More Ranting: Careers, Majors and other Imaginary Bull#$%&

Jason-

I enjoyed the rant on colleges and universities, and it seems to me that the cost of a college education goes up every single year while it has been a long, long time since there has been any real increase in the value. I think that colleges and universities have the luxury of a largely captive audience due to the fact that every middle-class family on the planet is convinced that their children will die poor, homeless and alone if they do not get a college degree.

It does seem to me that businesses could be putting more pressure on the secondary education community, but for some reason it does not seem to be happening. This might be an opportunity for HR to play a more strategic role and I think that most colleges and universities would be pretty jazzed about partnering with businesses to examine curriculum as well as how to make internships, career services and other things more valuable. I know that some of this happens, but it seems to be the exception rather than the norm.

There is some stuff that we disagree on though…

I do very much want the college experience to be more valuable and more challenging. I think that colleges tend towards arrogance and take advantage of students who are often borrowing large sums of money to be there. I think that colleges far too often put really smart people who are horrible educators in front of college students.

But.

I do think that college (whatever kind of college, whenever attended) should be about exploration…in fact I think that there should be much more exploration.

I strongly agree with what you said about the importance of personal development and self-mastery, more of that should be integrated into college, as well as professional settings and the K-12 system. But I think that this whole idea of selecting a career is bullshit, and I feel the same way about “majors”…especially “business majors.” As a matter of fact, as I take a look at the state of business today, I think that we should immediately delete all business undergraduate and MBA programs. “Business people” and “financial people” want to talk shit about HR and say that HR is not relevant? Are you kidding me?

But I digress.

I think we create a bunch of simplistic categories that become limiting and get in the way of a more balanced and integrated approach.

Unlike most of my classmates, I did not know what I wanted to be in 10^th grade. Or 11^th grade. Or 12^th grade. I did not know what I wanted to be in my first attempt at college. I did not know what I wanted to be while I was in the Marine Corps, or during my second and much more successful attempt at college. I was actually about 35 years old before I actually got some real clarity as to what I wanted to do professionally. I am deeply grateful that I eventually made that discovery, but I had to do a lot of other stuff to get there. I had to get lost to find my calling.

Yes, this is now “Deep Thoughts, by Joe Gerstandt.”

I guess that I think that education (as well as professional development) could be more valuable and more applicable if it was more about exploration, trying new things and getting outside of your comfort zone. I realize this does not look neat and orderly if you are the one paying the bills, writing the curriculum or monitoring the sacred metrics, but this is part of how real growth and learning happen.

I have, over the past 10+ years, learned a great deal from being in an on-going dialogue about work and business and leadership with you. A Great Deal. Is there any college (or business) out there that does a good job of putting learners in formal or informal relationships with people like you? No. They do not understand how real learning happens...or at least how to make it profitable. Blogging can be a powerful development tool...do colleges (and businesses) use it that way? A few. But as we both know businesses (and many colleges) are more likely to view blogging as being about as valuable to them as communism.

I think that from kindergarten, through high school, college, professional and leadership development there is not a lot of real learning to be found. In my experience, most of it happens elsewhere, and often by accident.

-joe

The Future of HR - Part 2

Joe,

I think your lists summarized our prognostications accurately. So, it's on to the implications for human resources as this future emerges. I'm going to propose to we take turns outlining one concept at a time.

As a foundation for this discussion, I also want to clarify that I believe that the purpose of human resources for organizations now and in the future is to ensure that the organization has the human capital it needs to achieve it's objectives. Human capital for me means the right people in the right place doing the right things at the right times. Hopefully this definition of HR is at least fairly close to how you define it. How an HR function realizes this purpose in the future is the question we have in front of us.

As I look at our list of what's coming in the upcoming years, it jumps out at me how much needs to change and how much there is to learn. In order for our organizations to navigate this change, we need to build new skills, knowledge and perspectives quickly. To make this happen, the HR organization of the future really needs to master skills in teaching, coaching, and developing others. This means that where HR and training organizations are separate today, they cannot be separate in the future. Each interaction that HR has with an employee or manager should be treated as a teachable moment where they are empowering the individuals with new skills and abilities.

