Lynda Gratton - The Future of Work

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.

The Five Unanswered Questions on Gender

Last month, I took the train up to the beautiful city of Cambridge to speak at their Gender Summit. Over the course of the day, and with the help of a varied panel of business and academic speakers, we explored what it takes to promote gender equality and diversity within organisations. We debated a wide range of themes, from the impact of corporate governance structures on gender policies to the practical steps for increasing the number of female applications for the best jobs. The strength of the debate revealed how much opinion is still divided on this issue, and the wealth of research still to be done. As I travelled home, I reflected on the themes we had covered and found that five questions in particular deserved further research:

1. What are organisations doing to change attitudes to fatherhood?

Throughout the day, we touched on the complexity of balancing working life with being a mum, and the emotional and physical exhaustion that can result from ‘trying to have it all.’ It seemed that the problem wasn’t trying to have it all, but trying to do it all. Women continue to be the primary care givers at home despite taking on more responsibility in the world of work. One of the reasons behind this is that the concept of fatherhood has remained quite static over the last thirty years, with short paternity leave entitlements and a continued focus on being the main breadwinner. To really achieve gender equality in the workplace, we must also work on achieving it in the home.

2. How can women operate in male dominated senior networks?

Women are still drastically under-represented at the senior level, at around 17% of all members of FTSE 100 boards and senior executive teams. The result is male-dominated senior networks that are incredibly difficult to penetrate if you are an ambitious woman. So, whom do women end up networking with if they are not easily accepted in the male-dominated elite circles? All too often, the answer is other women more junior than them who can’t help them advance their career. To get more representation of women at the top, we need to ensure they have access to influential senior networks.

3. Are quotas useful?

Norway has pioneered the quota approach to bringing women into the boardroom and now has 40% female representation at board level. However, this has resulted in some negative labelling of these new appointees as ‘golden petticoats’, promoted to tick a box rather than as a reflection of their talent. So, what is the answer? In my opinion, quotas are still essential in getting women to the top. By forcing the distribution, we can get women networking with the right people and can begin liberating men to take more responsibility in the home.

4. How can people bring their best selves to work?

An emerging theme in management thinking is how to encourage your employees to be the best they can be at work. This requires more than just generous compensation packages; it means that working life must be tailored to individuals by acknowledging their interests, concerns and commitments. In particular, women can’t be their best selves at work if they are distracted with family obligations they are neglecting while building their careers. Organisations must invest time in understanding their employees’ needs and building more tailored arrangements to cater to them.

5. How can we move beyond narrow categorisations of women?

In my blog on May 22nd I talked about how we continue to categorise women leaders by their personal circumstance rather than their goals and ideals. These women are far more heterogeneous in their backgrounds and outlook than many of their male peers, however they are often classified according to whether or not they are married, how many children they have and what kind of mother they are. These narrow categorisations fail to recognise the real difference these women are bringing to the world of work. To truly embrace diversity we must first be able to appreciate difference.

This year I launched an Inclusion and Diversity Research Consortium to bring organisations together to provide answers to these questions. We’re hearing some very interesting insights that I look forward to sharing with you in the coming months.

The Three Paradoxes Of Generation Y

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a considerable amount of attention focused on Generation Y from both the media and business world. The May 20 issue of Time Magazine led with a cover story labelling them the ‘Me, Me, Me’ generation: narcissistic, fame-obsessed, and self interested; Meanwhile PwC reported findings from a comprehensive Next Gen study of its Gen Y employees – a cohort that will make up around 80% of its workforce within the next three years.

This recent focus on Gen Y reflects a building sense of nervousness around how this generation, the biggest since the Baby Boomers, will reshape work. It’s a nervousness I’ve felt from the HR leaders in my executive programme at LBS who often despair that this generation just aren’t accepting ‘the way things are done around here,' and are instead challenging long-standing processes and practices.

But is this anxiety justified? Are Gen Y really so different from their predecessors? And, if they are, do organisations need to change to accommodate them?

Here are three paradoxes I’ve uncovered that can help us answer those questions.

Short-term focus, but equally committed – Gen Y are fast movers. We know they will change jobs, and perhaps even entire careers, many times in their long working lives. This is a stark contrast with the ‘job for life’ career pattern of their Baby Boomer parents, and the HR leaders at my executive programme. It also shows their desire for meaningful, stimulating work from day one, and their lack of interest in traditional career paths that promote slowly.

