For a Competitive Edge, Train Your IT Professionals on Business Initiatives

By Drew Cather, Vice President of Innovation for Trace3

Professional development events are common for business professionals in most industries. In fact, there are more than 10,000 trade shows held in the U.S. annually. With a well-planned personal schedule, one can certainly learn a lot at a trade show; but occasionally, you can return from a week of attending various sessions wishing you’d learned a bit more and, frankly, realized better ROI for your time away from the office.

It’s a fairly common epiphany, and I recently had one of those experiences in the tech industry. It got me thinking: How can IT leadership conferences and professional development programs be taken to the next level? What are the most important aspects on which we should be focusing for the future?

Technology is a major business differentiator and something that has the power to shape the future of an organization. Companies should want their IT professionals to be more ingrained in understanding the mechanics of their business, so development programs should help IT professionals become more aligned with—and aware of—the business initiatives within their organizations. In many regards, the CIO of today is tomorrow’s CEO.

In speaking with many tech industry CIOs and vice presidents I found that the majority agreed, with most providing valuable feedback for what they would look for in a development program like this. The ideal program would be geared toward helping attendees go out and learn about business. IT is a necessary service supporting the business of any company, so they go hand-in-hand.

Armed with this feedback, the lightbulb went off for me while I was attending a CIO-focused event at University of California, Irvine’s Center for Digital Transformation. The center offers educational programs that help organizations leverage the possibilities enabled by emerging digital technologies. This is done by conducting innovative research and offering an exciting outreach program including workshops, conferences and lectures. It dawned on me that this would be the ideal resource and host to facilitate the creation of a program.

I met with Dr. Vijay Gurbaxani, the director of the UCI Center for Digital Transformation, and his associate Ed Trainor to discuss my concept. The first question Gurbaxani and Trainor posed to me was, “What’s the value in a program like this?” It’s a great question.

Here are some reasons why a program like this is so important:

1. The people we work with in IT leadership are actively searching for tools to nurture and grow their best and brightest team members to get them focused on understanding the business and ultimately aligning technology innovation to drive the business.
2. From the research I conducted, it appears no such program exists with respect to the curriculum and focus being put together. With the support of Gurbaxani, Trainor and my organization, we set out to bring the program to life. I foresee the development of more programs like this as HR and the C-suite continue to see the value in IT professional development.
3. Recent disasters like the Equifax data breach (along with other major security meltdowns) show that cybersecurity and IT are serious concerns for the C-suite. With budgets being devoted to preventing cyberattacks that devastate the bottom line, it makes sense for IT staff to learn about business strategy.

The UCI Paul Merage School of Business has just launched the program, offering a Certificate in Business Leadership for IT Executives with participants from such diverse organizations as AIG, NetApp, Sutter Health and Yamaha Motors USA. For me, the go-ahead from UCI to join in the development of the program was absolute validation that a need existed for the program, and acted as a call to action for so many tech companies that understand the value in shaping tech executives to look for new ways to drive business outcomes.

In an ideal world, no one would finish a leadership program questioning its value. Leadership programs should be purposefully designed to educate and enable their participants to understand the business side of things in order to better align innovation to the objectives of their organization.

To remain competitive, organizations must embrace digital transformation while staying focused on traditional objectives. By learning about business initiatives to complement their existing knowledge base, today’s IT professionals are in the perfect position to help guide their organizations and advise the C-suite on the evolving tech landscape.

Drew Cather is vice president of Innovation at Trace3, where he focuses on turning technology innovation into business value. He holds an economics degree from UC-Berkeley and lives in Orange County, California, with his wife and young son.

Town Hall Meetings Get Real

By Brian Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer at POPin

As new tools, analytics and technology transform the traditional workplace, "town-hall-style" gatherings remain popular forums for employees at all levels to engage with one another and have direct contact with senior management.

Beyond the camaraderie, the issues at hand and the need for consensus gathering, transparency, feedback and input make town halls an attractive option. As such, the agenda setting, post-meeting action items and feedback loops can hold as much weight as the meeting. But corporate town hall meetings often fall flat; employees see them as lip service rather than places for their voices to genuinely be heard, and senior management perceives them as precarious attempts at transparency with a low yield on organizational alignment.

