Monthly Archives: March 2012

March 28, 2012 · 12:28 pm

The Transformational Entrepreneur Cited in the Academic Journal of Economic Literature

For Immediate Release – March 28, 2012 -

Terry Murray’s groundbreaking book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Business Breakthrough Success” was recognized and cited in the peer-reviewed, academic Journal of Economic Literature’s March 2012 quarterly issue.

Performance Transformation, LLC™ (Venice, FL) announced today that their founder and Managing Partner’s book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur”was recognized and cited in the academic Journal of Economic Literature for its contribution to professional business literature and thought leadership.

“We received the unsolicited notification letter from the Journal last week,” responded Mr. Murray. “It was both humbling and exciting at the same time.  I’ve been working on the business side of the life sciences, medical technology and health care sectors since 1988, so I have an enormous appreciation for the diligence of peer-reviewed, academic journals.  As a business executive, and not an academic, this is a distinct honor for my book to be recognized for its contribution to the field of business and economic professional literature.”

The Journal of Economic Literature is published by the American Economic Association (AEA), a professional organization of economists, academics, and business thought leaders with more than 22,000 members.

“My executive career has spanned some truly remarkable changes in the global business landscape,” added Terry.  ”Historically, there’s always been a lag in leadership, strategy and organizational philosophy in response to market shifts in value creation.  I entered the biotechnology world during its infancy.  This was the beginning of the knowledge-based economy and coincided with the boom in personal computing.  Yet the methods, perspectives, and philosophies we were trained for in business school all emerged out of the Industrial Age.  We literally had to discover a new approach to business as usual along the way, but it is only today, some 25 years later, that the strategic imperative of human creativity in business is beginning to move into the mainstream.”

“The Transformational Entrepreneur” will also be indexed in the American Economic Association’s internet database, EconLit, which is accessible at libraries and universities around the world, as well as to licensed institutions and AEA members.  The electronic bibliography indexes over 120 years of economics literature from around the world.  The database complies professional journal articles, collective volume articles, working papers, dissertations, and books of note on the subject of economics and business practice.

“The shift in the source of value creation truly began in the 1980s, but information technology bridged the productivity gap for thirty years, masking the need for a change in the approach to  leadership, strategy and organizational development.  By the turn of the century it was already beginning to hit a point of diminishing returns, right at the time the explosively disruptive power of the internet began to take off.  Even old world industries are doing business in ways they never could have anticipated ten years ago,” commented Terry.

Mr. Murray went on to say, “Perhaps because I was immersed in the knowledge-based economy for so long I saw the need for a more human-centric approach to business.  Research scientists, physicians and engineers, and their creative talents, are the raw material for value creation and competitive advantage in this new era of business.  You cannot lead creatives the same way we once managed assembly line workers.  Two years after I began writing my book, the IBM Global CEO Survey exemplified the perspective and approach I was writing about at the time, reporting that creativity and the ability to cultivate creativity throughout the workplace was the single most important attribute CEOs are looking for in future leaders.”

Terry’s book was published two months after IBM released the results of their bi-annual survey in December of 2010.

About the author ~ Terry Murray is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and professional business advisor/coach with twenty-five years of progressive experience in strategic development, executive leadership, and the deployment of highly profitable business teams. His work with Fortune 1000 and startup companies has directly contributed more than $1 billion in market capitalization growth throughout his career.

He is the founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation, LLC™, a professional and strategic development firm focused on igniting breakthrough performance by optimizing and aligning authentic leadership, mindful strategy, and an engaging, creative organizational culture.  The company’s evidence-based programs and pragmatic approach employs their proprietary Accretive Coaching Process℠.  This innovative, developmental process integrates concepts from published research in the neurosciences, emotional intelligence, performance psychology, quantum physics and Applied Behavioral Economics with Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning.

For more information, please visit http://ignitingcreativityinbusiness.com.

© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.


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March 25, 2012 · 3:14 pm

Terry Murray Discusses Creativity in Business on Nationally Syndicated Frankie Boyer Show

Key Concept ~ Creativity in business is rapidly becoming a strategic imperative in today’s global economy.  Terry Murray shares his insights on why creative thinking is so critical throughout the business and the steps we can take to cultivate our own creative abilities as well as our associates’ creativity to deliver and sustain competitive advantage.

