The Value of Green Recruiting (by Lizz Pellet | Talent Management)

-By Development Network-

 

We've all heard that green is the new black. In the '90s, organizational culture was touted as essential for business success, and social responsibility seems to have taken its place. A lot of companies are finding it's good to be green as they integrate environmentalism and sustainability into their corporate cultures. Not only is corporate sustainability good for the community and the planet - it also can help employees reduce waste and operate more efficiently. Companies share their environmental initiatives in annual reports, core values and community activities. Yet many fail to leverage their environmental efforts in one key area, and that's recruiting. Many companies are missing a key opportunity here because a commitment to sustainability can be a factor the most desirable candidates consider when choosing an employer.

 

Green Is Red Hot

 

There are three main drivers for talent managers to consider as they determine if their organizations should increase sustainability efforts: importance, cost savings and congruence. First, determine whether social responsibility really matters to the organization and its potential employment candidates. Since green recruiting is such a new idea, there is conflicting information available. Talent leaders must determine whether social responsibility is important enough to the top talent they seek before making the effort to go green to attract and retain them.

 

The second driver for many organizations to create a green recruiting function is the significant cost savings associated with green solutions. Some talent leaders may disagree and say this should be the No. 1 driver, but as the economy regains strength and companies begin to hire at their pre-recession levels, the focus will be on finding the best qualified candidate and the right cultural fit.

 

The third driver is congruence. If the organizational culture boasts an environmentally friendly mission or emphasizes sustainability in its consumer advertising, then that company should certainly have a sustainable HR function. Some companies may make a halfhearted attempt at "greenwashing," but today's savvy job seekers can detect incongruence in words and actions from a mile away.

 

Is there a business case for going green? Absolutely. A finding from i4cp's 2010 Major Issues Study revealed that more than three-quarters of responding business professionals projected there would be more green business initiatives in the coming year. Additional data suggested that professionals view the green issue as vital to business success. If an organization has not researched the business case for or evaluated its commitment to sustainability, it's time to broach the subject.

 

There are definitely benefits to this kind of activity. In April 2010, U.S. Airways Magazine was dedicated to going green and highlighted 10 businesses that bloomed and then boomed by leveraging sustainability. The list held an interesting mix of industries and supports the idea that talent leaders can get into the green game, save money and increase profits. The 10 featured organizations were Amazon.com. New Belgium Brewing, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Starbucks, Patagonia, The Ritz-Carlton, the University of New Hampshire, Wynn Las Vegas, Dell and the city of Greensburg, Kan. A few months later, in November, Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft, wrote an article for Forbes on how cloud computing can greatly reduce the net energy use of business computing. Apparently even the clouds are green these days.

 

The aforementioned organizations demonstrate their green commitment in many ways, but one thing they all have in common is how they have rolled sustainability into their values. This is where the third driver to go green - congruence - comes into play. If an organization sees the value of embracing sustainability, then it must become a value.

 

Note: The "please consider the environment before printing" footer on e-mails is not enough to send the sustainability message to the marketplace. Commitment in actions and stated values is far more effective.

 

In a 2010 HRPS People & Strategy journal article, "Transitioning to the Green Economy," Jeana Wirtenberg, senior advisor at the Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, offered talent managers some sound advice.

 

"Sustainability represents a huge opportunity for HR to play a more strategic role in their organizations, something HR had been aiming at for years," Wirtenberg said. "In many ways, it falls right in HR's sweet spot. Under the right circumstances, HR professionals can help infuse sustainability into talent management systems, but they have to build up their own competencies in this area." Over the years talent leaders have been asked to continue to build competencies and move from a tactical function to a more strategic business partner, so it comes as no surprise that, given its implications for talent and the bottom line, they will need to build knowledge around sustainability.

 

Planting Green Seeds

 

So where should organizations start? There are many opportunities to go green in every step of the employee life cycle, from candidate search to retirement benefits, but the largest area of impact may be right at the beginning: recruitment.

 

Let's start with social networking. Gone are the days of calling up the local newspaper and placing an ad. That was replaced by job boards, and now job boards are in trouble and losing market share to organizations that are doing their own candidate searches. We all know these mediums help talent leaders recruit better, but they are also a greener practice than what has been done in the past. Organizations are seeking and finding passive candidates on LinkedIn, posting jobs on LinkedIn subgroups, tweeting jobs on Twitter and building professional Facebook pages that work well to attract quality candidates. Additionally, these recruiting methods are free, so companies are saving real green.

