Big firms are trashing their own people assets

Age and experience exposes the naivete of youth Clip courtesy BBC's The Apprentice

By Neil Patrick

Recently I had some bad news from a friend. His wife had been laid off in a corporate restructuring.

This lady had spent over ten years with a global blue chip employer and through professionalism and hard work had risen to the position of Global Marketing Director.

She’d done absolutely nothing to deserve her ejection. On the contrary, she had been diligent and committed. Her results and appraisals had been excellent. Her colleagues thought highly of her.

Yet in an HR spreadsheet exercise, she and several hundred other senior colleagues were terminated. No ifs, buts, or options. Just out.

Age is always side slipped in diversity programmes

The firm’s plan was to cull the most senior and expensive people and hire younger – and of course cheaper people. Doubtless, someone had bandied around the term ‘Digital natives’ in the discussions about this decision.

Perversely, their website talks a lot about creating a more diverse workforce – yet this diversity appears to mean just gender and ethnic diversity. They seem to have forgotten that age is also a diversity issue and a protected characteristic in law (in the UK, under the Equality Act, 2010).

Money talks and…you know the rest

I understand a severance package (doubtless constructed with bullet proof legal advice) is in place. But this is not the point.

The point is that this is no doubt thought of as cutting out the dead wood and saving money in the process.

We need to look at people as part of the balance sheet more than the P&L

The second irony is that her employer is one of the biggest and most prestigious advisory and consulting firms in the world. i.e people you’d expect to understand that assets like people are part of the balance sheet (at least conceptually), not just a cost on the Profit and Loss account.

Older and more expensive people are more valuable than younger and cheaper people. We need them both and we need them to work together respecting and harnessing each other’s unique skills and aptitudes.

After so many years, my friend’s wife is older. She’s more experienced. She’s more valuable than however many cheaper young people they could hire instead. Perhaps not if this was a potato farm. But this is a global leader in knowledge-based advice and solutions for large corporations and organisations. They trade in intellectual capital. And intellectual capital isn't bought, it is grown and nurtured over years.

How many times do we hear CEOs spouting the mantra that ’Our people are our most valuable asset’?

That’s right. They are. And when you have invested a decade in nurturing an asset, surely it’s idiotic to just throw it away for a cheaper and less effective one?

But she’s in marketing; like its cousins, sales and advertising, marketing jobs are notorious for over-valuing one personal characteristic; youth.

Ageism is illegal in the UK. But it is also the last of the ‘isms’ to remain socially acceptable. And since it is so easy to fudge, many employers breach this law routinely.

So her chances of a rapid and smooth transition to a comparable role elsewhere are slim and will become slimmer with each month which passes.

There’s no such thing as a specialism where youth trumps everything else

Most people believe that marketing demands high creativity, high energy, media know-how. Exuberance and slick presentation skills don’t hurt either. These are characteristics which are incorrectly (see my post about this here), believed to be more prevalent amongst the young. The reality is something else. Effective marketing teams are experts at revenue generation; nurturing client relationships; data gathering and interpretation; brand building; managing specialist suppliers.

I work all the time with smart, enthusiastic young people who have marketing roles. They are wonderful. But they are also inexperienced and limited in their understanding of how to build successful businesses. They simply have not had the depth of experience to obtain the perspectives which I learned often painfully through 30 years of hard won experience.

Sure our world is transforming faster than ever before, but this doesn’t mean it is entirely different. The digital revolution doesn’t change the fundamental workings of economics and business, it just changes the ways in which these goals are attained. The Zuckerberg mythology is just that. Facebook is a success not because of Zuckerberg’s youth. It’s a success because he did better than his Silicon Valley peers…who guess what, were also young and inexperienced.

Youth alone is not a panacea for the digital age. The future belongs to those organisations who can figure out how to satisfy the aspirations and nurture the talents of young and old alike. It’s called ‘inclusivity’ guys…

Digital business is not at all beyond the comprehension of older employees. In fact I’d wager they could bring a good deal of common sense to some of the short sighted nonsense I see written about SEO, social media and other preserves of the tyros.

Please, please please, let’s stop believing that somehow culling the most experienced people is a recipe for progress.

It’s not. It’s like setting fire to your best work and flushing the ashes down the toilet…

Don't fear hiring the 'wrong' person; fear not making good people great

By Neil Patrick

Fear is the new greed. And catching a dose of it is more life threatening to more people than any terrorist or viral epidemic.

Tomorrow’s UK referendum about staying in or leaving the EU has been dominating the media now for what seems like forever. Watching media interviews with the public on this topic reminded me of an old truth - many people fear change and the unknown more than anything else. Most people will stick with a terrible spouse, a toxic employer and a collapsing career rather than face up to the unknown. Their default is to stick with what they know, even to the point of it harming them.

Banks know this human failing well and even have a name for it and make a great deal of money from it. They call it customer inertia. It's what stops customers switching to another bank even when they are really unhappy about their current one.

And this fear is becoming the norm for organisational behaviours too. Risk management has become a profession which has expanded its death grip from sensible steps to mitigate calamity to an all-pervasive mind set which hampers any organisation seeking to do the sorts of things they aspire to yet often fail to successfully implement. Risk avoidance has become a surrogate for good practice.

Things like becoming agile. Being flexible and responsive. Being customer centric. The reason these management buzzwords cause me to retch every time I hear them, isn’t because they are unworthy aspirations, it’s because so few people who espouse them actually practice them, or have even figured out a way to make them a reality instead of a pipedream.

And nowhere is this commitment to mediocrity more prevalent than in the decisions around hiring people. The whole sorry process has (not unlike the EU) taken on a life of its own. It has grown from a sensible desire to avoid hiring totally unsuitable people for jobs, into an over-rigid and over-specified set of requirements which mean hardly anyone can meet such demanding criteria.

This is why so many vacancies remain unfilled. It's why employers claim they cannot find the people they seek. HR and hiring managers are so terrified that they might make a bad decision that they make no decision. So the post remains unfilled often for months, because no-one suitable can be found (allegedly). In the meantime, the organisation limps on, other employees carry extra burdens, and the whole environment becomes more toxic, more pressured and less productive.

Yet these thousands of person shaped holes are not because no-one can be found. It’s because the specifications and requirements are so extensive that almost no-one could meet them. In my career I have interviewed and hired hundreds of people and watched their careers develop. The thing I learned from this was that an average person can outperform a superstar every time if they are provided with a good environment. Put a superstar in a poor environment and the reverse happens.

And the responsibility for creating a good environment is down to employers not employees. Some employers know this and work hard at it. Too many abdicate responsibility and pass the buck for their failures to their employees.

Employers want good people. But good people are made not bought. And if your organisation is capable of turning good people onto superstars, you’ll not only have a more loyal and productive workforce, you’ll enjoy the benefits of people staying with you longer and critically, acquire the capability of attracting more good people more easily.

It’s time for organisations to stop talking about talent acquisition and start practicing talent manufacturing.

Beware the killer job description

By Neil Patrick

Sloppy job descriptions are hurting businesses and employees more than you ever thought possible. Here's how...

From time to time, I like to look at job postings. It’s like car crash TV to me.

My earlier post, titled “Why are so many job descriptions cut and paste catastrophes?  ” seemed to resonate with people, so I thought it was time to revisit the subject.

Job descriptions (JDs) have far reaching consequences. How they are framed dictates who applies, and in this age of numerous unhappy employees and busy recruiters, there’s rarely a shortage of applicants. Unfortunately, this flood of applications deludes employers into thinking their JDs are not a problem.

