Author: guest

The link with HR and performance
by Neville Pritchard

Posted on guest2 CommentsPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Alison Beard in the July/August issue of HBR referred to the happiness backlash. The search for ‘flow’ was cited as an example of the focus on achieving happiness. The alternative essay provides a pragmatic reality of the world as it is. Later in the magazine the need for a revolution in the way we provide people support through ‘HR’ was also questioned. Our consulting experience would also point to a need for change in the way HR works.   Walter McFarland recently explored the need for managers to stay human in the ‘digital age’. Progress is more rapid than in any time in history and with rapid change, demands for greater productivity, resulting stress levels […]

What you can’t Measure…. MATTERS!
by Herb Nold

Posted on guest2 CommentsPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Business schools throughout the world hammer into future business leaders the importance of data, analysis, and techniques to use data to shape behavior. The slogan “what gets measured, gets done” has become more than just an idea but a primary guiding principle for many MBAs who have become managers and executives. Consequently, data driven methodologies using modern digital technology like management by objectives (MBO), balanced scorecards, and six-sigma have gained popularity and wide acceptance. Clearly, behaviors can be influenced through rewards or punitive action taken based on performance data to yield improvement. However, history shows that the problem with action based solely on tangible data, with little regard for human factors, is that the vast […]

Humans, How Do You Rate?
by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Geoff Colvin’s new book insists that humans are underrated. It’s a fun follow-up declaration to his earlier book, which taught us that talent is overrated.   The two are not as incompatible as it might seem. Colvin’s point in the earlier book was that talented people always succeed in the context of a system, and it’s hard to rate talent independent of its context. As a result, stars usually get more credit for their successes than they’re due. (Boris Groysberg’s research backs this up by showing how the high performance of stars in various fields turns out not to be portable when they are recruited away by other employers.)  Indeed, it’s often a well-designed system […]

Is Your Work Culture Conducive to Digital Transformation?
by Jane McConnell

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Why is digital transformation hard? Because it goes against the grain of established ways of working and is a threat to management practices that have existed for decades. It is therefore not surprising that the top challenges that slow down digital transformation are much deeper than just resistance to technology. Whether you’re starting up a transformation initiative or trying to re-energize an on-going one, the first place to look is in the work culture of your organization.   I have explored obstacles to digital transformation in my online surveys with organizations around the world over the past nine years. I have grouped the toughest ones – those considered to be serious and holding us back […]

Great Innovators are Path Creators
by Piero Formica

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

In my research on innovators, I like to draw the distinction between “path finders” and “path creators” but rarely does the metaphor seem so apt as in the case of Federico Bastiani. He is the originator of the “social streets” movement now spreading across Italy, so the innovation he created literally involves a path: the street in which he and his family live in Bologna.   Bastiani grew up in a small town in Tuscany, where people knew and helped their neighbors, and when he moved to the city he was disheartened by how little social connection he had to the other residents of his street. His solution, in 2013, was to create a Facebook […]

Leading Job Growth in the Digital Economy
by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Last week I visited Finisterre, an ancient Spanish port and fishing village, where my grandfather was born.  He, like many others, was forced to emigrate to Argentina at the end of the 19th century, leaving land, family, and friends in search of employment, since jobs were increasingly scarce at home.  This photograph from the period, O home e o neno, shows a man and his son crying as some of their dearest relatives board the boat to Buenos Aires.   The heart-wrenching scene reminded me of the terrible challenges that today’s job-seekers face thanks to the advance of technologies that make human labor obsolete. In many ways, the situation is even worse than it was in my […]

We Have Met the Economy, and It Is Us
by Robin Chase

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

Barbara Ann Berwick drove for Uber for eight weeks in 2014. She, and two others, then brought suit against the company. On June 16, the California Labor Commission ruled that she as a driver should have been classified as an employee – not an independent contractor – and that she was due over $4 million in expenses and penalties. As expected, Uber filed its rebuttal on July 9, bolstered with written statements from more than 400 drivers supporting the company.   Are Uber drivers being exploited or fairly compensated? Should governments, consumers, and voters support or suppress the movement towards increasingly freelance labor? It depends.   The 150-year history of industrial capitalism has led the US (and […]

Finding something that machines can’t do
by Lesley Crane

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

One of the pervasive and persuasive myths associated with burgeoning technology in the workplace is that it would create thousands of new and liberating jobs: the truth is more like a wholesale stripping of human employment (see Liviu Nedelsecu). Another preaches that technologies will afford workers more time: more time to think, reflect, to be creative, to learn and innovate, to work from home. Recent visits to several private and public sector organizations told a different story. I was left with a strong impression of people running hard to keep up – grateful for the business, but perhaps at a loss as to how to increase the hours in a day. This is arguably indicative […]