Jacob Morgan's Blog, page 29

FOW Community Update!

It’s been a few weeks now since we first launched the FOW Community to a very small and select group of members. We learned a lot through our initial (albeit quiet) launch and are getting ready to kick things up a bit. The goal of the community is to prepare organizations for the future of work by giving them access to valuable resources and a valuable network of some of the world’s most forward thinking and progressive companies around the world. We have a lot of themes and topics we want to tackle such as the internet of things, collaboration, millennials in the workplace, the sharing economy and much more. As the community grows so will the themes.

On the member side of things we are very pleased to have companies such as Wells Fargo, CEMEX, Sanofi, SAP, Alberta Energy Regulator, and others as FOWC members with several additional companies in the approval queue waiting to join.

Every month members get access to between 5-10 different types of content around the future of work.  We are now regularly providing members with:

1-2 webinars every month where a guest comes to present on a specific topic, thus far we have explored things such as organizational design and workplace productivity, a non-IT focused approach to collaboration, the five trends shaping the future of work, and others.
4 podcasts every month (trying for 1/week) that focuse on a specific theme related to the future of work or on a unique company
2-4 whitepapers every month that provide educational content around a specific theme related to the future of work such as holocracy as an evolution of collaboration and five fears of the millennial generation
1-2 report summaries every month where we take a research report that someone like a PwC may have created and distill into a very short easily digestible report summary that gives members all the key information they need

We have also made significant updates on the technology side since we custom-built an entire community for our members. Updates here include:

streamlined activity feeds to make it easier for members to see what’s going on in the community
the ability to link to specific status updates that members create
using hashtags within the community, this was widely requested and is now available
creating a single notification center where members can see who is commenting on content, liking content, etc.
improved UI/UX experience
weekly email digests so members can stay up to speed on the latest conversations, find out about new members, and learn about the more recent resources
and much more

The important thing to point out about the platform itself is that since we created it we can add new features to it and customize it based on what the members want and like.

Perhaps the most valuable thing that members get access to is each other, a collection of some of the smartest and most progressive organizations that thinking about how the world of work is changing. These members ask each other questions, share links, and provide advice and support to one another and it’s fantastic to see!

We are in the process of starting to explore our first physical event to happen some time in 2015 and have lots of other exciting plans such as launching a type of innovation network for members to connect to, gamification for the community, resource tagging and categorization, and much more!  The community is barely a month old (if that) and we are all very excited to see where it goes and how it grows. Members can expect new features (that they help decide on) to be released approximately every quarter.

We are now going to significantly kick up our marketing and efforts to let more people in the world know about the FOW Community!

No other community like this exists. If you are interested in learning more or requesting and invite you can do so by visiting the FOW Community or by emailing me directly, Jacob [at] fowcommunity [dot] com.

Onward!

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The Future of Work Podcast, Episode 5: Guy Halfteck – How Big Data and Games are Changing the Recruiting Process

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The one stat you need to know

“More than 70% of organizations cite “capability gaps” as one of their top five challenges according to Bersin by Deloitte.”

What this episode is about and why you should care

Recruiting is fundamentally broken and oftentimes organizations can’t find the right person for the right job. Sitting in an interview and answering a bunch of questions about yourself doesn’t really tell organizations much about a prospective candidate, nor does it allow the candidate to truly share what their skills and competencies are. so what’s the solution? Perhaps it’s games and big data!

This episode talks about using games as an effective recruitment tool in determining a person’s potential, skills, talents, and strengths. I talked to the creator of Knack, Guy Halfteck, on how these games he created can help in discovering a person’s “knack” to identify career direction.

In the traditional recruitment process, a lot of people get jobs based on how they present themselves in person. This is where human judgment or subjectivity comes into play, and potentially leads to biases. While in games, you are judged based on scenarios you are presented with, where you have to make decisions based on those situations. Knack looks at over 200 variables for how someone plays a game including how long it takes them to make decisions, what kinds of decisions they make, where they hold the mouse cursor, how they prioritize actions, and a bunch of other things. The result of these games is a set of “knacks” which are presented in the form of types of badges which can tell an organization if someone is risk averse, cool-headed, empathetic, patient, and much more.

This is a fascinating look into a new area being known as “people analytics.”

