GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Many profit based organizations focus on their sales numbers when they should be more concerned with their gross margins on sales. The gross margin on sales is the difference between sales revenue and cost of goods sold (the price paid for inventory). The term gross indicates that the expenses necessary to operate the business must still be deducted to arrive at your bottom line. If the gross margin of sales is less than the operating expenses, the difference is a net loss for the period.

Let’s look at a simplified example: The XYZ Company purchases widgets for resell at $5.00 each. The sales staff sells these widgets to their clients for $8.00 a piece. This month, sales were $80,000 (10,000 widgets sold x $8.00 each widget). The cost of the widgets to XYZ Company is $50,000 (10,000 widgets purchased x $5.00 for each widget). XYZ Company’s gross margin on sales is $30,000 ($80,000 sales less $50,000 cost of sales). This means that their expenses cannot exceed $30,000 for the month if they want to stay profitable.

To stay profitable:

• Calculate your expenses for each month so you know how much gross margin on sales you need to cover them.
• Focus on how much you need to make on each sale and how many sales you need to stay in business.
• Selling fewer products for more money will give you more free time and less hassle.
• Make sure you only sell to clients who can afford to pay you.
  

Coaching: Why Are Soft Skills Important?

In many positions and occupations, job performance is soft skill dependent. Companies use assessment tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, so they can get an idea of what soft skills employees possess. These skills are often intangible and, therefore, not easily taught. They tend to be more a function of personality characteristics. Some examples of soft skills include:

Responsibility
Self-esteem
Sociability
Self-management
Integrity/honesty

Examples of interpersonal soft skills include:

Participates as a member of the team
Teaches others
Serves customers
Exercises leadership
Negotiates
Works with cultural diversity

Hard and soft knowledge are both important in the working world but employees who lack the ability to manage their lives, take responsibility for their own success, and follow through on commitments need to learn soft skills along with the hard skills required for a job so they understand how all aspects of their lives connect. Soft skills provide a way to get the highest return on investment when considering human capital. They can build great people. Few individuals are fired because they lack technical knowledge. Most are fired because of a deficit in soft skill knowledge. Ultimately, what we know is not nearly as important as what we do with what we know, and how well we do it.

Some organizations will attempt to train soft skills but training is a use it or lose it proposition. While a participant may be motivated and excited after returning from a program, preexisting thought patterns can work against implementation. Many trainers will admit that follow up is necessary for retention. The transfer of training includes both generalizations of training on-the-job and maintenance of learned material. For this to occur, abilities must be learned and retained through practical experience and repetition. The work environment, including cultural climate, management and peer support, and performance opportunity, is vital to this achievement. Coaching is a tool that can help arrive at transfer of knowledge by recalling the lessons learned, reinforcing their importance, and motivating the client to move forward, despite obstacles or roadblocks. It is suggested that peer coaching, group coaching, or manager to employee coaching take place as follow-up. These techniques will make soft skill retention possible.

Teams, Socio-Technical Systems, & Organizational Values

High performance and self-organizing teams have become an important part of organizational design to maintain a competitive edge. One of the most progressive team designs was developed in the 1950’s by social scientists Trist and Emery. The theory of socio-technical systems (STS) is a process-based, team oriented approach to work that evolved as a way to extend democratic and humane values into the workplace. The organization is viewed as an open system structured to integrate two independent but linked systems; the technical subsystem and the social subsystem. The technical subsystem, following the rules of physics, chemistry, and engineering, includes equipment and transformation processes which are technologically and economically driven so the most desirable method is the most productive at the least cost. The social subsystem, following the rules of psychology, sociology, and politics, incorporates interpersonal relationships that develop among people and build a mutual trust. The system recognizes that commitment to work is conditional on the work experience and assumes technology can be adapted to fit people. The best match of solutions is explored through joint optimization and discovery (see All Teams Are Not Created Equal by Lyman D. Ketchum and Eric Trist, 1992).

STS requires those who work to get a great deal more authority, control, skills, and information than what was customary with scientific management. Socio-technical designers seek to broaden each individual’s knowledge of social and economic consequences, and encourage each worker to develop a range of skills to get results. The work group becomes the focus of change. Organizations using STS should structure the task, authority, and reporting relationships around the work group by delegating decisions regarding job assignments, training, inspection, rewards, and punishment to the group. The aim is to optimize both technical and social subsystems for the benefit of the larger system. Management is responsible for coordinating the groups according to the demands of the work and task environment. Their role is to monitor the environmental factors that effect internal operations and coordinate the two subsystems.

One STS design goal is to produce a system that is capable of adapting to change and making the best use of an individual’s creative abilities. Turning to socio-technical values, objectives, and principles can simplify overly complex production systems and may provide answers for current problems, such as the challenge of reinforcing corporate values. Values are something of worth and importance where learning and experience are the two greatest forces shaping them. Organizational values involve individuals working together to achieve a common goal and help us create our standards of conduct that drive business decisions. As Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computer put it, “The only thing that works is management by values. Find people who are competent and really bright, but more importantly, find people who care exactly about the same things you care about.”

Organizations need to establish a shared set of values and beliefs that align with the social and technical aspects of project management to achieve the organizations business objectives. These values provide the linkages between the organization’s members, structure, systems, and processes used in the adoption of management project methods. There are several principles leaders can follow to design a socio-technical system based on organizational values:

1. Express the needs and hopes of workers in design criteria and values to insure greater worker investment in organizational purposes. Participants share expectations while working to achieve agreement on the goals and objectives of a design team. The outcome is a set of shared values and assumptions that reflect the process.
2. Express values in the language of the organization and refer to the experiences of its members.
3. Clarify Values. Value clarification is a process of making explicit the premises that inform design choices.
4. Guide and test design decisions against explicit values.
5. Fit the workgroup to the technology. Technology should not determine work organization or design.

A supportive climate must exist between employees and leaders to strengthen organizational values. Management has a social responsibility to employees to ensure technology-based changes are introduced properly. Here are a few recommendations:

1. Let everyone know about the new technology changes through “selling and telling”.
2. Introduce the system to management first (to gain support), then to employees.
3. Make sure the technology works as promised.
4. Get rid of the old system once the new system is working.
5. Provide hands-on training.

How is your Organization Structured for Today’s Economy?

Structure facilitates the creation and implementation of strategy and the overall coordination of the enterprise. Organizational structure determines the placement of power and authority. It embraces two relationships: who is responsible for what, and who reports to whom. Organizations can become more “structure influenced” when they hit market maturity, there is a decline in competition, their industry is stabile, tasks are routine, or they operate in a politically charged environment. Movement away from a strong structural influence may be caused by industry upheavals, deregulation, economic decline, and legislation.

Businesses with structure-driven configurations buffer themselves from the need to change. In many ways they resemble a closed system and will use politics to capture key environmental resources. Organizations that can ignore the environment either reside in stable markets or have market power and resources to resist pressures to change. Uncertainty is reduced by pursuing routinization, standardization, and formalization. Performance in structure driven organizations is usually measured against internal standards like cost. Ironically, structure can also serve as a major factor in extreme open and flexible structures where rich organizations are well-adapted to their environment or operate in an unchanging setting.

