BusinessWeek.com has an intriguing article titled Why Failures Can Be Such Success Stories.  I have an appreciation for these discussions because I can relate to many of these topics.  My career has had many ups and downs and certainly does not look like a textbook example of how to build a career.

In business—as in sports, politics, and the arts—many of the greatest and most influential leaders share a history of failure. Automaker Henry Ford and animator Walt Disney both stumbled badly with early business ventures. Early in his career with General Electric (GE), Jack Welch caused an explosion that blew the roof off a building. Not long after taking Apple Computer (AAPL) public, founder Steve Jobs was ousted by the very man he recruited to lead the company.

Psychologists say it’s not simply the fact that these people learned from mistakes that led to eventual success. It’s also the resilience they displayed in getting past those potholes.

Blowing the roof off of a building definitely qualifies as a “pothole.”  Resiliency is a key trait among successful leaders.  Many companies realize this fact, but they do not have a method for assessing it.  We do.

This definition was particularly apt:

While self-efficacy is akin to other aspects of positive thinking such as self-confidence and self-esteem, it relates in particular to self-assurance about being able to excel at a particular task rather than to a person’s overall self-image. When failure strikes, people with high self-efficacy learn from their errors and strengthen their resolve to succeed.

Leadership roles at any level require this ability.  If you are not assessing for it today, perhaps it is time to start?

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I have a friend who is one of the steadiest guys in the world.  He is extremely talented, has worked for some large companies and has an impressive list of degrees.  However, he has been working on his career path since the moment he graduated college in 1992.

He has worked for 4-5 year stints at a few companies before joining a company now that is the realization of his chosen path.  The humorous aspect of his journey is that his employer is an old company.  Their initial review of his stellar resume was this - he is a jobhopper.  I still laugh when I think about that line applied to him.

It is all perspective, right?  He thought his 5 year stints were fairly secure while this company viewed it as risky.  He got the due to a strong recommendation despite the hiring manager’s concerns.  My friend has since started to climb up the corporate ladder with one success after another.

His story came to mind when I read this article from abcnews.com.  The article speaks to the increasing number of employees who work from home.  But tucked inside the article is this information (emphasis mine):

Having to replace a star employee who flies the coop can cost a company 150 to 200 percent of that worker’s salary, Seitel says. Considering Millennials and some of the youngest Gen X employees job-hop every one to three years, she adds, that turnover gets pretty pricey. Employers must spend time and money to hire and train new employees while sustaining losses in productivity, she said.

The hiring manager from my friend’s company would have a myocardial infarction if he read that statistic.  Every 1 to 3 years they change jobs!  The entire jobhopping definition is going to be turned on it’s ear by Gen Y.  They are looking for a career path like my friend except they are not going to be as patient.

Retention will continue to be a top priority this year and will increase with time.  Nomadism is going to be one important, low-cost tool for companies in their quest to keep their top employees.

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Sometimes the best advice is simply stated which is true of this Inc.com post titled The Fallacy of an Open-Door Policy.  This topic catches my attention in that some of the worst managers I worked for claimed profusely that they had an open-door policy.  They stated it, but we sales reps all knew it was a ruse.

I think the author strikes a perfect chord with this:

You need to create an environment where people can speak up in any venue. I’ve had some of my most important communications with employees driving in the car, standing in the lunchroom, or walking through the shop floor.

How true…and difficult to put in practice for some managers.

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Not my words, but rather a quote from this Selling Power article:

“If I had to use one word to describe Generation Y, it’s empowered,” says Ann Fishman, president of Generation Targeted Marketing Corporation, a specialized marketing firm providing insight into consumer preferences, trends, and buying habits affecting the six generations of Americans. “This is a generation who has a tremendous amount of self-confidence. They are civic minded, optimistic, and want to be involved in their futures. They are going to come on very strong.

And now for some tips:

Fishman notes a few things to keep in mind when going through the hiring process with this group. First, Generation Y is very interactive, says Fishman and suggests getting them involved in the interview process very early.

The other thing that is really important to this generation is bonding and branding, says Fishman. “This group bonds to companies very early – they start bonding at age 10 and they are almost fully bonded by the age of 15,” she explains and advises offering summer internships, sponsoring field trips, sport teams, or volunteer causes. “You have to support their volunteer causes. This group has been volunteering since pre-K. Establish name recognition with them early on.”

And then the tip that caught my attention (emphasis mine):

Along those same lines, you need to be careful once you hire Generation Y employees; make sure that they have a clear understanding of what’s to be kept confidential. This is a group that has no concept of privacy. Their lives are online with MySpace, Facebook – everything is exposed and open to the public.

That is an excellent point.  I suspect there has always been some intellectual bleed from companies in the past, but Gen Y could multiply it by an order of magnitude more.

Lastly, a tip for hiring:

Speed is very important to them. They’ll give you a quick turnaround, but they expect a quick turnaround. If they can’t text message, then they don’t understand why. Email is almost too slow for them. A sales career is a great match for them, because the sales industry is fast paced.

Since they are speed demons, they aren’t really good at handling long-term projects. Fishman suggests breaking up long projects into shorter segments. Along the same lines, if you decide you want Generation Y employees, you need to hire them right away. They won’t wait around for six-month background checks or interview processes that take weeks. They want a quick response.

We got a bloody nose on this topic when we lost a good, young candidate who wouldn’t wait for our plodding customer to work through their baby boomer hiring process.  The candidate took another job before our customer finally decided to move forward.

We learned a valuable lesson from that experience.

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The Wall Street Journal provides an article that does a nice job of laying out the upcoming shortage of workers.  The focus is upon the different generations and the general drive behind each.  The article is rather rudimentary, but it provides a clean view of the problem.