What you will learn in this episode

The difference between using games and big data vs the traditional method of recruiting
How data collected using games can help recruiters figure out who the best people are
The amount and types of data you can collect from different types of games
Examples of recruitment scenario when games are incorporated in the application process
A look at the human component when shifting to this type of recruitment process
What the role of big data is within this new type of recruitment
How companies are using games for recruitment
Can these games prevent people from getting a high level job or from moving up?
Can knack solve the ultimate problem of skills gap that recruiting and talent management is facing today – getting the right people for the right job
What the future of the games and recruitment might look like

Links from the episode:

Knack (email: guy@knack.it)

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Keynote Panel on Workforce 2020 From Success Connect Conference (Video)

I spent the past week in Kauai with my (now) wife, Blake Landau, (for our honeymoon) where we ate lots of good food, explored the island in a helicopter, took a boat tour, swam in the ocean, and did all sorts of fun touristy things. Shortly before I left I had the great opportunity to participate in a keynote panel at the Success Connect Conference (for SuccessFactors which is owned by SAP) in Las Vegas in front of over 2,000 HR practitioners and leaders from around the world. The panel started off with a 20 minute presentation by Edward Cone from Oxford Economics who shared their recent findings from a “Workforce 2020″ report which explored everything from contingent employees to millennials in the workplace. I embedded the video below and have it starting during the actual panel discussion but if you want to see it starting with Ed’s presentation then just scroll back, enjoy!

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The Evolution Of The Employee

This concept and the visual was taken from my new book which just came out called, The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization.

One of the things I have been writing about and have tried to make clear over the past few months is that work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Employees which were once thought of expendable cogs are the most valuable asset that any organization has. However, the employee from a decade ago isn’t the same as the employee who we are starting to see today. To help show that I wanted to share an image from my upcoming book which depicts how employees are evolving. It’s an easy way to see the past vs the future.

Based on the above evolution these are the key things to pay attention to…

Truly flexible work

The first two items above along with “focusing on outputs” comprise this idea of flexible work, that is working anytime, anywhere, and being evaluated not by how many hours you sit in a chair but by what you produce. There is no longer a need for most employees to work from an office or to work 9-5. Unilever is doing a great job of this where they are rolling out this concept of (what they call) “agile work” to their 175,000+ employees around the world. Aetna and American Express are among other organizations leading the way for flexible work. The future employee will only work in this way.

Use any device

We’re already starting to see this with BYOD but gone are the days of company sanctioned phones and computers. Instead, the future employee will be able to use any device they chose to get their jobs done. Companies like Ford, IBM, and Intel have been among those leading the way in allowing their employees to use many personally owned devices for work.

The death of the “ladder” and customized work

When you start working for a new company usually you start off at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole. In other words you begin as a sales coordinator, then a sales manager, senior sales manager, sales director, and so on and so forth. You have to climb the ladder for a few years in the hopes that one day you will reach a position that you are happy with. However with the freelancer economy, collaboration platforms, and new management approaches; employees are now starting to shape their own career paths and how they actually work. Companies like Deloitte offer something called the Mass Career Customization Program which allows employees to change their work preferences twice a year, changes include things such as making a lateral move within the company or selecting how much time an employee wants to spend traveling. Other organizations like Valve or Treehouse allow employees to completely pick the projects they work on or who they work with!

Sharing is caring

Employees use to hoard information and keep it to themselves. There was no incentive, scalable way, or reason for employees to share what they know with others. Knowledge is power and if employees keep their ideas to themselves then they have the power. Employees were also not encouraged to share or think creatively, their job was merely to show up to work and perform their tasks…that’s it! For the future employee the exact opposite is true. Collaboration platforms are making it easy for employees to share information and organizations are creating incentives to do this ranging from internal incubators to intrapreneuer programs to open innovation programs. Internally, email is also shifting from being the primary form of communication to being the secondary form of communication.

Going forward any employee can have an idea that can turn into a new product, service, or opportunity. Shell with their GameChanger program and Whirlpool with their “Winning Workplace” program are just two examples of organizations that are shifting their culture from hoarding to sharing.

Anyone can be a leader

As mentioned above employees were thought of as being expendable cogs which meant they had no voice within the organization. Once again, collaboration technologies play a crucial role as they give any employee within an organization the chance to be a recognized leader by sharing their ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc. Any employee that is able to build a following with the content they share internally is capable of being a leader; something which was not possible before especially not at the scale that collaboration platforms allow today. Think of how many people have become leaders as a result of social platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, now employees can do the same inside of their companies.

Knowledge vs adaptive learning

Knowledge is now nothing more than a commodity. To be the world’s smartest person all you need to do is pull out your cell phone where you have access to anything you need to get answers to. This means that for the future employee it’s not knowledge that is the most important but the employee’s ability to learn new things an apply those learnings to new situations and scenarios that come up. In other words, always being able to learn how to learn and stay adaptable. This is far more important and valuable than what you “know.”

