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11 Biggest Challenges of International Business in 2017

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11 Biggest Challenges of International Business in 2017

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Great insights into the many serious considerations when doing business globally. From politics, laws, currency exchange rates, cultural differences, shipping, and environmental issues there are so many complex issues that must be considered when a company goes global. I enjoyed the infograph with the cultural differences.

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From the U.K.'s unprecedented decision to leave the European Union to the historic and divisive U.S. presidential election, 2016 was a year of large-scale change and uncertainty. Nowhere, perhaps, was it felt more keenly than in the world of international business. Political, economic, and environmental issues are increasingly becoming the remit of international business leaders as much as governments.

At Hult, our aim is to prepare our students to become the next generation of global business leaders, embracing the opportunities and challenges of international business. While the global marketplace becomes more interconnected and accessible, the risks involved in doing business abroad are not to be taken lightly.

Expanding business overseas means reaching new clients or customers and potentially boosting profits. Despite all the uncertainty of 2017 and the challenges that have yet to reveal themselves, there are some guidelines for conducting business on a global scale that you should always consider before leaping into new international operations. Here is our advice on how to tackle the 11 biggest challenges for international business:

International company structure

If your aim is to be competitive globally, you must have a team in place that's up for the challenge. One fundamental consideration is the structure of your organization and the location of your teams.

For instance, will your company be run from one central headquarters? Or will you have offices and representatives "on the ground" in key markets abroad? If so, how will these teams be organized, what autonomy will they have, and how will they coordinate working across time zones? If not, will you consider hiring local market experts who understand the culture of your target markets, but will work centrally?

Coca-Cola offers one example of effective multinational business structure. The company is organized into continental groups, each overseen by a President. The central Presidents manage Presidents of smaller, country-based or regional subdivisions. Despite its diverse global presence, the Coca-Cola brand and product is controlled centrally and consistent around the world.

While Coca-Cola is a vast international brand, the structure of your business and the number, nationality, and level of expertise of your team will vary depending on your industry, product, and the size of your business.

Foreign laws and regulations

Along with getting your company structure in place, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the local laws and regulations governing your target markets is key. From tax implications through to trading laws, navigating legal requirements is a central function for any successful international business. Eligibility to trade is a significant consideration, as are potential tariffs and the legal costs associated with entering new markets.

Airbnb ran into trouble in 2014, with a crackdown on advertised rental properties falling outside local housing and tourism regulations. The company was forced to pay a €30,000 fine for a breach of local tourism laws in Barcelona.

It's important to note that employment and labor requirements also differ by country. For instance, European countries stipulate that a minimum of 14-weeks maternity leave be offered to employees, while on the other hand, there is no such requirement for U.S. employers. With the complexity involved in foreign trade and employment laws, investing in knowledgeable and experienced corporate counsel can prove invaluable.

Beyond abiding by official laws, engaging in international business often requires following other unwritten cultural guidelines. This can prove especially challenging in emerging markets with ill-defined regulations or potential corruption. In response, companies doing business in the United States must abide by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which aims at eliminating bribery and unethical practices in international business. A good rule of thumb is to beware of engaging in any questionable activities, which might be legal but could have future reputational repercussions.

International accounting

Of the main legal areas to consider when it comes to doing international business, tax compliance is perhaps the most crucial. Accounting can present a challenge to multinational businesses who may be liable for corporation tax abroad. Different tax systems, rates, and compliance requirements can make the accounting function of a multinational organization significantly challenging.

Accounting strategy is key to maximizing revenue, and the location where your business is registered can impact your tax liability. Mitigating the risk of multiple layers of taxation makes good business sense for any organization trading abroad. Being aware of tax treaties between countries where your business is trading will help to ensure you're not paying double taxes unnecessarily.

A focus on tax efficiency is often the aim of international accounting efforts. In the European Union, companies may benefit from the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base proposal, whereby companies with operations around the EU can limit tax liability to one corporate center. Tax consolidation is a feature of several multinationals' decision to be headquartered in Dublin, as Ireland is known for its "business-friendly" corporate tax policy. Well-known companies with operational headquarters in the Republic of Ireland include Google, Facebook, and Intel.

Cost calculation and global pricing strategy

Setting the price for your products and services can present challenges when doing business overseas and should be another major consideration of your strategy. You must consider costs to remain competitive, while still ensuring profit. Researching the prices of direct, local-market competitors can give you a benchmark, however, it remains essential to ensure the math still works in your favor. For instance, the cost of production and shipping, labor, marketing, and distribution, as well as your margin, must be a taken into account for your business to be viable.

Pricing can also come down to how you choose to position your brand - should the cost of your product reflect luxury status? Or will low prices help you to penetrate a new market? Swedish furniture giant Ikea, known in Europe for its low-cost value, struggled initially in China due to local competitor costs of labor and production being much cheaper. By relocating production for the Chinese market and using more locally sourced materials, the company was able to successfully cut prices to better reflect its brand and boost sales among target consumers.

Wherever you're looking to launch your product or service, here are four useful strategies to help you find the right price:

Source: AmericanExpress

Universal payment methods

The proliferation of international e-commerce websites has made selling goods overseas easier and more affordable for businesses and consumers. However, payment methods that are commonly accepted in your home market might be unavailable abroad. Determining acceptable payment methods and ensuring secure processing must be a central consideration for businesses who seeks to trade internationally.

Accepting well-known global payment methods through companies like Worldpay, as well as accepting local payment methods, such as JCB in Asia or Yandex Money in Russia, can be a good option for large international businesses. Accepting wire transfers, PayPal payments, and Bitcoin, are other possibilities, with Bitcoin users benefiting from no bank or credit card transaction fees. Despite the risk of fluctuating value, the lack of fees is one of the reasons a number of online companies, including WordPress, the Apple App Store, Expedia, and a number of Etsy sellers accept Bitcoin.

While price setting and payment methods are major considerations, currency rate fluctuation is one of the most challenging international business problems to navigate. Monitoring exchange rates must therefore be a central part of the strategy for all international businesses. However, global economic volatility can make forecasting profit especially difficult, particularly when rates fluctuate at unpredictable levels.

Major fluctuations can seriously impact the balance of business expenses and profit. For instance, if your company is paying suppliers and production costs in U.S. dollars, but selling in markets with a weaker or more unpredictable currency, your company could end up with a much smaller margin - or even a loss. One way to protect yourself against large fluctuations in currency is to pay suppliers and production costs in the same currency as the one you're selling in. This may mean switching to more local production where possible in order to better balance your outgoings and sales revenue.

Another option for mitigating the risk of unpredictable currency rates can be setting up a forward contract and agreeing a price in advance for future sales. Of course, this potentially means missing out on greater profit should rates shift in your favor. However, it can protect your sales from the risk presented by unstable currency.

Learn more about six key factors that can influence currency exchange rates:

Choosing the right global shipment methods

The potential of online sales presents a huge international business opportunity for retailers in the 21st century, but finding reliable, fast, and cost-effective shipment and distribution methods can be a difficult balance in some markets. Depending on the volume and destination of your shipments, will you send by land, sea, air, or a combination? Your choice of shipping method can be a major influence on your revenue and may be a limiting factor to the products you can viably sell overseas.

Other considerations to address according to your company's products and your target markets include customs fees, the need and cost of storage, and local methods of distribution. There are also country-specific regulations and shipping requirements to take into account. For a quick check of costs and compliance, UPS International has created an online tool called TradeAbility to help businesses and individuals manage the movement of good overseas.

Communication difficulties and cultural differences

Good communication is at the heart of effective international business strategy. However, communicating across cultures can be a very real challenge. At Hult, developing cross-cultural competency and communication skills are a core focus inside and outside of the classroom.

Effective communication with colleagues, clients, and customers abroad is essential for success in international business. And it's often more than just a language barrier you need to think about - nonverbal communication can make or break business deals too. Do your research and know how different cultural values and norms - such as shaking hands - can and should influence the way you communicate in a professional context. Being aware of acceptable business etiquette abroad, and how things like religious and cultural traditions can influence this, will help you to better navigate potential communication problems in international business.

Discover the subtle nuances of body language for different countries and nationalities you may be doing business with:

Source: BusinessInsider

"Hult gave me an opportunity to open my mind towards the world. It helped me gain perspective towards people from different countries such that I can go to any country and start working without any culture shock."
Mayur Chimurkar
MBA Class of 2014

Cultural differences can also influence market demand for your product or service. The need your business may address at home may already be met or not exist at all overseas. Local market insight is key, and there are a number of successful brands whose business models simply weren't viable in overseas markets. For instance, American coffee company Starbucks seriously struggled in Australia, where the demand for local, independent cafes and coffee shops vastly outweighed the appeal of the corporate giant.

Small practical considerations can also be easily overlooked, such as creating quality translations of product and marketing materials, and even ensuring your brand name works well abroad. A number of well-known companies have had to consider adapting the names of their brand or product when launching in a foreign market. The Chevrolet Nova is perhaps the most commonly cited example, where "no va" literally translates to "no go" in Spanish-not the best product name for a car. Although slumping sales figures in Latin America have proven to be an urban legend, the story of the "no go" car serves as a useful reminder of the importance of preparing well before launching your business in a new market.

An obvious risk for international business is political uncertainty and instability. Countries and emerging markets that may offer considerable opportunities for expanding global businesses may also pose challenges, which more established markets do not. Before considering expansion into a new or unknown market, a risk assessment of the economic and political landscape is critical.

Issues such as ill-defined or unstable policies and corrupt practices can be hugely problematic in emerging markets. Changes in governments can bring changes in policy, regulations, and interest rates that can prove damaging to foreign business and investment.

A growing trend towards economic nationalism also makes the current global political landscape potentially hostile towards international businesses. For instance, companies like Facebook are banned in China, partially in preference for national social networks and also due to government regulation over internet content. Monitoring political developments and planning accordingly can mitigate political risks of doing business abroad.

Supply chain complexity and risks of labor exploitation

When it comes to sourcing products and services from overseas, managing suppliers and supply chains can also be a tricky process. Unfortunately, the length and complexity of supply chains increases the chance of working with suppliers who have unethical - and even illegal - business practices. Of growing concern is the risk in international business of forced labor and worker exploitation.

In October 2015, the UK passed the Modern Slavery Act in response to this often-hidden human rights violation. Recent research led by a partnership between Hult International Business School and the Ethical Trading Initiative revealed that an astonishing 77% of businesses believe that modern slavery exists at some point in their supply chains.

To raise awareness and help local and international businesses respond more effectively to this issue, their published research report presents case studies of businesses who have implemented practices at the leading edge of the fight against modern slavery. As the research team continues to bring their findings to light, developing and supporting ethical and sustainable business practices remains a focus in the Hult classroom.

"International conventions and national legislation make modern slavery illegal, but we are still a long way from its final eradication. Businesses can play an important role in addressing modern slavery."
From Corporate Leadership on Modern Slavery

Download the report on Modern Slavery from Hult International Business School

Worldwide environmental issues

As the environmental risks and effects of climate change are becoming better understood, sustainability is high on the agenda of many major global corporations. Recent international legislations and proposals, such as the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, have put environmental issues at the forefront of international business development. The Ashridge Centre for Business and Sustainability at Hult researches innovative ways that organizations can develop and implement more environmentally sustainable business models.

On a practical level, if you're considering expanding your business overseas, it's important to be aware of the country-specific environmental regulations and issues associated with your industry. Some key considerations include how your production methods might impact the local environment through waste and pollution.

Beyond a legal or ethical incentive to be more eco-friendly, establishing environmentally conscious business practices can attract new, forward-thinking consumers to your company. With a number of brands such as Dell, Renault, and MUD Jeans leading a shift towards the circular economy, there is an opportunity and demand for changing production methods and consumer behavior to establish a more sustainable future for the environment and society as a whole.

In the video below, Dr. Mark Esposito discuss the global business and societal benefits of the circular economy:

Closing thoughts

As we see what the first months of the new year will bring for international business, new opportunities, challenges, and uncertainties will continue to arise. How are you preparing to make the most of the opportunities of doing business overseas in 2017? Comment below with any further issues or challenges and how your organization is overcoming them.

Want to learn more? Discover how Hult's unique global Masters, One-Year MBA, and EMBA programs are designed to prepare globally minded professionals to overcome the pressing problems of doing business on the international stage.

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11 Biggest Challenges of International Business in 2017 - Hult News

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From the U.K.'s unprecedented decision to leave the European Union to the historic and divisive U.S. presidential election, 2016 was a year of large-scale change and uncertainty. Nowhere, perhaps, was it felt more keenly than in the world of international business. Political, economic, and environmental issues are increasingly becoming the remit of international business leaders as much as governments.

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We all have to make multiple decisions each day at our jobs. While some can be made easily and without a great deal of thought, other decisions require more complex analysis. These tips include weighing the consequences, contemplating interpersonal issues and weighing alternatives. This is something I deal with during the home buying and home selling process with my customers. When presenting an issue to my customer, I have to think about how each side of the transaction may react and what consequences there are. I have to think about all the possible alternatives and be able to give pros and cons of each. By thinking the problem through before discussing with my customer I am able to provide the information they need to make the best decision for their situation in a way that is not overwhelming to them.

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Communicate your decision, and take action.

Let's look at each of these steps in detail. Each step features a list of related Mind Tools resources to help you further.

Step 1: Investigate the Situation in Detail

Decisions often fail because key factors are missed or ignored from the outset. So, before you can begin to make a decision, you need to fully understand your situation.

Start by considering the decision in the context of the problem it is intended to address. You need to determine whether the stated problem is the real issue, or just a symptom of something deeper.

Look beyond the obvious. It may be that your objective can be approached in isolation, but it's more likely that there are a number of interrelated factors to consider. Changes made in one department, for example, could have knock-on effects elsewhere, making the change counterproductive.

Step 2: Create a Constructive Environment for Your Decision

Can you give your decision the attention it needs? Spend some time preparing yourself before diving in to the facts and figures.

Remember that most decisions will affect other people too, so it helps to create a constructive environment in which to explore the situation together and gain support.

This is especially true when you have to rely on other people to implement a decision that you're responsible for. You'll need to identify who to include in the process and who will be part of any final decision-making group, which will ideally comprise just five to seven people.

Enable people to contribute to the discussions without any fear of the other participants rejecting them and their ideas. Make sure that everyone recognizes that the objective is to make the best decision possible in the circumstances, without blame.

Step 3: Generate Good Alternatives to Decide Between

The wider the options you explore, the better your final decision is likely to be. Generating a number of different options may seem to make your decision more complicated at first, but the act of coming up with alternatives forces you to dig deeper and to look at the problem from different angles.

This is when it can be helpful to employ a variety of creative thinking techniques. These can help you to step outside your normal patterns of thinking and come up with some truly innovative solutions.

Brainstorming is probably the most popular method of generating ideas, but for more tips on how to examine your situation from new perspectives, and how to organize ideas into manageable themes and groups, see the Mind Tools resources in the box, below.

Step 4: Explore Your Options

When you're satisfied that you have a good selection of realistic alternatives, it's time to evaluate the feasibility, risks and implications of each one.

Almost every decision involves some degree of risk. You'll need a structured approach for assessing threats and evaluating the probability of adverse events occurring - and what they might cost to manage. You'll also want to examine the ethical impact of each option, and how that might sit with your personal and organizational values.

