Do you know where you"re going to?
A somewhat syrupy song from the 1970s went "Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Where are you going to… do you know?"
Well, do you know?
Business conditions continue to deteriorate but the road that runs from downturn to downsizing doesn't have to continue on to deterioration and devastation. So allow us to ask you an important question - one just as important to your success as trimming the fat, reorienting to changing markets, implementing new business strategies, and revitalising customer networks:
Is your workforce confident, coherent and cohesive? Or is it demoralised, disengaged and disempowered?
In the current economy, there is a tendancy to think that employees should feel lucky to have a job and work harder than ever to prove their worth. Recent surveys prove otherwise. LHH Global Partner, Masteryworks, reports recent US surveys show:
• 87% of employees are less likely to recommend their organisations as a good place to work;
• 81% say customer service has declined;
• 77% believe more errors and mistakes are being made;
• 64% say their colleagues' productivity has reduced; and
• 61% feel their organisation's prospects have declined.
Over the past year, employee engagement levels have apparently declined in every category measured - a resounding call to action for managers in every business that hopes not simply to survive, but to evolve into a leaner, fitter, more flexible, adaptable and disparate but aggregated organisation.
Career development is an essential requirement for employee engagement and talent retention and it is vital that leaders and managers:
• Communicate, interact, offer information and invite employees to share their experiences and perspectives;
• help employees articulate their value and identify areas of expertise and knowledge - those applicable in their current roles and those that might have value in a different context;
• find out how employees see their career progression, help them envisage alternative scenarios, and provide them with skills that make them opportunity-focused and job-ready;
• support the survivors who have shared in the confusion and complexity of change, experienced the fear and uncertainty, watched their colleagues leave, and taken on additional work, stress and responsibility.
An article published in Harvard Business Review some years ago, said the question foremost in the minds of mid-career professionals is "Am I doing what's right for me, or should I change direction?" The author, Herminia Ibarra, proposes a "test and learn" model of change which seems ideally suited to career development in the current context.
She decribes a conventional "plan and implement" model of change as one where we clarify what we want to do next and use that knowledge to guide our actions, and suggests "Change actually happens the other way around. Doing comes first, knowing second." It is now widely acknowledged that we do not have one "true self" but are in fact many selves, defined by our experiences, current situations and hopes and fears for the future. Ibarra believes that "Our possible selves… are at the heart of the career change process…. That is why, working identity… is necessarily a process of experimenting, testing, and learning about our possible selves."
The only way to meet uncertainty, she says, is to resist the tug of a comfort zone (which paradoxically, is often no longer comfortable!), and make alternative careers more real and possible, by:
Crafting experiments. In approaching career change, our biggest mistake is to delay the first step until a destination has been determined. The test and learn option allows new working identities to evolve by trying out new activities and roles on a small scale - e.g., through part-time work, volunteering, a sabbatical or new training - before committing to a major transition.
Shifting connections. We must network outside our usual circles, to develop contacts who can open doors to new worlds and identify guides who can help us see and grow into our new working identities.
Making sense. We need to recognise or create catalysts for change, make meaning of our experiences and use it to tell the story of who we are becoming. "Arranging life events into a coherent story is one of the subtlest, yet most demanding, challenges of career reinvention", providing an answer to the oft-asked questions "Tell me about yourself" and "Why would you want to do that?"
The working identity approach invites us to learn by doing, to act and reflect. It suggests there is more to be gained from exploratory career day trips than might eventuate from a carefully planned for major journey. As Ibarra says:
"Your working identity is an amalgam of the kind of work you want to do, the relationships and organisations that form part of your work life, and the story you tell about why you do what you do and how you arrived at that point. Reshaping that identity, therefore, is a matter of making adjustments to all three of those aspects over time. The adjustments happen tentatively and incrementally, so the process can seem disorderly. In fact, it is a logical process of testing, discovering and adapting that can be learned by almost anyone seeking professional renewal."
Well, do you know?
Business conditions continue to deteriorate but the road that runs from downturn to downsizing doesn't have to continue on to deterioration and devastation. So allow us to ask you an important question - one just as important to your success as trimming the fat, reorienting to changing markets, implementing new business strategies, and revitalising customer networks:
Is your workforce confident, coherent and cohesive? Or is it demoralised, disengaged and disempowered?
In the current economy, there is a tendancy to think that employees should feel lucky to have a job and work harder than ever to prove their worth. Recent surveys prove otherwise. LHH Global Partner, Masteryworks, reports recent US surveys show:
• 87% of employees are less likely to recommend their organisations as a good place to work;
• 81% say customer service has declined;
• 77% believe more errors and mistakes are being made;
• 64% say their colleagues' productivity has reduced; and
• 61% feel their organisation's prospects have declined.
Over the past year, employee engagement levels have apparently declined in every category measured - a resounding call to action for managers in every business that hopes not simply to survive, but to evolve into a leaner, fitter, more flexible, adaptable and disparate but aggregated organisation.
Career development is an essential requirement for employee engagement and talent retention and it is vital that leaders and managers:
• Communicate, interact, offer information and invite employees to share their experiences and perspectives;
• help employees articulate their value and identify areas of expertise and knowledge - those applicable in their current roles and those that might have value in a different context;
• find out how employees see their career progression, help them envisage alternative scenarios, and provide them with skills that make them opportunity-focused and job-ready;
• support the survivors who have shared in the confusion and complexity of change, experienced the fear and uncertainty, watched their colleagues leave, and taken on additional work, stress and responsibility.
An article published in Harvard Business Review some years ago, said the question foremost in the minds of mid-career professionals is "Am I doing what's right for me, or should I change direction?" The author, Herminia Ibarra, proposes a "test and learn" model of change which seems ideally suited to career development in the current context.
She decribes a conventional "plan and implement" model of change as one where we clarify what we want to do next and use that knowledge to guide our actions, and suggests "Change actually happens the other way around. Doing comes first, knowing second." It is now widely acknowledged that we do not have one "true self" but are in fact many selves, defined by our experiences, current situations and hopes and fears for the future. Ibarra believes that "Our possible selves… are at the heart of the career change process…. That is why, working identity… is necessarily a process of experimenting, testing, and learning about our possible selves."
The only way to meet uncertainty, she says, is to resist the tug of a comfort zone (which paradoxically, is often no longer comfortable!), and make alternative careers more real and possible, by:
Crafting experiments. In approaching career change, our biggest mistake is to delay the first step until a destination has been determined. The test and learn option allows new working identities to evolve by trying out new activities and roles on a small scale - e.g., through part-time work, volunteering, a sabbatical or new training - before committing to a major transition.
Shifting connections. We must network outside our usual circles, to develop contacts who can open doors to new worlds and identify guides who can help us see and grow into our new working identities.
Making sense. We need to recognise or create catalysts for change, make meaning of our experiences and use it to tell the story of who we are becoming. "Arranging life events into a coherent story is one of the subtlest, yet most demanding, challenges of career reinvention", providing an answer to the oft-asked questions "Tell me about yourself" and "Why would you want to do that?"
The working identity approach invites us to learn by doing, to act and reflect. It suggests there is more to be gained from exploratory career day trips than might eventuate from a carefully planned for major journey. As Ibarra says:
"Your working identity is an amalgam of the kind of work you want to do, the relationships and organisations that form part of your work life, and the story you tell about why you do what you do and how you arrived at that point. Reshaping that identity, therefore, is a matter of making adjustments to all three of those aspects over time. The adjustments happen tentatively and incrementally, so the process can seem disorderly. In fact, it is a logical process of testing, discovering and adapting that can be learned by almost anyone seeking professional renewal."
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