By guest blogger Margaret Jennings, M Squared Consulting

Cybersphere’s newest celebrity, Steven Slater - the Jet Blue flight attendant who announced to the world he was quitting his job by releasing the emergency chute at JFK and, literally, leaping to freedom – was reportedly provoked by a difficult passenger who pushed his patience too far.  For his actions, Slater has become an instant folk hero.

If Slater is to be believed, it may be that, in this instance, “the customer is not always right.”  But some pundits say that Slater, like any other flight attendant on any given day, should have bitten his tongue and continued working normally despite the apparent abuse from the passenger.  But at what point do we, as individuals and as business leaders, draw a line and take responsibility for the well-being of employees over demanding and/or abusive customers? 

Many successful, savvy executives (including Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines) have built their empires on flexible employee-customer policies.  They believe that the happiness of their employees comes first, because disgruntled staff are not well-positioned, nor, at the very least, motivated, to provide excellent customer service.   Kelleher once wrote a personal reply to a passenger who regularly flew on Southwest, and, consequently, complained after every flight.  ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’

Yet, when an employee accepts a job offer, shouldn’t they be aware of, and take some responsibility for, the type of stress (and abuse?) inherent in the new position?  Certainly, employers should be recruiting people with the right temperament for the job and providing them with adequate customer training.  But it is not always possible to walk away from challenging customers, just to keep your employees happy.  Small businesses in particular face a dilemma when dealing with difficult customers, as a single lost account could mean disaster.

So, if the customer is not always right, where do you draw the line between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’?  Set the line too high or too low, and you risk alienating either the customer or the employee. Finding that perfect balance is difficult, and different for every business.

For information about how M Squared Consulting can help you manage your flexible workforce strategies, visit www.msquared.com or call 888-818-2505.

By guest blogger Margaret Jennings, M Squared Consulting

Keeping your staff motivated and engaged can be far from straightforward. 

Author  Peter Bregman, in a recent blog in the Harvard Business Review, suggests a simple concept to help:  connect your staff with the source of an idea or business practice to inspire their commitment through a sense of ownership. By doing so, he finds employees are “always happier with the outcome. They feel something deeper than the success of a project gone well. They feel pride of ownership. They feel satisfied by the journey that brought them to their success.”

Larry Sternberg, writing for Workforce.com (‘Give Employees What They Need’), takes this idea further and believes there are two interlinked principles to keep in mind when motivating staff.  Firstly, “Each person has a unique configuration of need - their own goals, wants, desires and aspirations.” And secondly, “People stay in organizations that meet their needs.”

He provides some detailed tactics for meeting such needs.  In summary;

1.     Ask your staff what their needs are.

2.     Don’t be afraid to change precedent for your best performers.

3.     Make staff feel important, have time to listen to them.

4.     Emotionally rehire people.

Not surprisingly, in today’s economy many employees have diminished confidence in employment stability, feel vulnerable and are no longer happy working for someone else.  The trend toward a flexible and self-employed workforce looks set to continue.  Projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predict that the flexible workforce will grow 19% through 2016, almost twice the rate of total job growth of 10%.

This change in approach to employment has an upside for employers too.  More on this topic in upcoming posts.

To help your organization leverage the top-tier of the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com

Back in April in this space we discussed whether there’s a talent shortage in America, particularly in light of the coming retirement of many baby boomers.  We examined whether there is indeed a pervasive labor shortfall, or if the laws of supply and demand are out of balance in certain industries or geographies.

An article this week in the Wall Street Journal by Mark Whitehouse expands on this topic.  The piece, titled “Some Firms Struggle to Hire Despite High Unemployment”, cites why, despite the tough economy, some companies are having a difficult time filling job openings.

Some excerpts: 

…With a 9.5% jobless rate and some 15 million Americans looking for work, many employers are inundated with applicants. But a surprising number say they are getting an underwhelming response, and many are having trouble filling open positions.

“This is as bad now as at the height of business back in the 1990s,” says Dan Cunningham, chief executive of the Long-Stanton Manufacturing Co., a maker of stamped-metal parts in West Chester, Ohio, that has been struggling to hire a few toolmakers. “It’s bizarre. We are just not getting applicants.”

Employers and economists point to several explanations. Extending jobless benefits to 99 weeks gives the unemployed less incentive to search out new work. Millions of homeowners are unable to move for a job because the real-estate collapse leaves them owing more on their homes than they are worth.

The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can’t qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work like the food servers that Pilot Flying J seeks for its truck stops.

