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How to Easily Slaughter a Bully When Negotiating

“When negotiating with a bully, the first skirmish starts in your mind.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Do you recall a time when you were cowered by a bully? Did it make you feel like you wanted to slaughter him? There are strategic ways to fight a bully when negotiating. They start with how you plan your strategy for the negotiation and how you engage him.

Continue reading and you’ll discover how you can easily slaughter a bully in your negotiations.

The Setup: Bully’s Allies

  • Know who the bully’s strongest and weakest allies are and know their strengths and weaknesses.
  • Understand their sway with the bully and access how you might alter their allegiance to him and make them your ally.
  • Devise a plan to have them fighting amongst themselves and think about at what point(s) in the negotiation that you might implement this scheme.

Cost: Price of Bullying

  • Make it clear that they’ll be a toll to exact if the bully attempts to bully you during the negotiation.
  • Consider how you might threaten the well-being of those the bully cares about (e.g. loss of finances, reputation, prestige, etc.) Be prepared to fire a warning shot to display your seriousness.

Strategies: Fighting Back

  • Consider the demeanors you’ll display to exhibit your mannerisms during the negotiation. You should align your desires to move the bully to a place of comfort or discomfort, depending on the situation.
  • Consider your strategies (e.g. pincer move (he’s surrounded with no way out), deceit (a bully will engage in deceit. To combat him, you must be willing to engage in it, too.)

Body Language: Interpreting Signals

  • Gestures that indicate weakening (e.g. breaking eye contact (weakening), speaking verbosely (losing steam and/or attempting to dazzle you with his BS), hands closer to his body (protecting himself), Looking around at/for others (seeking assistance/help), requesting a recess (needs time to collect himself)

 

  • Gestures that indicate strength (e.g. glaring (becoming more resolute), increasing the tone (attempting to convey commitment), asserting more space/puffing himself up (attempting to be perceived as bigger than he is), lack of veracity (he’s fearless about not being forthright – this might indicate desperation and/or an attempt to sway you by lying), insisting that you accept his position (act of intimidation)

 

  • Keep in mind that any of the gestures above may be a ploy. To assess their validity, do the opposite of what’s displayed or match it; your actions will depend on the circumstances at hand. Either way, you’ll glean insight into the validity of is action by the way he responds to yours. Be aware of how the bully shifts his perspective and positioning in the negotiation based on your reply to his actions.

The Trail: Set Markers

  • Be hypersensitive to the direction of the negotiation; know where you’re headed. If you don’t like where it’s going, change directions by invoking red herrings or any diversion you’ve created for this purpose.
  • Have markers denoting exits from the negotiation when you sense you’re in futile
  • Don’t stay engaged in a negotiation that’s not going expectedly if you see no way to make a course correction. You’ll hurt your negotiation position by doing so.

In your next negotiation, take heed of the points above. Assess how and when you’ll implement them. Adopt them as the shield and sword you use to combat a bully. In so doing, you’ll rob him of his powers … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.TheMasterNegotiator.com/greg-williams/

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Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development

Converting Information into Knowledge-Based Assets

When I developed my forecasting model in the early 1980s, I could see that a digital revolution would unfold, and as it did, an advanced form of capitalism would emerge, one where ideas and knowledge stimulated economic growth even more so than labor, land, money or other tangibles. It later became known as the Knowledge Era – or the Knowledge Age – in contrast to the Industrial Age.

A Few Strategic Questions to Consider

There is a big difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom. Today we are all focused on big data, and we should be because it provides the foundation for the three higher levels. We all have a database, and as we all know, there is no shortage of information, but do you have a knowledgebase? Is your organization creating new revenue streams by converting information into actionable knowledge, sharing that knowledge internally to increase its value, and then selling it in non-competing industries? I helped a large global organization do this several years ago and they generated over $100 million in the first year. All too often we fail to see the hidden value of the people part of the business. Are you actively using web-based technology to leverage the talents, knowledge and wisdom of employees to create new high-margin products, as well as solve problems faster?

All too often, as we grow larger and move faster, we can easily lose track of the wide variety of intellectual property (IP) we have created. Are you actively formalizing, capturing and leveraging your intellectual property(IP) to create higher value assets? Using today’s digital tools, it has never been easier for any organization, regardless of size, to create new revenue streams by leveraging their enhanced IP.

