Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan

Paul Irving is Chairman of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging and distinguished scholar in residence at the University of Southern California Davis School Of Gerontology.

Paul spent much of his life as a corporate lawyer as chairman and CEO of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a law and consulting firm. He is also the author of “The Upside of Aging: How Long Life Is Changing the World of Health, Work, Innovation, Policy, and Purpose,” a Wall Street Journal expert panelist and contributor to PBS Next Avenue and Forbes. When he came to the end of his term as CEO he enrolled at Harvard to look at ‘something new, something interesting’. There, he was asked to do a research project on the impacts of population aging in cities in the U.S.  They came up with an idea about ranking U.S. cities, knowing how ranking systems attract interest and attention, and it was called “Best Cities for Successful Aging”.

Eventually Paul became the president of the Milken Institute which is based in Santa Monica, although they have offices in Washington D.C., and Singapore. Each of these is involved in spreading both domestic and global prosperity and improving health.

One of the things that the Institutes are now focused on is this question of how population aging will affect individuals, families, communities, businesses, and societies.

Some of the trends Paul is seeing in the workforce include:

 

  • Across the world populations are much older
  • Workforces are becoming more diverse
  • Enhancement of opportunities for women over the last several decades, the increasing diversity and inclusion in leadership positions
  • There is a risk of talent loss and talent shortage as a result of retirement

 

  • There is a very clear need for people to work longer and aspiration for people to work longer

 

  • The HR culture has become much more complex

 

 

As Paul points out, “we have about a billion people today over 60 in the world. By mid-century, that

number will more than double, the number of people in their 60s in the United States will more than

double. We have ten thousand people turning 65 a day in the US, and we are now at a point where there

are more older adults than kids and teenagers in the world. So the bottom line is that we have a

historically unprecedented demographic shift, unlike anything that humankind has seen since the

beginning.”

 

The operating assumption is that older people are:

  • Unwilling to learn,
  • Unable to evolve, and
  • Are less effective performers than the young people

 

The evidence is simply not there to back up those claims. They are ageist expectations that come from a fear of aging, a fear of death, a fear of physical change and a lack of recognition of the complementary skills of young people and old people.

As Paul mentions, organizations can benefit from hiring people over 50, because they bring important things to the table including balance, judgement, wisdom, and experience. And several companies are specifically bringing in older employees for this reason. Companies like Airbnb, BMW, and Michelin have programs and incentives in place to make sure they they have employees ranging in age and experience because they understand that it is critical for their future success.

What you will learn in this episode:

  • What the Milken Institute does
  • The impact of the aging workforce
  • Examples of companies such as Airbnb, BMW, and Michelin who are bringing in older employees who can share their wisdom, experience and training
  • What will happen to organizations not paying attention to this trend
  • Paul’s advice for older workers
  • How to create policies for older workers

Contact:

Direct download: Paul20Irving_podcast_done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 9:18am PDT

What is Empathy and why do we need it? A lot of times we confuse empathy with sympathy. In the past organizations have been good with being sympathetic to employees, but in the future of work it is empathy, not sympathy that is crucial for organizations to have.

A lot of people confuse empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone else’s circumstances, empathy on the other hand is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It means putting yourself in someone else’s shoes to not just say you feel sorry for them, but to actually imagine how hard it must be to be in that situation.

In the past organizations have been good at being sympathetic, but they have struggled with being empathetic. Unlike in the past when most organizations had hierarchies where there really was no need for upper management to be empathetic, in today’s organizations we are beginning to see why it is so crucial to have empathy in the workplace. We have different generations of workers, we have work/life integration that is starting to happen, we have a war for the best talent and many other reasons why employee experience is becoming a priority for organizations.

But the fact is, employee experience cannot happen unless we embrace empathy. We have to be understanding when an employee has a sick kid, we have to be genuinely interested in getting feedback, we have to build collaboration and increase transparency. To do these things we have to have empathy.

Don’t be a sympathetic organization, be an empathetic organization. Empathy is the one thing that is going to differentiate your company from all the other companies out there.

Direct download: Employee_Experience_Cannot_Happen_Unless_We_Embrace_Empathy.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:02am PDT

Andrew Glincher is the CEO and Managing Partner at Nixon Peabody LLP, one of the largest law firms in the world. Andrew started at Nixon Peabody 30 years ago. He is a first generation college graduate, having grown up in Brockton, Massachusetts. He studied business at Boston College undergraduate and has always prided himself as being as much a business person as a lawyer. He ran his own snack bar and concession in high school, was very entrepreneurial, worked in business, and then went to law school. Initially he went to work for a small firm for about a year and a half to do business and commercial real estate. Eventually, Andrew made his way to Nixon Peabody, running the Boston office with a large corporate and commercial real estate client base which has evolved into his current role of CEO.