 

In line with these next generation talent acquisition approaches will be the way talent managers look at career fairs. If an organization hosts or attends career fairs regularly, it should consider the materials it provides to prospective candidates. Are they double-sided and printed on recycled material? If not, they should be. This may seem like a minor detail, but discerning candidates are looking at things like this. Another way to get attention is to distribute company information on a USB thumb drive, or better yet, given the proliferation of smart phones, create an app. That move is the epitome of reduce, reuse, recycle and will surely leave a lasting impression on the most desirable talent. Much like employment branding, organizations need to offer something their competitors don't in order to differentiate themselves and look more attractive to talent. Everyone offers benefits, so organizations must be bold and go down a different path to give candidates a different, memorable experience.

 

Next, talent leaders can evaluate their organization's interview process. Does it rely on the same old telephone screening process? That may have been the standard for years, but it's not anymore. Live virtual or video interviewing is becoming a popular approach. Futurist John Sullivan stated in an ERE.net blog post in June 2009 that the "interview from anywhere" would become the standard practice for all but the final interview.

 

Live virtual interviews not only cut candidate travel costs by up to 75 percent; they significantly reduce talent management's carbon footprint. Solution providers handle everything from webcam fulfillment and technology support to candidate coaching so companies can have successful virtual interviews. Companies using this approach are already making headlines. At the Global Onrec Expo in September 2010, Baptist Health System in San Antonio, Texas, won the Best Candidate Experience award in its physician recruitment function, and the Innovation in Recruitment award was presented to communications and engineering solutions provider ARINC. Both of these companies used the live virtual GreenJobInterview.com platform as an integral piece of their recruitment practice.

 

Some of the other companies that provide similar services include HireVue, Interview Studio and Interview Stream. Before choosing a provider, talent leaders should be sure to include IT and legal departments in the conversation. Some providers require organizations to purchase their software or store the recorded interviews for two years. Any provider chosen will depend on an organization's budget, internal bench strength, legal implications and ultimately its corporate culture and values.

 

Some companies are using platforms such as Skype to conduct virtual interviews. A word of caution here: There are certainly legal implications if an organization decides to go this route. Some interview candidates may not have access to the necessary equipment, and there can be no taint of discrimination without an organization opening itself to potential liability. Further, the quality of a Skype meeting may not be appropriate for a professional interview. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and Skype is free.

 

Using any of these solutions will significantly cut travel expenditures as well as support an organization's sustainability efforts. In an ERE.net blog, Gerry Crispin of Career Crossroads used CarbonFootprint.com to make some calculations based on a mythical firm of 1,000 employees that hired a mix of 240 applicants. He calculated that this company produced about 1.25 tons of carbon dioxide per hire. Imagine how much that could be reduced by implementing just one green solution into the talent management process, such as virtual interviews.

 

What if an organization made a real commitment to sustainability and looked at every touchpoint along the employee life cycle? Think about the huge impact it could have, not just from a sustainability perspective, but also from a cost-savings perspective. Sometimes the bottom line is the bottom line, and by making talent management more eco-friendly, an organization can add meaningful value to its brand and its wallet.

 

 

[About the Author: Lizz Pellet is the chief cultural officer for Emerge International and author of The Cultural Fit Factor: Creating an Employment Brand That Attracts, Retains and Repels the Right Employees.]

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Snaptu: KENYA: Experts call for long term solutions to drought

Local and international agricultural experts have stressed the need for long-term measures to avoid a repetition of the life threatening drought currently hitting the Horn of Africa. The situation has left 12 million people hungry. In Kenya, whose…

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Perfecting Performance Management (by Marc Effron | Talent Management)

-By Development Network-

 

Few talent processes are as powerful or as widely despised as performance management. The steps to align employees with corporate goals, coach them to higher performance and assess their accomplishments often elicit an unending stream of complaints from managers and employees alike. Talent managers should ignore the siren's calls to eliminate the performance review, and instead create a process that's guided by science, easy to use and features clear accountability.