First:

Americans of childbearing age simply are not producing enough kids to meet the economy’s future need for workers, notably in fast-growing fields such as medicine and engineering. The shortfall is coming largely because the fabled baby boom generation was so huge—75 million Americans born in the 18 years from 1946 to 1964—that no other generation can be expected to match it any time soon.

Ok, that point leads to this:

They are being replaced by two younger generations, each with its own desires regarding the opportunities and rewards available at work. The challenge for hiring managers is to figure out what these workers’ needs are, so that employers will be able to find them, hire them, and keep them on the job.

Retention is going to be a top business initiative over the next couple of decades which is a simply outcome of supply and demand.

The baby boomers: They place a heavy emphasis on work and successfully climbing the corporate ladder. Work is an anchor in their lives.

The Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1980: They enjoy work but are more concerned about the work-life balance.

Generation Y, also known as Millennials, born after 1980 and now age 28 or younger: They often have different priorities than their Gen X and baby boomer counterparts, Smith says.

“Because of their reliance on technology, [Millennials] think they can work at any time and any place and believe they should be evaluated on the basis of work produced—not on how, when or where they got it done. Curiously, most Millennials want long-term relationships with employers, but on their own terms,” Smith says.

And finally, here is the rub we have seen between Baby Boomer managers and Gen Y employees:

The Millennials respond poorly to those who act in an authoritarian manner and those who expect to be respected due to higher rank alone. They believe they can learn quickly, take on significant responsibility and make major contributions far sooner than baby boomers think they can.

Exactly.  There has to be a balance between the boomer manager allowing the Gen Y worker to grow quickly in the role and the Gen Y worker not expecting too much, too fast.  There is distinct tension between these two goals.

As they see, read the entire thing.

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Apparently the answer to that question depends upon whom you ask.  From an older RecruitingTrends.com article:

Furthermore, executives’ innate understanding of what defines flexible work strategies varies. While the largest percentage (45%) define it as pertaining to time, 31% view it as something to do with an employee’s location, and another 23% see flexible work arrangements as something other than time or location.

I would fall in the “Flexible location” group in terms of defining it.  It would appear that this relatively new phrase requires a better definition.  Or perhaps all new phrases and terms begin with some ambiguity.

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CareerBuilder.com offers up another list with “wacky” in the title.  For web purposes, wacky is a euphemism for link bait, but I’ll bite.  The list is comprised of the most unusual excuses provided by employees for being late.

1.  
   1. While rowing across the river to work, I got lost in the fog.
   2. Someone stole all my daffodils.
   3. I had to go audition for American Idol.
   4. My ex-husband stole my car so I couldn’t drive to work.
   5. My route to work was shut down by a Presidential motorcade.
   6. I wasn’t thinking and accidentally went to my old job.
   7. I was indicted for securities fraud this morning.
   8. The line was too long at Starbucks.
   9. I was trying to get my gun back from the police.
   10. I didn’t have money for gas because all of the pawn shops were closed.

As a manager, I would find #8 completely acceptable.

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Another good article here from WSJ titled New Career, Same Employer.  The gist of the article:

Ernst & Young LLP last year named Nancy Harley director of career mobility for the Americas, a new position designed to help employees of the accounting firm move into new roles. “The longer someone stays intrigued and challenged, the longer they’re going stay with the firm,” Ms. Harley says.

Observers say employers are creating or expanding these programs to improve retention rates in a competitive job market, particularly as Baby Boomers begin to retire.

The initiatives typically include Web-based programs for evaluating employees’ career goals and suggesting relevant paths.

Interesting title - director of career mobility.  That position, or some form of it, may become quite common in the next 5 years.  Evaluating skills, talents and motivations is already a common tool used today by companies in both hiring, evaluating and promoting.

Here is an example from the article of how a large company handles this topic:

Accenture’s career-change initiative includes resources such as an online skills-assessment tool and a Web page featuring video clips of workers who have changed careers at the company. Every Accenture employee has an internal career counselor. Employees are urged to work with these counselors to develop a plan, including searching the company’s internal online job board.

I like the idea of an internal career counselor.  Obviously, Accenture is large so they have the ability to offer these resources.  However, managers can still be tuned into these topics with their employees.  This management skill will surely become more important as Gen Y increasingly becomes the largest generation in the workforce.

On a related note, I wrote an article a couple years ago that talked about Gen X and Y desiring a skills path for their personal development.  You can read it here.

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This Wall Street Journal quick-hit article is shocking:

Companies are rolling out software that allows them to mine their employees’ emails and electronic address books for contact information, in a bid to make it easier to establish relationships with potential clients and others. But the tools also raise privacy concerns, and have been met with resistance at some firms.

“Raises privacy concerns”…that is an understatement.  There has to be more to this story, but I can’t imagine companies using these tools.  If they do, I suspect the natural reaction will be for employees to carry around their contact info on their cell phone and not place it on their company computer.

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This I did not know - from a Pioneer Press short Q&A article (my editing):

My company has a new district manager. He and I got off to a bad start when he divulged my salary in a mass e-mail and caused an uproar among my new co-workers. Some of them do the same job as me but make considerably less. When I called him on this, he responded, “What’s the big deal? They all tell each other anyway.”

A: Even though the manager showed poor judgment, he didn’t break the law, according to Richard Kass, a partner at Bond, Schoeneck & King in Manhattan. “Employees have no right to privacy in their salaries,” Kass said. The manager may have “acted stupidly,” he said, but he did not break any laws.

To take it one step further:

Your situation is unusual and is the inverse of a situation that actually is illegal. Companies typically get into trouble for directing employees to keep their salaries secret and then trying to punish those who exchange salary information, Kass said.

I’m a bit surprised by that fact.  It may be legal, but the manager sharing that information sure seems like a morale-killer.  He may have unwittingly opened a Pandora’s box.

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