This disconnect shows a failure to source feedback from employees prior to meetings so that management can plan to address the right topics. Despite efforts to gather the whole team, it is challenging to prioritize agenda items, figure out what’s really top of mind across the board, and discern how best to address issues with a constructive, results-based approach.

Below are a few tips to drive more actionable insights on important company-wide issues in a town hall setting:

Before the meeting:

Crowdsource questions. By crowdsourcing questions from employees before the town hall starts, companies can set a structured agenda for the meeting. Managers can use these questions to gauge which issues are the most pressing and should be prioritized. By using software to crowdsource questions from employees, management also minimizes the risk of spending the majority of the meeting discussing a topic that isn’t a primary concern for employees.

Enable anonymity. Candid feedback is key to company improvement, and by remaining anonymous, employees can be more honest with their feedback without the fear of retribution. Employees should be allowed to anonymously ask questions and provide feedback to senior management. Crowdsourcing technology makes it easy for employees to submit anonymous comments.

During the meeting:

Encourage dialogue. Real-time questions allow the audience to engage with the presenter during the town hall. However, employees can be intimidated when the CEO asks the audience for questions. To prevent this, companies can use mobile technology to allow employees to anonymously submit questions during the town hall.

Swap the schedule. During most town halls, CEOs and upper management can seemingly dominate the allotted time with presentations and monologues, leaving little time for a Q&A session at the end.

The goal of a town hall is to gain insight and feedback from employees. By limiting the presentation time for executives and scheduling a longer Q&A session, management will have ample time to address employee concerns.

After the meeting:
Leverage analytics. Companies should have an analytics platform in place to quantify how effectively the messages of their town hall meeting was transmitted. Analytics empower managers to bridge identified gaps and build closer relationships with their employees.

Provide insights. In addition to providing a recap of the town hall, managers should provide all employees with insights gained from the meeting. A crowdsourcing platform can help managers use analytics to provide insight in a constructively.


For managers, corporate town halls are a great way to drive transparency within the organization and cultivate meaningful conversations with their employees. Town halls provide employees with an open forum to ask questions and provide feedback, which will ultimately help the company improve. Despite best efforts to hold interactive town halls in which workforce concerns are heard, it’s still difficult to discern exactly what employees need. By leveraging new tools and analytics to facilitate anonymous, organized town halls with employees, managers can ensure that these meetings will provide fruitful results.

Aligning Values and Culture—the Undersung Secret to Success

By Catherine Rains, CPP Education Consultant, and a New MBTI® Certification Program Trainer

A successful career entails not only identifying a career that gets you excited, but also finding an organizational culture that meshes with your values. The culture of a particular company might be a product of its wider industry, or it might be unique to that organization. Either way, your “cultural fit” will have a deep impact on your success. If the fit is off, you may find yourself frequently experiencing difficulty communicating, feeling that you’re speaking a ‘different language’, while missing opportunities for promotions/rewards, and eventually experience stress and burnout (Hammer 2007). A solid cultural fit, on the other hand, will allow you to more fully engage with your work.

The kind of work that we enjoy doing is heavily influenced by our personality type preferences. However, whether or not we gel with a certain organizational culture is just as important a factor in our enjoyment and success within a work position. This will largely be determined by our values, which can also be described by our personality type. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment identifies this (Briggs Myers 1998) with the two middle letters in our four-letter type (for example, the ‘NF’ in ENFJ).  The second MBTI “letter”—either S or N—describes how we take in information. Those preferring Sensing (S) like specific, practical and tangible information, while those preferring Intuition (N) focus on the big picture, and look for connections between facts, seeking patterns and possibilities.

Contrast these to the the third MBTI “letter”--either T or F--which addresses how we make decisions. Those preferring Thinking (T) look at logical consequences, and mentally remove themselves from the situation. On the other hand those preferring Feeling (F) consider what is important to them and others involved, and mentally place themselves in the situation at question.