Late last week I had the opportunity to return for an appearance on The Frankie Boyer Show to discuss creativity’s growing importance in the workplace.  Frankie’s show is syndicated on more than 30 terrestrial radio stations and can be heard coast-to-coast as well as in London and Singapore.

“I’m just crazy about your book, Terry,” exclaimed Frankie.  ”There’s no other book out there like it!”

In the interview, Frankie went on to comment on how few companies are creative in their approach to business and how few people are allowed to be creative in the workplace.  In exploring why this is, I explained that, for most companies, their approach to leadership and organizational culture is still mired in the paradigms of the Industrial Age.  This is problematic because the fundamental source of value creation in today’s economy is the commercialization of intellectual property.  The source of intellectual property is human creativity.  Even in old world industries, what they do may be very traditional but how they do it and how companies market their products and services is changing at an accelerating pace.  This requires creative thinking at every touch point throughout the organization to fully leverage competitive advantage.

The pre-requesit for creative thinking in a business is employee engagement, yet research demonstrates less than a third of associates show up with any passion or interest for their company or their work.  The endemic employee disengagement crisis is a direct result of the traditional, transactional leadership approach of the last century.  For creativity to thrive in an organization, leadership must first migrate to a transformational leadership philosophy.  One of serving those we lead, of putting the productivity and psychological needs of our associates, stakeholders, customers, and prospects ahead of our own, personal interests.

We went on to discuss how everybody has creative thinking capabilities and talked about how leaders and companies can cultivate creativity throughout their organizations.  I explain how creative thinking can be spurred by the introduction of novel cognitive and emotional stimuli, but the organization must also create the necessary space, time and organizational culture for the phases of the creative process to unfold.

Frankie also inquired about our approach and use of Equine Facilitated Learning for cultivating creativity in leaders and business teams commenting, “I did an equine learning exercise a few years ago in Arizona and was blown away.  It was a fascinating learning experience for me!”

You’re welcome to learn more by listening to the ten minute podcast replay of the live interview here:

You’re also welcome to visit Igniting Creativity in Business to explore our approach to unleashing the creative potential in leadership and organizations.

Photos courtesy of The Frankie Boyer Show and Precision Photography of Honolulu.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

© 2012, The Frankie Boyer Show.

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March 22, 2012 · 9:49 pm

The Correlation Between Coherence, Flow and Productivity

Key Concept ~ Most entrepreneurs share a common attribute; a burning sense of urgency.  While intrinsic motivation is critical for someone striking out on their own or stepping up to launch and lead a startup business, some balance is required as well. Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, and how we regulate our own energy, focus and activities has a bearing on long-term success.

If you’re an entrepreneur you’re probably fairly familiar with eighty to one hundred hour work weeks, juggling multiple priorities concurrently, and literally living your business at times.  If our own fire in the belly isn’t enough motivation, the constrained resources, limited bandwidth, competing priorities, and competitive pressures of leading a startup quickly remind us…there’s always work to be done.  The question is, what happens to our productivity, our ability to creatively leverage our vision, business acumen and experience for the benefit of the business, when we simply find ourselves running too hard?

We all do it at times.  I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a habitual offender.  It started in college.  I launch my first company my junior year at business school and would commonly work sixty hours a week while going to college full time.  By my second semester I scheduled all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which in my mind, left a complete five day work week for the business!  I was the classic young man in a hurry.  I did the same thing in corporate, working eighty to hundred hour weeks, flying 100,000 miles a year, and not taking a real vacation during a five year stretch.

My wife kindly forwarded an article to me last week that referenced a host of research studies, some going as far back as 1914 (Henry Ford conducted internal research on productivity, costs, and labor hours), all demonstrating how rapidly human productivity declines after working for eight hours a day or more than forty hours a week.  Winston Churchill recognized this during the war and devised a clever work schedule to maximize his productivity and meet the demands of the Prime Minister fighting the Axis powers on a global front.  He would rise early and work until mid-day, at which time he would go home, take a bath (while giving dictation to his secretary sitting just outside the ajar door), and then a long nap.  He would then go back to work until late into the night.  He was also known to have commented there’s never a good time to take a vacation.  Take one anyways.  And he practiced this even during the darkest years of the war.

