Are Your People Ready for the New Collaboration Economy?

Are your people ready to lead?

All the CEO and leadership studies point out how critical it is to help recruit, engage, develop, and retain our high performers. They also point out on a regular basis there’s a habitual shortage of great people in all organizations. It the classic Chicken Little story, the sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Successful leaders take control of this situation by taking matters into their own hands.  They have begun creating talent pipelines that reach all the way back to high school. They are getting creative with how they approach their people about this impending challenge.

I was at a HR conference several years ago and one of the speakers predicted that companies would spend more money and resources on finding their employees than taking their products to market. The audience of senior level executives moved around in their chairs and laughed uncomfortably at the speaker’s crazy pronouncement. When talking with leaders today I believe we are on target to see this happen in the next three years in most emerging and global markets.

We are living in a time where people will be your only competitive edge. Future business technologies require your people to have multi-disciplinary capabilities to be successful.   Since many mature industries are just beginning to experience these business disruptions because of the impending retirement of many key people, we see this trend extend well into the next decade if we don’t begin to change the way we look and develop our people.

We share and talk about many different topics here at Market Leadership Journal. We have contributors from all over the world sharing their thinking on what’s happening in their fields of expertise. My contributors are all leading edge professionals. I know this because I recruited them for their expertise and ability to share it with our readers.

We have over 138,000 regular readers of our leadership blogs. My professional network extends to well over 2,000 CXOs and Managing Directors across the globe in almost every line of business. I’m constantly talking to these leaders and they are sharing what is happening in their industries and markets. They are constantly sharing books and articles about business and how it’s changing. Last year I also attended 12 conferences and read several hundred books for clients. Why does this matter to you, our reader?

We are seeing a seismic shift in the practice of management and leadership worldwide. As baby boomers continue to retire and younger generations continue growing in influence and power, we are seeing a whole new way of doing business. It’s no longer the business many of us grew up knowing. We are seeing active disruption not only in business, but in the communities in which we live and work.

Businesses offer our children jobs with limited future mobility, telling them there’s a career path if they just stick with it.  The kids are smart enough to know they’re being lied to. No more blind allegiance to our employers. These next generation leaders are looking for more than just employment from the people they work with. Note I didn’t say for, because these future leaders are much more agile than past generations. Career and personal reinvention is as critical skill as knowing how to read a balance sheet. Getting more from less requires people to collaborate in ways unimagined in the past.

Corporate boundaries are disappearing and with them are many of the competitive forces that drove markets and economic growth. We are becoming more interconnected every day. We are just starting to understand the power of leveraging each individual’s strengths, gifts, and life experiences. Organizations that expand and thrive moving forward understand and master these new dynamics. They help create significant opportunities for their team members. Organizations who fail to change how they operate will begin to disappear, replaced by more agile competition coming from almost anywhere in the world.

Why do I point this out? Well, before you think I sound too much like Chicken Little, I want you to know we are committed to helping you become stronger market leaders by sharing how to develop better strategies and implementation capabilities. We are going to publish three days a week, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Keith continues providing great material on connecting and developing stronger relationships with the key people in your life every Tuesday.

Want to read more about building a stronger business culture? You might enjoy Does Your Culture Need a Strategy Upgrade?

This Thursday I share five trends that are transforming our lives and businesses. I believe we have a different take on them than you might be reading from more traditional business sources.

See you Thursday.