This focus on short-term success is sometimes used to depict Gen Y as less committed to work than their Gen X and Baby Boomer peers. Yet this stereotype is certainly not true of those surveyed in the Next Gen study. According to Dennis Finn, Global Human Capital Leader at PwC, ‘this generation is as engaged, committed and prepared to work as hard as previous generations’. They don’t mind working. They just think there are better ways to work.

Tech savvy, but value face-to-face - Gen Y is known for its intensive use of social media and virtual communication. In the USA, this generation send and receive around 88 texts a day according to research by Pew, and 70% check their phones every hour. With these statistics in hand it’s easy to view this generation as happy to conduct their lives, both professional and private, exclusively through their phones, iPads and laptops. But PwC’s research tells us that Gen Y’s aptitude for electronic communication augments rather than replaces face-to-face interaction. Particularly when it comes to performance and career discussions where personal interactions are still the preferred method.

Require recognition, but not necessarily more trophies - Time Magazine rather negatively dubs Gen Y the ‘trophy generation’ who, as a result of receiving too many participation trophies as children, have a sense of entitlement far beyond that of their older peers. It’s easy to see where this assumption comes from. Just look at games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, which provide satisfying rewards for every action the player takes. So, it should come as no surprise that, according to a study cited by Time Magazine, 40% of Gen Y believes they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance.

 But again, this may be misinterpreting the issue. We know Gen Y place an real emphasis on continual learning, and the drive for regular promotion should not be confused with the desire for regular feedback, which many see as a vital part of their personal and career development. Though a visual indicator of progression, promotion does not always bring with it greater learning opportunities.

So, what do organisations do about these paradoxes and how can they truly understand what drives their Gen Ys? PwC’s Next Gen report has a few recommendations, but one stands out to me as particularly important for this fast-moving, tech-savvy group: ‘Invest time, resources and energy to listen and stay connected with your people’. If there’s one thing we know for sure about this generation, it’s that they like to have their voices heard, and to feel empowered. Whether in the virtual or real world, perhaps the key to understanding this generation and knowing how to engage them is to simply listen to them.

Many of the insights from PwC’s NextGen study came out of Hot Spots Movement FoWlab jam methodology. Have a look at our website to find out more.

 

Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Woman?

London Business School’s Global Leadership Summit was an opportunity to see senior executives and CEOs come together to talk about their views. It was fascinating stuff. We heard how Tim Breedon, a recent joiner to the Barclays Board, has put values at the centre of the bank’s transformation; how Unilever CEO Paul Polman is creating deep alliances with NGOs and multi-lateral organisations like the UN to work on some of the world’s most intractable problems; and how Aberdeen Asset Management’s CEO Martin Gilbert is particularly interested in investing in the ‘frontier markets’ of the world. 

What was striking was that, although each of these speakers looked remarkably similar (dark suit, white shirt, blue/red tie, formal black shoes), when they described their stories, their unique perspectives became clearer. Polman described how his determination to form these alliances, particularly around poverty and climate change, is in part a promise to his children that he will try to leave the world a better place, while Gilbert’s fascination with ‘frontier markets’ came from his early childhood spent in Malaysia, and his familiarity with that part of the world.

While these men looked similar, over the course of the day their unique perspectives emerged. We might visualise senior men as a homogenous group, but those with a strong personal narrative are able to show their differences, revealing their uniqueness in the process.

So, what of women executives? At first glance, they are certainly a less visually homogenous group. Over the course of a month teaching at LBS I have had female corporate executives speak to my class attired in hippie beads, long skirts and cowboy boots, top to toe Chanel and 5-inch high Louboutins, sensible black trouser suits and white shirts, floral blouses and simple skirts… I could go on. But the point is that visually, these women are portraying themselves in their unique way. And like the senior executives at the Global Leadership Summit, they too have a unique narrative about how they see their business and the goals they have for it.

But here is where this marvellous female diversity gets lost. Rather than being defined by their distinct styles and unique narratives, women executives are most often typified by their private lives, with the dominant typologies going something like this:

Type 1: Has one child (late) and has found a way to make it work.

Type 2: Does not have children and works all the time.

Type 3: Has lots of children, works hard and possibly has a stay-at-home partner.

Type 4: Has decided not to return to full-time work and is trying to create a balance between family and work.

The simplicity of this typology has, I believe, two profoundly negative implications for women.