They are wrong. They are damaging their businesses every day. And in this post I will show you why.

Employers frequently moan not about the quantity but the quality of applications they receive. And I would push this right back at them and say they are largely responsible for this, not the job applicants.

Get the JD wrong, and everything else will go wrong...

JDs are frequently scrabbled together by a junior HR person and/or recruiter in a rush to meet some deadline or other. The hiring manager ‘approves’ it and the die is cast…

But there is a more critical aspect. A JD determines not only who applies, but also after the hiring decision is made, dictates what that person does from day to day. "That’s obvious", I hear you say, but if the way a JD is framed completely misunderstands how the job holder can add value to the business, the foundations are wrong. The daily work and focus is wrong, the job holder fails to achieve expectations, the employer loses out and everyone is disappointed.

And right now, there are few JDs which get this wrong more than digital marketing roles.

So here’s a real JD I took at random this morning for such a role. A few details have been changed to protect the guilty.

Let’s ignore the spelling and grammatical mistakes. Although these are also circumstantial evidence that insufficient care and thought has been applied to this task.

This firm is looking to employ a Digital Marketing Manager. Here’s the summary and the job holder’s responsibilities:

A rapidly expanding business is looking for a top flight Digital Marketing Manager to take on and develop a new role in this ever expanding company. This is a chance for a hands on practitioner to take on a more strategic role and make your mark in a senior management role.

From the off there is a dangerous assumption here. The assumption is that this ‘top flight’ (whatever that means) digital marketer is currently in a more junior role. And the terms ‘strategic… senior management role’ are used to tempt them into believing that this job could be their big career break.

In this case, I believe this is disingenuous as I shall explain if you read on…

Responsibilities:

* Devising strategies to drive online traffic to a portfolio of websites with a B2C, D2C and B2B activity

The first thing said is usually the most important. And unfortunately if this is the job holder’s biggest goal, they will be focused on pushing those numbers up. So what, isn’t that what they are supposed to do? No it’s not.

Effective digital strategies first and foremost are not about traffic numbers. They are about connecting with customers, not chasing clicks. They are about establishing a customer preference for us over our competitors. They are about building goodwill with customers, about understanding them better, about showing we care about them. If we reduce them to clicks that we count, we are travelling in the wrong direction from the get go.

Calling a task a strategy doesn't mean the role is strategic. Moreover, there is nothing in this JD which I would consider to be strategic. So you can see why I think there's something of a ruse going on here.

* Establish and track and optimise conversion rates Developing (sic) and managing digital marketing campaigns

There’s no such thing as optimising a conversion rate. Since most firms regard conversion rate as a quantification of enquiries to sales, these need to be maximised. ‘Optimised’ implies that we can have too much as well as too little. Nonsense. No business I have ever encountered has grumbled about too many sales.

Conversion is a stupid term to apply to digital marketing. ‘Outcomes’ is much better. If the FT shares our content, that’s a great outcome. If a hundred people love our tweet so much they retweet it, that’s also a great outcome. But if we are defining conversion as 'sales', these wonderful successes score zilch.

* Develop and implement strategies utilising a range of techniques including Email, Social Media, SEO, Affiliate and PPC

This is interesting. The firm seeks to leverage every channel available. Nothing wrong with that, but I sense here that this is all about numbers. We can get x clicks from this and y from that. We’ll measure and compare the cost per click and then do more of the cheapest and less of the most expensive. This is putting the cart before the horse. It’s the old throwing mud at the wall game…

* Working in conjunction with the corporate marketing team implement the social media strategy to support existing and new business opportunities

In my experience, most marketing teams have a chronic misunderstanding of the role that digital media should play in the strategy. I cannot prove this is the case here, but my guess is that the corporate marketing people will be expecting the digital marketing manager to be playing second fiddle to their client acquisition goals.

E.g. “Let’s tweet about our latest meeting with XYZ Corp because they are a potential client.”

"Erm…No. Let's not - their reputation is atrocious.”

* Managing online brand and product campaigns to raise brand awareness and increase revenue

A brand campaign functions to raise awareness. Period. It is therefore about growing the firm’s intangible assets. Its part of the balance sheet. Revenues appear on the P&L. The connection is indirect and impossible to connect. Attempting to do this is a waste of everyone’s time.

* Managing the updates of the company websites for Europe

Fair enough. But I wonder if these sites are multilingual? They should be…

* Improving the usability, design, content and conversion of the company website

Once again, here is evidence that the firm’s ideas about digital are all mixed up. Websites exist for a multitude of purposes. It’s sensible to have sales goals for an e-commerce site. It’s idiotic to set this as a goal for a corporate or B2B one…

* Responsibility for planning and budgetary control of all digital marketing

Fair enough, but I would have liked to have seen a specific statement that this job holder could have a voice in deciding exactly what these budgets should be.

* Evaluating customer research, market conditions and competitor data

Good. For once I like this! That said, because this is so important, it is disappointing that it appears so low on the list of tasks.

* Review new technologies and keep the company at the forefront of developments in digital marketing.

This is naïve and unreasonably optimistic. If you truly want to be on the bleeding edge of digital marketing, you’d better be prepared to invest a whole lot of time and money in wasted pursuits and blind alleys. This is counterproductive and a gamble which flies in the face of everything else on this JD.

* Stakeholder management. Both internal and partners

Okay. I know this is a cut and paste on most JDs. But please tell me what it means. Unless you do, I will assume it just means don’t p**s off the bigwigs.

What we have here is a recipe for everyone to be unhappy a few months after this hire is made. The new hire will be full of enthusiasm for their new ‘senior’ and ‘strategic’ job. They will set about driving all those extra clicks with every trick they know. They will probably succeed in pushing these up a bit too.

But the real value will fail to materialise, because they have been hard at work doing the wrong things. Because the JD tells them they must do these things and their appraisal will be measured against them.

They will become disillusioned. The firm will likely think, “We made a bad hire. And this digital stuff isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

And so it will all end in tears.

Becoming self-employed? Here’s the #1 critical question you MUST be able to answer

By Neil Patrick

Whether you are setting up business as a sole trader or a company, there's one critical question you must be able to answer.

Last week, I was contacted by a former colleague from the financial sector. She had just lost her job in the latest corporate reorganization. Her reaction to job loss was positive. She was embracing it as an opportunity to convert all those years’ experience and acquisition of skills into a self-employed variant of her former job. I immediately agreed to help her anyway I could.

About the same time, I was sent a business plan for a start-up financial business. I was asked to provide my reactions and suggestions as to how the plan might be improved. The plan was ambitious and innovative. It embraced and aimed to capitalise on the financial, technology and media changes that are transforming the world.

At first, these two events might appear to have nothing in common. But as I examined both situations I realised that both were dependent upon getting to grips with exactly the same question.

It’s a very simple question to ask but a very hard one to answer perfectly. In a single sentence though, it frames the challenge for every new business venture. Being able to answer it clearly and precisely sets you up for success. Even if you cannot answer it precisely, trying to do so will instantly reveal the weaknesses in any business plan.

So what is the question?

It’s this:

“What problem do we solve for whom, and how?”

That’s it.

Time and time again when I see new business proposals, whether they are corporations or individuals, they fall apart when examined with this question.

Often it’s a variation of the age old business failure that arises because the business owner is looking to sell what they want to make or do, rather than making what people want to buy.

Today, attention spans are getting ever shorter. If you cannot articulate what problem you solve in a couple of sentences, you will struggle to get attention. And no attention means no sales. And no sales means your business is dead.

