The greatest asset – the power of people or what?

What is going on in the companies all over the world. Did I really miss something here? I have come across several significant indicators on a severe underprioritization of the most important value creating asset of all companies – the people.

McKinsey has done some recent research to uncover business trends and future focus, and the research strongly confirms that the most important factor to drive competitiveness is “talent and knowledge” – but the major point here is that on a very close second place is “low cost competitors”.

So, efficiency of production is still where most business leaders feel that they can compete.

According to my thinking, there is a lot of business leaders playing a last century game!

This spring, Microsoft started a huge marketing effort with the focus on convincing business leaders on the importance of – guess what – their people.

So why do you think Microsoft want to invest $$$ – becuase they are having problems all over the world in their partner channels, convincing business leaders on the importance of their people.

So, where are we?

Significant hint – be smart, slack off

Yes, here we come! A great tip to all of you out there, working 50 hours or more, and being intensely ON all the time.

A great column at CNN has this article, and it is quite down to earth, its all about taking a step back, getting enough sleep and generally slowing down. Now, that’s a recipe everybody can understand!

With innovation now our main competitive strength, creativity is crucial for anyone who wants to move up.

But it’s really, really hard, if not impossible, for the human brain to come up with fresh new ideas when its owner is overworked, overtired, and stressed out. And in today’s wonderful world of nonstop work, 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weeknights.

“The physiological effects of tiredness are well-known. You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by overworking him,” notes Peter Capelli, a professor of management at Wharton.

Limits to human performance – the bell curve revisited

In one of my previous postings, I wrote about some extensive Danish research on stress and managers. Now, let me explain some of the very fundamental things about how these researchers think about stress.

First of all, stress is healthy. Maybe somewhat a surprise. But you probably know it yourself, when you a kick out of something, feel completely in flow, and just loves what you are doing, – these feelings are generated when there is a balance between expectations and resources. Our body is in a short period of stress where energy is purposeful for you – and your brain and body can deliver the highest possible performance. To support these short periods of high performance, your body needs time for restitution.

But when the the expectations are too high, compared to your available resources, you will experience negative stress, and your performance will degrade significantly. If you are under this type of pressure for a very long time, you become a patient. The balance for you and your manager is to give people the ups and downs needed to perform as a human being.

On top of this it is very important to use the ups for the most value generating tasks, for example innovative product development, process optimizations or whatever your competitive advantage is built on.

Technorati Tags: stress, knowledge work, research, social responsibility, management

Limits to human performance – managers takes dope!

More facts coming up on the negative impacts of the lack of concern for the knowledge worker.

The Danish association of managers, has also made extensive research on the subject, and (if you are danish) a very worth while read. Here is a short summary of the report.

Managers are under pressure, but some of them indicate that they are using dope. Now, it is not only high profile athletes, but managers, and it is very commonplace:

This survey of stress among managers indicates that 81% eat painkillers to cope with stress, 52% drink alcohol, and 46% smokes. But that’s not it, stress is also managed by the doctor, 21% take calming nerve medicine, and 16% take antidepressive medicine.

Now, that seriously indicates that someone has lost control of what actually generates high performing and motivated people.

Technorati Tags: stress, knowledge work

Stress as the working norm

I am currently investigating material to understand how people actually trying to cope with their jobs in the current knowledge intensive companies.

And I am finding the scary facts. A Danish Union for Engineers has survyed engineers in Denmark, and the results are quite alarming. Especially when you consider driving your car today, maybe even over a bridge:

Hver tredje ingeniør er udsat for så meget stress, at de mindst én gang om ugen oplever problemer med koncentrationsevne, hukommelse og evnen til at tænke klart og tage beslutninger. Det alarmerende tal fremgår af Ingeniørens stress-undersøgelse, som er foretaget af analysefirmaet Epinion.

In English: Every third engineer is under so much stress, that they at least once a week experience problems with ability to concentrate, memory loss, and the ability to think straight and take decisions.

It is quite easy to see that there is limits too human performance, and now engineers are quite close to that limit.

Who’s next?

Technorati Tags: stress, knowledge work

When things was “in order” and people was happy

Let’s get started.

From quite a few years of dialogue with great managers of all types of companies, I feel that one of the challenges towards the knowledge socity resides deep inside us. The desire to achieve and perceive order.

I have been discussing this with quite a few, and still don’t really get it. It is yet another of the very strong social, cultural and genetic challenges that we need to deal with.

From a brilliant article by C. F. Kurtz and D. J. Snowden, both at the IBM Cynefin Centra for organizational complexity, I found this great quote:

Order and chaos in antiquity. The human distinction between order and chaos goes back to an abundant presence in mythology, in which order arises out of (and thus requires) and then vanquishes (and thus destroys) the mysterious forces of chaos. For example, in the Enuma Elish,2 the Babylonian epic of creation, the world began under the reign of Tiamat, the mother of all things. In Tiamat’s world, “none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained.” After several generations, Tiamat’s god-children appointed a champion to seize control. Marduk not only defeated his ancestor, but “split her up like a flat fish into two halves” that became heaven and earth. He then proceeded to order the universe in finer and finer detail:

He [Marduk] made the stations for the great gods;
The stars, their images, as the stars of the Zodiac, he fixed.
He ordained the year and into sections he divided it;
For the twelve months he fixed three stars….
He founded the station of Nibir [the planet Jupiter] to determine their bounds;
That none might err or go astray…

Note the words “fixed,” “ordained,” “divided,” “determined,” “err,” and “astray.” Control (in the first four terms) and an absolute knowledge of right and wrong (in the last two) are the salient points of Marduk’s new world. Of course Tiamat was never entirely vanquished; forces of chaos appear in all traditions in the form of tricksters and malcontents such as Bacchus, Loki, Coyote, the Monkey King, Anansi, and Hermes. The forces of order and chaos danced with each other throughout ancient times.

It’s stunning to think about management today, in a chaotic and complex, fast changing world – and still we are directed by stuff that origins nearly 4000 years ago.

Technorati Tags: knowledge work, history, chaos, order

Hello world! – A new blog is born (among 2 mio others today)

It’s a nice winterday. Yesterday morning I took this picture out of my window. I think that would form i nice beginning of my blog.

Lot’s of people have started blogging lately, I was stunned by the latest Technorati statistics – they now track more than 20 mio blogs, and doubling every 5 months! Impressive!

And lately, I have realised how much I actually use blogs in my private and professional life. Thanks everybody.

Now it is time to give back – and there you have it. Here is my blog.

Our rolemodel Dave Winer with his Scripting News, started with the right spirit in 1997, as you can read in this article. I might choose a more humble road to the world of blogging, but nevertheless try to be visionary.

That article actually represent a turning point in the history of the Internet, – people was beginning to be aware of the fact that not all quality information had to come from well polished towers of big media houses.

For me May 2001 also was bubble bursting time, and a new are begun. An era where I started focusing on the world of work in the future.

This blog will be about the world of work, and how to get everybody on board the knowledge society.

Welcome.

Technorati Tags: knowledge work, information work, social computing, blogging, blogosphere