First, it constantly draws the debate about an executive woman towards how she behaves with regard to these typologies. By doing so, this sucks all the life out of much more interesting debates, such as those I heard among the male executive speakers at the GLS yesterday. About what they believe, how they would like to make a contribution to the challenges of the world, what their strategy is for the business

Second, the very simplicity of these typologies, and the focus they bring to a woman’s private life, prevents many from recognising the real differences between women. This is apparent not just in the private life typology, but also in the simplicity with which ‘feminine traits’ are described. Of course some women are sensitive, empathic and caring. And others are ambitious, aggressive and independent. But femininity is not a spectrum, and it certainly can’t be reduced to typology.

We fail women when we fail to see the real and relevant differences between them. More than men, women signal these differences in how they are choosing to present themselves visually, from the hippie beads to the trouser suits. But that does not mean their uniqueness is superficial. It is a rich product of their history, their interests, and their hopes and aspirations. So we can’t let our constant focus on their private lives and our stereotyping of their working traits overpower the uniqueness of what they believe, how they perform and how they want to make the world a better place.

 

Reinventing the Corporation

What is it that you most want to change about corporations? That’s the question I put to my LBS elective program, and here are three deep frustrations that the 50 MBA and Sloan students shared:

Corporations don’t do as they say. We’ve all had a friend start a new job and report back “it’s nothing like I thought it would be.” This resonated strongly with my students, who felt that corporations go to great lengths to attract them with strong value propositions; but once they join, these values are nowhere to be seen.

Employees aren’t empowered to change the way things are done. My students felt that corporations don’t give employees at all levels of the firm the ability to challenge the way things are done and propose new ways of working. This stifles innovation in big corporations and contributes to employee turnover. 

Leaders aren’t accountable to their teams. While most students had heard of leaders ‘turning the pyramid upside down’, few of those working in large corporations had experienced this in a practical sense. They felt that traditional management structures still prevail and that leaders are rarely held to account by their employees.

Over the course of a week, and with the help of a series of guest executives, we explored how corporations are beginning to meet these frustrations. One example students found particularly interesting was Standard Chartered Bank’s commitment to living up to its corporate values. Marianne Mwaniki, Head of Social and Economic Impact at the Bank, talked through one of their most successful initiatives:

‘Here for good’ at Standard Chartered Bank

Standard Chartered Bank is a UK-based multinational, with operations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The Bank states its brand promise as being 'Here for good… sticking by clients and customers through good times and bad, and always trying to do the right thing.'

To really live up to its brand promise, Standard Chartered felt it needed to fully understand the effect of its activities on the countries in which it operates. In 2010, it became the first in its industry to carry out a comprehensive socio-economic impact assessment in Ghana, one of its key markets. The results were astounding: the Bank’s direct impact on Ghana’s economy through paying taxes, creating jobs, and buying goods and services contributed around USD55 million of value-added. Better still, its indirect and induced impact, mainly through companies and households spending the money it lent them, dwarfed this, amounting to USD400 million, or 2.6% of Ghana’s GDP.

These findings helped Standard Chartered understand its influence on Ghana’s economic development, and it showed stakeholders that the Bank was truly striving to be ‘Here for good’. For my MBA class, the Bank’s desire to measure impact in order to further its mission was a great example of how companies can in fact do as they say, building accountability and demonstrating their values in the process. 

It appears that to attract and retain the next generation of talented individuals, companies must to develop effective ways of living their values. This is one of the many challenges being addressed by the Management Innovation Exchange’s Hackathon – an online event bringing people together from around the world to generate real-world solutions for big businesses. Perhaps this forum will generate some of the new initiatives that will help corporations turn intent into actions.

Restoring Faith in Leadership

This week, I asked the MBA and Sloan students at my London Business School elective how many of them wanted to become leaders of large corporations. Looking around the room I saw that less than 15% raised their hand. Why, I asked them, were they not eager to take the reigns from the Jack Welchs and Richard Bransons of the world and lead our biggest businesses into the future? The responses were varied, but underlying this was a recurring theme: many of them simply lacked trust in today’s leadership models. Here are some of the concerns they voiced:

Are leaders transparent enough in their actions? They felt that often times, leaders were not open enough about how they make the big decisions that impact their organisations. This lack of transparency made it difficult for people to hold their leaders to account. This concern is not limited to these London Business School students. When the research team at the Future of Work Research Consortium that I direct asked over 3,000 corporate executives about the significance of various leadership traits, they ranked transparency as increasingly important in the future. Yet they also acknowledged that right now this was not a well-developed capacity and is a high-risk trait in need of attention.

