Leading in The Human Age
As the Gordian Knot of uncertainty continues to grow and tighten, agility and the ability to innovate will come to define success. Change must come to be an accepted and expected part of everyday life for individuals, companies and governments. Time for planning will continue to shrink and companies will need to focus on strategic agility in the face of uncertain headwinds. This, in turn, requires business leaders to rethink the way organizations understand, address and manage talent. Successful companies will create flexible workforce strategies aligned to their business strategy in order to boost productivity, build resilience and drive business results—even in changing circumstances. In short, this period of “certain uncertainty” requires new approaches to the world of work. HR leaders need to be able to build adaptable work models that allow for adjustment to these unpredictable changes. Successfully implementing these flexible work models will require a leadership shift to become more participative and collaborative. It also requires highly resilient and strategic Human Age Leaders who can build and drive a culture of collaboration, and who can develop managers with the capacity to engage top talent over the long term. Businesses that are able to successfully navigate the 2013 Future Forces driving the Human Age and control their destiny will continue to out-pace competitors who remain inflexible to the complex forces shaping this ever-evolving era. Thanks to years spent tracking critical work of work trends, plus ongoing research and application of innovative workforce solutions, ManpowerGroup has unique insights into these forces and the impact they are having on the world of work. This paper leverages those insights and provides recommendations for how business leaders can build the Human Age Corporation in the face of certain uncertainty. Manpower Group 2013
Good and Bad Crisis Decision Makers
For decision makers, crises involve a cumulation of adverse conditions and, if only for that reason, crises will be high-risk events. Some decision makers will turn out to be particularly good crisis managers, converting critical conditions into splendid opportunities, whereas others will be unable to cope with a crisis and may see their careers ruined by ill-conceived crisis management. It is not always easy to predict the crisis management qualities of decision makers. Those who are solid managers of daily political or administrative affairs may be far from effective in crisis management. A dramatic example of this was the former mayor of Amsterdam, Van Hall, who was an excellent administrator and promoter of business activity but could not effectively cope with youth protests and public-order disturbances; he was removed from his post by central government intervention (Rosenthal, 1986). On the other hand, decision makers who show mediocre talents in routine politics and administration may rise to the occasion in a crisis. In fact, decision makers may be very talented in coping with certain types of crises but unable to make appropriate decisions in others. They may be excellent in one stage of crisis management (for instance, crisis response at hectic moments) and then fail to keep to that level the longer the crisis continues. In consequence, experts should anticipate a surprising distribution of crisismanagement qualities among key decision makers. They should also anticipate changes in the distribution of such qualities during a crisis. What Expert Advisers should Understand about Crisis Decision Making, Uriel Rosenthal and Paul ’T Hart http://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/staff/hart/pubs/35%20Rosenthal%20&%20t%20Hart.pdf