Tag Archives: innovation

Key Trends Shaping The Workforce Of The Future

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by Kevin Parikh

The workforce of the future has been debated for years but has never been such a hot topic as today, with the Covid-19 pandemic. It is no longer news that the face of the world and the way we do business has irrevocably changed. Instead of the slow and steady climb toward a borderless, digital society, global economies suddenly found themselves launched onto a new trajectory, forced to adapt to survive. We are watching the workplace and workforce of the future take shape, with changing roles, relationships and demands. There has been a rapid shift toward remote work, innovation and automation, enabled by the ubiquity of technology and the digital economy.

What will the future look like, and what does it mean for the workforce and youth of today?

The workforce of the future will be distributed and transboundary.

Advancements in digital and unified communications, allowing for real-time audio and visual connection, have made it easier than ever to work remotely and efficiently from anywhere in the world without compromising the quality of interactions. In fact, at the advent of the pandemic, many white-collar companies around the world were able to make the work-from-home shift almost instantaneously.

According to a survey of roughly 1,200 chief information officers across different industries around the world conducted by Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), 72% of the workforce is remote, and it is expected that the share of the workforce permanently working from home will double to 34.4% in 2021, from 16.4% before the pandemic.

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6 questions on the future of L&D with Microsoft’s learning leader

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by Jennifer Colletta

Learning and development have become one of the cornerstones of many companies’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as organizations seek to arm their employees with the skills needed to navigate the frequent change and disruptions, while also preparing them for ongoing digital transformation. In order for such efforts to be sustainable, companies must have a true commitment to fostering a learning culture, says Joe Whittinghill, corporate vice president of talent, learning and insights at Microsoft.

Whittinghill has spent more than two decades with the tech giant, including the last five helming its learning initiatives. His work was influential in the development of the Microsoft Learning Center and the creation of Microsoft’s Leadership Principles—a driving force in the company’s cultural transformation. Whittinghill recently sat down with HRE to talk about the role of learning in culture, particularly at a time of rapid reinvention.

HRE: What were L&D leaders at Microsoft spending most of their energy on prior to the pandemic? And how did the pandemic shift those priorities?

Whittinghill: At Microsoft, we have long been focused on creating a culture of “learn-it-alls” by developing a personalized learning journey with cutting-edge learning and development, content, platforms and services. Our approach to learning has moved rapidly to be grounded in neuroscience, and more fully understanding how the brain functions, to truly enable our best work and best lives. While the pandemic hasn’t drastically changed our overall approach, it has certainly accelerated it. What has changed is the move to fully virtual, both real-time and asynchronous, and the development and optimization of these durable capabilities within our portfolio of available learning methods. Now more than ever, we’re looking at bringing new ways of learning to our employees and ensuring that we continue to prioritize a learning culture by offering time and space for learning.

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How to work with every damn Myers-Briggs personality type

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by Jonathan Thompson

We got experts to weigh-in on how classic personality traits translate to remote work.

The shift to remote work has given many of us a new perspective on how we do our jobs. Without the context of a shared workspace or the rhythm of a typical office day, our own personalities are having far more of a say in our performance.

It follows, then, that the best way to maximize our output in a WFH environment is to better know our personalities – and those of our dispersed colleagues.

An efficient (and intriguing) way to manage this personality wrangling is via the tried-and-tested Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Generally regarded as one of the most accurate personality tests out there, the MBTI is widely applied within the business world, with 89 of the Fortune 100 companies utilising it.

“The MBTI is deceptively simple, but it’s also an extremely useful way to see how team members are inherently different, and how you can work together more successfully,” says occupational psychologist John Hackston, Head of Thought Leadership at the Myers-Briggs Company. “It’s a means to boost productivity in people, increasing their engagement and making them generally happier in their work.”

In other words, the MBTI might just be the key to turning your remote team into a smooth autonomous unit.

The 16 personality types and their traits

Based on Carl Jung’s Theory of Psychological Types, the MBTI is a self-reported personality survey that has been around in various shapes and forms since the 1940s. Respondents answer a series of simple questions about their feelings and preferences, eventually aligning with one of 16 personality types.

Each of these types is identified by four letters, starting with an E or an I (for extrovert/introvert) followed by S or N (sensibility/intuition), T or F (thinking/feeling), and finally a J or a P (judgment/perception). Each type also has a descriptor, e.g., “the analyst,” to further characterize the personality type in action.

Once you know your team members’ types, the thinking goes, you can better assign them to projects which match their preferences, proficiency, and proclivities. You can also communicate more effectively if you have a better idea of how people process information.

To get started, take the official Myers-Briggs test here (or try a similar free questionnaire, recommended by psychologists here), then check out our expert guidance below on how to work with each personality type. Continue reading →

Do people work better without a crowd?

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What we can learn from athletes performing in empty stadiums.

by Ben Lyttleton
On June 20, Manchester United’s star player Bruno Fernandes scored a late penalty to earn his team a draw against English Premier League rivals Tottenham Hotspur. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the stands at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium were empty when he took the shot. It was the first of many soccer games to be played behind closed doors, and afterward, Fernandes was asked if it was easier to take the penalty without the distraction of the opposing team’s home fans. “I like the pressure,” he said. “With the crowd, it would be better.”

With fans across the world mostly forbidden from attending sports venues, it’s been possible to compare performances with and without the presence of crowds. In soccer, for example, there have been more goals, more mistakes leading to goals, more penalties scored, and more away wins. In Germany in particular, one analyst described a “negative home advantage,” as away teams, unaffected by a home crowd (and a referee who may give the home team more beneficial decisions), played with a new freedom.

Players and coaches seem emboldened by empty stadiums: more willing to be creative and take risks (and make mistakes) than they otherwise might be.