Are leaders engaging their stakeholders effectively? Some believed that leadership teams of large corporations seem to be stuck in traditional management models that did not help them build trusting relationships with stakeholders. Inside corporations they can fail to create effective democratic processes with employees, while externally they aren’t always demonstrating real commitment to wider social challenges. I see this as a challenge for leaders as people increasingly look at companies’ ethical practices and the way they treat employees when deciding whether to trust them or not. It’s clear both from these students and from the broader research that delivering consistently strong financial performance does not guarantee a corporation the trust of its stakeholders unless accompanied by good practice and ethical behaviour.

Do leaders do as they say? A recurring theme for the week was the challenge of intent and actions. Leaders may talk about strong corporate values, but some were quick to bypass them in the interest of the bottom line. No doubt this skepticism is a response to the wave of corporate scandals in 2012 that has increased suspicions about corporate leaders. Again, this thinking isn’t limited to these MBA students – a global survey by consulting firm Edelman Berland, found that less than 1 in 5 people believe business leaders will actually tell the truth when confronted with a difficult issue.   

It is clear that there is still much scepticism about leadership intent. That’s why the London Business School’s Global Leadership Summit later in May will be so interesting. The theme is the Future of Leadership and a stellar cast of leaders from across business, government and media will be there to discuss the real issues behind the current leadership crisis.

I look forward to this gathering, which brings together multiple perspectives and promises to raise some tough questions. My expectation is that it will bring deeper insight into what it takes to restore some of the lost faith in today’s corporate leadership.

The Power of Place

One of the highlights of the Davos meeting this year was a panel comprising the heads of Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, together with Bill Gates and an unexpected guest… a young Pakistani girl. Her seat on the panel was the result of her extraordinary performance in an online educational program she had registered for from Stanford. Faced with thousands of others from across the world competing for the top place, she had cruised in as one of the highest performing students. Aged 11 and living in Pakistan, this was something of a phenomenon. It was no surprise that the panel discussion put many of the attending business school professors into something of a spin. Was Gates right when he said that online education would trump traditional education within the decade? Certainly my colleagues from London Business School and I rapidly convened a meeting to ask the simple question of what it is that face-to-face education does that could be superior to virtual education.

It’s an important question. As Tammy Johns and I argued in a recent Harvard Business Review article ‘The three waves of virtual work”, there is a distinct trend across the world of work becoming more virtual, as workers flee to their homes for peace and quiet, while corporations are only too happy to turf them out of expensive and carbon-hungry offices. However, what we found fascinating was that the third wave was not simply about virtual working, but was more about the re-emergence of co-located work in neighborhood hubs and local coffee shops. It seems that sitting in our pajamas all day does not always trump the cut and thrust of face-to-face office work.

Perhaps that is what Marissa Mayer had in mind this week when she banned Yahoo employees from working from home. Faced with a deteriorating stock price and a culture that some have described as caustic, her actions as CEO to bring people back from the bedroom and into the office could be read as an attempt to reestablish the power of place. 

The challenge of course is that place has many other connotations. I was struck in a visit to Japan recently at the sheer strength of the office as a place of work, defined by a culture of ‘presenteeism’. I heard some marvelous stories of office workers going to great lengths to be sure that their bosses knew that being at the office was the most important part of their working life.

The power of place has become something that we have to think about really carefully. A decade or two ago, the question was not so pertinent. When communication systems were slow and unreliable, working from home was never going to be an option. But now it is, and it seems that we have to consider the why and when of place with a great deal more finesse. Otherwise how can Yahoo stop itself becoming an American version of a Japanese bureaucratic company? 

Here is how. It seems to me that in thinking about the power of place, there are three questions we have to ask.

What happens in the place? This is really the big question for educators like myself, as we try and justify why our teaching shouldn’t go online. If we bring students to London, Stanford or Boston, there has to be a really good reason for doing so, and we have to make every moment of physical connectivity count. So that means that we have to create ways of rapidly accelerating all the benefits of face-to-face working, be that appreciating each other, building trust or resolving conflicts and dilemmas. Simply leaving it to ‘water cooler conversations’ is just not going to be enough.