Organizations with high structural influence may confine themselves to existing and predictable market niches. The choice of strategy is limited to adherence with specified power distributions, inviolate rules, and procedures with specific modes of interaction. Innovation and differentiation are rare, as norms of efficiency would be pursued. Managers within a structural influence are comfortable with existing functions and will have very little personal discretion. This uniformity reinforces the status quo.

There are five common ways to structure an organization: function, geography, product, customer, front-back hybrid.

Function
The functional structure is organized around major activity groups. It provides advantages in knowledge sharing, specialization, leverage with vendors, economics of scale, and standardization. This structure is most effective for managing a single product or service line and can create barriers between different functional areas. Each area tends to develop a unique perspective that can make collaboration difficult. Functional organizations operate most effectively in small companies, businesses with little diversity in product, or markets that don’t compete based on speed. Common criteria: single line of business, small, core capability requires depth of expertise in one or more functional areas, product diversity or fast product development cycles not critical, common standards important.

Geographic
A geographic structure is organized around physical locations. It provides the advantage of local focus because power is given to the regional manager but slows down response time when a global solution is needed. Common criteria: high cost to transport, service delivery on-site, proximity to customer for delivery or support, local perception.

Product
The product structure is organized around product divisions. It can evolve from a functional structure when a company diversifies and each line is large enough to support its own production. This structure has the advantage of a product development cycle, product excellence, and a broad operating freedom. Its challenges lie in divergence issues, duplication, lost economies of scale, and multiple customer points of contact. Common criteria: product features or being first to market is important, multiple products are produced for separate market segments, short product development time is an advantage; products have short life cycles, the organization is large enough to achieve the minimum efficient scale required to duplicate functions.

Customer
The customer structure is organized around major market segments. It provides customization, relationships, and total solutions. Difficulties arise in divergence, duplication, and scale. Common criteria: important market segments where buyers have strength, customer knowledge provides an advantage, rapid customer service and product cycle times are required, the organization is large enough to achieve the minimum efficient scale required to duplicate functions.

Front-Back Hybrid
The front-back hybrid structure contains elements from the product and customer structures. It allows for product excellence at the back end while increasing customer satisfaction at the front end. This structure is best for large organizations that have multiple product lines and segments, serve global customers, need to maximize both customer and product excellence, and have managers capable of managing complexity. The front-back hybrid has several advantages, such as a single point of interface for customers, cross-selling, value-added systems and solutions, product focus, and multiple distribution channels. The complexity of the design can overwhelm an organization.

What Else is Important?
The size of an organization is another aspect for structural decision-making. Small organizations tend to have flat, simple, structures. They cannot afford to duplicate functions, so a functional structure will be most efficient. As an organization grows, it will have the resources to specialize its products and services by market or industry. This usually happens when an organization’s volume increases to a point where they hit the break-even point. The size of an organization does not change the design process, only the number of iterations in the process. For example, a one hundred person firm may only have one level of design. The resulting units will not be large enough to be structured more than one level further.

Every organization experiences the pulls that underlie their structure: pulls to centralize by top management, pulls to formalize by the technostructure, pulls to professionalize by the operators, pulls to collaborate by the support staff, and pulls to divide by the middle line managers. Since organizations tend to configure around the pull that dominates, structures can serve as a tool for diagnosing the problems of organizational design.

How is your organization designed and structured? Is the structure the dominate influence on how things get done? Maybe leadership or environment is more important. Does your organization have the right structure to grow and expand? What could change?

Is Your Organization Influenced by the Environment?

Environment is usually a dominant influence for small firms in highly competitive environments with few resources, and midsized firms in uncertain situations. In this scenario, there is little potential for product differentiation and few barriers to entry. Small profit margins lead to simple, centralized, cost efficient strategies that can respond quickly to changing markets. In an unstable economy, more organizations will move towards environmental influence when there is an increase in external uncertainty. They will only move away from environmental influence when their company accumulates sufficient market power through size, differentiation, vertical integration, and diversification.

According to the book, Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations, there are 4 types of structures found under specific environmental conditions. Simple, stable environments result in organizations that rely on standardization of processes and centralization for coordination. Complex, stable environments lead to decentralized structures that coordinate through the standardization of skills. Dynamic, simple environments rely on flexible, organic structures while remaining centralized. Dynamic, complex environments have decentralized organizations so managers or specialists can understand the issues. The structure provides flexibility so the firm can respond to unpredictable changes. Extreme hostility in the environment will drive organizational types to temporarily centralize their structures.

There are seven external categories that can influence an organization and affect their bottom line:

• Economic - inflation, interest rates, employment, incomes
• Social - births, housing, population trends
• Cultural - consumer values, safety, needs, beliefs
• Resources - materials, labor, credit, investors
• Government - laws, regulations, contracts, trade
• Political - policies, tariffs, taxes, elections
• Industry - competitors, prices, technology, markets

Supporters of environmental influence suggest that organizations must adapt to their surroundings because constraints determine which forms of strategy and structure are practical. The environment, as a cause, imposes uniformity by extinguishing organizations that ignore it. It is assumed that gross departures from industry standards will lead to failure. This position is held by many traditional contingency theorists and industrial economists.

Environmental scanning can provide the information needed to strategically plan for change. In a study of 20 nondiversified companies, profitability was greater when executives had an accurate perception of industry volatility. A study of 65 organizations concluded that active participation by top leaders in monitoring the external environment was associated with a more accurate perception of the market.

When the environment is a major influence, organizations should develop intelligent systems that scan for threats and opportunities. Here are some questions likely to be important to your organization in these hard economic times:

• What do clients and customers need and want?
• What is the reaction of clients and customers to the organization’s current products and services?
• Who are the primary competitors?
• What strategies are they pursuing?
• How do competitors’ products and services compare to ourorganizations products and services?
• What events affect the acquisition of materials, energy, information, and other inputs used by our organization to conduct its operations?
• How will our organization be affected by new legislation and by government agencies that regulate its activities?
• How will new technologies affect our organization’s products, services, and operations?
• How will our organization be affected by changes in the economy?
• How will our organization be affected by changing population demographics?
• How will our organization be affected by international events?

There are several guidelines leaders can use to monitor the external environment. First, identify the relevant information that needs to be gathered. Look for timely information about specific sectors of the environment on which the organization is most dependent and for competitor performance. Second, use multiple sources of relevant information. For example, informal network contacts, journals, newsletters, trade and professional publications, and government reports can help avoid biases. Interpretations are likely to be more accurate if many people are involved in the process. Third, learn what customers want and need. Market surveys are a common source of information. Fourth, learn about the products and services of competitors. This information provides a basis for evaluating your own organization. Fifth, link environmental information to strategic plans. Use the information to measure the relevance of current goals.

What Type of Leader Are You? Leadership Influence in the Organization

The term leader is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as “a person who leads.” The definition suggests that a leader must help the organization choose a path by developing a plan, then motivate people to follow that plan. James Gardner, author of On Leadership, magnifies this premise, “The two tasks at the heart of the popular notion of leadership are goal setting and motivating” In reality, leaders are more multidimensional, with each having a unique pattern of attributes. An observation made by Bennis years ago rings true today:

Always, it seems, the concept of leadership eludes us or turns up in another form to taunt us again with its slipperiness and complexity. So we have invented an endless proliferation of terms to deal with it… and still the concept is not sufficiently defined.

Underlying much of the research on executives is an interest in discovering how much and in what ways they influence the organization. When leadership is a major influence, it emphasizes the impact of a CEO’s behavior, goals, talents, drives, emotions, and fantasies on the organization. McClelland argues that leaders with a high need for achievement attempt to control their organizations while pursuing ambitious strategies. Miller and Droge show that a CEO’s need for achievement in a small firm was an important predictor of organizational structure. High achievers tend to like centralized power and will set up control systems and formal procedures to obtain feedback on performance. A CEO’s flexibility gives rise to niche strategies, informal and simple structures, intuitive decision-making, and risk-taking. In addition, a CEO’s perceived ability to persuade strongly influences organizational innovation, and pro-activeness.

A strong leadership influence is usually more prevalent in the birth phase of a business cycle. It also includes firms that are often small and run by the owners who make the key decisions. Movement towards a major leadership influence might occur when past leader successes elevate power, charismatic leaders hire like-minded managers, CEO’s are also owners, or hiring policies discourage dissent. Movement away can be influenced by a leader’s departure, performance problems that erode a leader’s credibility, a public offering, or takeover.

There are several avenues in determining the effects of leader influence. One way is to assess competing leadership values and trade-offs. For example, task requirements, such as efficiency, productivity, and investment, sometimes conflict with the desires or concerns of employees. Structured work may increase efficiencies, but this less flexible environment will make it difficult to implement changes in strategy. Efficiency is easier to increase when the environment is stable and there is less need to innovate products and services. The more volatile the environment, the more important it is to be adaptive. Leaders who deal with internal and external stakeholders will also need to weigh incompatible demands, such as, should profits increase at the expense of social responsibility? A leader is responsible to find some balance.

Leadership models can also help us to understand a leader’s organizational influence. Bolman and Deal, in Four Framework Approach, suggest that leaders display behaviors in one of four frameworks: Structural, Human Resource, Political, or Symbolic. Each requires a specific organizational setting to be successful. In the structural framework, the leader is detail oriented and focuses on configurations of structure, strategy, environment, implementation, experimentation, and adaptation through a thorough analysis. This framework is very effective during reorganization or change efforts. The human resource framework describes a leader who believes in the people and provides support and empowerment. This leader is visible, accessible, and shares information to move decision-making downward. In some organizations, the leader would be seen as a pushover. Leaders of a political framework clarify what they want and assess the distribution of power and interests. They use persuasion, negotiation, and coercion, if necessary, to achieve their goals. In the wrong environment, these leaders appear manipulative. In the symbolic framework, leaders view organizations like actors view a stage. Experience is framed through interpretation and used to communicate a vision. This type of leader can be very inspiring or appear all “smoke and mirrors”. Leaders should be conscious of all four approaches, even when one approach is preferred.

Dr. Bruce Winston of Regent University provides an excellent audio presentation on eight types of leaders:

• Despotic Ruler
• Benevolent Dictator
• Paternalistic Clan Chief
• Democratic Official
• Absentee Leader
• Transactional Leader
• Transformational Leader
• Servant Leader

Visit http://media.regent.edu/schlead/leadership/leadership_leader_follower.wma to listen to the presentation.

In summary, leaders establish goals, assumptions, policies, strategies, and accepted norms of behavior. They usually recruit and promote managers who conform to their own values and expectations. While a leader’s influence is evident in all organizations, it will apply more to small, highly centralized firms, or young, owner run businesses, and can increase with tenure. In your organization:

• What type of leader is in control?
• What type of leader do you see yourself as?
• Did you see a relationship between how the various leaders interacted with their followers and what structure might be best suited for the organization?
• What can you do to create a more leadership friendly environment?

The Configuration Approach: Organizational Strategies

In his doctoral thesis at Carnegie Mellon University, Pradip Khandwalla uncovered that organizations function effectively by putting different characteristics together in complementary ways. His arrival at McGill University’s Faculty of Management in the early 1970’s, stirred interest in the configuration approach. This resulted in Mintzberg’s two books on the subject, one about structure, and the other on power relationships.

In 1971, a major research project began at McGill that tracked strategies of various organizations over thirty to fifty or more years. Distinct stages were identified in the histories of the organizations. These stages sequenced themselves and four main patterns emerged: periodic bumps, oscillating shifts, life cycles, and regular progress (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel 306, 310).

Danny Miller, initially affiliated with McGill University, wrote a doctoral dissertation using published studies of companies to pattern ten archetypes of strategy formation; four failures and six successes. His work integrated different attributes of organizations and covered a combination of large samples and specific firms. Later, Miller and Friesen describe the concept of organizational change as quantum, as in viewing the changing of many elements concurrently, rather than piecemeal, which involves changing one element at a time. Miller indicates that success within organizations is often achieved by exploiting the strategies already in place. When the configuration gets out of sync, a strategic revolution has to take place where many things change at once. The company will try to leap to a new stability as quickly as possible (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel 312-314).

In another published study about configuration in strategy and structure, Chandler identified four stages in a firms’ life cycle after researching the evolution of the large American industrial enterprise.

• Initial acquisition of resources
• Establishment of functional structures
• More growth and diversification
• A second shift in structure

Large firms now usually concentrate on core competencies. Together with Chandler’s stages, this suggests oscillating cycles of control and release (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel 317-318).

Background

The configuration approach is characterized by terms such as holistic, universalistic, integrative, and systemic. This stance asserts that the parts cannot be understood in isolation but order emerges from the interaction of the whole (Meyer, Tsui, and Hinings 1178). It focuses on the mutual influence of four variables: leadership, environment, structure, and strategy. Think of these elements as the causes, and the organizational design as the effect. While each is likely to have a role in all configurations, most often one influence will dominate (Miller 686).

This school of thought suggests that for a period of time, the organization will adopt a structural form, matched within some type of context that causes particular behaviors to give way to a set of strategies (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel 305). Organizations will alternate between equilibrium and disequilibrium. Change, as episodic, occurs in rapid transformations from one stable state to another. Transitions between the four influences may happen during the course of a firm’s life cycle, but organizations will change easier within their major influence and original theme. For example, a bureaucratic firm may strive for more standardization. Destroying an old configuration to build a new one is a disruptive undertaking. Such a move requires significant incentives. The most common changes are due to serious performance declines, or replacement of top management (Miller 698).

The configuration approach shares many elements of chaos theory such as, disorder, instability, and nonlinear relationships. It embraces the concept that certain patterns are within systems of apparently random behavior. It accommodates equifinality because there is more than one way to succeed in each setting but cohesive configurations reduce the number of ways the elements combine. This allows for some commonality between organizations, especially between structure types and strategies (Meyer, Tsui, and Hinings 1178-1179).

Works Cited:

Meyer, Alan, Anne Tsui, and C.R. Hinings. “Configurational Approaches to
Organizational Analysis.” Academy of Management Journal 36.6 (1993): 1175-1195.

Miller, Danny. “The Genesis of Configuration.” Academy of Management Review 12.4 (1987): 686-701.

Mintzberg, Henry, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel. Strategy Safari. New York: Free Press, 1998.

