Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

Davos 2018: the imperatives for job reskilling

The mood at Davos 2018 was more upbeat than last year. Recall that in January 2017 those gathered on the snowy peaks were confronted by two unforeseen events – Brexit and President Trump. This year both events are in play – in fact PM Theresa May in her address hardly mentioned Brexit and President Trump gave a conciliatory pro-business speech (accompanied by a marching band). With the central banks and the IMF predicting growth rates of 2% and beyond, Davos man (and woman) are feeling the worst is behind them.

Instead much of the focus was on the impact of AI – ministers and Prime Ministers and Presidents (Emmanuel Macron and Theresa May in particular) worried about big data and issues of privacy; CEOs fretted about how they could transform their companies to make the most of digital capabilities; and there was a general concern about the impact of technology on job loss.

My own focus was on work and education. This year I am a Steward of the WEF Council on Work, Education and Gender and so attended a host of meetings with politicians, non-governmental groups (such as the ILO) and CEOs. Here are my six takeaways about that:

No one knows …

There is an understanding that many tasks will be automated and jobs will be lost, and that new tasks and new jobs will be created. In general, those lost will be routine work, and those gained will be either jobs that are hard to automate (caring work for example) or jobs that rely on creativity and innovation. But right now no one can be specific about the reach or the speed.

AI in the ascendance

What is clear is there is much excitement about AI – Theresa May for example name checked DeepMind in her speech and shared a vision of London as the AI capital of the world, and there were many sessions on AI with long queues to get in. The excitement was palpable about the speed of development (witness for example the computer and analytical power of DeepMind), and the breadth of impact (for example on computing healthcare outcomes). Words like ‘super human’ and ‘artificial general intelligence’ became common parlance. Some said AI would exceed human intelligence within 20 years – others thought earlier.

Disruptions and transition

There was a consensus that we are at a point of major disruption and transition between a past of job security and stability – and a future of flex and continuous learning where ‘combinations’ of art and science would be particularly valuable and where STEM skills would be in the ascendance. Yet many acknowledge that whilst this is a major transition, few governments or companies are prepared. An undercurrent conversation was ‘what is it that humans can do?’ Yes, we can be creative, innovative and inquisitive – but are our corporations and the way we live our lives creating space for these high functioning human capabilities?  And, if work goes, what then brings purpose and meaning to our lives, and are conversations about Universal Basic Income simply sticking plasters on a much deeper issue? 

Partnerships

In gatherings of social groups, governments, educators and companies there was a clear agreement that no one group could solve the challenges of job loss. Who should support employees to make the shift? Could governments step in with financial support, should corporations be ‘nudged’ to do more, should educators finally take the plunge into ‘lifelong learning’, or should the risk be taken by the individual employee who must assume more responsibility for retraining throughout their lives?

Some early movers

We heard of places where governments, educators and companies are moving ahead. I was in sessions with ministers from both the Netherlands and Denmark as they described the initiatives they are taking. Some, like Germany and Singapore, are focusing on apprenticeships as a way to ensure job-ready skills, others like Denmark are creating ‘roadmaps’ to show employees how their jobs will evolve and what they will have to do to make the transition. Similarly, companies like Westpac, TCS and AT&T are trying to bridge the gap by creating a map of the future and putting significant resources aside to motivate, guide and support employees; whilst companies like LEGO are focusing on educating parents to better understand the potential job future of their children. Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer spoke to me about the importance of honesty about job change and creating a context of learning. And a ‘tech pioneers’ group I led spoke of how new technologies in job matching, individual profiling, and learning could significantly reduce the current friction in the job market.

But the truth is …

This transition will create enormous flux that we are not prepared for. So the need for action is crucial. The WEF is working hard on this and the reports published during the week on skills and jobs are important.

There was a clear agreement for rapid and immediate action. Employees need a great deal more clarity about how the job market will shift, what the new and valuable skills will be, and how they will be supported to transition to these new skills. Governments, educators and corporations must step up. Without these actions, the revenue from the growth that are being predicted over the coming year will simply exacerbate the growing inequality between the rich and educated, and the poor and uneducated – a point make forcibly by both Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau.

9 Reasons Robots are Distorting our View of the Future

There are acres of books, innumerable conferences and endless press speculation about the rise of the robot. We first witnessed IBM’s Big Blue defeat Jeopardy contestants and then go on to beat chess masters. But, we thought, robots can’t do easy stuff like walking up stairs – until we sat bewitched by the Boston Dynamics Big Dog robot which can positively scamper over obstacles. And to cap it all economists are reminding us that within the next decade up to 60% of jobs could be lost to advances in machine learning and robotics.

So it’s no surprise that when we let our minds speculate about the future we become fixated by the rise of the machines. We imagine that over the coming decades those wizards in Silicon Valley will be pumping out a continuous supply of technological products that will perform tasks we didn’t even know we needed and, as a result, we frame the future in terms of our consumption of these delights.

Speculations about the future are something I have been transfixed by as Andrew Scott and I have written our book The 100 Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. When we all live longer, then the context of these longer lives becomes fascinating.

But as we imagine the future, should we let technological developments be the major framing? It seems to me that this obsession about our robotic future is missing the point, and at a lecture given this week by Judy Wajcman, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, I began to understand why – summarised here in nine bite-sized thoughts:

1. It’s a geek's view of the world. Those wizards in Silicon Valley and other technological hot spots around the world are a homogenous bunch. They are mostly male, in their 30s, deeply into gaming and technology from childhood and often introvert. So as with any homogenous group, they are likely to view the world and the future through their own lens.
2. It’s hard technological determinism. The result of this is the notion that somehow technology just develops and we humans have little impact on the velocity or speed of this development.
3. It’s myopic. This single lens perspective leaves a great deal of the story untold. Five hundred years ago Thomas More wrote Utopia in which he described an imagined island community. He described their practices of engagement and marriage, their celebrations of life and death, and their laws and ways of living. His was a much richer and interesting view of the future.
4. Images of the future leave women out. Well not quite – would the technology films Ex Machina or Her work if the robot or operating system was a man? So this technological future casts women in a certain role. But as inventors or creators or imaginers of the future - women are almost absent.
5. It is ambivalent about time. So here is the paradox. Most machines are there to provide us with the gift of time and yet the technologies we create are the very same that seem to rob our time. Is the future really 300 emails a day, and is the only way out of this a cleverer machine?
6. It takes away human resolve. Rather than imagining we are the central players in this vision of the future, we seem instead to be playing a walk on part unable to make our needs and hopes and aspirations felt.
7. We see ourselves as hostages to the machines. And by doing so we focus on what we have lost (jobs, peace of mind) rather than what we could gain in the future.
8. It reduces the big questions. As we try to frame the future and prepare for it, it seems to me that Thomas More was right – the big questions are about how we want to live with each other, what our communities could look like, what it is we value, how we might think about what we want to tell our children. So surely our questions about the future should center as much on this as on the technology?
9. It makes us less human. In a world where technology has reduced some of our more onerous tasks (imagine life without a washing machine) surely our conversations should be about what makes us more human – how the future could be about creativity, innovation, intuition.

Perhaps now, in the year of the anniversary of More’s Utopia, it is time to re-imagine our future in its totality, embracing families and communities, work and rituals.

Davos 2016: My Three Take-Aways

So here is what has got me thinking after a week at the 2016 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos:

1. The rise of the scientists.

The dominant Davos talk last year was of the Greek crisis and the possible break up of the Euro - this was a time when politicians and bankers were centre stage as they were called into action to solve the crisis of the moment. This year, whilst bankers and politicians were still around in abundance, now at centre stage were AI scientists, robotic experts, neuroscientists, medical researchers and authorities on the science of climate change. The questions they debated are just as challenging as the economic questions of 2015, though less likely to be resolved any time soon. Questions like: ‘What will be the impact of AI and machine learning on jobs?’; ‘How are humans different from the robots already present at the forum?’; ‘When will we understand the human brain?’; ‘Will a cure for Alzheimer’s be found in our lifetime?’, ‘What role can science play in mitigating climate change’. It seems to me that we should forget the rise of the robot – what we are watching is the rise of the scientists.