Three Must-Have Components to Leverage Intellectual Capital

1. Everyone in the organization must see the tremendous opportunity and added value in going beyond the current activity of converting data into information, to higher levels of value by creating and delivering actionable knowledge and wisdom. In addition, auditing and evaluating intellectual assets must be seen as a strategic direction.

2. Everyone in the organization must see that its technology infrastructure and organizational culture are the keys to unlocking the vast wealth of knowledge within the organization, both for the organization and your clients. Knowledge increases in value when it is shared within the organization, and that means shifting from being an Information Age organization to entering the Communication Age. Informing is a one-way activity that does not always produce a result. Communicating is two-way and dynamic and almost always causes action. That’s why social media has grown so fast; it is a Communication Age enabling technology. An internal knowledge-sharing strategy, focused on fostering two-way communication and dialog, is crucial because as I said earlier, knowledge increases in value when it is shared.

3. Everyone in the organization must see their participation as essential to building a strong foundation for the enhancement, sharing and delivery of knowledge. When we have collective knowledge and wisdom at out fingertips, everyone can accomplish their work with less time and effort.

Keep in mind that you get the behaviors you reward; therefore, there must be a rewards system for sharing knowledge. Remember, there are many ways to reward people and not all have to involve money.

If you would like to learn more about how to convert information to knowledge and then productize it for revenue, I recommend reading my latest bestselling book, The Anticipatory Organization.

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Culture Growth Management Personal Development

If You Want Optimum Trust and Success You Better Behave

Some organizations have achieved incredible success despite leaders who exhibit questionable behaviors. There are numerous stories about the petulance of Steve Jobs. Some days he was “good Steve” and other days “bad Steve.” Jobs was well known for exaggerated emotional outbursts laced with profanity. Yet still, Apple has been amazingly successful and, as of this writing, is the most valuable company in the Fortune 500 (capitalization) recently touching the trillion-dollar valuation mark. How does one explain the valuation of Apple when many of the behaviors of its most prominent leader were trust-breaking?

How does one explain the growth in valuation of Uber in the face of recent leadership issues and the resignation of one of the founders because of accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination? Yet, as of this writing, Uber is estimated to be worth $70 billion and is known as the company that upended how people think about and use personal transportation.

These two examples beg the question “How can a leader(s) achieve such amazing success while behaving so inappropriately?” It’s frustrating to know that inappropriate trust-breaking behavior by leaders can occur concurrent with incredible financial success. It’s a paradox. The answers lie in the interaction between strategy and culture and the priorities of the leadership at the time, namely, the desire for short-term vs. long-term success.

The famous quote “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” was originated by Peter Drucker and made famous by Mark Fields, president at Ford. This thought sets the stage for us provide some answers for managing the variation of trust. The point of Drucker’s quote is that both the culture of an organization and its strategy interact to achieve success. They are interdependent. One will influence the other. Culture will eventually either undermine the strategy or support it. In the long term, culture wins.

If it’s true that the leader(s) of an organization influences the culture, then we can explain how Steve Jobs evolved. Jobs’ behavior softened over the long term. Recent articles about Uber reveal that they changed their core values. Those most knowledgeable about Uber describe how the original core values often led to inappropriate behaviors, including competition between colleagues.

The key answer to long-term success is consciously managing culture to support an effective strategy. By providing a structure and method to manage the variation in trust we are helping the culture to evolve and to support the strategy.

The question: “How can we create a culture of trust that will support an aligned strategy?” The answer: “We must clearly define core values using specific observable behaviors. We must then provide consistent feedback about those observable behaviors.”

When the core values are operationalized, they describe specific observable behaviors. It’s not enough to say, “We behave with integrity” or “We respect each other.” The leadership needs to define exactly what that looks like. Otherwise, it is difficult, if not impossible, to provide credible feedback when needed. The feedback needs to be timely and credible.

If we want trust and predictable success, leadership must behave.

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.   Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.  See other resources here.

For more, read on: https://c-suitenetwork.com/advisors/advisor/wally-hauck/

Categories
Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Are You Ready for Back-to-Work?

How do you prepare for peak performance?

Kids get new pencils and back-packs, maybe even a new lunch-box. How do you prepare for getting back to work after the summer down-time?