The research referenced in the article made a pretty strong argument, and I’m not one to argue with Mr. Churchill, but there was still a part of me that was thinking, yea, well how do you explain my success…it was directly associated with my effort, right?  My wife kindly reminded me that all of our company professional development programs and workshops are based upon peer-reviewed research.  She then added, “Ignoring research on productivity wouldn’t be very authentic, would it?”

So I took the weekend off.

Let’s face it, sometimes a forty hour work week is impossible for us.  But at what cost to our productivity?   One thing is for certain, entrepreneurs would be well served to cultivate emotional resiliency in order to maintain our own optimal level of productivity.  This is a core focus of our programs and workshops; the cultivation of competencies in emotional intelligence.  Building our self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management skills places us onto the path to self-mastery.  There are actual, biological underpinnings that we can positively influence, for ourselves and those around us, that directly effect our productivity as well as our health (another critical factor, entrepreneurs can rarely afford the time to be sick).

Those capable of self-mastery, of mindfully engaging their emotional landscape (internally and externally), experience multi-dimensional benefits.  First, they experience the physiological and psychological benefit called coherence.1   Coherence occurs when the oscillatory systems of the body (i.e. heart beat, respiratory rate, blood pressure, brain waves) synchronize and become entrained together in frequency.2  Coherence improves physiological function on a biochemical and metabolic level.  We all know that unhealthy levels of stress have a negative impact on our immune system and the health of our heart.  Being in a state of coherence is believed to have the opposite effect.

Achieving coherence also has a positive impact on cognitive ability.  When we are fully engaged and enjoying what we are doing we enter what renowned researcher and psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as flow.  Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research looked into the psychological state of a wide variety of professionals operating at peak performance.  When they were fully engaged, focused, and enjoying their endeavor, their biochemistry reflected an increase in cortisol (from the hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal, or HPA axis) which brought them to a place in which they were taking full advantage of their cognitive and/or physical abilities.  If the HPA axis shot past this point due to stress, adrenaline and cortisol levels continued to rise and performance rapidly diminished.  His work proved that a person’s emotional state is a governing factor in cognitive and physical performance.

Still another benefit of coherence is its effect on our ability to positively engage and motivate those around us.  When we express empathy for another being, entrainment of each person’s physiological rhythms ensues.  Research conducted by Drs. Levenson and Gottman at UC Berkeley observed this phenomena between spouses.3  Research conducted by Carl Marci at Harvard University documented similar results of coherence and physiological entrainment between patients and psychotherapists during expressed moments of empathy by the therapist.4  When people connect emotionally we actually connect physiologically as well.

All of these things profoundly effect our productivity as entrepreneurs and leaders.  We’re all different, but cultivating the self-awareness to see when we’re pushing ourselves past optimal flow can help us self-regulate and maintain our productivity by taking our foot off the gas, even if for a moment.

1.)  R. McCraty, M. Atkinson, “Psychophysiological Coherence”, D, McCraty R, Wilson BC, eds. Emotional Sovereignty. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, forthcoming.

2.)  R. McCraty, “The Energetic Heart – Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People”.  Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, CA., 2003.

3.)  R. Levenson, A. Ruef, “Physiological Aspects of Emotional Knowledge and Rapport”, In: W. Ickes, ed. Empathic Accuracy, Guilford Press, New York, New York 1997.

4.)  C. Marci, “Psychophysiology and Psychotherapy:  The Neurobiology of Human Relatedness”, Practical Reviews of Psychiatry,  2002; 25(3).

5.)  M. Iacoboni, “Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons”, Annual Review of Psychology, 2009.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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March 14, 2012 · 2:23 pm

Terry Murray Interview with Tron Simpson of KCMN Colorado Springs

Key Concept ~ I was recently invited back for a radio interview with personality Tron Simpson on KCMN in Colorado Springs.  Tron’s a lively, fun host and it is always a pleasure to be on his top rated, drive-time radio program in the Rocky Mountains!

