Do you have the right people working for you?

Organizations go through huge challenges hiring and developing the right people and do not always get it right. The right people are described as self motivated, passionate and independent. Able to work without supervision to meet strict international reporting schedules. At other times they are described as innovative, go-getters, with a positive or "can do" attitude. These people are also described as enterprising and creative team players.  The right person will be required to have a core competence and able to achieve set goals but flexible enough to handle challenge and diversity.

In an effort to attract and arrest the attention and interest of the right people organizations often attach substantial and generous pay packages to the vacant positions and therefore end up attracting applications from all manner of would be gold diggers. Many of whom have learned the art of faking the requirements of the job. However, since the organization is not very clear of what they are looking for in the first place, it becomes obvious after a few months that the description they used to attract the new employee was not quite right.

Our suggestion is that you start your recruitment process by defining the right person. A fairly accurate definition of a person who fits the hoped for profile in paragraph one is a leader. Interestingly leaders are not always attracted by flamboyant salaries. They do require training, but are more inclined to work on interests that excite them. The leaders pay is making a difference in the world and using their gifts to serve humanity. That may sound more romantic than realistic, but a person who has poor leadership ability and does not take time to develop their leadership capacity will not meet the desires of the corporation. Would you rather an organization of leaders or team of employees? What are you looking for an employee or a leader?

NGCL Team

Why Next Generation Corporate Leaders?

The world has changed dramatically over the last century. Changes in agriculture, industry, medicine and education have made the world more productive, healthier and habitable in many ways. But the world has also changed fundamentally over the last decade. Education has revised the way children are education while information technology has changed the way we define our world. Even war has been redefined from fighting “objects” and people to fighting concepts such as terrorism and “human rights” and “literacy”. The corporate world has challenged the image of the super manager to run organizations and now demands process leaders to ensure corporate success. No single manager knows enough to run the corporation by him or herself. CEOs today must rely on leaders to run the business of the corporation.   

The Next Generation Corporate Leaders face a different set of dynamics that their predecessors. In the past there was relative stability in professions, markets and industry structures. In the early part of last century it was possible to plan for 50 years of production for a stable market based on a single invention such as the motor car. Today strategic plans are outdated by a single innovation in a matter of months – and there are hundreds of innovations every day. In the old days markets were closed. Today anybody can do business anywhere. In the old days careers were guaranteed by education, today if you do not go for training you are outdated as soon as you graduate from college. Next generation corporate leaders must handle dynamics, diversity and turn dreams into reality.

Dynamics is not the same as change or change management. Corporations today house dynamic order. People come and go, technology is adopted and revised, products and processes are in a constant state of modification in a bid to keep up with external competition and innovation against the erratic demand of customers. Gone are the days when careers were permanent and pensionable and staff were reliable and guaranteed to stay for 20 years. The nature of the corporate process is “here today gone tomorrow”. The leader must be comfortable with these dynamics.

The very definition and advantages of a stable corporate culture demand a significant degree of uniformity. However, the new world does not guarantee uniformity. Globalization goes against the very core of uniformity. Organizations struggle with generational ethics where old and young work in the same environment. Analog and digital exist side by side. Diversity is more than race or color. Diversity is about integrated systems, accommodating religious beliefs, worldviews and educational backgrounds. It is about mainstreaming gender issues, but also providing opportunity for minorities to develop themselves. The demand is for corporate leaders who understand how to interpret a single product profitably in four different countries with multiple cultures and several different time zones. The next generation leaders will not deal with consistency - they must master inconsistency!

The only way that the next generation can advance the cause of their organizations is if they have vision. Vision is the capacity to not only see the future but bring it about today. In the past it was enough to see the future, today leaders are expected to bring the future to the people. Such is the challenge of NEXT GENERATION CORPORATE LEADERS – Today!

NGCL Team

The College Corporate Gap

I hear it over and over again in the corporate world; “don’t they teach anything in college”. This challenge would be easily resolved if colleges and corporate organizations could sit down and come to an understanding. But since they chose not to, both will keep suffering from each intransigence. Unfortunately, corporate organizations end up with the short end of the stick. However, there a colleges and corporate that are beginning to appreciate this gap and create programs that are not just educative but transformative in nature.

Colleges give introduction, corporate want production. Colleges teach theory, corporate want application. Colleges have a syllabus to cover, corporate have a system to run. However the point is not to focus on the differences but to work out how these parallel processes can be integrated to create value for (and in) the corporate world. Since this is where corporate draw their human resources.

The induction of college graduates to the corporate world demands that they quickly get to appreciate what the corporate world wants from them and not only what it is willing to give in exchange. There is a glaring shift from the college (and schooling) culture of learning and preparing to doing and producing. College demands receptacle cognitive skills like knowledge, recall and comprehension the corporation demands productive competencies like understanding, initiative and creativity. These later competencies have to be learned just as the competencies that guaranteed one success in college had to be mastered.  The difference in these approaches is the difference between “learning” and “training”.

While colleges require intellect to facilitate learning and skill acquisition, corporations require three other competencies in equal measure initiative (leadership), enterprise (innovation) and employment (productivity). College students are not a natural fit in corporate structure and rarely do academicians make good corporate leaders. However, corporate executives provide excellent case study material for student development.  While college emphasizes knowing, corporations demand know-how. 

An evaluation of the college corporate gap gives you a first line assessment and a birds eye view of the challenge of molding an effective corporate executive out of an outstanding student. Large corporations have their own training schools that covert and shift employee thinking to align it with the organizations programs, others have two or three year management trainee program that serve to facilitate this transformation while the basic minimum is an employee induction program that helps the employee appreciate the goals and objectives of the corporation and how to realize and materialize them.

Allan Bukusi,

Director NGCL Program