 

Thanks to 60 years of psychology research, we have information to set goals that create higher motivation and drive performance. Science tells us that:

 

1. More difficult goals produce higher performance:

We increase our effort as a goal becomes more challenging. The old performance management maxim of "three regular goals and a stretch goal" doesn't cut it. Today it should be four stretch goals.

 

2. Goals motivate better when they coincide with self-interest:

When we believe a goal can help us earn, learn or realize other personal objectives, we'll be more motivated to complete it. This doesn't mean employees should set their own goals. In fact, allowing them to do so can easily reduce the power of the first point.

 

3. Fewer goals are better than many:

The more goals we have, the less effort we can give to each. Science doesn't tell us the right number of goals, but my experience is few of us have more than five truly important goals in any given year.

 

Many parts of the typical performance management system add complexity to the manager's life without adding value. You can eliminate many traditional bells and whistles to make your process easier and more efficient for your managers.

 

4. Encourage a one-page goal setting and review form:

We can all agree it's not about the form, but a complex, difficult-to-use form can poison the process for both managers and employees. The only form elements supported by science are a goal statement, metrics and a section to evaluate results. Anything else you want to include should be considered guilty until you prove it innocent.

 

5. Kill the labels:

Fancy classifications such as "valued contributor" or "star performer" complicate the message you're trying to send to employees. Simply tell them they exceeded, met or partially met their goals last year.

 

6. Precision does not equal accuracy:

Especially popular in scientific and engineering cultures, the precise, formulaic calculation of a performance score gives managers comfort but adds absolutely no value. It is impossible for a manager to accurately measure the difference between a 3.7 and a 3.8 performer. Eliminate the calculation, and force managers to consider the totality of accomplishments and assign a rating.

 

Even the most well-intentioned manager might not always complete performance management in the time and fashion you require. Two powerful levers can help.

 

a) Time-bomb communication:

We can help managers do the right thing by making our expectations visible. At key points in your process - goal setting, coaching, reviews - have your CEO or HR leader send a message to every employee covered by performance management detailing the process and expectation.

 

The message should describe the process, timing, what employees should expect from their manager and what managers should expect from employees. You've handed the manager a ticking time bomb and given him or her easy instructions to defuse it.

 

b) Forcing/guiding/managing a distribution:

Highly controversial but increasingly popular, providing strong guidance for performance distribution is a response to the chronic inflation of ratings seen in most companies. If properly challenging goals are set, a reasonable distribution should be achieved. But until managers are fully competent at this activity, the training wheels provided by managed distributions are a helpful tool.

 

Spend one hour today thinking about how you could decrease complexity, increase transparency or drive more accountability in your performance management process. You don't need to redesign the entire process; simply chip away factors that are causing the most pain. It's the most powerful thing you can do to improve your company's performance.

 

 

[About the Author: Marc Effron is president of The Talent Strategy Group and author of One Page Talent Management.]

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With Pennies a Week, African Women Are Saving for Their Future (www.care.org)

-By Development Network-

CARE works with both domestic and international leaders at many levels - from U.S. members of Congress to village elders - to bring about meaningful changes in communities worldwide. Together, we seek the positive changes needed to create lasting victories over poverty.

http://www.care.org/getinvolve​d/advocacy/access-africa/index​.asp?s_src=SOS2011&s_subsrc=Sh​ortURL

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Snaptu: Crop Yield Raises Risk to Food Cost

Commodities experts said that the increases would ultimately lead to higher prices for staples like vegetable oil, pasta and meat

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R&D without public money : a prospective answer. Posted (by: Maikeru Roran CARE INTERNATIONAL)

