When The Wave Breaks

It seems as though we have been atop the crest of a wave in workforce planning for quite some time now. Today, we question the inevitable....

When Will The Wave Break?

Baby Boomers have long since reached the legal retirement age but are not retiring, Gen X-ers remain in the the wings seemingly content in doing so and Millennials can't go anywhere without being stereotyped out of even submitting an opinion. We remain in our generational silos, waiting to phase each other out, ignoring the opportunity to collaborate. Do our insecurities keep us from helping one another? Would admitting the need for help mark the end of our relevance?

One thing is sure: at some point the wave will break and everything will change.

Bureaucracy will vanish, no scandal will go unnoticed, women will earn as much as men, those motivated will climb the ladder and those who don't care will find a way to get by. Life goes on and in the middle of it all is a thing called......... work!

My friend Brian hammered this point home in a recent post that blamed lack of Employee Engagement on stifled organizational adaptation. "we've always done it this way" need not be passed along... We have to consider if the legacies built are worth protecting...?

Unconventional Visionaries
Mark Gonzales is a vandal and a criminal... he is also the most creative athlete of all time. Rachel Ray did not go to a French Culinary Institute... she cooked at a New York Pub. Ben Folds was a drummer who became a piano player.

The little boxes through which we seek life's answers are empty. You have to define for yourself who you are before you decide who you want to be.

Progress Eats Confrontation for Lunch
There are a thousand aging managers who still think they can bully their employees.

Their time is up....

The Danger of Protecting Incompetence
Early is my career I was devastated by my company's lack of faith in my leadership ability. I did everything right... I was the first to complete every initiative, nailed every core competency and had a network of admirers. I was also a disaster of a person, full of entitlement, under the impression I was responsible enough to lead.

In corporate America there are rules. Companies keep their doors open by avoiding lawsuits. If you prop up leaders too soon, you may compromise your future. If you are protecting corporate bullies, promotion of such incompetence can be equally destructive.

Transparent social networking, creative design and consultative business development win the day. Stuffy meetings in boardrooms are replaced by whiteboarding sessions, margin-built business models have been trumped by one-of-a-kind solutions and overcoming objections are replaced by validating concerns (and fixing them).

The end of an Era is fast approaching... and no one will even notice. To make an impact you have to care for people. No one ever got to heaven through following the orders of the less than well intended.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave