Dan Erwin

Recent College Grads: The Revolving Door and Parent Support

A survey of Generation-I, four year college grads between 22 and 26 years old, finds that they have little professional or geographic staying power. The study, fielded by Braun Research and funded by Adecco Group, was a telephone survey of 507 recent college grads. 

There’s plenty of research surrounding the validity of self-reporting, indicating that it is only moderately trustworthy. Still, a nationwide survey like this, can serve as a “pointer.” 

Intriguing findings:

Only 3% of recent grads said they’d expect to stay at any given job for more than five years. A job offer with higher pay, from a dream company or in a dream city would result in a move for more than 50% of grads. (I’ve always recommended that staying in the same job more than 3 years is nonsense and usually unwise. So I’d want to know what the survey meant when grads were quizzed about staying at any “given job.”) 

A striking 91% of recent would only continue working at a job they didn’t like for up to a year. In fact, 1 in 5 would only stay for three months before leaving a job they didn’t like. Salary, benefit and perk cuts, along with work that doesn’t fit their interests are killer reasons for these stats. 

Recent grads expect to stay connected to personal life—even at work. Certain activities will prevent grads from taking a job that they might be otherwise interested in. The list of important connections is highly reflective of the technology bent of the generation.

• 23% wouldn’t stay if personal phone calls are prohibited.
• 20% wouldn’t stay if they were not permitted to check personal emails.
• 15% wouldn’t stay if they were not permitted texting.
• 12% wouldn’t stay if they were not permitted to visit social media websites.

Nearly 30% of recent grads report that their parents are in some way involved in their job search process—and in some cases, very involved.

• 13% use parents’ personal network.
• 11% parents locate job listings for grads
• 9% parents rehearse job interview.
• 8% parents forward resume or cover letters for grads. 

More than half of recent grads report that parents help pay living expenses. The assistance is significant.

• 32% of parents help with cell phone expense.
• 21% of parents help with food.
• 20% of parents help with health insurance.
• 17% of parents help with rent.
• 17% of parents help with utilities.
• 13% of parents help with student loans.
• 12% of parents help with transportation. 

Students who graduate from college and are in that 22 to 26 year-old group are a very select group. It suggests that parents are very supportive of a huge proportion of college grads. I’m curious to know what you think about these statistics?

Flickr photo: U Chicago graduation

Is Leadership Passé?

Not quite, but you’d better start learning how to “do” collaboration. Competency needs grow out of cultural, economic and organizational demands. And today’s world, more and more, needs the skills of collaboration.

Recognize this!
The manufacturing age, which began with Henry Ford in the early 1900’s, focused on manufacturing’s needed competency: managing. Employees weren’t knowledge agents. They pounded widgets and followed orders, and everyone, bosses and ordinary employees, was fairly clueless about leadership. The only related term was “leader.”

A leader was the next rung up the manufacturing ladder from us peasants (I spent my year off from college—summer 1957 to spring 1958—in a Detroit manufacturing plant. And I was one of those peasants. But, since it was Detroit at the height of the manufacturing age, I made a huge pot of money, got my shit together, and went back to college and graduate school. Astute move.) The ascending order of company hierarchy was peasant (or whatever), leader, foreman, supervisor, then white collar executives who drove big Detroit cars. The leader was merely a very low level manager, responsible for five to ten people and their widget production. He usually drove a little Detroit Chevy, Plymouth or Ford. I had a great leader for my manufacturing education. You might find my experience very enlightening, here.) But the leader was totally a very controlling manager. He wasn’t interested in your ideas. He was not what we think of today as a leader.

By the 1970’s there was a fair amount of clarity on managing. When the explosion of technology in the 1980s demanded a different kind of smarts—Drucker’s knowledge worker—leadership was required to manage those people. Unlike my experience in Detroit, organizations began to realize that we humans weren’t merely peasants or robots. So the talk circled around the need for leadership, the definition of leadership, the differences between leading and managing, and questions of whether leaders are born or made. (They’re made!)

But society, economics and business continue their volatile move into the future. And in today's world, the great need for competency is the discipline of collaboration.

What’s collaboration?
Don’t be too quick to say that you know how to collaborate. Few do. It’s a tough skill to navigate. Like leadership, there are no born collaborators. And it’s very easy to go off the rails when you’re attempting to “do” collaboration, wondering what the hell just happened.

The first major shot across the bow on the subject of collaboration is Morton Hansen’s Collaboration: How leaders (there’s that word again) avoid the traps, create unity, and reap big results. It’s exceptionally good for the first pass at a major business subject. (Although not nearly as much fun as the first major shot at leadership by Warren Bennis. But no business writer can match the fun in Bennis and I’ll be very sorry to see his smarts and literary brilliance pass off the scene. God, what a well-rounded, well educated, highly practical, humanistic thinker!)

But back to Hansen. It takes him 14 pages to get around to defining his subject (He needed a better editor). He talks about it as the process by which people from different units work together in cross-unit teams on a common task or provide significant help to each other. Though accurate, his definition is pretty flat, lacking pizzaz. But, as I said above, there ain’t many Bennises.

Where Hansen is especially useful is his in analysis of what is and is not collaboration, when to use it and when not to use it, and what it can do for an organization.

Why collaboration?
In chapter 2, Hansen lays out his case for collaboration. Though his rationale is simple-minded and obvious, it’s exceptionally important and highly reflective of business needs today. Don’t forget, everything is obvious once you know the answer (see Duncan Watts). Hansen sees better innovation, better sales, and better operations providing a huge rationale for the competency. And he supplies a superb set of examples to explain his rationale. Every organization from P&G and Norwest Bank to British Petroleum.

Hansen needs to make much clearer that because of the knowledge explosion, no single person in business today, no single division or group, has the intelligence to create a product or service ready for the consumer to buy. You’re simply going to have to access a lot of smarts, from more than one place, or else you’ll get beat up badly by the companies that do understand and act upon the knowledge explosion. I wish that was obvious, but sadly, it isn’t. That’s one of the reasons many companies go bankrupt and disappear from the stock market.

Why so tough?
Though I have both extensive education and extensive experience in the field of collaboration it's still tough as nails to pull off. For a number of reasons. We have all these business silos still very much in place and their members aren’t interested in cross-silo collaborating, even when needed. Indeed, collaborators often find themselves in hostile territory attempting to pull off collaboration. Hansen’s comparison of Sony and Apple makes the point exceptionally well.

Another related issue, just as important, is that a huge portion of the business population is congenitally incapable of collaboration. It seems not to be in the genes. It's like strategic thinking. Ninety-five percent of business folk are incrementalists and can't think strategically. The training in collaboration, thus far, is also piss-poor. And long term, when organizations get around to recognizing the absolute necessity for the competency, they may have to terminate some of their folk to fulfill their organizational needs and succeed financially.

Collaboration relationships between business people and their clients is just downright terrifying to many. They have no models for collaboration, no personal experiences of the subject, and frankly, don’t really believe it can be pulled off. But as Apple has proved exceptionally well (in spite of their fascist leader, Jobs), great success in the knowledge economy absolutely requires the competency of collaboration.

It’s plainly obvious that long term, collaborative abilities are going to be more important than leadership. Besides, if you can “do” collaboration, you can "do" leadership. Leadership is merely (that’s right, “merely”) a subset of effective collaboration.

Photo fm Flickr: by starheadboy

Forget What You Think You Know About Gen-Yers

Five Millennial Myths
The conventional wisdom that Millennials--all those under the age of 30--are needy and narcissistic is deeply flawed, says Jennifer Deal.

Deal, a research scientist at the Center for Leadership in San Diego, has a book on the subject. Based on extensive survey research, she says that the stereotypes of Millennials are "inconsistent at best and destructive at worst."

Deal's summary in the latest issue of Booz-Allen's Strategy+Business challenges the five millenial myths that have been going the rounds for several years. My own extensive experience with the youngest generation supports her conclusions. Here's a thumbnail sketch of her conclusions:

Myth #1: Millennials don't want to be told what to do.  The unexpected conclusion is that they're exceptionally deferential to authority. More than the other work generations: Baby Boomers--30%, Gen Xers--30%, and Millennials--41%. The obvious implication is that managers can readily shape millennial employees' behavior. That is, if the millennials understand the culture and know the expectations. Her suggestion is almost too funny, but very true: Millennials even appreciate being told what time to arrive at the office. (The flip side will also come up. "If I've worked 12 hours or more, several days in a row, do you think I can go home early?")

