Don’t Write Off Men Just Yet!
Thursday, 22 July 2010 11:27
Published: July 21, 2010
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

The yang of America’s labor force is this: over a 40-year career, a man earns $431,000 more than a woman on average, according to the Center for American Progress.

The yin of America’s labor force is this: in this decade, for the first time in American history, men no longer inevitably dominate the labor force. Women were actually the majority of payroll employees for the five months that ended in March, according to one measure from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s mostly because about three-quarters of Americans who lost their jobs in the Great Recession were men.

Now men again fill a slight majority of payroll jobs because they are more likely to work in summer jobs such as construction. America may now teeter back and forth, with men predominant in the summers and women in the winters.

With women making far-reaching gains, there’s a larger question. Are women simply better-suited than men to today’s jobs? The Atlantic raised this issue provocatively in this month’s issue with a cover story by Hanna Rosin bluntly entitled, “The End of Men.”

“What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men?” Ms. Rosin asked. She adds: “The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today — social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus — are, at a minimum, not predominately male. In fact, the opposite may be true.”

It’s a fair question, and others also have been wondering aloud if a new age of femininity is dawning. After all, Ms. Rosin notes that Americans who use high-tech biology to try to pick a baby’s sex seek a girl more often than a boy. And women now make up 51 percent of professional and managerial positions in America, up from 26 percent in 1980.

It’s also true that while men still dominate the American power elite, they also dominate the bottom rungs of the ladder. By some counts, America’s prisoners are 90 percent male, and most estimates are that homeless people are disproportionately male.

If school performance predicts career success, then women may do even better a few decades from now, for girls clearly excel in school as never before. The National Honor Society, for top high school students, says that 64 percent of its members are girls. The Center on Education Policy cites data showing that boys lag girls in reading in every American state.

Yet count me a skeptic. My hunch is that we’re moving into greater gender balance, not a fundamentally new imbalance in the other direction. Don’t hold your breath for “the end of men.”

One reason is that women’s gains still have a catch-up quality to them. Catch-up is easier than forging ahead.

Moreover, the differences in educational performance are real but modest. In math, boys and girls are about equal. In verbal skills, 79 percent of elementary schoolgirls can read at a level deemed proficient, compared with 72 percent of boys, according to the Center on Education Policy.

At the very top, boys more than hold their own: 62 percent of kids who earn perfect 2,400 scores on the S.A.T. are boys.

Some education experts, like Richard Whitmire, author of “Why Boys Fail,” argue that the success of girls has to do in part with how schools teach children. Tweaking curriculums by exposing kids to more books full of explosions might lead boys to do better in reading — and if boys continue to lag, there’ll be more of a push for boy-friendly initiatives.

I think we exaggerate the degree to which the sexes are mired in conflict. As Henry Kissinger once said, “Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.” We men want our wives and daughters to encounter opportunity in the workplace, not sexual harassment; women want their husbands and sons to be in the executive suite, not jail. Nearly all of us root for fairness, not for our own sex.

The truth is that we men have typically benefited as women have gained greater equality. Those men who have lost their jobs in the recession are now more likely to have a wife who still has a job and can keep up the mortgage payments. And women have been particularly prominent in the social sector, devising new programs for the mostly male ranks of the jobless or homeless.

So forget about gender war and zero-sum games. Odds are that we men will find a way to hold our own, with the help of women. And we’ll benefit as smart and talented women belatedly have the opportunity to deploy their skills on behalf of all of humanity — including those of us with Y chromosomes.

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Talent management: Workforce of one
Sunday, 13 June 2010 16:46

Executive summary: Because everyone has different abilities, work styles and preferences, as well as different motivations for working, companies like Best Buy, Procter & Gamble, Google, The Container Store and W. L. Gore & Associates know that no single way of treating all employees is ever likely to be the best way. As the economy begins to recover, they are achieving improved workforce performance and productivity, higher levels of engagement and lower turnover while recruiting top performers who produce outstanding results, writes David Smith and Susan M. Cantrell in Accenture Outlook.

Market leaders like Best Buy, Procter & Gamble, Google, The Container Store and W. L. Gore & Associates are getting maximum performance from their employees by taking an individualized approach to talent management, treating each employee as a "workforce of one."

Because everyone has different abilities, work styles and preferences, as well as different motivations for working, these companies know that no single way of treating all employees is ever likely to be the best way. As the economy begins to recover, they are achieving improved workforce performance and productivity, higher levels of engagement and lower turnover while recruiting top performers who produce outstanding results.