When I was a kid I loved the excitement of getting back to school. Maybe because of my new pencils and outfits, but I actually liked the action of being engaged and using my brain. During the summer-break I would miss feeling productive. I know you might wonder what kind of kid is thinking about feeling productive. I did not call it that at the time of course. I think it was more like feeling I did something that other people responded to, learning stuff and showing my teachers that I was getting better and better at what they were teaching me. Reality is that is still what drives us as adults at work but let’s discuss that in another article.

Be a kid again.

Kids don’t have the same dread of “crazy-busy-no-time-to-myself” that adults do. Later when they are teenagers and studying for an exam though, the perfection-performance-mode already sets in. It is that mode, where we think our brain is the key to performance and that we just need to keep going without feeding, fueling or nourishing it, or the body that it is attached to that keeps it working. It is like thinking the computer can work without battery and electricity.

How did we go so wrong?

When did we start thinking of our bodies like a machine that just keeps going until it burns out? We don’t even treat our cars the way we treat our bodies. Maybe it was during the industrial revolution, where humans became less important than machines and we thought to compete we had to be like them? The thing is, we knowthat pushing harder does not make us more productive, and yet that is our solution for getting the work done.

Work less, get more done.

In 1926 Henry Ford introduced the 40-hour work-week. He found that when he reduced the work-day from 10 to 8 hours and the work-week from 6 to 5 day, productivity went UP. And yet most leaders work 10 hour days (or more) and 6 day work-weeks.

Kids in Finland started performing better in school when they had more play-time. They added a 15 minute break after each lesson, and their focus and attention improved. No surprise really, because neuroscience also tells us that we only focus optimally for 45-90 minutes at a time, and then we need 15 minute brain-off time, so that we can reset our nervous-system and re-boot our mental energy, so we can focus optimally again for the next 45-90 minutes.

So getting back to work, take a look at your schedule and make some performance changes. Cut your meetings from 60 minutes to 45 and take the 15 minutes in between for performance self-care.

Work better on food.

I consistently hear that people are not hungry or thirsty all day so they don’t stop to eat or drink water. It is probably not true that you are not hungry or thirsty! You are just not pausing for long enough to pay attention to your body.

Your body needs water and food, just as much as it needs a pause throughout the day. But when you are running on survival-mode your body tries to keep up with you being chased by a tiger (this tiger could be your boss, a deadline or your board of directors). When you are working on survival-mode, your body stops sending you messages of hunger and thirst, because all systems and hormones are on go-go-go, and you don’t get the “memo” that you are hungry until you stop late at night, – and realize you are starving. But by then you are also burned out.

Burnout prevention.

We don’t have to burn out. To avoid this cycle of burn out and recovery as the way we work, we need to bring self-care with us to work. We work better this way. It is how we can achieve peak performance, work better and go home happy with energy to spare.

Learn more about how to integrate burnout prevention into your company culture or your personal work-style find me at  jeanettebronee.com for keynotes, workshops and 1-on-1 coaching.

Photo: Jeremy Lapak via Unsplash

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

It’s Time for Managers to March to Their Own Coaching Cadence

Are millennials really that different from their younger counterparts: the members of the up and coming Generation Z? Yes, says Jessica Ogilvy, assistant professor of marketing at Marquette University. She explained the difference between generations during a recent Manage Smarter podcast.

Gen Z: Great Expectations

While managers might be used to supervising baby boomers, Gen Xers and millennials, Gen Z workers have different expectations. Here’s what you need to do to hire and keep the freshest talent.

Like millennials, Gen Z workers grew up in an age of transparency. They’re always connected and always want to be kept in the loop. This desire can come as a surprise to hiring organizations. In the past, you got away with not keeping in touch with candidates. That practice was especially true during the recession, when there were hundreds of qualified candidates for every job opening.

Right now, we’re in a strong labor market. If you’ve got a winning Gen Z candidate, you need to stay in touch. They want feedback. How did the interview go? Are you going to reach out to their references? Let them know these details, before they decide you’re not interested and move on to their next option.

Managing the Gen Z Employee

Once the Gen Z joins your workforce, the need for feedback doesn’t change. When these employees turn in an assignment, they expect some kind of response. For them, the absence of a response is the same as receiving a thumbs-down. That reaction is a far cry from the expectations of older generations. Old-school workers weren’t raised in a climate of constant feedback. They’re likely to break in a sweat, worrying they’ve done something wrong, when the manager appears at their cubicle.

It’s risky to hire an unproven Gen Z candidate right out of school. And it can be expensive if they leave quickly, which many tend to do. Ogilvy says we shouldn’t overlook the Gen Z eagerness to learn and high energy levels.

Coaching Cadence

To generate loyalty, Ogilvy recommends a using a practice called coaching cadence. Start your relationship with your employee by understanding their personal and professional goals. If they hope to buy a house and need more money, work with them on developing skills that will qualify them for a promotion in your organization. Help them see how their professional lives, at your company, will lead to achieving their personal dreams.

When you reach out as a manager on this level, employees see you being self-aware and empathetic. That transparency matters to them. The bigger challenge for you, as a manager, is to balance the unique needs of your youngest employees with all of the other demands on your time.

Make sure you regularly evaluate your priorities and don’t be afraid to delegate tasks when it makes sense.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

Monetizing Intellectual Capital

Your most valuable business asset may not be the raw materials, cash reserves, or even the technology found within your company. It’s the knowledge of the people on your team. Yet, a good number of executives overlook the value of this collective knowledge, commonly called Intellectual Capital.

Case in point: Several years ago, I attended a meeting with executives and managers from one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world. One of the top executives stood before the large crowd and exclaimed that their most valuable asset was their brand recognition. At that point, I knew this company was heading for trouble.

As I watched the business news headlines over the next couple of years, I could see how this icon of American manufacturing struggled to survive.

The lesson: Brand recognition is very important, but there are other things that are even more valuable to a company’s health and longevity. One of those things is something less tangible, but extremely impactful.

Intellectual Capital can be Leveraged 

Intellectual capital is a term that covers the value of intangible assets. The three dimensions of intellectual capital are Human, Relational and Structural.

These are all exactly how they sound – human resources are your company’s people; relational capital is comprised of your relationships with customers, vendors and other constituents; and your business structure includes infrastructure, processes, and databases of information. An example of structural capital is intellectual property.

Over the past 35 years, I have observed that the most valuable assets of an organization tend to be the knowledge, talent, experience, capabilities, and vision of the people within the organization. These, coupled with the value of their patents, customer bases, and good will, equal what is called their intellectual assets.

Managing Intellectual Capital

When leaders understand how to formalize, capture, and leverage their intellectual capital to produce higher-valued assets, their profits tend to soar. There is even an emerging business strategy that focuses on creating, shaping, updating and taking “stock” of intellectual capital.

It requires having the strategic vision to blend all dimensions of intellectual capital (people, relationships, and structure) to develop a management system that is measurable, yet pliable enough to change how the intellectual capital dimensions are blended.

There is more to the process than will fit into this one article, but the concept is this: By using a multiple stage process that is governed by evolutionary logic, the intellectual capital management includes interconnected sets of practices: strategic alignment, exploration and exploitation, measurement and reporting.

The Knowledge Era Put A Focus On Intellectual Assets

One important part of capitalizing intellectual capital is to keep the knowledge pipeline full. One of the best ways to do that is to convert information into actionable knowledge.

In 1990, I predicted organizations worldwide would increasingly create new economic value by converting information into knowledge, sharing that knowledge internally to increase its value, and then selling it in non-competing industries to a global client base. When the icon-based, user-friendly World Wide Web spawned a new digital industry in a short length of time, organizations began to want their intellectual property formalized, captured and leveraged for higher values. And they wanted it online.

It became known as the Knowledge Era or Knowledge Age, in contrast to the Industrial Age. By the end of the 21stCentury, we saw an advanced form of capitalism; one where ideas and knowledge stimulated economic growth even more  than did labor, land, money or other tangible resources.

Around the same time computer companies saw their profits shift from hardware manufacturing in the 1980s to software creation in the 1990s and beyond, businesses of all sizes and in all industries started using web-based technology to leverage the talents, knowledge and wisdom of employees to create high-margin products.

Three Must-Have Components to Create Intellectual Capital

When I consult with executives today, it’s often important to review the components that are necessary to leverage a process for monetizing intellectual capital to make sure they have them in place.

1. Everyone in the organization must see the tremendous opportunity and added value in going beyond the current activity of converting data into information, to higher levels of value, by creating and delivering knowledge and wisdom, which clients can quickly act upon. In addition, auditing and evaluating intellectual assets must be seen as a strategic direction.

