After a recent speech on compensation and strategy, I was asked to fly to the east coast to meet with managers of a major law firm to discuss organizational development issues that were deviling this venerable firm. Foremost among them was the issue of succession planning. Who, they asked, was going to run their law firm? The senior partners wanted to retire. The mid-level equity and income partners were too busy, too important to the revenue stream or client relationships, lacked management skills, or just didn’t want to. And the younger generation was quickly becoming famous as flash players – they were hiring on at $160k per year just long enough to pay off their student debt, and then bailing out of the 2,200 billable hour sweat shop environment.

This firm’s concerns are not unique to the legal industry. They are right in line with many of the mainstream business organizations that call us in to help figure out their long-term viability.

It is especially tempting in tough economic times to focus on the here and now, and push off any costs or concerns relating to the future. But in fact, it is tough times that call for focused attention on management and long-term viability, as customers, clients, shareholders and other constituencies – including top employees — are justifiably nervous doing business with firms that are perceived to be in peril. Business as usual PLUS grounded planning for the future is an investment in time and money that pays big dividends, and can set you apart from the competition.

–Jim Finkelstein, 10/15/08

I was searching for the topic for my first blog when after 32 years in the business of compensation and organization consulting, I came across it.  Brett Favre.

A super-star.  A high performer.  One of the greatest ever (even if you are not a Packers fan).  Retired with dignity.  But now, wanting to come back – sort of.  And, because of the politics and financial reality of football, the Packers franchise was considering offering Brett a deal of several million dollars per year not to play. Amazing.  A severance plan offered to get him to leave his “company!”  But with a big difference – he actually performed well!  (Note: as of the posting of this blog, he actually may rejoin the roster).

I have always marveled at the levels of severance payments offered to failed top executives of companies.  Pay to not play. Millions of dollars paid to execs who have totally destroyed the value of a business, laid off countless people and otherwise never lived up to their hype, expectations and compensation paid.  And this to executives who have already made enough in their annual compensation, stock options and deferred compensation – in one year — to feed a village or two. .  Employees might get severance of 1-2 weeks per year of service.  And that may not feed their own personal family for a year.     

I grew up in the business with Graef “Bud” Crystal, the father of executive compensation, at Towers Perrin.  Graef moved from the dark side to the light side (or vice versa depending on your point of view) when he became an advocate for investors (like the California Public Employees Retirement System) against excessive executive compensation.  In short (and I agree with him), the levels of executive compensation for non-performing companies was and still is approaching the absurd. 

Play and perform?  No problem.  Create wins for everyone – your stakeholders, the community, your employees.  But when there is clearly no performance – why continue these practices of providing huge levels of severance benefits when execs are terminated for not getting the job done?  

And let me assure you – they exist – despite the best intentions of Sarbanes-Oxley and all the watchdogs.  Brett Favre – you may deserve it.  But Mr. and Ms. Executive of yet another under-performing company, you don’t.

Jim Finkelstein, President and CEO
FutureSense, Inc.

8-3-08

May 2008

I recently attended an excellent panel discussion on “Managing Across Generations” hosted by the Business School at Vanguard University (I serve on the Advisory Council for them).  The focus of the talk was on managing the Millennial Generation (maybe you know it as Gen Y) - people born between 1978 and 1998.

Why is this group so important?  Considering the pace of retirements out of the baby-boom generation, who are still leading many of our institutions today, the importance of the Millennials will expand exponentially as new college classes keep graduating.  In addition, you may agree that uncertainty looms around the next corner we are approaching, and the Millennials will be a huge factor in success or failure through that turning.

One of the panelists, Chip Espinoza, is a Vanguard Professor and EVP of LeadershipTraQ (www.leadershiptraq.com).  He shared research about Millennials as expressed by a large population of managers who lead these individuals:

1.      They want a trophy just for showing up.
2.      They need constant affirmation.
3.      They want to have a say from day one.
4.      They think they work smarter and faster than the rest of us.
5.      They want to know what I am going to do to help them get promoted.
6.      They don’t give themselves to projects that they don’t find interesting.
7.      They don’t seem interested in what I know.
8.      They think any excuse will make being late okay.
9.      They seem to have a short attention span.