Everyone is a teacher and a student

In most organizations today if you want to learn something you have to sign up for and attend a class that may be a few days or a few weeks away. Today (again thanks to collaboration platforms) any employee can take out their cell phone and record a “how-to” for anything ranging from setting up a modem to programming something on excel. Simply being able to connect employees to each other provides a way for democratized learning and teaching in ways that were never before possible. Thanks to sites such as Udemy, Coursera, and Khan Academy we have the ability to learn what we want to learn and teach what we are uniquely qualified to offer to others.

 

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The Future of Work Podcast, Episode 4: Charles H. Green – Trust and the Future of Work

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The one stat you need to know

“Nearly 1 in 4 workers say they don’t trust their employer and only about half believe their employer is open and upfront with them.”

What this episode is about and why you should care

When we think about the future of work “Trust” falls flat and center as a topic that must be addressed, especially since it seems as though trust today seems to be at an all time low. We used to do business with a handshake and today we use massive legal document-based transactions which shows how companies and individuals have less trust between one another. We need trust among employees and among managers. Without trust we can innovate, collaborate, share, communicate, or work. So what has happened to trust over the past few years? How did we get to where we are today? What does the future of trust look like? And what do organizations need to be thinking about to help build trust among their employees and managers? Here to talk about trust is Charles Green who spent most of his career focusing on trust and trust-based businesses. He is one of the smartest guys I know and provides a fascinating and non-conventional perspective on what trust is and how to create it.

What you will learn in this episode

Reasons why modern businesses have trust issues
How the simple handshake agreement would pan out in the future
How technology simplifies trust with a click of a button
The problem of the distinction between lack of trustworthiness and lack of willingness to trust
Distinction between trust towards people and trust towards institutions
The decrease of trust and loyalty within organizations or businesses and its advantages
Solutions for the decreasing loyalty of employees and retention of employees
How the idea of “job-hopping” and trust relates with each other
The importance of motives of millennials who are “job-hopping” and how “job-hopping” is not a bad thing
How to build trust as an employee towards managers and peers
The trust equation and how it works
How to build trust as a manager towards employees
The relevance of collaboration platforms with building up trust
The advantages of sharing ideas and how it builds trust among people
Ways to cut through long contracts and makes things much simpler and easier
Advantages of being trusting in a business relationship and taking a personal risk
The reciprocity of trust and how it works
Charlie’s personal advice on people who had their trust tainted by other people’s betrayal
How getting personal builds trust and its importance
Charlie’s personal advice for people who are starting out in building trust

Links from the episode:

Trust Equation

Trusted Advisor Associates

The Trusted Advisor (Amazon)

Trust-Based Selling

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How To Attract the Right People With Transparent Compensation

This is a guest post from Jurgen Appelo who is the author of “#Workout: Games, Tools & Practices to Engage People, Improve Work, and Delight Clients (Management 3.0) and is one of the top top leadership and management experts in the world according to INC. I asked him to share his thoughts on a topic that I find to be quite interesting, transparent compensation.

Enter Jurgen…

If only things were always transparent! It took me years of building a reputation as a technical leader and a track record as a development manager before I was allowed to take over responsibility for the project management department in our company, only to discover that during all that time, the project managers had been paid more than the software developers.

While researching literature on the topics of compensation plans and salary structures, I came across one article that contained strong advice for human resource managers to “keep the salary ranges in the strictest confidence”. Yes, that makes total sense if you don’t want anyone to find out they’re being screwed! Fortunately, not all companies follow this advice. In fact, depending on where you live, demanding confidentiality probably isn’t even legal. [Meyer, “Appeals Court Says Employees Can Openly Discuss Wages”]

We live in a different age now. With the rise of the Internet and social networks, more and more people have become accustomed to the idea of sharing (almost) everything about themselves. On Twitter, we let people know where we are; on Instagram, we show what we eat; on Amazon, we publish what we read; and with AirBNB, we even rent out our homes to complete strangers. Why should we make a fuss about people finding out how much we earn? [Gascoigne, “Open Salaries at Buffer”]

Be Transparent

I see many companies switching to transparency of finances and publication of their compensation plans. Research confirms that pay secrecy only hurts a company’s culture and results in negative morale, decreased performance, and higher turnover. [Belogolovsky and Bamberger, “Secret Salaries Hurt Worker Performance”] Therefore, defaulting to transparency and making everything publicly available, perhaps even to outsiders, can be a smart move. Yes, everyone will be able to figure out what everyone else earns. Why is that a problem? A transparency policy is a good thing because it forces management to be fair to everyone. [Griswold, “At Whole Foods, Employees Can Look Up Other Employees’ Salaries”] When a few employees don’t like that, the problem resides more likely with personal attitudes or with unfair salaries than with the transparency policy itself. A ban on secrecy has a tendency to scare away people with a bad attitude, which helps to reinforce a good culture instead of feeding a poisonous one. [Elmer, “After Disclosing Employee Salaries”]