2. Everyone in the organization must see that its technology infrastructure and organization are the keys to unlocking the vast wealth the Knowledge Era had to offer, both for the organization and your clients. Knowledge increases in value when it is shared within the organization, and that means the Communication Age could not have come at a better time. Informing someone of your knowledge is very different than communicating with them. That’s why a knowledge-sharing technology strategy, focused on fostering two-way communication and dialog, is so crucial to organizations in achieving their goals.

3. Everyone in the organization must see the importance of his or her own participation as essential to building a strong foundation for the enhancement, sharing and delivery of knowledge. You get the behaviors you reward; there must be a reward system for sharing knowledge. I like to remind my consulting clients that there are many ways to reward people, and not all of them have to involve money.

At this point in time, technology is no longer a barrier to creating a Knowledge Era enterprise. Below is a case study about a knowledge-based product that was created in the midst of this era, and serves as a great example of the value of intellectual capital.

An Early Example: Mayo Clinic’s First Knowledge-Based Product

In the 1990s, one of the largest health systems in the country, Mayo Clinic, was looking at a future of decreasing reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid, and increasing losses in their emergency rooms. For the Mayo Clinic and other health systems, the future looked bleak.

In a consultation with their executives, I asked a simple question: “Why don’t you sell your knowledge?” Though their initial response was skeptical, further thinking led them to put Mayo Clinic knowledge on a CD, which was a relatively new technology at the time.  That meant that any time, day or night, people who purchased the CD could put it in their PC and determine if, for example, their child’s rash and fever required just aspirin, or a trip to the emergency room.

The Mayo Clinic put a $100 price tag on their CD product when it first came out, and in the first year, I was told they sold 670,000 copies. A light went on for the clinic executives; leveraging internal knowledge could create value.

It was their first-ever knowledge-based product, and it was a precursor to not only MayoClinic.org, but also to a host of other online consumer health information portals that are heavily used today. One side benefit they discovered was the impact on their brand; by using knowledge as an asset, Mayo Clinic developed a new and powerful image in the health care marketplace that they continue to leverage right up to the present.

Knowledge is (Branding) Power

Before putting actionable knowledge on a CD (keep in mind this was before people were on-line), in order to get help from the Mayo Clinic, you had to go to one of their locations. But with a CD of knowledge that was then translated into French, German, Spanish, and Japanese, the clinic could help people anywhere around the world at any time. And, keep in mind, this was long before the phrase 24/7 accessibility became popular.

From there, Mayo Clinic decided to customize the knowledge product for various audiences, including elementary schools, high schools, medical schools, and nursing homes.

The result was new value and new revenue; they had opened their customer base up, not only to people who were geographically close, but also to the world. And in the case of the Mayo Clinic, the name recognition isn’t regional or national anymore; it became international.

This history lesson illustrates the power of using new tools to create new income streams and elevate your brand in powerful new ways.  It doesn’t matter what industry you are in; we all have intellectual capital that can be formalized, captured and leveraged using today’s new and powerful tools.

Are you leveraging the most valuable assets in your organization?

If not, what are some ways you can convert information to actionable knowledge and then productize it for revenue? In today’s mobile, social, virtual online world, you are  limited only by your mindset.  If you feel stuck, I recommend subscribing to my Anticipatory Leader System to determine what intellectual assets will be important to your consumers in the next 5 years and beyond.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Management Tips from The Charisma Coach

You’ve hired your dream candidate. They’re blowing the doors off all the technical problems you’ve been having. But, they don’t seem very happy. And, they don’t seem to be fitting in with the rest of the team, especially since they’re lacking professionalism. What are you going to do now? Mary Gardner, The Charisma Coach, who we just interviewed for a Manage Smarter podcast on the C-Suite Radio Network, would say it’s time to put on your coaching hat. Here’s how it works…

Today’s managers are faced with building teams from five different generations. Older employees, those in the baby boomer and Gen X groups, accept assignments without question. They put in long hours. For many, the concept of work-life balance doesn’t exist. Younger employees question everything. These team members won’t necessarily complete a task unless they feel involved.

To increase involvement and make solid connections with your team members, use storytelling. Try opening a meeting on a project by delivering a one-liner: a statement about what must be delivered. Then you should delve into details that will make your audience, your team, become emotionally involved. Talk on a personal level about a similar project you managed and how it impacted you or the larger world.