-By Development Network-

Historical Entrepreneurial Science is a research field dedicated to the social and mitigational development of the entrepreneurial capital of human societies. The entrepreneurial capital encompasses all the cognitive and technical assets that have been in use since the dawn of Mankind. Experimental History and Archaeology illustrate a nice manner to consider the past and address its assets.
The empirical world and history are an abiding source of cognitive resources and complex systems. We therefore suggest being the architects of such resources and systems, outside of any space or time limit but only depending on needs, to associate knowledge and know-how in a similar way as the banking sector associates the holder of a capital with the holder of a project. Developing knowledge and the know-how of human societies may only be possible through social benefit and mitigation. This added value will be dedicated to attracting the investors who wish to perpetuate it.
Historical Entrepreneurial Science aims to meet contemporary social needs through the use of empirical and historical assets in three phases.
A. Identification of the social needs locally. The socialization of mankind is mainly dedicated to security reasons. Consequently, social problems are most often related to medical, energy, food, economic or political insecurity. 
B. Assessment of assets from the past. "If you don't know where you are going, look at where you come from". This African proverb illustrates with a noble sense of pragmatism the significance of the past in the construction of a society on a daily basis. While socio-cultural differences are strong in the oecumene, the fundamental human needs, emotions and cognitive skills are universal. And similarities in the history of techniques and breakthroughs between two ethnic groups located very far away geographically from each other undoubtedly come from the cognitive ability to provide a same answer to an identical problem.
C. Value added creation. The basis of the economic system lies on the association of Capital and Know-How. Wealth is the ability to use the resources we have at our disposal. There is no natural resource, but ways to work our environment. This wealth is dynamic, not hoarded.  If each individual, group, company, community can provide added value to somebody or something, it de facto creates a CAPITAL – KNOW-HOW dynamics which will inevitably attract an investor whose interest will be to preserve the system so created... The aim of Historical Entrepreneurial Science is therefore to create a durable social benefit. Financing research by investment differs from the current objective-based financing which subjects researchers to political and economic will...
Historical Entrepreneurial Science is built around the concept of Kyuuninkai旧忍会, in turn built around the kanjis  旧(Kyuu) , which means ancient, past, in the past; 忍 (Nin), related to survival, endurance but also secret, and Kai (会) which means meeting, as exchange is at the basis of wealth generation.

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Snaptu: Why successful people don’t want to mentor you

Successful people are constantly sought out as mentors. Sadly, most people do a terrible job of asking for mentoring. They come off as desperate, awkward, and irritating.But busy people LOVE helping others who take action, so there is good news: As…

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The Top 10 Ways to be Effectively Assertive!!! [By Robert G. Jerus (MBA, APC, MA)]

-By Development Network-

There's a fine balance when dealing with people between the arrogant, aggressive, offensive style and the timid, submissive doormat method. The balance is in being confident enough to be assertive of personal rights and boundaries while respectful of others.

1. Know the distinction between being assertive versus being aggressive or arrogant

Assertive people promote their rights rather than stepping on those of others.

2. Have clear boundaries when dealing with others.

If you're clear where the limits are, others know as well.

3. Politely but directly, let people know your position.

Don't allow your position, point of view and feelings to be ignored. Your needs are important.

4. Affirm yourself and your good qualities.

Develop self-confidence and positive self-esteem.

5. Know what you want.

There is a time and a place to go along with others but there is also a time to reach for your own dreams.

6. Avoid being timid.

While aggressiveness steps on the rights of others, being overly timid sacrifices your own rights. Don't let others steamroller you.

7. Be willing to clearly say either yes or no and to stand by your answer.

Allow yourself to develop opinions and maintain them.

8. Avoid arrogance.

Dominance and controlling tendencies impinge on others being themselves.

9. When opinions are in question, give yourself permission to self-disclose.

Let others know your viewpoint and recognize that it is significant.

10. Take responsibility for yourself.

Don't make many excuses. Require that friends and associates take responsibility for themselves and their actions. Avoid being co-dependent; be careful not to dominate quieter spirits.

With Best Regards,

V Chacko Jacob

Manager - Training

Springboards Leadership & Talent Management

TPL House, 3, Cenotaph Road, Teynampet, Chennai 600018

Mobile : +91 9840539064; Phone : +91 44 2431 0181

www.springboards.in

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How To Assess Leaders For Strategic Aptitude[ by Steve Krupp, Samantha Howland & Paul J.H. Schoemaker | Chief Learning Officer]

-By Development Network-

 

Traditional models of leadership tend to emphasize individualism and top-down command. Picture the classic image of Gen. George Patton leading Allied forces into World War II: a solitary visionary atop a white horse, pointing ahead with his outstretched finger. This heroic model served us well when the world was reasonably predictable. The current business environment demands something new. As uncertainty increases, humility, shared decision making and flexibility are even more crucial than the ability to rally the troops. Strategic thinking, however, may be the single most critical leadership capability needed in today's organizations.

 

When pressed, however, CLOs struggle to articulate what being strategic means. Let's use the following definition for strategic aptitude: leaders who succeed in today's uncertain terrain due to their ability to anticipate, think critically, interpret, decide, align and learn.

