I enjoyed a post earlier this month to Modern B2B Marketing (excerpt below) that suggests that thought leadership is one of the most valuable assets that your company brand – or your personal brand — can develop.

In Corporate America, thought leadership initiatives are in place at many companies, some of them extensive (and expensive), and others more ad hoc. And with the advent of social media, which can instantly deliver wisdom (and everything else) far and wide, personal brand building via thought leadership has taken off like wildfire. Yet there are pitfalls if the plan is half-baked or the product sub-par. But well-conceived thought leadership programs can pay dividends, both to your brand and the bottom line.

FYI, M Squared Consulting has a robust thought leadership program, one pillar of which is our annual Independent Consultant Survey, which takes a snapshot of economic trends as seen by members of our 14,000-person strong consulting network. For a copy of that survey, drop me a note at jtarabini@msquared.com.

The excerpt below makes for fascinating reading:

As a B2B marketer, thought leadership is one of the most valuable assets your brand — or you — can attain. In down economies, prospects conduct even more research leading up to the purchase. This means B2B marketing professionals must help educate prospects in the early stages of the buying cycle; doing this well can help frame their buying process and establish your brand as a trusted advisor that understands their problems and knows how to solve them. Therefore it’s more vital than ever for your organization to be viewed as an industry leader and trusted resource for all key stakeholders: customers, media, analysts, investors and everyone in between.

Unfortunately thought leadership is not as easily quantifiable as other demand generation metrics like revenue, sales or leads. And investing in reputation building may not produce the same short-term, immediate effects of efforts such email marketing campaigns. But cultivating thought leadership can have a significant long-term payoff, as in time it elevates your brand at scale.

What are the qualities that define thought leaders? Thought leaders:

• Develop relationships with customers, prospects and others by engaging them in non-sales, industry-relevant conversations.
• Become the go-to source for research, insight and interpretation of the latest news and trends.
• Gain trust among prospective customers so that when the time finally comes to purchase, customers turn to the thought leader organization.

Try incorporating some of these ideas in your B2B marketing efforts to build your organization’s reputation:

1. Provide original research
2. Use your company blog to provide insight
3. Be a solution for specific problems
4. Join the speaking circuit

If you still aren’t sold on the value of cultivating thought leadership, consider the indirect result of these measures. Done well, reputation-building efforts can:

• Provide you with additional quality inbound links to your website
• Increase higher-quality referral traffic
• Elevate your brand to become referential

Plus, the more optimized content you produce in the form of whitepapers, blog posts and webinars, the higher your search rankings. What’s not to like about that?

Read the complete article at http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2009/10/why-thought-leadership-is-your-most-valuable-asset.html

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rises above 10,000. Warren Buffett says that the economy has “plateaued at the bottom”. The rate of job cuts abates, at least temporarily. Reasons for hope for U.S. businesses and consumers perhaps, but what may put a damper on the recovery parade is the phenomenon of knowledge workers voluntarily leaving the States to return to their home countries.

A recent essay by Vivek Wadhwa, a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley and a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School, brings this critical issue to light. In “Beware The Reverse Brain Drain to India and China”, Wadhwa contends that Indian and Chinese professionals are returning to their homelands by the thousands. What this foreshadows for the skilled labor force in the United States remains to be seen, and this is a trend that M Squared Consulting is following closely.

(Excerpted from the full article.*)

I spent Columbus Day in Sunnyvale, fittingly, meeting with a roomful of new arrivals. Well, relatively new. They were Indians living in Silicon Valley. The event was organized by the Think India Foundation, a think-tank that seeks to solve problems which Indians face. When introducing the topic of skilled immigration, the discussion moderator, Sand Hill Group founder M.R. Rangaswami asked the obvious question. How many planned to return to India? I was shocked to see more than three-quarters of the audience raise their hands.

Why would such talented people voluntarily leave Silicon Valley, a place that remains the hottest hotbed of technology innovation on Earth? Or to leave other promising locales such as New York City, Boston and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina? My team of researchers at Duke, Harvard and Berkeley polled 1203 returnees to India and China during the second half of 2008 to find answers to exactly this question. What we found should concern even the most boisterous Silicon Valley boosters.