Social Isolation in the Virtual Community

When Frederick Taylor in the early twentieth century introduced scientific management, humans were seen more as physical components in organizational machines than emotional and spiritual individuals. Today, the corporation is viewed as a social community and becomes an arena not only for work but also for identification, self-realization, and friendship. As the new century progresses, “on-line communities” are taking the place of traditional labor environments and many Americans are transitioning to virtual work. By recent estimates, nearly 18 million U.S. workers spend at least a portion of their work week in virtual mode. Although virtual work has many benefits, there is ample data to support the premise that those who work at home full-time experience social isolation. Social isolation is the absence of work-based social support associated with organizational identification. For many, virtual environments inhibit the social interaction that builds community and identification within the workplace.

Although sociologists differ on what community means, there are two concepts universally agreed upon to constitute its existence. They refer to a commonality of location and a commonality of interest. Considering virtual employees work at least part of the time in separate locations, this definition indicates that building a virtual community brings unique challenges. Without daily interaction, a common workplace, and a sense of identity, virtual personnel can feel disconnected and isolated. These workers repeatedly report concerns about being “out of sight, and out of mind” from their organization.

As virtual employees are isolated from their colleagues, they lose opportunities to benefit from other people’s ideas and experiences. The synergy that teams experience as they interact within community is lost when community is not established in cyberspace. This can easily discourage employees from participating in virtual programs and hinder the progression of any telework program.

Consequently, virtual organizations can also lose social cohesion, which refers to situations in which individuals are “bound to one another by common social and cultural commitments”. This results in a loss of individual loyalty to common norms, values, and interdependence that arise from shared interests and individual identification within the group. An employee’s identification to the organization provides a psychological link referred to as “strength of members.” This indicates the degree to which employees are motivated to fulfill organizational needs and goals, their willingness to display organizational citizenship, and their tendency to remain in the organization.

The costs of social isolation are too great to be ignored. The entire virtual work program is weakened as personnel fear losing their identity and distinction. Some feel their contributions may end up in a company’s database to never be associated with its contributor. Other’s have asked themselves, “If my hard earned experience, knowledge, and wisdom can no longer be traced directly back to myself, what future will I have in a Knowledge Economy?” Ultimately, employees may decide to terminate their participation within a virtual environment.

Similar to the days of the Industrial Revolution, today’s managers must learn how to lead within the context of newly established communities. Isolation and potential loss of identity among colleagues inhibit many people from taking advantage of telecommuting and virtual teams. Social isolation requires managers to rethink their methods of leading within today’s on-line community.

So how do leaders ensure that social relationships and commitments are maintained, and that social isolation does not occur within the virtual environment? One way is to understand the personalities, gifts, and styles of virtual employees and their leaders. Another way is through organizational design of a socio-technical system. To accomplish this:

1. Set boundaries to define the overall limits of permissible action by a follower, but use these boundaries to give team members freedom to work, rather than directives from management.

2. Manage the boundary between the system and the environment.

3. Communicate with followers on a continuous basis by email, conference calls, and instant messaging. Instead of relying on unplanned contact in physical third places, members of communities must seek out companions in personal spaces created through the use of new communications technologies. Many tools are available for this, including Blackberry™ devices, free conference call websites and Skype.

4. Hold face-to-face meetings in order to build higher levels of trust and communication. People who fail to communicate cannot compose a common culture and are not, therefore, a community. If meaning is lost in transition from speaker to addressee, then community is lost. In addition, conducting meetings, at least annually, enables leaders to facilitate teambuilding activities with their constituents.

Using these methods within a socio-technical design context will mitigate or eliminate many problems related to feelings of isolation brought on by virtual environments. As communication and change are inevitable and move at an accelerated pace, leaders within virtual communities must work toward acquiring the competencies needed to maintain a sense of cohesiveness despite location.

The Changing HR Structure: Leadership, Foresight, & Strategy

In an annual survey from the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit entitled, CEO Briefing: Corporate Priorities for 2006 and Beyond, senior executives worldwide indicated they were unhappy about their company’s HR functions. Historically known as a support department with a lot of responsibility and little control over outcomes, HR has taken a direct hit. To survive in organizations driven by globalization, changing demographics, cost containment, advanced technology and legislation, HR must prove its importance by acting as a strategic partner and aligning with company wide objectives, or face outsourcing themselves.

The new HR professional performs transformational work that involves knowledge management, foresight, and strategic redirection and renewal. Knowledge programs evaluate and manage the process of accumulation, creation, and application of intellectual capital. Foresight is used to plan for the future. According to Edward Cornish, those who study the future concentrate on three areas. First, they believe that the world and all its systems and inhabitants are interconnected and dependent on each other. Second, they are focused on time as a critical force and believe that to change the course of events, one has to begin now. Third, ideas of the future are paramount for improving the lot of humankind. Knowledge management and foresight are both used in the strategic processes. Strategy-making involves capturing data from all sources, including insight, internal and external material, and then synthesizing the learning from that data into a direction for the business to pursue. It encompasses projecting knowledge into a future state of existence. These skills allow HR leaders to act as consultants in the advancement of state of the art systems and processes for use within the organization, and to help business unit line executives strategically address and forecast staffing needs.

There is a two-way relationship between human resource planning and companywide strategic planning. Human resource planning helps the organization create a feasible strategy that makes sure people are available with the appropriate skills to pursue the firms’ strategic objectives. It identifies gaps between staffing needs and current or projected demographics, determines the strategy for recruiting, retaining, or retraining critical talent, and monitors those strategies to ensure alignment. According to Raymond Noe, from his book, Employee Training & Development, “human resource planning includes the identification, analysis, forecasting, and planning of changes needed in the human resources area to help the company meet changing business conditions”. Planning allows a company to anticipate the movement of employees due to turnover, transfers, retirements, or promotions. Rapid technological advances can cause serious mismatches between the jobs available and the number of people with the necessary skills to fill those jobs. Strategic HR matches employee skills with other positions in the organization when necessary and provides training to prepare employees for increased responsibility or predicted job opportunities.

Since strategic staffing involves forecasting the supply and demand of appropriate human resources for the organization, planners must understand the external business environment and the trends that occur within it. In an article called, “Workforce Planning: The Strategy Behind Strategic Staffing,” Christina Morfeld suggests using a four-step model to staff strategically.

1. Supply Analysis: Identify the demographics and competencies of your current workforce by examining attrition statistics, including resignations, retirements, internal transfers, promotions, and involuntary terminations. A skill inventory that captures information on each employee’s knowledge, skills, abilities, education, experience, and compensation history can address changing needs.
2. Demand Analysis: Forecast the competencies that will be required by the company’s future workforce to be successful. Review internal and external influences to predict how the nature of the work will change. These include reviewing the business mission, strategies, goals, legislation, economic conditions, technological advances, and market competition. Scenario planning is an effective way to systematically evaluate these variables by answering the question, “What would happen if…?” They may also be developed through the use of back-casting.
3. Gap Analysis: Compare the supply and demand data collected during steps 1 and 2. The results determine skill surpluses, skill deficiencies, and help pinpoint who is at risk.
4. Solution analysis: Develop strategies for closing the gaps identified in step 3. Identify ways to build skills that are in short supply and reduce those that are overly abundant in relation to the organization’s projected needs. Focus on optimizing the current and future workforce.

Strategic human resource planning drives the other human resource management functions by providing a framework for policies and programs such as compensation and training. The process is used to determine how people will be hired and used in the firm as it considers:
· Tasks and responsibilities that are tied to business goals
· Competencies and skills necessary to produce outstanding performance
· Which combinations of resources are most productive
· Tools designed to make the better hiring choices

A strategic staffing plan that is carefully designed and executed transforms hiring practices to align with the organization’s human capital and strategic goals. These methods improve employee utilization and the company’s overall effectiveness and competitive positioning.

In concluding, we must realize that job markets today are about variety, choice, and change. HR professional’s that think like futurists and take a strategic approach to designing organizational structures can lead their company into a new era. This involves the continuous process of futures fluency; gathering data to monitor changes, accessing the implications of change, imagining alternative futures, envisioning ideals, and planning. The success of future American corporations relies on the development of systems and practices that attract, retain, and develop a skilled, educated, and talented workforce.

Decisions: How do you make them?

In my working career, I have noticed that many leaders do not always think their decisions through before implementation. The biggest mistake they make is not consulting with the employees to whom the decision will effect. Such action requires engaging the employees in conversation and the decision-making process. It means asking them questions about work flow, time constraints, problems, integration with other departments, and customer care, to name a few. It especially means listening to what others have to say. By including employees in decision-making, the leader will discover critical information that will enable them to make a more effective decision. They will probably even gain buy-in.

Some workplace decisions may require a certain level of confidentiality. In such circumstances, it may be beneficial for a leader to hire an external coach. Coaching can help leaders make more effective decisions by considering unrecognized variables and working through the consequences of different scenarios. If coaching is not an option, here is a tool to get you started in making better decisions.

When I was a child I used to love to draw nature pictures. Most of my pictures had the sun in them. I would draw a circle and then draw straight lines coming out from the edge of the circle all the way around the perimeter (OK, I still draw the sun like that). I want you to grab a piece of paper and draw about eight suns on it. Make the suns fairly large and spread them out. Now, think of a decision you recently made. What action did you decide to take? At the top of the paper write, “If I take this action, how will it effect………” In the middle of each sun, write one of these words or phrases: me, my employees, my department, other departments, the company, customers, vendors, and environment. If you have eight suns, each with one of the eight words of phrases written in it, you are now ready to record your bright ideas. Starting with the ME sun, record on the spokes or straight lines all the ways your plan of action affects you. Then move to the EMPLOYEE sun. Record on the spokes or lines all the ways your plan of action affects your employees. Repeat the process for each sun. Record both the good and bad. There are always two sides to every story. If you need help discovering both sides, engage others in the process to help you. Once you are done with the exercise, read over it and ask yourself some questions. Is your plan of action still as good as you thought it would be? What needs to change? What other actions might be more feasible or cause less damage? How can you make your decision even more effective?

I hope you have a better understanding about the importance of thinking your decisions through. Our actions usually touch others in some way that we may not be aware of. The question becomes: Is your action harmful or beneficial to others? Is your decision selfish or considerate of the greater good?

Coaching and the Law of Attraction: Seven Ways to Find Focus

There is a lot of buzz out there about the law of attraction. What I have deciphered from it all are two key points: Clear Focus and Action. Let me explain. When I hear people say, "I want more money" what does that really mean? How will it come to them? Will they win a lottery or get a big settlement from an accident they are about to be in? We need to be clear on how we will attract what we desire. In the same instance, we may desire to make more money by selling additional products and services from our business. We may be completely clear on our focus, but unless we take action and grab the opportunities that come along or make our own opportunities, nothing is going to happen.

Your brain is a wonderful organ. When you have clear focus, it will actually weed out irrelevant data around you, and you will begin to see or find opportunities that may normally be ignored. For example, when my husband and I decide to buy a car, we do a lot of research. We may go online, buy Consumer Guide's Auto Report, and visit every dealership in our area. We become completely focused on the car we want to purchase. So what happens? Our ideal car is suddenly everywhere; at the shopping center and gas stations, on the highways and back roads. The car ads for our vehicle jump out of the newspaper. We begin to see it on every car lot we pass. This does not stop until we purchase the car and/or decide to focus our attention on something else.

OK, so where does coaching come in? Well, coaching helps clients FOCUS and be accountable by taking ACTION. Suddenly your goal is right in your face and your coach will make sure you don't get off track. Every time you talk to your coach they will be asking you about your focus and what action you have taken to get closer to achieving it. I am going to give you 7 ways to start a coaching relationship and keep your focus. Decide if your focus is work related or personal, then choose the best method for you. Think out of the box and try to come up with a few more ways to get the coaching you want.

1. Self Coaching

Self coaching empowers individuals to be responsible for managing and developing themselves. It can build self-esteem, confidence, and competencies. Individuals identify, find, and apply solutions to their goals by using one of the coaching or problem solving models, such as GROW.

2. Peer Coaching

Peer coaching is used widely in universities and school settings. It is a process through which two or more colleagues work, learn, and develop together. Peer coaching is usually voluntary and less threatening than traditional coaching arrangements. Peers are flexible enough to provide support and feedback right on the job. For personal goals, try peer coaching with a friend.

3. Coaching with Managers

Managers that coach their followers do so on both an informal and formal basis, depending on the circumstances. Working with employees daily, a coaching manager can spot problem areas, talent, and developmental issues quickly and apply coaching skills for change. Managers also have extensive knowledge of what is needed in the area under their command and can integrate a big picture view into the coaching relationship. They are in a position to best know what motivates each of their employees to action.

4. Coaching with Senior Leaders

Senior leaders that coach have the ability to leverage their role in the organization and make coaching a cultural reality. They are the ultimate role models of how coaching is to be handled. Role modeling requires extensive commitment to self development through reflection, assessments, and feedback. It means using coaching with intention and appropriateness, having their own coach, and being authentic.

5. Team Coaching

In team coaching, a coach provides coaching to a group of people, usually for development purposes or to meet higher productivity demands. A coach can help a team: Define its purpose, understand its environment, tackle performance barriers, build learning plans, grow confidence, and develop ways to internalize coaching. Team members must learn to put aside personal agendas and develop actions that are good for the group and the organization they belong to.

6. Coaching with Internal Coaches

To stay competitive in a global economy, organizations like IBM take coaching seriously and have hired coaches for internal positions. They usually work the organization both horizontally and vertically, impacting a large number of the workforce. Internal coaches can also teach and reinforce coaching skills in management and are able to integrate coaching into other learning programs. They have access to organizational resources and are able to give timely feedback to those they coach.

7. Coaching with External Professionals

An external coach is someone hired from outside the company as an independent contractor. Many external coaching initiatives today are directed towards those in leadership roles. External or executive coaches are usually brought in to sharpen the leadership skills of high potential individuals. They can provide alternative perspectives, political neutrality, high objectivity, and confidentiality that may not be possible from internal coaching arrangements.

Whether your goal is personal or business related, hiring a coach will help you focus and get results. Let's be realistic. Life is distracting. Coaching is the best tool to keep you aligned towards the reality you want. Find a coach now. Your brain will reward you for your efforts.

Working Women: Finding Balance and Equality in Creative Organizational Design: Part 5 of 5

The Company

Many educated women want to have a career and a family, but the idea of giving up a profession to become a stay at home mom or elder caretaker can be daunting. Thanks to the communication age, women are reshaping their work environments by interweaving jobs with parenting and other responsibilities. Picture an executive office suite company designed just for females who need to make life/career transitions. The purpose would be to provide a professional atmosphere where women could be their own boss and adapt their work around outside obligations. Support services within the building would allow women more freedom to do what they choose.