Intriguing, eh?  There is a tendency to think something is particularly unique about this generation versus others, and there may very well be big differences in the life-circumstances that form the perspective of this group – there may be some expectations and “entitlement” issues that are distinctive.  However, I wondered whether the things that motivate them are really that different from everyone else.

After my last story on “The Pursuit of Reason” my friend Joe Bonaker sent me a classic article on motivating employees from the 1968 Harvard Business Review written by the leadership guru Fredrick Herzberg.  It addressed the key factors influencing motivation.  The following is a listing of the 6 factors that led to extreme job satisfaction:

Achievement, Recognition, the Work Itself, Responsibility, Advancement, and Growth

When I consider these fundamental building blocks of motivation, and then I compare them with the 9 characteristics of Millennials, I see an extraordinary parallel.  In my estimation, what Herzberg’s research described as the keys to motivating employees 40 years ago are the same things that motivate Millennials today, especially being recognized, enjoying the work itself, being given responsibility, and moving forward in their careers.

Admittedly, there are some behavioral tendencies that differentiate young people today – extreme self confidence, an expectation of recognition and encouragement, and tendencies to be cavalier and sometimes undisciplined – but I’d argue that these things were also true for me when I was a “twenty something”.

I believe that Millennials are a resource we must fully endorse and support (beginning right now) if we hope to keep our businesses moving forward.  It seems to me that it’s easy to fall into a trap and assume they are hard to manage and “not our problem”, but we let this happen at our extreme peril.  It seems wise to me that we recognize that these youthful greats need the same things we did when we were their age (and that we still do now), and we should consider motivating them to be among our greatest opportunities.

-Jeff Black — Principal Consultant, McDermott & Bull Executive Search

black@mbsearch.com

John Wooden said, “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best you are capable of becoming.” Success isn’t about awards or trophies. Success isn’t perfection. “Success is happiness in your heart because you try 100 percent to be your personal best.” Success should touch every part of our lives… mentally, morally, physically and spiritually and it is something that we should go after each and every day. Success is in each and every one of us.
I often speak when I am doing a training session about the number of hours that we spend working (i.e. the job that we drive to every day, the work that we end up doing on the weekends, etc.). We spend more hours at work or doing work than anywhere else. And I often ask the question during these sessions, “So, how much do you love your job and what you do?” I follow with the question of, “On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best) how eager or energized are you about doing your job or going to work every day? There is usually a mixture of responses. Wouldn’t we all want to shout out “10” every day? Can you see in others when they are a 3 or a 4? How is success created where 3’s and 4’s permeate the environment?
I want 9’s and 10’s every day! And you should too! I hope that my 9’s and 10’s rub off on others as I move through the day and through life. I want others to do the same for me. I am very blessed to have the opportunity to connect with individuals, teams and organizations to pull out the motivation to get to success. So, how do you create success for others? How do those 9’s and 10’s rub off on others? It is those relationships, based on integrity and trust that are key components in creating an environment where people are willing to go the extra mile…. all of the time.
On a recent trip back from New York, I was in the ladies room at JFK. As I approached the sink to wash my hands, I noticed that the counter was wet everywhere. I tried not to lean into it with my purse and bags. The female attendant came over and wiped the counter dry for me. She looked as if she was having a “3” day. I thanked her. I finished and walked over to her, touched her shoulder, looked into her eyes and said, “Thank you. You are doing a great job!” I thought her smile was going to jump right out of her body. And I wondered when the last time someone had acknowledged her work. It seemed so simple to me.
Wooden says, “The most important profession in the world is parenting. The second is teaching and everyone is a teacher to someone.” We all have the ability to impart a little of what we have learned along the way to someone else. And we should!
Webster defines a teacher as one who “gives instruction and guidance with a specific end in mind until rapid and successful execution of assigned duties and tasks is assured.” A great leader, teacher and coach will bring individuals along the path to achieve competence. The success is bringing the individuals to be part of a team. Even when they don’t think they want to be.
I speak to managers about leadership and coaching and the awesome accountability of developing others to their fullest potential. You’ve been there…. You have taken someone, whether it is a colleague tackling a new piece of technology, a subordinate that you are teaching a new skill to, or a student that you are mentoring toward their future. When you see that success in that individual, how does that make you feel? It’s amazing! For me, there is nothing better! That is Wooden’s “doing the best of which you are capable to enable others to do their best.” It goes full circle! It melts your butter!
I met with a manager on one occasion who shared with me that she had been put into a manager role and she really disliked managing people. She didn’t want to deal with their issues and concerns, she didn’t like 1:1 or team meetings and she really didn’t like meeting with her staff to do their annual performance evaluations. I thought about her staff and wondered how their needs were being met. How and when did they get feedback? How did they build a relationship with their manager? Did they know that it was supposed to be different? I wondered how many would stay and for how long under her leadership.
She shared with me that she had a great team; very talented and a group that would do whatever needed to be done. I paused and asked her, “Do they know that’s how you feel about them?” She assured me that they knew. I asked her again, “Do they know that’s how you feel about them?” As she looked at me, I said, “Tell them!”
Mother Theresa said, “A day lived without doing something good for others is a day not worth living.” Doing good for others bring joy and happiness. It feels good! The opportunity to be a teacher, leader and coach is a serious commitment. So grab a hold of it with all that you have. Your best is needed each day – especially if you are the leader.

