Category Archives: Uncategorized

Authentic Creativity vs. Creative Authenticity

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Spending a lot of time with executives these days talking about their corporate and personal challenges, I see some paradigms in their thought life and, for some, in their behavior:

First, all of the more than 15 executives with whom I have spoken in the last week acknowledged that they are tired, overwhelmed, feeling stretched, having a hard time coping, running out of answers and struggling to make decisions. Not all in that order, but I think you get the picture…

Second, none of the executives I spoke with expects this to change anytime soon. In fact, one who said he had not had one Saturday off since December, declined my invitation to an event because “I just have to sleep… and see my kids sometime …” He was particularly dejected.

Third, all of the executives I spoke with are both creative and authentic – the former to various degrees, the latter consistently so. You can’t be “somewhat authentic.” You either are or you aren’t.

But these men and women are honestly struggling to keep up. Remember the Red Queen effect from Alice in Wonderland: you have to keep running faster and faster, just to keep in the same place. Much less get ahead. It’s like you’re on a treadmill and someone keeps turning up the slope and speed of the machine.

In reflection, I note that these authentic women and men, who are striving to give it their best shot, are also declining in their creativity because of the increasing pressure on them.  Many are losing heart and so they begin to bluff their way through. And hence, for many, what was once authentic creativity is slowly but surely becoming creative authenticity.  I once coined the phrase “authentic bullshitting” for this, but have now come to believe it is not that, but rather, sincerely now, creative authenticity. People who once were, are now having to fake it, just to survive.

We, as responsible employers, have to catch them, relieve them, even reanimate them them before the speed and slope of the treadmill gets so fast and steep that they fly off.

Boomers

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The Boomer Generation, or Baby Boomers, are those born between 1946 and 1964. After WW2, there was a baby boom until the pill hit main street in America.  Alone in the U.S., there are 78 million boomers. Last year, the first Boomers turned 65 – retirement age.  Today, we are witnessing 10,000 boomers going into retirement PER DAY alone in the United States. This trend will continue to occur for the next 16 years.

According to the January 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, there are 38 million Americans between 55 – 64 and 41 million who are 65 and older.  Of the 55 – 64 year-olds, 64 percent are still working. Of the retirees, 18 percent are still working. 81 percent of 45 – 54 year-old Americans are still working.

I could bore you with comparative statistics, but would rather get to the paradigm dilemma at hand: on the one hand, we see more and more 65+ needing to work, indeed working and living a lot longer. On the other side, thanks to economic downturns and the resulting reduction of jobs by firms, the fact that more senior personnel are more expensive, and by the limited job mobility of boomers vis-a-vis Gen X and Gen Y, we see more and more Boomers between 45 and 65 getting laid off. These still-working-Boomers, along with the youngest segment of the Millennials, feel the economic crunch the most. Young Millennials don’t find great jobs, older Boomers are forced out of good positions.

What is “society” to do about this conundrum? What is the responsiblity of firms to society as well as to their shareholders? I do not expect this trend – especially for 45+ year-olds to improve.

What do you think?

Millennials

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Just read the latest PWC report “Millennials at work: Reshaping the workplace”.

Millennials were born between 1980 and 2000. I have four of them at home so know first hand all about them. By 2020, millennials will form 50 percent of the global workforce. F I F T Y percent.  Now that should get your attention.

Yesterday, I had a long discussion with another “senior” – (baby boomer) and frankly I was appalled at his attitude that “these punks” have to “get in line” with the rest of us. Hmmm.. No wonder firms are laying off and sidelining the 50+ mid-management who is too set in their ways. The PWC study found that 38 percent of millennials think that “older senior management do not relate to younger workers” and 34 percent that “their personal drive was intimidating to other generations”.  Hmm… not just food for thought, but a clear call for action.

No question, millennials joining the workforce – in fact, dominating it, will affect how we do business. But how do we best adapt our business practices, perhaps even our business models before everyone else?

Read the study. Let me know what you think.

http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/managing-tomorrows-people/future-of-work/millennials-survey.jhtml

How does Gen-Y learn and what are we doing about it?

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Attending the MBA Conference hosted by the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) in Paris this week, delegates from more than 40 schools are discussing many issues of relevance to our MBA programs:

- what is the balance between academic rigor and practical relevance of content?

- what is the balance between content and other services MBA programs should provide?

- what’s hot and what’s not?

- what are the marketing, admissions, program management and career placement trends around the world?

- what are the challenges faced by MBA programs and how are they dealing with them?

Clearly, we could discuss the first two questions ’til the cows come home. They are age-old questions that need to be re-visited time and time again.  Every school does this in quarterly workshops, annual curriculum reviews, and are often the topic of our weekly team coffees. Of course it is always interesting to hear the development stories of other schools and reflect how we can learn from their experiences. The trend information will be put on our website next week as much of this is good data.

My main learning this week, however, is this: the way our future MBA students learn is changing radically and at a rate that I previously had not known. As Gen-Y reaches the age of attending business school, indeed our MBA programs, within the next several years, they bring with them expectations about learning for which many business schools are not prepared.