What happens in the gang? Next is the questing of the nature of work and of working groups. Look around in most workplaces and you will see that, for many working groups, there is little chance that all its members will be co-located at the same time. I don’t know about the working practices of Yahoo, but my guess is that members of most working groups are located in different places. What that means is that those who are co-located and working together build ever-stronger ‘in-groups’, which in turn exclude those from the ‘out-group’. So whether you are working from home, or in another city, or another time zone, being part of the ‘out-group’ puts you at a real disadvantage. So, if we assume that not all members of the gang are going to be together anyway, it’s obvious that, whether they are working from home or another office, it really makes no difference. It’s impossible for everyone to be present all of the time. So the challenge becomes one of how corporations build deep cooperative practices for virtual workers, wherever they happen to be.

What happens to the trust? I was told in my recent visit to Japan that one of the reasons why some Japanese companies prefer their workers to be in the office for long hours is that, by doing so, they can be assured that they are working and not being distracted at home. It could well be that Mayer has some of the same concerns. Perhaps the downfall of Yahoo has indeed been caused by a culture of slacking. So bringing people back to where they can be seen could be a good way of monitoring their hourly performance. But as Japanese office productivity shows, just because people sit in the office all the time, that doesn’t mean they are being productive. So the question here is not so much about observation, but rather about motivation: how can work be redesigned so that it’s intrinsically interesting and meaningful, and so that people are engaged and excited wherever they happen to be?

It seems to me that it’s time we acknowledge that the office-based ways of working are on their way out. But that doesn’t mean place is not crucial. What it does mean is that we have to think about place in an altogether more sophisticated and nuanced way.

The Choices for Japanese Youth

In The Shift, I wrote of the ‘default future’ and the ‘crafted future’. The ‘crafted future’ emerges when we actively make choices about the future with some understanding of the consequences of these choices. The idea of the ‘crafted future’ was very much on my mind this week as I spoke to journalists, students and workers in Tokyo. I was in Japan to support The Shift, which since its launch in autumn 2012 has become one of the best selling business books in the country. It seems that the idea of a ‘crafted future’, of choices and of consequences, has resonated with young and old in a country that appears to be at a fork in the path. This piece is written for the many hundreds of people I spoke with this week, the hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who have read The Shift, and for anyone who is interested in the future of corporate Japan and Generation Y.

Be a Passive Child or a Volitional Adult?

Reflecting on my time in Tokyo, it seems to me that now is a time of profound choices for Japanese workers, and particularly the Generation Y of Japan. Let me describe these given the nature of current relationships between corporation and worker.

The traditional relationship between the corporation and its workers across the world has been ‘parent to child’. The corporate ‘parent’ provides for the worker ‘child’. It does this through the promise of lifetime employment, through clearly demarcated promotion based on seniority, and through well-defined hierarchies of decision making. In this ultra-secure context, the role of the worker ‘child’ is to behave in a passive, disciplined manner by working long hours, rarely questioning authority, and by fitting into the hierarchy.

In much of the world, this ‘parent to child’ relationship has been swept away by a combination of cost-cutting corporations and feistier and more outspoken employees. For a variety of reasons, the ‘parent to child’ relationship in many Japanese corporations has remained intact until recently. However, as Japanese corporations such as Sony and Panasonic battle the likes of Apple and Samsung with little success, this corporate culture of ‘parent to child’ is coming under increasing pressure and scrutiny, particularly from the youngest generation.

There is an alternative to the ‘parent to child’ relationship. This is the ‘adult to adult’ relationship. This removes the predictability and comfort of ‘parent to child’, but puts in its place the possibility of greater freedom, creativity and choice. The challenge of this relationship is how to become more volitional, more able to understand the choices available, and more capable of grasping the consequences. The challenge becomes one of making a transition from being a ‘passive child’ to a ‘volitional adult’. 