No Hidden Agendas

Will there be discussions when you open the books on salaries? Of course there will! [Nisen, “Why You Should Reveal Everyone’s Salaries”; Silverman, “This Is What Your Co-Worker Is Paid”] But these discussions will reveal the problems that are already in the system; and by dealing with them, you stop them from festering and poisoning your company’s culture. Of course, it requires that you have a fair compensation plan in place that is able to explain what everyone’s salary is. When nobody can easily explain it, that’s a good reason not to show it!

When you announce your plan for a transparency policy and people respond with alarm and even threaten to quit their jobs, I would just let them go. I would even open the doors for them. Thank you and goodbye! At the same time, I would leave the doors open for the many people outside who learn about the new fair compensation policy and want to get in.

The move toward transparent compensation plans is a global trend. Some even say companies don’t really have a choice. [Silverman, “This Is What Your Co-Worker Is Paid”] Obviously, I don’t mean to say that you should start posting everyone’s individual salaries on your company’s public website tomorrow. Experiment, take small steps, and think about where you want to go. Use your compensation plan to reward people for the right behaviors. That means no politics, no secrecy, and no hidden agendas.

Sources:

Belogolovsky, E. and P. Bamberger. “Secret Salaries Hurt Worker Performance, Increase Top-Talent Turnover” ScienceDaily, 26 February 2014. Web.

Elmer, Vickie. “After Disclosing Employee Salaries, Buffer Was Inundated With Resumes” Quartz, 24 January 2014. Web.

Gascoigne, Joel. “Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer: Our Transparent Formula and All Individual Salaries” Buffer Open, 19 December 2013. Web.

Griswold, Alison. “At Whole Foods, Employees Can Look Up Other Employees’ Salaries” Entrepreneur, 4 March 2014. Web.

Meyer, Eric B. “Appeals Court Says Yes, Employees CAN Openly Discuss Wages” TLNT, 27 March 2014. Web.

Nisen, Max. “Why You Should Reveal Everyone’s Salaries” Open Forum, 25 September 2012. Web.

Silverman, Rachel Emma. “Psst… This Is What Your Co-Worker Is Paid” The Wall Street Journal, 29 January 2013. Web.

Jurgen Appelo is the most popular European leadership author, listed on Inc.com’s Top 50 Management Experts. His latest book Management 3.0 #Workout, full of concrete games, tools, and practices, is available for free. Download it here: http://m30.me/wo

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The Future of Work Podcast, Episode 3: Deb Acosta – Cities of the Future

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The one stat you need to know

Between now and the year 2050, urban growth will only continue to rise: 89 million homes and 190 billion square feet (about 17.5 billion square meters) of retail and other nonresidential space will be built in the United States alone [source: National Resources Defense Council]

What this episode is about and why you should care

In Episode 3 we explore the idea of the “smart city” and the “future city.” Songdo, a city in South Korea is already using technology, open spaces, cutting edge building design, connectivity, and a top notch transportation network to build what they are calling the city of the future. But what should other cities around the world be thinking about and what impact does being a future city have on the people that actually live there?

Deb Acosta is the chief innovation officer for the city of San Leandro where is working on transforming it into a future city. Deb shares some of her current initiatives and talks about what cities of the future will look like in the 5 and 25 years. We touch on things such the importance of cities taping into their local entrepreneurs, creating a transportation network, super high speed connectivity, business culture, and much more. This episode is not only fun and informative but will help shape your perspective on where you live and how the world is changing.

What you will learn in this episode

What a future city look like in 5 years versus 25 years
What impact the companies have on a future city
Will the city help change the company or does the company need to change before it can be a part of the city
Things that make up a future city that go beyond just having connectivity
How important sensors are in collecting data which is a big part of the future city
Challenges towards creating a future city
Main characteristics or qualities of a future city
Criteria in evaluating if a city is a future city
The impact that a future city has on jobs
What cities are future cities
Key driving forces for the future city

Links from the episode:

Lit San Leandro

San Leandro Next

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The Future of Work is Out Today, Last Chance for Bonus Content!