So not only must you be able to answer the question, you also have to be able to express it in a way which demands attention and interest from the people you seek as customers.

In a start-up, this can be the difference between getting investment and withering on the vine. In the case of sole traders, it’s the difference between having a queue of eager customers and an empty diary.

Why do so many people get this wrong? 

Employers don’t teach us how to be entrepreneurs

Experience of working for a large corporation provides plenty of experience and learning. But it’s not usually the sort of learning that equips you to be successful in your own business venture. Suddenly your specialist expertise itself is less important than your ability to get others to pay for it. 

When you are self-employed, before you can start work, you must obtain it

In a normal job, our employer provides a regular pay cheque. And depending on its size, we cut our cloth accordingly. When we have a job, the work is just there. We normally don’t have to actually create it. In a normal job, what’s critical is the quality of our work. When you work for yourself, how much you earn depends on how much work or business you attract. What’s critical is the quantity and frequency of our work. 

Problem solving for others is different to problem solving for an employer

In a normal job, we may very well require problem-solving skills. But these problems are internal to our employer. The problems are given to us to tackle. When we work for ourselves, the problems are not given to us. We have to identify them in other people’s lives. So these problems are external. And before we can solve them, we have to have a solution that our customers find more attractive than the alternatives.

Knowing the answer to the number one question helps us focus our actions on doing the right things to drive business success. It means you have a business proposition which people actually want and are willing to pay for.

Not being able to answer the question means your business isn’t going anywhere, until you can…

How professional services firms can become social media superheroes (Part 2)

By Neil Patrick

This is part two of my post on social media for professional services businesses.

In part one here, I presented the latest evidence from FTI Consulting which showed that professional services firms:

• Lag behind other sectors in their utilization of social media

• Are handicapped by compliance and regulatory obstructions, lack of understanding of how to execute it and difficulties in producing the necessary content

Nevertheless, most reported that they anticipated an increase in their use of social media in 2014. And critically, those that had already successfully implemented social media programmes reported not only higher numbers of new clients, but also a doubling of the average value of business generated.

To recap, the research asked 408 US-based financial advisors about their use of social media for business. They grouped respondents into the following 4 categories:

In the Wings (25%) Respondents who don’t use social media in business at all. However, they are active users of social media in their personal lives. For example, 62% of this group use Facebook, 33% use LinkedIn, 58% view or share videos on YouTube, 27% use Twitter and 24% use Google+.

Network Novices (38%) Respondents who use social media passively. They use it to build their personal brands, enlarge referral networks and connect with other professionals.

Connectors (17%) Respondents who use social media more actively to cultivate relationships with prospects and current clients.

Power Professionals (20%) Respondents who use social media to deepen business relationships by gathering information and disseminating thought leadership. Power Professionals are more than twice as likely as Network Novices and more than 60 percent more likely than Connectors to use social media for business on a daily basis.


In this post, I’ll look at how the most progressive users of social media in professional services are overcoming the obstacles and examine 5 keys steps to making this happen.

1. Demolish the obstacles

The FTI Consulting research examined what professional services organizations can do to move up the ladder from passive to active users of social media. Part of this research asked respondents what their company could do that would increase their usage of social media.

The results from this open-ended question revealed the most serious obstacles. The major barriers to successful social media use are very pragmatic: regulatory and compliance issues and a lack of training and content.

20% to 25% of respondents from all four segments were asking for modifications to compliance requirements. But regulatory constraint doesn't seem to be the problem per se. Rather, the primary issue pivots on an understanding of compliance policies. Moreover, these policies are often unhelpful because they were framed before the existence of social media. They are reflective of a different media age and the associated top down, command and control approach to communications which characterised it.

In the Wings respondents were twice as likely as Power Professionals to cite regulation as a hindrance. However, once respondents felt they understood compliance policies, they called for more training, content and social media marketing from their firm.

I would endorse this observation. Recently I was consulting with the marketing team of an established financial firm. They were keen to grow their social media activity. But they had one big obstacle. Every single item they wished to post online had to be approved first by their in-house compliance team. And this could take up to two months. TWO MONTHS! That’s an age even in the old world of marketing. In the digital age it’s an eternity.

The pattern is clear. The most progressive companies and professionals are coming to terms with regulatory boundaries and are learning how to use social media within the constraints. So for professionals to reap the rewards of social business, professional services organizations must tackle these three issues:

• Modify or loosen policies as much as possible

• Communicate and provide training

• Invest in the creation of meaningful content

2. Trust your people and liberalise your policies

To help professional services firms take a closer look at their social media policies, FTI asked respondents to tell them which of 12 common LinkedIn activities their company permitted them to use. These activities ranged from passive tasks such as accepting connections and listing the company name in a profile to active outreach, including sending InMail and requesting recommendations.

More than 90% of respondents reported they could use LinkedIn at work at least to accept connections. The vast majority were allowed to accept and request connections and name the firm on a profile page. Some 70% were allowed to join LinkedIn groups.

However, the percentages declined for more active outreach activities. Permission to post content to groups had been granted to only 27% to 55% of respondents, depending on the segment. Permission to write or request recommendations ranged from 21% to 41%. However, at least 20% of respondents, said their company allowed them to engage in each activity.

This suggests that most social media activities are on their way to acceptance. While seemingly small, 20% indicated that every activity, from accepting connections to posting content, was permissible. We can conclude that liberalized social business policy is moving from a small cadre of progressive professional firms into the mainstream.

Interestingly, Network Novices - professionals whose use of social media is most passive - may be the group best primed for action. Network Novices are less likely than Connectors and Power Professionals to use social media for outward communications such as posting updates to their profile or to groups. Surprisingly, respondents in the Network Novices group were most likely to believe that their firm’s policies permitted them to do so - sometimes to an even greater extent than Power Professionals.


3. Communicate and train people to give them confidence

Companies need to communicate their policies clearly and make sure employees understand the content. Effective communication of policy bolsters social media use and also prevents its misuse.

Communication should be anchored in training and education. With the exception of In the Wings, respondents from all segments are asking for more training in social business skills and information about best practices.

Given the hectic schedule of most professionals, on-demand training may be the best choice for their firm. For example, companies can provide pre-recorded webinars on complex topics such as social business strategy or simple fact sheets covering straightforward issues like LinkedIn usage policies. Ideally, professional services firms would offer training, best practices and sample content on a single platform so professionals easily can access what they need as they need it.

4. Create and share pertinent content

A growing number of experts are warning about social media fatigue. As a tsunami of content hurtles around the globe, they assert that the bar for getting noticed is rising, arguing that creating fresh, compelling content is becoming more and more difficult.

I would partly dispute this argument. It is applying the old world marketing model which scales vertically by expenditure to the new digital world which scales laterally through peer to peer endorsement.

Put another way, if your audience is well targeted and engaged, then you are not fighting it out to gain attention from a largely disinterested audience. You are successfully engaging with people who know you and are interested to hear what you have to say. It doesn’t mean you can settle for substandard or sporadic content, but I think this alleged threat is over-stated.

Of course as the volume of content shared expands, so the finite capacity for your audience to consume it comes under pressure, but this is more than compensated for by the nature of social networks which amplify your reach through the process of sharing content they like.

Nevertheless the requirement for sound content at the core of social media remains a challenge for firms who are already stretched. There’s no short cut to the production of great content. However, once a firm understands that this is a sound marketing investment (and that compared to traditional marketing is relatively low cost), the investment needed becomes much easier to bear.