Skilled females who need more flexibility than traditional organizations allow, could rent office suites and continue working as entrepreneurs. The idea is for tenants to use the services of other tenants, as well as seek their own clients. The Executive Suite Company for Women would promote its tenants to area businesses through quarterly publications and its website. Because the tenants are predominately women in similar situations, they can support each other in their efforts. In addition, the building would have childcare on the premises, and contract with surrounding businesses or women working from home to offer discounted and delivery services to its tenants. These include dry cleaning, home babysitting, sick care or healthcare, meal preparation, fitness, seminars, and personal assisting. All these services would be listed on the businesses intranet, accessible by the tenants, who could also email or instant message others in the building.

Visualize a tree. Its core is the roots and trunk, which provide support for the branches and leaves. In the same sense, this new company for women would have a core group responsible for its operation and support. Staff might include a building manager, in charge of rental space contracts and other daily operations; a marketing representative, hired to promote/sell office space and the services of the buildings tenants; a business manager, in charge of financial and administrative matters; and a building receptionist, to greet clients of tenants, receive mail, answer phones, and other clerical duties. While all tenants would have mailboxes, most services would be ala cart so women pay only for what they need. For example, the receptionist could also answer their phone calls for an additional fee. If the core staff needed additional help, it would first seek the services of its tenants. These primary employees would have to work as a team. With most services contracted out, including cleaning, maintenance, and web design, it would be necessary to coordinate all activities.

The suites would vary in size and room divisions. All would include electric, windows, phone lines, high speed internet access, individual heating and cooling controls, cleaning services, and most importantly, sound proof walls. Each tenant would be given a billing card, similar to a credit card, to charge miscellaneous building services. The building would have a lunch/snack area with tables inside and out, complete with vending machines and refrigerators. For those too busy to pack a lunch or eat out, different restaurants would be sponsored each day and tenants could place their order for delivery through the receptionist. This would also include ordering food for children in daycare or aftercare. Several conference rooms would be made available for tenant use, as well as an area with copiers, fax machines, debit machines, Federal Express, UPS, and US mail pick-up. Business identity programs would be made available to women who prefer to work from home and include the use of the business address as well as other building amenities.

Suppose this organizational design was a franchise. Women tenants from one city could use building services, including daycare, in another city while traveling. The internet would make information sharing easy.

Just like branches of a tree that sprout off in different directions, the building would have divisions of professionals working within its walls. Since one organizational goal is to provide tenants with easy access to specialized services, some entrepreneurial businesses would be treated as extensions of the core and actively solicited to rent office space. For instance, building management would contract out for a daycare facility, preferably from a franchise, to be run within the building. The daycare would be for the use of tenants renting space and of course the general public. While daycares are usually paid on a monthly or weekly basis, tenants would be eligible for special weekly, daily and hourly rates. They would only be obligated to give 24 hour notice to the center for childcare. Working mothers in the building could view their child in daycare via their computer. An after school and summer program would also be sought out for school age children. Both curriculums allow tenants to bring their children to work with them. Other businesses important to the overall success of this new organization include office support services, accountants, and marketing or professional advertisers.

The leaves of a tree are ever changing. Just like working women, leaves are affected by different seasons. This business concept is for those life transitions. Visualize an organization where women have the flexibility to plan their work around yoga classes, school plays, field trips, and visits to the nursing home without career penalties. These women have community support and support from other women with the same needs. A senior woman, who loves to shop but needs a little extra money, takes care of your grocery list once a week and prepares three meals for you that can be pulled out of the freezer during the week. An accountant taking care of her three year old at home helps with your investment planning and finances. Or maybe someone in the office has a teenage daughter to baby sit for you while you attend a dinner function. The possibilities are endless, and your life feels more complete. To build your own woman friendly organization:

• Find experienced, professional women who understand the importance of balance to provide equity investments and business advice.


• Design for workforce flexibility. A variation of Charles Handy’s (1989) Shamrock organization may be a good place to start. The first leaf represents the professional core workers. These are the people who are essential to the organization and hard to replace. The second leaf represents contracted work to people who specialize in a particular field and are able to do it at less cost than what you could in-house. Find women who would like to work as consultants or on a job by job basis. Finally, the third leaf represents part-time and temporary workers; perfect for women with children in school or retirees who need to supplement their income. This structure, with its flat hierarchy and small core, allows for reconfigurability.


• Support women vendors and employees by providing access to “helping services.” These include forming relationships with area restaurants, drycleaners, banks, travel agencies, housecleaning, babysitting, and eldercare businesses.


• Start your own franchise as a way to help women throughout the country. Women can have an impact on the way America works.
  

Working Women: Finding Balance and Equality in Creative Organizational Design: Part 4 of 5

Work/Life Programs

While work is still a necessity for survival, it should also be a source of personal satisfaction. One vehicle available to provide a balance between personal and professional goals is a work/life program. Research presented at the Society of Industrial-Organizational Psychology in May 2002 defined work/life programs as not just a series of programs but a culture that emphasizes the value of the individual (Latham, 2002). Although it has been around for more than a decade, work/ life issues are just now gaining momentum. This change is coming out of research being done at universities, as well as an increasing awareness of the importance of organizations to respond to employees needs.

Work/life programs allow employees more control over the structure of their life schedule. Some common benefits include flex-time, job-sharing, telecommuting, childcare, education, referral systems, elder care assistance, sabbaticals, parental and health related leave policies, employee assistance programs, and a spectrum of training and support for managers and employees. In addition, there are many communication tools that help employees gain flexibility by working anywhere and anytime, such as cellular phones, e-mail, voice mail, videoconferences, podcasts, and internet based software. The more popular work/life programs are discussed further.

Flexible work hours let employees decide how to spread the eight hour work day between convenient hours for them, such as 10am to 6 pm or 7am to 3pm. Employees are required to work a specific number of hours a week, but are free to vary their hours around core times (Robbins, 2003). Job sharing allows two or more employees to share the responsibilities of one job, varying the work hours or workdays to fit each schedule. Part-time work schedules involve cutting hours and pay, but can lead to an increase in personal satisfaction. Telecommuting may involve working from a home environment at least a few days a week. Appropriate jobs for this type of arrangement include routine information-handling tasks, mobile activities, and professional or other knowledge-related tasks (Robbins, 2003).

Lotte Bailyn, a researcher of work/life benefits and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, discovered that the very things hindering a person’s ability to lead a fuller personal life were the same factors hindering workflow and outcomes. Research clearly shows that work/life programs positively impact employees, the organization, and ultimately the bottom line (Martinez, 1997). The newest discovery about the business benefits of work and family programs is their direct correlation with increased customer retention and satisfaction. First Tennessee has found that because of their commitment to work/life programs, they have a customer retention rate of 96%, one of the highest in the industry. Sears found that improving employee satisfaction also improved customer satisfaction and increased revenues (Lombardo, 2002).