In this entry (my first blog ever, actually), I hope to discuss a fairly abstract concept about people, nature, and society and its potential implications to the multi-faceted fields of corporate culture and organization development. I’m delighted that you are here to read this and hope that you will share your thoughts in response to this topic as well – it’s developing very holistically and I would love to incorporate any ideas you may have!

I don’t consider myself to be an “HR” guy. It is not the field that totally encompasses my interests, nor my expertise or experience. Personally, I am more interested in the sociology of human beings as it relates to the natural world. It is an area that bridges sociology, psychology, biology, ecology, anthropology, and philosophy. I’ve been working with an organization that specializes in the consulting about certain HR practices and I’ve found that there are elements of the Human Resource conundrum that do tickle my fancy. I actually attended a conference recently that spurred some thought in this arena and I made some intellectual connections amongst some ideas.

At first, I thought the conference was going to be about “talent recruitment strategies.” As I have only been to a few of these industry conferences so far in my career, I approached the hotel ballroom somewhat skeptically, thinking that this event was not going to be any different from the other ones attended previously. It turned out it was actually about talent recruitment strategies, but, somewhat peculiarly, the speakers discussed topics that turned out to be very intellectually stimulating.

The first speaker’s focus was about how to keep talented young women in the workplace. I don’t recall exactly what she brought up, but what I do remember was that the discussion with the audience took her topic in a whole different direction. It became more about workplace issues regarding job satisfaction, over-worked employees, and creating a true system of fair rewards. It seemed to go right down to the heart of human nature – what we workers get out of our jobs intrinsically, emotionally, and physically.

There seemed to be more questions than answers. What do we do to ensure the physical and mental health of our employees so that they are more productive? Our industry’s market demands that they work more hours, but this is unattractive to them in terms of retention – what should we do?

More and more, I couldn’t help but reflect upon what seems to be a primary aspect of our culture’s essential mindset – an intense focus on profit, development, progress and productivity. I think there are many parallels between this mindset and that of our treatment of the environment. Many authors such as Daniel Quinn, Doug Brown, and Paul Hawken argue that this mindset stems (recently) from the concept of market capitalism, but also agree that it has cultural roots extending much farther back in history. With this framework in mind, I wondered how could companies maintain a profit-driven focus and not seek to maximize the most of their employees? In this context, it seems understandable that companies are pushing the limits of their employees. I will get into this more as it relates to the next speaker.