5. Choose your platforms with care

Although respondents view LinkedIn as their primary network for social business, the number has declined slightly. In a study conducted in 2012, 90% of respondents said LinkedIn was their primary business network; in 2013, the number was 80%. This fall has coincided with the growth of the Linkedin userbase and the attempts by Linkedin to drive up user engagement and revenues. Inevitably this more diverse membership and commercialisation of the platform has resulted in some reacting negatively to these developments.

30% of respondents said that if their firm allows them to use it, Facebook would be the best platform for brand building. Twenty-seven percent see Facebook as the most desirable tool for improving the effectiveness of their network. For cultivating prospects, Facebook would be the platform of choice for 33% of respondents.

I wonder if this apparent endorsement of Facebook is skewed by the respondents’ personal experience of social media platforms however. As one of the earliest and still the largest platform, Facebook is familiar to most of us. But neither this fact, not its scale mean it is automatically the most suitable platform for business users of social media. Personally I feel it is not the best environment for a professional services firm to be seen in. It may be fine for restaurants and travel businesses, but accountants and solicitors...?

Although these percentages are lower than those of LinkedIn, respondents were slightly more likely to say that Facebook was the preferred network for nurturing existing relationships. On every dimension, In the Wings respondents gave higher marks to Facebook than they did to LinkedIn. 

In conclusion

Social media has huge potential to change the way professionals communicate with their clients and build a positive reputation. Although regulatory compliance and brand reputation remain issues, the most successful social media business users have already overcome these concerns. Their next challenge will be to further develop businesses social media skill and expertise. And critically, this research demonstrates that social media investment and expertise does find its way to the bottom line.

The time to act is now. Social media isn't a fad and it isn't going away. It is reshaping the very essence of how the world communicates and it is the most powerful development in human communications since the invention of the printing press. And whilst the social platforms allow almost instant communications, the results are far from instant - social media success is a marathon not a sprint.

You can try to survive with 20th century approaches if you like. Personally, I prefer to seize the limitless opportunities of this new world.



About the Research

The FTI Consulting research was based on a survey of 408 U.S.- based financial advisors, conducted in July 2013, in conjunction with Putnam Investments. The sample was drawn from a proprietary research panel of financial advisors maintained by FTI Consulting Strategic Communications and from panelists provided by Harris Interactive.

This post is adapted from an article that originally appeared here:
http://ftijournal.com/article/social-media-power-users-and-why-they-matter

How professional services firms can become social media superheroes

By Neil Patrick

I’m in the business of delivering professional services to my clients. And social media is a key tool in helping me grow my network and business opportunities.

But in professional services generally, it is clear that many are much less convinced than I am about its benefits.

Professional services folk trail behind other business-to-business industries in social business. In this two-part post, I’ll be looking at what the hard evidence reveals about this and what the professional services superheroes are doing with social media today.

From conversations with my network, it’s clear that part of the resistance lies in the difficulties of tying their social media efforts to quantified business results.

Slow adoption of social media in these professions is sometimes attributed to regulatory and brand constraints. It’s also often hindered by a lack of senior management support, doubts about the appropriateness of social media and concerns about the return on the time and money invested.


Let’s take a look at the data

FTI Consulting identified in this recent study the practical problems that professional services firms need to overcome in order to generate better results with social media. These are:

· remedying lack of knowledge
· understanding best practices
· creating suitable content for social business

FTI looked at the issues of social business in professional services by carrying out a survey of financial advisors. These professionals are a useful proxy to discover what all professional services firms can do to boost their effective use of social business. Just like financial advisors, lawyers, architects and consultants also build their businesses by cultivating individual relationships. On social media platforms, the success of that cultivation relies on providing authoritative and engaging insights on the issues clients and prospects care about.

Most professional services firms must navigate a challenging landscape of regulatory demands and company compliance measures. Despite these regulatory constraints, the survey found that the use of social media is on the rise. Although 25% of respondents are not using social media at work, only 30% say social media will not be significant in their marketing efforts in the next year.

Of respondents who now are using social media for business, their use has been rising steadily. For example, more than 60% of those respondents, have been increasing their use of LinkedIn over time. Nearly the same number of respondents have boosted their use of Facebook. In addition, financial advisors have become more frequent tweeters – 57% of respondents presently using social media have been expanding their use of Twitter.

Approximately 60% of respondents who now use social media expect that usage to climb in the coming year. A prime driver of this growth is the buiness results that users are achieving. For example, of the 60% who expect to increase their social media use, the majority will do so because they report that the people they are trying to reach are on LinkedIn or Facebook. 40% attribute their expected increase to the role social media has played in achieving their results to date.

The emergence of Power Users

The report found that social media power users (individuals with both the skills and enthusiasm to optimize social media tools and channels) add much more to their company’s revenues and profits. Financial advisors that are classed as power users are more than twice as likely than the less savvy to have won new clients through social media: 73% vs. 30%. Similarly, the value generated by those clients is double: a median of $1 million in investible assets vs. $500,000.

These results demonstrate how social media helps financial advisors achieve greater levels of new business. Power users also are the most likely to say social media has helped them achieve their desired results and agree that the people they want to reach are active on social media.


So what do Power Users do?

A key finding of the research is how power users are achieving these results. The research proved the positive impact of social media upon seven key business objectives and its contribution to the key goal of winning valuable new clients by:

• Building brand identity
• Improving effectiveness of referral networks
• Cultivating specific prospects
• Enhancing current client relationships
• Connecting with other financial professionals
• Cascading thought leadership
• Expanding professional knowledge

Which type are you presently?

The research identified four distinct groups of financial advisors on a scale from passive to active users of social media. Passive users focus primarily on building brand identity and on improving their referral networks. Active users, on the other hand, create a virtuous circle by compiling and disseminating knowledge and using that information to cultivate prospects and enhance business relationships.

The four groups (and their characteristics) are:

In the Wings (25%) Respondents who don’t use social media in business at all. However, they are active users of social media in their personal lives. For example, 62% of this group use Facebook, 33% use LinkedIn, 58% view or share videos on YouTube, 27% use Twitter and 24% use Google+.

Network Novices (38%) Respondents who use social media passively. They use it to build their personal brands, enlarge referral networks and connect with other professionals.

Connectors (17%) Respondents who use social media more actively to cultivate relationships with prospects and current clients.

Power Professionals (20%) Respondents who use social media to deepen business relationships by gathering information and disseminating thought leadership. Power Professionals are more than twice as likely as Network Novices and more than 60 percent more likely than Connectors to use social media for business on a daily basis.

The path turns an old adage on its head: It’s not who you know, it’s what you know. Advanced social media users are doing more than connecting with others; they are adding value by creating, obtaining and sharing information. For Power Professionals, social business success is a matter of what they know and can share with the market. Network Novices and Connectors still are focused on the “who.”

So it’s clear that social media use by professional services firms is on the rise. And that those who do it most effectively win more business AND more valuable business.

In part two of this post, I’ll reveal how you can overcome the obstacles to becoming a power user and achieve better results with your social media. Follow this link to go straight to part 2.


This post is based on an article that originally appeared here:
http://ftijournal.com/article/social-media-power-users-and-why-they-matter

Exodus on Wall Street

By Neil Patrick

Whilst some would have us believe it, not everyone working in the financial sector is a villain. To condemn a whole group for the misdemeanors of a few is naive and simplistic. The people who work in the financial centers around the world are a very diverse group. They include lawyers, analysts, compliance managers, IT specialists, HR and training people, accountants.