The resources highlighted below offer tried-and-true models to help you.

Step 5: Select the Best Solution

Once you've evaluated the alternatives, the next step is to make your decision!

If you have various criteria to consider, use Decision Matrix Analysis to compare them reliably and rigorously. Or, if you want to determine which ones should carry most weight in your decision, conduct a Paired Comparison Analysis.

If your decision is being made within a group, techniques such as multi-voting and the Modified Borda Count can help your team reach an agreement.

When anonymity is important, decision-makers dislike one another, or there is a tendency for certain individuals to dominate the process, use the Delphi Technique to reach a fair and impartial decision. This uses cycles of anonymous, written discussion and argument, managed by a facilitator. Participants do not meet, and sometimes they don't even know who else is involved.

If you're working with an established team, Hartnett's Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making Model is useful for encouraging everyone to participate in making the decision. Or, if you're working with several different teams, or a particularly large group, assign responsibility for each stage of the decision-making process with Bain's RAPID Framework, so that everyone understands their responsibilities and any potential in-fighting can be avoided.

Step 6: Evaluate Your Plan

After all the effort and hard work you've invested in evaluating and selecting alternatives, it can be tempting to forge ahead at this stage. But now, more than ever, is the time to "sense check" your decision. After all, hindsight is great for identifying why things have gone wrong, but it's far better to prevent mistakes from happening in the first place!

Before you start to implement your decision, take a long, dispassionate look at it to be sure that you have been thorough, and that common errors haven't crept into the process.

Your final decision is only as good as the facts and research you used to make it. Make sure that your information is trustworthy, and that you've done your best not to "cherry pick" data. This will help you avoid confirmation bias, a common psychological bias in decision making.

Discuss your preliminary conclusions with important stakeholders to enable them to spot flaws, make recommendations, and support your conclusions. Listen to your own intuition, too, and quietly and methodically test assumptions and decisions against your own experience. BRAIN BRAN BRAND is a useful tool for this. If you have any doubts, examine them thoroughly to work out what's troubling you.

Use Blindspot Analysis to review whether you've fallen prey to problems like over-confidence, escalating commitment, or groupthink. And consider checking the logical structure of your process with the Ladder of Inference, to make sure that a well-founded and consistent decision emerges at the end.

Step 7: Communicate Your Decision, and Take Action

Once you've made your decision, you need to communicate it to everyone affected by it in an engaging, informative and inspiring way.

Get them involved in implementing the solution by discussing how and why you arrived at your decision. The more information you provide about risks and projected benefits, the more likely people will be to support it.

If people point out a flaw in your process as a result, have the humility to welcome their input and review your plans appropriately - it's much better to do this now, cheaply, than having to do it expensively (and embarrassingly) if your plans have failed.

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How to Make Decisions - A Model for Making the Best Possible Choices

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Communicate your decision, and take action. Let's look at each of these steps in detail. Each step features a list of related Mind Tools resources to help you further. Decisions often fail because key factors are missed or ignored from the outset. So, before you can begin to make a decision, you need to fully understand your situation.

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Make Accountability a Core Part of Your Culture

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Make Accountability a Core Part of Your Culture

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"Without accountability, execution suffers." So true. Setting clear goals, tracking them and rewarding good performance help improve accountability and lead to more satisfied employees and less turnover.

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Accountability in the workplace is something every manager wants to have. Accountability has a clear link to higher work performance, but experts indicate that it also results in improved competency and commitment to work, increased employee morale, and work satisfaction (Source: ). It's also known to improve creativity and innovation because the employee is more invested in the future of the organization. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management

However, a ccording to a study (Source: AMA Enterprise, 2013), leaders recognize a significant lack of accountability on the part of employees. In fact, 21 percent of respondents stated that unaccountable employees make up 30-50 percent of their workforce.

What exactly is accountability in the workplace, and why is it essential to high performance? What can leaders do to make accountability part of their organization's culture?

Accountability in the Workplace

High performance teams and organizations empower employees to take ownership, they foster a accountability, and they have a high levels of trust between all levels of the organization. Furthermore, there's a strong link between these three values and characteristics of high performance.
Ownership is about taking initiative and doing the right thing for the business. It's about taking responsibility for results and not assuming it's not someone else's responsibility. At minimum, taking ownership means that if you recognize something is material to achieving results, that you take the initiative to bring it to the attention of the right people. If ownership is about taking initiative, accountability is about follow through and getting done what you said you'd get done. It's recognizing that other team members are dependant on the results of your work and not wanting to let them down. It's about good, open, pro-active communication to keep team members informed on the status of your commitments because you respect that the results of your work has a direct impact on their ability to make their own commitments. Ultimately, when team members consistently demonstrate ownership and accountability, trust is formed.

Why accountability is essential

Without accountability, execution suffers. This happens in two ways.

The first is that when we don't hold ourselves accountable to getting work done well and on time, there's a tendency to become even more lenient and forgiving for slippages. A day becomes a week, a week a month. If it happens once, it's that little bit more acceptable for it to happen again.

The second is that when we don't hold ourselves accountable, the impact is exponential. Your delay becomes your team's delay. The work they had planned gets impacted and that work potentially has further downstream effects. The post, The Importance of Accountability on Teams , explains the lesson of punctuality on the Canadian ski team: when 10 people are waiting for you, if you are 2 minutes late - it's not just 2 minutes lost - the team has lost 22 minutes

Similarly, lack of accountability can snowball in a team, department and organization. Tolerating missed deadlines, lack of punctuality and un-finished work has the tendency to make this behaviour "no big deal". People learn that the real deadline is a week from the published one; that consistently being 10 min late for a meeting is the norm; that sub-par work is acceptable in the interest of "getting it done" (which should not be confused with pushing yourself to ship and not over-work a project). The cumulative impact across an organization can be substantial. One clear way to understand the impact of poor accountability is to imagine accountability in the context of the military. This HBR post, " What Ever Happened to Accountability ", Thomas Ricks covers the impact that a move away from accountability had in the United States Army during the Vietnam war. Ultimately, lack of accountability at the top level trickled down to many levels and had disastrous consequences.

How to Make Accountability Part of Your Culture

Here are some of the things leaders can do to help make accountability a key value.

Make accountability a lived value

Make accountability a part of your team's normal way of operating. Talk about it, share ideas, come to a common consensus about what accountability means in the workplace, and then use that as a foundation everyone works from as they make accountability an organizational goal.

Most importantly, make sure that accountability is more than a stated characteristic of how your team operates. Accountability needs to have consequences which are both positive and negative and those consequences need to be consistently applied. Research consistently contends that business leaders lose the most kudos when poor performance isn't dealt with and poor performers are able to continue without repercussion.

Goals are at the heart of accountability

An important step here is to break things down into meaningful goals and measurable metrics for everyone in the organization. Without proper goals, it's also going to be nearly impossible to effectively enforce accountability.

Goals provide clear expectations for everyone on what's expected. The less room for ambiguity the better - so goals need to be specific and measurable. In a team environment, this is especially important because of the dependency on each others' work and the exponential impact of not meeting expectations.

Another important outcome of having goals is defining what is NOT going to be a priority. One of the biggest reasons we fail to live up to our commitments is because we put too much on our plate and become de-focused on key priorities. So goals need to be realistic. We can't create accountability if what we're asking people to be accountable for isn't realistic or achievable.

Show the numbers

There are 3 ways that showing key metrics creates workplace accountability .

First, showing the number declares ownership. Every goal should be measurable and sharing this is a great way to demonstrate commitment to the result and communicate a clear expectation to other team members.

Second, showing the numbers creates some healthy workplace competition. Achieving goals and receiving recognition is a positive consequence of accountability. Missing a goal that's openly shared with the team has the effect of making us double down the next period to do better.

Third, showing goals helps keep people focused on priorities. It's easy to get distracted by new projects, but showing goals helps you hold yourself accountable and helps others hold you accountable as well.

Make accountability everyone's responsibility

Ownership is about taking responsibility and taking initiative whether or not the responsibility is clearly yours. There's a tendency in group settings for whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present. In the context of accountability, this may mean you don't see yourself as responsible for holding others accountable for timeliness, quality and strong communication. Perhaps it isn't your responsibility - there's someone more senior in the meeting or team, but this is where taking ownership becomes important. Resist the temptation to ignore when someone on your team needs to be held accountable. Owning this aspect of your culture is key so that others can adopt the same attitude. diffusion of responsibility

In terms of having the dialogue, there are likely going to be uncomfortable moments. These two posts from HBR have good tips on how to handle difficult conversations and conflict strategies for nice people .

Build trust through support and encouragement

Trust is an important factor that contributes to accountability. In low-trust environments, people are quick to focus on the blame, not the solution. In high trust environments, people focus on the solution, not the blame.

A key reason people avoid accountability is as a self-defence mechanism, because they're worried about what might happen if things go wrong. A person with low self-confidence - and perhaps bad past experiences - will fear accountability due to fear of messing things up and the imagined consequences, while a person naturally more confident knows they can get up and try again if things go wrong. So give praise where praise is due, to build up confidence in your staff, so people aren't afraid to take things on.

One thing you can do to help individuals that resist accountability is to help them understand the difference between accountability and making a judgement about how well they're doing their job. Failure to meet an objective is OK if the individual let the team know with as much notice as possible, why it happened, how they intend to correct it and to ask for help if it's needed. Approaching failure in this way is demonstrating accountability. There's an opportunity to learn from it and seek coaching or support to ensure future success. In this case, the individual is doing their job well. It's OK to fail from time to time. You just need to be upfront and proactive in your communication of it.

Creating accountable employees delivers numerous business benefits: better execution, lower employee turnover and more creativity and innovation. Overall, shifting to constructive accountability may require a culture change within your team or organization, but leaders, managers and employees will find the results well worth the effort.

About SoapBox

SoapBox Innovations creates software that helps managers engage with employees in a way that increaseses commitment and engagement. We make software that allows an organization to scale how they collect employees ideas and feedback. Recently, we also launched a beta of a one-on-one application called GoodTalk. GoodTalk makes it easier to build agendas and track action items. This increases accountability and helps to make one-on-one meetings more productive.

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How to Create a Culture of Accountability in the Workplace

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Accountability in the workplace is something every manager wants to have. Accountability has a clear link to higher work performance, but experts indicate that it also results in improved competency and commitment to work, increased employee morale, and work satisfaction (Source: ).

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Working in a group can be a challenging experience for me. I like to be in control and get things done on deadline so when others don't work that same way it upsets me. I like these tips and think it would be helpful to share something like this list at the beginning of working with a group to set clear expectations and make it a pleasant experience for everyone.

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Working together in a group can be a great experience or a terrible one. Which way it goes depends, to a large extent, on the quality of the communication among group members and the respect they show for each other. Here are a few guidelines for making your group work successful.

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How to Stay Motivated When You Are Self-Employed

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How to Stay Motivated When You Are Self-Employed

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I am self-employed and work from home so these tips were useful. I especially liked the one about growing. I find that when things are slow, I can stay motivated by learning new things. So, taking an online class, going to an industry event or even just calling a colleague to find out what they are up to can all help me learn more and help me stay motivated to grow my business.

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5 Ways to Stay Highly Motivated When You're Self-Employed

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Being self-employed makes the end result more fruitful since you're the sole credit receiver.

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Writing an Effective Corrective Action Plan

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Writing an Effective Corrective Action Plan

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This information from Northwestern University offers a good checklist for managers to use when doing a corrective action. This provides clear information to both manager and employee about what happened and how to fix it as well as a deadline for follow up.

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Writing an Effective Corrective Action Plan | IRB Institutional Review Board

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Step 1: Clearly state the problem or weakness, including the root cause. Define the Problem: What is happening? What is the effect? What should be happening? How can it be fixed? Step 2: List the individuals who will be accountable for the results of the corrective action Who should be responsible?

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The text mentioned the trend of outsourcing some technical jobs to overseas workers. I have mixed feelings about this. It's great that it helps the people in other countries attain a better standard of living, but it also harms people in our country by reducing the number of jobs available. This article discusses how the trend may actually reverse due to political changes and resulting policy changes since the election in 2016.

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The IT environment drastically changed in 2016, with Cloud and enterprise systems such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS and machine learning capabilities and other technologies gaining prominence. Many of these followed the outsourcing way, with companies facing outsourcing integration challenges or facing roadblocks about outsourcing selections. New service-based norms of outsourcing became mainstream-pay-as-you-go models took over in a bid to attract even small players. And new skills needed to be dug up or developed to deliver to expectations. Most importantly, the upcoming Presidency of Donald Trump has put a big question mark on outsourcing from a policy perspective, making the global trade community apprehensive. The year 2017 spells a similar state of flux for the IT outsourcing industry.

One thing is sure, uncertainty will mark US outsourcing, and thereby, global outsourcing. Political repercussions will have the power to overhaul the IT outsourcing outlook, as direct-impact areas, such as trade agreements, rules and regulations, tax policies, visas and immigration directives, are expected to change.

Brexit and Trump will change course: The course of IT outsourcing will be determined by the new Trump regime in the US and the expected effects of Brexit in the UK. Companies have already started re-assessing their contracts in the light of the not-so pro-outsourcing changes expected. Legal implications will be discussed deeper, renegotiations will happen, as companies try to arrive at common ground for policy adherence and business viability. Despite this, we can expect more work being transitioned to onshore delivery centers, than off-shore.

Security will be a key concern: The year 2016 was an infamous year for data and security breaches. As outsourcing policies change, delivery mechanisms and required infrastructure will change, creating security challenges. On the other hand, increased awareness about security will compel companies to opt for advanced security measures, such as automation, threat intelligence and analytics solutions. New vendors in the security space will emerge, delivering niche services to customers.

Artificial-intelligence led automation: Machine learning will find a place in the process of commercial outsourcing, with deep learning providing deeper insights into outsourcing mechanisms, and driving down costs. Automation will help standardise, thereby reducing direct costs and extending benefits to suppliers, buyers and customers. Thus, the details of existing outsourcing deals may stand redundant and we will see lot of renegotiation led by intelligent automation.

The Cloud will mature: The initial craze for the Cloud has worn off. Customers are now ascending maturity levels. As customers become more knowledgeable, Cloud service providers will need to adapt or perish. One can expect home-grown cloud vendors to emerge, having taken a cue from the initial outsourced parties on how to deliver a superlative cloud experience.

Dwindling growth prospects for offshore providers: With policy changes, comes a hit to offshore services providers, be it cloud, data and analytics or SaaS. The persisting currency exchange issues are a dampener, badly affecting the margins and resulting in staff downsizing. Vendors will have to thus, face reality and be prepared to find alternative avenues to revenue generation. One way may be to look for acquisitions by the US and UK companies.

Defeat of the call center: An earlier prominent outsourcing function-the call center will lose its significance with the emergence of self-servicing tools and intelligent virtual assistants. Virtual agents will take over in the form of contact centers catering to customers' queries and needs.

Cognitive will see concrete advancement: While 2016 saw much talk and less concrete action in the cognitive intelligence space, 2017 should seal it for cognitive-based solutions, particularly platforms. Many of these may be home-grown, rather than the current crop of outsourced ones. These new entrants will use the past references of specific case studies to establish themselves.