2. Questioning the status quo.

What caught my attention was not grand theories – it was the questions that were being asked, and the small experiments that were being described. Here are three I’m still pondering: First, a question from Tharman Shanmugaratnam the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore in a session I ran on the skills gap “Why aren’t education institutions measured on their outputs – for example their ability to create productive skills and knowledge?” He is right, why aren’t they? Next an experiment described by Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the Japanese Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, in which tax breaks are being created in families where three generations are living together. That’s an interesting experiment in a country where the isolation of older people is a national challenge. Or the question posed by Thomas DeRosa the CEO of Welltower, USA, “We have ‘bring your babies to work’ initiatives – why not ‘bring your ageing mother to work’?” Hmm – why don’t we bring our ageing mothers to work?

3. The individualised future.

I’ve been thinking and writing about the future for a decade now. But what is really beginning to strike me is that there are no ‘grand theories’. The forces that are shaping our future - be they the forces of technology, demography or resources - are playing out very differently across the regions of the world and are impacting areas and communities in unique ways. There is no one grand theory of the future – instead there will be multiple futures. What that means is that shaping positive futures will come from the experimentation and social change that individuals, families, communities and cities embark on as they try to navigate their own way through this highly volatile environment.

My guess is it will be these experiments and questions that will increasingly shape the global conversations that take place in groups like the World Economic Forum.

What will artificial intelligence do for work?

It’s my fourth visit to Davos and it’s fascinating how many more of the academics here are scientists rather than economists or management theorists. What is it that scientists can tell us about business? I had an opportunity to understand this when I led a debate with four professors from the University of California, Berkeley, who are experts in artificial intelligence (AI), neuroscience, and psychology.

The question we debated was “Will machines make better decisions than humans?” Of course this is a crucial question for anyone like me who is interested in the future of work. What impact will machines – be they computers or robots - have on the way we work? There are those that argue that up to 60% of the work we currently do will, within the next couple of decades, be replaced by machines. Of course this is already happening. The ‘hollowing out’ of work has already seen much medium skilled work disappear as executives’ thumbs and their smartphones replace secretaries, whilst assistants are being replaced by a combination of Wikipedia and automatic filing.

I started the debate by asking the audience what they believed: “Will machines make better decisions than humans?” About 50% agreed and 50% disagreed – it seems that even this auspicious group at Davos has no consensus. So what are the issues?

The first is well known to AI scientists.  It is best described in Moravec’s paradox. This is the paradox that right now computers are really good at some things we humans find tricky - solving mathematical equations, playing chess, winning jeopardy, and even driving cars. These are tasks that require speed and precision.  But here is the paradox. Machines are bad at other tasks we find easy  - like clearing the coffee cups from a table or being creative. The psychologist Alison Gopnik studies babies and for her it’s clear: machines are not as smart as a two year old. Why? Well perhaps a two year old cannot play chess or drive a car, but they can do lots that a computer cannot do. They can create theories, make hypotheses, figure out how things work, imitate – and most importantly they learn and can be creative. Moravec’s argument by the way is that computers are great at reasoning, but the often unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge that has evolved in the human brain over billions of years is impossible to imitate.

The second issue, one we debated at length, was values and morality. We humans make decisions on the basis of our values. But do computers have values? The AI expert Stuart Russell argued that it is already possible to programme computers on the basis of utility in terms of gaining the highest value outcome. But whose values and how can the constant changing of consensus on values be programmed? And what of morality? As Bob Knight observed, human decisions are about emotions and we make decisions cognitively and viscerally. This comes from the evolution of the frontal cortex that took place over the last two million years.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of time? Computers cannot make decisions better than humans right now, but what about in 30 years time or a 100 years time? Or will it take another two million years for machines to become moral? Certainly with regard to sheer computing power, the technology is developing fast – recent developments in cloud computing are enabling the connection of millions of devices and that has enormous potential for amplification.

Or perhaps it’s not about time, but more about combinations? Ken Goldberg, an AI expert, believes it is in the combination of computers and people that real progress will be made. And, as I am learning in my own study of open innovation, it is the combination of diverse minds that bring forth the ideas that can be the basis of innovation.