… Matching people with available jobs is always difficult after a recession as the economy remakes itself. But Labor Department data suggest the disconnect is particularly acute this time around. Since the economy bottomed out in mid-2009, the number of job openings has risen more than twice as fast as actual hires, a gap that didn’t appear until much later in the last recovery. The disparity is most notable in manufacturing, which has had among the biggest increases in openings. But it is also appearing in other areas, such as business services, education and health care.

If the job market were working normally—that is, if openings were getting filled as they usually do—the U.S. should have about five million more gainfully employed people than it does, estimates David Altig, research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That would correspond to an unemployment rate of 6.8%, instead of 9.5%.

… Longer-term trends are at play. For one, the U.S. education system hasn’t been producing enough people with the highly specialized skills that many companies, particularly in manufacturing, require to keep driving productivity gains. “There are a lot of people who are unemployed, but those aren’t necessarily the people employers are looking for,” says David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Manufacturers of high-precision products such as automobile and aircraft parts are in a particularly tough spot. Global competition keeps them from raising wages much. But they need workers with the combination of math skills, intuition and stamina required to operate the computer-controlled metalworking machines that now dominate the factory floor.

Clearly, there are many angles to explore here, ranging from the state of the economy to the effects of long-term unemployment benefits to the quality of our public education system. 

For the high end of the market, there is also a healthy debate about whether there are enough skilled workers in the right place at the right time to help companies advance their strategic priorities.  Many companies continue to seek out interim specialists and consulting talent to help them during the peaks and valleys of normal business cycles.

Stay tuned as we continue to follow developments on this important subject.

To help your organization leverage the top-tier of the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com or call 1-888-818-2505

By guest writer Margaret Jennings, M Squared Consulting

Despite being aware that balance in all things in life (including business) is a good thing, I was quite surprised to read some of the figures quoted by Whitney Johnson in her recent HBR post about the impact women in leadership positions can have on a business.

She cited findings by the University of Michigan and Cornell University that showed that “…IPOs of companies with greater gender diversity outperformed (others) by as much as 30%.”   She also quotes the research of David Gaddis Ross of Columbia University that “organizations most inclusive of women in top management achieve 35% higher ROE and 34% better total return to shareholders versus their peers.”

It is not difficult to reason that there are significant benefits for a business with a female presence in senior management in any business.  However, the 2009 Catalyst Census of FORTUNE 500 Women Board Directors revealed that less than one fifth of companies have three or more women on their boards, and more than 40 percent have no women directors whatsoever.

How can organizations increase the presence of women in leadership roles and across the workforce?  An article in HR Management offers insight from some leading companies:

• “What General Mills does is look at everything from soup to nuts. It looks at the hiring of women to make sure that they’re bringing in women that they know are going to stay and succeed. And, interestingly, the turnover rate is very low at General Mills. They think long-term. They hire someone to stay and not just to fill a gap.”
• Healthcare company WellPoint consistently ranks in NAFE’s list of the top 50 companies for executive women. CEO Angela Braly is also the only woman to serve as CEO of a Fortune 50 company.  Their company ethos is “…you don’t have to check who you are at the front door. Bring your whole self to work. You’re not just an executive, but you’re an executive and a mom or a dad, if you have kids, and it’s important that you be able to spend time on both.”  They also have many work-at-home programs.
• IBM has been supporting women in the work place for over 120 years.  “Work/life integration is extremely important and luckily IBM is a leader in this field. For example, we offer flexible work options and job sharing, and in 2000 IBM created a $50 million global work/life fund to support our employee’s child and elderly care needs around the world.”

Clearly, gender diversity in corporate leadership is good for business, and there is no shortage of examples to demonstrate that fact.

To help your organization leverage the top-tier of the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com

Back in April in this space we debated whether there is a looming talent shortage in America.  Now, in a related piece, an insightful blog article from the Harvard Business Review by authors Sue Ashford and Scott DeRue discusses how best to address the leadership talent shortage that they suggest exists in companies today:

Nearly 60% of companies are facing leadership talent shortages that are impeding their performance. Another 31% expect a lack of leadership talent to impede their performance in the next several years. Yet, in 2009, U.S. companies spent an estimated $12 billion (24% of their overall training budgets) on leadership development programs and services. By any reasonable standard, what we are currently doing to grow and develop future leaders is not working. Here are five critical attributes that we believe are necessary for developing the leaders of today and tomorrow:

1. The best learners make the best leaders. We must teach people how to learn leadership from life experiences. We argue that learning leadership is a function of how people approach, go through, and reflect on developmental experiences — a process we call “mindful engagement,” We need to stop teaching leadership theory in a vacuum, and start teaching people how to learn leadership from real-world experiences.
2. Leadership as a set of principles. Business education is largely oriented toward teaching an important but narrow set of technical knowledge and skills. We need to expand our teaching to encompass a set of leadership principles that can be globally applied across situations. Doing so will build an adaptive capacity that enables people to more effectively lead in today’s complex and dynamic business environment.
3. Reward leadership development (FINALLY!). All companies pay lip service to the importance of developing people, but how many companies actually reward (with any significance) the development of people? Answer: very few. Also, how many companies penalize managers for hoarding key talent? Answer: almost none. Yet, managers often do everything they can to avoid losing key talent to other opportunities because, as one executive put it to us the other day: “I can’t afford to lose my best people.”
4. Leadership development at all levels.  We previously argued that leadership is not about position. If that is true, then why do most leadership development programs focus on senior executives? We need to expand our focus to figure out ways to efficiently and economically develop leaders throughout the organization.
5. Keep it simple. Leadership is complex, but leadership development cannot be. We must provide key talent with clear metrics and development priorities that provide a straightforward roadmap for realizing their leadership potential. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most companies. One Fortune 500 company that we are working with developed a leadership competency model that specifies 54 distinct competencies across 15 different leadership skills. The result? Employees are confused, and assessment data are poor. Instead, identify the three or four competencies that really differentiate top performers across different levels of the organization, and then reward and promote based on those competencies.

Contributors:  Sue Ashford is Associate Dean for Leadership Programming and Executive MBA Program and the Michael & Susan Jandernoa Professor of Management and Organizations at the at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.  Scott DeRue is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

For more information on leveraging leaders from the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com.

Most people know that it makes good business sense to listen to, acknowledge, motivate and reward employees.  A recent article in Workforce Management cites how the Gallup Organization created a feedback system for employers that would identify and measure elements of worker engagement most tied to the bottom line–things such as sales growth, productivity and customer loyalty.

After hundreds of focus groups and thousands of interviews with employees in a variety of industries, Gallup came up with the Q12, a 12-question survey that identifies strong feelings of employee engagement. Results from the survey show a strong correlation between high scores and superior job performance. Here are those 12 questions:

• Do you know what is expected of you at work?
• Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
• At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
• In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
• Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
• Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
• At work, do your opinions seem to count?
• Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
• Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
• Do you have a best friend at work?
• In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
• In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

In any economy it pays to have engaged employees.  The answers to the questions above will shine a light on how well you’re doing.

For information on how to develop your contingent workforce to the fullest, contact M Squared Consulting at msquared@msquared.com or 1-888-818-2505.

There have been many stories about the alleged lack of talent looming from the aging of America.  But is it real?  Peter Cappelli, management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, likens alarms about a talent famine to breathless warnings from information technology professionals that computer systems could fail catastrophically when clocks rolled over to January 1, 2000.

In retrospect, of course, the Y2K hype was overblown. With that example in mind, the current sky-is-falling labor predictions could easily be called Gray2K.

It is true that in 2014, some 78 million baby boomers will fall between the ages of 50 and 68. But partly because many of them will work beyond the age of 55, the U.S. labor force will continue to grow during the next eight years, according to government projections. Other factors helping to soften the blow of baby boomer retirements include immigration and the prospect that U.S. companies will send more work offshore.

The real question surrounding the labor force in the next five to 10 years is where tightness in specific talent markets might emerge. Already some industries, occupations and geographies are showing signs of a squeeze.

The Conference Board of Canada recently reported that Canada is facing a workforce shortage once baby boomers recover financially from the recession.  The organization reported that the current economic downturn has only delayed the anticipated labor shortage, and urged companies to plan for it.

Among the loudest voices sounding a Gray2K labor shortage alarm is consultant and author Roger Herman, who preached the importance of keeping good employees during the economic downturn in 1990. In 2003, he co-authored a book titled Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People.

The book’s cover jacket displays a chart purporting to show a shortage of 10 million workers by 2010. That figure comes from the difference between what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected as the civilian labor force in 2010 and the number of jobs it estimated for that year.

The BLS’ most recent projections show a smaller difference of 2.4 million between the two figures for 2014. In any event, the bureau explicitly warns that these figures are not strictly comparable. Norm Saunders, coordinator for research projects in the BLS’ projections program, says one problem in mixing the two data sets is that people can hold more than one job. But he’s not surprised the figures have been misrepresented.