Nixon Peabody LLP is one of the largest law firms in the world - with 16 offices. They have international alliances throughout the world, particularly in Asia. In the United States, their major metro offices are located in Boston, New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They employ about 700 attorneys and 1500 total employees. They work on almost everything except criminal defense work - except white collar. They do not do personal injury work on the plaintiff's side nor do they do divorce work. They particularly excel in corporate, real estate, labor and employment law.

Some of the changes in this law firm that Andrew has seen are:

  • Moving away from hierarchies
  • One size glass wall offices
  • A shift towards encouraging collaboration
  • No more corner offices
  • Unified office furniture for everyone
  • More open spaces with cafes and collaboration space

Nixon Peabody isn’t an ordinary law firm and Andrew isn’t your typical CEO. In fact, as you will here in today’s discussion, Andrew is simply not content with the traditional ways that law firms are used to operating. He and his team at Nixon Peabody are finding ways to increase collaboration, change the way they think about space, encourage leaders to be empathetic listeners, and use technology to be more efficient and productive.

How do you deal with people who are resistant to that change? Andrew says you can show them companies that aren't fairing well who have resisted change. He also says you should have discussions about change and acknowledge that change is difficult. You have to keep encouraging people to do things.

What you will learn in this episode:

  • How law firms are changing
  • The role AI and technology may have on the the field of law
  • How to be an empathetic listener
  • How to deal with people resisting change
  • Advice to leaders looking to change their work spaces

Contact:

Direct download: Andrew20Glincher_podcast_done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 11:50am PDT

Creating a true human organization has been a topic for decades and there has been a lot of smart people, wonderful books, case studies and research reports out there that talks about leadership, employee experience, and management skills. 

 

But still, a lot of organizations all over the world struggle to embrace these things. Still, a lot of employees out there don't like their jobs. So a part of me wonders,  does any of the work that I do matter? Why isn't change happening? why do these companies still exist?

 

Then I remember the emails I get or the stories I hear from all of you about how change is happening in your organization. It might be hard for us to see change because it takes time, but change is truly happening.

 

It's like going to the gym. I have no idea how long it’s gonna take for you to look better or feel better, but I know that over time, as you exercise and eat healthier, you’re gonna start to look a little bit better and feel a little bit better. One day you will wake up and look and the mirror and think “I look and feel pretty darn amazing!: Stay optimistic. You too overtime, will start noticing change.

Direct download: change_takes_time.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 1:54pm PDT

Caskie Lewis-Clapper is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Magellan Health, Inc., (“Magellan “). Prior to joining Magellan, she served as senior Director for Human Resources Operations for Helix Health, a Baltimore, Maryland-based health care system. At Helix, she held a variety of senior leadership positions, including Sr. Director of Human Resource Operations and Director of Training and Organizational Development. Prior to joining Helix, she was a consultant with General Physics Corporation, providing training and performance improvement consulting services, and conducting human performance improvement research. She is a published author of articles on team building and human performance improvement. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maine and her Master of Science degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Magellan Health is care management for the fastest growing and most complex areas of healthcare, including special populations, complete pharmacy benefits and other specialty carve-outs. It is “the right care at the right time in the least invasive way”.  With 10,000 employees, they work relentlessly to provide the best care.

Workplace flexibility is something that has been discussed and worked on over the years. Magellan was on the cutting edge of this issue as they were finding ways to allow employees to work off site since the early 90s. And they continue to make flexibility a priority for their employees. Currently 40% of their staff works from home.

A lot of organizations question flexibility because they feel that the best collaboration and innovation happens when employees are in the same location and able to talk face to face daily. But Caskie believes that Magellan is able to make it work because they focus on having purposeful, meaningful in person meetings from time to time that allow everyone to stay on the same page. But they a majority of the time they are able to collaborate and innovate through phone calls, Zoom, and online resources.

A lot of times when teams are in the same location, they tend to waste time in pointless meetings just to say they met. The important factor, whether your team is onsite or not, is that during meetings the leader is clear about what they are there to do.  Caskie says, “Let the work drive when you need to be in a room together.” And then when you go your separate ways everyone knows what they are aiming towards and what needs to get done.

Another topic of debate these days is around who is responsible for the development, advancement, learning, and success of employees. Is it up to the organization? Is it up to the employee?

