Archives for October 2018

The literature of ancient Israel invites any leader to consider the following: If you have the gift of leadership then lead with diligence.

We don’t often speak of diligence in connection with leadership. Maybe we should.  When is the last time you did a personal assessment of your competency to lead, and the outcomes of your leadership? Today might be your best day to honestly assess the Diligence Gap in your work of leading.

Start by considering Leadership as a gift.

The Gift You are Given.  An organization gives you a gift when you are invited to take on a role of leading others. The gift is given to you when your exceptional performance is continually noticed. It’s a risk because it assumes that you also have the potential to lead at a higher level of organizational complexity.

The Gift You Give.  Every individual you lead receives the opportunity to invest in their career development. In your leadership you give the gift of feedback, training, delegating responsibilities, stretch assignments, and promotions. Your responsibility is to be fair with each individual in light of their capacity and capabilities.

The way you do this is through Diligence.  It represents your drive to keep learning how to develop your    leadership competency. It is defined as “careful and persistent work or effort.”  It implies careful attention with haste and speed in doing something that you highly value, aspire to, and love.

It is the opposite of letting the leadership for each individual linger at the end of your “To Do” list each day.

Diligence is:

…Passion – The desire to lead more effectively and efficiently.

…Experience – The willingness to take on stretch assignments to enhance your leadership capacity.

…Intentionality – The delegation to develop high potential team members to increase team productivity.

…Return on Investment – The impact of developing the next generation of leaders.

What is the Diligence Gap in your leadership? What will you do this week to demonstrate the careful attention and persistent work of leading others?

What happens to recruiting when there is no-one to recruit?

In another 12 years, says a global survey, the world will be missing more than 85 million skilled workers.  That’s more than the current population of Germany.

The survey is the most recent of Korn Ferry’s “Future of Work” series. It’s one of many recently to sound the manpower alarm.  Numbers vary but they all say the same thing:  the problem is not robots replacing people, we’re running out of people to replace people.

Not that populations are generally declining – although countries such as Japan have experienced low birth rates for several decades. We are still breeding: there are plenty of people.  It’s the skill part that has gone wrong.  We are on course to run out of skilled people.

According to the Global Human Capital Report from the World Economic Forum, the world has only developed 62% of its human capital.   In 14 countries, less than half of the human capital has been developed.

The report measured 130 countries in four key areas of human capital development – Capacity, Deployment, Development and Know-How.  It concludes by blaming governments for failing to translate investment in higher education into opportunities for higher-quality work.

EU No Further Ahead

A telling statistic comes in yet another survey focusing on European countries.  Indicators suggest that the free movement of labor, a key benefit of EU membership, is unlikely to solve the skills shortage.

There are other pressures.  The Korn Ferry report singles out the passage of the baby-boomer generation in the United States.  Most of the boomers will have moved on by 2030, but the next generations will not have had the training or the time to be ready to take over the highly-skilled jobs left behind.

The impact could be great enough to affect leadership in some sectors.

The report cites the US as the current, undisputed leader in tech but concludes it faces losses as high as $162 billion of revenues per year if it fails to find more high-tech workers.  In contrast, India will have a surplus of a million high-tech workers by 2030 and could become the new tech leader.

Constant Learning Will be Central

“The savviest organizations are taking on the onus of training talent themselves, hiring people straight out of school,” says Jean-Marc Laouchez, president of the Korn Ferry Institute.  “Constant learning will be central to the future of work.”

Then there are today’s workers.

Writing this week in the publication “Emerging Europe” Tom Quigley, who believes Europe is “looking over an abyss of severe talent shortage,” states:

“The future of work doesn’t just require different skill sets and early access to talent potential. It also requires the adoption of entirely new ways of working for existing employees.”

This includes more flexible relationships, per-project engagements, working from home as well as workers taking responsibility for their own professional development.

While committing to help train the next generation, leaders will also need a comprehensive understanding of the current talent supply chain in order to have in place the skills they need.

Pity the person in the corner office.

 

 

The world has become less friendly to recruiters in recent months.

Surveys have singled out many and growing challenges facing those who search to find top talent in virtually any field.

Allegis Group, a $2B giant in the field, put it in memorable terms a few days ago in the new 2018 Global Workforce Trends report, the first paragraph of which reads:

“Today’s employers must contend with a perfect storm of talent supply and demand challenges. Unemployment rates hover near historic lows. New technologies raise the demand for new skills. Many older workers are retiring, and companies face new competitors in the race to acquire talent while retaining the workers they have.”

In addition to the Workforce Trends report, other surveys remind us of:

• The perils of the gig economy – difficulties of hiring resulting from the decline of FTE and rise of independent and contracted workers (Forbes.com))
• The impact of disruptive technologies (Allegis Group)
• Predictions of a worldwide talent shortage of more than 85 million people by 2030 (Korn Ferry- Future of Work)

And then there is the summary from Saba with the cheery title “Failure to Develop, Engage and Retain Talent” to remind you that things can only get worse.

Although conditions fluctuate with geography, indications are the challenges are not regional.  The Allegis survey was global and reached 700 talent acquisition professionals.  Among respondents, 80% have had problems acquiring critical talent due to changing global labour markets due to economic environment, demographic shifts, generational differences and more.

Nearly two-thirds of companies (65%) have had to adjust business strategy because they could not secure the right talent in a specific function or geographic area.

So given all this, times must be tough for the people who make their living recruiting top talent, right? Well, not so much.  In fact, far from being half empty, the opportunity glass seems to be half full.

Retained Search Firms Happy

Members of the global AESC – the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants – are unfailingly optimistic over the state of their profession.  In the Americas, all countries but Mexico are more optimistic with regards to 2018 business performance, in Asia all but China, and in Europe all members without exception.

Here at home, Cornerstone International Group (CIG) specializes in retained executive search and has member offices in 35 countries.   So far this year, business activity would seem to reflect the usual ups and downs of a global network with the market in the Americas being notably robust.

Why are they having an easy time of it when surveys say the talent market is getting tighter all the time?

“It’s actually not such a surprise,” says Larry Shoemaker, President of CIG. “For two reasons. One, it is getting more difficult to find the right people but employers have to find them, so the volume of hires doesn’t necessarily decline.  Two, when top talent gets harder to find, you look for the best searchers. You don’t leave things to chance.

“Retained executive search firms such as Cornerstone have more experience, very broad contacts and superior expertise.  We deliver when in-house recruiters struggle.  We are in the market every day and know where the appropriate candidates are and how to attract them.”

There is also the new challenge of finding agile talent, the kind that will stay longer with the hiring employer.  But that’s for another day.

To learn more about Cornerstone, click here to read our e-Book “Recruiting top Talent”