Market consolidation: Most importantly, with all these policy changes shaking up the IT outsourcing ecosystem, we can expect a slew of spin-offs, mergers, acquisitions and renewed ways of working to take over. New policies will ensure some vendors are thrown out of business-only those who understand and action the changes, will make it through.

2017 is thus, proposed to be the end of the outsourcing saga. The model which delivered a competitive advantage to companies and a cost advantage to customers, is set to cease. How companies will cope and bounce back, is a question of agility and action, at the right time and with the right business model.

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Trends 2017: What to Expect in Outsourcing This Year

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The IT environment drastically changed in 2016, with Cloud and enterprise systems such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS and machine learning capabilities and other technologies gaining prominence. Many of these followed the outsourcing way, with companies facing outsourcing integration challenges or facing roadblocks about outsourcing selections.

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The concept of big data and its applications for management and decision making is fascinating. This article discusses a few ways that companies are using big data about consumers garnered from the internet to make decisions about products, customer service and global marketing.

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Leaders from eBay, Chico's and Brooks Brothers describe today's shoppers

Alison Bolen, SAS Insights Editor

We all know that today's consumer is more connected than ever before. But it's still staggering when you think about it: This one, single device that we keep in our pockets can be used to review products, check prices, share purchases, request coupons - and sometimes even to purchase products from one retailer's online channel while standing in a competitor's store.

While mobile connectivity has empowered the consumer to shop in many different ways - it has also created opportunities for retailers. Namely, it opens the door for retailers to interact with customers more purposefully and to become more personalized in those interactions.

As smart retailers think about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, data and analytics remain at the center of their thoughts. But what, exactly, are they thinking?

Read Shopper Insights to Improve Retail Loyalty Programs

We brought together three leading technologists from the retail industry to help us describe and define today's consumer - and how retailers are responding to this new consumer.

The seven characteristics they've identified are:

Around-the-clock-shopping. "There's an expectation among today's consumers that the ability to consume is a 24/7 thing," says Eric Singleton, Chico's Chief Information Officer. "When consumption can take place at any time of the day, retailers have to address the nuances and the requirements of different consumer needs throughout day." According to Singleton, the Internet of Things will compound this issue in the coming years. "Our challenge as a businesses is to address those expectations on every conceivable platform.

Consumers are in control. "Customers in today's era are much more in control of their shopping experience, and they know they can dictate the shopping experience that they want," Gayatri Patel, eBay's Director of Global Data infrastructure. "They have the means to explore, research and share every purchase decision. And they can do it in a very quick way. If you lose them, it may not be just for that purchase. It may be for a long time. You have to be responsive to their needs immediately instead of trying to direct them. That balancing act is the biggest challenge."

Omnichannel shopping. "The biggest trend we see right now is this blurring of lines across channels," says Sahal Laher, Brooks Brothers Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer. "No matter where he is shopping, the consumer is the consumer. You have to break down those barriers between channels, empower the consumer in a uniform way and engage them in the same way on your site as you would in your store."

Content consumers. "Customers are branching out with this significantly broader ability to explore your products in the moment," says Singleton. "They have closer relationships with what they're buying and the reasons for buying it in their mind. Content has tremendous influence on how they're behaving, so Chico's is also looking at content to complement decisions in a more enriched way for customers, especially on social channels."

Global experience. "It's a truly global economy," says Laher. "We need to understand the customers' needs wherever they are. Whether they're in our NYC store or our Tokyo store, we need to arm associates with the tools that will make the customer interaction as meaningful as possible."

Collaborators. "There is a lot more collaboration and sharing of information that can influence consumer decisions compared to the offline experience," says Patel. "eBay can complement those experiences with our retail partnerships." Singleton agrees, saying "There's definite use of devices to check out and share new products, to see if something complements your existing wardrobe or to validate what you saw on the Web."

Social sharers. "The relevance of social media on retail is untapped but growing very rapidly," says Laher. "It goes beyond retail reviews of purchases. We are working with an outside partner to leverage social feedback before we even have products in the store. We can have various online groups give feedback on ideas and colors before investing time and money to create different colors and incur the costs of manufacturing and shipping, for example. That feedback mechanism didn't exist before."

Sound familiar? Do these characteristics describe you or your customers? If you want to know more about how our panel of retail technologists are using data and analytics to meet the needs of today's consumer, come back next week and we'll share some great tips and ideas.

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Seven characteristics of the modern consumer

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Alison Bolen, SAS Insights Editor We all know that today's consumer is more connected than ever before. But it's still staggering when you think about it: This one, single device that we keep in our pockets can be used to review products, check prices, share purchases, request coupons - and sometimes even to purchase products from one retailer's online channel while standing in a competitor's store.

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I completely agree with this theory about power. Developing personal power is the way to be successful as a manager. This is similar to the way I work today as a realtor. Gain trust, display knowledge and win customers.

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French and Raven's Five Forms of Power: Understanding Where Power Comes From in the Workplace

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Power comes in many forms. Identify them so you can push back on the negative ones.

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I agree with this article. If the manager is engaged, the employees will perform better. Also good point about reward programs and the burn out factor. It's discouraging when you get a reward for something one year and then nothing the next year. My husband's company did a fantastic holiday party in 2015 but nothing at all in 2016 and everyone was really bummed out. Consistency is important.

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Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started "
As a manager, you have a powerful effect on how engaged your organization will ultimately be. Employee engagement is ultimately a viral phenomenon. True, the word is terribly overused in a time when everyone's talking about viral marketing, viral memes on social networks, and so on. But it makes sense when you're talking about an organization -- a living organism in which every employee is a cell. Inside the organization, ideas, emotions and attitudes spread in the same way that a virus spreads from cell to cell in the body.

An organization can't say, "You will now be engaged." Beyond choosing to be engaged herself, however, a manager can (and should) create conditions under which engagement can thrive, and then step back and see who "catches" the "engagement bug." As a manager, you have a great deal of influence over this process. By virtue of your own level of engagement -- what you say and do, rather than the orders you give or memos you write -- you can help create an environment in which people will choose to be engaged or choose to be cynical and indifferent. You're the boots on the ground, and your behavior as a leader can have a far greater impact on organization-wide engagement than decrees from the C-suite. After all, if you go all-in, your followers are more likely to do the same.

Our manager engagement research shows us something very interesting (and somewhat surprising): an engaged manager has a greater ability to uplift a team's engagement level than a disengaged manager does to drag a team's engagement down. According to the data, a team's employee engagement increases by an average of 23% when that team's manager is fully engaged. On the other hand, the team's percentage of fully disengaged employees only increases by 7% when a manager is fully disengaged, versus fully engaged. In other words, if I'm an engaged manager, my team is quite a bit more likely to engage as well. If I'm a disengaged manager, well, human nature takes over.

So, what is a manager's role in engagement? First of all, be transformational, not transactional. When I see articles that talk about this or that company's "engagement programs," and go into detail about awarding cruises to high-performing personnel, I cringe. Perks are important, but they don't equal engagement. Perks are transactional. If I give you a cruise to the Caribbean this year, what happens when I don't give you a cruise on the Rhine next year?

Our research into engaged teams and engaged managers has consistently revealed six common things that good managers do to create engaged teams:

1. They are personally engaged. Not only do these managers preach engagement, they live it. They are engaged as both individuals and managers. They bring their hearts, spirits, minds, and hands to their work. It's contagious.

2. They are involved. We often see "management by exception," which means the only time a subordinate interacts with her leader is when she does something well or really steps in it. Engaged managers are there day-to-day, taking the temperature, learning what people need to be inspired to give discretionary effort.

3. They hire wisely. You may not have total discretion over hiring for your team or department. But you probably have influence. The engaged manager does whatever he or she can to ensure that new hires are people likely to get on board with the organization's engagement environment.

4. They create an environment of "MAGIC": Meaning, Autonomy, Growth, Impact, and Connection. They understand the key components of engagement, and don't try to substitute imitation satisfaction factors for what's truly important.

5. They don't mess it up. When your team is fully engaged, sometimes your job is just to get out of the way and adjust the sails.

6. They lead by example. More than anything, the engaged manager's role is to lead by example. In the words of Gandhi, "be the change you wish to create."

Engagement is the innate default setting of the great majority of human beings. We naturally crave engagement, and we will stretch to find it even in circumstances where it is not made readily available. If this doesn't make sense, think of it this way. When was the last day you showed up at work and thought, "I sure hope today sucks"? Rarely, I would guess. One thing working to a manager's advantage, then, is that human nature is to want to be engaged, regardless of the circumstances that surround us. It's simply easier to do when my manager is also engaged, and creates that environment in which I can also choose to engage.

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6 Common Things Good Managers Do to Create Engaged Teams

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Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started " As a manager, you have a powerful effect on how engaged your organization will ultimately be. Employee engagement is ultimately a viral phenomenon.

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I don't see how this leadership style would really work in business. If you are focusing all your energy on better your employees wouldn't your business objectives take a back seat? Not sure how this style can be successfully applied in the business world, but definitely see this being ideal in the non-profit sector and government (even though that will never happen).

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While servant leadership is a timeless concept, the phrase "servant leadership" was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said:

"The servant-leader is servant first... It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions...The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

"The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?"

A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the "top of the pyramid," servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.

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What is Servant Leadership? - Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership

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While servant leadership is a timeless concept, the phrase "servant leadership" was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said: "The servant-leader is servant first... It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.

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I learned in the discussion that the founders of Marriott are Mormons and how their faith influenced their corporate values and policies. Their website has an extensive section on corporate social responsibility and I was pleased to see how seriously they take this. They are able to respect people and the environment while still making a profit for shareholders and that made me happy.

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in taking on our world's most pressing social, environmental and economic issues. With our size and scale, we have a global responsibility and a unique opportunity to be a force for good. Guided by our 2025 Sustainability and Social Impact Goals, as well as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we commit to creating positive and sustainable impact wherever we do business.

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Today, business plays an increasingly critical role... in taking on our world's most pressing social, environmental and economic issues. With our size and scale, we have a global responsibility and a unique opportunity to be a force for good. Guided by our 2025 Sustainability and Social Impact Goals, as well as the UN Sustainable Development ...

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Interesting to learn how recruiters are using this site to find job candidates.

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1 billion members | Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights and opportunities.

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This link has some great ideas for questions - Do you see yourself working here one year from now? If you were to quit today, what reason would you give? What three words would you use to describe our company's culture?

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Employee engagement is suffering. According to Gallup's 2017 State of the American Workplace Report, only 33% of U.S. workers are engaged with their jobs. Previously, the management consulting company found that a mere 13% of employees are engaged across the globe. Considering the fact that, as Dale Carnegie points out, companies with engaged employees outperform those without them by up to 202%, it comes as no surprise that engagement is routinely listed as a top concern for many organizations.

One of the easiest ways to increase employee engagement is by regularly soliciting feedback from your team in order to know how they're feeling at any given point in time. By using pulse surveys on a weekly or biweekly basis to ask workers a few questions while giving them the opportunity to respond to them anonymously, you can increase the chances the feedback you receive is honest, helpful, and productive.

To get the most out of pulse surveys, you can't expect to ask any old question whenever you feel like it. Instead, you need to ask the right ones at the right frequency to stay on top of employee sentiment.

With the right strategy in place, pulse surveys will increase employee engagement - making your company that much stronger. With that in mind, here are 20 employee engagement survey questions you need to ask your team every at recurring intervals:

01. On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you at work?

If you want to get straight to the point, this question is undoubtedly the most direct in relation to workplace satisfaction. Find out where your company's morale falls on the 10-point scale.

How likely an employee would refer someone is a reflection on how satisfied this person is at their job. If they're unhappy with their job, you can bet they don't have much good to say to their friends about the company.

Another poll by Gallup found that employees who get the opportunity to continually develop are twice as likely to say they will spend their career with their company. Find out if your workers have a clear understanding of what lies ahead of them. If their answers are negative, you'll need to start offering developmental opportunities to prevent people from quitting in rapid succession.

Employees need to balance work and their personal life in order to be productive and engaged. If employees are feeling lopsided, then that's a red flag that signals burnout is right around the corner.

Bad communication, lack of transparency, feeling unvalued - these can all be uncovered by asking this question. Find out whether your employees feel like they're there to stay or if there are underlying issues that are driving them to look elsewhere for work.
06. Do you feel valued at work?
Our research has revealed that only 21% of employees feel strongly valued at work. Use this question to gauge how valued workers in your organization are feeling.

Find out how the leadership team is doing with recognizing their employees. If the majority of workers have said they've gone more than two weeks without recognition, there's a good chance morale is dropping. And that can lead to disengagement, loss of productivity, and attrition.

Feeling valued at work is a huge motivator. This question will help uncover if leaders (or peers) have missed the mark when it comes to recognition. If employees don't feel their hard work is properly recognized, you can work together to find a solution to this problem.

Employees want to work at a place that will nurture their desire for growth. The more opportunities for growth your organization can offer, the longer employees will stick around.

This is a tricky question - the happier an employee is at their current job, the more likely they would be to reapply to that very same position. So if an employee rates on the lower end of the spectrum then they're most likely unhappy and won't be at the job for long.

A question like this is pretty self-explanatory. However, it can say a lot about your retention rate. If a majority of your employees are saying they don't see themselves working here in one year, you've got some changes to make.

No one wants to work at a place that ignores their employees. When leaders don't take feedback or suggestions seriously, it shows that they're not committed to making improvements. And frankly, it makes employees feel unvalued.

Our previous research found that transparency is the number one factor that contributes to workplace happiness. In our 2017 Employee Engagement Report, however, we found that only 25% of workers believe management is very transparent - despite that nearly twice as many managers consider themselvestransparent.

Find out how well your leaders are doing with providing information to their employees.

Our previous research has also uncovered the fact that only 42% of employees know their organization's vision, mission, and cultural values. A low number is unsettling because it's saying that employees are doing their work without any real understanding of how they're contributing to the company or that everyone isn't working on the same page.

Fun, suppressive, supportive - find out what your employees think about your culture. Use the results to find ways to strengthen and improve your culture to suit your employees' needs.

A workplace should never be a hostile environment. Nor should it be one that's suppressive. Employees should feel comfortable providing feedback to their supervisors so that they can continue to offer suggestions for improvements.

You want to build a culture where people respect one another - not one where heads clash. Dig under the surface to find out how employees truly feel about each other. If they're not supporting one another, it's time to start doing team-building activities.

Do your employees feel like the organization's values are just meaningless words on the walls? Or maybe they believe leaders aren't living out the values. Either way, an organization's values are there are guidelines for behaviors and decisions.

Are the top leaders in your organization fostering a positive work environment or a negative one? With this survey question, you'll be able to go behind the scenes and find out how well leaders are upholding the organization's culture.

Employees spend so many hours at work. Find out if your employees think your organization's culture is worth waking up every day for.

Anonymous employee surveys are an important tool for fighting disengagement and attrition. But you'll need to act on this feedback by sharing it with your employees and working with them to find solutions to improve the workplace in order to truly foster an engaging environment.

Got a Favorite Question?

The beauty of employee feedback surveys is that there are many ways to ask each question. What unique or creative questions have you used in your employee surveys? Share them with us in the comments section below!

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in June 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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20 Employee Engagement Survey Questions You Need to Ask

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Employee engagement is suffering. According to Gallup's 2017 State of the American Workplace Report, only 33% of U.S. workers are engaged with their jobs. Previously, the management consulting company found that a mere 13% of employees are engaged across the globe.

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The thing that most people struggle with is listening to hear, not to reply. Good advice for paraphrasing back what was said to ensure that the message was understood correctly.

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What makes a good listener? Most people think is comes down to three components: not interrupting the speaker, following along with facial expressions, and being able to repeat back almost verbatim what the speaker has just said. According to research from Zenger and Folkman, however, we’re doing it…

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Cool infographic with tips on running and effective committee meeting

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How to Run Committee Meetings Infographic

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It takes the right set of tools to run successful committee meetings, including relevant agendas, specific motions, meaningful discussion, and voting procedures to make credible decisions.

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Perhaps no hard or soft skill gets as much blame when social situations break down as communication. It's pretty common to hear disagreements end with "You're just not communicating well," or "It must have been a miscommunication."

Understanding communication

For its apparent necessity, communication doesn't always include a huge margin for error. There's actually a good reason for that, and it is because communication is not just one person's burden. By definition, communication means two or more people exchanging information.

Often understood to be verbal, communication can take on many forms. For instance, I (the author) am communicating with you (the reader). There are many important types and forms of communication. Here are the six most important forms of communication.

1. Listening

We were talking above about how many arguments are blamed on miscommunication (most of them - rightly so). In those arguments, it isn't uncommon to hear one party accuse the other of "not listening." It's not just in arguments, though, that listening is important. Listening is a mode where you are receiving and processing every other form of communication another person, or group of people, is putting forward.

Good listening skills will not only help you in the midst of an argument, but will be beneficial to avoiding disagreements altogether. Understanding that a person's communication goes far beyond his or her words will help you read into nonverbal cues and possibly extrapolate completely different messages than what he or she is saying in some cases.

2. Verbal communication

As the form of which most people think when they hear 'communication,' verbal communication is incredibly important to well being in your relationships. Knowing how to use words to properly articulate your thoughts in a way that is gentle and yet assertive can be one of the most difficult soft skills to master. Understanding your audience can be crucial to elements of verbal communication like word choice, slang usage, etc.

Other instances may call for you to use euphemism, or say something in a kinder and less forward way than you might actually intend. Another verbal communication skill is repeating back something somebody else has just said to you. Not only does this show you were listening, but helps avoid you misunderstanding their meaning if they did not communicate it properly.

3. Nonverbal communication

Did you know that, while verbal communication is extremely important, it only makes up 7% of all communication. Your mind literally only uses words as a last resort when nonverbals clues have been perceived as ineffective communication. Because is a bit of a deconstructed term (meaning any communication without words) it encompasses a huge range of elements.

The most studied elements to nonverbal communication are things like body language, eye contact, voice tone or inflections, and distance. Paying attention to the way you are using these elements to communicate will help give you a more straight-forward and assertive communication method. For instance, if you're involved in a project and trying to communicate that you think it will get done on time (even if you're nervous about it), a relaxed stance (one foot crossed over the other if standing, shoulders lowered, chin up) and wide hand movements are confident communicators.

On the other hand, if you're not mindful of this and telling your group that you "know everything will get done" in a weak voice, moving erratically and with your arms crossed, you are actually betraying what you're saying with your nonverbals.

While your group members may not be able to put their finger on it, most or all of them will be able to say there was something untrustworthy about your assertion. Their minds are doing what all ours do - recognizing nonverbal cues first and prioritizing them higher than verbal communication.

4. Emotional awareness

Like nonverbal communication, emotional awareness is an element of good communication that requires you to be attentive and in-the-moment. Good emotional awareness means being able to figure out the emotions both you and a conversational partner are bringing to discourse.

Our emotions are powerful filters that are going to affect our perception of reality regardless of how hard we try to be unbiased. Knowing your own emotional state will help you communicate better. For example:

A coworker has said something to me that made me feel stupid and like I didn't know what I was doing. When I go to meet up with a friend later, he's telling me about this new stereo he bought and mentions it's a 150-watt amplifier, then follows up with "not that I expect you to know what that means." The conversation can either continue or break down here.

1. I lose my temper and storm out. How could he also think that? Maybe I really am stupid!

2. I acknowledge his comment and respond "Yeah I hear watt numbers thrown around a lot on TV ads, but really don't know what that all means. Is 150 good?"

In the first scenario, I was unaware of how self-conscious I had been feeling since I had been made to feel stupid at work (which was also likely just a communication breakdown). Because I didn't stop to think about my own state, the insecurity festered and caused a catastrophic meltdown when my friend triggered those latent emotions.

In the second scenario, I had spent time thinking about how the coworker didn't really mean I was stupid, and she was having a bad day and probably taking that out on me a little bit, and I really know what I'm doing. I also knew that I was liable to respond negatively to criticism because of my earlier experience. Even though those feelings were triggered, I was aware of them and didn't let them control my reaction to a completely harmless comment from a friend.

See how important it is? The same goes for others. In the example above, if I had known that my coworker was upset about her favorite baseball team losing a few hours ago, I would know that any mercurial reaction she had was not actually an indication of how she felt. Of course if everybody in this story knew how they were feeling, all of the poor communication would have probably been avoided.

5. Written communication

Most of us aren't dipping quills into ink any more to write lengthy letters on our holiday in Charleston, or new birth in the family (that's what Facebook and Instagram are for, right?). We are still confronted with multiple situations every day, however, in which having a handle on effective written communication opens the door to stronger professional and personal relationships.

Whether it's sending an email to your boss, composing a cordial text message to a friend or reaching out to your friends on Facebook and asking for donations to a charitable cause, written communication is often taken for granted in spite of its importance. It's also a difficult communication style to master, as it utilizes words alone without any vocal inflections or nonverbal cues. Additionally, unlike in-the-moment communications, written communications may be referenced after their initial receipt which means there's an even greater importance to understand audience and communicate clearly and respectfully.

The application of your writing may require adherence to an established structure or series of conventions. These rules can vary greatly, but will often need to be minded in order to have your writing taken seriously and accomplish its end purpose.

6. Communicating in difficult situations

Difficult situations can make communication feel impossible, or at least secondary to survival and protecting your self-interest. Both stress and uncertainty can team up to evoke your fight or flight response in personal and professional settings. Here are some situations which could be difficult:

For supply-chain reasons alone, you've been consistently underperforming at work and now your district manager has asked to meet with you personally.

A romantic relationship has been on the rocks lately. Your partner text messages you and asks if you can meet up tonight to talk.

Your son calls you and said he accidentally left the car unlocked in a not-great neighborhood and now it's gone.

You received a letter from the insurance company, letting you know that your claim for the emergency dental surgery you had last month was denied.

As a civil engineer, you are called to a city council meeting to explain why the intersection you planned in the suburbs has had a record number of traffic accidents.

Not only does stress make it difficult to examine your emotional state, but there is an impetus present for good communication in these circumstances. It's like being forced to swim 5 laps...but also your feet are tied together...and also if you don't make it you drown in the ocean.

Mastering communication in difficult situations is a lifelong process, but every time you do it (...and maybe fail a bit), you learn something that can teach you about how to do it better the next time.

Understanding the distinction between planned conversations that are difficult and unplanned will also help, as you are going to be liable to react differently depending on how aware you were the communication would be taking place.

While planned communication (like the scenarios above) will give you time to assess how to keep your verbal communication respectful, stay confident and assertive in your nonverbals, and be aware of your emotional state, being able to communicate in difficult situations that are unplanned is truly the Olympics of good communication.

A helpful strategy to begin the road toward great communication in difficult, or down right bad, situations is to monitor your emotional reactions when bad or stressful news is sprung upon you. People react differently.

You may be somebody who immediately puts all of the blame on him or herself, and need to remind yourself that disagreements or failures are usually a multi-person effort.

You may be somebody who immediately gets angry, and need to spend a minute breathing deeply and trying as hard as you can to think objectively about the best way to move forward.
Understanding your own communication DNA is the first step toward correcting any issues that may be building walls between you and others, and will help prepare you for the times where you're not able to think about the best way to respond to criticism or difficulty in relationships.

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Perhaps no hard or soft skill gets as much blame when social situations break down as communication. It's pretty common to hear disagreements end with "You're just not communicating well," or "It must have been a miscommunication." Understanding communication For its apparent necessity, communication

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5 guidelines for making employee recognition programs effective. I agree with most of these, but disagree with the author and think that monetary recognition is pretty important.

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I was grocery shopping the other day (Yes, this sometimes happens). A mom with two small kids in tow kept up a constant stream of chatter: "Great job pushing the cart, Stella, you are so smart." "Good work picking out a pepper, Max, now put it back." It went on and on - kids do something/anything, mother responds with a positive affirmation, kids do another something, mother reacts. This is so awesome to see in action. I'm in aisle 10 and it continues. There is a giant metaphor unfolding as I seek out my coconut water.

You rock. You're so special. Nice job putting your toys away. On and on it goes: reflexive praise for doing the right thing and, in many cases, the not-so-right thing. We're becoming a culture in which people expect to be rewarded for drawing breath and taking up space, which makes the job of an HR pro or business leader tasked with employee retention a difficult one indeed. If many of your employees expect routine and social praise and "badges", how can you recognize extraordinary achievement? When should recognition and reward be linked?

In many organizations recognition and financial reward are joined at the hip. An employee does something above and beyond and receives a gift card or a lunch with the boss; a team achieves a goal and is rewarded with a party. These rewards, however, can backfire; they tell the employee that he or she is worth n dollars to the organization for some level of effort. In my opinion this approach misses the point of recognition: people are motivated by more than money. People crave positive feedback, recognition they put in extra effort, acknowledgement of leaders and peers, the glow that comes with knowing an achievement has been seen, appreciated and celebrated. I love this place. But I'm also realistic as I look at ways leaders can recruit and truly nurture current and future talent.

Financial reward is a great thing, don't get me wrong, but it's not the equivalent of recognition. Let's not kid ourselves. It's a short term solution. Neither is constant praise for average work. Recognition is a key tool in employee retention programs for a reason: people need more than constructive feedback and positive affirmation. They need recognition of extra effort. They need to "feel" it. This will never go away as a basic human need.
An effective approach to employee recognition encompasses these key points:
1) In the moment - as much as possible, be timely. Catch people doing exemplary work and acknowledge their efforts. Don't be knee-jerk - showing up for work on time does not count in most cases. Be specific, descriptive and measured.

2) In context - recognition is most effective when it's given in the context of a larger goal or business-results-focused activity. Random affirmations are much less meaningful than those tied to a business goal. An employee who lands a big contract by putting in the extra effort needs to know you noticed, and understand the employee's effort to ensure business success. This matters.

3) Appropriate in volume/scale - think back to the mom in the market. Was the praise she doled out appropriate in scale and volume? Not really. Here again randomness is not your ally. Recognition should match effort and results, or it loses meaning. This is where the complexity lives.

4) Authentic, not automatic - you have to mean it when you give employees recognition. This is my chief worry about automated recognition systems - they remove the human touch so important to effective recognition. Can we find a smart balance? Can we make social HRTech software work?

5) Tied to the employee's perception of value - people know when they're valued, and they should have a good idea of their value to the organization. Monetary rewards can skew this notion of value, linking it to cash when it should be linked to appreciation of extra effort and smarts. Money is appropriate much of the time, but it's not the only - or even the most effective - motivator. Treat employees as valued team members, not as numbers. Most of the time it's the best way to really recognize a valued player.

There is HR Technology that's super sexy and relevant for engagement. I'm overthinking it at the moment. This is typical as we find the most meaningful ways to innovate the future of work. I'm excited about software and social applications for rockstar leaders and workplace culture. It's all good. Now we seek to connect the most relevant, human and inspiring dots.

I have many thoughts about how we, as a society and a global social leadership community, handle recognition, but I'd like to hear what's on your mind. Please weigh in and tell me what recognition means to you, and how you've successfully recognized your employees and co-workers. Leaders jump in here too. Lead the revolution. You Rock.

Image credit: businessnewsdaily.com

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5 Ways Leaders Rock Employee Recognition

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I was grocery shopping the other day (Yes, this sometimes happens). A mom with two small kids in tow kept up a constant stream of chatter: "Great job pushing the cart, Stella, you are so smart." "Good work picking out a pepper, Max, now put it back." It went on [...]

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This article talks about how Zappos created their core values and touches on a lot of things mentioned in the text - how time consuming it was; gathering input from the employees; the need to let management know exactly what leaders were looking for in new hires; how HR developed interview questions to hit on each of the core values and determine a match. Very interesting article that gave a real life perspective on this idea

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Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. During the past 10 years, the company has grown from almost no sales to more than $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales, driven primarily by repeat customers and word of mouth. Below is an excerpt from Tony's forthcoming book that describes the beginning of Zappos.
Even though our core values guide us in everything we do today, we didn't actually have any formal core values for the first six or seven years of the company's history. It's my fault that we didn't do it in the early years, because it was something I'd always thought of as a very "corporate" thing to do. I resisted doing it for as long as possible.

I'm just glad that an employee finally convinced me that it was necessary to come up with core values - essentially, a formalized definition of our culture - in order for us to continue to scale and grow.

I only wish we had done it sooner.

Back in San Francisco, Nick [Zappos' original founder], Fred, and I tried to interview every prospective employee to make sure they were a culture fit for Zappos. When we moved the company to Vegas, we were hiring a lot of people very quickly due to our rapid growth. It wasn't scalable for us to be involved with every new hire decision, but the problem was that because we had so many new employees, not everyone knew exactly what we were looking for when we said we were looking for a culture fit.

Someone from our legal department suggested that we come up with a list of core values to serve as a guide for managers to make hiring decisions. I thought about all the employees I wanted to clone because they represented the Zappos culture well, and tried to figure out what values they personified. I also thought about all the employees and ex-employees who were not culture fits, and tried to figure out where there was a values disconnect.

As I started creating the list, I realized that I needed to get everyone's input on what our core values should be.

Over the course of a year, I emailed the entire company several times and got a lot of suggestions and feedback on which core values were the most important to our employees.

I was surprised the process took so long, but we wanted to make sure not to rush through the process because whatever core values we eventually came up with, we wanted to be ones that we could truly embrace.

The commitment part was the most challenging part. A lot of corporations have "core values" or "guiding principles," but the problem is that they're usually very lofty sounding and they read like a press release that the marketing department put out. A lot of times, an employee might learn about them on day one of orientation, but then the values just end up being part of a meaningless plaque on the wall of the corporate lobby.

We wanted to make sure that didn't happen with our core values. We wanted a list of committable core values that we were willing to hire and fire on. If we weren't willing to do that, then they weren't really "values."

We eventually came up with our final list of 10 core values, which we still use today:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service

2. Embrace and Drive Change

3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

5. Pursue Growth and Learning

6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

8. Do More With Less

9. Be Passionate and Determined

10. Be Humble

Over time, our recruiting department developed interview questions for each and every one of the core values, and we tested our commitment during the hiring process.

Be Humble is probably the core value that ends up affecting our hiring decisions the most. There are a lot of experienced, smart, and talented people we interview that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But a lot of them are also really egotistical, so we end up not hiring them. At most companies, the hiring manager would probably argue that we should hire such a candidate because he or she will add a lot of value to the company, which is probably why most large corporations don't have great cultures.