By using one or more of four workforce-of-one customization approaches, these organizations are achieving customization in a highly structured, coordinated and scalable way, thereby retaining control of the management of their organizations. The hard work organizations have done standardizing people practices remains valid and relevant; it serves as the foundation enabling companies to take the next evolutionary step toward customization.

Controllable and manageable
"After a comprehensive study of more than 100 organizations, we have identified four distinct ways that an organization can customize in a structured, rules-based manner (see chart, below). These four workforce-of-one approaches to customization are built on standards that allow flexibility rather than encourage sameness, which is precisely what makes the approaches controllable and manageable," writes David Smith and Susan M. Cantrell.

1. Segment the workforce.
Just as marketers have been deftly dissecting consumer populations for decades—they have us pegged as suburban moms, clothes-conscious teens, techno-geeks and the like—companies can segment a workforce into discrete groups that share similar characteristics.

Employees may be grouped by any relevant criteria, such as value to the company, role or workforce, and age or generation. Advances in business intelligence and analytics have spurred a revolution in how companies are segmenting their workforces; companies are now creatively grouping their employees on such varying dimensions as learning styles, values, personality, wellness profiles, mobility, behavioral patterns, and even networking and communication styles.

Even the extended workforce can be segmented. Many companies today are finding highly talented workers all over the globe by tapping Web-based talent profiles of pre-screened people available for work, using test scores, experience, ratings and referrals from other users—think of Amazon.com and Facebook—to help them make a strong match for a particular need.

Because executives specify standard practices at a detailed level for each given segment, control is maintained.

2. Offer modular choices.
Just as Dell customizes computers by offering customers a menu of mix-and-match options, companies can offer a predetermined list of organizationally defined options that enable employees to customize their work experience.

At Capital One and Microsoft, for example, employees choose from a variety of mix-and-match work environment options based on their individual needs and changing work tasks.

Other organizations have unbundled standard job descriptions and broken them down into smaller tasks that can then be reconfigured in numerous ways by the individual, based on interest and skill. And at Skyline Construction, a San Francisco–based builder, eligible employees can pick their own salaries (within a certain range), choosing between lower salaries and a shot at a larger bonus, and higher salaries and the possibility of a smaller bonus.

By limiting employees' options to a list of organizationally defined and sanctioned standard alternatives, offering choices becomes manageable, affordable and controllable.

3. Define broad and simple rules.
Alternatively, an organization can create standard organizational rules so broad and simple that they can be interpreted in many different ways by workers or managers.

Just as contestants on the reality TV show The Amazing Race can take different routes to the same destination, so, too, can companies simply define the end, letting individuals and their managers customize the means based on the employee’s unique strengths, preferences and needs. The organization maintains control because the rules always have clear boundaries; as long as employees stay within them, they can act in a way that suits them best. Boundaries may be constrained by strategy, values, time, money, results or organizational scope, among others.

Consider how broad and simple rules can be used to customize jobs. At W. L. Gore, the Delaware-based maker of Gor-Tex and other fluoropolymer products, boundaries are constrained by organizational scope; employees determine their roles and tasks on each project, working within the loose limits of general functional or broad work areas only.

Time may also be used as a constraining boundary. At Google, for example, engineers need spend only 80 percent of their time on core duties; the remaining 20 percent may be customized by working on projects that have the greatest potential to create value for their organizations.

Best Buy, on the other hand, customizes jobs by using the broad and simple rule of obtaining results. Take Moira Hardek, a member of Best Buy's Geek Squad. After discovering that customers responded positively to her personal style, Hardek developed a passion for getting more females interested in technology careers, including jobs on the Geek Squad. Because Best Buy broadly defined Hardek's job as delivering superior customer service, she was able to match her job to her strengths by creating a technology summer camp with unique hands-on experiences designed to demystify technology for a younger generation—specifically young women.

Data analysis done jointly by Best Buy and Gallup reveals that helping people play to their strengths effectively doubles the rate of increase of employee engagement. This makes a dramatic difference in Best Buy's financials, since each 0.10 increase in engagement (on a five-point scale) is worth an estimated $100,000 in incremental profit per store, per year.

4. Foster employee-defined personalization.
In the same way that today's consumers can define and create their own content using the video-sharing site YouTube or the volunteer-written reference site Wikipedia, employees can now define and create their own people practices without any centrally defined limits, choices or policies designed to serve particular employee segments.

Individuals can create customized learning experiences, for example, by participating in wikis, blogs, YouTube- or Facebook-like applications, or virtual, simulated job experiences. They can also set their own schedules, as they do at Tesco and JetBlue Airways, by brokering schedule changes with fellow employees through shift-trading markets.