Workers with more control over their jobs and schedules tend to be more satisfied, less burned out, take more initiative at work, feel greater loyalty to employers and plan to remain with the company longer than other employees (Lombardo, 2002). Job satisfaction is influenced by mentally challenging work, equitable rewards, supportive working conditions, and the support of colleagues (Robbins, 2003). Programs designed to support employees and provide them with flexibility have a common underlying strategy: to reduce the level of distraction employees feel at work regarding their non-work priorities. When they are at work, they can give 100% to the job. In comparison, programs designed to increase the intrinsic value and rewards associated with work, such as the use of learning programs, are also connected by a common strategy: to increase employees’ commitment to and satisfaction with their jobs. Both programs indicate that focused and satisfied employees are more likely to stay with a company and perform effectively.

An article in TIP called “Work in the 21st Century: The Role of I-O in Work-Life Programs,” discusses multiple strategies available to businesses for increasing people’s ability to meet their life needs through work (May, 1998):

• Design jobs to include assignments and responsibilities that are meaningful and challenging.


• Place people in jobs they find stimulating.


• Involve employees in decisions regarding the content and structure of their jobs.


• Allow employees to spend some of their time doing volunteer work.


• Provide learning opportunities on and off the job.


• Use reward and recognition systems.


• Provide support for employee career development and planning.
  

Jobs can be redesigned to make them more interesting and motivating for the employees. Such options include cross-training, job enlargement, job enrichment, and team based work designs (Robbins, 2003).

As men start to take advantage of work/life programs it could have profound ramifications for the advancement of women. Until now, it has mostly been mothers, usually the primary caretakers of children, who have made use of the alternative work schedules. While women have been grateful for such policies, the help has come at a cost. There is still a growing wage gap between men and women, and it’s the mothers who are hit the hardest. A study of mothers in the Midwest by Jennifer Glass, chairman of the sociology department at the University Of Iowa, found that the salaries of mothers who used family friendly policies lagged behind those of mothers who didn’t use the policies. All this could change if men insisted that they want more balance in their lives. Women would benefit by no longer being the only parent seeking career flexibility and full-stream advancement (Stein, 2002).

Growing numbers of educated women are seeking to redefine the workplace and create meshed worlds. Work/life balance has taken on new meaning, as the two are barely separate. Michael Silverstein, director of Boston Consulting, indicates that working women still handle 75% of the housework, juggling many roles throughout the day (Pallavi, 2005). As we have discussed, alternative work schedules and programs can alleviate some of the pressures females face. Allowing women to customize the pace of their career advancement without long term damage would also help. If organizations are not willing to change, women have the options of starting their own companies or seeking more women friendly environments. Imagine the design of a business created by females who understood the needs of their gender.

In the last part of the series we will uncover an organizational structure the reshapes the work environment for women with life/work challenges.

Working Women: Finding Balance and Equality in Creative Organizational Design: Part 3 of 5

The Changing Environment

In the 1960s and 1970’s, most jobs were Monday through Friday and employees worked an average of eight or nine hours a day. This is no longer true due to the creation of global organizations, communication technology, longer hours required by employers, and multiple breadwinners in the family. Employees are recognizing that work is taking over their lives and they are not happy (Robbins, 2003).

Generation X has been shaped by globalization, two-career parents, MTV and computers. They watched the baby boomers attempt corporate loyalty only to be rewarded with downsizing and reengineering efforts. Xers learned from this and expect their work lives to deliver more and demand less. They want their jobs to allow them the flexibility to pursue non-work priorities, such as family, and they expect their work to have meaning and provide intrinsic value (May, 1998).

Generation Y, also known as the Millenials, Echo Boomers, and Nexters, started their careers on the heels of Generation X. With their “me” mentality, they will follow Generation X when it comes to demanding a balance between their personal and professional lives. Generation Y also expects a workplace that is fun and rewarding and will offer job assignments that fit their interests. As the first generation to grow up in the digital world, they will use technology to customize work environments, schedules, and lifestyle preferences. Nexters will require challenging work that makes a difference, personal relationships within the company, technological tools, recognition and reward systems, and higher wages (Newton, 2002).

While a common management outlook has been that all employees should be treated the same, the fact is that people are not all the same. We have different career goals, our family situations differ, and our preferences when it comes to our work and income vary. Changing demographics of the labor market also play a role. Basic economics shows us that the more income one has from various non-labor sources, such as a spouse’s income, the higher the reservation wage may be for them and, therefore, there is less a need and desire to participate in market activity. For example, if one person makes $70,000 a year, the other members of the household may not see a great need to work full-time in order to achieve their personal standard of living. Since we are all different in regards to our preferences for work, we will have different levels of satisfaction in the presence of constraints. The ability of organizations to offer non-traditional work schedules provides opportunity for increased employee job satisfaction, which will benefit the company in the long run (Delaney, 2002).

The changing economy and values of tomorrow’s workforce will continue to create demands for flexible, diverse benefits and policies. As all the baby boomers slide into retirement, Generations X, Y and Z won’t have the numbers to pick up the slack. Between 1995 and 2015, the labor force ages 25 to 44 will decrease by more than 3.2 million workers (Finnigan, 2001). Faced with a shrinking labor pool and severed employee/employer relations, companies will be forced to help employees balance their work and personal lives in order to remain competitive (Maurer, 2002).

Modifications within the American family will be a result of many boomers outliving their savings and moving in with their children. It is projected that a woman born after 1980 is likely to take care of her mother longer than she cares for her own children. On the other end, millennial kids will drag out adulthood and take longer to move out of their parent’s home. Both scenarios impose economic burdens as two-income wage earners will be necessary for survival (Zolli, 2006).

Part 4 next week will discuss Work/Life Programs

Working Women: Finding Balance and Equality in Creative Organizational Design: Part 2 of 5

Since the 1960’s, tens of millions of women have extracted time from their lives to accommodate jobs and careers. They married later, had fewer children, paid others to help, and persuaded men to do more chores. Many have been stretched to the breaking point. What happened on the road to gender equality? Too much work happened. “The reality is that our society hasn’t really changed the rules of the game - it’s only said: ‘OK girls, we’ll let you try. But we’re not going to change anything in the work culture’” (Swiss, 1996, p. 68).

In the book, Women Breaking Through, Deborah Swiss surveyed 325 working women across the nation on company initiatives to promote women. With the exception of a few, the women told her that their organizations remain stuck in some bad habits, and it doesn’t look as if things are going to change anytime soon. Deeply entrenched organizational attitudes have stopped gender reform in its tracks:
"Despite the media hype, the CEO breakfast meetings, the women’s conferences, and the progressive policies on paper, equal treatment and opportunity on the job remain a distant goal for too many women. Sometime in the last decade, the progress of women at work came to a quick halt, with too many business leaders saying one thing but practicing another" (1996, pp.1, 5). Sometimes inhospitable corporate cultures add to the stress. Many women feel their contributions are not recognized or valued, they are not taken seriously, or they are excluded from informal networks and training opportunities (Solomon, 2000).

Statistically, women make up almost one half of the nations workforce (Velasquez, 1998), yet a study by Catalyst, a women’s advocacy group based in New York, found that women represented only 11.9% of corporate officers in America’s 500 largest companies as of March 1999. Men still hold 93% of line officer jobs. These are considered high profile positions with profit and loss responsibility that can lead to top positions. Many women who achieve executive or management level are placed into staff positions such as human resources or public relations (Armas, 2000). Degrees don’t appear to be a factor. For the first time in history, women have more education than men. According to the March 2006 edition of Fast Company Magazine, females have exceeded males in obtaining bachelor and master degrees and within 10 years, the discrepancy will increase (Zolli). In addition, a 2001 census by the Society for Human Resource Management revealed that women account for 40% of PhDs (Phin, 2002).