Beyond storytelling, start involving your team members. Ask for their input. Start with the least experienced person in the group. Otherwise, the more experienced team members may squelch creative thinking, simply because newer employees often feel intimidated. Include as many ideas as you can in the project in order to give employees ownership. This process, says Gardner, will appeal to millennial and Gen Z workers who admire inspiring leaders.

Excitement about a work project may still not be enough to induce professionalism in your new tech hire. Managers realize that while younger employees bring energy, ideas and technical skills to the table, they often lack understanding of true teamwork. It’s up to you, the manager, to set ground rules. One approach to the situation is to focus on career goals and discuss how the current job fits into the employees’ larger vision for their lives. Ask if they see themselves progressing in a management role. Many young workers share this goal.

If they are coming in late, leaving early and asking about more benefits, explain how that attitude doesn’t match the management profile. Encourage them to volunteer for more projects and devote more energy to work. Advise them to pay attention to company culture. For example, taking more than an hour for lunch isn’t a good idea. Another example could be reminding them to praise a co-worker for a job well done. Consistent coaching on these topics can help you shape the career path of a talented employee. What could be more rewarding than that?

Categories
Growth Personal Development

12 Technology Categories That Will Transform Careers

As technology continues to impact our lives, workers at every level in today’s ever-changing labor market need to be prepared with skills to adapt and succeed in the workplace.

The problem is, we live in an uncertain world, and because of the high levels of uncertainty we all face, people of all ages and career levels are finding it difficult to know what new skills to learn, what courses to take, and what degrees to get that will provide them with the most opportunity going forward. Uncertainty keeps us stuck in the present.

Certainty, on the other hand, gives us the confidence to make a bold decision, to move forward with confidence, and to invest time and money to learn new things. Over the past thirty years, I have developed a proven methodology to anticipate disruption and change before it happens, allowing you to find the confidence that certainty provides. This new science of certainty involves a scientific method of separating Hard Trends — trends that will happen — from Soft Trends — trends that might happen. This method is currently being used by many Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, Deloitte, and Pratt & Whitney to name a few, as well as the Pentagon to provide an accurate roadmap of the opportunities that are ahead.

That’s why I wrote my latest bestseller,The Anticipatory Organization, and why I’m now helping you to connect the dots on how the 12 Hard Trends driven by technology I outline below will transform every career, and create new ones. By providing an accurate roadmap for anyone who wishes to increase their personal career relevancy in a world of transformative change, you can make career and education decisions with confidence. The list highlights technologies that are now and will continue to transform present and future careers. As you read through the list, ask yourself how each one will play a key role in your industry and your personal career path.

1. Mobile Hardware, Software, and Interactive Services will continue to rapidly evolve, creating many new careers, as all phones become smartphones, wearable capabilities expand, and our primary computer and tablets continue to evolve as our laptop replacement. This new level of mobility will allow any size business to transform how it markets, sells, communicates, collaborates, educates, trains, and innovates. Augmented Reality (AR)and Virtual Reality (VR) will become increasingly mobile, playing a major role in direct and indirect job creation.

2. Remote Visual Communications is rapidly evolving into a primary relationship-building tool for businesses of all sizes as employees use smartphones, tablets, and laptops, in combination with current enterprise-level video conferencing systems combined with mobile conferencing apps, to communicate at new levels with customers, partners, and employees.

3. Social Business Enterprise Management will continue to grow rapidly as organizations shift from an Information Age “informing”model to a Communication Age “communicating and engaging” model. New careers will emerge as Social Software for business rapidly grows with applications to enhance relationships, collaboration, networking, social validation, and more. Social Search will increasingly shape careers as marketers, researchers, and those on Wall Street create applications and services to tap into millions of daily tweets, Facebook conversations, and much more, providing real-time analysis of many key consumer metrics.

4. Cybersecurity and Forensics careers will grow rapidly as we become increasingly connected and dependent on computer systems and machines using intelligent sensors connected to just about everything. Careers in data and information forensics will grow rapidly as the need to solve cyber crimes increases.

5. Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) will create many new careers in manufacturing as this revolutionary technology allows any size company to manufacture quickly, locally, and with far fewer costs. Additive manufacturing builds things by depositing material, typically plastic or metal, layer by layer, until the final product is finished. Examples of final products today include jewelry, iPhone cases, shoes, car dashboards, parts for jet engines, prosthetic limbs, and much more.

6. Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and AI enhanced Simulations, coupled with the Gamification of Education, will create many new careers as corporations and educational institutions at all levels accelerate learning by using advanced simulations, VR, and skill-based learning systems that are self-diagnostic, interactive, game-like, and competitive, all focused on giving the user an immersive experience thanks to a photorealistic 3D interface.

7. Advanced Cloud Services and Virtualization will be increasingly embraced by businesses of all sizes, as this represents a major shift in how organizations obtain and maintain software, hardware, and computing capacity. IT is rapidly becoming an on-demand service that is rapidly transforming all business processes, resulting in a rapid evolution of current careers as well as creating new careers in every functional area.

8. Big Data and Real-Time Analytics describe the technologies and techniques used to capture and utilize the exponentially increasing streams of data with the goal of bringing enterprise-wide visibility and insights to make rapid critical decisions. This new level of data integration and analytics will require many new skills and cross-functional training in order to take advantage of new opportunities as well as break down the many data and organizational silos that still exist.

9. AI, Machine Learning, and Intelligent ePersonal Assistants (Chatbots) using natural language voice commands was launched with Apple’s Siri, which was rapidly followed by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others all offering what is rapidly evolving into a mobile electronic concierge on your phone, tablet, and television. The technology will rapidly evolve, and soon every profession from retailers to maintenance workers will have an Alexa-like assistant. Adding an e-personal assistant to support an existing product and/or service will create many new careers.

10. 3D Web will transform today’s Internet experience (which is like looking at a flat piece of paper with a few photos, embedded video, and a few hyperlinks) to a true 3D experience, similar to todays video games, where you can virtually walk into a showroom, look around, and both listen to and see the new car you are interested in, or whatever the website is trying to show you. This will employ many new graphic artists, designers, and programmers.

11. Connected Intelligent Sensors and Machines using chips, micro-sensors, and both wired and wireless networks will create a rapidly growing Internet of Things (IoT),sharing real-time data, performing diagnostics, and making remote repairs. Many jobs will be created as we add intelligent connected sensors to bridges, roads, buildings, homes, and much more. In just a few years, there will be well over a billion machines talking to each other, and people will install them.

12. Advanced Robotics and Automation will take a giant leap forward thanks to networked sensors, artificial intelligence, and Amazon-like voice communications, taking the next level of repetitive jobs from humans. This will create many new career opportunities from design, programming, and installation to service and maintenance to name just a few.

You don’t have to know the physics of a telephone in order to use it. You do have to know it exists and how to creatively use it to accomplish your goal. Don’t wait until next year or the year after, or until you’re laid off. Invest the time to identify what you need to learn right away so that you will thrive both now and in the future, either in your current career or a new one.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Don’t Like Conflict? Here’s How to Stop Avoiding that Dreaded Encounter

If you’ve been managing people for any length of time, you know it’s not always fun. You’ll have great days when you’re cheering about a team member’s win. And, then, you’ll have some truly challenging days. You know what I’m talking about. It’s those days when you have to address an employee performance issue. If you’re conflict-averse, you may be avoiding these encounters.

When you avoid an employee-related problem, you’re damaging your credibility as a manager. Your inaction also demotivates other team members. If they see a co-worker consistently taking long lunches, and not being asked to change their behavior, resentment grows. To stop this problem from getting any worse, take action as advised by Steve Sisler.

In a recent Manage Smarter podcast, Sisler, president of the Behavior Resource Group, discusses how to understand and address your motivations as a conflict-averse individual. He describes one situation involving a manager who didn’t want to ask an employee to stop coming in late.

“A highly altruistic person, this kind of manager [conflict averse] sees the value in other people sooner than they see the value in themselves.” As a result, these managers find it hard to say anything confrontational to someone else.

If you’re not comfortable telling an employee to change their behavior, try a different approach. Since you don’t want to be the ‘bad guy,’ one of Sisler’s suggested workarounds is to blame company policy. Tell the employee that everyone else is coming to work on time, because that’s what the policy requires. So they must follow the policy, too. By bringing in the higher authority, the conflict averse manager escapes having the employee’s resentment directed at them.