What propelled them to return home? Some 84% of the Chinese and 69% of the Indians cited professional opportunities. And while they make less money in absolute terms at home, most said their salaries brought a “better quality of life” than what they had in the U.S. (There was also some reverse culture shock—complaints about congestion in India, say, and pollution in China.) When it came to social factors, 67% of the Chinese and 80% of the Indians cited better “family values” at home. Ability to care for aging parents was also cited, and this may be a hidden visa factor: it’s much harder to bring parents and other family members over to the U.S. than in the past. For the vast majority of returnees, a longing for family and friends was also a crucial element.

Many students wanted to stay for a few years after graduation if given a choice—58% of Indians, 54% of Chinese, and 40% of Europeans. But they see the future being brighter back home. Only 7% of Chinese students, 9% of European students, and 25% of Indian students believe that the best days of the U.S. economy lie ahead. Conversely, 74% of Chinese students and 86% of Indian students believe that the best days for their home country’s economy lie ahead.

To some degree, these responses reflected the moribund U.S. economy and the rough job prospects facing students. With U.S. unemployment at 10%, who cares if we lose the next generation of geeks? There won’t be jobs for them for years, anyway, until the U.S. job market recovers. And sure, I know the xenophobes are going to cheer my findings. They believe that foreign workers take American jobs away.

But a growing body of evidence indicates that skilled foreign immigrants create jobs for Americans and boost our national competitiveness. More than 52% of Silicon Valley’s startups during the recent tech boom were started by foreign-born entrepreneurs. Foreign-national researchers have contributed to more than 25% of our global patents, developed some of our break-through technologies, and they helped make Silicon Valley the world’s leading tech center. Foreign-born workers comprise almost a quarter of all the U.S. science and engineering workforce and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. It is very possible that some of the smart Indians who sat in the room with me holding their hand up on Columbus Day will start the next Google or Apple. Many of them will build companies which employ thousands. But the jobs will be in Hyderbad or Pune, not Silicon Valley.

*Read the complete article at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/17/beware-the-reverse-brain-drain-to-india-and-china/

I recently came across two interesting data points which provide some important clues to what the emerging, post-recession, marketplace for labor might look like.

These data points have extra significance because in recent weeks we’ve seen an increase in consulting opportunities across all our practice areas, and we’ve also begun to notice a tightening of the knowledge worker labor force.

You might ask, how can it be that we’re still hearing about the recession and unemployment almost every night in the news, yet you’re saying there is both business opportunity and a lack of talent in the market?!

Here’s my explanation.

First of all, unemployment statistics are a lagging indicator. The rate of unemployment in the market will peak long before the government agencies report it. A much more reliable indicator of labor market trends is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). When it grows, the labor market will grow.

Second, unemployment for those with a college degree or higher (i.e. the knowledge workers that M Squared Consulting depends on to deliver results for clients) remains at near historic lows. The reality is that many members of the knowledge workforce have delayed their retirement. Once we begin the post-recession economic cycle we will see an increasing number of Baby Boomers (the most educated and experienced component of the current labor marketplace) begin to retire from the workforce. I predict this dynamic will cause a renewed war for talent.

August 2009 ExecuNet Recruiter Confidence Poll

Executive hiring by healthcare companies is expected to set the pace for management recruitment across all industries now through the end of 2009, according to ExecuNet’s latest Recruiter Confidence Poll. The survey found that nearly 150 responding executive search consultants anticipate seeing the most executive hiring in the healthcare space, followed by the clean/green technology sector, energy/utilities, and the life sciences market, including companies in the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical sectors. Senior management hiring in the publishing and media/advertising/entertainment industries is expected to be the weakest, extending a longstanding trend line.

“With the economy showing signs of stabilization, corporations are beginning to strategically upgrade their leadership teams and fill positions that were put on hold during the downturn,” says Mark Anderson, President and Chief Economist of ExecuNet. “In light of the deep cuts many companies made during the past eighteen months, the pace of job growth during the year ahead could be stronger than expected in many industries.”

