Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan

In Psychology there are two ways of thinking; System 1, which is a fast, intuitive way, almost like a gut reaction and then there is System 2, which is a more conscious, purposeful way of thinking.

A lot of times in our organizations we tend to make decisions about our people initiatives and employee experiences in a System 1 type thinking. We react quickly, we don’t think about it too deeply, we just do something for the sake of saying we did something.

We need to take a step back and be more conscious about our decisions around our initiatives to understand what we are doing and why. We need to act in a more mindful, purposeful way instead of reacting in a knee-jerk fashion. Our initiatives will be much more effective and successful if we can change our way of thinking.

Direct download: the_two_ways_of_thinking.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 2:31am PDT

 

Christy Gillenwater is the President & CEO of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce. Christy has been in the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development field for over 20 years, mostly in various cities throughout Indiana. She moved to Chattanooga in 2017. Chattanooga is the first city to be twice named Outside Magazine’s “Best Town Ever” and it was recently ranked one of U.S. News’ Best Places to Live. 

 

What does a Chamber of Commerce actually do? Christy shares that while every chamber has differences, one of the main focuses they all share is “the economic prosperity of their geographic region, so whether that's the county, their city, or a multi-state, multi-county area, they focus on making sure that their existing businesses can grow, thrive and prosper, that those companies have the talent they need to meet existing and future customer demands. They really think about and partner with their elected leaders, and business leaders, around what does their community need to continue to grow and diversify, and build their GDP in their area.”

 

One of the main focuses of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce is Velocity 2040, which allows the community to have a voice in the city’s preparation for the future. A committee of over 50 people conducted a series of workshops and then they went out into neighborhoods and surveyed citizens. These surveys were meant to find out the priorities, hopes, and dreams of the community. From there the committee put together the Velocity 2040 report, which is what is being used to create actionable plans that bring the dreams of the community to life. 

 

The five priorities that were pinpointed by the surveys are: 

 

  • Learning--They are focused on educational excellence which means making sure students have what they need to learn and ensuring that everyone has access to good schools and good jobs. 
  • Thriving--They are thinking about the types of jobs that are being created and doing what they can to make sure the best talent is being recruited to the local area
  • 20 Minutes or Less--This is in reference to their new transit standard to help families and individuals overcome “time poverty”
  • Leadership--Making sure the community is intentionally inclusive and diverse
  • Collaboration--They have a new collaboration process in order to solve issues with openness, respect, participation, and a shared vision.  

 

For each of these five areas the community is working on specific strategies that will help achieve their goals to build a better Chattanooga over the next 20 years. 

 

Christy says individual citizens are able to make a difference in their cities. She encourages everyone to reach out to and engage with their chamber members. “I would say call your elected officials. Call your city council member. If you have county commissioners, or a county mayor, reach out to them. How can I help? