Once upon a time, in a large city, there were many men working tirelessly, constructing a gigantic building. Their supervisor came along and spotted three bricklayers, pausing to have a sip of tea in the middle of their work.
‘What are you doing?’, he asked each of them.
The first man replied gruffly, ‘Are you blind? I’m laying bricks.’
The second man replied in a morose tone, “I’m putting up a wall and it is back-breaking work. But of course, I do get paid regularly, so I suppose it is all right”.
The third man lifted his hands to the sky and said enthusiastically and with pride, “I’m building a cathedral.”
Which of the bricklayers are you? Are you like the third bricklayer who is enthusiastic, self-driven and proactive?Are you like the third bricklayer who sees work not as an impediment to his real life but an integral part of it? Are you like the third bricklayer who loves work so much that it loses its distinction with his life and becomes one happy melange of responsibility? Are you like the third bricklayer who speaks passionately about his work and well of his company and truly means it? Are you like the third bricklayer who wants to see the bigger picture and contribute to the world at large?
Then the future belongs to You.
You are Indispensable
Robotics is the future. Period. Whether we see a machine-run society where humans are enslaved by robots or we finally achieve that idyllic bliss-lithe lifestyle with all work being executed by robots, the paradoxical truth will be that humans will become as indispensable to companies as technology.
You are going to be absolutely indispensable and invincible with every technological leap and feat. The age of “Big Data” which is approaching, bodes well for you as your expertise will be valued and seeked to sift and make sense of the mounds of information.
In the current corporate age of surveillance cameras and infrastructure that tabs every keystroke and Internet site visits, the future will see employees being subjected to daily brain scans and assigned daily tasks based on its results. For example, an employee showing high activation in the frontal lobe of the brain (which controls functions such as attention, problem-solving and judgement) on a particular day will be assigned a more detailed task such as reviewing a 100 page financial document. HR will have a separate staff of resources whose function is to track and develop the mental capabilities of employees while alleviating stress.
You are the Master key
Insights suggest employees are going to enjoy and hold greater power than ever before. Since the 2008 recession, we have seen many a company going austere, tight and increasingly unwilling to spend on their employees. In fact most of them are taking sheer advantage of its employees by skirting all training expenditure and loading them with additional duties with the bare minimum compensation. Little do they realize that they are playing with fire with increasing reports of employee disengagement and burn-out. The truth be told that those companies that fail to pay attention and tap the true potential of its employees will bear the severe brunt of this gross neglect.
Gone are the days when all those Booker prize-worthy prose and eulogies on employee development delivered in the boardrooms got transported to the bottom end of the priority list of the management in actuality. Gone too are the days when employees were too busy for learning and saw it as a hassle that ate into their productive work hours.
Thanks to the uncertain job market conditions, there has been a marked attitudinal shift in the employees. Today’s’ employees are a refocused lot viewing development and learning as their best career investment. And they will naturally make a beeline and swarm to those companies offering the honeypot incentive of real-time employee development.
While employees are getting enlightened and empowered, the organizations that fail to play catch up will be left in the lurch. Here’s why. The Employee deal, the social contract between the employer and the employee has gone through a marked change over the decades. From the past when companies promised lifelong employment in return for employees’ loyalties to the current paternalistic trend of hiring and firing as per business need, the futuristic Employee deal will tread and morph the middle ground. The Employee deal of successful companies will offer a smarter and more practical alternative to job stability – Strong commitment to training and career development. Successful companies will use training as their core strategy to build employee loyalty. That is the new security blanket.
It is now upon the companies to bring upon themselves success or failure. Success is when companies realize their chances for growth are closely aligned with its commitment to fostering employee development. Success is when companies can effectively track, realize and multiply the potential of its employees. Success is when companies find their Master key, You.
You are seeking Nirvana
‘What you can be, you must be’. That is the goal of the enlightened You.
As the world is getting increasingly hi-tech, people are increasingly yearning to go back to their roots in quest for sobriety, simplicity and wisdom. The recession is teaching people many important lessons. People have realized that you don’t need much to make the most of your living. Scarcity breeds innovation and people are finding many innovative and simplistic means to live a wholesome life.
Quite naturally, companies are finding it tougher to retain this new breed of enlightened employees ie You with just a conventional benefits package. Trending the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs table, You are truly seeking Self-Actualization like never before. You are keen on seeing the big picture and taking an active interest in the vision, the productivity and the future growth of the company. You understand how your piece fits in the whole organization puzzle.