Myth #2: Millenials lack organizational loyalty. Deal's research finds that the group has about the same amount of organizational commitment as the other generations. Her explanation of the myth is that Gen-Yers, who are at the lower levels of the organization, are paid less and have less responsible positions. Their elders are likely to be more invested in the organization because of income and responsibility. It's all a matter of the fact that in your 20s is liable to be the best and only time that you can try on new jobs and careers. Loyalty is a characteristic of age, not generation.

Myth #3: Millennials aren't interested in their work. This is new to me, but evidently the mythology is out there. As the research shows, my experience has been that all people at the lower organizational levels are slightly less motivated by the content of their jobs than higher-ups. They're just not that motivated to do grunt work. This is true of all of us, and especially in our early career years. Most understand that grunt work is part of a job, but a reasonable portion of the job should be interesting. If not, why not find a new job?

Myth #4: Millennials are motivated by perks and high pay.  No more, the research says, than Boomers and Gen Xers. And although you think that handing them an iPad will increase their dedication to the job, it won't. As one of my Gen-Yer friends said, "cool," but it didn't increase his overall motivation.

Myth #5: Millennials want more work-life balance. This myth is "marginally accurate." But as Deal points out, society as a whole now believes that life is about more than just work. Policies such as flex schedules, part of a work-life balance, are perceived to be important by both Gen Xers and Yers. 

Ensuring that workers of all generations are "engaged contributors to the workforce" is far more critical in this world than in the last century. Knowledge is the key corporate equity, not bricks and mortar. Deal has given us a highly useful understanding of the Millennial generation.  

Jennifer Deal, Retiring the Generation Gap (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2007)
Photo fm flickr: Ali Goldie

How Leaders Kill the Joy of Work

Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees,” say Harvard’s Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. Amabile and her associates have successfully studied the inner work life of employees. And often, the picture is not very pretty.

These aren’t union leaders. This is management. The sample isn’t from the factory floor or your local public school. No. These are business professionals. The objective of the research was to better understand the role of upper-level management. To get at that objective, Amabile and Kramer dug back into 12,000 electronic diaries from dozens of professionals working on important innovation projects at seven North American companies. They selected only entries from diarists who mentioned bosses—868 narratives in all.

Progress: Key to meaningful work
As the researchers remind us, understanding the traps should help execs determine whether they risk falling into some of the traps themselves—unknowingly. And dragging their organization into the abyss with them.

In their book, The Progress Principle, Amabile and Kramer argue that managers routinely—and unwittingly—undermine the meaningfulness of work for their subordinates through “everyday words and actions.” They found “that of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.” So, they wanted to see whether meaningful progress is on the radar screen. In survey research of 669 managers at all level from dozens of companies and industries around the world, they sought to rank five employee motivators: incentives, recognition, clear goals, interpersonal support, and progress in the work.

Their conclusion, reported in the McKinsey Journal, reveals that most managers and execs don’t act as though progress matters to their direct reports. Only 8 percent of senior executives ranked progress as the most important motivator. Had they chosen randomly, 20 percent would have done so. In short, our survey showed that most executives don’t understand the power of progress in meaningful work. And the traps revealed by the diaries suggest that most executives don’t act as though progress matters.

But back to the first research. The study revealed four traps that leaders fall into—often inadvertently.

• Mediocrity signals. The diaries that the researchers studied were full of references to innovation. Yet, those senior managers were so focused on cost savings that they repeatedly negated their teams’ autonomy dictating cost reduction goals that were primary. By the end of the diary reports, employees were “completely disengaged.” Mediocrity was also signaled by top managers’ risk aversion.
• Strategic ‘attention deficit disorder.’ A second trap, far too familiar for those of us who’ve done much consulting, was starting and then abandoning initiatives, making for an attention deficit disorder. What workers call “the fad of the day.” Of course, if execs don’t have their act together on where the organization is heading, the troops will quickly lose the joy of work.
• Corporate Keystone Kops. You remember those Keystone Kops from the silent films—fictional policemen, running around in circles and bashing each other on the head. Some execs contribute to the “comedy” by failing to hold support organizations accountable, overly complex reporting structures and last minute changes. A chronic indecisiveness.
• Misbegotten ‘big, hairy, audacious goals.’ It’s important for organizations to give strategic direction, audacious, relevant goals, articulated in a way connects with peoples’ values and emotions. (Google’s stated mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” In contrast, the researchers found that goals are stated in ways that seem unattainable and vague, even empty.