Gen-Y, the Millennials, is learning more and more via social networking, and not through traditional teaching – even though many educators think they are using modern teaching techniques.  I don’t mean just reading material on-line or via iPads, but real, deep interaction with each other in solving real classroom problems, dialoging about assignment content, sharing resource links, and so forth.  And yet the vast majority of this learning is peer-to-peer outside of the classroom, for the simple fact that the majority of their lecturers did not land in the crib with a smart phone like many of this generation did.

Obviously, one of the most daunting challenges will be for business schools to re-educate the teaching faculty to use social networking in – and outside – of the classroom. So how would this type of teaching and learning look like?  Surely, this is a lot easier for some topical areas or functions such as organizational behavior or corporate communications than, say, for finance, statistics or economics.

And even if we find adequate teaching methods for such topics, how can schools get their faculty up to speed to handle the knowledge gap between educators and program participants regarding these tools?

What can we do to change the mentality of some great educators who have been very successful using traditional teaching methods, knowing very well that they may not be as successful with the next generation of students?

As we are currently conducting a thorough curriculum review of the MBA program in St. Gallen, we will begin to address these important questions. The implications of Gen-Y for learning and teaching is fascinating.

What do you think about this opportunity? (I especially would like to hear from “Gen-Y”!)

PS: there are various definitions of Gen-Y. I tend to focus on those born between 1982 – 1995.

Japan: Leadership in catastrophe as opposed to catastrophic leadership!

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Japan has been knocked to its knees, if not downright k.o.ed. One disaster after another. Earthquakes, tsunamis, atomic power plant explosions. And these are happening in plural.

8.9. Gulp. The power plants were designed for maximum 6.9.

On top of the huge natural catastrophe shock and loss of life, can you imagine how people are coping struggling to find water, food, not to mention lost family?

Can you put yourself in the shoes of the leaders of the nation and firms that are trying to hold things together and make good decisions when everything seems to be going wrong and perhaps getting worse before things get better? What keeps them up at night right now makes your problems as a leader and manager seem … well … petty.

This morning, I specifically was thinking about Board members and CEO, Mr. Shimizu, of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) who made the decision yesterday to limit electricity to its 45 million customers for up to two hours a day beginning today. It doesn’t sound like too drastic a measure – all things considered – but can you honestly imagine having to make this sort of decision and the repercussions of such a decision? Clearly, they were thinking about the good of the nation and its citizens for the long-term.  Today, the Nikkei index lost over 6 percent of its value. TEPCO lost 24 percent of its value, but surely will be honored for making the right, if not tough, decision in the long-run.

Leadership in times of catastrophe put women and men to real tests of courage and at the limits of their capacity. We should applaud the leaders of Japan and its leading companies for the way they are handling this dire crisis.

Pursuing your Passion

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Perhaps it is suiting that I write about pursuing your passion on Valentine’s day. Today, people in many countries around the globe celebrate a “day of love and lovers”. Incidentally, some countries have a ban on this althogether due to religious reasons.

In Greek, paschō, or passion, means to suffer.  So is this what I mean when I recently wrote about The St. Gallen MBA looking for candidates with passion? Well … sort of…

Is suffering part of finding your passion? Anyone who has been deeply in love or asked about the meaning of life knows all about suffering. It is physical, spiritual and mental passion we are seeking – not necessarily to suffer per se as the modern term often connotates something negative.

Finding and living our true vocations is indeed to carry that calling – yes, with all the suffering and passion that goes with it. It has to do with our responsiblity, our element, our calling, our vocation, putting all of our skills in the right efforts where our passion and our abilities meet. To be passionate is a frame of mind at the minimum, a holistic lifestyle at the maximum.

So focus on your passion on Valentine’s day – what is your true love?

Find it.

Go for it with all you’ve got.

Are you divergent or are you a divergent thinker?

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The standard definition of divergent is differing or deviating. Implicitly, at least for me, this has a somewhat negative connotation.

To be a divergent thinker, however, is a characteristic to which one should strive. Developed originally in the 1950s by psychologist Joy Paul (J.P.). Guilford, divergent thinking is a important part of creativity. Guilford associated it with four main characteristics:

+ fluency: the ability to produce a large number of solutions to a problem very quickly
+ flexibility: the capacity to consider a number of different approaches to a problem simultaneously
+ originality: the tendency to produce ideas and solutions different from most other people
+ elaboration: the ability to think through the details of an idea and execute it effectively

A practical 2011 interpretation of this idea from 1950: be quick on your  feet, think broad and yet deep, think out of the box, be thorough, do it well.

Know when to be prime. Know when to be composite.

Stand out by striving towards divergent thinking at every occasion.

Finding and Marketing your Element

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In Monday’s Financial Times, there was an article titled “Students – express yourselves” which reported on job-seeking students’ experiences using songs, film clips and the like as ways to differentiate themselves in the admissions process into MBA programs. Despite my American heritage, my response to this was sheer abhorremce. I can’t imagine our potential students thinking they have to “sing for their supper”.