What I have learnt from spending time with scientists is that they have much to tell us about how the world of work and organisations will develop. And even if there is no consensus on timeframes, the direction is clear: there is a great deal more to come in the human/machine interface. 

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How Will Japanese Corporations Address their Ageing Workforce?

I have recently returned from Japan where we held the Future of Work Research Consortium’s first live event in Japan. During the course of my visit, I found myself thinking more and more about how Japan will cope with the dual conundrum of an ageing population and a rapidly shrinking workforce.

During a previous visit to Japan, I was struck by the challenges facing Japanese Youth and the behaviours they will need to adopt to remain competitive in our increasingly global talent pool. This time round, as I spoke to some of the country’s leading organisations including FoW members, Fast Retailing, Kokuyo and Ricoh, I became more fascinated by the organisational response to Japan’s demographic dilemma. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the challenge facing Japan, 22% of the population is 65 or older, and this will increase to 40% by 2060. This increasing number of older people will be supported by a shrinking population of workers, owing to Japan’s birth rate of just 1.39 children, one of the lowest in the world.

For organisations, this context will present two key challenges. First, the war for young, talented workers will become increasingly fierce. Companies wishing to succeed in this war for talent will need to consider how they support younger workers who will likely be caring for elderly parents and grandparents as well as starting their own young families. 

Second, organisations will need to develop models that help older workers remain in the workforce. Japanese companies already outperform their peers on this front, but will need to consider whether their policies and practices will continue to work when older people significantly outnumber younger colleagues. How will career models have to change so that they are not faced with the increasing wage costs associated with older, senior staff? Part of the solution will come from rethinking linear career paths that see pay increase in line with age and considering more lateral models in which people can dial up and dial down their commitments and pay over long working lives.

From the discussions I had during my trip, and my own research in this area, it seems there are three tools Japan has to relieve the demographic tensions it faces:

1. Involving Women

One way to ease the tension around a shrinking workforce is to be more innovative about where you seek out talent. For Japanese corporations, the challenge is to increase the number of women in all ranks of its organisations. With just 48% of women in the workforce, this remains an area of untapped talent within Japan. Indeed, some of the savviest Western multinationals such as AMEX and Unilever have taken advantage of this situation and recruited many of Japan’s female stars. The issue around women’s participation is very much a cultural and behavioural one, requiring the breaking of conventions such as women leaving the workforce as soon as they marry or have children. Attracting women will require a concerted effort from Japanese corporations, perhaps reaching out to young women as they begin forming their aspirations in their late teens and early twenties, and demonstrating that there are opportunities for female leaders.

 

2. Globalising Japan

One of the observations I made during my previous trip to Japan was that the students I met at Tokyo University did not speak English. This was in marked contrast to the experience I had at Chinese and Indian universities in which the appetite for learning English is insatiable. To take advantage of a global talent pool, and to expand operations abroad, Japanese students must equip themselves with the international business language which, for now at least, is English. 

 

3. Opening the Borders

Perhaps the most contentious issue, but also the most promising way out of the demographic dilemma, is immigration. Currently, less than 2% of Japan’s population is non-native and the government’s approach to immigration has been generally conservative. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has eased restrictions on some categories of immigration in recent months, but these reforms will need to go much further if they are to make a substantial difference to workforce dynamics. 

What became clear to me during my time in Japan was that there is a great deal of promise in this fascinating country. Japan has a unique culture in which age-old tradition sits side-by-side with groundbreaking technology. It is home to some of the world’s oldest and most successful companies and holds a reputation around the globe as a producer of the highest quality technologies.

I believe that the demographic challenges facing Japan are by no means insurmountable and the appetite for change demonstrated by the wonderful people I met during my stay suggests they are at an important turning point. With ageing populations a worldwide phenomenon, Japan has an opportunity to be at the leading edge when it comes to catering for the needs of citizens who may live to be 100 – with the potential to provide case studies and establish best practice that other countries will follow. In this area in particular Japan’s next moves will be the subject of great interest – and the world will be watching.