What to do?
Although Amabile and Kramer don’t address it head on, this is a masterful study of the creation of strong motivation. Think about that subtext: leaders must create forward momentum in meaningful work. Leaders who can provide meaningful work for their employees are on the road to success.

FYI: As I’ve worked through these recommendations, thought over their implications and seen their immense relevance, four issues kept cropping up in my ever-busy gray matter:

1. The notion of meaningful work has a long history, dating from the Reformation. Martin Luther and John Calvin both spoke to the importance of meaningful work in ways that haven’t been on our 20^th and 21st century radar screen. But some workers are caught in meaningless work. Flipping burgers is little more than a few bucks in the pocket of a teen-ager or poorly-educated adult.
2. Amabile and Kramer’s conclusion are spot-on. They couldn’t be more accurate. On those occasions where they’ve been implemented, the productivity rates skyrocket.
3. Most leaders don’t think in terms of the subjective or of soft power. Yet when they do, success is often inevitable.
4. When someone asks me why, at my age, I haven’t retired, I have one answer. “I’m having too much fun. My contributions have been exceedingly meaningful for me as well as for others. Why would I want to retire?” Duhhhhhh.

Want to motivate your employees? Make sure their work is meaningful.

Photo from Flickr: Intermayer

Just a "Taste of College" Can Boost US Success in the Talent Wars

The need for hard-to-find talent has some of America’s best companies getting involved in high school education. A former client, now senior executive at General Mills, nailed the problem. “If we don’t build relationships at high school level, another major firm (Target or Best Buy) will steal some of our best potential talent,” she said. Business support and pushing of talent development, even at the pre-college levels, will more and more become a key strategic necessity for American companies. Talent development in K – 12 will take many different forms. 

What top researchers in Minnesota have found is that just a “taste of college” can boost high school student success, providing more opportunity for building our talent base.   

The program, emphasizing dual credit in high school and college, has been pushed by Joe Nathan, one of America’s most respected educationists, who specializes in inner city education. Nathan, formerly of the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, now runs research out of the Center for School Change at Macalester College.  Nathan believes that if we can develop a sense of “I belong here. I understand this world,” through dual credit classes for poor and minority students, we can keep kids who might otherwise leave school. The growth through advance placement classes, International Baccalaureate programs, or dual credit classes (taught by college profs in high school), has shown surprisingly significant results in developing potential talent. 

The report recommends that “dual credit” courses be available to younger and perhaps the less academically successful.  It also notes that a study of New York and Florida students revealed that dual credit programs demonstrated an “ability to raise the achievement of students not traditionally seen as successful in high school”—low income and low-achieving students. 

Participation increased from 17,581 in 2007-2008 to 21,184 in 2009-2010. That’s a huge change in a state will little over 60,000 public high school graduates per year.  

The program offers a number of significant advantages to both students and families.

• Students can earn a two-year associates degree while enrolled in high school.
• The programs, paid for by the various school districts, are free.
• It keeps some of the kids in school who might otherwise drop out.
• Students and parents can save as much as $40,000 on a four-year degree.
• Provides lower income and minority students a better understanding of school options.
• Provides students with a clearer understand of life goals.
• Makes for a far easier transition for students from high school to college.
• Makes it possible for those who do not see themselves at college to complete relevant certificate programs.
• Studies from several states show that students who take college courses in high school fare better in college. 

At first glance, “dual credit” programs may sound like just another flaky educational idea, but, as the statistics above demonstrate, longitudinal research strongly supports Nathan’s ideas. If you’ve been around inner city kids, you know that it’s their attitudes that get in the way of motivation and prevent them from achieving. And what Nathan’s program does is to focus on those attitudes, and provide constructive opportunities to impact the students’ learning context. 