Our philosophy at Zappos is that we're willing to make short-term sacrifices (including lost revenue or profits) if we believe that the long-term benefits are worth it. Protecting the company culture and sticking to core values is a long-term benefit.

Once we had our final list of our ten core values, I sent an e-mail to the entire company describing each of them in more detail. We still refer to the original e-mail today. In fact, when new employees join the company, they are required to sign a document stating that they have read the core values document and understand that living up to the core values is part of their job expectation.
Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. "Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose" is Tony Hsieh's first book, and will be released on June 7, 2010. The book can be pre-ordered on Amazon. For more information about the book, visit: http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com.

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How Zappos Infuses Culture Using Core Values

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Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. During the past 10 years, the company has grown from almost no sales to more than $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales, driven primarily by repeat customers and word of mouth. Below is an excerpt from Tony's forthcoming book that describes the beginning of Zappos.

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I love how the Zappos website has a well thought-out section about corporate culture. It's more than just a statement, seems like they really live their ideals.

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Explore The Zappos.com Blog, Your All-Access Pass To Company Culture, Charity Events, Lifestyle Advice And Beyond.

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A useful technique for understanding strengths and weaknesses to aid in decision making.

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How to Do a SWOT Analysis

Avoid relying on your own, partial understanding of your organization. Your assumptions could be wrong. Instead, gather a team of people from a range of functions and levels to build a broad and insightful list of observations.

Then, every time you identify a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, or Threat, write it down in the relevant part of the SWOT analysis grid for all to see.

Let's look at each area in more detail and consider what fits where, and what questions you could ask as part of your data gathering.

Strengths

Strengths are things that your organization does particularly well, or in a way that distinguishes you from your competitors. Think about the advantages your organization has over other organizations. These might be the motivation of your staff, access to certain materials, or a strong set of manufacturing processes.

Then turn your perspective around and ask yourself what your competitors might see as your strengths. What factors mean that you get the sale ahead of them?

Remember, any aspect of your organization is only a strength if it brings you a clear advantage. For example, if all of your competitors provide high-quality products, then a high-quality production process is not a strength in your market: it's a necessity.

Weaknesses

Weaknesses, like strengths, are inherent features of your organization, so focus on your people, resources, systems, and procedures. Think about what you could improve, and the sorts of practices you should avoid.

Once again, imagine (or find out) how other people in your market see you. Do they notice weaknesses that you tend to be blind to? Take time to examine how and why your competitors are doing better than you. What are you lacking?

Be honest! A SWOT analysis will only be valuable if you gather all the information you need. So, it's best to be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths as soon as possible.

Opportunities

Opportunities are openings or chances for something positive to happen, but you'll need to claim them for yourself!

They usually arise from situations outside your organization, and require an eye to what might happen in the future. They might arise as developments in the market you serve, or in the technology you use. Being able to spot and exploit opportunities can make a huge difference to your organization's ability to compete and take the lead in your market.

Think about good opportunities that you can exploit immediately. These don't need to be game-changers: even small advantages can increase your organization's competitiveness. What interesting market trends are you aware of, large or small, which could have an impact?

You should also watch out for changes in government policy related to your field. And changes in social patterns, population profiles, and lifestyles can all throw up interesting opportunities.

Threats

Threats include anything that can negatively affect your business from the outside, such as supply-chain problems, shifts in market requirements, or a shortage of recruits. It's vital to anticipate threats and to take action against them before you become a victim of them and your growth stalls.

Think about the obstacles you face in getting your product to market and selling. You may notice that quality standards or specifications for your products are changing, and that you'll need to change those products if you're to stay in the lead. Evolving technology is an ever-present threat, as well as an opportunity!

Always consider what your competitors are doing, and whether you should be changing your organization's emphasis to meet the challenge. But remember that what they're doing might not be the right thing for you to do. So, avoid copying them without knowing how it will improve your position.

Be sure to explore whether your organization is especially exposed to external challenges. Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems, for example, that could make you vulnerable to even small changes in your market? This is the kind of threat that can seriously damage your business, so be alert.

A SWOT Analysis Example

Imagine this scenario: a small start-up consultancy wants a clear picture of its current situation, to decide on a future strategy for growth. The team gathers, and draws up the SWOT Analysis shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. A Completed SWOT Analysis.

Strengths What do you do well? What unique resources can you draw on? What do others see as your strengths?

Weaknesses What could you improve? Where do you have fewer resources than others? What are others likely to see as weaknesses?

We are able to respond very quickly as we have no red tape, and no need for higher management approval.

We are able to give really good customer care, as the current small amount of work means we have plenty of time to devote to customers.

Our lead consultant has a strong reputation in the market.

We can change direction quickly if we find that our marketing is not working.

We have low overheads, so we can offer good value to customers.

Our company has little market presence or reputation.

We have a small staff, with a shallow skills base in many areas.

We are vulnerable to vital staff being sick or leaving.

Our cash flow will be unreliable in the early stages.

Opportunities What opportunities are open to you? What trends could you take advantage of? How can you turn your strengths into opportunities?

Threats What threats could harm you? What is your competition doing? What threats do your weaknesses expose to you?

Our business sector is expanding, with many future opportunities for success.

Local government wants to encourage local businesses.

Our competitors may be slow to adopt new technologies.

Developments in technology may change this market beyond our ability to adapt.

A small change in the focus of a large competitor might wipe out any market position we achieve.

As a result of the team's analysis, it's clear that the consultancy's main strengths lie in its agility, technical expertise, and low overheads. These allow it to offer excellent customer service to a relatively small client base.

The company's weaknesses are also to do with its size. It will need to invest in training, to improve the skills base of the small staff. It'll also need to focus on retention, so it doesn't lose key team members.

There are opportunities in offering rapid-response, good-value services to local businesses and to local government organizations. The company can likely be first to market with new products and services, given that its competitors are slow adopters.

The threats require the consultancy to keep up-to-date with changes in technology. It also needs to keep a close eye on its largest competitors, given its vulnerability to large-scale changes in its market. To counteract this, the business needs to focus its marketing on selected industry websites, to get the greatest possible market presence on a small advertising budget.

Frequently Asked Questions About SWOT Analysis

1. Who Invented SWOT Analysis?

2. What Does SWOT Analysis Stand For?

SWOT Analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

3. What Can a SWOT Analysis Be Used For?

SWOT analysis is a useful tool to help you determine your organization's position in the market. You can then use this information to create an informed strategy suited to your needs and capabilities.

4. How Do I Write a SWOT Analysis?

5. How Do SWOT Analysis and the TOWS Matrix compare?

6. What Are the Biggest SWOT Analysis Mistakes?

Making your lists too long. Ask yourself if your ideas are feasible as you go along.

Being vague. Be specific to provide more focus for later discussions.

Not seeing weaknesses. Be sure to ask customers and colleagues what they experience in real life.

Not thinking ahead. It's easy to come up with nice ideas without taking them through to their logical conclusion. Always consider their practical impact.

Being unrealistic. Don't plan in detail for opportunities that don't exist yet. For example, that export market you've been eyeing may be available at some point, but the trade negotiations to open it up could take years.

Relying on SWOT Analysis alone. SWOT Analysis is valuable. But when you use it alongside other planning tools (SOAR, TOWS or PEST), the results will be more vigorous.

How to Use a SWOT Analysis

Use a SWOT Analysis to assess your organization's current position before you decide on any new strategy. Find out what's working well, and what's not so good. Ask yourself where you want to go, how you might get there - and what might get in your way.

Once you've examined all four aspects of SWOT, you'll want to build on your strengths, boost your weaker areas, head off any threats, and exploit every opportunity. In fact, you'll likely be faced with a long list of potential actions.

But before you go ahead, be sure to develop your ideas further. Look for potential connections between the quadrants of your matrix. For example, could you use some of your strengths to open up further opportunities? And, would even more opportunities become available by eliminating some of your weaknesses?

Finally, it's time to ruthlessly prune and prioritize your ideas, so that you can focus time and money on the most significant and impactful ones. Refine each point to make your comparisons clearer. For example, only accept precise, verifiable statements such as, "Cost advantage of $30/ton in sourcing raw material x," rather than, "Better value for money."

SWOT Analysis Tips

Here are four tips for getting more out of a SWOT analysis:

1. Be specific. The more focused and accurate you are about the points you write down, the more useful your SWOT analysis will be.

2. Work backwards. Experiment with filling in the four sections of your SWOT analysis in a different order, to stimulate new ways of thinking. Working backwards, in particular, from threats to strengths, may cast new light on the situation.

3. Get together. Highlight the most useful people to contribute to your SWOT analysis, then gather information and ideas from them all.

4. SWOT your competition! To stay ahead of your competitors, carry out a regular SWOT analysis on them. Use everything you know about them to evaluate their situation, and use SWOT analysis to plan your competitive strategies accordingly.

SWOT Analysis Infographic

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SWOT Analysis With SWOT Templates and Examples !

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SWOT Analysis is a simple but powerful framework for analyzing your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Includes template. Access on-demand resources, expert videos by becoming a Mind Tools member now!!

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I've always liked this quote and find it to be true. Never knew Benjamin Franklin said this.

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There is a popular adage often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the father of time management, " Failing to plan is planning to fail," The quote may sound like music to your ears but planning for business analysis work is a key area which tries to zero in on the importance of planning in a software development project. Sadly, it is a step that is often overlooked.

The absence of proper planning can detrimentally affect timely meeting of the on-going project deliverables. To avoid such a failure it is vital that a project manager ensure that the requirement planning activity is given due importance, so that everything is under complete control.

So, how can a project manager ensure that a business analyst (BA) is given the power of execution to get the things delivered with the required level of quality and within the defined time frames. Let's examine some of the key pointers essential to effective business analysis planning.

The Planning Stage

The planning stage gives a high level understanding of the intended software product. It gives the project team a pulse of the current systems and processes, while evaluating the existing deficiencies and identifying the key objectives that need to be addressed in the proposed software development activity.

The planning stage also helps the stakeholders identify the risks that may be associated with the project. Over time, the business requirements keep growing in an attempt to enhance the existing functionality. The objective of the planning stage is to make it absolutely clear - working in partnership with the client and the development teams - what full range of functions and content will be addressed.

The Kick-off Meeting

The kick-off meeting is the opening play of the project. It is an ideal occasion for the project team and the client to introduce them selves and set the project expectations and milestones. The meeting should identify the team roles across the entire spectrum of project related activities, in order to ensure that these activities get completed smoothly.

Requirements Tools and Templates

The business analyst analyses, documents, manages and presents the project requirements for review and approval to the client in a comprehensible manner. As part of the planning process, and early in the project, the BA should communicate to the customer the standard templates and requirement management tools they will adhere to, in order to document the requirements specifications.

For projects large in size and complexity, it is important to make use of requirements management tools to manage version change, track requirement status, communicate with stakeholders and reuse the requirements wherever possible.

Define Points of Contact and Escalation Hierarchy

Should there be any queries or concerns regarding any aspect of the planned project activity, it is important to define a clear process to identify the key points of contact in the project engagement with proper escalation mechanism.

The steering committee is responsible for advice on strategic direction, overseeing planning and implementation, resolving open issues, achieving the project deliverables and milestones, and for preparing a weekly project status report giving updated and accurate information as the project progresses.

The Requirements Sign-off: A Project Milestone

It is imperative that every project participant understand what the Requirements Sign-off means, and its associated impact on the project. Clients should not dismiss sign-off as meaningless, but rather consider it as an important project milestone.

Requirements sign-off means a formal agreement with the project stakeholders, stating that the contents of the requirements document, as drafted, are complete to the final projections and that there are no open issues left to be addressed.

Obtaining a requirements sign-off is typically the final task within the framework of Requirements Communication, which is an expression of the output of requirements gathering to all those concerned with the project.

Conclusion

A holistic approach is absolutely essential and indispensable for the success of the project. It takes effort to leverage and climb the ladder of success. The journey is indeed rewarding and also a voyage of discovery.

Nilesh A. Raje is a Sr.Consultant (Functional) with SYSTIME Computer Systems Ltd. SYSTIME ( www.SYSTIME.net) is a leading global business provider delivering reliable, high-quality, cost-effective IT solutions and services. Nilesh has extensive experience in Business Analysis. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering and is also pursuing his Master's in Business Administration. He has also been published earlier with International Institute of Business Analysis, a leading association in the world of business analysis, as well as in a previous issue of Project Times. In 2007, Nilesh represented his country as "The Youth Icon of India" in Brussels at the First CCS World Youth Forum in the European Parliament. Nilesh can be reached at nraje@SYSTIME.net.

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There is a popular adage often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the father of time management, " Failing to plan is planning to fail," The quote may sound like music to your ears but planning for business analysis work is a key area which tries to zero in on the importance of planning in a software development project.

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McKinsey Global Institute research suggests that 400 midsize emerging-market cities, many unfamiliar in the West, will generate nearly 40 percent of global growth over the next 15 years.

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As the economic spotlight shifts to developing markets, global companies need new ways to manage their strategies, people, costs, and risks.

Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. McKinsey Global Institute research suggests that 400 midsize emerging-market cities, many unfamiliar in the West, will generate nearly 40 percent of global growth over the next 15 years. The International Monetary Fund confirms that the ten fastest-growing economies during the years ahead will all be in emerging markets. Against this backdrop, continuing advances in information and communications technology have made possible new forms of international coordination within global companies and potential new ways for them to flourish in these fast-growing markets.

There are individual success stories. IBM expects to earn 30 percent of its revenues in emerging markets by 2015, up from 17 percent in 2009. At Unilever, emerging markets make up 56 percent of the business already. And Aditya Birla Group, a multinational conglomerate based in India, now has operations in 40 countries and earns more than half its revenue outside India.

But, overall, global organizations are struggling to adapt. A year ago, we uncovered a "globalization penalty": high-performing global companies consistently scored lower than more locally focused ones on several dimensions of organizational health. For example, the former were less effective at establishing a shared vision, encouraging innovation, executing "on the ground," and building relationships with governments and business partners. Equally arresting was evidence from colleagues in McKinsey's strategy practice showing that global companies headquartered in emerging markets have been growing faster than counterparts headquartered in developed ones, even when both are operating on "neutral turf": emerging markets where neither is based (see " Parsing the growth advantage of emerging-market companies ").

Over the past year, we've tried to understand more clearly the challenges facing global organizations, as well as approaches that are helping some to thrive. Our work has included surveys and structured interviews with more than 300 executives at 17 of the world's leading global organizations spanning a diverse range of sectors and geographies, a broader survey of more than 4,600 executives, and time spent working directly with the leaders of dozens of global organizations trying to address these issues.

Clearly, no single organizational model is best for all companies handling the realities of rapid growth in emerging markets and round-the-clock global communications. That's partly because the opportunities and challenges facing companies vary, depending on their business models. R&D-intensive companies, for example, are working to staff new research centers in the emerging world and to integrate them with existing operations. Firms focused on extracting natural resources are adapting to regulatory regimes that are evolving rapidly and sometimes becoming more interventionist. Consumer-oriented firms are facing sometimes-conflicting imperatives to tailor their businesses to local needs while maintaining consistent global processes.