“If it’s a good sound bite, some people will run with it,” he says.

Saunders says shortages in the U.S. labor market tend to be short-term and isolated, thanks to the laws of supply and demand: Wages rise in the area lacking enough workers, drawing new people into the field. He also says the overall labor force can increase beyond the BLS’ projections. A jump in wages could reverse a decline in the share of men in the workforce as well as accelerate the rate at which women are joining. Saunders also says immigration, which is assumed in U.S. Census Bureau population projections to be 900,000 documented immigrants arriving in the states each year, could be higher.

A larger percentage of older people have been working than in the past, with the trend likely to continue. Plus, Saunders adds, work at U.S. organizations in many cases can be sent to other countries. That’s been happening in growing numbers of service fields, including banking, software and travel services.

As a result, Saunders has a dim view of any looming wide-scale lack of talent.

“My sense is, it doesn’t exist,” he says. “There are lots of different ways for the supply to grow to meet the demand.”

Herman concedes that the bureau’s projections for the labor force and jobs are “apples and oranges.” Yet, he says, the numbers nonetheless point to trouble ahead in hiring.

“We don’t know if the shortage is 10 million or 14 million or 8 million,” Herman says. “The key is, we’re going to have a multi­million-person shortage of skilled workers.”

To ensure that you’re winning the war for talent by leveraging the high-end of the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com or call us at 888-818-2505.

Sources:  www.workforce.com, www.UPI.com

An intriguing article in BNET (www.bnet.com) caught my eye.  It noted that nine of the 20 richest people in America are geeks (and most of the rest are either named Walton, Mars, or Koch, so when the old money’s gone, they’ll all be geeks).  And we’re not just talking about Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and the Google twins - Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Have you ever heard Warren Buffet speak? He’s not a techie, but he’s still a geek, a financial geek. Why do you think he gets along with Bill Gates so well?

Geekdom transcends gender, geography, and generation. Geeks can be your employees, your peers, your manager, even your CEO.  Anyway, if you want to get ahead in this world-gone-geek, you’ll need this indispensable guide:

10 Things You Need to Know About Geeks in the Workplace

So if you want to get ahead in the modern business world, you’d better get your geek on. Just don’t overdo it. Geeks can smell a fake light years away.

To find just the right consultant or team for your next project, contact M Squared Consulting at msquared@msquared.com or 1-888-818-2505.

The cover story in the current issue of BusinessWeek entitled “The Permanent Temporary Workforce” is a fascinating read about the state of the American workforce.  The article describes the hardships faced by those affected by layoffs, and how many companies are turning to temporary help to protect profits in the economic downturn.

But in contrast to similar articles in recent years, the authors here point out that the current recession has fueled a “leadership on demand” phenomenon, meaning that many of the temporary workers are white-collar professionals, not “sneaker-footed admins”.  Many are seasoned professionals who relish the flexibility of a free-agent lifestyle.  “People with sought-after skills can earn more by jumping from assignment to assignment than they can by sticking with one company,” the authors write.

Déjà vu?

In her groundbreaking book, “A New Brand of Expertise: How Independent Consultants, Free Agents, and Interim Managers are Transforming the World of Work,” published in 2001, M Squared Consulting founder and CEO Marion McGovern tackled this very subject in some depth.

In particular, in the chapter about why many professionals choose “free agency”, Ms. McGovern’s writings are more relevant today than ever:

“Whether it is control over where they work, their hours, or their vacations, overwhelmingly it is a desire to make work fit into their lives and not vice versa.  One of our consultants of Dutch descent explained that she became an independent practitioner because she thought that American vacation structures were untenable; being used to at least six weeks of vacation annually, she couldn’t continue in the American mode of two weeks per year.  In today’s 24×7 world, time has a currency all its own.”

She continues….

“Some consultants want control over what they do, a sphere of influence that as a mere mortal in a large enterprise was beyond their reach.  At M Squared Consulting, we see this often with the alumni from large consulting firms.  Exposed to many types of industries and products, they may have been able to indentify the type of work they most enjoyed, but they may not have had the opportunity to do it again.  For these individuals, the type of work – the “what” – is most critical.

So in addition to being prescient, McGovern’s book illustrates that there are some long-term trends in place affecting American business, and the savvy consultant can take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves and thrive in today’s work environment.  And challenge, pay, and control are not the sole discretion of either the employer or employee.