 

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The key to enhancing employees’ emotional vitality

The topic of emotional vitality has become increasingly popular in HR circles – and the general consensus is that work often damages an individual’s emotional vitality. The downside of the hyper connectivity we all enjoy in our personal and working lives is that the combination of globalisation and technological developments can leave always-on workers exhausted and drained. Employee engagement surveys show that people are exhausted, their well-being is deteriorating, and their emotional vitality is being eroded.

As a result, the very energy and enthusiasm that are the keys to individual vitality and corporate resilience are ebbing away. It may seem that encouraging ourselves and others to work flat out, to answer that message and keep our phone by our bedside, is a sure-fire way to increase productivity. But this is a fallacy. In reality, when we lose the natural rhythm of our lives and work flat out, what disappears is our emotional resilience and those times of reflection, contemplation, and playfulness that can be the wellspring of insight and innovation.

So what can be done?

How corporations enhance emotional vitality  

The simple truth about the future of work is this: there are no checks and balances on the horizon that will reduce these working pressures. The answer lies in the way that employees and executives think about work and about how work is done. It’s fundamentally about working practices and the design and management of culture and norms. Let’s look at three important ways in which this can be done.

1.       Improving the work-home cycle

As the research I did with Hans-Joachim Wolfram shows, the work-home cycle also has a huge role to play when it comes to managing and combating stress. This cycle can be either caustic and draining, or positive. To get the balance of the work-home cycle right, organisations need to stop thinking about work and home as two unconnected spheres, because they are inextricably linked. Companies must think about how they support families and about whether employees have enough scope to ensure a cycle of positive spillover between home and work relationships.

2.       Encouraging playfulness

It is not simply “not working” that can be a source of emotional vitality—the work itself can also be energising. Specifically, when the working day has within it times of unstructured, free-flowing and playful activities, which provide opportunities for vitality to be strengthened and for creativity to flow. While researching my book The Key: How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems, I looked at how “free time” at the chemical company DuPont led to the development of the fibre Kevlar, one of DuPont’s most successful and profitable innovations. The textiles company W.L. Gore is another great example of how unstructured, playful work affects the vitality of workers and the resilience of a company – a playful exercise by one of the company’s engineers led to the reinvention of acoustic guitar strings and a 35 percent share of a market where Gore traditionally had no presence. Providing people with space to explore and experiment with new ideas, behaviours, or identities can play a crucial role in creating emotional vitality and building inner resilience.

3.       Designing natural rhythm 

Playfulness across a week or a month can be a real bonus to emotional vitality, but what happens in the long term? There are times when we want to come “off ramp” and change the speed and trajectory of our career for a period of time to accommodate and prioritise other activities in our lives such as developing new skills.

Many organisations are struggling with this because they have for too long associated the idea of career customisation with motherhood. However, as life stage becomes an increasingly important factor in people’s career choices, a far wider spectrum of employees requires access to customisation. One reason for this is that people can reach the same life stage at vastly different ages. For example, some employees will choose to become parents in their 20s, while others do the same in their 40s. As people start to live longer, we will see more and more people rejecting traditional linear career paths and opting for careers that move sideways, downwards, or even pause for a while. Handling this effectively means making career customisation fluid, mainstream and transparent – as Deloitte has done with its lattice-shaped careers.

There is evidence that the current stress at work will only increase unless those who lead corporations can learn to support the work-home cycle, think about encouraging playfulness, and create a more natural rhythm of work. All this is possible, and as we have seen, there are some emerging good practices in play to act as a role model for others.

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The power of amplified intelligence

The quest for talent is one that has long preoccupied the world’s corporations. Many have honed their talent-acquisition skills to a very high degree, continuously boosting their intellectual resources by bringing in the most talented people from around the world. And it is undeniable that one of the biggest assets possessed by large corporations is their potential to find and connect some of the most talented and creative people in the world.

While the talent search is undeniably important, companies still often neglect the next crucial step: taking the intelligence inherent in their carefully picked talent pool and amplifying it to maximum effect.

The amplification of intelligence and wisdom is becoming ever more central to how corporations are addressing the challenges they face and to building resilience. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, The Key: How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems, there are four key elements to achieving this: the surfacing of ideas, amplification through open innovation, experimentation and the celebration of risk taking.