 

1. Anticipate:

Most leaders focus on what's directly ahead. Leaders who anticipate look for game-changing information at the periphery, search beyond current boundaries and build wide networks to help them scan the horizon.

 

2. Think critically:

Convenient wisdom is tempting, but woe to the leader who swallows every myth and opinion at face value. Critical thinkers question everything. They tend to reframe problems to understand root causes, challenge current beliefs and mindsets, and uncover hypocrisy, manipulation and bias.

 

3. Interpret:

Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, many leaders rush to judgment. The strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. Savvy sense makers seek to understand patterns from multiple data points, engage others to weigh, filter and develop insights, question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses.

 

4. Decide:

Many leaders fall prey to analysis paralysis. Strategic leaders use process and discipline to arrive at a good enough position. They tend to carefully frame the decision and approach, balance speed, rigor, quality and agility, and take courageous stands even with incomplete information.

 

5. Align:

Perfect consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge. An alignment-focused leader can understand what is hidden, ensure tough issues surface to pinpoint misalignment, and assess risk tolerance and follow-through support.

 

6. Learn:

Strategic leaders embrace and encourage feedback, viewing success and failure as sources of critical insight. Learning leaders encourage and exemplify transparent, rigorous debriefs, stay agile and course-correct quickly if off track, and celebrate success and the right kind of failures.

 

The assessment instruments most CLOs use evaluate style, personality and emotional intelligence. They lack a robust approach to bridge the critical leadership gap around strategic acumen. A strategic aptitude (SA) assessment can pinpoint traits that comprise strategic agility and identify precise development priorities.

 

SA assessment can help organizations undergo powerful, self-reinforcing transformations. Leaders can build capability and confidence. Armed with tools such as scenario planning, critical thinking and peripheral vision, they can tackle the challenges of an increasingly uncertain world.

 

CLOs can lead the charge to enhance the strategic aptitude of their organizations, even amid the ongoing challenges of upheaval and global turmoil. Learning leaders must make use of every tool at their disposal to adapt and succeed. They must embrace navigational tools such as strategic aptitude assessments, build a finely trained crew and learn how to change course midstream.

 

 

[About the Authors: Steve Krupp is CEO of Decision Strategies International Inc. (DSI). Samantha Howland is a partner and Paul J.H. Schoemaker is founder and chairman.]

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Scenario Planning the Future ( by Daniel W. Rasmus | Chief Learning Officer)

-By Development Network-

 

Scenario planning explores the implications of how uncertain forces critical to a business' country, region or constituency will play out under a wide range of social, technological, environmental, economic and political (STEEP) circumstances. It has been used for decades as a tool to make better strategic choices, but in this time of turbulence, it also has proven to be a powerful learning tool.

 

Scenario planning starts with uncertainties and develops a set of narratives to convey stories about plausible futures. Unlike speculation or science fiction, scenario planning pursues rigorous dialogue to ensure the stories don't break the laws of physics, jump to irrational conclusions or otherwise suggest circumstances not in play within the event horizon. But scenarios do posit the unthinkable or the unimaginable. Something unimaginable may be so for cultural or psychological reasons, but being unimaginable is not the same as being implausible.

 

Scenario planning offers three primary learning opportunities. First, naming uncertainty provides a way to confront issues that are unconscious or uncomfortable. Second, scenarios provide new context to understand internal and external business dynamics. And finally, scenarios offer a unique way to inform action and a framework for feedback once action has been taken.

 

Learning From Uncertainty

 

The starting point for learning begins with naming uncertainty. Many organizations focus their strategies exclusively on things they can control. They then execute plans to manipulate those factors into more favorable futures. Organizations often miss their objectives not because efforts to control the forces acting on them fail, but because they didn't recognize forces over which they had little or no control and discounted strong influences that could make or break their plans.

 

Consider a classic example from the oil industry where a tool manufacturer thought its future was tied to the price of oil. As long as that stayed stable or went up, the future would be assured. Company plans reflected a plus-or-minus percentage based on fluctuations in oil prices. When President Regan was elected, one of his first acts was tax simplification. One item in the 1986 Tax Reform Act came to be known in some circles as the Dentists Tax Incentive. Essentially, people with disposable income could shelter some of that money by financing oil exploration. Tax simplification eliminated that deduction, and along with it a sub-industry of oil exploration. Rather than a future tied to oil price, the industry discovered its future was tied to the tax code. It had ignored a force acting on the industry and thus failed to understand the impact of tax reform.