Connecting the dots between values and culture
The various combinations of these preferences align with workplace cultures in interesting ways. Here are a few examples:

● Do you want to solve complex problems? Those preferring NT (Intuition/Thinking)  often gravitate toward professions like engineering, architecture, high-tech, research, business analysis and strategy-driven consulting, and feel at home in organizations that emphasize strategic planning and innovation.

● Do you like to provide a practical service to others ? Do you like to frequently interact and collaborate with colleagues? Did you love  group projects in college? These drives are common for those preferring SF (Sensing and Feeling), who often gravitate toward healthcare, teaching, social work, travel, hospitality, non-profit and customer service. However, these days collaboration is highly prized in just about any industry and is often considered a hallmark of innovation. Therefore, you can find a company in a range of industries that pushes for a highly collaborative and interactive culture.

● Do you feel a strong innate desire for accuracy and precision? Do you often base your decisions on data and numbers, or find yourself seeking out concrete numbers when learning something new? These inclinations are common for those preferring ST (Sensing/Thinking), who often feel at home in practical service-oriented industries/organizations such as finance, actuarial work, accounting, science and the military.

● Do you think about the future possibilities for people, and feel the call to make a long-term and meaningful impact for humanity? Those preferring NF (Intuition and Feeling) want to make a difference, but may be more concerned with making an impact over the long term. These folks often find cultural fits in counseling, coaching, human resources, non-profits, higher education and HR, the arts, and will feel at home in purpose-driven organizations that stress internal harmony and growth.
These are of course only a few examples of how these preferences align with various workplace cultures. The more you know about yourself and your values the more sound  your decisions will be. Now, with that in mind, what do you envision as your ideal cultural fit?

*Hammer, A.L. (2007). Introduction to Type and Careers. Mountain View, California: CPP, Inc.
**Briggs Myers, I. (1998). Introduction to Type. Mountain View, California: CPP, Inc.

HRO Today Forum EMEA Starts Tomorrow!

We at HRO Today are very pleased to announce that our annual HRO Today Forum EMEA in Edinburgh, Scotland will begin tomorrow, Nov. 8!

The central theme of this year’s event is Be Connected! – HR Technology, Services and Leaders Unite. As technology continues to become more prevalent and integrated in daily life, leaders are learning to adapt and rethink the way their businesses attract, retain, and serve their employees.

Our program this year will focus on the way that technology has shaped today’s HR processes and ways that HR will continue to evolve in the future. We’ve got a fantastic agenda of diverse and informative sessions and plenty of opportunities to discuss best practices and network with top HR professionals.

For the full agenda and detailed information about sessions, speakers, and sponsors, check out our event guide.

We are also excited to recognize our attendees for their innovative contributions to the HR field during our HRO Today EMEA Awards Gala. Click here for more information about our annual awards.

We hope that you will find this year’s HRO Today Forum EMEA to be both informative and enjoyable!

Digital Transformation Starts at the Top

By David Ludlow, Group VP of Solution Management at SAP SuccessFactors

Successful leadership in the digital economy is contingent on how leaders empower the workforce and equip them with data-driven strategies and technologies. For companies to truly take part in the digital economy and transform their business, change has to start at the top. While employees have an important role to play in bringing strategy to life, leadership sets the vision and tone for the digital transformation.

Leaders 2020, a recent study conducted by Oxford Economics and sponsored by SAP SuccessFactors, analyzed how executives are driving digital transformation and identified the characteristics of “Digital Leaders.” Though difficult to define by one action or leadership trait, there is a shared set of identifiable tactics and strategies that these executives embrace to drive success. These executives are better prepared to build a digital workforce, empower employees, encourage collaboration, and drive continuous innovation.

Take action. Don’t expect employees to drive digital alone – they are looking to leaders to create the agenda. This means embracing digital yourself and listening to the rising number of millennial executives who are ready to implement strategic digital initiatives. Leaders 2020 found that only 37 percent of millennial executives feel that senior leadership is using technology to achieve competitive advantage. If leadership isn’t embracing technology and data-driven decision making, how can the workforce be expected to?