Another reason no single model fits all global companies is that their individual histories are so different. Those that have grown organically often operate relatively consistently across countries but find it hard to adjust their products and services to local needs, given their fairly standardized business models. Companies that have mainly grown through M&A, in contrast, may find it easier to tailor operations to local markets but harder to integrate their various parts so they can achieve the potential of scale and scope and align a dispersed workforce behind a single set of strategies and values.

Although individual companies are necessarily responding differently to the new opportunities abroad, our work suggests that most face a common set of four tensions in managing strategy, people, costs, and risk on a global scale. The importance of each of these four tensions will vary from company to company, depending on its particular operating model, history, and global footprint. (For more on the implications of these uneven globalization efforts, see " Developing global leaders.") Taking stock of the status of all four tensions can be a useful starting point for a senior-management team aiming to boost an organization's global performance.

Strategic confidence and stretch

Being global brings clear strategic benefits: the ability to access new customer markets, new suppliers, and new partners. These immediate benefits can also create secondary ones. Building a customer base in a new market, for example, provides familiarity and relationships that may enable additional investments-say, in a research center.

But being global also brings strategic challenges. Many companies find it increasingly difficult to be locally flexible and adaptable as they broaden their global footprint. In particular, processes for developing strategy and allocating resources can struggle to cope with the increasing diversity of markets, customers, and channels. These issues were clear in our research: fewer than 40 percent of the 300 senior executives at global companies we interviewed and surveyed believed that their employers were better than local competitors at understanding the operating environment and customers' needs. And barely half of the respondents to our broader survey thought that their companies communicated strategy clearly to the workforce in all markets where they operate.

People as an asset and a challenge

Many of the executives we interviewed believed strongly that the vast reserves of skills, knowledge, and experience within the global workforce of their companies represented an invaluable asset. But making the most of that asset is difficult: for example, few surveyed executives felt that their companies were good at transferring lessons learned in one emerging market to another.

At the same time, many companies find deploying and developing talent in emerging markets to be a major challenge. Barely half the executives at the 17 global companies we studied in depth thought they were effective at tailoring recruiting, retention, training, and development processes for different geographies. An emerging-market leader in one global company told us that "our current process favors candidates who have been to a US school, understand the US culture, and can conduct themselves effectively on a call with head office in the middle of the night. The process is not designed to select for people who understand our market."

One of our recent surveys showed how hard it is to develop talent for emerging markets at a pace that matches their expected growth. Executives reported that just 2 percent of their top 200 employees were located in Asian emerging markets that would, in the years ahead, account for more than one-third of total sales. Complicating matters is the fact that local highfliers in some key markets increasingly prefer to work for local employers (see " How multinationals can attract the talent they need "). Global companies are conscious of this change. "Local competitors' brands are now stronger, and they can offer more senior roles in the home market," noted one multinational executive we interviewed.

Scale and scope benefits, complexity costs

Large global companies still enjoy economic leverage from being able to invest in shared infrastructure ranging from R&D centers to procurement functions. Economies of scale in shared services also are significant, though no longer uniquely available to global companies, as even very local ones can outsource business services and manufacturing and avail themselves of cloud-based computing.

But as global companies grow bigger and more diverse, complexity costs inevitably rise. Efforts to standardize the common elements of essential functions, such as sales or legal services, can clash with local needs. And emerging markets complicate matters, as operations located there sometimes chafe at the costs they must bear as part of a group centered in the developed world: their share of the expense of distant (and perhaps not visibly helpful) corporate and regional centers, the cost of complying with global standards and of coordinating managers across far-flung geographies, and the loss of market agility imposed by adhering to rigid global processes.

Risk diversification and the loss of familiarity

A global company benefits from a geographically diverse business portfolio that provides a natural hedge against the volatility of local growth, country risk, and currency risk. But pursuing so many emerging-market opportunities is taking global companies deep into areas with unfamiliar risks that many find difficult to evaluate. Less than half of the respondents to our 2011 survey thought these organizations had the right risk-management infrastructure and skills to support the global scale and diversity of their operations.

Furthermore, globally standard, exhaustive risk-management processes may not be the best way to deal with risk in markets where global organizations must move fast to lock in early opportunities. One executive in an emerging-market outpost of a global company told us "a mind-set that 'this is the way that we do things around here' is very strongly embedded in our risk process. When combined with the fact that the organization does not fully understand emerging markets, it means that our risk process might reject opportunities that [the global] CEO would approve."

Understanding these tensions is just a starting point. Capturing the benefits and mitigating the challenges associated with each will require global companies to explore new ways of organizing and operating.

About the author(s)

Martin Dewhurst is a director in McKinsey's London office, where Suzanne Heywood is a principal; Jon Harris is a director in the New York office.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Kate Aquila and Roni Katz to the development of this article.

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As the economic spotlight shifts to developing markets, global companies need new ways to manage their strategies, people, costs, and risks. Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

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Benefits of working for a multinational company

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Benefits of working for a multinational company

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I think it would increase your value to your employer but also enrich your life personally. Sounds exciting!

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Callum Thomas is the CEO of Thomas Thor Associates, a global executive search and recruitment business in the energy sector.
I am fortunate enough to work in an environment with colleagues representing 14 different nationalities. The close team working culture at Thomas Thor Associates means that the opportunities to experience the benefits of working in a multinational and multicultural environment are particularly prevalent.

Six benefits of an international workplace

I would like to share some of the great things that I have observed from working with people from a diverse mix of countries and cultures. Here are six factors that can benefit your career, your lifestyle and you as an individual:

› It increases your value to employers

Today's business environment can most definitely be described as global. The vast majority of employers are either busy expanding their operations into new countries and continents, or planning to do so soon.

As the CEO of an international recruitment business, I can report that over 80 per cent of the job descriptions we receive from our clients contain either a mandatory requirement or a strong preference for international and cross-cultural team experience.

The fact is simply that, if you have this international experience, you are more attractive to employers and more likely to be involved in interesting multicultural environments and expansion projects for your employer.

› Learn about other cultures and customs

One of the best things about visiting new countries is experiencing new cultures and customs. Imagine if you could do that in a meeting or during your lunch break!

This is a daily possibility when working in a company with staff from different countries and cultures. I have had many a fascinating conversation with my colleagues at work, covering topics such as living in the UAE, farming techniques in Wales, employment in the US and buying property in Asia!

› Insights and creativity thrive

I am not a psychologist, but I do have a keen interest in behavioral psychology and there are countless studies proving that creativity and new insights thrive in environments where people have different ideas and perspectives.

Henry Ford, American founder of the Ford Motor Company, said "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got". Working with diverse people gets the creative juices flowing and opens the mind to new ideas.

› It gives you the experience to move internationally

Most people I meet have a plan at some point in their life to move and work in another country. Having already worked in a multinational and multicultural environment gives you the experience, credibility and confidence to make these moves.

At Thomas Thor we give people the opportunity to move internally to other countries and our vision is to keep expanding worldwide to increase the options our employees have in the coming years.

The international team at Thomas Thor in Amsterdam
Whether it is for an internal move or to join a new company, understanding different cultures and nationalities opens up new opportunities.

› Free exposure to other languages

Learning a new language is time consuming and challenging, and your level can drop quickly if you don't practice.

Whether you are picking up a few words of Russian for the first time or practicing your French to keep up your level, working around people speaking different languages is great.

Speaking other languages gives a much greater depth of understanding of a culture, which is useful in- and outside of work. If you are looking for an even stronger reason to pick up another language then bear in mind that it is clinically proven to delay the onset of dementia in older people!

› Plenty of holiday destination ideas (and people to give you contacts and advice!)

The best holidays I take are the ones where I either have a local guide, or benefit from the knowledge and recommendations of a local before going.

One of the best things about working with people from many different countries is the never-ending suggestions for holiday destinations, and the amazing restaurants and beaches that they recommend that are way off the normal tourist path!

I look forward to travelling the world in the future and meeting up with various friends and colleagues that I have met along the way.

Seize the chance!

So if you have the desire or opportunity to work with an international or multicultural organisation - seize it! It can open up the world to you in more ways than you think!

Thomas Thor Associates is an executive recruitment and consulting business focused on the energy sector. For questions or guidance you can contact them here.
Callum has over 16 years experience in recruitment and executive search and has been instrumental in...

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6 great things about working in a multinational and multicultural company

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Callum Thomas is the CEO of Thomas Thor Associates, a global executive search and recruitment business in the energy sector. I am fortunate enough to work in an environment with colleagues representing 14 different nationalities. The close team working culture at Thomas Thor Associates means that the opportunities to experience the benefits of working in a multinational and multicultural environment are particularly prevalent.

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Interesting first person look at what it's like to be an expat.

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What challenges do expats face when they are settling abroad and what are the best ways to tackle these problems? Are there any simple tips and tricks that we can apply to make our transitions smoother? To find out more about this, we will be speaking to one of the renowned psychologists in Singapore - Eugenia Gajardo.

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Business has a deeper purpose than making a profit. Understand the interconnection between all the aspects of the business. Shareholders, employees, etc. cooperate and work together interdependently like an ecosystem. This will produce more long term shareholder value.

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John Mackey discusses Conscious Capitalism, the purpose of business, and the role of a company in its community.

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Why can't more companies see the benefits of paying a living wage? Is it ethical to pay an employee minimum wage when you have multi-billion dollar profits? I don't think so!

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AP Photo/Elise Amendola

Last week, we wrote about The Container Store and its "1 = 3" theory, which says that one "great" employee is just as productive as three workers who are only "good."

Kip Tindell, the company's CEO and founder, says this rule allows him to pay his retail employees an average salary of nearly $50,000 a year - almost twice the retail industry average.

Of course, The Container Store isn't the only major retail chain that professes a commitment to paying its workers a livable wage.

At Costco, hourly workers make an average of more than $20 an hour - well above the national average of $11.39 for a retail sales worker - according to a 2013 Businessweek story. For employees who put in 40 hours per week, that works out to about $43,000 a year.

In addition, Businessweek reports that 88% of Costco's 185,000 employees have company-sponsored healthcare.

The Container Store uses its high salaries to lure and retain elite talent. Costco is primarily focused on making everyone who works at one of the company's 663 warehouses happy. The idea is that a more pleasant workplace will lead to lower employee turnover and a more productive workforce.

"I just think people need to make a living wage with health benefits," CEO Craig Jelinek tells Businessweek. "It also puts more money back into the economy and creates a healthier country. It's really that simple."

To that end, the company's turnover rate is a measly 5% for employees who have been there more than a year.

Nonetheless, some argue that not every retail company would be successful offering its workers such high wages.

In fact, the industry group The National Retail Federation has said that raising the minimum wage from its current $7.25 an hour pay would make it harder for stores to maintain current staffing levels.

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Why Costco Pays Its Retail Employees $20 An Hour

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Last week, we wrote about The Container Store and its "1 = 3" theory, which says that one "great" employee is just as productive as three workers who are only "good." Kip Tindell, the company's CEO and founder, says this rule allows him to pay his retail employees an average salary of nearly $50,000 a year - almost twice the retail industry average.

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I'm curious to see how they incorporate sustainable ideas at their new Jacksonville location. Just learned that they are using 100% renewable energy for our location.

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I was shocked to learn that only 4.2% of Fortune 500 companies are run by women. Women make up half the population - where is there such a huge deficit in corporate representation?

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With so few women running large US companies, it would seem that the number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 could only go up.

Nope.

In 2016, the number of women at the helm of Fortune 500 firms declined to 21-not 21%, but 21 total. That's down from 24 the previous year. The lost ground means a mere 4.2% of the 500 largest US companies by revenue are led by female CEOs.

The statistics, courtesy of the Fortune Knowledge Group (FKG) and a new study underwritten by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), suggest America's largest companies have much work to do to achieve gender parity, and the financial benefits that have been shown to come with it. McKinsey & Co. research, for example, has shown that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity in top management and at the board level are 15% more likely to outperform the average financial returns for their industry.

The FKG/RBC study isolates another important benefit of female CEOs: the C-level teams that surround them are far more likely to include women.

The presence of a female board chair also seems to be correlated with gender-diverse C-suites, but the impact isn't quite as dramatic.

It's worth noting that in both cases, the promotion or presence of women in C-level roles seems to deplete the next tier of managers of female talent, suggesting even those companies with diverse top-management teams have work to do to deepen their bench of female talent.

Overall, the FKG study finds that 19% of the more than 7,500 senior management positions across the companies examined are held by women. By sector, companies in the household and personal products industry are the most diverse on the basis of gender, followed by the hospitality (hotels, restaurant, and leisure) and apparel industries.

FKG also created a diversity index, ranking companies in the Fortune 500 based on the number of women in senior management, board roles, and "pipeline" positions where rising talent can be groomed for the next level. An index score of 1 is the top ranking. Here are the top 20 companies for senior-level gender diversity based on their composite index score. Corn refiner Ingredion leads the list, followed by Avon and PepsiCo.

Most Popular

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Only 4.2% of Fortune 500 companies are run by women

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With so few women running large US companies, it would seem that the number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 could only go up. Nope. In 2016, the number of women at the helm of Fortune 500 firms declined to 21-not 21%, but 21 total. That's down from 24 the previous year.

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I was really encouraged to learn that there are employers out there that value older workers. I thought the internship program was very cool and something I never even thought about until I read this article.

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It took six years, but Charlene DeWindt, 58, of Newport News, Va., is now an electrician. She's also a production planner and scheduler at Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII is the largest military shipbuilding company in the United States), earning more than $50,000 a year. DeWindt honed her trade at the firm's Newport News Shipbulding Apprentice School and, in August, graduated with an Associates in Business Degree. That's when she completed the school's Production Planning Program. Even better, throughout her coursework, she continued working for the company.
Life-Changing Apprentice Program for a Midlifer
DeWindt calls the apprentice program a life-changer for her.

"I had been out of school for 40 years and suddenly there's Algebra, Calculus, Physics, I and II," DeWindt told me. "But I was persistent, and now I have a great job, benefits and a chance to excel." And, she adds, "This program has allowed me the opportunity to learn so much, keep my brain and body active and save more for retirement."

You might be thinking: Aren't apprentice programs just for recent high school grads and people in their 20s? As Nobel laureate Bob Dylan would say: the times they are a changin'.

I learned about that age-friendly apprentice program in the new report from AARP Public Policy Institute: Disrupting Aging in the Workplace: Profiles in Intergenerational Diversity Leadership. The report looked at five employers that are wisely approaching the issue of age diversity in the workplace: DeWindt's employer Huntington Ingalls Industries, UnitedHealth Group, PNC Financial Services, AT&T and Centrica PLC, parent company of British Gas, an energy and services corporation.
An Age-Diverse Workplace Is Smart Business
"Most significantly what they [the researchers] found is that moves by businesses to embrace and engage with the intergenerational workforce are not merely an exercise in good civics, they're smart business," Jo Ann Jenkins, AARP CEO wrote in her recent column on LinkedIn. "Studies have shown that the productivity of both older and younger workers is higher in companies that have mixed-age work teams than in companies that do not and that age diversity within a team heightens performance in groups that must undertake complex decision-making tasks - but what's most interesting is that these things are already happening out there in the real world."
What These Employers Are Doing Right
I'll get to some of the interesting initiatives in the report shortly and then offer suggestions about talking to your boss to make your workplace better.
Also on Forbes:
Let's start with DeWindt's apprentice program. Of Newport News Shipbuilding's 21,000 employees, about 2,900 are Apprentice School alumni. Many of them are now in leadership positions at the company.