Compensation can be employee-defined too. In the US Navy, sailors—not HR—set compensation levels in hard-to-fill jobs through an online job auction website. This market-based system differs from a modular-choice approach to talent (like the Skyline Construction example cited above). Rather than having a few predefined schedule or compensation options determined by HR to choose from, this system gives people a practically unlimited ability to define their own schedules or salaries based on what the internal employee market can bear.

Even competencies, job descriptions and career paths can be defined not from on high but rather in a bottom-up fashion by employees themselves. By scanning résumés, email and other electronic communications, human capital analytics software can organically tell the organization what skills, experience and knowledge each employee has to create common, dynamic and ever-evolving worker-generated profiles.

Companies can use analytic technology, like that developed by talent management software company Taleo, to analyze promotion and transfer histories to identify common customized career paths taken by their employees. They can then use social networking technology to help those employees identify and network with people who have taken paths similar to the ones they want to take. This process will help provide some degree of structure and guidance for employees who work in complex organizations but have no clear career paths.

It's true that the employee-defined personalization approach grants the organization the least amount of control. But the organization still decides which employee-defined personalization practices it will support and how through incentives, technology and cultural change—enabling it to maintain some degree of control, consistency and alignment with business needs.

Read full story here

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Read more:
www.accenture.com
 
French Finance Minister says crisis calls for women
Monday, 31 May 2010 09:45

In response to a journalist who asked me a few months ago about women’s strength in times of crisis, I smiled and said that if Lehman Brothers had been “Lehman Sisters,” today’s economic crisis clearly would look quite different. It was a quip, of course, but one that reveals a bit about how I view things.

When women are called to action in times of turbulence, it is often on account of their composure, sense of responsibility and great pragmatism in delicate situations.

Audur Capital, an Icelandic private equity fund wholly managed by women, is the only such fund to have made it through the crisis without a hitch. And in February 2009, Iceland’s citizens chose a woman, Johanna Sigurdardottir, as prime minister in the midst of the country’s financial crisis. At the other end of the spectrum, Muhammed Yunus first turned to women to promote micro-lending. They now account for 97 percent of his 8 million borrowers in Bangladesh. When he launched that revolution in 1976, he knew that women would use their loans to advance projects or purchase tools, while he was wary of what men might do with the money.

The time is long past when women were relegated to discussing world events at tea time. In the economic and political arena they are assuming ever greater power. The current economic crisis affords us an opportunity to impose more responsible, moderate and equitable approaches to finance.

The list of women who hold positions of responsibility is growing daily, and a woman in a position of power is no longer the exception that proves the rule. I know, however, that nothing can ever be taken for granted, that the situation remains tenuous, and that constant efforts are required to turn “women’s power” into a shared reality.

It took some luck and a lot of willpower for me to reach the position I hold today. I was lucky enough to be born into a family environment that was as demanding as it was stimulating. Being raised in a family of four children teaches discipline, sharing and the meaning of hard work. I was lucky enough to benefit from a challenging educational system that develops the skills necessary for success. And I was lucky enough to make a career in my chosen field, and to meet mentors and partners who helped me along the way.

It also takes a great deal of willpower to direct the French economy, and, through my actions, to try to influence the decisions made by political authorities at the national and international level. I am not doing this for women, but as a woman I am, perhaps, more keenly aware of the damage that the crisis has done through greed, pride and a lack of transparency. As France’s minister for the economy, industry and employment, I am determined to do everything within my power to change the rules of the game and do my best to ensure that a crisis such as this can never happen again.

Through the weight of tradition, too many cultures and many governments even now keep women in a subordinate role. Nevertheless, in most countries, all but a handful of professions are open to us. We no longer have to be “better than men” to be accepted, and our struggle now is no longer really for de jure but for de facto recognition. Yet the business community is still struggling to give us top positions: the sharing of responsibilities, pay equality, and the balance between professional and personal life are not always experienced in the same way on both sides of the glass ceiling.

Although the compensation gap is closing gradually and universities have enrolled as many women as men, if not more, many boards of directors and cabinet meetings should better reflect the world’s diversity and draw on different viewpoints and experiences.

Do we need strict rules regarding gender parity? Let us, rather, judge women as we do men — on the basis of their deeds. The point is certainly not to erase the differences between women and men but to enhance the talents of each individual.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A woman is like a tea bag — you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.” Let us make sure that talents that emerge during the crisis do not go unnoticed when our economies recover. Everyone can and should contribute.

Christine Lagarde is France’s minister for the economy, industry and employment.

Read Benjs' article: Shall women save the world economy?