Surfacing ideas

For most of the history of corporate life, collaboration has happened when small groups of people worked together face-to-face. Technology is changing this – we now have connectivity tools which enable us to share ideas and knowledge not just within small groups meeting face-to-face, but also across thousands of people meeting in virtual environments. And yet, many large organisations still find themselves going back to the same small group of people for their next big business idea.

One example of how corporations can break this cycle and start harnessing the intelligence of ‘wise crowds’ is the Indian IT company Infosys. Their executive group decided to give younger employees a more active part in the long-term success of the business, by launching a virtual “Innovation Co-Creation Platform”. The platform enables employees to identify colleagues with whom to collaborate, to gain access to business data, and to consult experts and submit a business case for an idea. As well as generating valuable business insights and creating a fast and continuous flow of information from around the world, the platform has made it easier for senior management to identify the most knowledgeable and excited people in the organisation.

Amplification through open innovation

No matter how many great people you have within your organisation, there are always many more outside. Corporations have always been aware of this, hence their habit of engaging with universities and specialist research groups to boost their innovation capabilities – but they now have the opportunity to cast the net far wider and to gain access to ideas outside their established networks. Some good examples of this are InnoCentive, a platform which uses open innovation to connect problems to those with knowledge, and Proctor and Gamble (P&G), which has opened up its innovation challenges to the world through its Connect and Develop scheme – a process the company expects will deliver $3billion towards the its annual sales growth by 2015.

The importance of experimentation

One avenue for surfacing ideas which I think too many companies ignore is experimentation. This can be a particularly valuable process when you are faced with problems to which no-one has a ready-made answer. All the breakthroughs we have seen in medicine, for example, have come through a process of hypothesis, experimentation and clinical trials where several different options are tried out and compared.

Despite the scientific record, very few companies dare to experiment. When I was seeking out examples of corporate experimentation for my book, The Key, I found that they were few and far between and most of them were led by scholars or academics – further underlining companies’ apprehension about experimenting themselves. In fact, the only two that made it into the finished book were at Roche and Xerox. And yet, I feel that if companies would only dare to try, experimentation has a wealth of benefits to offer. After all, one of the biggest changes in the workplace – flexible working – was the result of repeated experimentation at BT.

Celebrating risk

One of the problems with experiments is that they represent a risk: it is not possible to be right all the time, and some experiments will fail. This can be a serious barrier to empowerment. If an employee is aware that their idea may not lead to the desired outcome, they are less likely to act upon the idea for fear of failure or – in the worst case – losing their job.

So how can corporations encourage employees to set aside their fear of failure? The key is to create a culture where experimentation is valued and failure is seen as a natural part of the process. At Tata Group, for example, the company’s Group Innovation awards include a ‘Dare to Try’ category for daring attempts at innovation which have failed.

It’s clear that the amplification of intelligence and wisdom – whether from inside or outside the corporation - plays a crucial role in helping people and organisations become more resilient. As the examples I have highlighted show, technology has a role to play, but it is those companies who are able to build amplification and connection into specific and every day organisational practices and habits that will reap the benefits.

Building resilience in a fragile world

We live in a fragile world. Every one of us faces profound and escalating challenges– youth unemployment touches many families; income inequality and poverty are a source of shame for many of us in developed countries; whilst it is only the least observant who could fail to recognise the early signs of a profound change in the climate. These challenges are no longer particular to one country or area: they affect most people around the world. 

 The challenges faced by organisations are no less complex. They too are faced with the implications of climate change, of inequality, and of the gap between their needs and the available pool of talent. These challenges are on a greater and more global scale than ever before, and emerging at an ever faster trajectory. Previously stable companies find themselves on shaky ground – and the negative consequences of the problems that surround them are proving difficult to reverse.

Over the last five years I have directed the Future of Work Research Consortium which brings together executives from more than 50 companies to consider how best to address these challenges. What is clear is that resilience is the key, and to build resilience companies will be called upon to develop a whole new set of tools and ways of innovating.