Over the course of my week in Tokyo, I was asked many times about my opinion on how this transition can be achieved. Here are my top three tips for making the transition from ‘passive child’ to ‘volitional adult’:

• First, widen your gaze.  The world is joining up at an extraordinary pace. These emerging networks are creating fast-flowing streams of knowledge, ideas and projects. From Chile to Russia, young people are connecting to each other through online platforms like InnoCentive, which act as platforms for creativity. Those outside of these global networks are in danger of becoming isolated, failing to benefit from this enormous pool of creative energy. There is a real risk of Japanese youngsters becoming isolated from these global streams of knowledge and ideas, as Japan’s ultra-homogenous society provides few glimpses of other ways of living. What’s more, the inability of many to read English marginalizes the possibilities for global connection. Being a ‘volitional adult’ is about knowing the extent of the choices available, and it is only through widening the gaze that these choices become clearer. Building the diverse networks of the ‘Big Ideas Crowd’ will be crucial.
• Next, speak out.  A child may argue with a parent, but ultimately the nexus of power remains with the parent. A good ‘adult to adult’ relationship has a more balanced nexus of power. It is based on conversation, mutual understanding and joint action taking. The basis of this is being able to speak out and have your voice heard. If employees are to become more volitional, they have to have the courage to speak out about what they believe to be right. One area of ‘speaking out’ that seems to me to be crucial at this stage in the development of corporate Japan is the role of women at work. Few senior figures in corporate Japan are women, and in the recent World Economic Forum ‘Gender Gap’ report, the country ranked 101 out of the 135 countries measured. If half of the potential Japanese workforce is unable to have their voice heard in an ‘adult to adult’ way, then this severely reduces their capacity to be a ‘volitional adult’.

• Then take courageous action. Being a ‘volitional adult’ is about understanding the choices available (by widening your gaze), debating these choices and consequences (by speaking out), and then exercising choice (by taking courageous action). This stands in direct contrast to the ‘passive child’. What might these choices look like for young Japanese workers? As I mentioned in my last blog, there is a growing consensus that youth unemployment is becoming one of the scourges of modern society. Research clearly shows that large corporations are rarely the primary creator of new jobs. Instead, new jobs are created in start-ups and medium sized companies. It seems that there is a great opportunity for some of the youth in Japan to become entrepreneurs. Yet few have taken this path to date. Faced with the comfort of the traditional ‘parent to child’ corporate relationship, the outside world of the ‘adult to adult’ can seem cold and uninviting. Yet there are those who are taking the risk. At Hub Tokyo, I met young entrepreneurs working together and connecting with others across the world. Over the coming decades, Japanese Generation Y cohort will build deep competence in how to support an ageing population, how to live in a civilized way in a ‘re-balanced world’, and how to balance industrialization and the resource needs of the natural world. These are all skills and insights that Japan’s young entrepreneurs, as well as its traditional corporations, can take to the rest of the world.

Widening your gaze, being prepared to speak out, and taking courageous action are ways of being that will be increasingly crucial in the joined up, global world that Japanese Gen Ys are entering. Now is the time for Japan’s Generation Y to make the shift.

Left Out in the Cold

You could almost feel the zeitgeist emerging over the four days that the World Economic Forum meets at Davos. Thousands of CEOs, government ministers and a sprinkling of academics packed into a small town surrounded by snow – the perfect place for the fermentation of ideas and thoughts. 

Looking back to the 2012 Davos, the talk was all about the final playing out of the financial crisis and the deep concerns about the break up of the Eurozone. Just a year later, and the mood seemed more optimistic, though with a strong undercurrent of realism. For me, one of the emerging challenges of Davos was around youth unemployment, while one of the strongest threads of opportunity was the relentless advance of learning technologies. Combined, these two developments could lead to the paradoxical situation of highly educated people with no jobs.

Growing concern about youth unemployment

There was certainly a strong consensus that the most pressing short-term, and indeed long-term global challenge is youth unemployment. Its scale is overwhelming: in some countries, more than 50% of young people have no gainful employment. It’s an issue that is set to destabilize fragile economies, become a breeding ground for extremism, and leave a generation permanently scarred. Indeed, it is on track to become one of the worst legacies of the Baby Boomer generation.

The irony is that, right now, corporations are awash with financial resources (some commentators asserting that there is currently two trillion dollars on the global balance sheets). But executives are lacking confidence to invest in the shadow of recession. Though there is vocal concern around the issue of youth unemployment, there is very little in the way of concrete action. It’s clear that those regions with light-touch labour regulations and strong signaling mechanisms to communicate skills in demand are winning. But in many regions, young people are caught in the net of restrictive labour regulations, and weak signals are producing a limited awareness of employable skills. Within the Forum, there was indeed talk of creating a global fund for unemployment, and a more explicit requirement for companies to take on young people. Yet these steps are simply inadequate when confronted with the tidal wave of youth unemployment that is washing over many regions of the world.

