CHART OF THE DAY: Do you trust this chart?

...if you are say about 25 or 30 years of age, you probably don't.

This week's installment in CHART OF THE DAY comes courtesy of the recently released Pew Research Report titled Millennials in Adulthood: Detached from Institutions, Networked with Friends, a look at how the Millennial generation is transition into adulthood.

One of the more interesting findings is that, at least according to this report, the Millennials are much less trusting than the other, older generations. Take a look at the chart from the Pew report, then as you have come to expect, I will have a couple of comments about the data.

My thoughts on the chart:

1. There exists a pretty vocal cadre of people that think that all of these kind of generational differences research reports are silly, and that people are all individually distinct, and thus making broad conclusions and generalizations about entire generations is a wasted effort. These people are also wrong.

2. Could this lower relative level of 'trust' be a factor of the Millennial generation's observance of their parents experience with work and workplaces, which to at least some degree involved the breakdown of things like the employer-employee trust relationship, the ongoing decrease in organized labor, and the gradual phasing out of defined benefit pension programs? Do Millennials 'trust' less because their parents trusted their employers too much?

3. It could be that the lower 'trust' levels are also a reflection of Millennials own economic challenges. Facing a tough job market in the last several years, feeling the pressure of (for many), significant student loan debt levels, and seeing their friends and themselves having to take jobs outside of their fields, and often in the service industry where low wages, limited benefits, and lack of stability prevail. 'Trust' could be a function of vulnerability. The more vulnerable you are economically, the more wary you become.

Anyway, have a look at the entire Pew Research report, it offers some interesting data on how this important generation is transitioning into adulthood and what their attitudes suggest for the future of work, workplaces, and the society at large.

Happy Wednesday. 

Job Titles of the Future #9 - Chocolate Foresight Activator

I caught this Job Title of the Future from a recent piece on The Atlantic, describing the Hershey Company's quest to find, what the Atlantic called a 'Chocolate Futurist', or what Hershey refers to in their still-posted job ad, a 'Senior Manager, Foresight Activation.'

I think The Atlantic wins points for the jazzier job title.

Just what does a 'Chocolate Futurist/Foresight Activator' have to do?

Straight from the Hershey job listing:

Supports the activation of existing foresight (trends, forecasts, scenarios) into strategic opportunities (SOs) and platforms with commercial value for Hershey, mining existing foresight content for highest potential business impact opportunities or threats.  Performs ongoing monitoring of the external environment for new insights and trends approaching tipping points.  Partners with external agencies to identify new trends that can inform and accelerate foresight activation.  Collaborates with Corporate Strategy, R&D, Global Knowledge & Insights and Silicon Valley Advance Team as well as other business and functional teams to flesh out opportunity assessment and business case.  Shapes new initiatives in the front of funnel and drives to successful completion through Gates A, B and C.

What kind of background or education do you need in order to activate foresight and drive to successful completion through Gates A, B, and C, (what the heck does that even mean, btw?)

Education: MBA in Marketing or Masters in related field required

Experience: Minimum of 8+ year’s relevant experience.  Multi-disciplinary background (Marketing, Corporate Strategy, R&D, Management Consulting).   User design or consulting experience a plus.  Solid front-end innovation capability including the identification of insights and translation to business growth strategy.

Experience with a major innovation consultancy (i.e. What If? IDEO, Doblin, Innosight, Prophet, Jump Associates, Eureka Ranch, New & Improved) supporting multiple clients to accomplish the same.

Progression of successful accomplishments in identification and commercialization of new business opportunities. Experience with a top-tier consumer packaged goods company preferred.  International and technical experience desirable but not required

So, in order to 'activate foresight' it probably would help if you had a solid, cross-functional background, had a fair bit of customer-facing experience, and new something about product development and management.

But, at least according to the posting copy, in order to be qualified to be a Chocolate Futurist/Foresight Activator, you don't necessarily have to know anything much about chocolate. In fact the word chocolate doesn't show up anywhere in the listing.

Which in a way is kind of cool. The future might not be all that chocolat-y, who knows?

Maybe the foresight activator for a chocolate company should be someone that doesn't view the world through cocoa-tinted lenses.

Maybe Hershey is actually showing some foresight themselves in looking outside their normal frames of reference to find someone to help them 'form presentations that create a tangible vision of what the future might look like that business partners can grasp.'

Sounds like a cool gig. And one that earns official SFB designation as a 'Job Title of the Future.'

The problem with deadlines

Is that, all too often, they are completely one-sided.