Building inner resilience

Resilience starts with what happens inside the corporation –with an, intellectually challenging, emotionally vibrant and socially connected community of employees. Those companies, like Tata Consultancy Services and Unilever who are attempting to do this, are using newly emerging technology to amplify the intellectual ideas and knowledge of employees across their businesses. They are ensuring that they gather the social wealth held in the different communities of people and in the networks that crisscross the company and stretch beyond its boundaries.

Executives also need to think hard about how to design jobs in a way that they enhance rather than denude the emotional vitality of their employees. For some, like BT, the wide-scale adoption of flexible working is allowing people to manage their own time in a positive and enhancing way. Others, like Deloitte are thinking hard about how to break the career hierarchies and introduce a matrix process that allows people to increase or decrease their contribution at different stages of their working life.

The importance of outer resilience

Creating a foundation of resilience is critical – and in some corporations there is also a focus on building resilience in supply chains and in the wider world they operate in. This is crucial because increasingly companies do not exist independently of the rest of the world, and their future is reliant on their interaction with the communities in which they are embedded

I saw this at Danone where people across the company are actively working with farmers in their supply chain to ensure that they are building strong communities – the John Lewis Partnership is doing the same in the UK. These are corporations that are facing the challenges of our increasingly fragile world head-on, by recognising their connection with the outside world. They understand that their businesses are profoundly related to the communities in which they work and are able to think differently and comprehensively about the larger environment in which they operate. Some, like Royal Dutch Shell, are using scenario planning to help executives really become aware of the forces shaping their lives and their businesses. It is this awareness that will enable them to face these forces in a positive way, seeing them as opportunities rather than threats. The final piece of the puzzle is leadership: building resilience needs leaders who are prepared to balance long- term needs with short- term financial results.

What is clear to me is that being resilient requires making the choices that are positive for employees, investors and those in the communities they touch.

Lynda's latest book, The Key: How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World’s Toughest Problems, is out on 9^th June.

 

 

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What would HR policies look like if they were based on giving?

At a recent masterclass for the Future of Work Research Consortium, I raised the following question: what would HR policies and processes be like if companies based them on the assumption that their employees are programmed to be helpful to others?

My starting point was the realisation that in most organisations, HR seems to be set up to act as a buffer between the company and its employees’ worst natures.  The “worst nature” they imagine is that of someone whose priority is to take what they can while giving back as little as possible in return. This in contrast to what we see around us. For example, if you take a look at the people you know, you’ll notice that in their lives outside work, they often give their time and resources to help others. In fact, outside work, most of us are what Professor Adam Grant defines in his book Give and Take as “givers…people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return,” or “matchers [who] aim to trade evenly.” Far fewer people are “takers” who “strive to get as much as possible from others.”

If we apply Adam Grant’s concept to my question above, the question becomes: “What would happen if we turned the tables?” Here are my thoughts on what would happen if we based HR policy on the assumption that people alike to cooperate.

• It would revolutionise the selection process

If you were building an organisation with the awareness that some people are “givers”, others are “matchers” and some are “takers”, who would you want to hire? Iimagine the first change most companies would make would be to redesign their selection process to identify and favour more cooperative individuals.

• Performance management would have a positive focus

If your policies are based on the assumption that employees are trusted collaborators, you would also assume that every worker in your organisation is doing the best they can. As a result, development processes would be run on the assumption that employees have a positive outlook and are prepared to coach and mentor colleagues. People wouldn’t be ranked against each other – instead, managers would focus on building each individual’s strengths as fully as possible.

• You would provide meaningful work

In an environment where we assume everyone will be generous with their skills and time, it would be easier to design meaningful jobs that allow each employee to give of their skills and expertise to others.

• You would provide opportunities to give something back

Co-operative people tend to give across the board – they don’t restrict their giving to a single context. In an organisation based on a culture of giving, the working day would be structured to allow ample time to give to the community around them as well as the organisation. A great example of this is the John Lewis Partnership, where employees are encouraged to take time out to volunteer in the community.