As part of our launch strategy for Igniting Creativity In Business, we’ve set off on another media campaign to drive traffic, market awareness, and revenue.  Public relations is a key facet of our growth strategy, and one many entrepreneurs struggle to get their arms around.  Traditional PR firms can be very expensive, requiring substantial monthly retainers while simultaneously guaranteeing they’ll to do their best to get you media exposure.  That sentence is usually followed up with a caveat of the nebulous nature of the 24/7 news cycle and how all PR firms are constrained by the whims of the media.

This doesn’t have to be the case.  Fortunately, we work with perhaps one of the only PR firm that actual works on a pay-for-performance philosophy.  Our PR firm, E.M.S.I., is led by Marsha and Steve Friedman and their remarkable staff of seasoned, creative and talented media experts. They work on a set budget that guarantees media placement.  They just don’t toss you to the lions, either.  Senior Campaign Manager Alex Hinojosa and Creative Director Penny Carnathan work diligently to design and align a media strategy that truly optimizes our return on investment.  Alex is a brilliant media coach as well.  He thoroughly prepared me for how best to communicate my message during radio interviews.  Rich Ghazarian, our radio campaign manager, has booked us on many syndicated, terrestrial radio programs that have high ratings and are heard throughout the country.  These aren’t internet podcasts, we’re talking broadcasts.

If you’ve been burned by agencies that promised the world and delivered little more than a monthly invoice I highly recommend the E.M.S.I. team!  They’re the perfect fit for entrepreneurs looking to build their credibility, visibility, and reach for a very reasonable investment.

You can listen to this morning’s interview with Tron Simpson by clicking the MP3 link here:

Interview with Tron Simpson 3:14:12

© 2012, Terry Murray.

© 2012, KCMN, Colorado Springs.

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March 12, 2012 · 10:00 pm

Performance Transformation Launches Igniting Creativity in Business

PR Newswire – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Performance Transformation, LLC™ (Venice, FL) announced today the launch of their new professional development programs and workshops designed to cultivate creativity in the workplace.

“We’re very excited to bring our innovative approach into the marketplace,” said Terry Murray, Founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation.  ”Regardless of your industry, creativity thinking is now a strategic imperative for cultivating and sustaining competitive advantage in the 21st Century.”

In fact, the 2010 IBM Global CEO survey identified the single most important attribute CEOs are looking for in future leaders is creativity and their ability to cultivate creativity throughout the organization.  However, a peer-reviewed research study conducted by Cornell University  and published in The Journal For Experimental Social Psychology identifies a disconnect.  The research identified a heretofore unseen bias in business.  High potentials that display creativity are often sidetracked on their way up the corporate ladder.

“The accelerating complexity of the global marketplace we’re currently experiencing is unprecedented,” adds Mr. Murray.  ”Creative thinking can no longer be relegated to the R&D or marketing functions.  It needs to be present at every touchpoint throughout the organization.”

More than four years in development and validation, the Igniting Creativity In Business series of professional development programs and workshops are entirely based upon peer-reviewed research from diverse, scientific disciplines.  Research findings from the neurosciences, emotional intelligence, biochemistry, Applied Behavioral Economics, Core Mammalian Emotional Systems, performance psychology, creativity research, Kolb’s Adult Learning Style Inventory, and quantum physics have been integrated into a multi-dimensional, innovative approach for sparking creativity and innovative thinking.

“For the past four years we’ve been focused on developing and delivering programs and workshops that align and optimize leadership, strategy, and organizational culture,” states Terry.  ”Our baseline programs, first released in 2010, Transformational Leadership, Adaptive Team Building, Igniting Breakthrough Sales, The Emotionally Resilient Nurse, and Warriors in Transition set the foundation for the next evolution in professional development.  When we saw the results from the IBM Global CEO Survey a year and a half ago we realized we had identified the fundamental elements necessary for promulgating creativity in business.”