They compete to get and keep their jobs just like everyone else. They face demanding challenges at work just like everyone else. In fact the challenges they face are much more stressful than many. When large sums of money are directly involved, it’s a certainty that you will be under a lot of pressure to perform. Consequently, a good number of them are actually completely burned out by the time they are in their mid-thirties.

And much of the money that they earn is spent in businesses where they live, like food, services, retail, residential and cars. The money earned in financial businesses plays a big part in providing work for others - and is a big contribution to the city’s tax revenues.

Today, like many others, these people are seeing their jobs and prospects significantly downscaled. The savage cuts in headcounts in the wake of the 2008 collapse have left financial centers with their expensive offices much emptier than they were six years ago. And the remaining staff with a lot more work to do.

JSquish

Take Wall Street for example. The Big Apple’s fabled financial district is steadily becoming more of a tourist hub than a financial hub. New York’s share of jobs in the securities industry dipped below 20 percent earlier this year to an all-time low, according to government statistics.

Moreover, jobs lost after the financial crisis are being replaced in the city at less than half the rate of the rest of the country. Two decades ago, New York was home to 30% of all such jobs.

The securities industry has recovered just 54% of the jobs lost nationwide after the 2008 financial crisis, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But Wall Street has recouped only 23%. The workforce has been hollowed out - 167,000 employed at securities firms, down from 191,000 in 2008.

“The numbers say there are a lot of Wall Street jobs that don’t need to be in New York,” Barbara Byrne Denham, an economist who tracks the local business scene, told Crain’s New York Business. “That has all sorts of implications for the city’s tax revenues.”

Facing regulatory changes and with the advent of new trading technologies, the banks that long ago transferred lower-level personnel out of New York have started moving up the corporate ladder to put higher-paid people - such as investment bankers, analysts and financial advisers - in places like Tampa, Jacksonville and Salt Lake City.

So no-one is immune to the fallout from the collapse including the people who were closest to it. Perhaps it’s not altogether unlike what the military call ‘friendly fire’?



Some parts of this post were taken from an original article here:

http://nypost.com/2013/12/08/job-stream-from-wall-street-turning-into-a-florida-flood/

Baby boomers fueling wave of entrepreneurship

By Matt Sedensky

In a mix of boomer individualism and economic necessity, older Americans have fueled a wave of entrepreneurship. The result is a slew of enterprises such as Crash Boom Bam, the vintage drum company that 64-year-old Glay began running from a spare bedroom in his apartment in 2009.

The business hasn’t made him rich, but Glay credits it with keeping him afloat when no one would hire him.

"You would send out a stack of 50 resumes and not hear anything," said Glay, who had been laid off from a sales job. "This has saved me."

The annual entrepreneurial activity report published in April by the Kansas City, Mo.-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found the share of new entrepreneurs ages 55 to 64 grew from 14.3 percent in 1996 to 23.4 percent last year. Entrepreneurship among 45- to 54-year-olds saw a slight bump, while activity among younger age groups fell.

The foundation doesn’t track start-ups by those 65 and older, but Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that group has a higher rate of self-employment than any other age group.

Part of the growth is the result of the overall aging of America. But experts say older people are flocking to self-employment both because of a frustrating job market and the growing ease and falling cost of starting a business.

"It’s become easier technologically and geographically to do this at older ages," said Dane Stangler, the research and policy director at Kauffman. "We’ll see continued higher rates of entrepreneurship because of these demographic trends."

Paul Giannone’s later-life move to start a business was fuelled not by losing a job, but by a desire for change.

After nearly 35 years in information technology, he embraced his love of pizza and opened a Brooklyn, N.Y., restaurant, Paulie Gee’s, in 2010. Giannone, 60, had to take a second mortgage on his home, but he said the risk was worth it: The restaurant is thriving and a second location is in the works.

"I wanted to do something that I could be proud of," he said. "I am the only one who makes decisions and I love that. I haven’t worked in 3 ½ years, that’s how it feels."

Some opt for a more gradual transition.

Al Wilson, 58, of Manassas, Va., has kept his day job as a program analyst at the National Science Foundation while he tries to attract business for Rowdock, the snug calf protector he created to ward off injuries rowers call "track bites."

Though orders come in weekly from around the world, they’re not enough yet for Wilson to quit his job.

"At this stage in my life, when I’m looking at in the near future retiring, to step out and take a risk and start a business, there was some apprehension," Wilson said. "But it’s kind of rejuvenated me."

Mary Furlong, who teaches entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University and holds business startup seminars for boomers, says older adults are uniquely positioned for the move because they are often natural risk-takers who are passionate about challenges and driven by creativity.

There can be hurdles.

Though most older entrepreneurs opt to create at-home businesses where they are the only employee, even startup costs of a couple thousand dollars can be prohibitive for some. Also, generating business in an online economy is tougher if the person has fewer technological skills.

Furlong said many who start businesses later in life do so as a follow-up to a successful career from which they fear a layoff or have endured one.

"The boomers are looking to entrepreneurship as a Plan B," she said."

Antoinette Little would agree.

She spent 20 years at a law firm, starting as a legal secretary and working her way up to manage the entire office. The stress of working 80 hours or 90 hours a week and always being on call started taking a toll.

After being diagnosed with an enlarged heart, she said, "The doctor told me either quit or you’re going to die."

Little took a series of culinary classes and found a new passion, opening Antoinette Chocolatier in Phillipsburg, N.J. She misses her previous career and, though the store is now in the black, the profits aren’t robust. Still, she says she is having fun making chocolate, particularly when children press their noses against the glass doors to the store’s kitchen.

"I’m my own boss and you get to eat your mistakes," she said. "How bad could it be?"

Most boomer businesses are not brick-and-mortar establishments like those of Little and Giannone.

Jeff Williams, who runs BizStarters, which has helped Glay and thousands of other boomers start businesses, says most older entrepreneurs want to make a minimal investment, typically less than $10,000, to get off the ground.

He classifies about 40 percent of his clientele as "reluctant entrepreneurs" who are turning to their own business because they can’t find any other work.

Williams said owning a business also gives older adults the flexibility they desire and a sense of control while remaining active.

"To suddenly leave the corporate world and to be sitting around the house all day long? This is an alien concept to boomers," he said.

Glay says he needed the paycheck, but starting his business was also about keeping his mind engaged. He had worked for the same record company for 23 years when he was told to meet his boss at an airport hotel, where the bad news was delivered.

Though Crash Boom Bam hasn’t come close to replacing an annual income that crept into six figures, Glay says he’s busier than ever now, between the business, regular drumming gigs, and part-time work at a bookstore and a wine-tasting event company. Sitting among shelves full of drums and their shimmering chrome, he is reflective thinking about what his business means.

"The satisfaction of doing what I’m doing now is much greater, but the money is less," he said. "Even if it’s not making me a millionaire, I know what it’s doing for my head. There’s no price you could put on that."

Matt Sedensky, an AP writer on leave, is studying aging and workforce issues as part of a one-year fellowship at the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which joins NORC’s independent research and AP journalism. The fellowship is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and supported by APME, an association of AP member newspapers and broadcast stations.

This post originally appeared here:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57010864-79/business-older-glay-job.html.csp?page=2

Why Pay Is Too Damn Low

By JAMES SUROWIECKI 

A few weeks ago, Washington, D.C., passed a living-wage bill designed to make Walmart pay its workers a minimum of $12.50 an hour. Then President Obama called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage (which is currently $7.25 an hour). McDonald’s was widely derided for releasing a budget to help its employees plan financially, since that only underscored how brutally hard it is to live on a McDonald’s wage.