• It would add value to your business

Such changes might make the workplace a nicer place to be, but how would they add value to the business? I feel that one of the advantages cooperative people bring to the workplace is their ability to build far-reaching networks of weak ties – those slight connections we all create on an everyday basis and which have proven to be more valuable than strong ties (friendships, family relationships) in the context of work. People who are generous enough to help those they don’t know well build networks as wide as they are strong – and wide networks are extremely valuable, not only to the individual, but to the organisation in which they work.

It seems clear that assuming employees are inclined to cooperate makes sense. However, actually changing HR policies and processes is a much taller order. Aligning HR policies and processes with the realities of work today isn’t happening. It’s time to start asking ourselves why.

Leading in Complex Times

If you’re a business leader today you are working to understand and balance the perspectives of an unprecedented variety of stakeholders – from NGOs becoming more voracious in their demands to workers who are increasingly hard to engage – and doing so in a world that is more transparent and connected than ever before. It’s a tough challenge.

I found myself reflecting on this the other night as I sat down with two very smart people for one of those marvelous European dinners. Both are business leaders in one of the world’s great pharmaceutical companies. The conversation turned to the growing complexity of the business environment, and the question was inevitably posed: What had I, as a business professor, managed to figure out about what it takes to succeed under such conditions? In no particular order, here are my thoughts.

No Illusions, Eyes Wide Open
Some 15 years ago my colleague Sumantra Ghoshal and I wrote business cases on three companies that were then leaders in their sectors: BP, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Nokia. In one way or another, and for rather different reasons, all of these companies have since struggled. So my first observation is that leaders must constantly acknowledge that their companies are subject to an onslaught of destabilizing forces. Being vigilant and observant about the nature and velocity of these forces is crucial. Effective leaders in complex environments do not succumb to a belief in their invincibility – they keep their eyes wide open to the reality of the world.

Authenticity, Tempered by Custodial Responsibility
Over the course of the dinner, we arrived at the hot topic of authenticity. Various proponents of this notion have urged leaders not to try to conform to a narrow description of what a leader does, much less copy someone else’s style. Leaders are urged to be themselves. Only those perceived to be authentic and who are comfortable bringing their whole selves to work can gain others’ trust and inspire them to pull together. It seems to me that this emphasis on authenticity is an important counterbalance to earlier assumptions that people gained leadership powers by dint of titles or positions in hierarchies. And it certainly resonates with the world’s reverence for Steve Jobs, who created the world’s number one brand while obstinately refusing to be anything but himself.

At the same time, growing complexity in the business environment creates a challenge. For people in organizations facing an external world of mounting chaos, being led by groups of highly idiosyncratic leaders, however authentic, could be confusing and distracting. In particular, when a leader is not a founder, he or she inherits a role as a custodian, and is entrusted with growing and passing on to future generations of employees and shareholders the value that past generations sowed. So yes, be authentic – but don’t break the mold so completely that others need to spend energy figuring out how to engage with your leadership. The world is complex enough without this further variable to be considered.

Strength in Diverse, Collaborative Teams
Thinking again about the problems encountered by BP, RBS and Nokia in the past decade, as different as they were, it’s possible to see a common factor. These firms lacked diverse, highly collaborative leadership teams. At RBS, CEO Fred Goodwin isolated himself from his colleagues, failed to listen to others, and became increasingly selfish in his behavior. At Nokia, the senior leadership team was for a long time extraordinarily homogenous (mostly men, mostly from Finland, mostly software engineers, mostly educated in Helsinki). How likely was it that they would be on top of the rapid developments in Asian consumer markets, or in technology and design emanating from Silicon Valley? At BP, we know top management found it difficult to integrate US assets and build collaborative relationships with the leaders of US acquisitions – contributing to a problem with implementing safety standards globally.

Simply put, as businesses are increasingly challenged by dynamic change and crises, it becomes ever more crucial for their leadership teams to have sufficient diversity to see what is happening from different perspectives, and sufficient collegiality to work collaboratively with each other even when under stress.

There is undoubtedly much more that could be said about leading well in complex business environments. Indeed, in a conference next month – the Global Drucker Forum, in the wonderful city of Vienna – I’ll be participating in a bigger conversation. There will be more smart people seeking answers they can take back to their organizations. Together, we’ll make the way forward for leadership a little clearer. And with luck, there will be time for coffee and streudel.