stick growth curve. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon are bringing cognitive computing capability to the masses.

And it’s only a matter of time until nearly every aspect of our work and personal lives are impacted.

These advances are still relatively new. Time will tell when and how they change things, but it will happen, and it will happen quickly. In a recent article, Steve Denning reminds us that a repeating pattern of massive transformation has occurred regularly over the last 250 years.

With massive change at our doorstep, now is the time to begin a collective discussion to help leaders navigate this new age. (more…)

BPO sales

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BPO Sales Executive

The Senior BPO Sales Executive is responsible for achieving profitable sales growth by managing/closing multiple sales campaigns using deep sales process and offering or product expertise within a complex market or emerging market/white space. The role report to the Sales Vice President and Leader and is focused in Banking/capital Markets or in Pharma/Life Science Industry sectors.

Outsourcing Concept

Responsibilities:

Grow the Business: Drives sales opportunities to closure – increasingly selling a mix of defined solutions/extensions and new offerings or products into white space; wide range of service group offerings and deal structures

Develop Key Relationships: Develops strong relationships with key client buyers: the Divisional head/C-Suite level; client decision making spanning multiple layers of organization

Experience:

10- 15 years’ experience in F&A BPO business development in Banking, Capital Markets or CPG

Proven ability to develop new BPO business and meet quotas ($10 million)

Excellent communication skills and high level of maturity

Superior relationship management and networking skills for both internal and external customer/s

Excellent client handling skills, with ability to present and articulate various points of view

Ability to forge relationships across and throughout the internal organization

Personal Characteristics:

The ideal candidate is able to operate successfully in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment. Energy, drive and an entrepreneurial spirit are necessary characteristics for success.

Strong and capable leader, able to win the confidence and trust of his/her team, shape the culture, and exert influence both internally and externally

Ability to establish immediate credibility among his/her peers, a professional who is respected for his/her leadership, intelligence and expertise

Superb negotiator and communicator

If interested, please contact:

Jeff Bruckner. email bruckner@issg.net

Phone: (973) 761-5613

Leadership styles must change in the new era of “always on” transformation

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by Lars Fæste and Jim Hemerling

In the face of disruptive technologies, globalization, and a volatile marketplace, leading companies are committing to a new kind of transformation.

Instead of pursuing it as a onetime, crisis-driven initiative and instead of focusing primarily on cutting costs, they are committing to “always on” transformation — profoundly changing their strategy, business model, operating model, people, and organization on an ongoing basis in order to stay ahead.

The new approach demands a new kind of leadership — leadership that is not just directive but also inclusive and that has an appetite for risk, says a new e-book published by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Transformation: Delivering and Sustaining Breakthrough Performance draws on the firm’s work in more than 400 transformations that generated a median annual impact exceeding $340 million through cost cuts, revenue increases, the application of capital efficiency levers, and improvements in organizational performance. (more…)

The 10 Best Business Lessons Of 2016

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Here’s a list of the best advice we’ve given for building and growing a successful organization.

Over the last year, there have been a lot of changes on the business landscape from Yahoo being sold to Verizon to Gawker going bankrupt. Along the way we’ve talked to CEOs of big companies, first-time entrepreneurs, and those working hard every day to make something new. Many have gone against the grain and looked at practices that may seem unintuitive but ultimately helped them find success.

To help you prepare for making change at your own company in 2017, we’ve complied some of the best business lessons we learned this year.

Lesson 1: Look Outside The Box When Sourcing Talent

Though unemployment has been on a steady decline over the last few years, tech jobs are still in high demand. More often than not they are hard to fill. Take the example of security: Cybersecurity jobs are very hot right now, and most companies are having trouble finding and cultivating the right talent. The answer to this problem may be to think bigger. Telecommunications services firm Level 3 has actually found success in sourcing security talent not from their hard labor skills but from their passions, namely from musicians.

Though many people do not know the technical skills that security professionals need, the company found that those adept at music were able to learn how to do the job and excel at it. By casting a wider net and seeking talent from out-of-the-box sources, a few companies have been able to fill gaps where others are still searching long and hard.

You can read about this strategy here: Musicians May Be The Key To The Cybersecurity Talent Shortage (more…)