Extensive research by Carol Dweck and her associates at Stanford has consistently shown that students with a growth mindset—a fundamental attitude--do better in school. Moreover, the research demonstrates that the growth mindset raises motivation and achievement, especially in difficult courses or across difficult school transitions. Though faculty may not label or talk about the dual credit experience as a “growth mindset,” that’s exactly what the experience can provide for students. 

Though I grew up in a family with college background, I have never forgotten how important my trips to the University of Michigan with our high school choir were. Years later, I can still see myself on that magnificent campus, talking to recent grads from my own high school. I recognize that those experiences were a piece of my drive for higher education. They impacted my attitudes and served to motivate me as strongly as anything anyone could say.    

Sure, I know that what works in Minnesota, Massachusetts or Michigan in the 1940s, may not work--because of resources--in Nevada, New Mexico or Alabama today. If you’ve lived and worked in several different parts of the country, you know that state cultures and state resources differ profoundly. That’s why smart thinkers in the US Department of Education are encouraging individual states to figure out what works locally, experiment with it, create a pilot program, tweak it, and when successful, celebrate and publicize the stuff. The “dual credit” program is one such successful strategy for developing talent. It’s actually quite amazing that just a “taste of college” can boost student success.

IBM's Unique, Highly Successful "Ground Rules"

A textbook case in how to drive change, IBM has been so consistently successful that it is almost boring. Even more surprising is the size of its workforce in contrast to other tech firms: IBM has more employees than Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco, Apple, Amazon and Google all put together. Furthermore, only HP pulls in more revenue than IBM.

What’s the secret to IBM’s success?

In an interview with Steve Lohr, Sam Palmisano, the retiring CEO, says that the firm’s pursuit of excellence around four dimensions—ground rules—shaped the strategy and focus over the past ten years. Palmisano boils his ground rules down to four questions:

• Why would someone spend their money with you—so what is unique about you?
• Why would somebody work for you?
• Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography—their country?
• Why would somebody invest their money with you?

These questions cut new territory in the business world in a number of differing ways, providing especially relevant insight into the 21^st century orientation to talent management, careers, and socially responsible businesses. The third, why society allows you to operate in their geography, was rarely considered in the past. Today, although many ignore the question and social responsibility, more are beginning to take notice and get involved. Indeed, Rosabeth Kanter points out six strategic reasons for serving, a highly relevant necessity in today’s world. Palmisano not only read speeches and memos from the founder, Thomas Watson, but he had lunch regularly with Watson Jr., once a month. The Watsons, he says, always defined I.B.M. as a company that did more than sell computers; they believed that it had an important role to play in solving societal challenges. It’s old-fashioned, but it’s motivational, he says.

The second, “why would someone work for you,” has become a significant matter in the battle for brainpower in a day in which the so-called talent war has gone global, along with talent shortages. It’s a reminder that although all kinds of employees are out of work, more and more businesses are having a difficult time accessing needed talent, even in states like Michigan. Skills shortages are widespread. Dan Pink’s comment back in 2001 is even more relevant today: “Talented people need organizations less than organizations need talented people.” Palmisano found that social responsibility resonated with the young people IBM is recruiting.

A couple of times a year, Mr. Palmisano speaks to groups of elite students whom I.B.M. is trying to woo to its research labs. The pitch, he says, is that I.B.M. is a place where you can make a difference and do deep science.

“You can change the world, and you can compete for a Nobel prize,” he says, referring to I.B.M.’s five Nobel winners.

(Eighty-seven percent of the candidates who were offered jobs by I.B.M. Research this year joined the company.)

Mr. Palmisano’s appeal to young technologists is just one example of an answer to one of his four questions.

The first question, why someone would spend their money with you, goes straight to the heart of business strategy. This is an issue that has gotten much attention since Drucker, and continues to be the beneficiary of much thinking, refining and focusing.

Viewed individually, these questions are not especially unique, excepting the talent focus, but together they are a phenomenal set of ground rules. My response when I first read the ground rules was, “my god, this guy is really a thinker, a great thinker. Not just the typical business yeoman who performs in workmanlike fashion to achieve the company’s objectives.” Taken together, his ideas are client focused, but at the same time, they force a scintillating inward focus upon the operations of the firm. They impact the culture, the strategy, the workforce morale, the commitments of its employees, finances and the clients’ expectations. It’s no wonder that Warren Buffett, who normally shuns technology, to accumulate $10 billion of shares, amounting to a stake of 5%.