Sisler points out that conflict averse individuals often don’t possess the ability to become angry. And anger is often the emotion that drives conflict. In Sisler’s opinion, four energy systems drive human behavior: anger, optimism, fear and patience. If you have too much anger, Sisler points out, you can turn into a manager everyone avoids. Why? Because you’re looking for conflict even there isn’t any.

To succeed as a manager, think about what motivates you. Take a personality assessment and study the results. Then review the motivators of the individuals on your team. Once you have that information, think logically about the best way for you to approach each person in every type of situation. Thinking they want to be treated the same way you want to be treated can easily make things worse in many cases.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development Technology

Four Big Brands Blindsided by Accelerated Change

It’s one of life’s universal lessons: Look both ways before crossing the street. Parents have been impressing its importance on every generation since Henry Ford tinkered with the internal combustion engine. However, many of us forgot that good advice, or assumed it didn’t apply, when crossing from one decade of business into the next.

From the 1970s into the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, the prevailing assumption was that the future would be relatively similar to the past, and that major changes only took place over long stretches of time, which provided plenty of leeway to adjust.

We stepped off the curb, looking straight ahead—and wham! Individuals and organizations were blindsided by massive changes. It happened to big companies like IBM, Motorola, Research In Motion, Sears and countless others.

Four Big Brands That Were Blindsided

IBM. The original computer giant was late to act on the Hard Trends shaping the future of computing and missed the huge need for personal computers, entering the market late. Then in 2005, IBM sold its personal computer portfolio of products, including the popular ThinkPad brand, to Lenovo, which is now the world’s largest personal computing vendor. IBM was also late to embrace the Hard Trends of increasing use of mobility and the cloud.

Motorola. Similarly, the historic telecommunications company failed to anticipate exponential changes of the early 21st century, though it had many telecom firsts—first car radio, first handheld mobile phones in the early 1970s and the first smartphone using the Google Android OS. Unfortunately, the Motorola Mobility branch relied on being Agile, reacting after a disruption occurs, while leading companies were Anticipatory, using Hard Trends to see the future first and jump ahead and stay there.

Research In Motion. The company’s BlackBerry was the undisputed leader in business mobility, with a highly usable mini keyboard and tight integration of mobile email and calendar functionality. When Apple released the first iPhone, Research In Motion’s leadership failed to see the new future Apple had enabled and focused instead on making improvements instead of embracing the Hard Trends that were shaping the future of mobility and taking its loyal user base into the smartphone future.

Sears. Widely considered the first “everything” store, Sears had a winning business strategy: a notoriously large selection of goods in a catalog that was mailed to just about everyone. Products that were ordered were delivered right to the customer’s home. Like many big brands blindsided by game-changing Hard Trends followed by disruptive innovation, Sears didn’t see how serious competition had become—for both brick and mortars like Walmart and online-only retailer Amazon. Their past success and organizational ego limited their view of the future.

Based on these and other painful experiences, the prevailing assumption was dramatically adjusted: Change is speeding up—get used to it. But then with each passing decade, crossing the street of change became an exercise in advanced risk analysis. Dodging oncoming traffic was the name of the game.

Seeing Change Is Only Part of the Solution

Spotting technology-driven change provides only part of the solution, however. Literally thousands of important high-tech breakthroughs are zooming at us from left and right. Not only do we need to carefully look both ways, it is essential to actually see and understand the ramifications of what’s coming.

Hopping out of the way in a panic or jumping onboard the next new thing isn’t the answer; nor is taking a wait-and-see attitude. By reinventing how welookat technology-driven change, it is possible to reinvent the way we thinkabout change. Once that happens, the reinvention of how we actin response to change takes place.

Look. Think. Act. These distinct steps are the key to both finding and profiting from the many new opportunities that are headed our way.

Look at the Hard Trends that willhappen and the game-changing opportunities they represent. Look at the Soft Trends that might happen and the opportunities to influence them.

Think about your list of opportunities and refine them into a few Must-Do actions.

Pick at least one opportunity and act on it now, because if you don’t do it, someone else will!

Today, agility—reacting quickly after a problem occurs or after a disruption disrupts, is not good enough. It’s time to learn how to become Anticipatory, using Hard Trends to anticipate disruptions beforethey happen, turning disruption and change into a choice.

If you would like to learn more, check out my latest bestseller, The Anticipatory Organization: How to Turn Change and Disruption Into Opportunity and Advantage.