According to Caskie, Magellan places the main responsibility with the individual employee. Caskie says, “You're the driver of your work. You're the driver of your development, you're the driver of your successes, you're the driver of your learnings. And that means that as a team member at Magellan, and I'm going to use a word that's a really overused, but you're empowered to, you have the power to make things happen for yourself and for our company.”

They feel that it is important for employees to have goals, to be proactive in advancing their careers, and to find ways to keep learning.

What you will learn in this episode:

  • How employees at Magellan collaborate while working in different locations
  • What mindsets/skills/traits they look for in potential employees
  • How to help people navigate change
  • How to be a digital citizen and a perpetual learner
  • How Magellan is giving employees ownership over their learnings, development and success
  • Interesting programs inside of Magellan--Vern and Rita
  • What it’s like to work at Magellan
  • Changes Caskie has seen at Magellan over the past 20 years

Contact:

Caskie Lewis On LinkedIn

 

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

Give employees the service experience they deserve because everyone deserves great experiences at work. Eliminate frustration and improve employee satisfaction with a single access point for efficient, personalized HR services. ServiceNow helps you put service at the heart of your business. Start today.

Direct download: Caskie20Lewis-Clapper_podcast.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 9:30am PDT

There has been a major shift in the way we view work. In the past when a company had a position to fill they announced the opening and people jumped at the opportunity. There wasn’t any talk of employee perks, health and wellness programs, workplace flexibility or workplace design. Someone needed a job, they found out about the job and they applied.

Now if an organization has an opening people don’t just jump at the opportunity. They want to hear about what it’s like to work at that company, they want to know what the company perks are, they want to know whether the office is an open floor plan and whether or not they have the latest technology. People have options now, so they don’t have to jump at the first opportunity, they can wait for the job that is a perfect fit for them.

That is why it is so important for companies today to focus on employee experience. Companies have to be able to understand their Reason for Being and they have to be able to answer questions like, what is it like to work for your company and why should I want to come work there?

Organizations, we need to do a better job convincing people why they should work for us.

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

Give employees the service experience they deserve because everyone deserves great experiences at work. Eliminate frustration and improve employee satisfaction with a single access point for efficient, personalized HR services. ServiceNow helps you put service at the heart of your business. Start today.

Direct download: a_shift_in_the_way_we_think_about_work.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 12:39pm PDT

Jacqui Canney, is EVP and Chief People Officer at Walmart and Clay Johnson, is EVP and Chief Information Officer at Walmart.

Jacqui has been with Walmart for three and a half years. She is focused on the development, the retention and the rewarding of their 2 million employees. Clay joined Walmart 18 months ago. He focuses on the technology but also the shared services for the company. He is charged with putting those two together to create more productivity and automation.

With over 2 million employees, Walmart is the world’s largest employer. They have 5000 stores in the U.S and 10,000 globally.

Skilling and training employees on a massive scale

Investing in people is a focus for Walmart, in particular the last few years they have made investments around salaries, training and education. As Jacqui puts it, “we are people led and tech enabled. So investing in our people and humanity is what Walmart is rooted in and is our competitive advantage”.

Recently, they have been moving wages and announced new education benefits that employees have been asking for. One of them is a dollar a day college opportunity. Both full-time and part-time employees who have been with the company for at least 90 days are able to attend college for $1 a day to get an associate degree or a bachelor’s degree.

They have also created in-house training called academies and have about 200 of them in the United States, as well as others outside of the United States where they are teaching employees retail fundamentals and leadership skills.

New jobs or skills that Jacqui and Clay are identifying as being important at Walmart include:

  1. Digital literacy,
  2. Data-driven decision making,
  3. Growth mindset,
  4. Flexibility and adaptability and then the
  5. Empathy

One of the things recently implemented at Walmart is called BYOD at work. It stands for bring your own device.  So they can bring their personal phones into work and also have access to any kind of the work content they would have on a desktop. So, if an employee is on the floor, they can access all types of training content, just like they were sitting at a desk.  The idea is to create more productivity and allow people to learn in a lot of different ways.

They also recently announced a game that it’s on the App store called Spark City - that anybody can actually play. It’s the gamifying of how to run a store. So, people that want to work at Walmart can use it, even before they are hired.

You may not realize how technologically advanced Walmart is when it comes to their workforce. They are leveraging a lot of cutting edge tools to train, retain, and upskill their employees. Here are just a few examples:

  • Using IOT – Including having sensors in freezers that ‘go bad’ and allowing employees to connect with their personal devices throughout the store
  • Applied blockchain to food safety – to be able to identify the original source of the food the supply
  • Jet Black – Which allows anyone to find and order gifts tailored to the recipient

Jacqui and Clay say that Walmart is running, not walking, into the next 5-10 years and they are excited to see what new tools, tech, and resources become available to allow them to stay ahead.