"The hardest thing is answering those four questions,” Mr. Palmisano says. “You’ve got to answer all four and work at answering all four to really execute with excellence.”

Finally, it should be noted that Mr Palmisano was not bred a techie, but came up through the ranks of IBM sales with a Johns Hopkins history major. His thinking is highly indicative of the strengths of that liberal arts background. History people are weaned on the big picture, and thrive on the intellectual ideas that initiate and maintain change in a sea of competing ideologies. This critical tool is especially useful for analyzing the sequence of events leading up to massive changes and reformations, and adept at forecasting the consequences of ideas for good or ill. History is one of two or three fundamental critical tools of global human thinking and analysis, and Palmisano’s thinking reflects that background. It’s paid off superbly for the firm over his CEO tenure.

Where New Employees Go Wrong

Effective socialization strategies can impact the company bottom line early in a new employee's tenure. 

One of my friends recently left her consumer products' firm and accepted a project role in a medium-sized software firm. Over the past two months, I’ve quizzed her about her firm’s assimilation process. Frankly, I’ve been surprised and delighted by the firm’s approach to new employees. They’ve emphasized organizational culture more than her new job. Unlike her organization, far too many firms fail in this fundamental process. And, as a result, the productivity of the employee suffers. But her new firm takes a multi-pronged, strategic approach to its assimilation process. The result, thus far, is one happy camper, who’s digging into her new role with a great deal of enthusiasm. 

Her experience reminds me that new employees easily go wrong because most firms provide far more information about the employee’s initial job tasks than about the organization’s culture.

Task information that comes from the top of the organization down to the lowest-level employee is usually specific and narrowly defined. Cultural information, in contrast, is vague or sometimes implied. That's a dangerous situation. Research shows that without effective assimilation processes, gossip often plays a large role in the employee's assimilation. Susan Hafen,at Utah's Weber State University,found that gossip has a major role in enhancing workplace deviance behaviors. Lacking cultural input, new employees have no way to evaluate gossip which detracts from the desired goals of organizational citizenry. Her research serves as an important warning to firms regarding the assimilation process. 

The cultural values and principles of the organization and the kind of supportive (or non-supportive) environment has direct bearing upon an individual’s ability to understand the task and its importance. For example, in some organizations, collaboration work is highly valued and rewarded, whereas in others only individual efforts are recognized. The more cultural information is unclear or uncertain, the more the new employee needs help in understanding it. Without detailed cultural information, employees have difficulty assessing cultural information from their new colleagues. That’s a potentially dangerous setting, one that could easily impact long-term productivity. 

Employee socialization is also especially important. One of my clients, a senior manager at a major small appliance firm, told me that the first problem he encountered in his job was one that took four years to get over. The facility was one in which the average years of service was about 10 years--yeah. . . there still are places like that. When he first arrived, the employees felt that he could not be trusted and that he couldn’t possibly know what he was doing. His predecessor had retired from the position after 15 years, and had given him his blessing as the new replacement. Still, he was viewed as an interloper and an incompetent by most of the employees--even though he came into the new role with extensive experience. The problem resolved itself after several years, but he told me it was very troubling at the start. An effective assimilation process, with a focus upon socialization, would have made for an easy adjustment. When he was promoted to VP a few years ago, one of the first issues he dealt with was the firm’s entire assimilation process. He emphasized the costs of poor assimilation processes several times as he related that story to the CEO. Once the CEO understood the finances of the problem, my client got the needed support—and made some significant changes in HR. 

How do better companies integrate the new employee? 

Rather than focusing solely on the formal orientation process, smart companies take a multi-pronged approach to employee entry. Traditional approaches include the formal orientation programs, socialization strategies, training programs, and formal and informal mentoring. Research from as far back as 2004 recommend advanced communication and information technologies including e-mail, web pages, voice mail, instant messaging and video-conferencing. A sizable amount of research and corporate resources are expended on socialization processes. What corporations and especially HR need to keep on the front lobes is that the socialization processes are critical to maintain a dedicated and loyal workforce. Indeed, how seriously the organization takes it obligation to socialize new members determines the degree of turnover and, ultimately, productivity.

