Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Next Generation Workforce and Workplace

We help individuals, organizations, and communities think innovatively about the next generation workforce and workplace. Read these forward-thinking stories and best practices from our work and lives.

  • 4 Criteria for Creativity: Women Working or Drones?

    4 Criteria for Creativity: Women Working or Drones?

    What’s more creative:  1) drones delivering a Kindle to your door in 30 minutes or less or 2) women working?

    According to Fast Company’s  100 Most Creative People in Business, women in the workplace, in Saudi Arabia at least, is more creative. Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud topped the list of most creative people in business by inviting Saudi women to work.

    Quoted as saying, “You cannot have half your population not working,” the princess emphasizes why an “innovation” with people is more important than technology that allows all kinds of things to be delivered to your door as quickly as a pizza. Not only more important, but also more of a challenge.

    But is extending the invitation to work to half the population creative, or something entirely different? This example illustrates that in order for something to be truly creative, the following has to be present:

    1. Conventional thinking has to be challenged. In a country where it is illegal for women to drive, women working challenges conventional thinking.
    2. Risks have to be involved. Again, in a country where it is illegal for women to drive, risks are involved in inviting women to work.
    3. Impact extends beyond the original intent. Might it be made legal for women to drive because women are working? It may necessitate a legislative change eventually.
    4. Positive gains are made and results are achieved. As reported in the article, “The Riyadh department store-which opened in 2000 as Harvey Nichols’s first location outside the U.K. – weathered a 42% drop in profit last year, partly because of opposition to the female sales force and partly because of loyalty to the far-more-seasoned salesmen it replaced.” Time will tell if this creative intervention will lead to business results. But maybe, just maybe, this example goes to show that you get more points for creativity if societal results are achieved at the possible short-term detriment to business results. See #2 above. As the princess said, “The second a woman is responsible for her own finances, she’ll want to explore more of the world for herself and become less dependent.”

    What’s the most creative people intervention or idea have you ever witnessed?

    You may also like:  What Employers Want: Creativity

  • I May Have Adult ADD But I Wouldn’t Trade It For Anything: Refusing to Choose Between Work and Life

    I May Have Adult ADD But I Wouldn’t Trade It For Anything: Refusing to Choose Between Work and Life

    At an HR conference this week with a focus on wellness, the topic of work-life balance is bound to come up. It is and continues to be a buzz phrase in the field. How do we as individuals balance work and “life” and how do companies and HR professionals help employees find and gain balance in order to promote wellness and avoid stress and burnout which ultimately hurts company performance?

    As I sit here writing this at the conference, my eight week old is with me. So is my mom who is here to help and also hear some key sessions at the conference she is interested in. I am going to sessions, volunteering for the conference, checking email and responding to clients, eating dinner with friends and aunts I haven’t seen in a while, feeding my little girl and changing her, talking to her and enjoying her precious grins that have just begun to make an appearance across her sweet face.

    I think I may have adult ADD (attention deficit disorder) with the constant change in focus, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Because I enjoy each component of these activities and roles, the lines between my “work” and my “play” or “life” are so blurred that I’m sometimes not sure which box I’m in, and in my opinion that is the way it should be.

    You don’t have to choose between work and life.

    The people I know who love their work don’t talk a lot about work/life balance. They do work, they do life and oftentimes they aren’t sure which one they are doing at the moment. It’s just all life.

    So how do we get to the point of not needing to seek out work/life balance?

    1. Choose work you love. Finding the unique balance between your talents, your passions and your values will enable you the opportunity to choose work you love and allow you to make it an integral part of your life. It also allows you to clear the clutter and say “no” to things that really do not need to be a part of your life and your work.
    2. Surround yourself with people who support you in your work and life. I realize that this may be more of a challenge for some than others because to a certain extent it may be out of your control. I am fortunate that my mom was able to come with me to this conference because she too had a business needs to hear some of the speakers. My husband is at home with our other child manning that front, and he is glad to do it. But it goes beyond just having the support of family being close by or having the flexibility to help. It extends to doing business- working with and for- those who share the same mindset of work-life balance.

    For example, I’m working with a marketing firm to develop a marketing plan and strategy to take the company to the next level. The timing of brainstorming sessions needed for this came about two weeks after I had the now eight week old. We didn’t postpone it. They came to my house to do it. Not one session, but two. They held the baby, I held the baby and, because my husband was still off on leave because of the birth, we were able to get his ideas too, which is highly valuable to me. In my opinion, we came up with, among other things, some pretty awesome tag lines for the three unique lines of services/products we will be offering soon. (If you want to turn on your creative side, go grab a baby while you brainstorm). Picture proof of this session here.

    1. Refuse to think either/or: I could have postponed the brainstorming sessions and I could have skipped this conference and some people probably think I should have skipped both. Aren’t most maternity leaves 12 weeks? But I’d rather do both from a different perspective- having my child with me, who obviously needs me almost constantly as an infant and who will so soon not be giving me those sweet grins that I don’t want to miss out on, and doing work that I love and I hope meets needs for others too can be done together.

    I don’t have to separate my work from my life or choose between the two and you don’t either.

    What are your best methods for doing life instead of having to balance work and life?

  • Everyone Gets a Trophy and The Skills Gap

    Everyone Gets a Trophy and The Skills Gap

    At a lunch meeting yesterday, one topic of discussion was the “everyone gets a trophy” generation. The millennial generation – of which I am barely a part of based on my date of birth, but rarely admit to being – seems to have a problem with feeling entitled. And the negative outcomes this creates in schools and int he workplace is a hot topic.

    A couple of issues cited in this discussion were:

    • Lack of respect for consequences of one’s actions. For example, a star pitcher not getting to pitch in a game when scouts were there because he missed a practice and was also in trouble at school for skipping class. His parents raised holy terror because he didn’t get to play. Who is to blame? The parents or the student?
    • Lack of respect for other people and their time. For example, a teenager not showing up for work to teach swimming lessons because she had play practice and no one called to let the family know the child would not have lessons because the teacher couldn’t make it. Is the paid work or the play practice more important to attend? The director of the play told her she couldn’t miss practice. Does getting a paycheck for something also communicate you can’t miss?

    Compare these to examples to key findings cited in the Alabama Skills Gap Study conducted by the Alabama Department of Labor:

    Employers were more likely to identify gaps in soft skills (41%) than in technical skills (38%).

    Of the employers who have identified gaps in soft skills, 65% stated that Attendance was a problem. Following Directions and Time Management were the next most often identified soft skill gaps (39% and 36% respectively).

    We could blame these skills gap issues on just one generation, but the numbers show employers must be facing it with the majority of their workforce, which can’t possibly be all made of just the trophy winners.

    So what should we do? First, we should focus on soft skills development just as much as we do technical skills development in our schools and in our homes. A good resource for soft skills curriculum can be found here: http://www.dol.gov/odep/topics/youth/softskills/

    Next, we need to turn the mirror on ourselves, whether as a parent or as a teacher or even as a student. The question becomes, am I guilty of what I’m complaining about and how do I model the behavior I want to see?

    I say this as I sit here, letting my three year old skip swimming lessons. He’s asleep next to me after having tried to wake him up from his short-lived nap to go to the lesson. You haven’t seen holy terror until you’ve tried to wake a three year old up who doesn’t want to be woken up. Yep, that person complaining about the teenager teaching swimming lessons was me and now here we are not going to a scheduled lesson. Am I teaching my son something I don’t want to be teaching him? Sure am. But at least I called to let them know we wouldn’t be there… (I know don’t tell me, because I know, we still should have gone).

    As I beat myself up about not doing what I know I should, I figured I’d at least share the lesson. Soft skills are important. They are learned. Teach them by modeling the behavior you want to see.

    Want more on the soft skills employer want? Check out these posts:

    What do employers want? The 4 Cs

    What do employers want? Creativity

    What is your smart phone teaching you about communication?

    Want to get a job? Foster collaboration

  • 6 Reasons NOT to Strive for Perfection

    6 Reasons NOT to Strive for Perfection

    I used to get so frustrated as a recruiter when I asked the question “What are your weaknesses?” in an interview and I would get the response “I’m a perfectionist.” It seemed to me to be a way to state a “weakness” when in reality striving for perfection, I thought, was a characteristic that is desired in the working world and in fact classified as a strength.

    I’d turn around and probe the applicant in a way that made them tell me what bad behaviors or results arose because of their perfectionism. Most people just stared at me after asking this question. I wanted to say,  “Now give me an answer to this question that isn’t canned!”

    But, now I’m beginning to believe perfectionism truly is a weakness. Here’s why:

    Perfectionism leads to paralysis. In other words, decisions aren’t made because of perfectionism.

    The inability to make decisions leads to stuff not getting done. Number 23 in the article 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself,  states “#23. Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done.

    When stuff doesn’t get done, the organization can’t meet customer needs and can’t move forward. You can’t vision for the future and think strategically when you are always trying to make things perfect.

    Perfectionism in the extreme sense is really is just another word for neurotic. If you know a true perfectionist, then you know what I mean. One client engagement I had last year was to improve their hiring practices in order to improve organizational results. After performing an analysis, it was obvious that we needed to implement some type of screening that tested for neurosis. Low performers were exhibiting this characteristic over and over and it was often described as “perfectionism”.

    Learning doesn’t occur when things are perfect.  We often learn more from our failures than our successes, which drives continuous improvement. And continuous improvement does move people and organizations forward.

    Quite frankly, perfect is boring.  And it is never going to happen.

    So if you want to drive results and strategic thinking in your organization, stop telling your people that they need to deliver “perfect”.  Tell them instead they need to be better today than they were yesterday- striving for continuous improvement.  A little bit better today than yesterday is a lot better than being paralyzed today because yesterday wasn’t perfect.

  • Flexibility to Reduce Workplace Stressors

    Flexibility to Reduce Workplace Stressors

    I attended a seminar last week discussing ways to improve productivity and communication in the workplace. One thing that stood out to me in the presentation was the emphasis the presenter placed on eliminating stressors so that people could be innovative and creative. He placed a value on innovation and creativity as the only differentiating factors in creating a sustainable advantage.

    What if standard or traditional work arrangements are creating workplace stressors and reducing innovation and creativity?

    This leads me to consider a tie to a book I mentioned last week,  The Elephant and the Flea  and its emphasis on employing free agents. Charles Handy writes,

    “Meantime, more and more people are going to become aware that their knowledge which drives innovation and creativity has marketable value. They will be reluctant to sell it for a time-based contract, a wage or a salary.  They will want to charge a fee or a royalty, a percentage of the profits.  The difference is that a salary is paid for time spent, whereas a fee is money paid for work produced, irrespective of the time spent on it.” (italics mine.)

    The beauty of this model is that you not only get results, but you get people who are less stressed because they are in control of their own situation, which allows them to be creative and innovative and produce better results.  It also may cost you less.  Many who charge a fee for work produced don’t come with the added cost of a benefit package.

    Or consider the FutureWork Institute described in the book Now You See It. Describing the founder of the institutes philosophy, the author Cathy Davidson writes,

    “The workplace of the future had to start taking into account the life desires, not just the work ambitions, of workers.  She was convinced that the best, most creative workers in the future might not be workaholics with the eighty-hour workweeks, but people who had figured out what way they love to work and how they work best.”

     

    My two year old snoring is eliminating my stress and fostering my creativity…

    As I sit hear writing this post on a Saturday at home, my two year old is asleep in my lap.  Although it took a little maneuvering to get him situated so that I can type,  I can’t help but think that creativity does come when we are in control of when and how work gets done. But maybe that’s the point… blurring the lines of work and life so much that you don’t realize to consider it work, which fosters creativity and innovation.  What could eliminate stress and make writing more enjoyable than two year old contently asleep in your lap?

    What way do you love to work and how do you work best?

     

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