Sixty years ago, the program's age limit was 21. "I actually applied when I was 28, but I was too old," said DeWindt.

Over time, the age ceiling was raised, and in 1996, ultimately eliminated as a result of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's determination that apprenticeship programs should be subject to the requirements of the Age Discrimination Employment Act.

Interestingly, the HII workforce (median age: 45) is currently comprised of 35% boomers, 32% Millennials, 32% Gen X'ers, and 1% Silent Generation. Also adding to the mix are Gen Z employees, the oldest of whom are just coming out of college, interning and starting their first jobs.

It's a portrait of age diversity, and to me, that's noteworthy. While there's lots of talk these days about the need for diversity in the workplace, when people talk about diversity on the job, it's usually not about age, just race and gender. The AARP report noted that only 8% of CEOs include age as a dimension of their diversity and inclusion strategy, according to the PwC 18th Annual Global CEO Survey in 2015.
Common, Mistaken Assumptions of Older Workers
As this recent Harvard Business Review article points out, common assumptions about older workers are mostly hogwash. "People of every age are reinvesting in their skills, looking after their health and thinking about options, transitions and career switches that weren't a reality for previous generations," according to authors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott.

Speaking of reinvesting in their skills, the AARP report notes that Centrica - an international recipient of the 2011 AARP Best Employers for Workers Over 50 Award - participates in a fascinating pilot program helping workers do just that. It's called HitReturn and is targeted toward senior-level professionals (men and women) who want to return to the workforce after a career break of two years or more.

Launched with Mars and Vodafone, HitReturn offers 12-week, paid "returnships" giving people the opportunity to work on professional assignments and to receive coaching and a mentor. It's the first cross-company partnership in the U.K. Job opportunities are in areas including marketing, legal, finance operations, technology and human resources. Participation does not, however, guarantee a permanent job.
Cross-Generational Mentorship Programs
Cross-generational mentorship programs are a priority at HIII, PNC and AT&T. At PNC's Diversity and Inclusion Mentoring Program, each employee signing up makes an annual commitment; the mentee and mentor decide the frequency and activities for their meetings and what they'll work on together.

For Sue Filiczkowski, 48, a senior underwriting manager at PNC, "one of the most memorable and rewarding moments was when my mentee, who is a Millennial, presented in front of PNC's senior management team. She had explained to me during our first meeting that she did not like to present in front of large groups and felt uncomfortable. We worked very hard throughout the year, taking baby steps such as meeting with and presenting to smaller groups of managers. Eventually, my mentee felt comfortable and ready to present a topic of her choice to the senior management team, and she did a great job!"

Before the duo's regular meetings, they'd each read articles about leadership and work challenges they faced. "We would discuss what we got out of the articles and how we would have responded to similar situations at PNC," says Filiczkowski.

That's the heart of what these companies, and others like them are doing: different generations working together to solve problems. PNC also offers an Employee Business Resource Group called IGen, focusing on intergenerational issues. It "provides a natural way to transfer knowledge from older generations to younger generations," the AARP report said. AT&T's >50 Employee Resource Group focuses on professionals there who are 50 and older. It also has another focusing on young professionals, called oxyGEN, which, AARP said, "sponsored events to educate seniors about mobile technology in 26 cities in 2014."

These efforts remind me of a conversation I had with Paul Irving, chairman of the Milken Institute's Center for the Future of Aging and editor of the inspiring book The Upside of Aging. "Leaders in business are beginning to appreciate that older workers retain unique values, skills, wisdom and judgment and are recognizing, frankly, that the intergenerational teams and workforces may be the most powerful workforces of the future," Irving said.
What You Can Do
OK, so what can you do, or try to get your boss and employer to do, to foster a terrific intergenerational workplace? Here are a few ideas:

Reach out to HR or your manager to see about starting a mentoring program.

The next time you're asked to work on a project, be sure at least one younger colleague is on the team.

Raise your hand and ask to be considered for workplace education and training programs to keep your skills sharp.

Keep in mind, you might need to make a business case why a mentoring initiative, intergenerational project or training will benefit your work and, in turn, the company. When suggesting a new way of doing things on the job, it's always about how your employer or boss will ultimately shine.

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It took six years, but Charlene DeWindt, 58, of Newport News, Va., is now an electrician. She's also a production planner and scheduler at Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII is the largest military shipbuilding company in the United States), earning more than $50,000 a year.

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What Do Millenials Really Want at Work? The Same Things the Rest of Us Do

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What Do Millenials Really Want at Work? The Same Things the Rest of Us Do

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This article completely changed my mind about dealing with millenials in the workplace.

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Saturday Night Live recently featured a sketch poking fun at Millennials. It opens with a young woman frantically texting on her iPhone, approaching her boss and asking for a promotion. The boss asks how long she's been with the company. She replies, "Three days."

Everyone gets it. Conventional wisdom holds that Millennials are entitled, easily distracted, impatient, self-absorbed, lazy, and unlikely to stay in any job for long. On the positive side, they're also looking for purpose, feedback, and personal life balance in their work. Companies of all kinds are obsessed with understanding them better.

The fascination with Millennials has given rise to a new consulting industry. Hundreds of firms, speakers, authors and individual experts are vying for a share of the "Millennials are Different" segment of the $150 billion-a-year global HR consulting market. A dizzying array of books, seminars, and articles such as Ties to Tattoos and "Dude, What's My Job? Managing Millennials in Today's Workforce" promise to help turn generational differences into an asset. There's even a consultancy that specializes in helping other consultants hone their message to tap into this lucrative market.

While pithy descriptions of what makes Millennials unique are presented as self-evident and seem to have a ring of truth to them, very few are supported with solid empirical research. On the contrary, a growing body of evidence suggests that employees of all ages are much more alike than different in their attitudes and values at work. To the extent that any gaps do exist, they amount to small differences that have always existed between younger and older workers throughout history and have little to do with the Millennial generation per se.

There are plenty of examples to cite. For one, a group of researchers from George Washington University and the Department of Defense analyzed more than 20 published and unpublished studies examining generational differences and concluded that meaningful differences among generations probably do not exist in the workplace. The small differences that do appear are likely attributable to factors such as stage of life more than generational membership. The researchers go on to say, "targeted organizational interventions addressing generational differences may not be effective." As Elspeth Reeve wrote in The Atlantic in 2013 "It's not that people born after 1980 are narcissists, it's that young people are narcissists, and they get over themselves as they get older."

Even the most widely accepted stereotypes about Millennials appear to be suspect. Last year, IBM's Institute for Business Value released a report titled " Myths, Exaggerations and Uncomfortable Truths: The Real Story Behind Millennials in the Workplace." Based on a multigenerational study of 1,784 employees from companies across 12 countries and six industries, it found that about the same percentage of Millennials (25%) want to make a positive impact on their organization as Gen Xers (21%) and Baby Boomers (23%). Differences are uniformly minimal across nine other variables as well.

A 2015 national study commissioned by CNBC echoes these results. Looking at the importance of six traits in a potential employer - ethics, environmental practices, work-life balance, profitability, diversity and reputation for hiring the best and brightest - CNBC found that Millennial preferences are just about the same as the broader population on all six. In fact, countering hard-to-please stereotypes, Millennials reported being more satisfied with the training and skills development they receive, compared with 76% of the rest of the population; 76% were satisfied with their opportunities for promotion, 10 percentage points higher than the rest of the population.

While it's one thing to point to research surveys, it's another to see similar findings at your own organization. At KPMG, the Big Four accounting firm where I work, Millennials now make up a majority of our 30,000-person work force. We also found a lack of difference between Millennials and others on our annual employee survey. Of the 88 dimensions of morale and work life assessed by the survey, Millennials' favorability ratings were within +/- 5 percentage points of everyone else's on 70% of the items, and equal to or more favorable than their colleagues over the age of 35 on two-thirds of the items. KPMG's Millennials are also virtually identical to their older colleagues on every measure of overall engagement such as pride in the organization, optimism about the firm's future, trust in leadership, and willingness to recommend KPMG to a friend.

Moreover, when we invited all of our employees to tell us about their higher purpose at work in an online initiative we called the "10,000 Stories Challenge," many of our leaders predicted the initiative would appeal mostly to our "purpose-hungry" Millennial employees. Instead, we received more than 40,000 employee stories and participation rates across the generations were essentially the same.

And while voluntary turnover is higher among our Millennial population, that's nothing new. Our employees under age 35 are more likely to move on to new opportunities than their older coworkers generally, but that has been true for at least the past two decades. In fact, our current employees under the age of 35 are actually less likely to leave the firm than their same age counterparts in years past.

Indeed, writes Ben Casselman for FiveThirtyEight.com, "The myth of the job-hopping Millennial is just that - a myth. The data consistently shows that today's young people are actually less professionally itinerant than previous generations."

In light of all this evidence, it's likely that companies pursuing Millennial-specific employee engagement strategies are wasting time, focus, and money. They would be far better served to focus on factors that lead all employees to join, stay, and perform at their best. So why in the face of such overwhelming evidence do the myths about Millennials persist?

Part of the reason is the proliferation of poor "research," or overreaching and invalid conclusions based on otherwise valid facts. The most glaring examples of faulty research are "studies" of Millennials that lack comparisons to any control groups of other workers or young people of other generations. Thomas C. Reeves and Eunjung Oh, two researchers at the University of Georgia, reviewed dozens of studies on generational differences. "Gross generalizations based on weak survey research and the speculations of profit-oriented consultants should be treated with extreme caution," they concluded.

It's also more attention-grabbing to talk about differences among groups and changes in the workplace than it is to report on how alike they are. In a digital world that doesn't always distinguish between high quality and low quality research, studies with the most provocative findings often get the most views, giving them an aura of validity. Since most of us prefer to believe that we are on top of the most current and innovative thinking, there is a tendency to move like a herd when the news of conventional wisdom begins to get circulation.

Finally, by attributing challenges with workforce engagement to generational forces that are largely beyond our control, it may provide organizations with a rationale to avoid addressing more difficult workforce engagement issues such as workload, career development, sufficient financial reward, and meaningful work.

In the research presented in our 2002 book, The Human Capital Edge, Ira Kay and I found that whether one looks across generation, race, or gender employees have generally wanted the same things from work. Four key questions continue to recur when employees are deciding whether to join, give their best effort or stay at an organization. And they appear to stand the test of time:

Is this a winning organization I can be proud of? Employees want to be proud of the organization they work for. They want to work for a successful, high-performing company and for leaders with a blend of competence, integrity and vision.

Can I maximize my performance on the job? Virtually all employees want to be able to do a good job. That means working in an environment that will make the most of their skills and which provides the resources, information, authority and training necessary to perform at their best.

Are people treated well economically and interpersonally? People want to work in an inclusive environment where they are respected, valued and treated fairly. They want their opinions to count, and they want their contributions recognized and rewarded both financially and psychologically.

Is the work itself fulfilling and enjoyable? Everyone wants to enjoy the work they do and the people with whom they work. They also want to derive a sense of meaning and purpose from what they do every day.

Companies that create environments in which employees answer each of these four questions with a resounding "Yes" - regardless of their generation - are those most likely to win the war for talent.

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What Do Millennials Really Want at Work? The Same Things the Rest of Us Do

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Saturday Night Live recently featured a sketch poking fun at Millennials. It opens with a young woman frantically texting on her iPhone, approaching her boss and asking for a promotion. The boss asks how long she's been with the company. She replies, "Three days." Everyone gets it.

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Tim Cook on Apple's Future: Everything Can Change Except Values

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Tim Cook on Apple's Future: Everything Can Change Except Values

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Interesting to see how Jobs' core values will remain at Apple after his death. This further supports my statement that I think Jobs will rank in history as one of the top CEOs.

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Fast Company: How does Steve Jobs's legacy live on at Apple?

Tim Cook: Steve felt that most people live in a small box. They think they can't influence or change things a lot. I think he would probably call that a limited life. And more than anybody I've ever met, Steve never accepted that.

He got each of us [his top executives] to reject that philosophy. If you can do that, then you can change things. If you embrace that the things that you can do are limitless, you can put your ding in the universe. You can change the world.

That was the huge arc of his life, the common thread. That's what drove him to have big ideas. Through his actions, way more than any preaching, he embedded this nonacceptance of the status quo into the company.

Several other things are a consequence of that philosophy, starting with a maniacal focus to make the best products in the world. And in order to build the best products, you have to own the primary technologies. Steve felt that if Apple could do that-make great products and great tools for people-they in turn would do great things. He felt strongly that this would be his contribution to the world at large. We still very much believe that. That's still the core of this company.

There's this thing in technology, almost a disease, where the definition of success is making the most. How many clicks did you get, how many active users do you have, how many units did you sell? Everybody in technology seems to want big numbers. Steve never got carried away with that. He focused on making the best.

That took a change in my own thinking when I came to the company [Cook left Compaq to join Apple in 1998]. I had been in the Windows world before that, and that world was all about making the most. It still is.

When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can't, and if we can't own the key technologies, we don't do it. That philosophy comes directly from him and it still very much permeates the place. I hope that it always will.

Did that philosophy play out in the decision to make the Apple Watch?

Very much so.

Is that it, on your wrist?

Yes, it is. [Cook starts showing off different views on the watch.] See, my calendar is right here, there's the time, the day, the temperature. There's Apple's stock price. This is my activity level for today. You can see what it was yesterday, and now it's redrawing it for today. I haven't burned very many calories today so far.

You look at the watch, and the primary technologies are software and the UI [user interface]. You're working with a small screen, so you have to invent new ways for input. The inputs that work for a phone, a tablet, or a Mac don't work as well on a smaller screen. Most of the companies who have done smartwatches haven't thought that through, so they're still using pinch-to-zoom and other gestures that we created for the iPhone.

Try to do those on a watch and you quickly find out they don't work. So out of that thinking come new ideas, like force touch. [On a small screen] you need another dimension of a user interface. So just press a little harder and you bring up another UI that has been hidden. This makes the screen seem larger, in some ways, than it really is.

These are lots of insights that are years in the making, the result of careful, deliberate...try, try, try...improve, improve, improve. Don't ship something before it's ready. Have the patience to get it right. And that is exactly what's happened to us with the watch. We are not the first.

We weren't first on the MP3 player; we weren't first on the tablet; we weren't first on the smartphone. But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch-the first one that matters.

The iPod was introduced in 2001 with fairly low expectations. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, expectations were sky-high. Where does the watch fit in that continuum?

With the iPod, the expectations for Apple itself at that time were very low. And then most people panned the iPod's price. Who wants this? Who will buy this? We heard all the usual stuff. On iPhone, we set an expectation. We said we'd like to get 1% of the market, 10 million phones for the first year. We put that flag in the sand, and we wound up exceeding it by a bit.

On the watch we haven't set a number. The watch needs the iPhone 5, 6, or 6 Plus to work, which creates a ceiling. But I think it's going to do well. I'm excited about it. I've been using it every day and I don't want to be without it.

When the iPhone first came out, there weren't any outside apps. Eighteen months later, because Apple opened the phone up to app developers, it was a completely different value proposition. What kind of curve do you expect for the watch?

