Centered leadership: How talented women thrive

Women start careers in business and other professions with the same level of intelligence, education, and commitment as men. Yet comparatively few reach the top echelons.
This gap matters not only because the familiar glass ceiling is unfair, but also because the world has an increasingly urgent need for more leaders. All men and women with the brains, the desire, and the perseverance to lead should be encouraged to fulfill their potential and leave their mark.

The challenge of hiring and retaining women

In an era of ever-intensifying competition for talent, companies that can appeal to and retain different kinds of workers are more likely to succeed. Understanding diversity in the workforce has been a professional interest of Axelrod’s since 1989, when she was asked, as a young McKinsey consultant, to help figure out why the firm was losing so many women and what could be done to keep them. In the late 1990s, Axelrod was a leader of McKinsey’s War for Talent project, which quantified the challenges that leading US companies faced in finding talented executives. She later moved on to executive roles at the global marketing communications group WPP and then to eBay.

Can an organisation evolve itself to become an employer of its choice

In todays business, people are the key differentiator and getting the right type of talent, in time and retaining them has become the primary focus of almost all organisations. Becoming a beacon to attract talent has become the secret ambition which has spurted organisations to take note of how they are perceived by employees, both current and prospective.

Organisations have started adopting various novel ways of becoming attractive. And like a peacock displaying its plumes during mating seasons, organisations too have started publicizing their uniqueness.

Economic and hiring outlook, third quarter 2008: A McKinsey Global Survey

Although executives indicate that their companies have greater pricing power, it isn’t translating into stability for workers. Hiring plans have dwindled over the past year. Almost 30 percent of the executives now expect their companies to shrink the size of the workforce in the next six months (Exhibit 4), up from 18 percent a year ago. Executives in manufacturing and financial services, where workforce cutbacks have been more common than in other industries, are even more likely than executives in general to say the workforce will decrease than increase. By contrast, 43 percent of the executives in energy expect hiring levels to rise—by far the most in any industry. It seems likely that energy companies are drawing on their enormous profits to continue exploring.

Online Video Resumes

Do you ever have one of those moments when you wince at the past and wonder, “What was I thinking?” Big hair and parachute pants come to mind for me because I was a child of the eighties. Trends come and go. Some stay and become part of our lifestyle and culture while others, gratefully, die a natural death never to be resurrected. Yet at their height of popularity, it’s difficult to tell which have staying power and which do not. This is why we need to pay very careful attention to the newest job search trend – the online video resume.

WorkPlace Diversity- A melting pot of talent

A global economy brings with it a diverse workforce. Workplace diversity encompasses race, gender, ethnic group, age, personality type, educational background and work experience.

Managers need to be careful and ensure that decisions and actions are not influenced by stereotypical views. “Ethnic minorities lack qualification, women with young children are less committed to work, disabled employees are more likely to be sick than others and older workers lack ambition and enthusiasm”. These could be some of the stereotypical presumptions that exist. These should be avoided.

Why multinationals struggle to manage talent

A McKinsey survey of managers at some of the world’s best-known multinationals covered a range of sectors and all the main geographies. Our findings suggest that the movement of employees between countries is still surprisingly limited and that many people tempted to relocate fear that doing so will damage their career prospects. Yet companies that can satisfy their global talent needs and overcome cultural and other silo-based barriers tend to outperform those that don’t.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

With the rapid increase in the ‘service’ oriented companies/sectors in the Indian economy, this trend is only set to increase manifold. Several service industries predominantly IT & ITES and Aviation have been built on this trend and the current retail boom is all set to leverage this resource pool. Reflecting on this fast growing trend, Ravi Saxena, MD, Citymax India comments, “Definitely the trend is on the rise since there is a severe crunch of trained manpower at various levels across industries.”

Technology revolution in HR

The relationship between human resource management and information technology is inverse. Human resources use machines to manage people, and information technology uses people to manage machines. It is important to remember that information technology brings new tools and a strong interest in knowledge management to this business relationship. While human resource brings a strong orientation for improving job performance and a focus on knowledge use.

Using branding to attract talent

Competition for talent is heating up in many industries and will probably intensify, since demographic trends make it increasingly difficult for companies to replace valued employees when they retire.1 In response, many companies are trying to sharpen the way they market themselves to recruits, by applying branding techniques to recruitment.

Is the family business right for you?

If you already run a family business, you already know how complex the relationships can become. The key to success is organizing the business just as you would any other, with charters, governance procedures, and the like. Spell it all out. Over the years Davis has contributed a number of articles for HBS Working Knowledge that provides useful advice on how this can be accomplished.

Few, proud and social

For the US Marine Corps, social networking is nothing new. The few and the proud have a long history of coming back from travels and conquests to tell stories to friends and family. So it is only natural that the Marine Corps now uses social networking as a big part of its Internet marketing efforts to attract new recruits.
From a MySpace page to its own branded social networking site at Our.Marines.com, the Marine Corps uses the power of social networking and viral communication to excite and engage its target 18- to 25-year-old audience.

Follow The Leader

Recently, in a KPO, two senior officials quit to set up a direct competitor of their existing employer. The first thing they did was to contact their teams at their previous employer. There was complete havoc created while the teams were quitting, and eventually, the organisation had to suffer heavily though it had invested so much of time and effort to build those teams.

Biggest global challenge - Managing Talent

According to the latest global study by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the World Federation of Personnel Management Associations (WFPMA), managing talent is the most critical manpower challenge worldwide. It is believed that this issue would remain at or near the top of executive agendas in every region and industry for the foreseeable future. 

Hidden Talent

Corporation can gain a competetive advantage if they can identify the employees who hold key knowledge and retain them - or at least transfer their knowledge to others if they do decide to leave. Those employee exist at all levels of an organisation , but they are frequently hidden from view. Identifying, nurturig and retaining key knowledge holders and other emplyees with valuable but often overlooked skills will allow corporations to remain agile even during times of high turnover.