In the past two years, more than a dozen research studies and surveys have been released by global consultancies, universities, and leading institutions all pointing to the growing disconnect between leadership and employees.  Economic volatility and the global recession contributed to this issue. On a macro level, more than 70% of employees are disengaged with their company.  Trust in leadership is at an all time low (10%) and fear dominates many organizational cultures.

Terry goes on to state, “Fear kills creativity.  It is part of our Core Mammalian Emotional System.  When we promote fear as a motivating factor, we get a predictable response; disengagement.  When we promote another of our part of our Core Mammalian Emotional System, seeking, we also get a predictable response; engagement and creativity.”

Today’s multi-cultural and multi-generational workplace provides significant opportunities for devising and implementing creative solutions to challenges and opportunities alike.  It does, however, require a fresh approach to leading, planning, and delivering a culture capable of engaging every human perspective in the business.

“Creative thinking requires both divergent thinking and convergent focus,” added Terry.  ”Diversity of perspectives, coming from diverse people is key.  Inclusion of diverse perspectives has never been more strategically important for companies than it is today.  The other key element for creative thinking that is often overlooked in business is novel stimuli.”

Performance Transformation delivers novel cognitive, emotional, and psychological stimuli through their proprietary Accretive Coaching Process℠, which can include Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning workshops.  The carefully crafted, ground-based exercises with horses introduces a novel, neurological response triggering the development of new neural pathways.  This approach, followed up with a rigorous educational and coaching process helps professionals shift their response to new challenges away from conditioned thinking into an exploratory, neurological response.

Terry concludes, “The challenge is to first promote the formation of new neural pathways in the individual through the introduction of emotionally, cognitively, and psychologically novel stimuli.  To break out of the wheel worn paths of conditioned thinking.  The brain is very conservative with energy, so it has a tendency to follow the path of least resistance.  Developing new neural pathways takes more energy than following established ones.  The more practiced we are in developing new ways of thinking, the easier it becomes to respond to unprecedented challenges in creative ways.  We then work to help client organizations connect and amplify the nodes of though throughout their company.  This approach to cross-pollinating organizational thinking is the key to success going forward.”

© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.

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March 10, 2012 · 3:29 pm

Entrepreneurial Leadership in an Old World Industry

Key Concept ~ Every once and a while we can come across the most enlightened perspectives where we least expect to find them.  I did last night.

Last night, after a long week of toiling away launching my new blog site, Igniting Creativity in Business, my wife and I headed out for a light dinner.  It was a balmy night here along the Gulf Coast, so we headed for an outdoor restaurant that features live music.  Sitting amongst the snowbirds, we struck up a conversation with the couple sitting next to us.  Tom and his wife live on the beach here in Venice, and as we chatted the subject of what we did for a living came up.  Tom told me that he owns a manufacturing company in Cincinnati, Ohio and his company makes custom windows for commercial buildings.  He went on to tell me he has 113 employees, “Yeah, I’ve got overhead!” he added.

Jovial, as the Bearcats just defeated Syracuse in the Big East Conference basketball tournament, Tom began talking about his approach to leadership.  He told me he was thrown out of college in his freshman year and never looked back.  He was too busy having fun.  He fell into the construction trades and eventually found himself working for one of the largest commercial construction companies in the country.  In his late forties, he decided to strike out on his own.  That was thirteen short years ago.

As we talked, Tom began to share his leadership philosophy with me.  He told me he is committed to providing a minimum of 40 hours of training a year for all of his employees.  ”I don’t care if it’s the guy pushing a broom in the factory, I’m determined to help him become the best at what he wants to do in life,” Tom commented.  ”If my people aren’t successful, how can I be?”

To say that I was a bit taken aback would be an understatement.  ”Do you realize you’re more progressive than 80% of corporate leaders?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I just run my business with common sense,” he replied.  I responded with a favorite expression of a colleague of mine, “What might be common sense isn’t always common practice.”

“Four of my biggest competitors shuttered their doors last year,” Tom added.  ”They were playing with their banks’ money, but I’m playing with mine.”

