Actuaries on "rethinking retirement"

Retirement is becoming a big part of conversation in the United States.  People of all ages are wondering how they will live in retirement - or if they will be able to retire at all.

Check out "Rethinking Retirement," an article published in the June 2013 edition of Contingencies, a trade magazine focused on actuarial science.

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Rethinking Retirement

What's actuarial science, you may ask?  It's what actuaries do, of course!  :)

Actuaries, according to the USDOL's Bureau of Labor and Statistics,   "analyze the financial costs of risk and uncertainty.  They use mathematics, statistics, and financial theory to assess the risk that an event will occur and to help businesses and clients develop policies that minimize the cost of that risk."

If you like math and want to learn more about actuarial science as a career, check out the American Academy of Actuaries and the Society of Actuaries.

Best,
Bryan

Make meetings matter

"I can't seem to get anything done because of all of these meetings!"

Followership

"I can't wait until I'm the boss and don't have to answer to anyone."

We've all heard something similar, either in business, in the community, children, or perhaps in our own voices.  It's a consistent refrain echoing across all ages, from the very young to the very old:  one day I'll be in charge.  For all of us, that day never comes - no matter our upward trajectory in an organization.

Too much of the wrong thing

As individuals matriculate through careers, it is quite common for blind spots to develop.  Some common blind spots have to do with interpersonal relations, focus and direction, and delivering on hard-to-quantify soft skills for the good of the organization.

Decathletes (Jump the Curve)

In his book Jump the Curve, visionary Jack Uldrich shares his "50 essential strategies to help your company stay ahead of emerging technologies." His focus is on what he calls the exponential executive, the successful forward-thinking leaders in the future.

GE: serious about leadership

In most large organizations, leadership is affirmed as a key contributor to organizational success.  Typically there is some form of leadership model, special programs for high potentials, and perhaps rotational programs to move high performing or high potential leaders through the experiences needed to lead and perform at the next level.

Leadership models come in all shapes and sizes, and most are helpful in keeping leaders (and aspiring leaders) focused and developing.  NASA offers an excellent graphical representation of leadership behaviors arranged on a disc, moving from large dimensions in the middle to more granular areas towards the outside.  The MIT Leadership Center promotes FCF (Four Capabilities Leadership Framework), which points to four critical components of leadership:  sensemaking, relating, visioning, and inventing.  Leadership powerhouse Lominger (part of Korn/Ferry International) has developed 67 leadership competencies and publishes a book called FYI:  For Your Improvement that’s now in its 5^th edition.And then there’s GE.

Strategic Workforce Planning (by any name)

Back in 2007 I described leadership development in a speech as “ensuring we have the right people, in the right place, at the right time, and at the right cost, now and years into the future.”  When I coined the phrase, it felt like a winner– very easy to explain and understand.  I still use this description in conversation, and even in recent posts! :)

For a year or two I felt original, then found that several others must have been generating similar ideas and thoughts for years.  The U.S. Department of Interior came up with it in 2001 to describe Workforce Planning (WFP).  The County of Fairfax in Virginia presented “Strategic Workforce Planning” in 2003 – noting at the link that “planning begins with the organization’s strategic plan.”  In 2006 NOAA used the phrase in describing “workforce planning,” considered much more strategic than simply “succession planning.”  The effort was called “One NOAA,” an effort to “develop, value, and sustain a world-class workforce.”  In 2009 GFT used the phrase to describe “flexible resourcing.”

Today, Human Capital Institute, highly regarded in Human Resources circles, offers the SWP certification with this quote:  “Strategic Workforce Planning is the most sought after skill in talent management today….”

Case study: the annual review

Kaitlyn is a process engineer. She has worked for Jeremiah for quite some time, and feels like he understands her contributions to the team.

Several days ago, she had been looking forward to her annual performance review. She had saved the company $4 million in March of this past year, and remembered the praise Jeremiah had heaped on her in front of the company president. Shortly after this big win, the president asked Jeremiah to broaden her responsibilities. Kaitlyn expected a glowing review and a nice bonus check to cap off a stellar 2010.

Blockers

When I speak about talent management, I describe the work as follows:  talent management is about ensuring the right people are in the right roles at the right time.  It's easy to say - rolls right off the tongue.  However it's very complex, and not so easy to implement.

Most large firms have a formal review of talent at least once per year. A component of this conversation is to discuss individuals in three broad dimensions: performance against goals; behaviors that benefit the individual, team, and firm; and the potential to develop and contribute at a higher level in the organization.

Sun Tzu for Execution: How to Use the Art of War to Get Results

When I'm reading, I like to highlight passages and important nuggets of information that might be interesting or helpful to read again in the future. It directs the eyes and helps me maximize my reading based on my learning style.

At the end of Sun Tzu for Execution: How to use The Art of War to Get Results, by Steven W. Michaelson, I noticed that a great deal of the text had been underlined, something on just about every page.

Sun Tzu: The Art of War

If you haven't read Sun Tzu's The Art of War, you're missing a treat. When I was in college, one of my fraternity brothers had a habit of pulling out a Sun Tzu quote every time we had a speaking event (that's you if you're out there, Dan!).

Walk the Walk, by Alan Deutschman

I just finished Walk the Walk, by Alan Deutschman. It's a short read, and could be finished in a night (I dragged it out over two myself).  The book came out in 2009, with great promotional fanfare. The blog was maintained throughout 2009 – looks like the final post was in January of 2010. Deutschman's theme is all in the full title: "Walk the Walk: the #1 Rule for Real Leaders."

