Leaders are suffering from their own business hangover. During our recent political in-fighting and economic uncertainty, businesses have had their nose to the grindstone striving to do more with less. Everyone was so focused on surviving and cutting, they're just now looking up and realizing they have no clear next steps, limited vision and no energy.
AmyK, who has worked with Martha Beck (Oprah's Life Coach, bestselling author and columnist for O), National Geographic, IBM, John Paul Mitchell Systems, to name a few, offers you, our readers, these three quick and easy tips for executive development that any business leader can practice to immediately improve his/her leadership performance: - Focus on energy, not time. Time is a constant; energy is a manageable, renewable resource. What's sucking out your energy and what refuels it? Your answers will influence your strategy for energy management within the constraints of time.
- Leadership happens one conversation at a time. Slow down and ask better questions. Focus on thought-provoking questions over reports. In meeting prep, devote at least five minutes to think of three to five questions that will lead to a more productive, more thought-provoking meeting. These five minutes will save you hours down the road.
- Create internal alignment. Step back and ask yourself: What am I resisting? What am I judging? What am I attached to? Answer these three questions and you'll gain clarity, insight and a foundation for momentum.
About our Guest Author:
With over 700 presentations to 20,000+ executives in seven countries, AmyK Hutchens serves as an Intelligent Activist and business strategist to leaders around the globe. AmyK is a former senior EVP of operations for a leading sales and marketing firm, director of education for Europe and Australia for a 900 million dollar consumer products company, and chosen member of National Geographic's Educator Advisory Committee. She is the winner of five Telly Marketing Awards and the Summit International's Award for Creativity (2008) and a featured guest on NBC, Fox and ABC for her brain-based commentary on current events.
Getting the job filled with the right person may be the ultimate goal of a recruiter, but instilling trust and confidence in clients should always precede that target.
At the core of this challenging profession is the desire and skill to understand clients’ needs, specific industries and the geographical landscape of placement territory.
A “good recruiter” never rests on the laurels of past performance – its opening night every day for those in the recruitment business, and having more than a passing knowledge of the industry in which they 
specialize is paramount.
Many recruiters get into the business after enjoying a career in the industry for which they recruit – this rings true particularly in recent years within the high lay-off high technology realm. Having the ability to “speak” a client’s language cuts down on potential miscommunication and in due course the time it will take to make that working match. In addition, recruiters who have been personally involved in a specific industry understand how to best locate candidates for a particular geographical area.
Recruiters with the right stuff know the impact of trust. A client company should never have to worry about being left out in the cold if a new hire doesn’t work out. A dependable recruiter will be there with “replacement warranty” in hand to make sure that this bump in the road is smoothed out in the short distance.Beyond building relationships with clients and candidates, recruiters must have integrity. They will never steal candidates from one client to “sell” to another and will always be available to clients to iron out problems.
And the cream of the recruiter crop will take the time to understand a client company’s corporate culture. It should never be about merely filling a position – it should always be about filling it with the right candidate, one who will meet the needs of a client and in turn make for a happy “marriage” between employer and employee.
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James E. (Jim) Moniz, CEO of Northeast VisionLink, a Massachusetts firm that specializes in structuring executive compensation. James E. Moniz is a national speaker on the topic of wealth management and on executive compensation. Jim Moniz will be presenting at this years SHRM conference in Phoenx, be sure to check out our presentation: “Creating and Sustaining a Competitive Advantage, The Role and Impact of Effective Compensation and Rewards Strategies”
In September 2010, the Economist Intelligence Unit published the results of a quantitative study that demonstrated how the speed of change brought on by the evolutionary technological changes, the globalization of markets and the recent economic realities have forever redefined how companies must operate in 2020.
Because "speed" will increasingly become the keyword for success, companies will see a paradigm shift toward a more "just in time workforce" vs. a permanent workforce. Hiring local managers will guarantee an expeditious and seamless integration in new and emerging markets and HR will be a critical link between the centralized decision making authorities and the globally decentralized branches. Is your company ready for 2020?"Global firms in 2020. The next decade of change for organizations and workers," Economist Intelligence Unit. Sep 2010: 1-32.
By 2012, the workforce-performance-management software services industry will reach nearly $2.6 billion according to an IDC report entitled Worldwide Workforce Performance Management Forecast 2008-2012.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about “economic downturn”, “slowdowns”, and the unemployment rate. At the same time, the IDC is forecasting somewhat rapid growth for software services that provide workforce-performance-management solutions.
This can be explained easily enough: HR executives are hedging their bets that a software solution is a cheaper solution than a human solution (i.e. a consultant or a new hire), and (working in the workforce-performance-management software services industry) I am inclined to agree.
Lisa Rowan, the IDC’s HR and Talent-management services program director says that “Despite a potential business downturn, employee retention will continue to be a key concern for HR executives in 2008, given the very real demographic shifts occurring in the workforce” and that “[e]mployers will be seeking ways to both automate and integrate talent functions, with the goal of identifying and retaining top performers. Performance management is a linchpin in this process”.
On a small scale, might such services (as implemented in, say, a paper company) be a first step in the direction of better fostering a relationship between Connectivity and Productivity?
I recently read an interesting report in The Economist that really got me thinking about something that many HR executives are coming to see as a problem: how do we foster a more portable, “always on”, virtual type of working style for our employees while, at the same time, retaining the kind of cohesiveness and sense of control that made the last century so unbelievably productive?
The argument has always been that as technology grows more sophisticated (and perhaps sophisticated isn’t the right word), we grow more productive, we break free of “Malthusian equilibrium” and so, from a very modern historical prospective, we are liberated from the arduous nature of “labor”. And, to a certain extent, we’ve really seen this kind of evolution.
Computers have changed everything, right? Well so have cellular phones, fax machines and the internet. The necessity of the vast cubical farms that make Dilbert cartoons so funny, from a technical standpoint, really isn’t there anymore.
But there is still that practical standpoint. Technically, we could save hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing away with the vast majority of our office space, and sending our employees home with their “terminals” and getting them all a Blackberry and an HP C1340 All-in-one printer. Done. We might even save enough to pay a percentage of their rent or mortgage and upgrade their health coverage.
But will they work?
My guess, along with virtually everyone else’s, is that, no, they will not work. So if we are going to actually make use of our new gizmos in the work place, we need to find some way to reconcile the more recent advances in mobile technology, bandwidth, and mobile computing with the stationary, “conventional” (and this is perhaps the focus for change), work arrangement; to knit the two together with some rather unconventional Human Resources Management.
We all know how they are doing it at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. But how do we do it at the insurance company, the consultancy, the paper distributor?
With over 700 presentations to 20,000+ executives in seven countries, AmyK Hutchens serves as an Intelligent Activist and business strategist to leaders around the globe. AmyK is a former senior EVP of operations for a leading sales and marketing firm, director of education for Europe and Australia for a 900 million dollar consumer products company, and chosen member of National Geographic's Educator Advisory Committee. She is the winner of five Telly Marketing Awards and the Summit International's Award for Creativity (2008) and a featured guest on NBC, Fox and ABC for her brain-based commentary on current events.
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