We went on to talk about over-leveraging debt to equity for a while when he said, “We had a 33% drop in revenue ourselves last year, but I salt away the cash in the good years knowing we’re bound to hit a downturn now and then.  I took a $400,00 loss last year”  A downturn, I thought…in commercial construction.  That’s putting it mildly.

“You know what I did in response?  I increased my training budget by 150% and didn’t lay off a single soul.  In tough times, that’s when you need to double down on your investment in your people.”

I was flabbergasted.  I immediately told him about the recommendations that came out of a recent study by the Chartered Management Institute that made that very recommendation.  That training was even more valuable during tough times and global corporations would be well served to invest in their people during downturns, as it has been proven to accelerate growth well ahead of the competition once an economic recovery takes root.  I shared with him the research from Harvard that demonstrated a dollar invested in advertising returns a two dollar return, but every dollar invested in training delivers a forty dollar return on investment.  We went on to discuss the difference between transactional leadership and transformational leadership, which were foreign terms for him even though he was one of the most transformational leaders I’ve met in a long time.  We spoke about leading the Gen X and Gen Y crowd and he told me he consistently attends training seminars on cross-generational leadership.  ”They’re my future…I have to understand how to connect and motivate them or I’m history,” he added.

As our conversation wound down, Tom left me with a comment I will never forget, “My only concern is that I’m not listening to my employees closely enough…I have a dominant personality, so I have to be careful.”

As I drove home with my wife I couldn’t stop talking about Tom’s enlightened leadership.  He wasn’t griping about the fact that he couldn’t fill jobs because people didn’t have the necessary skills.  He invests in his people even when his company, and he personally, is losing $400,000 in a single year.  Running a manufacturing business, in America, in the heart of the rust belt.  Somehow I sensed he was still smiling as he went to bed in his beach house on the Gulf.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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March 7, 2012 · 4:51 pm

One Year In ~ A Special Thanks to my Readers

I wish to thank all of you that have spent some time with me over the past year reading this blog.  It was a year ago today that I published my first commentary on this site.  One hundred and seventeen blogs and more than 60,000 words later, thank you.  I hope the information I’ve shared and will continue to share contributes value to your entrepreneurial endeavors!

To Your Success,

Terry

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· 4:45 pm

Cultivating Competitive Advantage in Small Business

Key Concept ~ Small businesses need a competitive edge to win in the marketplace.  In today’s world, people are the source of competitive advantage.  Large firms may enjoy economies of scale, high brand equity, and bloated marketing budgets, but they consistently continue to miss the mark in leadership, leadership development and associate engagement.  This is the soft underbelly of corporate and a place where small firms can outperform the multi-nationals.

The Chartered Management Institute in the UK recently released a major research study titled, “The Business Benefits of Management and Leadership Development”.  The study surveyed nearly 4,500 mid-level to senior level managers in the United Kingdom seeking to find if there were any correlations between management and leadership development programs and organizational performance.  The study also delved into the types of developmental programs that are perceived as valuable and the types of programs that deliver skills that are actually used on the job.  Some of the key findings of the study include:

~ In low performing organizations, 39% of line managers were rated as effective.  Sixty-one percent of line managers were rated as ineffective.

~ In high performing organizations, 80% of line managers were rated as effective.  Twenty percent were rated as ineffective.

~ In low performing organizations, 30% of associates reported being highly engaged.

~ In high performing organizations, 83% of associates reported being highly engaged.

No real surprises.  The findings in the UK parallel the findings of other U.S. and international studies that have been published in the last several years.  I believe this is the sixth study released in the past two years from highly respected global consultancies, universities, and institutions that underscores the state of leadership in business today.  In fact, the 30% highly engaged figure for low performing organizations nearly mirrors Gallups findings that peg associate engagement levels at 29%.  The question that begs to be asked is whether or not senior leadership is listening, and if so, what are they doing about it?