"Changing Companies' Minds About Women"

In my previous blog, Why do men hold back women in the workplace, I referred to the groundbreaking Mckinsey report by Joanna Barsh and Lareina Yee that addressed the frustrating lack of women at senior levels in America’s business. 

Their recommendations for resolving the problem are both realistic and practical. But for some reading this blog, I need to reinforce the fact that dealing with the problem simply because it’s the right thing to do won’t cut the mustard. A diverse leadership team is highly is highly advantageous for their business. 

Many of the leading consumer products firms understand the business rationale for women in leadership. They recognize, as the McKinsey report asserts, that there is a bevy of research that highlights strong statistical correlations among large numbers of senior women, financial performance, and organizational health. The bottom line: companies gain hard business benefits from a more diverse senior team. 

Based on the experience of successful companies the report makes five recommendations:

• Injecting greater rigor into people processes
• More data on the subject
• Thoughtful targets pushing women into key roles
• A company specific case for women
• Better sponsorship approaches 

I believe that all five of the issues can be exceptionally useful. Although some firms are merely giving lip service to the discussion of women in the workplace, most companies are aware of the problem, but not many are aware of the benefits of the diverse senior team. 

I’m committed to the proposition that long term innovation, whether in the form of change or new products and services, is first and foremost built on our ability to sell its benefits to the relevant stakeholders. Steve Jobs is the master at that issue. Some think it’s the quality of his innovations, but I doubt that. In the final analysis Jobs is focused on benefits his products and his services can bring to the consumer. Jobs understands the consumer as well as anyone on earth. Thus, changing companies’ minds about women is fundamentally a sales job. The McKinsey article addresses this issue, but it fails to make clear enough that every organizational leader who understands the benefits of women in leadership had better be able to address the benefits of their proposal to the fundamental stakeholders of the organization. 

There’s solid agreement today that In order to do different things and make change, at least on a consistent, systematic basis over a sustained time period, organizations and their people must begin to think differently. What that means is that data is exceptionally important. In order to change thinking there are going to have to be a great number of conversations. Conversations which openly deal with the assumptions a manager makes and the data underlying those assumptions. What that implies, also, is that execs take data seriously, that they make data a central part of their decision making and that they can recognize that the inferences and ultimate conclusions they draw are built on data. Now the data they use may be poor or inadequate, but still they need the expertise to think data. Organizational cultures vary in their willingness and ability to deal with data. Lacking those characteristics makes the change process far more difficult.

Furthermore, for execs to commit themselves to change is one thing. But it’s another to actually make progress on those commitments. Leaders will need to guard against backpedaling and be sure to continually keep the process going.

These McKinsey women have made a significant contribution to women in the workplace. It’s an article that HR people and the company leadership will find very useful.

Why Do Men Hold Back Women in the Workplace?

I’ve got a lot invested in this issue. It’s not just the many clients of the female gender whom I’ve coached over the years or my background in gender communication. But three beloved daughters, all professionals. So Joann Barsh and Lareina Yee’s article in the September McKinsey Quarterly struck a chord with me. Their article sets out to change companies’ minds about women. And they’ve done a swell job.

Despite the Arianna Huffington’s of the world and corporate commitment to women’s career advancement, progress appears to be stalled. The stats are telling:

• Women account for 53% of entry-level employees
• Women hold only 37% of middle-management positions
• Women hold only 28% of vice-president and senior management roles
• Women hold only 14% of seats on executive committees

[This week’s Newsweek reports that women in the U.S. seriously outpace men in college degrees: 36% of women and only 28% of men in the age group of 25 to 29 hold bachelor’s degrees. (The U.S. is tops in the world for educated women. That includes education level, literacy and gender parity in schools. Who says government legislation and campaigns can’t impact problems from the mid-twentieth century? Those statistics are a far cry from my generation of septuagenarians.The flip side of that issue is that the educational attainment of men is of tragic proportion.)]

As the authors of the McKinsey research point out, corporations have trouble retaining promising women or promoting them into top jobs. The real issue is the “invisible, but powerful beliefs” held by managers. These mindsets subtlely and unintentionally hold back women.

Long term, this is an important issue for corporate America. Systematic research shows that companies gain very solid business benefits from a more diverse senior team. Consumer products firms take this issue seriously.

