What if I told you that your profits don’t come from your great products or services? They also don’t come from your latest online campaign, and they certainly don’t come from your improved multichannel strategy.
So where do they come from? The answer is simple: According to the recent Mercer study, 52% of a company’s long-term profitability is directly related to the quality of their leadership team. When you ask different leaders in an organization about how they would rate their personal leadership performance, though, only 39% see themselves doing a good job with their leadership abilities.
So what makes it so difficult to be a good leader? It all starts out with
the bad quality — or sometimes the nonexistence — of decision-making that’s frustrating. Instead of having the guts to say “A” or “B” and have a solid reasoning behind it, many leaders play ping-pong with important and critical business decisions. By doing so, they oversee the fact that in the digital economy fast decision making is critical and necessary.
It gets more difficult when you add the daily dose of rivalry and competition amongst senior members all the way up to board members. Unfortunately, the leadership mindset in many industries is still “old-school,” where fighting over personal advantage is considered success and team-based decision-making is seen as a weakness. And if you then sprinkle this with the expectations of the millennial workforce on leadership — being motivated by visionary people, who inspire and serve as true role models — you realize pretty fast that it is difficult to live up to all these differing expectations.
Hardly any leader is well-trained on these dimensions, since all those skills are neither part of the curriculum at business school nor part of an established training program in the workplace to help leaders develop and prepare themselves accordingly.
Many leaders also miss support from their supervisors yet face unrealistic goals, which makes leading with vision and motivation even more difficult.
In short, expectations for leaders are high — and will be higher in the future. The digital economy, with its new millennial talent, diverse teams spread all over the world, need for fast decision-making based on data analytics, and full scope of digital products and services will demand even more from leadership teams. Below are three core competencies leaders must master in order to be effective today.
Core Ability #1: Master The Balancing Act
The competence to manage and guide through change is a core competence today. From a top-down perspective, leaders are expected to deal with high-pressure situations and still make the right decisions while helping their direct reports adjust and anticipate the future — a balancing act for which one needs training. But not “training” in the classical setting of a short offsite leadership seminar. Rather, a professional, business-experienced coach or mentor is needed for regular support and consulting. Companies can also support growing leaders by offering a monthly peer group where employees can share experiences and learn from each other. This can have a significant impact on mastering the balancing act required by leaders today.
Core Ability #2: Walk And Talk
In addition to driving organizational change, a leader’s ability to collaborate and to successfully communicate with different stakeholders is critical. Times are gone when single fighters made it to the top. To jointly achieve bigger goals in a team effort and to ensure a communicative and participative leadership style are what organizations need to train and coach the next generation of leaders in. If leaders continue to rush from meeting to meeting, are out on lunch appointments, barely prepared for annual employee reviews, and lock themselves in their beautiful corner office for most of the day, they will never get a true feeling for what’s going on with their people. Make time on a leader’s agenda to work with and get to know his or her team members, understand what drives and motivates them, and then take it from there.
Core Ability #3: Mix The Formats
Without a doubt, the requirements leaders face in the digital future are beyond what they learn at any good business school. And in many cases, those unforeseen real-life situations account for the biggest lessons learned. How can leaders prepare for those? How can leaders learn?
By mixing formats.
Yes, make sure your leaders understand the basics and the “theory,” which you can provide in off-site training or online courses. But also make sure that your leaders then get access to experienced coaches or mentors who help them apply what they’ve learned to real business environments.
In conclusion, by making sure that your high potentials have access to mentors, allowing your leaders to schedule more people-time into their calendars, and mixing learning formats, your organization will be better prepared for future success and profits.
Despite all the technological innovations taking place, we need to keep in mind that there is a human factor that plays a vital role in the digital industry. We can automate processes, we can have robots as new team members, and we can work with smart, connected, shared devices that tell us what we want before we even know it. But there is no organization—to date or in the future—that can operate without any human beings at all.
The true success factor for companies in the twenty-first century will be human maturity at the right key positions of an organization.
So the questions of the day are—Who are the main actors in this disruptive digital game? What distinguishes these up-and-coming talents of generation Y from their parents and grandparents? The makeup of the global workforce is in the middle of a massive change, where today half of the employees in the world are considered millennials or generation Y—born between 1980 and 1997. Millennials are the children of generation X and the large group of baby boomers, the majority of whom is about to retire. This Y generation has been strongly influenced by the impact of the Internet on our daily activities: work and life are strongly interwoven, personal opinions are expressed directly and openly, and their new personal lifestyle shapes how entire societies think, act, and collaborate.
Understanding how these most important players of the future workforce tick and what makes them perform and live a purposeful life is essential for a successful digital revolution in any industry.
One could fill a bookshelf with articles and studies that have been published on this markedly different generation of millennials. Yes, there are differences that are worth remembering, and yes, there are still a lot of values, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and desires that remain the same as in previous generations. Being a millennial myself, I once was asked in a plenary discussion to introduce myself as “the typical gen Y / millennial.” Here is the transcript of my answer:
I (as a millennial) favor the entrepreneurial spirit, a high level of independence, and yes, I’m digitally savvy with strong objections to micromanagement. I love empowerment, I love challenge, and I love excitement, thus I have a more unorthodox approach to my career and my daily job performance that does not parallel traditional paths. I view traditional hierarchies and authorities skeptically, but I bring an impressive portfolio of academic credentials and skills to the workplace. What do I want in return for putting those skills into action? I aim for fast-track promotions, nice salary raises to fuel my nonprofessional areas of interest/hobbies, flexible work arrangements to combine professional and family life, and yes, there needs to be a reason, a bigger purpose, and, of course, fun in whatever I am supposed to be doing. I want meaningful work that adds value, and I appreciate constant feedback, flexibility and recognition. I am also very impatient, so don’t you dare promise a distant pay raise or promotion—this will not get my attention.