With all this talent, why do women still face career barriers? Society has several reasons for why the glass ceiling exists, one being that women are not as comfortable promoting themselves as men. Lynda Obst, producer of Sleepless in Seattle noted, “Women will fight for everyone but themselves. Women need to learn to demand more, negotiate better and tougher, and walk away when the money is not right” (Mapping Out a Strategy, 2000). Many females have been taught that hard work alone is sufficient to put them on a par with men. Women tend to be over-preparers, making sure their work is technically correct, but not assuring that it will be noticed by influential people in the organization (Gale Group, 2000). Comfort zones can also play a role in the existence of the glass ceiling. Men will promote men because they feel comfortable with them, drink with them, play golf with them, talk with no inhibitions around them, and don’t have to explain them to their wives (Mapping Out a Strategy, 2000).

While assertiveness training can teach women to assert themselves in work and social situations, females are mostly blamed for placing family responsibilities ahead of their job (Hodgetts, 2002). Families can limit the time devoted to a fast track career and such activities are not as susceptible to legal challenges (Mapping Out a Strategy, 2000). A 2004 survey by the Center for Work-Life Policy at Columbia University revealed that more than a third of the 2443 American women surveyed had stopped working for some period of time and 60% described their careers as nonlinear (Graham, 2005).

Next week, part 3 will discuss The Changing Environment

Working Women: Finding Balance and Equality in Creative Organizational Design: Part 1 of 5

The Creative Process for this Article

5 Part Series

When I was a student in the Human Resource Development Master’s Program at Webster University, I was exposed to predominately female peers and professors. The women instructors were all professionals in their fields and had managed to climb the corporate ladder. Though very successful, none of them had children, and only one was married. On the other hand, the men instructors were all married with children. In most cases their wives stayed home to raise a family. I found this scenario disturbing. Why can’t successful, professional business women have both a career and a family? As my own life progressed, I began to find it more difficult to juggle all my responsibilities. Between a full time job, home responsibilities, three kids, and school, there never seemed to be enough time in the day. While I still feel that way, I have managed to seamlessly integrate all four aspects into each day. Because I am able to work from home, I have the flexibility to arrange my responsibilities in an order that suits my needs. I will admit, my life probably looks chaotic to many, and I really believe that my children’s teachers and coaches think I live a carefree life because I am always available for appointments and meetings. The downside to my complete integration is very little relaxation time. Home is also my workplace and study place.

I skim through approximately twenty five to thirty magazines a month. The subject matter ranges from Harvard Business Review to Self Magazine to National Geographic. Recently, several articles have been published about women very similar to me. Many find it necessary to work but difficult to raise a family and have a satisfying career. Let’s face it, not all women reap satisfaction from staying home and changing dirty diapers. We want to contribute to the workforce like men but we are tired of being punished if we also need to take care of family matters.

I decided to create an organization on paper that would benefit many women out there. Maybe someone will want to implement it. My organizational design is a culmination of influence from previous women instructors, reading material focused on working mothers and professional women, conversations with other mothers, design theory, and my own life experiences. I can truly relate to every issue discussed in my article and have concluded that women with dependent responsibilities need flexibility, support, and help so they too can enjoy a fulfilling career. The creative process was literally a gift from God. I was sitting at the kitchen table after making lunch for the family and suddenly my mind was flooded with design plans. I could hardly write fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. Since I am introverted, I need time to think things through. Over several days, I was able to fine tune some of the details. I kept asking myself, what would be an ideal environment for professional women with small children or other personal responsibilities, such as elder care or volunteer work? Is there a place where women could maintain their skills, have support and help, yet add flexibility to meet life’s demands? I hope someday there will be. My ideas will be presented over the next 4 weeks in a 5 part series, this piece being one of the five. I would appreciate any comments you may have.

Mediation

Last weekend I attended training classes in Boca Raton, Florida to become a Florida Supreme Court Certified County Court Mediator. Mediation is a process whereby a neutral third person, a mediator, acts to encourage and facilitate the resolution of a dispute between two or more parties. It is an informal process with the objective of helping the disputing parties reach a mutually acceptable and voluntary agreement. In mediation, decision making authority rests on the parties.

Many businesses are choosing mediation over court because it is:

• Less expensive and does not require the presence of lawyers.
• Expedient in comparison to litigation.
• User friendly, meaning the process is simple to follow and a mutual agreement is reached. There is no judge deciding for you.
• Confidential and private. Court is very public.

Anyone can hang out a sign and call themselves a mediator. To find one who is qualified and certified for your particular situation:

• Get a referral from someone who has used a mediator.
• Call lawyers in your town and ask them about mediation. Some may perform the service themselves or refer you to people who do.
• Visit the Association for Conflict Resolution at: www.acresolution.org
• Visit a state or local mediation site. In Florida we have the Florida Academy of Professional Mediators www.tfapm.org
• Ask your county court house if they can refer mediators.
  

Do you have a story about mediation you would like to share?

Time Managment

Last week I talked a little about focus. Something that helps us focus on what is important is time management. Our perception of time is a direct result of how we choose to manage it. To make the best use of time, we must first identify our goals and prioritize our tasks according to importance. We must then establish a balance between the number of tasks we have piled on our plate, our available resources, and our ability to perform those tasks effectively. Tasks should be delegated to others when someone else can do it better, faster, or cheaper than you can.

Keep these points in mind:

• Your visions, values, and goals should guide the manner in which you use your time.
• Go for quality of time well spent rather than the quantity of activities you can squeeze into a day.
• Try to complete your most important tasks during your most productive hours.
• Learn to schedule in both personal time and work time on your calendar so you can stick with it better.

If you wonder where all of your time goes during the day, I found a free tool that might help at http://www.toggl.com . It allows you to time all your tasks and activities. I was surprised to find out just how long checking email really takes me. What eats up your time?

What Focus?

Do you ever look at your TO DO List at 5:00pm and wonder, “What happened?” Do you find yourself getting off-track during the day and starting other projects? If so, you are not alone. As a start up business owner, recent graduate from Regent University’s Doctor of Strategic Leadership Program, and mother, I find my days full of distractions. I can schedule all my work on a calendar, look at it 10 times a day, and still go off on a side adventure. We tend to be attracted to activities we enjoy doing and want to do them first or we stop and put out fires that come our way.

What really helped me to become more focused was creating purpose or vision statements for different parts of my life. Ask yourself:

What purpose do I want for my life?
What do I value?
What is my purpose at work? What am I here to do?
What ultimate vision am I trying to achieve?
What do I want to accomplish in each area of my life?
What do I want to be known for?

Now write out short purpose/vision statements for each of your life focus areas and post them where they can be read daily. When a new idea or distraction comes along, review your purpose/vision statements and see if it will help you attain what you are working towards. If it does, put it aside to consider after you finish your other planned activities or tasks. If it doesn’t fit, discard it or put it in a non-urgent file. Save it for the end of the day. Work on your most important tasks first (and save the distracting dishes or laundry for later).

What helps you to focus? I would love to hear your tips.