When I need something done, answered, actioned, or otherwise handled is almost certainly not perfectly aligned with how you would like to accommodate my request, (or to spend the time to take a decision to actively not accommodate the request).

My, 'I need it by the end of next week' has to be translated into the language of your workflow, capability, availability, and most importantly, that mental list of the things that are ranked in order to their importance to you, (and that I almost definitely am not aware of).

I can ask you if it is reasonable if I can have that thing by 'End of next week', and you will likely tell me 'Sure, not a problem' because when looked at on a Monday or a Tuesday 'The end of next week' seems like forever away from now and the commitment to deliver seems so far afield from the promise that I would think you kind of incompetent if you simply said 'No'.

I think a better question than 'Can I have this by the end of next week?' or its close equivalent, 'About how long will it take before you can turn this around?' would be, "Where is this item on your priority list?' or 'Assuming you had everything you needed to work on this, when would you actually, you know, start working on it?'

I think it is much more important for the requestor to know how the person being asked to do something actually has the item prioritized and importance-ranked in their own mind than the often irrelevant 'How long will it take to complete?' angle.

It almost never matters how long something will take to complete.

What matters is how motivated you are to start.

Have a great week everyone!

This weekend's company culture test

I am of (pretty) firm belief you can tell just about everything you need to know about company culture from tracking and analyzing email usage patterns, traffic levels, and response expectations.

Sure, not all organizations, and certainly not all roles in organizations, are overly reliant on email as their primary communications, collaboration, and general project management tool, but for those that are, and I suspect that would include just about everyone reading this post, your email Inbox is largely a proxy for your 'work' in general.

Very few initiatives actually get started without first sending an email to someone.

Progress is communicated and monitored on those tasks in ongoing series of emails.

Organizational structure and power dynamics are reflected in who you are 'allowed' to email, and who will or will not respond.

You overall stress level and relative satisfaction with your job can be extrapolated from the point in time condition of your Inbox.

Finally, you probably leave the office with a warped sense of accomplishment if, at the end of the week, you have successfully triaged all of your incoming messages, sent the necessary replies, and achieved that most elusive of states, so-called 'Inbox Zero'. You pack up shop for the week and head home, (or to Happy Hour).

And that is when my favorite test of company culture begins, what happened to your Inbox from say, 6:00PM on a Friday up until 6:00AM on Monday. (this is what we used to call the "weekend".)

As you enjoy whatever it is you enjoy this weekend, think about these few questions:

Who in your company is (still) sending emails on a Friday night? On Saturday morning? Or on Sunday evening when you are clinging like grim death to your last few precious hours of downtime?

Who is responding to weekend emails? And no, I am not talking about genuine business or customer emergencies, just 'normal' kinds of things. You know, the kinds of things you worry about on Tuesday.

Are your management or senior leaders making a habit of tapping away message after message (always "Sent from my iPad") all weekend long while they are ostensibly watching Jr's soccer game?

Are you checking or at least thinking about checking your work email on Saturday afternoon when, I don't know, you're supposed to have something better to do?

Finally, when you get one of those weekend emails do you respond? Are you expected to? And if you do are you now "at work?"

It's odd for the one piece of workplace technology that we all probably use more than any other, that we think about and really try to understand it's usage so little.

Email is just always there. It is always on. We engage with it constantly.

But we don't ever think about what it might tell us about the organization, the power dynamics, and most importantly, what it can tell us about the culture of an organization.

So, are you on email this weekend or are you off?

Have a great one no matter what you choose!

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 177 - Analyze This!

HR Happy Hour 177- Analyze This!

Recorded Monday, March 3, 2014

Recently,on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane sat down with Mike Cooke, Chairman and CEO of Brandon Hall Group, and welcomed him to the show.  With Trish's recent career change to joining Brandon Hall Group as the VP of HR Practice/ Principal Analyst, this seemed like the opportune time to discuss what analyst firms do and how HR leaders can be helped by the advisory services they provide in addition to the research.  In this episode, we talked about some of the upcoming research Brandon Hall Group is working on as well as the recently launched HR Systems Survey.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, or using the widget player below.

More Business Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Steve Boese on BlogTalkRadio

Additionally for you smartphone addicts, you can get the show on Apple’s iTunes or for Android devices, using an app called Stitcher Radio. In both cases just search for “HR Happy Hour” to download the show and to subscribe to the podcast.

It was a fun and interesting conversation with Mike, and I hope you check out the show and catch all of the past shows and archives over on the HR Happy Hour show page or at www.hrhappyhour.net.