 

As organizations engage in strategic dialogue in an open and honest way, they start to build a repository of influences, uncertainties and factors that companies should plan for, but may not be paying much attention to. Lawrence Wilkinson, chairman of Heminge & Condell and founder of the Global Business Network, said the exploration of uncertainty, regardless of its use in scenarios, can lead to "collaborative alignment and mutual understanding of the business context." Wilkinson said that North American companies that remain provincial in their strategy despite the overwhelming evidence of globalization prove indignant in naming what they don't know about markets and end up with "incomplete and unbalanced assumptions."

 

Rebecca Wayland, managing director of Competitive Paradigms, said that clients new to scenario planning often "yes" their advisers to death, saying, 'Yes, we have already considered that' to every item discovered." Thus, the biggest impediment to serious strategic planning is the willingness to admit there are things one may not know.

 

Learning From Context

 

Once uncertainties have a name, they need to be considered - not in isolation, but in how they play out against each other as well as against more stable forces, such as demographics. The narratives that evolve from the intermingling of uncertainties become scenarios.

 

To expand on his examination of North American businesses, Wilkinson said that scenarios help organizations "appreciate the global markets in different ways - seeing their different competing complexions, recognizing what is inconsistent with their models. Uncertainty only helps organizations recognize new sets of muscles. Scenarios help them learn how to flex them."

 

Organizations that incorporate STEEP forces reduce the risk of missing something, such as the impact of a local culture or tax code, that may profoundly challenge their assumptions. They create a more expansive context for considering the world and for incorporating factors that deepen their understanding of markets and customers.

 

For instance, multiple industries have faced uncertainty thanks to digital technology, which creates a new context and has created a more intimate relationship with customers. This happened in photography when digital media challenged assumptions at Polaroid and Kodak. It also happened at every music publisher and in every movie studio. Apple used this shift to create a new model and has taken the abstraction of consumption charts and made them personal. The company knows not just what the world is buying, but what each consumer is buying, and therefore it can target those consumers for additional sales. Wilkinson said that after the digital revolution many firms found they could "no longer sell what they thought they sold. The process or the relationship becomes the product. The game changes completely."

 

Wayland said contextual learning is a way of framing current struggles. "A scenario session brought in executives from all over the world. They found that each region existed in a different scenario. That quickly highlighted the reasons for the dissonance between corporate direction and regional acceptance of the direction. The divisions were literally living in different worlds, but until they had the scenarios to ground them, they had no way of talking about the issue." This learning can transform the fundamental ways an organization can approach strategy and internal communications and can help divisions bring "credibility to their observations and forge deeper relationships."

 

Essentially, new context creates new opportunities to frame issues, which leads to learning about the business, the market, the leadership and the culture in ways that may have been either too difficult or too vague without illustrative scenarios.

 

Action Learning

 

Once an organization identifies the uncertainties and forces that act on it, it need to consider how to monitor the unfolding of events. Microsoft used a cork board to track current events against scenario stories. The mass of evidence there demonstrated uncertainty as events unfolded along multiple vectors.

 

But again, just because something is uncertain does not mean it cannot be influenced. In fact, identification of uncertainty implies a watchful, often active engagement. In banking, regulation would be an uncertainty crucial to strategy. Banks do not sit around waiting to see what regulators will do. Naming an uncertainty means it should be monitored and engaged. Newly published regulations call for internal navigation, while regulatory debate in state and federal forums calls for lobbying. Scenarios help organizations imagine how various proposals will play out while keeping an eye on circumstances that converge on the best future and can determine which position to take. Further, scenarios deepen with time; feedback from engagement helps refine and even challenge assumptions as scenarios are employed.

 

Scenarios also help identify synergies between certain efforts. In the automobile industry, energy prices, consumer desires and government intervention are leading toward a confluence of more efficient vehicles, but some scenarios shows a disconnect between the reality of energy, government direction and consumer desires. Thus, an automobile manufacturer may want to create a marketing program to present new designs that appeal to all constituencies with an emphasis on educating the consumer, for instance, on how cool and sporty an energy-efficient vehicle can be.

