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: Time to Learn About Learning

As an educator I am fascinated by the way that learning will be re-shaped over the coming decades. Here are some of the far-reaching questions debated at Davos this year and the experiments discussed.

1. Shouldn’t craft-based apprenticeship be encouraged?

Historically the returns to higher education have been significant: Graduates have earned more than non-graduates. But as more executives are bemoaning the lack of job-related skills in graduates, will this trend persist? Or, should apprentice learning be encouraged, particularly at a time when artisanal endeavours could well be a growing sector of the workforce?

During the industrial revolution the craft-based apprenticeship systems in many countries were destroyed. Is it now time to re-invigorate this system of creating opportunities for young people to learn a craft in a working environment? And if they are to be re-created, what form could they take? What role could public/private partnerships play? Alain Dehaze, CEO of Adecco Group, Switzerland, talked of how he is chairing a global coalition to bring together the many stakeholders involved in this. My own view is that apprenticeship learning will be one of the most significant growth areas in the coming years.

2. What will be the valuable skills of the future?

This is not a new question, but embedded within it are three broad issues each of which will become ever more curial. The first issue is, what are the valuable skills that can be augmented by AI and machine learning?

In the debate about AI and machine learning it is becoming clear that ‘soft skills’ – curiosity, empathy, compassion, collaboration - will become crucial. But what is less clear is the learning infrastructure that supports and encourages these skills. The CEO of Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson, described how in an industry focused on technical skills they have created a package for ‘soft skill’ development that is being rapidly rolled out into schools and colleges.

Second, what is the best balance between science and liberal arts, and specialist and generalist? An Asian delegate remarked to me that just at the time when the West has decided that STEM subjects are more important than liberal arts, Asia - where STEM skills have always been highly valued – is questioning whether liberal arts should now become more central to the curriculum. And there is more: should people specialise deeply in one subject or should they have a foundation of general knowledge? I think fundamentally these are questions of balance and context and they will continue to be debated as education and industry tries to create an equilibrium.

Third, how can entrepreneurial skills be encouraged?  There is no doubt that the issue of entrepreneurship will become more crucial as the creation of small businesses and the support of individual producers becomes the powerhouse of employment in countries with historically high youth unemployment. What does it take to support someone in building their own business – financial acumen, alliance building skills, perhaps even network augmentation?

3. How will life-long learning be achieved?

From my own research on the implications of the 100-year life what becomes clear is that to continue to be productive into our 80s we will all have to up-skill, re-skill and re-learn. That means being prepared to invest in learning whilst we are at work, or using weekends and holidays to learn, or taking dedicated time out. This has fundamental implications many of which are positive – it will break the ‘age segmentation’ which is so much an aspect of current education; it will encourage partnerships between educators and corporations as they attempt to shape life-long learning environments; and it will provide opportunities for people to re-shape their potential throughout their life.

4. Shouldn’t education institutions use outcomes as a measure of success?

There are those, like Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School who argue that education is ripe for innovation and disintermediation. Whilst traditional education has certainly changed little over the last century, the forces of change are gathering: there is growing evidence of the skills gap between the needs of the workplace and the skills of graduating students; traditional education is seen as elitist and simply serving to reinforce the status quo. And as the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam remarked, there is concern that this is an industry untouched by the need to measure outcomes and performance. It seems inevitable that over the coming years these forces will result in a profound reevaluation of learning and education.

What if money was no longer the most valuable asset a company could offer an employee?

What is the most valuable asset a company can give an employee?

Historically the answer was simple – money. That’s why the HR function of most companies goes to such extreme lengths to design pay packets (bonuses, team-based rewards, stock options and so on) and to decide through antiquated performance management systems who gets paid what. Indeed, it’s why they’ve been persuaded that senior leaders really are worth up to 200% more than the pay of an average employee.

Yet we have known for sometime that although pay might indeed be a valuable asset for an employee, it’s unlikely to be the driver for their motivation. Indeed years of research have shown that this valuable asset turns out more often to be a source of dissatisfaction rather than a motivator. Most people don’t work harder, or more creatively or cooperatively because they are paid more.

So recently the search has been on for more ‘intangible assets’ that could be really valued by employees. Perhaps it’s the opportunity to work more flexibly, or the chance to work for a boss that likes you, or to work in a convivial open plan office that employees value. And indeed, perhaps it’s this combination that results in employees being engaged rather than disengaged.

I think – to use a simple metaphor – we are barking up the wrong tree. Let me explain. Over the last couple of years my colleague, the economist Andrew Scott, and I have been asking a simple question ‘What happens when most people live to 100 years’. It’s been a fascinating exploration. One undeniable truth is that if you live to 100 then you will probably need to work into your 80s. Now there is no doubt that over the course of a long working life money is indeed crucial – no one wants to look forward to an old age lived in poverty. So money is a valuable asset that a company can give to an employee.

However, across a long life this tangible asset, whilst important, has to be balanced by equally important intangible assets. It seems to me that chief amongst these crucial intangible assets is the type of work an employee is given to perform. Work that is valuable both now and as a hedge against the future has three crucial elements:

• It is interesting and allows workers to engage their mind and creativity
• It has developmental potential – particularly to in terms of capabilities that are ‘portable’ in the sense that they can be used beyond the current job
• It is non-routine so is unlikely to be substituted in the short term by robotics or Artificial Intelligence

For the sake of simplicity lets call this ‘good work’. Now lets play a mind game. Let’s assume that a leader in a corporation acknowledges that the intangible asset of ‘good work’ is as valuable to an employee as the tangible asset of money. If this were the case, what would we expect to see happening within the corporation? Here are five ideas:

• We would expect jobs to be analysed with regards to the extent that they are composed of tasks that are interesting, developmental and non-routine. We could even imagine that these job characteristics are rated against a common currency – lets call this unit a ‘tang’.
• So when an employer is advertising a job, they are able to show both the financial assets the job is valued at (salary, bonus, stock options etc) and also its ‘tang’ assets (interest, developmental potential, non-routine)
• When an employee is deciding on whether to take a job, they can balance the tangible and intangible assets it creates. They can decide, for example, that they are prepared to take a higher ‘tang’ rated job at a certain point in their career, even if the salary is lower. Or indeed take a higher paid job whilst acknowledging that the ‘tang’ value is low.
• It could be that managers who are particularly skilled at designing jobs for their team that have a high ‘tang’ value are celebrated for this sculpting skill.
• We might expect that if the ‘tang’ value of a job falls below a certain level then the whole job has to be re-designed to increase the ‘tang value’ by adding tasks that are interesting, developmental or non-routine. This re-design could be initiated by the manager, or indeed by the worker who is performing the job and who is encouraged to broaden the scope of the job to envelope more ‘tang’ rich activities.

Right now it is still money that dominates the negotiated relationship between an employee and employer. Let’s widen the conversation to include an equally important asset – good work. Perhaps by understanding the value of work with as much finesse as we currently understand the value of reward systems, we can begin to give employees a better choice about the deal they want to strike.

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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.

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.