Could these benefits also translate to the many lines of work that today are being done at home? And how does the lack of an audience affect our own performance? Can we use it to our advantage?

It’s easier to tally goals on a score sheet than productivity on a time sheet, but there are some indicators that a lack of face-to-face office experiences is also having unexpected effects in business — and not all of them bad. One big fear when many companies made the switch was that employees, away from the pressurized environment of the physical office space and with no one keeping an eye on them, would “shirk from home.”

In fact, the opposite happened. The length of working days has increased; digital presenteeism is on the up, and so is productivity. Many people like working from home — and the majority don’t want to return to the office, at least not full-time.

Coaches have also spoken of players who star in training but choke in front of a crowd. Not every player, it seems, is like Fernandes. As Dan Abrahams, a sports psychologist who works with soccer club AFC Bournemouth has said, “More players than you would think are negatively impacted by a crowd.”

Empty stadiums suit those introverts who, according to Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, feel most alive and most capable in quieter, low-key environments. Cain believes introverts flourish with more privacy.

For those who do flourish in front of others, an audience provides a change in the pressure dynamics that affect performance. In front of a crowd, our working mode changes from “threat state,” driven by anxiety, to “challenger state,” where we are more likely “to have a go,” according to Gary Bloom, a sports psychologist who works with the Oxford United soccer club. “The limbic part of our brain is where our emotions live — our fear, our anxiety, our excitement. That part is aroused by fear/threat,” he told The Athletic website. “I don’t think it is going to be as aroused [without a crowd].” So, perhaps performing in front of others gives a chance for the challenger state to take over, and we feel more comfortable taking risks.

A couple of years ago, researchers from Johns Hopkins University put the “threat state” theory to the test. They asked people to perform a task on a video game with and without people watching: Those with an audience performed better.

In the experiment, being observed clearly served as an incentive to do well — so maybe all those Zoom calls do keep us on our toes. It may also be that the relationship between performer and crowd builds community and cohesion, hallmarks of a successful working environment. It was French sociologist Émile Durkheim who coined the term collective effervescence to describe how people build a group identity. Sport certainly does that, as can any shared experience.

The changes imposed on our social connections by the pandemic forced us to find new ways to come together: rooftop musical performances, drive-by protests, and online author workshops, to name a few of the many examples of creative responses to lockdowns. “Emergencies often prove to be the forge in which new ideas and opportunities are hammered out,” wrote Erica Chenoweth, professor in human rights and international affairs at Harvard University, in the Guardian.

Our professional behavior may still be performative, albeit in a virtual space. However, we can take inspiration from sport, and specifically penalty kicks in soccer. The secret to a successful penalty, as Fernandes might attest, has little to do with crowds. It’s more about developing the right mindset and practicing with purpose. As we grow accustomed to new working models, these are the habits that can help build success.

Source: Strategy+Business

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The Digitization Imperative

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  By Ram Charan

The Covid-19 crisis isn’t behind us yet, but companies have to start putting the economic pieces together for their business to not just survive but also build a new future. At this point, there are three priorities most companies should act on with great haste: employee safety, cash management week by week and a digital connection with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners. Missing any of the three could seriously jeopardize the continuity of the business.

Companies that are not already on their way to being digital have to realize the urgency. It’s not just digital giants like Amazon that threaten their future. It’s also legacy companies that are becoming digital. In the pandemic, they’ve been able to adapt more quickly. And, under normal circumstances, they can gain share very fast.

Maybe you’ve come to terms with the fact that you must become a digital company. But you’re convinced that this is not the time to act. You have to realize that waiting for stability is a luxury you can’t afford. Really, there is no need to wait.

Talking to a number of CEOs, I have learned that there are myths about what digitization costs, how much cash it will use, and how long it will take. Business leaders don’t think they can show a clear return on their investment. Besides, they’re convinced that people in the organization will resist it.

Well, that’s no longer the case. You can now pick the most urgent, most critical tasks—the ones that will help you get cash, increase revenues or connect with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners—and achieve them in bite-size portions. You can see benefits in weeks or months, not years.

 

Here are some examples:

• Dynamic pricing. It is a necessity when uncertainty is here to stay.

• Collection of receivables. The collections process is critical to liquidity.

• A continuous connection with customers. You will need this to help you pick up how their behavior is changing, how demand is shifting and what the voice of the customer is. It will help with forecasting, with impacts on inventory and cash flow.

• A single source of data. Data-based decision-making, whether or not it’s automated, is now an imperative. But it is difficult to use data for decision-making if it is spread across many silos; it is highly inconsistent, and managers don’t trust it.

A number of small vendors now exist that can do projects like these for you in less than 90 days for less than $400,000.

Make your own list and take one or two tasks at a time. Then, reach out to small vendors (UST Global and Altimetrik are two I’m familiar with). Define your tasks clearly and precisely, just as you’ve done with outsourcing, facilities construction or other turnkey projects.

You might not realize that digital giants like Amazon all began using digital technology for one task at a time. They used small vendors—and still do—because they are fast, they cost less, and they take the project to completion. They become partners in operationalizing it. You focus on what needs to be digitized and why, and how it will create revenues, cash, margins, customer satisfaction or speed. The vendors focus on giving you the relevant digital platform or digital apps.

When it comes to organizational resistance, that is unlikely to exist anymore. If someone does resist, you have to deal with it right away.

One more thing: don’t be put off by terminology and tools with which you’re not familiar, like algorithms and big data. Algorithms—the mathematical rules by which data is processed—have been around for hundreds of years. Roughly two dozen of them are used for common tasks and are readily available.

So, take the mystery out and take on small turnkey tasks that can build your business and ensure its continuity.

Source: Chief Executive

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