And last week fast-food workers across the country staged walkouts, calling for an increase in their pay to fifteen dollars an hour. Low-wage earners have long been the hardest workers to organize and the easiest to ignore. Now they’re front-page news.

The workers’ grievances are simple: low wages, few (if any) benefits, and little full-time work. In inflation-adjusted terms, the minimum wage, though higher than it was a decade ago, is still well below its 1968 peak (when it was worth about $10.70 an hour in today’s dollars), and it’s still poverty-level pay. To make matters worse, most fast-food and retail work is part time, and the weak job market has eroded what little bargaining power low-wage workers had: their earnings actually fell between 2009 and last year, according to the National Employment Law Project.

Still, the reason this has become a big political issue is not that the jobs have changed; it’s that the people doing the jobs have. Historically, low-wage work tended to be done either by the young or by women looking for part-time jobs to supplement family income. As the historian Bethany Moreton has shown, Walmart in its early days sought explicitly to hire underemployed married women. Fast-food workforces, meanwhile, were dominated by teen-agers.

Now, though, plenty of family breadwinners are stuck in these jobs. That’s because, over the past three decades, the U.S. economy has done a poor job of creating good middle-class jobs; five of the six fastest-growing job categories today pay less than the median wage. That’s why, as a recent study by the economists John Schmitt and Janelle Jones has shown, low-wage workers are older and better educated than ever.

More important, more of them are relying on their paychecks not for pin money or to pay for Friday-night dates but, rather, to support families. Forty years ago, there was no expectation that fast-food or discount-retail jobs would provide a living wage, because these were not jobs that, in the main, adult heads of household did. Today, low-wage workers provide forty-six per cent of their family’s income. It is that change which is driving the demand for higher pay.

The situation is the result of a tectonic shift in the American economy. In 1960, the country’s biggest employer, General Motors, was also its most profitable company and one of its best-paying. It had high profit margins and real pricing power, even as it was paying its workers union wages. And it was not alone: firms like Ford, Standard Oil, and Bethlehem Steel employed huge numbers of well-paid workers while earning big profits. Today, the country’s biggest employers are retailers and fast-food chains, almost all of which have built their businesses on low pay - they’ve striven to keep wages down and unions out - and low prices.

This complicates things, in part because of the nature of these businesses. They make plenty of money, but most have slim profit margins: Walmart and Target earn between three and four cents on the dollar; a typical McDonald’s franchise restaurant earns around six cents on the dollar before taxes, according to an analysis from Janney Capital Markets. In fact, the combined profits of all the major retailers, restaurant chains, and supermarkets in the Fortune 500 are smaller than the profits of Apple alone.

Yet Apple employs just seventy-six thousand people, while the retailers, supermarkets, and restaurant chains employ 5.6 million. The grim truth of those numbers is that low wages are a big part of why these companies are able to stay profitable while offering low prices.

Congress is currently considering a bill increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 over the next three years. That’s an increase that the companies can easily tolerate, and it would make a significant difference in the lives of low-wage workers. But that’s still a long way from turning these jobs into the kind of employment that can support a middle-class family. If you want to accomplish that, you have to change the entire way these companies do business. Above all, you have to get consumers to accept significantly higher, and steadily rising, prices. After decades in which we’ve grown used to cheap stuff, that won’t be easy.

Realistically, then, a higher minimum wage can be only part of the solution. We also need to expand the earned-income tax credit, and strengthen the social-insurance system, including child care and health care (the advent of Obamacare will help in this regard).

Fast-food jobs in Germany and the Netherlands aren’t much better-paid than in the U.S., but a stronger safety net makes workers much better off. We also need many more of the “middle-class jobs” we’re always hearing about. A recent McKinsey report suggested that the government should invest almost a trillion dollars over the next five years in repairing and upgrading the national infrastructure, which seems like a good place to start.


And we really need the economy as a whole to grow faster, because that would both increase the supply of good jobs and improve the bargaining power of low-wage workers. As Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, told me, “The best friend that low-wage workers have is a strong economy and a tight job market.” It isn’t enough to make bad jobs better. We need to create better jobs.

This post originally appeared here:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/08/12/130812ta_talk_surowiecki

Proof at last - older employees are not less innovative than younger workers

By Neil Patrick

For decades now, there have been several highly persistent myths about older workers which have negatively influenced organisations' behaviour and had a detrimental effect on their performance.

The widespread negative stereotyping of older workers has led to many managers believing without a scrap of scientific evidence to support it, that older workers:

1. Have poorer health and thus greater absenteeism and lower productivity 
2. Have shorter job tenure, demand higher salaries and pension benefits and hence are more expensive 
3. Are less technologically competent 
4. Are more rigid and resistant to change 
5. And last but not least, are less innovative and creative in the workplace and their jobs. 

Myths 1-4 above are relatively simple to disprove through even the most cursory scrutiny of available data and research. For example, earlier research by Ng and Feldman (2008) showed conclusively that, ‘older workers exhibit stronger extra-role performance and less counter-productive behaviour than younger workers’.

Firm conclusions about creativity and innovation however have proved elusive due to the complexity of acquiring reliable data. Until now.

Last month, The Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology published new research by Thomas W. H. Ng and Daniel C. Feldman from the University of Hong Kong and The University of Georgia, respectively.

Titled excitingly (!) ‘A meta-analysis of the relationships of age and tenure with innovation-related behaviour’, this research proves conclusively that older workers are no less innovative or creative than younger workers, and under the right conditions are much more so.

By the year 2020, Americans who are over 55 years old will comprise close to 30% of the residential population of the United States and a similar percentage in the UK and Eurozone countries. The over- 55’s will also by that time comprise c.25% of the workforce.

Not surprisingly therefore, this topic is assuming a greater than ever degree of importance, not just from the point of view of fairness, but also from the perspective of the maximisation of the value of organisations’’ human capital.

‘Innovation-related behaviour’ (IRB) was the focus of this latest research. As innovation has become more critical component of an individual’s contribution to an organisation’s performance, an accurate assessment of the relationship between employee age and IRB is becoming even more important for managers to understand.

Moreover, as Sternberg (2001) and Choi and Chang (2009) have emphasised, ‘creativity only adds value when the people who generate new ideas can persuade others of their utility and can convince others to implement those ideas. If new ideas do not gain widespread attention, are poorly implemented, or are never implemented at all, they have virtually no impact on the organisation’s ability to innovate’.

The often superior levels of communication and influencing skills displayed by older workers give them a distinct advantage in this valuable respect too.

The methodology adopted by Ng and Feldman involved the meta-analysis of 98 empirical studies. Put another way, this means that no fewer than 98 separate previous studies and their respective data were selected and aggregated to create not only a diverse but also an up to date sample. The results therefore have a high degree of statistical reliability.

The research conclusions are summarised in the research report thus: 

• Contrary to common belief, the results of this study show that age and tenure are not negatively related to innovation-related behaviours. 

• Older and longer-tenured workers do not engage in less innovation-related behaviour than younger, more junior workers 

• These results hold true even at the high end of the age and years of service continuum 

• This study concludes that the negative stereotype that older and longer tenured workers are less innovative is not based on accumulated empirical evidence.

• As such excluding older workers from innovation-related tasks is counter-productive. 

Sadly I do not think that this report will be the end of the matter. Stereotyping takes years to eradicate in all areas of life, but I am hopeful that gradually, the findings of this important piece of work will filter through to organisations and start to eliminate the perpetuation of these myths and falsehoods. It’s vital not just to older workers, but to all of us and the success of the organisations we work in.