As leaders embrace digital, this vision needs to be shared across the organization to engage employees—58 percent of Digital Leaders are making their decisions transparent to the people affected by them. Implement and communicate a strategy for how the workforce can leverage technology to drive new and better business processes, eliminate manual tasks, and inspire innovation.

Encourage rapid decision making in the moment. Digital leaders empower employees by giving them the tools and insights to drive rapid decision making without the bottleneck of managerial approval. This approach is critical to creating an agile business environment and engaged workforce. Leaders 2020 revealed that 62 percent of digital leaders are making decisions in real-time, and 62 percent also state that decision-making is distributed across the organization (compared to only 41 percent of other executives surveyed.)

When employees are empowered to make fast decisions, they’re inspired to challenge the status quo and achieve business agility, which leads to more satisfied employees. In fact, 87 percent of digital leaders say they recognize and reward people who make process improvement challenges. By showing confidence in employees, digital leaders also create a more engaged workforce and help attract and retain top talent. Digital leaders invest in their employees and  give them the tools to succeed. In turn, these employees will go the extra mile beyond their job requirements.

Encourage collaboration to drive continuous innovation. The pace of change in the digital economy is not slowing down, so neither can the pace of business. Leaders 2020 revealed that barely half of executives surveyed say their senior leadership is highly proficient at using technology to achieve competitive advantage and facilitate innovation and collaboration.

Digital leaders, however, implement technology to facilitate collaboration, motivate employees, and create a dynamic business culture. They are creating fast-paced, productive work environments and responding to change quickly – 63 percent are capable of adapting to decisions made in real-time, compared to only 47 percent of other executives. Deploying human capital management (HCM) solutions that encourage collaboration is critical to helping employees adapt to change, create competitive advantage, and drive innovation.

Navigating the digital transformation is about more than deploying technology—it’s about creating a culture of innovation, cultivating employee engagement, and mastering business agility. Each incremental investment in digital must to be part of overall strategy, not just getting the latest technology for employees. Strong leadership in the digital age will inspire your workforce and yield significant business results.

To learn more insights from the Leaders 2020 study by Oxford Economics and SAP SuccessFactors, click here.

Regular Habits of Effective New Managers

By Rob Cahill, Co-Founder & CEO of Jhana.

Whether newly promoted or hired externally, brand new managers are going through one of the most exciting—and most challenging—transitions of any upward career trajectory.

Drawing from my company’s research and conversations with HR teams and new managers—and also speaking from personal experience— I’ve put together a list of 10 habits that new managers often struggle to build. Not coincidentally, they’re also critical for new managers to get right.

1.     Hold regular 1-on-1s.  You can’t know what’s going on with your team unless you talk to them. No matter how busy your calendar, schedule 30 minutes of face time every week with each team member. Never cancel.

2.     Give and request regular feedback. No one can work in a vacuum—not you, and not your team. Make sure you are giving each member of your team regular feedback and that most, but not all, of it is positive. Likewise, it’s up to you to solicit feedback on your performance from both your boss and your direct reports.

3.     Proactively manage up. Your boss isn’t a mind reader. If you need help, notice something that needs changing or just want to keep your boss in the loop, it’s on you to speak up.

4.     Clearly define expectations. If someone’s not delivering what you wanted, it likely means that you, the manager, haven’t done a good enough job communicating your expectations. For every project, use specific language to describe what a successful outcome looks like to you, and double check—in writing—that your instructions are clearly understood.

5.     Set fair goals. If possible, ask for your team's input to select and shape goals. They'll be more committed to goals they've contributed to in some way. Once you've set goals, be sure to also define how you'll measure success.
 

6.     Delegate well. It can be hard to let go, but it’s imperative to your team’s success that you trust them and enable them to do their jobs. Assign tasks, and then oversee, but don’t micromanage.

7.     Don’t shy away from tough conversations. It’s your job as manager to address problems head on, even  and especially when doing so makes you uncomfortable. Waiting will only make things worse.

8.   Own your mistakes. It’s common for new leaders to want to seem invincible. Resist the urge to fight or deny mistakes. Instead, admit your error, and describe what you’re doing to fix the problem and how you will ensure it doesn’t happen again. This advice applies to everyone you work with, not just your manager.

9.    Take hiring seriously. Don’t assume HR will do all the heavy lifting. After all, this person will be a part of your team, so it’s on you to ensure you’re hiring from a diverse, qualified pool of candidates. Don’t rely on your network. Some of my best hires have come from unexpected backgrounds.

10. Embrace your peers. Cultivate strong relationships with different groups and departments. The next time your team needs something quickly from Marta in sales or Jamal in Accounting, the trust you’ve already built will pay off tenfold. 

Rob Cahill founded Jhana in 2011 after personally experiencing how proper management can make or break retention and help reach company goals. Rob's mission is to provide effective and relatable management training that is available around the clock. Today, Jhana's clients have grown to many Fortune 1000's including AOL, Orbitz, CARFAX, Career Builder, Groupon and more. Rob was previously at Sunrun as chief of staff to the founder, helping the company scale from 20 to more than 200 employees. 

Five Reasons To Lead by Example

By Kim Shepherd and Loren Miner of Decision Toolbox

Successful businesses rely on infrastructures—systems, technology, policies, procedures, chain of command, and others. Businesses have an emotional infrastructure, too, made up of values, traditions, habits and attitudes. This infrastructure is to your corporate culture what plumbing and wiring are to your home, and employees are a huge part of it.

Some leaders are overwhelmed by the idea of emotional infrastructure. It's intangible—touchy-feely. Yet it's as important to success as any other infrastructure. You can tweak your financial infrastructure once a week and stay on course. But emotional infrastructure needs nurturing every day. Here are five ways that leading by example can provide the recommended daily allowance of TLC for your emotional infrastructure needs.

1. Example > Trust > Motivation > Engagement

People follow leaders they trust. If you want to test this, try saying one thing to your staff and then doing another. If you undermine trust, employee motivation and engagement will suffer, which will then negatively impact your bottom line. Leaders have to hold themselves to the same standards as everyone else, and maybe even higher ones. Trust isn't automatic—you have to demonstrate that you are trustworthy.

It's true that leaders' first responsibility is the fiscal health of the company. In most cases, employees' interests align with the interests of the company, but we all know there are situations in which interests conflict. If you have a robust foundation of trust, it will be easier for employees to understand and come to terms with unpopular decisions. Ultimately, you can't maintain a fiscally healthy company if your emotional infrastructure is diseased.

Here are some important best practices in leading by example:

• Be present and attentive when interacting with others.
• Respect others' time; don't be late, and keep meetings on task.
• Respect others' ideas by listening.
• Always follow through on your commitments.

2. That's Just the Way Role Models Roll

There are countless idioms and parables around the idea of leading by example, from "do unto others" to "walk the walk" to "be the change you want to see in the world." Leaders have plenty of opportunities to do this, for example, while modeling a proactive approach to self-improvement by getting involved in professional organizations. We heard another great example from a hiring manager recently: "Let candidates know that if I ask them to come in on a Saturday, they can expect to see me there, too." When times are tough, leaders should be seen fighting the fight. Julius Caesar wore a bright red cloak into battle for the express purpose of letting his troops see him fighting beside them.

3. Micromanagement is a Model T in a Maserati World

The landscape is constantly changing, and what worked before may no longer be effective. For example, more and more companies allow remote and telecommute options—and they should—but in those situations, you simply have to give up a degree of control. Values are changing as well. While it's always dangerous to generalize, the Millennials, who make up an increasing percentage of the workforce, see themselves as independent contractors, regardless of their employment status. It's part of their Me, Inc. mindset, and they expect to be empowered.

The best alternative to micromanagement is leading by example. We call it micro-training and macro-managing: hire passionate people, train them well in your vision and processes, provide them the tools they need, and step out of the way. Then provide guidance and reinforcement through role modeling.

Read the full story here