Nontraditional talent

In a September post, "Just Like Me" I shared the following:

Quick note of warning about thin-slicing and making generalizations too much – it’s easy to miss a diamond in the rough.  In large part these theories are interpreted in a way that assumes more perfect information than reality affords.  Often, individuals don’t fully know who they are, or what they may be good at doing, or even identifying traits in other individuals and organizations.  From an employer perspective, recruiters are often looking for identical experience to fill a role when a better fit might be for someone making a developmental turn – or from a different industry that utilizes similar skills. 

This month's Talent Management magazine has an interesting article:  "Hiring Talent With Nontraditional Backgrounds."  It's a nice overview of the pitfalls and opportunities of hiring outside of what might be considered the "normal" pools of sourced talent.  Here's the kicker:  "

Individuals with diverse academic and vocational backgrounds can be a boon to business, but talent managers must do their homework to determine the proficiency and cultural fit of these 'outsiders.'"So how to find these people?

Communication Timing

Scenario 1:  Driving down the interstate on a recent evening, I notice a car in front of me with a right turn signal on. I assume the driver will be taking the next exit. We pass one exit, then another. Since the vehicle is in the right lane, I assume the driver has inadvertently left the signal on, perhaps after changing lanes. After several miles, the vehicle turns on the third exit as the signal is extinguished. It's almost a surprise to see the vehicle take the exit.

Scenario 2:  A new information system is being rolled out across an enterprise. In January the project team launches a robust communication strategy that touches all employees, sharing the benefits of the new system and what to expect. During the last week of the first quarter, a small group of key stakeholders receive a brief email stating a new go-live date in the third quarter. The communications to all employees continue with the same focus on the benefits of the new system and what to expect. In the fourth quarter the system goes live. Adoption of the new information system is abysmal. The project team discovers that several groups in the business have created their own siloed solutions, and there is no appetite to convert to the new system.

Both scenarios share a lesson about communications: timing is everything.

Vegas

Las Vegas happens to be a popular vacation destination for many of my colleagues. I haven't been myself, but from the anecdotal evidence there is an event series common to most of these trips. A certain amount of money is allocated as “fun money,” meaning it will be gambled away. At some point the person wins a big gamble at one of the many tables or machines. At that point, the person starts to feel lucky, and decides to continue gambling with the hope of repeating the big win. Over the course of the vacation, the remaining cash is spent, and the person comes home, having spent all of the “fun money,” and sometimes much more.

Just Like Me

Are we really all the same?

There is a great deal of interest in behavioral research over the past several years, and the energy around the topic hasn't waned. From pop psychology books to academic studies of leadership, there is renewed interest in what makes people behave the way they do. To research these differences, large samples are often taken from across several companies and disciplines – this ensures the data is statistically relevant to a larger population.

This practice alone surfaces an implicit assumption that shared behavioral traits exist within certain functions and organizations.

During a guided visit to a busy trading floor, the people there were described as pampered, very hardworking, and compensation driven. A recent stop at a financial advisory office struck me because every person dressed alike, and had shared vocal intonations, mannerisms, and gait. At a recent nonprofit gathering, the similarities in personality were absolutely striking. At a funeral I attended a few years ago, someone looked at my pin-striped suit, cuff-links, and polished shoes and said “oh, you must be a banker” - which I was.

Every day we are able to function more efficiently by thin-slicing parts of our world (nod to Gladwell's book Blink), ascribing characteristics to particular people and things based on our prior experiences with similar people and things. We know that, generally speaking, similar people have similar traits.

Think about these statements, one by one. Likely an image will form in your mind as to characteristics of the people.

• He's a boxer


• She's a ballerina


• He's an administrative assistant


• She's a president

Is it valid to think this way?

Better Speakers, Better Leaders, Better Communicators

I've just completed a term as president of my local Toastmasters club, Gateway to Speaking Excellence. During my year in office, the theme of the club was the same as the title of this blog post. When asked to describe Toastmasters, I say something like this:  “Toastmasters is a safe-to-succeed, safe-to-fail environment in which we practice becoming better speakers, better leaders, and better communicators every single day.”

Wondering about the cheesy name?

Insubordination and followership

Browsing Bloomberg the other day I found Rosabeth Moss Kanter's review of Obama's firing of General McChrystal from a management and leadership perspective.  It was a reprint from a Harvard Business Review blog.  HBR has a couple of other posts around the firing that might be interesting, including this one and this one.

Span of Control

Recently we tackled an organizational design project. This particular project, like most, included determining the appropriate organizational shape.

Organizational shape is exactly what it sounds like – if you're looking at an org chart. People talk about flat organizations, tall organizations, etc. A flat organization is one that has a lot of direct reports for every manager, and a tall one has fewer. If you're staring at an org chart, you can see the difference in the “shape” of the chart, a rough triangle with the head of the organization at the top.

The number of direct reports a manager has is that manager's span of control.

Division of labor

If you've worked with a performance improvement consultant (nod to Geary Rummler, founder of the Performance Design Lab, may he rest in peace) or anyone in the organizational design field, you've probably taken a very close look at how work gets done in the organization.  Here's a term you might come across in one of those conversations:  division of labor.