What you will learn in the episode:

  • How Walmart is evolving and using cutting edge tech to train and upskill their workforce
  • How they are using Blockchain to track food
  • What the future of Walmart looks like 5-10 years out
  • Trends Jacqui and Clay are paying attention to
  • What is store #8 and how is Walmart using it to test new trends
  • What role leaders play in Walmart’s transformation
  • How HR and IT can collaborate
  • How Walmart uses VR in empathy training
  • How they balance what is right for the shareholders vs. what is right for employees and customers

Link from the episode:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquicanney

https://www.linkedin.com/in/claymjohnson/

 

 

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

Give employees the service experience they deserve because everyone deserves great experiences at work. Eliminate frustration and improve employee satisfaction with a single access point for efficient, personalized HR services. ServiceNow helps you put service at the heart of your business. Start today.

 

Direct download: Walmart20Podcast_done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 9:00am PDT

There used to be a time where work and life were kept separate and they did not overlap. Once you got home at 5pm everything that happened at work was put to the side and you focused on your personal life. But today there’s no longer boundaries between work and life. It is more of a blending of the two and it’s only going to keep becoming more and more blended in the future.

If the work side of your life is not going well, then most likely your life as a whole is not going well. Work is life and life is work; the two things are becoming one. Therefore it matters greatly what choices you make in your work life. It matters what career field you choose to go into, what organization you choose to work for and how you interact with others you work with. If you want to have an overall meaningful, happy and satisfying life you also need to have a good work life.

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

Give employees the service experience they deserve because everyone deserves great experiences at work. Eliminate frustration and improve employee satisfaction with a single access point for efficient, personalized HR services. ServiceNow helps you put service at the heart of your business. Start today.

 

Direct download: work_life_balance_integration.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 11:59am PDT

Dan Shapero is the Vice President of Talent Solutions, Careers, and Learning at LinkedIn. Prior to this, Dan held several positions at LinkedIn, from Vice President of Talent Solutions and Insights to Vice President of North America Sales, Hiring Solutions.  He has also served as the Manager of Bain & Company, as Senior Marketing Manager of Paramark, as Product Marketing Manager of Zembu, and as an advisor for Dropbox.

LinkedIn currently has over 575 million members around the world. They are the world's largest professional networking site. The idea originated to provide a platform for professionals to join and start to run their careers much like a startup would think about building their own businesses. Over the course of LinkedIn's history different capabilities have evolved.  They started with 300 employees in 2008 and currently, in 2018, employ over 12,000 employees.

Three things LinkedIn offers employees:

  1. Every two weeks they have a company all hands meeting hosted by the CEO Jeff Weiner
  2. They have a thing called InDay. Once a month, people are encouraged to clear their calendars, invest in themselves and invest in their teams
  3.  A program where every employee, every year, gets a budget of money to apply towards any number of things that help make their life a little easier.

When asked how work today compares with work 10 to 20 years ago, Dan says the biggest changes are around talent.

“If you look at the most important companies in the world, if you look at the companies that we tend to talk about in the news and the areas that are really driving industry, the new reality is that companies are realizing that they win or lose on their people.”

Because of this, there's a new focus on how to help people really thrive at work

 

LinkedIn has done some research on the idea of ‘career sleepwalking’, which is

when someone is in a role that they aren’t sure they want to be in, but they just

don’t know how to get out of it. Dan says there's a whole population of people - as

large as 40% in certain categories -who are ‘career sleepwalking’.

 

There is a ton of window shopping on LinkedIn for careers. People go and look at

jobs that are either different by industry, different by function, different by

location, and as a crazy stat, near 22% of people on LinkedIn say that “they really

fell into their current job versus actively choosing it”. And another 23% say that

they feel like they're on a treadmill going nowhere.

 

Dan’s advice for sleepwalkers or those on a career ‘treadmill’:

 

  1.  Visualize a path to make change
  2.  Find a friend to nurture your career path
  3.  Find a role model to help understand the steps to take
  4.  Have a plan B if it doesn’t work out

 

What you will learn in this episode:

  • What do non-HR people need to understand about HR?
  • How employment has changed over the last few decades
  • Three unique things going on at LinkedIn
  • Dan’s view of Millennials
  • What is the future of HR?
  • How LinkedIn is doing perks differently
  • What is Glint and why LinkedIn acquired them
  • Suggestions to pivot your career path

 

Contact:

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dshapero/

Direct download: Dan20Shapero20Podcast_done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 8:15am PDT

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