Management thinkers like to talk about large topics with grand import. Strategy, relationships – even science. And we soak this stuff up, hoping that a preemptive grasp of such as these will help us and our organizations get a jump on the competition. But sometimes it seems like the old story of the two guys running from a bear. When one of them, stopping to put on running shoes, is told he can’t outrun a bear, he answers, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”
Many of us from the baby boomer generation wryly comment about how hard it can be to juggle life’s competing demands on us. But the truth is, we are typically more concerned about juggling work’s competing demands – life is just a spectator at the show. Or, rather, life is the show, and we keep missing the curtain. The interesting thing is that, while we genuinely rue our inability to have it all, we criticize the younger generations – often quite harshly – which try to take a more balanced approach to life and work.
The past week or so have seen some interesting observations and cautions on trends shaping the evolving workplace. They cover the ground from what is perhaps a surprising expression of an old, forgotten idea, to efforts to understand a powerful new demographic trend, to cautions about one of the ways we transmit knowledge across the generations in the midst of all this change. . .
We all know that merger and acquisition (M&A) activity has a dismal success rate. The recent spate of this activity doesn’t promise to improve on that, much. The question remains, though, why? If the logic behind these proposals is persuasive enough to carry the decision-makers behind them along to execution, why do so many of them fail?
It seems to me that there are two principle reasons for the emergence of peculiar C-level titles such as Chief Information Technology Officer, Chief Knowledge Officer, Chief People Officer, and the like: mollification and obfuscation. Neither bode well for the organization. . .
Hiring people with work or educational backgrounds outside the industry of employment is a healthy trend. Many businesses – the consulting industry is a leader in this area – have noted that there is a kind of inbreeding that occurs when marketers, for example, hire only other marketers or people with marketing degrees. The problem is that, while they may be assuring themselves that there are basic degrees of industry-specific skills, or at least general knowledge, in the hiree, they are also establishing a pretty high likelihood that this new employee is bringing nothing new – no new insight, ideas, or even other skills that no one realized could be productively brought to bear on marketing.
There is an awful lot out there on the increasingly high-profile issue of women at work. On the one hand, the numbers don’t seem to be moving much in women’s favor, but the very visibility of the subject may help to change that. This post takes a look at some of what is available on the topic in the media and by at least one premier blog author.
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