Excitement about virtual learning

While there may not be jobs for every young person, the paradox is that their opportunity to receive free education through the development of online learning is expanding at an exponential rate. It seems that the promise of extensive virtual learning is rapidly being delivered. In the Forum, Professors from MIT and Stanford spoke of their determination to put their classes online for all to engage with, while Bill Gates made it clear that this was something he was personally committed to supporting. There are still issues of certification and verification of skills, but these seem relatively easy to solve.

There has been talk about fundamentally restructuring education for years. In fact, some have seen education as the last bastion of traditional hierarchical practices. Luckily, it seems that the momentum for education for all is finally beginning to build, fueled by lower-cost computers, greater levels of connectivity, and a willingness from some teachers to make their classes available online for free. As a consequence, there are those who say that, perhaps within the next five years, the education landscape will be profoundly transformed.

That still leaves the problem of what it is these more educated and motivated young people will actually do in their working lives. The ‘hollowing out of work’ has brought structural changes to many business functions and tasks across the world. Crucially, this hollowing out has seen middle-skill roles replaced by technology or outsourced to the lowest cost provider. What is left is the low paid and unskilled on one end of the spectrum, and the highly skilled and highly paid on the other end of the spectrum. The challenge for young people seeking work is that it is those disappearing middle jobs that have historically been their initial perch as they join a company. When they go the perch disappears, and with it goes the hope of employment, even for the smartest of kids.

But at this stage, it seems that the sheer complexity of youth unemployment, not to mention the diversity of stakeholders involved, is rendering the challenge almost impossible to solve. Like global warming, the fear is that this will simply be put into the box marked ‘too difficult to solve now’. It would seem that it is not only the CEOs at Davos who could be left out in the cold.

Related articles

A letter from Davos

The Skill Gap: Asian Style

The Frustration of Diversity

I found myself recently spending almost three days with an extraordinarily diverse group. Of the eight people with me, there was someone from Canada, America, Argentina, Japan, Indian, China, Germany and the UK; we ranged in age from 27 to 58; and in terms of specialism there was a psychiatrist, an international ice hockey coach, the head of HR for a global IT company, a couple of entrepreneurs and the provost of a major design college. I cannot image a more diverse collection of people spending time together.

What had brought us from all corners of the world was the World Economic Forum in Dubai, where more than 1,000 experts had gathered to consider a range of global challenges. The focus of our specific council was the rather ambiguous question about the future of leadership. This extraordinary and rather frustrating experience gave me an opportunity to reflect again on what research has helped us to understand the power of diversity. For, while the experience was indeed deeply frustrating at times, the outcome of our time together was without doubt deeper and more profound than it would have been if we were a group of similar people.

Here are the lessons I took away from my experience:

• Diversity comes at a cost. Our council had been speaking virtually for some time, yet when we met we still struggled to really understand the unique framing each brought to our conversation. My previous conversations with a bunch of psychologists like me was a great deal easier than the conversations in Dubai. And my guess is that was true for the psychiatrist and the ice hockey coach. It’s significantly easier to establish a way of working between people who have the same mindset and experience. So be aware that if the question is ambiguous and the team diverse then they are going to really struggle.

• The power of suspending judgment. So it’s important, given the struggles to understand each other, that each tries to suspend their judgment. In our own group we were helped enormously by a chairperson who frequently asked each of us to reflect on what we were thinking. That means that in these circumstances, being prepared to suspend judgment and simply to listen to each other is crucial.

• Staying with it. We had committed to spend three days together – in the same room, talking about the same subject, with the same people. That’s an extraordinary commitment and one that I know few people are prepared to give. But what we found was that, without that commitment, it would have been impossible for us to truly make some of the breakthroughs in our thinking. We simply had to get through the barriers to bridge to each other and this took time and being present. For me, the point here is that it takes a significant time commitment to make any sort of breakthrough when working on ambiguous questions.

• Focus, Focus, Focus. We had come to the WEF meeting to talk about one question, and one question only: How will our models of leadership have to change over the coming decade? We each had our own perspective on this question – drawn from our professional experiences and what we had learnt in our own countries. This focus was crucial to our coming to any breakthrough thinking. Without this, our individual experiences and perspectives could have led to us simply passing by each other with no real connection. Getting the question right is crucial to pulling the disparate ideas of the team together.

Will I be doing it again? Absolutely! But for the moment I am spending the next month with people just like me!