I believe some are, as we can see the much higher levels of management effectiveness and associate engagement levels in companies that are deemed high performing.  What was really interesting from this study, and should resonate with small business owners, was the misalignment between what business managers perceive as effective leadership development and what programs actually deliver the skills and tools they require to lead.  Nearly 90% ranked a business graduate degree program as the most effective approach for leadership development while only 10% of what they learned in an accredited graduate program was actually being used, day-to-day, in their managerial roles.  Programs that delivered credentials were perceived as being more effective but consistently delivered applicable skills well below the perceived level of value.  Programs that were perceived to be lower in value (i.e. workshops, short courses on leadership, conferences, on-the-job-experience, and internal knowledge-sharing networks) actually delivered consistently higher levels of applicable skills than the formal, accredited programs.  Lower cost training, coaching, and educational workshops actually deliver more relevant skills than the high-priced, accredited programs.

Another interesting finding was the effectiveness of professional coaching.  The report stated, “Coaching, either by line manager or external practitioners, appears in the top five most effective types of MLD (management and leadership development) for women but not for men. Coaching by external practitioners is identified by over half of CEOs and senior managers as something they wish they had received earlier in their careers.”  The report went on to quote a woman that had just finished an intensive, six month program as saying, “it provided me with many ‘eureka’ moments and genuinely changed my life and my expectations for my career… It had a massive impact on my competence at work.”

The conclusions of the report were clear.  Companies that out perform their competitors value leadership development.  They invest in it, senior leadership supports it, and these firms align their HR strategies with it.  This is an area where small businesses can compete on a very level playing field with major corporations.  You need not send your sales manager to Harvard to get an MBA.  Lower cost workshops, seminars, coaching, and training are available, and it is these types of programs that deliver applicable leadership skills.  Small businesses may not be able to out-muscle corporations, but they can out-lead them!  Leadership development, when properly aligned and supported, was found to explain as much as 32% of the variance in people performance and 23% of the variance in organizational performance.  Here are some of the recommendations from the study’s panel:

~ Value behaviors: coaching by both line managers and external practitioners was especially valued by senior managers, and something they would have appreciated receiving sooner in their careers.

~ Provide sufficient resources and commitment to development, even during tough times. Development is a long-term strategic investment that feeds the leadership pipeline for years to come.

~ Provide role models at the highest level with CEOs and senior managers demonstrating their personal commitment to learning.

~ Ensure managers are able to have effective career conversations to help align personal aspirations with the organization’s goals and values.

~ Align MLD to organizational performance measures to support the development of hard evidence of return on investment (ROI).

~ Create a rich organizational learning environment.

~ Provide coaching for all levels of management.

~ Build coaching capability within the organization at all levels through ‘leader as coach’ programs and accrediting internal coaches.

~ Create a culture of learning across the organization by encourage forums that facilitate knowledge-sharing, idea creation, collaboration, cross-functional working and debate.

~ Smaller organizations may need to network with other organizations to co-commission MLD and share best practice.

Once again, no real surprises.  Things that even our small firm has been speaking about for the past four years.  But as a colleague I respect once said, “Just because it is common sense doesn’t mean it is common practice.”  The great news for small business owners is there’s some low lying fruit waiting to be harvested right within your ranks.  Competitive advantage is there for the taking, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to implement.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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March 5, 2012 · 5:55 pm

Are You Prepared for the Talent Shortage?

Key Concept ~ Competing for talent is always a challenge for small firms.  The competition for talent in the 21st Century is already accelerating.  Entrepreneurial startups may want to rethink how they attract, recruit, and retain talent going foward.

The global staffing firm Manpower Group™ issued their 2011 Global Talent Shortage Survey (Manpower Global Talent Survey 2011 PDF) recently in which they identified that 52% of U.S. firms are struggling to find adequate talent for open positions.  In all of the Americas only Brazil, at 57%, is experiencing a greater shortage of talent than the U.S.  I don’t know about you, but I find this to be quite a sad commentary on the state of competitive fitness in the U.S.  There are few signs the talent shortage is about to abate any time soon.  In fact, most executives are anticipating the opposite; as we continue to move further away from the Great Recession the competition for talent will continue to heat up.

So, what are companies doing in response?  According to the survey, not much. In response to the shortage of talent (particularly for technicians, sales representatives, and skilled trade workers…the top three areas of talent shortfalls) only one out of five companies is increasing their training and educational programs for their associates.  Only 6% are pro-actively working with local schools and educational institutions to help address the skill gap.  More companies (25%) are changing their recruiting strategy than are looking to change, or even evaluate, their approach to how they lead and develop talent.