In the poll a representative sample of executive recruiters are asked what industry they anticipate yielding the highest growth of management hiring in the next six months. Here are the top ten responses from the poll:

• Healthcare = 13.8%
• Clean/Green Technology = 10.6%
• Energy/Utilities = 9.1%
• Life Sciences (pharma, biotech, medical) = 8.4%
• Environmental Products and Services = 7.2%
• High Technology = 6.3%
• Tie-Business Services = 5.3%
• Tie-Government/Nonprofit = 5.3%
• Defense/Aerospace = 5.2%
• Financial Services = 5.1%

Source: ExecuNet Recruiter Confidence Poll 8/09

The Aging of the American Workforce - Pew Research Center

The aging of the American workforce has accelerated during this recession, both because older workers have stayed in the labor force longer and younger adults are staying out of it longer, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.

One government estimate forecasts that 93 percent of the growth in the U.S. labor force through 2016 will be among individuals ages 55 and older.

By a ratio of nearly two-to-one, survey respondents said they would prefer a job that offers better security (59 percent) over one that offers higher pay (33 percent) but less stability.

Yet even in the face of widespread layoffs, pay freezes and involuntary furloughs, nine-in-ten employed adults say they are either completely (30 percent) or mostly (60 percent) satisfied with their job. In recent decades, the Pew study reports, levels of job satisfaction have tended to remain stable through good times and bad.

As it turns out, older workers are the happiest workers. Some 54 percent of workers ages 65 and older say they are “completely satisfied” with their job, compared with just 29 percent of younger workers. That’s because a much higher percentage of older workers is working not because they need to, but rather, because they want to.

At M Squared Consulting we’ve just finished our budgeting process for the 2010 fiscal year. I thought it might be of interest to share some insights and observations while they are still fresh in my mind, and propose some resolutions based on what I learned from our planning process:

1. It is always better to lead than to follow. Do your homework ahead of time, so that you come in prepared. It is always better to get in front of the process instead of getting dragged behind it.
2. Recognize that many of your business fundamentals have likely changed over the past 12 months. Your business strategy will likely change as a result. So commit to anticipating the key questions which need to be answered and then, using research, analytics, and common sense gather as much insight into them as you can so that you can make informed recommendations and smart budget assumptions.
3. Clearly state all your assumptions.
4. When making year-over-year (or any other time period) comparisons, make sure you’re comparing apples-to-apples. If there have been significant changes from one period to the next you should at the least note them or, better yet, try to back them out.
5. Approach your proposed budget from the ground up, with every element having a business case justification which estimates the return.
6. Recognize that you can only control what is yours. To the extent that other’s budgets impact yours, accept it, then move on. If something has a material impact, identify it, clearly state the facts, put it in your assumptions list, then move on.
7. Cast a wide net for input. In addition to data and commitment from your team, proactively seek input from others in finance, marketing, sales, human resources, and business units as you build your plan. This not only enables you to understand their questions and concerns (and hopefully incorporate the appropriate adjustments) but it has the added benefit of pre-selling your budget to peers, superiors, and other influencers who may be in a position to make your life miserable later.
8. Solicit input and early support from those who drive revenue. It has always amazed me that many business leaders don’t actively include their sales teams in the budgeting process. The level of sales team buy-in, commitment, and support for budgets that have been collaboratively built is always better than those budgets that are just handed down.
9. Clearly define what success looks like before you propose spending any money. Also plan to implement the necessary measurement system to make sure you can demonstrate the expected contribution.
10. Analyze the alternatives to all your budget recommendations, so that you are prepared to answer the inevitable tough questions from your CEO and CFO.

No matter what business opportunities or challenges you’re facing, or where you are in your planning cycle for 2010, M Squared Consulting (and our unique talent-on-demand business model) can help you keep critical initiatives on track. Across industries and corporate functional areas we deploy top-level experts who are completely focused on delivering bottom-line results to your organization.