As you said, developers were key for the phone. They were key for iPad, too, especially because they optimized apps for the tablet instead of just using a stretched-out smartphone app. And they'll be key to the watch, too. Absolutely.

This time, of course, we understand their importance from the beginning. We released an SDK [software development kit] in mid-November. So by the time we ship the watch in April, there will be plenty of third-party apps. You don't start with 700,000. You grow to that. But there will be enough apps to capture people's imaginations.

Many people seem to have a hard time imagining the usefulness of the watch.

Yes, but people didn't realize they had to have an iPod, and they really didn't realize they had to have the iPhone. And the iPad was totally panned. Critics asked, "Why do you need this?" Honestly, I don't think anything revolutionary that we have done was predicted to be a hit when released. It was only in retrospect that people could see its value. Maybe this will be received the same way.

You talked about the sense of limitlessness that Steve created. Part of that was the insistence on insane standards of excellence. He seemed to personally enforce that. Do you now play that same role, or is that kind of quality control more spread out?

The truth is that it has always been spread out. Steve couldn't touch everything in the company when he was here, and the company is now three times as large as it was in 2010. So do I touch everything? No, absolutely not. It's the sum of many people in the company. It's the culture that does that.

Don't ship something before it's ready. Have the patience to get it right.

Steve was almost viewed from the exterior as the micromanager checking to make sure that every i was dotted, and every t was crossed, that every circuit was correct, that every color was exactly right. And yes, he made a lot of decisions. His capacity was unbelievable. But he was just one person-and he knew that.

It was his selection of people that helped propel the culture. You hear these stories of him walking down a hallway and going crazy over something he sees, and yeah, those things happened. But extending that story to imagine that he did everything at Apple is selling him way short. What he did more than anything was build a culture and pick a great team, that would then pick another great team, that would then pick another team, and so on.

He's not given credit as a teacher. But he's the best teacher I ever had by far. There was nothing traditional about him as a teacher. But he was the best. He was the absolute best.

Let me just make this one point. Last year, the company did $200 billion worth of business. We're either the top smartphone maker in the world, or one of the top ones. Would the company have been able to do that if he were the micromanager that he was made out to be? Obviously not.

He's not given credit as a teacher... But he was the best. He was the absolute best.

Steve's greatest contribution and gift is the company and its culture. He cared deeply about that. He put in an enormous amount of time designing the concept for our new campus: That was a gift to the next generation. Apple University is another example of that. He wanted to use it to grow the next generation of leaders at Apple, and to make sure the lessons of the past weren't forgotten.

Steve's focus on the benefits of small teams has paid off for Apple. But maintaining the discipline to stay effective, fleet, and nonbureaucratic would seem to get harder and harder as Apple gets bigger and bigger.

And the rewards are greater and greater to do it right. So you're right. It's harder, and you are fighting gravity. But if you don't feel like you're in a small box, you can do it.

Steve's greatest contribution and gift is the company and its culture. He cared deeply about that.

We've turned up the volume on collaboration because it's so clear that in order for us to be incredibly successful we have to be the best collaborators in the world. The magic of Apple, from a product point of view, happens at this intersection of hardware, software, and services. It's that intersection. Without collaboration, you get a Windows product. There's a company that pumps out an operating system, another that does some hardware, and yet another that does something else. That's what's now happening in Android land. Put it all together and it doesn't score high on the user experience.

Steve recognized early on that being vertical gave us the power to produce great customer experience. For a long while, that was viewed as crazy logic. More and more people have opened their eyes to the fact that he was right, that you need all those things working together.

Steve always said that the difference between Apple and other computing companies was that Apple made "the whole widget." At first, that meant making the hardware and software for a computer, or for a device like the iPod. But now the "widget" is bigger. It's become the whole "Apple experience," meaning the universe of iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and now the watch, trying to work seamlessly with cloud services, content from any number of musicians and filmmakers and video producers, and so on. It's one big mother of a widget. Is it really manageable, or are we beginning to see cracks, because there's just so much to maintain across so many different interfaces? Microsoft ran into the same problem when it tried to be all things to all people with its operating system.

I think it's different. Part of the reason Microsoft ran into an issue was that they didn't want to walk away from legacy stuff.

Apple has always had the discipline to make the bold decision to walk away. We walked away from the floppy disk when that was popular with many users. Instead of doing things in the more traditional way of diversifying and minimizing risk, we took out the optical drive, which some people loved. We changed our connector, even though many people loved the 30-pin connector. Some of these things were not popular for quite a while. But you have to be willing to lose sight of the shore and go. We still do that.

Apple has always had the discipline to make the bold decision to walk away.

So no, I don't accept your comparison to Microsoft. I think it's totally different. Yes, things are more complex. When you're doing a Mac, that's one thing. But if you do a phone, and you want to optimize so that you have the fewest dropped calls of anyone, and you're working with 300 or 400 carriers around the world, each with slightly different things in their network-yes, that's more complex.

It's more complex to do things like continuity. Now the customer wants to start an email on their iPhone and complete it on their iPad or Mac. They want a seamless experience across all of the products. When you're only doing a Mac, that seamless experience is a party of one. Now you've got a three-dimensional thing, and the cloud. So it is more complex. There's no doubt.

What we try to do is hide all of that complexity from the user. We hide the fact that doing this is really tough, hard engineering so that the user can go about their day and use our tools the way they would want and not have to worry about it. Sometimes we're not perfect with that. That's the crack that you're talking about. Sometimes we're not. But that, too, we will fix.

In my mind, there is nothing that's incorrect about our model. It's not that it's not doable, it's that we're human sometimes, and we make an error. I don't have a goal of becoming inhuman, but I do have a goal of not having any errors. We've made errors in the past, and we'll never be perfect. Fortunately, we have the courage to admit it and correct it.

But, still, you are fighting gravity. You don't fear that this will become too big a job?

No, because we don't live in the box. We are outside of that. What I see is that we have to continually have the discipline to define the problem so that it can be done. If you try to engineer to the complexity, then it does become the impossible dream. But if you step back and think about the problem differently, think about what you're really trying to do, then I don't think it becomes an impossible task at all.

By and large, I think we're proving that. Look at the App Store, where we're doing things on an unparalleled scale-there are a million and a half apps on the store. Would anybody have guessed that a few years ago? We are still curating those apps. Our customers expect us to do that. If they buy an app, they expect it to do what it says it does.

I don't think the values should change. But everything else can change.

Are there any fundamental ways in which you are letting go of parts of Steve's legacy?

We change every day. We changed every day when he was here, and we've been changing every day since he's not been here. But the core, the values in the core remain the same as they were in '98, as they were in '05, as they were in '10. I don't think the values should change. But everything else can change.

Yes, there will be things where we say something and two years later we'll feel totally different. Actually, there may be things we say that we may feel totally different about in a week. We're okay with that. Actually, we think it's good that we have the courage to admit it.

Steve would do that all the time.

He definitely would do that all the time. I mean, Steve was the best flipper in the world. And it's because he didn't get married to any one position, one view. He was married to the philosophy, the values. The fact that we want to really change the world remains the same. This is the macro point. This is the reason we come to work every day.

Are you looking forward to Apple's new campus? [The company is set to move into massive new headquarters in 2016.] Would you have created this kind of campus if you had been CEO when the decision was first made?

It's critical that Apple do everything it can to stay informal. And one of the ways that you stay informal is to be together. One of the ways that you ensure collaboration is to make sure people run into each other-not just at the meetings that are scheduled on your calendar, but all the serendipitous stuff that happens every day in the cafeteria and walking around.

We didn't predict our employee growth, so we haven't had a campus that houses everyone. We are spread out in hundreds of buildings, and none of us like that; we hate it. Now we'll be able to work primarily at that one campus. So, yeah, I'm totally behind that.

As the human scale of the company grows, as the generations churn and new people come in, how does the culture get transferred to new employees? Is there something that needs to be systematized?

I don't think of it as systematizing, but there are a number of things that we do, starting with employee orientation. Actually, it starts before that, in interviews. You're trying to pick people that fit into the culture of the company. You want a very diverse group with very diverse life experiences looking at every problem. But you also want people to buy into the philosophy, not just buy in, but to deeply believe in it.

Then there's employee orientation, which we do throughout the company all over the world. And then there's Apple U., which takes things that happened in the past and dissects them in a way that helps people understand how decisions were made, why they were made, how successes occurred, and how failures occurred. All of these things help.

Ultimately, though, it's on the company leaders to set the tone. Not only the CEO, but the leaders across the company. If you select them so carefully that they then hire the right people, it's a nice self-fulfilling prophecy.

I noticed you still have Steve's nameplate up next to his old office.

Yeah.

Why? And will you have anything like that over at the new place?

I haven't decided about what we'll do there. But I wanted to keep his office exactly like it was. I was in there with Laurene [Powell Jobs, Steve's wife] the other day because there are still drawings on the board from the kids. I took Eve [Steve's daughter] in there over the summer and she saw some things that she had drawn on his white board years earlier.

In the beginning I really didn't personally want to go in there. It was just too much. Now I get a lot more appreciation out of going in there, even though I don't go in very often.

What we'll do over time, I don't know. I didn't want to move in there. I think he's an irreplaceable person and so it didn't feel right . . . for anything to go on in that office. So his computer is still in there as it was, his desk is still in there as it was, he's got a bunch of books in there. Laurene took some things to the house.

I don't know. His name should still be on the door. That's just the way it should be. That's what felt right to me.

[ Photo: Pete Marovich, Getty Images]

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Tim Cook On Apple's Future: Everything Can Change Except Values

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Fast Company: How does Steve Jobs's legacy live on at Apple? Tim Cook: Steve felt that most people live in a small box. They think they can't influence or change things a lot. I think he would probably call that a limited life. And more than anybody I've ever met, Steve never accepted that.

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I admire Adkins because he continues to learn and try new things, constantly challenging himself to further his education and advance his career.

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This article touches on how Jobs left Apple, then came back later and turned around the decline that happened during his absence. I think it's rare to see that happen. Usually when a CEO leaves, they move on and don't return. To me, this demonstrates how much Apple and Jobs are intertwined and made me curious about how things are going at Apple now a few years after his death.

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It was supposed to be a temporary fix. Steve Jobs was Apple's "iCEO," and the iconic first letter didn't stand for Internet. It stood for interim. In 1997, when Jobs returned to the company he cofounded, he insisted he was there only to do an overhaul. The floundering Apple was like a wrecked jalopy, he said, or an old girlfriend fallen on hard times. He'd make it shine again, then split. Apple's board asked him to stay permanently, of course, but he demurred, explaining that he already had a company to run. "I felt I was pretty committed to Pixar and couldn't do something else, didn't want to," he told me on the week of his return to Cupertino.

"And you will absolutely not be the CEO of Apple?" I asked.

"My name is not in the hat to be CEO," he said.

It turns out there was no hat. Interim or not, Steve Jobs inhabited the chief executive role so thoroughly and masterfully that eventually people stopped asking who would take over for him. The 2000 announcement that Jobs would stay was anticlimactic. By then he was not only Apple's CEO but someone who embodied the platonic ideal of that position.

Thus the poignant resignation letter that Jobs posted on August 24, 2011, ends an era. Though Jobs will remain at Apple as chair-and Apple says he will be an active chair-a milestone has passed. The greatest CEO in memory is no longer a CEO.

What makes the perfect chief executive? Understanding customers and what they want, even if they don't know it yet. Mastery of market dynamics. The acumen of a poker champ. Commitment to excellence and brutal rejection of "good enough." Accountability when things go wrong. Charisma that makes product launches as exciting as a Springsteen show. Steve Jobs had it all, in abundance. (Not necessarily included in the ideal skill set is a tendency to witheringly dismiss anything that fails to meet his "insanely great" standards. And a penchant for secrecy that makes the NSA look like the public library. But maybe those darker traits can't be separated from such an exacting, oversize personality.)

He also had a talent no other CEO could boast of-the ability to defy the corporate equivalent of nature's law. "If anybody's going to make our products obsolete," he once told me, "I want it to be us."

The bane of Silicon Valley is the Innovator's Dilemma, which says that once a company takes the lead in any given domain, it becomes less able to come up with radical innovations in that field. Jobs seemed to have discovered a powerful counterforce: the Innovator's Gyre, where each dizzying breakthrough leads to another. The iMac begat a digital hub strategy with iTunes, which begat the iPod. The music player eventually served as a launchpad for the iPhone, which in turn evolved into the first massively successful tablet, the iPad. And the iPad's innovations are now inspiring Apple's computers, as the Macintosh gains a gestural interface.

Some chief executives view a successful run as a springboard to loftier pursuits-politics, philanthropy, the helm of an even bigger firm. For Jobs, running Apple was the pinnacle. After receiving treatment for a life-threatening cancer, all he wanted to do, besides enjoy his family, was run Apple. For the past few years, every time I or another journalist interviewed him, he would reiterate: I love this job. Even during his medical leave earlier this year, he not only kept up with Apple's big decisions and products-reviewing key releases, negotiating with tech and media honchos-he also took star turns at two Apple launches. He did not iPhone it in but was, as always, ruler of the stage. Instead of enervating him, those moments seemed to energize him.

And now he's no longer CEO. It's ironic that Jobs made his decision only days after Hewlett-Packard said it might sell off its PC business. ¹ I once observed to Jobs that when he and Steve Wozniak started Apple, there was no template for how two young guys should build a big corporation. Jobs corrected me. "There was a template," he said, "HP." Also founded by two young men, it had been a pillar of Silicon Valley's values and standards for decades, and he saw it firsthand. "Woz and I both worked there," he said. "There would never have been an Apple had there not been an HP."

Now, of course, HP may be leaving the game and there is another company that is the inspiration for all young founders. ² "When we started Apple, we took values from Hewlett-Packard as best as we understood them," Jobs said. "We took things from other companies we admired, and to now be in that role for some new young company is wonderful. I'd like to think that in our own small way we've done some of that."

Jobs knows that he and Apple do provide such inspiration, and not in a small way. Though he returned to Apple as iCEO, he became the CEO, setting a standard for leadership that was as impossibly high as the standard he set for his products. Which creates a problem for the company he gave so much to: the Successor's Dilemma.

Senior writer Steven Levy ( steven_levy@wired.com) interviewed Bradley Horowitz, lead developer of Google+ for issue 19.10.
Note 1. Correction appended [Sept. 29, 1011/19:00]: This story previously reported, incorrectly, that Hewlett-Packard has left the PC business; in fact, it has only said it is considering doing so. Note 2. Correction appended [Sept. 29, 1011/19:00]: This story previously reported, incorrectly, that Hewlett-Packard has left the PC business; in fact, it has only said it is considering doing so.

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It was supposed to be a temporary fix. Steve Jobs was Apple's "iCEO," and the iconic first letter didn't stand for Internet. It stood for interim. In 1997, when Jobs returned to the company he cofounded, he insisted he was there only to do an overhaul.

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I thought this was interesting because it shows how involved Steve Jobs was in literally every aspect of Apple. I liked his comment about having "wonderful arguments" and admitting he didn't win all of them. It showed a different side of a leader who is known for being difficult to get along with. Despite that, his team felt comfortable disagreeing with him and working with him to achieve the team's goals.