The McKinsey study digs deeply into the problem, finding that at every point in the U.S. talent pipeline, the odds of advancement for men are twice those of women. When it comes to the big leap, from executive committee to CEO, nearly four times as many men as women succeed.

So why do men hold back women? This is what surfaced in their research:

• “She’s too aggressive” (or “too passive”) I can’t imagine a man getting the feedback. Furthermore, women won’t receive that info directly. In my interviewing for women clients I’ve picked it up, but in every instance the client told me she had never received that feedback. They quickly set out to remedy the problem in constructive fashion.
• “I don’t want to tell Bob he didn’t get that job.” Leaders are not comfortable telling their male protégés, whom they have groomed for years, that someone else is getting that job. What McKinsey didn’t point out is that that response is the remnant of the “boys club.”
• “I don’t know how to talk or mentor her.” Men tend to sponsor men. They gravitate to the sex with whom they find more common interests. There’s also plenty of nervousness about mixed gender relationships in the workplace.
• “If I put a woman in that role and she fails, it’ll set back all women.” This is an inadvertent mind-set that treats women as representative of their whole gender. I can’t imagine men being treated as other than individuals.
• “A woman isn’t right for that job.” Those stereotypes are still there, though vestigial. One of the upsides of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is the placement of women in the front.

This is a vicious cycle for women, difficult to deal with primarily because the statements are deeply held. They can be resolved one-on-one, but that approach is unfair to women. It’ll be the 22^nd century before the change takes place.

Mark Zuckerberg on Personal Identity

Although I’ve a great deal of respect for bright Gen-Yers like Mark Zuckerberg, a quote of his tells me that when it comes to personal identities, Zuckerberg is not too bright. You may have read his quote in Time: "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." Like a number of techies, he’s dumb about people. Michael Zimmer, a well-known information ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, put it this way: Zuckerberg has a history of speaking his mind . . . and what he says is often “fraught with problems, ignorance, and arrogance.” Like a few others I know in the tech field, Zuckerberg needed that Harvard liberal arts degree to learn how to think beyond bits and bytes.

But his attitude toward personal identity is a very common mistake. Indeed, I suspect that his belief on personal identity, what the unwashed herd calls the “real me,” is widely held. I’ve had numerous conversations with those, even PhDs, who thought you could peel back the layers and find out who you really are. But if you’re looking for an analogy for peeling back the layers, the best one for us all is the onion. Eventually, when you peel back far enough, you’ll find there’s nothing there. To quote Gertrude Stein, there is no there there.

If we only have one identity, we’re in luck if business needs that identity. But when that identity is no longer needed, we’re in deep shit. And, by the way, that’s exactly what’s happened to millions of single career American workers. It shouldn’t take much to figure out that the notion of a single identity (which, I assume, equals a single career) is not just damaging. In today’s economy it’s liable to leave you out on the streets

It’s not that I’m trying to be cute about all this. But as Curt Sittenfeld put so well in his opinion article, Zuckerberg believes we should all be the same in every context. He’s got to be kidding. I’m not the same person to my kids, my wife, or my neighbors, much less that monstrous variety of friends and clients. 

So let’s think a bit deeply about personal identity. And here, once more, I’m going to throw caution to the winds and dig into the sacred muck. Herminia Ibarra has summarized it best:

First, your working identity is not a hidden treasure (a passion) waiting to be discovered at the very core of your inner being. Rather, it is made up of many possibilities: some tangible and concrete, defined by the things we do, the company we keep, and the stories we tell about our work and lives; others existing only in the realm of future potential and private dreams. Second, changing careers (for example) means changing ourselves. Since we are many selves, changing is not a process of swapping one identity for another but rather a transition process in which we reconfigure the full set of possibilities. These simple ideas alter everything we take for granted about finding a new career. They ask us to devote the greatest part of our time and energy to action rather than reflection, to doing instead of planning.

This issue continues to surface regularly and in a number of forms. In a previous blog, I spelled out the research of Stanford’s Hazel Markus, and indicated that the notion of a true self--of a single identity--has been thoroughly dispelled by research. Several previous blogs call my readers to think twice before they follow their passion.  But the passion issue has a lot of staying power, and seems stuck in the 1960s, even with bright guys like Mark Zuckerberg.