It is typical for us millennials to find different and rapidly changing workplaces over the course of our careers. What will remain constant from one job to the next, however, is that we have certain expectations of ourselves, our supervisors, and the organizations we work for. To start with ourselves first, generation Y wants to learn technical or core skills in their areas of expertise because they fully understand how necessary those skills are in a digital environment. We are also extremely interested in learning skills focused on self-management and personal productivity as well as leadership skills, which are needed to solve current management challenges. All this should come with some sprinkles of industry or functional know-how and should be presented in a creative, innovative form or environment.
Our expectations toward the company we work for include the development of skills needed for the future, paired with ongoing professional coaching as we have been used to since our childhood days: whether it was our parents, neighbors, family members, or friends, there was always a good “coach” ready for a good conversation geared toward finding the best solutions. We also want a company with strong values and individualized offerings and benefit packages: from B as benefits to S as salary and W as working time. Organizations ready to gain and retain Y talents have to allow for—but not require—blending work with private life, and a clear career path must be presented.
Last but not least, the question remains of what millennials expect from supervisors or “the boss”—a term Ys would never use because of their dislike of hierarchy.
The “boss” is supposed to help navigate the career journey and provide constant, timely, and thorough feedback. This person should not only help guide but also coach and mentor on an informal basis and act as a sponsor in formal development initiatives. And, by the way, he or she should not have an issue with flexible work arrangements.
In a nutshell one could say that millennials are not willing to trust “old-school” schemes and sources such as preachy old advisors or traditional career tracks.
Given that generation Y will make up more than 50 percent of the global workforce by 2020, any company succeeding in attracting and working with millennials sits on a gold mine for future business success. Gen Y’ers are ambitious for thriving careers and charged lives, thus they will see progress in their professional lives, will see income growth, and see an increased possibility to pay for premium services. So if an organization has not yet disappointed them and manages to be attractive to them as customers and employees, chances are high that these organizations are well prepared for future success.
This Internet-savvy generation Y, with its focus on speed, openness, transparency, and global reach, is contrary to current management representatives who value quality, safety, privacy, and personal relationships. This changed mind-set, paired with a changed approach and a changed set of values and beliefs, will allow for taking on new perspectives and even generating new job descriptions such as a “generation integrator” or “digital disruption specialist.” Whether an organization can then motivate all generations to join forces in creating innovative and successful solutions remains another differentiating yet critical factor for high performance of any business in the digital future.
You read diet and you think of losing weight? How come? Well, simple answer because that’s what we normally want when we are interested in reading something about a diet, right? But what if I told you that the next sentences won’t be about reducing your calorie intake, lowering your blood sugar level, doing more exercise and taking the stairs instead of the elevator? What if there are simple steps you can implement in your daily life as of today that won’t hurt, won’t make you change long-existing habits immediately and that will still help you improve, feel happier and get closer to your desired professional performance?
It’s somehow ironical that we live in a world of plentifulness, yet we suffer disease and conditions that were unheard of in our grandparent’s teenage years. Despite all the lifestyle choices available, we have difficulty doing the simple, most powerful things first! Why simple? There must be a complicated solution for sure, after all, we live in a constantly changing, digital world where being overstrained is the norm! If you continue reading, be prepared that those ideas might sound too simple but take me at my word and implement them today….and let me know how much positive change you experienced!
The world’s best diet doesn’t cost you a penny!
This is the best diet you have ever taken! Whether your body mass index screams for a calorie reduction or is in brilliant shape, this diet is just perfect for you: for the next 3 weeks you will go on an information diet! Yes, an information diet! Avoid all the distraction and the time taken away by reducing all the unnecessary information you consume daily. So for the next 3 weeks, do not read any newspapers, do not listen to the radio, don’t touch any online news channel or news on TV, don’t touch your smartphone or computer for pure surfing online, no Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram or any other social media you frequently use! Don’t even watch TV! Give it a try and you will find out how much more time you will get back into your life that you can use for working on projects that bring you closer to your big life’s objectives by enhancing your productivity!
“25” is your new time slot.
Structure your work time and your productive time in blocks of 20-30 minutes. Those time-blocks you dedicate to one topic each and work without distraction on what needs to be done. A very powerful technique to structuring your work in time blocks is the Pomodoro® technique: you set a timer to 25 minutes where you spend your undivided attention on subject A, then have a five-minute break before you go into the next Pomodoro-session of 25 minutes. After four Pomodoros you deserve a bigger break of 15-20 minutes. It is all about working WITH your time, not AGAINST it. It helps avoid burnout and trains you to focus and get rid of distractions, subsequently helping you fight procrastination and foster happy, successful and productive days.
Just close your eyes and recharge.
Forget about all the myths regarding sleeping before midnight or those adults are fine with 6 hours of sleep only. Make sure you get 7 or 8 hours of sleep each night because a rested body is a baseline for performance. Without enough sleep, you can nurture yourself with all good ingredients but your internal system is simply not rested well enough to make use of all the good stuff you put in. Sleeping time is also renewal time for your body, needed for muscle repair, memory consolidation and release of hormones regulating growth and appetite. If it helps, get yourself a sleep app or some smart wearable device that measures your actual sleep time and then make it a priority to push this time in bed to 7+ hours.
I know this is not the typical dietary change or exercise recommendation that you would expect. The digital era is different, traditional answers won’t stick to currently burning questions and that is true for business as well as for private. We need to take care of ourselves again because digital transformation takes place at a fast speed and those who will master this – on an individual as well as organization level – are the ones who realize that innovative ideas don’t grow on trees but in the minds of healthy, high performing talents!