You are seeking Truth, Knowledge and Growth. You are seeking YOU.
You are the Winds of Change
Employees will become potent key-drivers of revolutionary changes within the organization.
The ball will truly be in the court of the employee. They will increasingly demand transparency in all the organizational dealings. Organizations will become more open about their policies and practices. Employees will expect greater openness from the management about performance review criteria, changes in corporate strategy, career advancement opportunities, high potential program selection and management succession. From the current situation faced by most companies as to how to motivate and effectively engage the employees, the future will see employees sharing this responsibility and making a clear choice to be engaged. Instructional freedom will be the rule rather than the exception. In future, employees will be more assertive about the trainings they need and be active volunteers for any high potential development programs. Thus, training programs will effortlessly transition from a top-down imperative to employee-driven. Rather than having organizations to chart their career path, many employees will want to take their career development into their own hands. Learning and development professionals will have to approach their role in a wholly different avataar. Rather than being mere deliverers of information, they will be allies to the employee helping them identify their career path, identify their strengths and locate the developmental resource. Employees will be involved in the measurement process thereby increasing the credibility of the Performance Management Systems. Currently, software tools such as Saleforce.com and Inc.’s Work.com allows employees to praise one another. The future is Crowdsourced Performance Review which involves feedback from a range of employee’s colleagues rather than the traditional top-down approach. They will have a voice in their own performance reviews and the power to nominate one another for awards.
You are Bob the Builder
Much like a dentist, You will go all out to root the decayed age-old norms and practices, cap and fix the current ones and build a much stronger company foundation. You will be an active builder of the company and societal culture.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) will hold far greater importance to the enlightened workforce of tomorrow as they seek to strike a values match with the companies they associate with. It will be a major factor for not just the consumers and investors but also in attracting and retaining employees. Companies will have to provide meaningful, safe and healthy work environments. Employee engagement and inclusion strategies should be well-planned, formulated and executed in such a manner that issues that negatively affect psychological health are the exception, not the norm. Workplace bullying will no longer be acceptable to the employee as they will increasingly be open and vocal about any form of harassment. Pretty often, the difference between a “good” place to work and a “not-so-good” one zeroes down to the relationships employees have with their bosses and peers. Workplace bullying is an ugly reality and is the antithesis of a healthy work culture.
You are the Boss
If Tom Vines, IBM VP-Technical and Business leadership’s words hold any ground, then chances are quite good that in the future, the traditional definitions of a boss and his subordinate will gradually erode into extinction. In fact, employees will be selecting their managers based on feedback instead of the other way around. Vines also predicts companies will publish the supervisor’s credibility as essential recruitment information to attract credible work pool. Yes, the day will come when companies will have to expose their key manager’s ratings to garner credibility from the resources.
Also, firms will no longer ‘own’ their talent. Employees will also have the upper hand when it comes to the terms & conditions of their work. Many will increasingly choose to work on a contingent basis as independent contractors or temporary workers or as volunteers without pay or not work at all for a period of time. Consider the recent case of Foldit, an online game by the University of Washington letting the public solve puzzles on the configuration of proteins. You never know the likely chances of hitting upon the cure of AIDS from an enthusiastic gaming volunteer.
You are a Bird
As the future veers to a decentralized, more permeable organization, employees will be like true birds with no boundaries. The sky will truly be the limit. And companies will appreciate and encourage employees to fly to other organizations for extended time periods to increase their competencies. They will also wholeheartedly welcome them back into their firm as they accept other long-term or temporary workers in the interim period.
The Malaysian company, Khazanah Nasional Berhad is an excellent example of this boundaryless employment deal. In a bid to improve the country’s economy in the fields of telecommunications, transportation and utilities, Khazanah has put into place a cross-organization leadership exchange, where high-potential managers take assignments in another company for up to two years. The middle-level managers are placed in challenging roles fostering their growth and tapping their potential while the home company pays their salary. Another empowering story is that of the San Francisco based solar-power service provider firm, Sunrun Inc. With 27 managers overseeing 200 employees, Sunrun takes keen interest in the development of its managers. Apart from monthly discussions, lectures by the likes of Hilary Krane and book reads such as Daniel Pink’s Drive, the company has a formidable succession plan in place for the managers to take them to the next level of a leader. In the words of Beth Steinberg, Sunrun’s vice president of talent and organizational development, “We’re really trying to arm people whether, frankly, they stay at Sunrun or go elsewhere”
You are Gaga
While economy cycles in the past followed a predictable pattern of 2-3 years of recession and a boom that lasted 7-10 years, current trends indicate a much shorter boom period followed by a long,stretchy periods of bust. Previous economic cyclic patterns played well to a formalized structure of instructor-led learning. But companies are no longer going to have the luxury of time they’ve grown accustomed to for training during better economic periods. They have to get people trained and trained faster than ever before.