What I know now – 9 lessons from my life

By Jim Langendorf

My last post was about my realization that my life was at half time and that I now knew the things I wish I'd have known when I was 23.

Upon further reflection, I thought a list of those lessons would be helpful.

I have nothing to fear if I am not liked. The most important lesson, which is applicable to business and professional life alike is that I am worthy of respect, if not affection. I don't like everyone and they are as unharmed by my lack of affection for them as I am of theirs for me. 

Time is fleeting but patience is rewarded. One must act with conviction, but be prepared to wait for results. It is often not clear what the consequences of our actions will be, but if you believe you are right, then you should act.

Consistency and diligence beat flashes of brilliance. Some of the brightest students in law school were unable to pass the bar exam. They could bring it to an essay exam for a class, and get As, but they could not maintain their focus and concentration at the big moments in July and February. Better to be regularly competent than only infrequently extraordinary. (See, Thomas Edison).

The front line of any organization is what gets work done. If you want to assure failure and rejection, then treat the waitresses, clerks, cashiers and janitors with disdain and disrespect. Almost everyone has to start somewhere. Some people start and stay lower on the "ladder." But they are mothers, fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. They are important in their own way in their own world. Almost everyone is doing the best that they can. Understand and respect them and thank them for their efforts.

Tip generously when it's deserved. Tip generously in advance to guarantee great service.

Show up and act like you belong where you are. If you believe, then other people are inclined to believe it too. If you believe that you can do anything and be anywhere you want, then you can be. It may be that simple.

There is a virtually infinite amount of money circulating the planet. You can have as much as you want, but you have to make an effort to get it. It will not automatically flow to you. Trillions are flowing all of the time. You only need a small part of that flow to be wildly rich. If I knew exactly how to do it, then I'd be rich too. I'm still working on the mechanics.

Go big. You can spend an hour digging a ditch, or selling industrial supplies, or learning how to finance a rental property with no money down. The hour digging a ditch pays quickly but only a little bit. The closed sale, or the refinanced rental may take a little longer to actually happen, but the payoff is far greater. Put your time into high return efforts and act on them, consistently.

Be courageous. Ask yourself what is the worst that can happen? Or remind yourself of the worst thing facing you a month, or six months, or even a year ago and recognize that you made it. It passed. Be bold. It pays off.

On that note, I am off to work. I have to litigate, settle and ideate for a while. Check out my website, http://www.langendorflaw.com/


Jim Langendorf is a law firm operator and an entrepreneur who spends much of his time in federal court recovering unpaid overtime wages for his clients. When he isn't practicing law, he is on a mission to self-improvement, wealth and health. He is always looking for opportunities where everyone wins.

Jim authors two blogs, Rashinal Thoughts http://rashinality.blogspot.com/and the more legal industry focused Donning and Doffing, http:// http://donanddoff.blogspot.com/ He welcomes new followers to both.

What every HR professional needs to know about the latest findings in neuroscience

With any task which requires learning, we can benefit from a deeper understanding of how the learning process actually works. What you may not know about though is how the latest discoveries in neuroscience can help people perform better at any task they undertake.

If you are a judicious entrepreneur, you will not need any convincing about the importance of a talent management approach as a part of your business strategy. Over the past 15+ years, cognitive science research (and specifically neuroscience) has given us some valuable insights into the ways learning and development take place.

These discoveries are not just of value to business leaders however. They are also invaluable for HR leaders interested in understanding how they can improve the learning capabilities (and overall performance) of their organisation’s people. More generally, they are also valuable for anyone who wants to understand how they can improve their own learning capabilities.

Some of the breakthrough discoveries are:

• Learning is a process that allows new neural networks to be continuously built and re-built 

• Teachers cannot transmit knowledge to learners! (interesting) 

• Our personal performance is entirely dependent on context (work, personal, history)  

• Learning skills are dependent on the coordination of basic skills rather than complex skills. 

• We must support our own learning by creating personal contexts (otherwise we will not learn!)  

• Essential to learning is regression (so if we make an error it is part of the learning process!!!)

• Skills are all interrelated rather than isolated

"Up until the 1980’s, scientists thought the structure of the brain developed during childhood and that once developed, there was very little room for change. Scientists now know that the brain possesses enormous capacity to change: People’s ability to process widely varied information and complex new experiences with relative ease can often be surprising. The brain’s ability to act and react in ever-changing ways is known as neuroplasticity" Understanding What Makes People Tick, 2009.

For example, employees may be able to memorise that HR exists for the purpose of people management. However to fully develop a meaningful understanding, for example one that enables HR professionals to use creative concepts, requires a person to constantly build upon new and old concepts, including understanding.

Cognitive development builds up connections between ideas and skills; this is a skill theory process of coordination of very complex (mental) units. So let's take an HR topic like 'Talent Strategy' and see where neuroscience comes in the picture.

With different explanations of talent strategy, I would broadly position it around these keywords: succession planning, effective training and development programs, and empowering your talent.

Now talent strategy cannot do wonders in isolation, instead you should have 4 key elements firmly positioned in place:

• Motivational factors that enable people to deliver business strategy 

• Elements that create the right talent culture  

• Making sure that managers feed motivation to the talent 

• Managing change by running business strategy and talent strategy in parallel with each other

If you have a vision to intersect neuroscience with HR, you will soon realise that the above 4 elements are already knitted into your culture. So what basically neuroscience suggests is that you, as an HR professional should understand how a human brain works.

Every employee performs and understands their work tasks differently, especially when they receive different levels of support.

First identify your talent through answering this question: Who is performing rather out-performing your expectations and has a track record of efficiently delivering the business goals? I will call these people ‘super performers’.

Recognise the attributes (found in a distributed form) of super performers such as having very clear purpose of what drives their behaviour.

Such people are very sure of how to execute their role and often appear as persistent self-improvers. You would observe their healthy disappointment with under-performance and not settling for anything less than perfect. One of the most admired attributes of super performers is that they are ‘thrill, feedback and new role’ seekers.

Without understanding what neuroscience tells us, as an HR professional, you would identify super performers as nothing but ‘trouble and pain’.

The million-dollar question is how to make most out of super performers through applying neuroscience.

I have created a model for ‘change management’ where you can effectively plant super performers and achieve business objectives. But first let's understand what neuroscience has to say about ‘resistance to change’, a very common HR challenge.

To our brains, change is detected as a fault/error/mistake!

This clearly means that our brain sees change as a slip-up. The reason for this is that our brain has been constantly working to create certain patterns and ways of doing things, these patterns are basically our ‘short-cuts’ for carrying out our everyday activities. As an example, you do not have to think how to walk every time you need to walk. However when our brain sees a change in walking, it realises that it has to work harder and hence, prompts a response of 'error/fault/mistake' and I would say sometimes even irrational reaction to change, as it is viewed as an error and this is directly followed by resistance.

Not trying to be a neuroscientist here, but as an HR professional, I have personally experienced the benefits of applying neuroscience. My approach to facilitate change for change-resisters especially those rated as ‘super performers’ would be:

• Encouraging them to create their own way of managing things, though staying within the scope of the change strategy

• Enhancing flexibility through ‘feeding’ them (in my words), otherwise known as training and development

• Developing people to generate solutions and not problems

So remember, “Those who are nurtured best, survive best” Cozolino

(c) 2013 Human Resources Global Ltd.

Written by Nicole Le Maire, Founder of Human Resources Global Ltd. a HR Consultancy targeting individuals and SME's within the emerging market regions. Nicole focuses on supporting clients in non-traditional HR ways and she can be contacted via Nicole@humanresourcesglobal.com or via twitter @NicoleLeMaire

Baby boomers start 'encore' careers

By Rodney Brooks


“Of 76 million people above 50 and nearing retirement, about half have interest in entrepreneurship,” said Jean Setzfand, vice president of financial security at AARP. “And many want to give back to their communities.”