The other speaker was a Dean of a reputable business school of management and labor. What he talked about was more up my alley of interests, but not all the way there. He spoke about the emerging trends of corporate social responsibility and environmentalism as an effective recruitment tool for filling jobs. Basically, along the lines of “show your recruit that your company cares, and they will be more enticed to join you.”

I’ll be honest, I’m very critical of the recent boom in popularized efforts to be socially and environmentally conscious by corporations. As an organization, I think much of the time they are just giving lip service to a movement that does have genuine interest in the betterment of human beings and the environment. I personally challenged his concept of “Compassionate Capitalism” and approached this dean after his speech. Surprisingly, he actually agreed with me! (As an academic, all he said he could really do was relay and analyze observations of current market fluctuations.)

He did, however, get me thinking more and more about how most modern human beings treat the environment. I started to see many parallels between the two speakers arguments and developed what seems to be a novel theory, at least in my mind. What I would like to posit is that by understanding the nature of human beings’ treatment of the environment, we can similarly understand trends of social interaction amongst ourselves and, furthermore, apply these lessons learned to the field of organization development and culture.

I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, but more of an “advocate of the natural world.” I believe that human beings have a rightful place alongside the butterflies, horses, and trees, but I’m aware that not everyone shares that sentiment. A common belief amongst our culture is that we have been granted “dominion” over the natural world – it is ours to take, manipulate, and conquer. We are somehow “special” in the closed system that is the global biosphere. Unfortunately, the field of ecology (the study of natural systems) has brought to light that we are, in fact, subject to the same laws of nature that govern those butterflies, horses, and trees. Thinking deeper, it seems this mindset is actually what’s driving the development of pollution and the climate crisis. Despite our magnificent intelligence and creativity, this understanding has only come to light very recently with evidence from anthropology, history, and (possibly) evolutionary biology.

This mindset has permeated our culture and has become its central tenet – and I will argue this notion is why we have so many unhappy workers. Much like we treated the earth’s natural wonders as an expendable resource, many corporations treat their workers also as expendable resources. From their badge/cubicle numbers to daily mindless tasks, workers today seem more disenfranchised from their jobs than ever before. Not only do many have trouble seeing their value and/or role in the organization, I’m not surprised that people feel overworked, stressed, and unhealthy because of their job. It is not their fault, nor that of their mangers. I argue that what’s at fault here is this central tenet of our global culture: productivity, development, profit and progress (rather than maintenance and/or sustainability.) If companies are to survive in an extremely competitive world, I think they need to intelligently reevaluate their own company culture as it relates to their human workforce.

Much like the environmentalist movement is evolving their focus more to this thing called “sustainability,” companies now seem to be discussing their need to focus on their own form of sustainability – the sustainability of human capital. With our current understanding of the natural world, I challenge corporations to take advantage of a great opportunity to make positive progressive changes with these lessons in mind: if we stop treating our workers as expendable “capital” and instead treat them as our most valuable resource, we may end up with happier and more productive workers. “Capital” denotes no sense of humanity, but that’s just what they are – human. This concept almost seems intuitive, right?

All-in-all, I think many lessons can be learned from the fields of ecology, history, and anthropology and that these lessons directly relate to the sociology of our workforce. Henceforth, these lessons can provide insight as to how to ensure survival and prosperity in the closed system of the modern marketplace. I’m interested in finding out how these lessons may realistically be applied to the field of Human Resources as it relates to corporate culture and workforce sustainability.

…to the FutureSense Blog and thanks for visiting! We hope you will enjoy reading (and contributing, as well) to this new feature of the FutureSense website.

The blog is intended to be an open forum of FutureSense-related interests and also a channel to get to the know the FutureSense team better. We invite you to share your thoughts and/or react to those published already in the fields of organization development, compensation, communications, and, most importantly, people. If you find an interesting article or attend an impressive conference, please bring those as well!

FutureSense team members will post regularly, but guests must register first — all that is required is a username and valid email address. All comments to posts are welcome as well!

Again, thanks for visiting! Please send all questions to Matt Finkelstein, blog admin, at matt@futuresense.com.

Sincerely,

Margaret, Mary, Matt, and Jim (the FutureSense Four)