Training programs are going through a complete makeover to match up to the unpredictability pressures of business on one hand and driven employees on the other. The recession has companies cutting down the clutter in the training programs. The “go deep, not wide” training philosophy will be rampant as companies realize offering a wide range of topics is not as effective as shortlisting them to an effective few and doing deeper dives. This philosophy has already been adopted by Amway Corp post recession where they replaced the ‘nice-to-have’ stuff with more targeted learning.
Training will go non-traditional. The classroom style learning will diversify into more outrageous and fun styles of learning. The reasons can be many. For one, the classroom style learning can be rigid and often intimidating. Quite often, the ones who need training the most are the ones who want it the least. They shun training out of fear. The fears can range from looking stupid, not being able to learn or being embarrassed in front of their peers etc. To make training less intimidating to the shy participants while at the same time making them fun for the fearless, developmental programs will increasingly get non-traditional and simply Gaga.
The current teaching methodologies adopted by a range of companies including Vodafone, Microsoft, IBM, Barefoot College, include mock fire-drills, jazz, Argentino tango, comedy or humor, puppets and sign language. There is a cost to being boring as participants don’t retain what their listen. Thus when the training is presented in an informal and creative manner, it cuts through all the clutter and people pay attention.All of them aim to provide a fresh, novel way that teaches resources about the importance of transparency, communication, feedback,agility and adaptiveness to the environment. Cheesecake Factory has a YouTube style platform called VideoCafé as a learning resource. They are now planning interactive games including a simulation tool to create the perfect hamburger. Kelly Services has a Facebook style social-collaboration tool called the Chatter for its 8000 full-time personnel.
You are a Grandmother
Companies will realize that every person has potential irrespective of race, sex, financial status, age or appearance. Companies will learn the valuable lesson of never eliminating anyone from the chain of success.
The inspirational story of Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan which has been featured in Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and a TED talk is a perfect lesson for HR. For starters, the fact that it trains the poor who live on less than $1 a day and that too grandmothers is an eye-opener for many corporates who are tracking the story closely. The college trains and empowers women, largely grandmothers to become solar engineers of their villages. The curriculum is taught, certified and delivered by the poor, many of whom are illiterate. Sanjit Roy, the founder spent five years digging wells and soon saw the wisdom, skill and the eagerness that the very poor possessed.
The greatest lesson to be learnt from Barefoot is undoubtedly in the way it values people. It demystifies and debunks the notions around knowledge and redefines the meaning of a professional. In the future, companies will value individuals across all levels. HR will understand that traditional credentials or university certifications are not the only criteria for role selection. Companies will provide development opportunities for all cadres of employees not just to those at the managerial or professional level. HR should identify the grandmothers within the company and empower them irrespective of their job level or experience.
You are a Mentor
It is very important that you mentor someone. Train them. Teach them what you know, especially those over whom you have authority, any person who is carrying out an instruction for you such as employees, children and so on.
You will always remember what you teach. Someone has said that you don’t learn anything when you talk; you only learn when you listen. That is inaccurate. Some of the greatest thoughts and ideas have surfaced while I was teaching others.
Successful businesses have employees who are informed, well-trained and confident about carrying out their instructions.This takes time. It takes energy. It takes great patience.
Your staff will not know everything. They may not see what you see. They may not feel what you feel. They may not have discovered what you know. You must invest time to nurture their vision, their product knowledge, and the rewards you want them to pursue.
You need good people around you. You need inspired, informed people around. You may be their only source of information and motivation.
What significant achievements of your own do you attribute to someone who has taken time to teach and encourage you? Who are you currently encouraging and teaching to be all they can be? What are you doing to prepare somebody to be your successor.
For, You are THE company – You Inc.
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