What was really startling was the perception held by executives as to the level of impact not filling key openings in a timely manner has on stakeholders (customers, investors, associates, etc.).  Only one out of five executives surveyed felt not backfilling a critical, open position has a high impact on constituents.  The survey goes on to identify 43% of executives believe leaving a position open has little impact, no impact, or didn’t know if open positions had any impact whatsoever on stakeholders.  This certainly isn’t the impression I’ve been getting from the research that continues to emerge from companies like McKinsey & Co., Gallup, RogenSi, Martitz Research, and other global consultancies.  The disconnect this points to is nothing short of astounding.  Hopefully, entrepreneurs, who tend to be closer to the front lines of day-to-day business, recognize just how disruptive this can be for the associates that remain onboard.

We collectively seem to have very short memories.  It was just fourteen short years ago when we went through the last severe chase for talent.  I was running a global service business in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical sector for a major corporation at the time.  The dot.com boom was in full swing, and places like the San Francisco Bay Area, a hotbed for both the high tech and biotech industries, had an unemployment rate of around 1%.  Our own customers were aggressively pirating our technicians away from our business.  Technicians that required six months of training and education before they were fully capable of conducting their work within the highly regulated biopharmaceutical industry.  Even if I could find potential technicians worth training, the skyrocketing wage scale and cost of living in the Bay Area created remarkable barriers to backfilling.  It became so severe, we would dispatch technicians from as far away as Mexico City and New Jersey for a week at a time to support our customers in Northern California.

What’s coming next will make that talent shortage pale in comparison.  More than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every day.  This rate of retirement will continue for the next seventeen years!  Workers from the Gen X and Gen Y generations are simultaneously introducing an entirely different set of expectations regarding their careers.  They are far more mobile than their Baby Boomer predecessors.  They expect opportunities for professional development and a greater sense of purposefulness as part of their employment.  They witnessed leagues of loyal Boomers work for corporations for decades only to be callously displaced at the next downturn.  The typical length of engagement for these younger workers, the ones with the adaptive technology skills companies covet so dearly, is around three years.  Perhaps this is part of the reason companies are so hesitant to provide training and employ professional development plans?  I’ll hire it when I need it seems to continue to be the prevailing attitude, unfortunately, it may not be there when you go looking for it.

Many companies are holding fast to their slash and burn harvest mentality.  Of squeezing every bit of value out of fewer and fewer human resources.  Of expecting more and offering less in return.  The survey and research results of the past few years are clearly demonstrating the effect of this on the workforce.  The majority of workers are feeling over-burdened, disengaged, and apathetic towards their employers.  The social contract, one’s whose expectations were forged in the post-WWII era, between employers and employees is broken. Talent holds the cards now, and it will be talent that will renegotiates this relationship going forward.

This creates an opportunistic environment for entrepreneurs.  Create a better working experience, and the talent will very likely find your firm, however small, an attractive alternative to life in corporate settings.  As an example, my first national sales management position was with a small company in Massachusetts.  We were anything but an attractive employer for top, seasoned sales talent.  We were, however, a wonderful place for high potential talent to germinate, get a few years of real, business-to-business sales experience in the life science market, and move on to a top-notch gig with a major company in the sector.  I chose attitude, intelligence, and the desire to grow professionally over experience.  I chose to train my sales team to sell the way I knew, from my own sales experience in the sector, would work.  I knew going in, I had to catch the talent on their ascent, and provide them with the training and experience they needed to get to where they wanted to go.  I knew my place in the career food chain, followed this approach, and the team achieved exceptional results.  Each sales representative I hired was with us for just a little over two years and every one of them went on to six figure sales jobs with their next company.  It was a fair trade-off, everybody won because we had calibrated our expectations accordingly.

As the talent wars continue to flare up, take a step back and look at what you have to offer.  You may be pleasantly surprised by embracing a fresh perspective in what you define as talent and what you need in terms of experience.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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