We are looking for authentic, genuine, level-headed, intelligent, (a whole other forthcoming blog on how to define this…), communicative candidates who know, or are open to us helping in the their journey of finding, their element.

Element?

According to Sir Ken Robinson, the element is “the meeting point between naturual aptitude and personal passion”.

The Element has two main features, and there are two conditions for being in it. The features are aptitude and passion. The conditions are attitude and opportunity.

You don’t need to impress us with your singing ability to get into the St. Gallen MBA program – or find a job thereafter. You need to be open to change, be authentic, and seeking your Element.

At the Interface: Basel III, Client Delight + Gen Y

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The majority of MBA students belong to the Generation called Gen Y, or the Millennials, the Net Generation, the First Digitals. This generation, generally defined as those born between 1976 and 1995, comprises the future leadership, management and workforce of corporations and organizations worldwide. Many young executives attend MBA programs with the hope and plan of pursuing a post-MBA career in finance – particularly, banking. Yet banks, indeed their underlying business models, unless going into a stage of paradigm paralysis, will undergo a paradigm shift in the next 10 years. Within that shift, banks need to delight clients in an unprecedented way. How will MBA graduates and Gen Y as a whole deal be affected – indeed affect – these changes?

Basel III will have a huge negative impact on banks. Tier 1 capital requirements will increase. Short-term liquidity requirements will increase. And there will be a gap in long-term funding. Closing these gaps will, logically, have a substantial impact on profitability. Additionally affecting the bottom line is of course the implementation of the the new systems: strategic planning, capital and risk strategy just to name a couple.  By McKinsey’s recent estimates, ROE will reduce on average by 4 % for European banks and 3% for US banks – a lot.  And what about the effects on personnel, on hiring, on growth and therefore on the level of service because of hiring freezes, threats of layoffs, and too many clients per client advisor.

On the flip side of this pressure is the ever increasing pressure for banks to do a better job with customer service. Call it client focus. Call it client centricity. I personally like to call it client delight – which is far above mere client satisfaction. Whatever they call it, it has to improve. Many of the major consulting firms regularly publish studies on the current and future status of banking. You know them. Deloitte. KPMG. McKinsey. And so forth. All talk about things like “client advisory excellence” and client delight and the fact that clients are global, savvy, sophisticated – and educated and increasingly demanding. The most recent KPMG / UNISG study shows, for example, that only 53% of the banks surveyed believe current client advice is sufficient to meet client’s changing needs in terms of rigorous assessment of financial profile, investment objectives, risk, and insightful investment ideas. 53 percent – barely the majority. Probably the scariest part about clients and the changing laws is the increase of transparency required by both sides, the law and by clients. Clients now can and should know what the bank is making off their money – and this naturally leads to some hefty discussions, and sometimes to clients changing banks.

Finally, there is Gen Y. Gen Y, the Millenials, the generation of new workforce that has been highly and diversly dicussed, watched, researched like no other. How will this generation, indeed our MBA graduates, deal with the changes facing the banks as employees? As clients? Will they find banking as interesting a career industry as previous generations with all of the expected forthcoming changes regarding both the banks themselves and their clients? Is there a fit? Is there a mismatch? How are banks adapting and planning now for the personnel (Gen Y in particular) and possible cultural changes going on right now and even more so in the next ten years? Whose responsibility is it? HR? The line? Strategy makers? Gen Yers themselves? What is the role of business schools such as the University of St. Gallen in these processes?

There is a lot of room for discusssion on all three areas and how they interface: new banking models resulting out of Basel III, what clients need today – and more importantly – tomorrow, and how the workforce will adapt to these changes.

What do you think?

FQ: The Fitness Quotient

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The Red Queen effect from Alice in Wonderland states that “it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”. Ergo, if we want to get ahead of “the pack”, we need to be fitter than the rest.

Intellectually.
Emotionally.
Spiritually.
Physically.

I’ve previously written about IQ, EQ and SQ and how they inter-relate.

Now there is FQ – the fitness quotient.

It is common fact that managers and MBA students under pressure to perform confuse their life-balance in favor of work or studying – especially in times of pressure. But it seems like the times of pressure seem to be more and more the norm. We have to run faster and faster just to stay in place, much less evolve, or develop or advance forward. Uff…

So, we work too hard. Neglect our family, friends, hobbies – and, well, ourselves. We take up bad eating habits, sleep too little and reduce the much needed physical exercise. Until one day we look down and observe our chest down around our waist like a life-preserver.

Get ready. In St. Gallen, we are about to change these nasty little patterns and habits. We are going to start exercising, running, spinning, doing arobics TOGETHER as a team several times a week. And you will see that you will get your strength back, sleep better and eat better as a consequence. The adrenaline and endomorphins which will be released will make you happy and energize you. You’ll see.

In order to “master tomorrow’s challenges” as the MBA mission states, we are going to help you get in shape. Stay tuned: it all starts in November!