A version of this article appeared in print on May 11, 2010, in The International Herald Tribune.
 
New trend: On-the-job coaching is vital!
Wednesday, 12 May 2010 12:13

New trend: On-the-job coaching is vital

"You know you need to coach your staff. If they perform well, you perform well. And, if you
aren't currently measured on your "ability to coach and develop others" — that is likely to
change soon," says Candice Frankovelgia, Center for Creative Leadership.

Coaching from an outside expert continues to be important. Increasingly, organizations are looking at on-the-job coaching as a vital tool for developing talent and meeting performance goals. The manager plays the key role.

"Leaders are being held accountable for developing others, but few are taught effective ways to coach," says CCL's Candice Frankovelgia. "They end up giving reviews, meeting occasionally and giving advice. We've been helping leader coaches understand what they need to do to be an effective coach and boiling it down to specific actions."

Whether you are a professional coach or a leader with coaching responsibilities you need to establish the relationship; incorporate assessment, challenge and support; and push for results. To gauge your effectiveness in each of these areas, consider the following competencies:

To create an effective coaching relationship, you need to, among other things:

  • Be clear about learning and development objectives.
  • Show good judgment about which information to share and which to hold private.
  • Be clear about the impact of your own behavior on employees.
  • Be patient.
  • Show integrity.
  • Follow through on promises or agreements.
  • Continually show that you have employees' best interests in mind.

Assessment. Do you skillfully help others to gain self-awareness and insight? If so, the actions you take will include the following:

  • Provide timely feedback.
  • Explore the gap between current performance and desired performance.
  • Help employees discover situations where their impact is different from their intentions.
  • Help gain clarity about the behaviors that employees would like to change.
  • Note inconsistencies between words and actions.

Challenge. Do you effectively challenge the thinking and assumptions of others? Do you encourage them to practice new behaviors and step outside of their comfort zone? As a coach, you might challenge employees by:

  • Helping them explore the unintended consequences of a potential action.
  • Encouraging them to generate alternative solutions to problems.
  • Asking open-ended questions.
  • Helping them understand the consequences of not changing key behaviors.
  • Encouraging them to take reasonable risks.

Support. How well do you listen? Are you able to understand the coachee's perspective and find ways to engage him or her in the coaching and development process - even through difficulty? Support comes in many forms, including:

  • Listening carefully to the ideas and suggestions of others.
  • Being open to the perspectives of others.
  • Allowing employees to vent emotions without judgment.
  • Encouraging employees to make progress toward their goals.
  • Recognizing the success of employees.

Results. Do you help the coachee set meaningful goals and be accountable for them? If so, you are likely to help employees identify:

  • Goals that will have the greatest positive impact on their effectiveness.
  • Specific behaviors that will lead to achieving their goals.
  • Specific metrics and milestones that employees can use to measure progress toward their goals.

"Once you have the tools and some practice under your belt, you will find that coaching is an effective way to develop and motivate direct reports," says Frankovelgia.

About the source
Candice Frankovelgia, Psy.D is Senior Faculty and Coaching Practice Leader and has been with the Center for Creative Leadership® since 1996. With a background in both business and behavioral science, Candice integrates these disciplines to design and deliver tailored programs for individual, team and organizational development. Candice co-authored chapters on Coaching in the Center's Handbook of Coaching: A Guide for The Leader Coach (Jossey-Bass, March 2006) and Handbook of Leadership Development (Jossey-Bass, March 2009) and serves as team coach for senior executive teams in Fortune 500 companies.

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Read more:
www.ccl.org

 
 
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor about the gender-gap in the workforce
Thursday, 22 April 2010 19:07

Following the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report, I found this very interesting interview with professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter from Harvard Business School (recorded by Harvard Business Review), who comments on the gender gap and explains why women’s compensation and advancement to the highest ranks have failed to keep pace with their impressive inroads into the workforce.

Professor Kanter pointed on the essential differences in the type of jobs performed by men and women:

‘It is still hard to find a way to exactly compare men and women because women, even at the high levels are still often, disproportionally found in people-oriented jobs and men are more often found in the high-risks jobs, where they have to make pivotal decisions. Ad those jobs are more likely paid more, because whenever there is a high degree of uncertainty, then you wanna pay more for the judgment of the people you trust’.

And, since the culture where women are regarded as the most family-oriented ready to sacrifice their career for the family sake, any radical change of the gender-gap situation will be impossible to achieve.

‘Until we have a generation of men who are just as family oriented, I think we won’t get as much change as we would like’.

See and hear the full interview below. Read Prof. Kanter’s blog on Harvard Business Review.
 
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