Book Summary - Corporate Agility

The initial results of the Future of Work project confirmed that although the global economy had undergone a series of rapid, model-shattering changes, most businesses were unable or unwilling to adapt their traditional management styles to new conditions. Prisoners of their own outdated business practices and assumptions about how work gets done, businesses found themselves losing ground to competitors who had not even been on the map a decade before. They became victims, rather than beneficiaries, of advances in information technology. And at a time when the attraction and retention of qualified employees had become an even more critical factor in a business' success or failure, they found themselves out of touch with a work force that had undergone a dizzying transformation in attitudes, abilities and ambitions

THE THREE MAJOR BUSINESS CHALLENGES

The workplace programs of today will age just as surely as the work force will. It is only by continually reviewing market conditions, re-examining corporate strategies and reallocating resources accordingly that businesses can prosper in a volatile and unpredictable global economy. The three major challenges facing business today are:

1. Reducing fixed operating costs.

2. Confronting the coming talent shortage.

3. Institutionalizing innovation.

Corporate agility can be achieved only through the continuous, collaborative management of HR, IT and CRE (Corporate Real Estate). 

The book offers a detailed discussion on all three areas, however here we have only included a brief overview of human talent.

ATTRACTING AND RETAINING HUMAN TALENT

Attracting and retaining qualified, engaged employees is the second of the three primary business challenges of the 21st century. There simply isn't enough human talent to meet the current needs of business, much less the constantly expanding global economy. The bottom line here is that in a few years — say, 2010 — the United States will have 10 million more jobs than it will have qualified people to fill them.

Where will companies go to get the talent? About one-third of the total will come from retirees remaining in the work force, though most likely not in a full-time capacity; one-third will come from outsourcing or moving work to interior population centers within the United States; and the remaining third will come from retraining workers displaced from lower-skilled and lower-paying jobs.

Meaningful Work

From the beginning, furniture manufacturer Herman Miller's founder made it clear to all those who worked for him that the quality of his employees' lives was as important a part of his company as the machinery that produced its furniture. Eighty years later, that spirit survives in Herman Miller's intentional Employee Experience.

Built on its founder's belief that people are what companies are made of, and that demographic and cultural shifts are changing the face of the modern work force, Herman Miller began to build its Employee Experience program in 2004 to ensure that the company remained an employer of choice for the future.

In order to coordinate the program with the company's evolving business strategies, its designers first assembled a cross-functional core team composed of upper-level managers from HR, IT and CRE, all of whom reported to a chief administration officer. The team then defined key ideas and integrated these ideas into the following themes:

• Meaning. Most people want more from      work than just a paycheck.
• Choice. Intelligent, qualified      employees don't like being told what to do.
• Opportunity. Opportunity is necessary      for employees to satisfy their need for growth.
• Engagement. When meaning, choice and      opportunity combine to give employees the feeling that they are      "owners" of the company, employees will be engaged.
• Leadership. Leadership makes employees      feel trusted and encouraged.

As the relative supply of creative labor shrinks, the pressure to achieve agility will grow.

PREPARING FOR THE NEXT WAVE OF CHANGE

There are eight major categories of questions that you should be asking — simultaneously and continuously. There is no magic or best way to sort these questions, and of course, there is always some overlap. But if you are devoting resources to continuously investigating these areas, you will be prepared for the next wave of change:

1. Meta forces of change. What are the global sociopolitical forces that impact how we work? What are the possible alternative futures, given those forces?

2. Public policy issues. What are the workplace/work force effects of trade policies, employee benefit requirements, environmental laws and labor laws? What will these public policy issues be in five years, and how will they affect your business and your customers?

3. Demographic dynamics. What are the multigenerational dynamics of demography, especially in underdeveloped countries? What factors influence generational cultures and values? What are the long-term trends in educational funding, in the United States and elsewhere?

4. Geography or talent pools. Close on the heels of the demographic questions, where will the most desirable talent be living in five, 10, 20 and maybe even 50 years? Why? What is the psychology that underlies mobility?

5. Work process and collaboration styles. What motivates humans to collaborate? How do compensation and reward systems affect work behaviors? More research is needed, as we really don't yet understand these areas very well.

6. Social and intellectual capital metrics. How should work force performance in a distributed work environment be measured and audited? How do you capture increased social capital on your balance sheet? What is that social capital worth in the marketplace?

7. Challenges and difficulties of managing a distributed work force. What are the specific competencies required to manage distributed workers successfully? What do leaders of the future look like? How do they develop these competencies?

8. Deeper understanding of barriers and sources of resistance to the new models. What are the cultural barriers to the fundamental changes that the future of work will bring — and demand? What kind of change management processes must be put in place? How do we get senior management on board?

There should be a special, identifiable group of people within the organization who are tasked with answering these questions, over and over again.

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT ORGANIZATIONS

Organizations contain three levels — or, more appropriately, spheres — of work. In the activity level, products or services are produced and distributed. In the administration level, different activities are coordinated. In the policy level, general direction is set. The point here is to locate the forward-looking role, the "futures group," at the policy level.

The three spheres of work — activity, administration and policy — represent a minimum set of necessary levels of an organization in the traditional sense. Executives set policy, middle managers coordinate action and non-managers do the work of the enterprise. You have to know where you are in the organization to understand how you fit into the overall scheme of things as well as how and what you can do to increase the organization's agility.

Core Issues at Each Level

The core issue for the activity sphere is "What are we doing?" These people are concerned about efficiency, resources and getting things completed.

Administrators are concerned with "How will we get it done?" They are characterized by control issues, methods of work and maintaining the status quo. Administrators are interested in survival.

Policy makers look at the question "Why are we doing this?" Their concerns center on issues of direction, effectiveness, the creation of new abilities for the organization and renewal.

An agile organization is one that strategically integrates the management of its real estate, human resources and technology assets. It does that in a collaborative fashion that requires a change from the decision-making processes and styles that rely on today. Finally, an agile enterprise organizes itself into three (and only three) levels that center on completion, survival and renewal.

Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World (Hardcover) by Charles E. Grantham (Author), James P. Ware (Author), Cory Williamson (Author)

The authors have a very informative blog at The Future of Work Blog.