Here's a few things that HR departments need to consider today to begin preparing:

• Start with your HR team. Develop a learning culture with your team where they experience what it means to teach and be taught, coach and be coached. HR will need to be the model of learning in the organization.
• Evaluate the talent of the HR team. If your current staff has been focused on reactive, problem solving, compliance activity, some of them may not be suited for a learning focused team. The HR professional of the future needs to have strong people skills and a desire to help others learn and grow. Be diligent in setting new standards and diligently manage your talent pool to the skills you need in the future.
• Invest in teaching coaching skills to your HR staff. They need the formal tools to help others (particularly leaders) learn and grow. Coaching is not an intuitive skill and it requires training and practice.

What are your thoughts?

Jason

The Future of the Organization, Part 2

Joe,

Thanks for summarizing our thoughts in your last post. The only place where I wanted to add a comment was related to #4 regarding choice. My thoughts are that individualization and customization are much more complex than simply choice. I think we already expect choice today as consumers. In the future, we not only expect choice, but we'll expect to be able to buy a product or service in almost every situation that is specifically and uniquely designed to meet my own needs.

As for the future of organizations, I want to issue a caveat before sharing my thoughts. There is a difference between predicting what the organization of the future SHOULD look like versus what the organization of the future WILL look like. I'm choosing to take an idealist view of things for the purposes of this post. So, what I'm about to share is how I think a successful organization ten years in the future should look. In addition, I'm taking a little more prescriptive approach as I think about how the organization itself needs to evolve.

1. The flatter the better. While I think it will take time to break down the hierarchies of the past, organizations that become flatter in the future will be better able to innovate and adapt to rapid changes. The fewer layers, the faster information can travel and the less places there are for silos and walls to be built. However, to become effectively flat requires some radical changes in thinking about accountability, power, career paths, development and communication.
2. Learning is the super competency. Innovation, design, driving and adapting to change are all learning activities. They require that individuals be constantly taking in information, processing it, looking for patterns and opportunities, and taking actions. Those who can learn the fastest and put new knowledge to work will be best positioned in the future. This is particularly true for leaders and executives (which will be a major change for them from the past). To effectively deliver on this, organizations are going to have to get much more aggressive in providing learning and development programs for all employees at all levels.
3. Transparency is king. The days of closed books and controlled flow of information are gone. With social networking, blogging and the web oozing in through every crack in even the most locked down organizations, there is no longer any place to hide. In the future, organizations will have to build their companies and cultures in such a way that they are fully authentic to their brand promise. Their actions will truly need to match their words.
4. Flexibility is the new norm. Fixed schedules, set work locations, and narrow job duties are things of the past. This may be where technology has it's greatest impact. It won't be long before all of your knowledge workers will require broadband wireless enabled laptops so that they can work where ever they happen to be, whenever they do their best work. Online collaboration tools are making "the office" less and less relevant. Additionally, even those who work in front-line, more traditionally structured jobs are going to expect flexibility in scheduling, job responsibilities, learning opportunities, etc. This will create a great deal of management complexity which will require organizations to be very creative to be successful.
5. Manager/Leader as coach. If you have ever participated in sports, you know how much differently a coach behaves towards his or her players than a manager does towards his or her employees. A coach may have been a player at one point in their life, but in their role as coach, they have very specific responsibilities that are different than being a player: teaching the game to players including the formal rules and the subtle nuances; figuring out where each player fits best (what position should each play); helping each player master the fundamentals of playing the game; setting up a system; and finally, managing the game and making adjustments as situations change during the game. The coach spends most of his time with his players practicing the skills required to perform when it counts. Contrast this to the manager of today who spends most of their time still playing the game and minimal time working with the team (and almost no time practicing). The leader of the future will need to model the style of a sports coach and spend 90% of their time focused on helping their employees excel in their positions.

Certainly, this list isn't exhaustive, but I think that these five things will be the fundamental changes that successful organizations will make over the next ten years to survive in this changing environment. I'm sure I've missed a few, so I'd look forward to you filling in the gaps and telling me what I may have gotten wrong.

Jason