 

But a confluence of events isn't the only way to learn from the future. The highest value for scenarios is a combination of action learning and anticipation. Scenarios help organizations practice and better prepare for the future, or parts of it, in case they become reality. Some companies place bets, complete with sealed envelopes in locked safes, in anticipation of an industry shift. Early warning signals prompt a dusting off of the plan - the offer to be put on the street - much to the scratching heads of less imaginative competitors. Months later, the sale of a business unit or a foray into a new market looks like genius. The genius lies in inquisitiveness; a desire to learn from forces that play against each other; the perseverance to monitor those forces once the strategic planning effort is over; and the courage to act on incomplete information, intuition and foresight rather than wait for the uncertain to become certain and the opportunity to be lost.

 

Learning From the Future

 

In 2004, Microsoft developed a program called the Information Worker Board of the Future. These young people, ambassadors from every part of the globe, were brought together to help the company understand how the future might unfold for the new, young, global workforce.

 

Learning from representatives of the future is quite different from reading reports and analyzing study data. Dialogue revealed that key principles from scenario planning hold true: The future hasn't happened, so one can still influence it, or at least a company's reaction to it, regardless of the current trajectory of events. That is the heart of scenario planning: learning enough from the future so that today's plans are better, more robust and more resilient than they would be otherwise.

 

Many forecast 17 to 20 jobs for millennials over their lifetimes. Little work has been done to understand the underpinnings of these proclivities, but outsourcing, offshoring, layoffs and downsizing likely are key factors. Creating attractive environments for millennials will be a competitive advantage to those facing knowledge continuity issues as they look toward the departure of their baby boomers.

 

Further, millennials may be more interested in learning because they have not experienced many slow marches, only quick shifts, during their lives. Two concepts - just-in-time learning and reciprocal mentoring - rise as potential discussion points. The first is as a way to talk about the value of social media to enterprise learning. The other is a way to partner young people with older employees, recognizing that both bring unique skills and knowledge to the relationship, providing an opportunity for both to learn.

 

In this time of economic upheaval, of markets that refuse to behave according to old rules, of emerging cultures and ever-evolving technology, scenarios offer a way to learn from the future by actively engaging in its dynamics. If learning leaders don't confront the future, it will confront them, and isn't it always better to learn ahead of a need and leverage a crisis rather than to learn in the middle of one?

 

Eight Rules of Engagement

 

To successfully use scenarios to inform organization learning, consider the following rules of thumb.

 

1. Don't incorporate scenario planning into other activities to start with. Go offsite so the day-to-day doesn't intrude on the process of cultivating the possible.

 

2. Hire consultants who can help challenge assumptions about process and domain knowledge.

 

3. Include outsiders in the process: customers, industry analysis, industry naysayers, politicians or others who connect deeply and broadly with the topic under consideration.

 

4. Include internal influencers. Scenario planning can be effective in the middle of an organization, but it is often most effective when considering strategic positioning. It's not that the best learning or strategy comes from the top, but if the highest levels of the organization aren't open to learning, the chances of lower-level learning being adopted diminish.

 

5. Select a question to solve that is extremely focused and specific, such as: How will sovereign wealth affect financial markets? Or, what will women buy in 2020?

 

6. Put a learning model in place early. As soon uncertainties are identified, start locating information about those uncertainties that demonstrates multiple vectors. Real events create a learning dialogue around why one item has so many outcomes and which outcomes are best for the firm to align with, compete against or absorb.

 

7. Don't just adopt scenario planning, adopt storytelling. Storytelling is crucial to ensure people perceive the credibility of future narratives. Narratives need to be plausible, consumable and credible. People need to be able to see themselves in the alternative futures and to believe they are possible. Only then will they permit themselves to learn from the ideas they play with in the stories.

 

8. Finally, don't let learning go. The learning from one set of meetings may be eye-opening, but as soon as that meeting is over, subtle shifts start to erode the value of any conclusions made. As the world evolves, organizations need to be open to continuous learning and re-evaluation to ensure they don't just periodically leap reactively from one place to another, but instead adapt constantly to the forces around them and to the needs of their customers and markets.

 

 

[About the Author: Daniel W. Rasmus is an independent strategist and author of Management by Design.]

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