Sitting at home through a 20- or 30-year retirement is no longer an option for an increasing number of baby boomers.

Some are looking to do something else because they have to for financial reasons. But, increasingly, boomers are embarking on entirely different “encore” careers after retirement.

“The reality is people are living longer, healthier lives, and when they get to the point when the need to make a change - they retire, are laid off or sell their business - they are 60 years old, and they say ‘I still have another 10, 15, or 20 or more years and I want to do something,’ ” said Nancy Collamer, author of “Second Act Careers: 50+ Ways to Profit From Your Passions During Semi-Retirement.”

“It’s out of financial necessity is some cases, but it’s lifestyle in other cases,” she said.

Take Linda Lombri, 65, and Virginia Cornue, 68, both of Montclair, N.J. In their post-retirement lives they have reinvented themselves as mystery writers, even though neither had written fiction before. They began an e-book series, the “Sandra Troux Mysteries,” which is sold on 10 websites, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple’s iTunes. The first in the series, “The Mystery of the Ming Connection,” was published last year under their pseudonym, Crystal Sharpe. Their second in the series will be out this spring; the third in the fall.

Both fans of the Nancy Drew series when they were young girls, they have re-imagined her into a trio of female baby boomer characters. “Not only are we reinventing ourselves, we have our characters reinventing themselves as well,” Cornue said.

Pushed out at 62

Lombri had careers as a home economist and a marketing executive. She was forced into retirement at 62 when her job was eliminated - when she had a daughter who was a high school sophomore. “I was ready for (retirement) emotionally, but not financially,” she said.

Cornue said she has already reinvented herself several times. She started out as an actor in New York City, became a director of nonprofit organizations and ended up a cultural anthropologist. She still teaches part time at a local college.

Then there’s David Roll, 72, who ended his career as a Washington, D.C., lawyer 10 years ago and embarked on a new one as an author, historian and founder of Lex Mundi, a nonprofit agency that finds pro bono lawyers for social entrepreneurs around the world.

But it’s the nonprofit legal agency, which has taken him around the world, that occupies most of his time: “I love it,” he said. “It has its frustrations, because you’ve got to raise money to keep it going. But to have created something that is having an impact. ... Not every social entrepreneur is changing the world, but they are some doing amazing things.”

Cookies!

Yuval Zaliouk, 74, is co-owner of YZ Enterprises in Toledo, Ohio. He retired from a career as conductor of the Toledo Symphony in 1989 and decided he didn’t want to move his family to take another conducting assignment.

The answer was his dream: to make and sell cookies based on his grandmother’s recipe, starting out in his kitchen. 

“I even won entrepreneur of the year award in 2003,” he said. “I never imagined that I could be a businessman.”

The Almondina cookies now sell 12,000 cases a day, ship to all 50 states and can be found in supermarket chains such as Trader Joe’s and Publix. Oh, by the way, the co-owner of the business is his wife, Susan, a former ballerina with the Royal Ballet Company in London, where they met.

“Only in America,” said Zaliouk, a native of Israel. “There is a lot of mobility in this country. It’s not like Europe, where if you are not fired, you stick with a job for life. Here you are free to start things. It’s a different atmosphere.”

Marc Freedman is founder and chief executive officer of Encore.org, a San Francisco-based organization that helps Boomers start that second career. Its focus is getting them involved in nonprofit agencies.

Freedman spent 15 years working with children in low-income neighborhoods. He has long had an interest in mentoring, so he made his second career into a job that helps baby boomers step into their second careers.

“The larger aspiration behind the organization is to tap the human capital and population moving into their 50s and 60s,” Freedman said.

Zaliouk has advice for budding boomer entrepreneurs: “In one word, courage.”

“It really is a question of courage, making up your mind to do something - courage, tenacity or stubbornness,” he said.



http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20130327/BIZ/303270026/Baby-boomers-start-encore-careers



HELP FOR ENTREPRENEURS

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France has lost ONE MILLION jobs, report claims

By Ian Sparks

• Now 60,000 French businessmen abroad employing around 16 people each
• Think-tank Concorde found 3% of two million French expats own companies
• Tax exiles include Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Michel Jarre and Bernard Arnault

France's repressive tax regime has sent entrepreneurs fleeing abroad and lost the country up to a million jobs, a damning new report has revealed.

Tax hikes and employment regulations imposed by left and right wing governments over 20 years meant there were now 60,000 French businessmen abroad employing around 16 people each.

The figures were released amid a flood of wealthy French quitting France this year to avoid a looming socialist tax of 75 per cent on all earnings over one million euros - about £850,000.

Film star Gerard Depardieu, the Mulliez family who own the Auchan supermarket chain, electronic music icon Jean-Michel Jarre and France's richest man Bernard Arnault have all quit France in the past six months.

Now research by the think-tank Concorde has found that three percent of the two million French living abroad now own companies and if they had not left there would one million more people in work in France.

And their report published in French daily Le Figaro describes even that figure as a 'conservative estimate'.

It added that the number of French going into tax exile had accelerated dramatically in the past year, and sales of properties worth more than one million pounds had also shot up.

France's economy minister Pierre Moscovici has reacted angrily to claims rich French are leaving the country, telling a conference of business leaders in Paris: 'I am troubled to read in the papers that the exile has begun, and that companies are fleeing.

'I also lament attacks on the government's economic policies that are in vogue in France and abroad. Le French-bashing is terrible.'

His comments also came after Laurence Parisot - head of MEDEF, the French equivalent of the UK's Confederation of British Industry - warned that left-wing economic policies risked turning France into 'the poor man of Europe'.

She said: 'Large foreign investors are shunning France altogether. It's becoming really dramatic.

'Ten years ago, Germany was the poor man of Europe and if we don't act now, that title will soon be ours.'

Paris estate agents said in September that France's luxury property market had hit a 'selling panic' as the super-rich rushed to flee new higher taxes.

Estate agent Daniel Feau said: 'It's nearly a general panic. Some 400 to 500 residences worth more than one million euros have come onto the Paris market since May.'

And British estate agent Sotherby's said its French offices sold more than 100 properties over 1.7 million euros between April and June this year - a marked increase on the same period in 2011.

Another report earlier this year by British estate agent Knight Frank said the tax plans had sent French interest in luxury London homes rocketing.

Inquiries from wealthy French for London homes worth more than five million pounds soared by 30 per cent in the first three months of this year, the statistics showed.

Prime minister David Cameron angered the French in June when he told the B20 business summit in Mexico: 'If the French go ahead with a 75 per cent top rate of tax we will roll out the red carpet and welcome more French businesses to Britain.

'And they can pay tax in Britain and pay for our health service and schools and everything else.'

The comments left one French politician so offended he suggested Mr Cameron must have been 'drunk' when he made them.

Gallic MP Claude Bartolone, a staunch ally of President Hollande, said: 'I hope that it was an after-dinner remark and that he didn't have all his wits about him when he said these things.'

France's European Affairs Minister Bernard Cazeneuve insisted there was no 'exodus', adding: 'What I can answer to this statement from the British prime minister is that French bosses are patriots.'

'There is a range of measures we will take in favour of business, measures that will support investment and encourage business to stay in France.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2298936/France-lost-million-jobs-repressive-tax-regime-report-claims.html#ixzz2OjkvOGL9