I hope all you had a wonderful long weekend!  I’m very excited to share that my latest book The Future of Work is now officially available for order wherever books are sold. It’s been endorsed by some of the world’s top business leaders such as Gary Hamel, Dan Pink, the global Chairman of KPMG, CEO of Whirlpool, CEO of SAP, CEO of Intuit, CEO of Zappos, and others. Hopefully if it’s good enough for them then it’s good enough for you!

It’s also your last chance to get all the bonus content that I’m including for people who buy a hardcover version of the book and email proof of purchase to “fowreceipts@gmail.com.” As a reminder the bonus content includes:

An Ebook I just wrote with the SVP of Engineering and Product at Elance-Odesk called: Hire Fast & Build Things: How to recruit and manage a top-notch team of distributed engineers (due out soon!); a great guide for anyone looking to build a distributed team (engineers or not)
20 Quotes to Challenge Convention Around the Future of Work which will be put together as either a PDF or PPT
The original book outline I put together for The Future of Work which is very different than the finished product
A proposal template that you can use when writing your own book, it’s based off of what most major publishers use
Seven versions of the original book cover that didn’t make the cut
The document I sent out to companies and executives to help secure their endorsements and features
The Official Guide to The Future of Work, which features insights and images from the book
Things You Need to Know About Writing a Book That Nobody Else Will Tell You!  This will be either a PDF or PPT which features 15+ different pieces of advice
Proposal guidelines and helpful tips for your book proposal from Wiley, this will be a word doc or PDF

I wrote this book to help people understand why the world of work is changing, how it’s changing, and what employees, managers, and organizations need to do to adapt to the changes. It’s over 200 pages of content which I think will really help put some context around what the future of work really looks like.

What makes this book release even more special is that it’s five days before my wedding which is taking place on Sept 7th! This is most likely the last blog post I will write about the book (unless something amazing happens) and I would love your support. Please help spread the word and you can order your hardcover copy from any major book outlet or by clicking on one of the links below.

 Amazon  |  CEO Read  |  Barnes & Noble | Booksamillion | iTunes

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The Future of Work Podcast, Episode 2: Stephane Kasriel – Creating Distributed Teams

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The one stat you need to know

By 2016 Forrester says 43% of the U.S. workforce will be working sometime from home.

What this episode is about and why you should care

Today, more companies are employing the concept of distributed teams. A distributed team is a group of individuals who work beyond the restriction of a traditional office environment by using various technologies at their disposal for communication and collaboration. It doesn’t mean that these employees never see each other it just means that their “home-base” isn’t a central office or location. Organizations that can create distributed teams are able to see an increase in productivity, more employee engagement, and reduced costs on things such as real estate. Employees also appreciate the extra flexibility that they are offered. Going forward, employees no longer to work in an office to get things done, they simply need to “connect to work.” To learn more about distributed teams, why they are important, and how to create them I talked to Stephane Kasriel who is the SVP of Product and Engineering at Elance-Odesk; one of the world’s largest marketplaces for freelance employees. Stephane and I co-wrote an ebook together for Elance-Odesk called “Hire Fast & Build Things: How to recruit and manage a top-notch team of distributed engineers.” The concepts from that book are applicable to a variety of industries beyond just engineers. Stephane has actually done an amazing job of creating a good size distributed team at Elance-Odesk and in episode 2 of The Future of Work Podcast he shares how he did it and how others can do so as well.

What you will learn in this episode

What a distributed team is and what it looks like
Why invest in a distributed team
Challenges in creating a successful distributed team
How Elance-oDesk’ s distributed team works
How flexible work and freelancers play a huge role in distributed teams
How to manage communication and collaboration among distributed teams
Solutions for people who aren’t freelancers that work for distributed teams
Benefits that small, medium-sized, and large organization’s get from distributed teams
Examples of companies that have distributed teams
Impacts of issues related to culture, promotion and career paths in having distributed teams.
The future of distributed teams

Links from the episode:

Hire Fast & Build Things: How to recruit and manage a top-notch team of distributed engineers (Amazon)

oDesk

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Must Watch Video on Automation and the Future of Jobs

Some of you may have already seen this fantastic video being shared around the web but if not then I highly recommend you take the 15 minutes to check it out. It does a great job of showing how robots and automation are going to impact the future of work and takes a stance that I very much agree with, and that is, technology is going to displace more jobs than it creates. Some lean on the more positive side of things and believe that technology will create more jobs in areas that we have yet to discover. The logic behind this is that this isn’t the first time we are seeing technology impact jobs however in my opinion this is the first time we are seeing technology impact virtually every single job that exists at the same time!

Take a look at the video below, I’m sure you will find it interesting.

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