With its collaborative approach, long-term relationships, and commitment to the success of both its clients and consultants, it’s no wonder that M Squared Consulting attracts top-tier professionals to its network.  To join the M Squared consultant community, please register on our website at http://www.msquared.com/consultants/join.html

What do Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Charles Schwab, Avon’s chief executive, Andrea Jung, and the late publishing giant Katharine Graham have in common?  According to a recent Forbes article, each described themselves as introverts.

A surprise perhaps, but it’s estimated that 40% of executives are introverts, and most admit that at some point in their leadership journey they’ve had to work to overcome being disregarded or misunderstood because of their quiet temperament.

The qualifications for leadership are not easily understood or so readily apparent.  But fortunately M Squared can help.  Since 1988, M Squared Consulting has been providing critical business solutions to our clients by delivering seasoned, targeted consulting expertise tailored to our clients’ unique needs.

According to Forbes, there are five key characteristics that help introverted leaders build on their quiet strength and succeed:

1. They think first, talk later. Introverted leaders think before they speak. Even in casual conversations, they consider others’ comments carefully, and they stop and reflect before responding. One executive tells me that he sits back and listens to his leadership team’s ideas and proposals, often using silence to allow even more thoughts to bubble up. Learning by listening, not talking, is a trait that introverts consistently demonstrate. They also use their calm, quiet demeanors to be heard amid all the organizational noise and chatter. (One thoughtful, reasoned comment in a meeting can move a group forward by leaps and bounds.) In fact, the most powerful person in the room is often the most quiet. Additionally, an introvert’s tendency to be more measured with words is a major asset in the current economy, when no leader can afford to make costly gaffes.

2. They focus on depth. Introverted leaders seek depth over breadth. They like to dig deep, delving into issues and ideas before moving on to new ones. They are drawn to meaningful conversations, not superficial chitchat, and they know how to ask great questions and really listen to the answers. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Deborah Dunsire, M.D., president and chief executive of Millennium, a Cambridge, Mass., biopharmaceutical company, said, “In addition to conducting organizational surveys and holding town hall meetings, I schedule walk around time, just stopping by offices. … I would just say, ‘Hey, what is keeping you up nights? What are you working on? What’s most exciting to you right now? Where do you see we can improve?’” Dr. Dunsire maintains that by pursuing this kind of in-depth questioning–something that introverted leaders do exceptionally well–executives can learn what’s actually happening in the far reaches of their organizations and engage and retain their top talent.

3. They exude calm. Introverted leaders are low-key. In times of crisis, they project a reassuring, calm confidence–think President Obama–and they speak softly and slowly regardless of the heat of the conversation or circumstances. Whenever they get ready for a meeting, a speech or a special event, their secret to success can be summed up in one word: preparation. They often plan and write out their meeting questions well in advance, and for important talks and speeches, they rehearse out loud. They also act “as if”: One executive tells me that he pretends to be James Bond before major industry conferences. It makes him feel more cool and confident. They psych themselves up internally, too, by quieting negative thoughts and framing the upcoming experience more positively. Prior to networking events, Bob Goodyear, an Atlanta-based information technology leader, tells himself, “I can do anything for 30 minutes.”

4. They let their fingers do the talking. Introverted leaders usually prefer writing to talking. This comfort with the written word often helps them better articulate their positions and document their actions. It also helps them leverage online social networking tools such as Twitter, creating new opportunities to be out there with employees, customers and other stakeholders. For instance, using Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, an internal social network for employees at the electronics superstore, senior management and sales associates can connect continuously to discussing workers’ feedback and ideas. I know one chief financial officer who writes a daily internal blog and in a recent posting described how he made “a good presentation great” by practicing. In so sharing his experience, he not only showed openness and honesty but also provided coaching to thousands of employees.

5. They embrace solitude. Introverted leaders are energized by spending time alone. They suffer from people exhaustion and need to retreat to recharge their batteries frequently. These regular timeouts actually fuel their thinking, creativity and decision-making and, when the pressure is on, help them be responsive, not reactive. When introverts honor that inner pull, they can do their best work. In managing interruptions, they also manage people’s expectations. When asked to respond to requests or ideas, Martin Schmidler, a vice president at a national food service organization, often tells his team that he needs time to absorb what’s being asked or presented. He’s clear on how and when he’ll get back to people, and he consistently follows through on his commitments. This clarity and consistency helps him build trust with his team.

It’s clear that having the right executive and the right consultants in place is critical.  M Squared consultants come with the qualifications, judgment, and expertise to meet your specific criteria and deliver results. They bring fresh perspectives and best practices to your business need. From the very first day through completion, M Squared makes an impact.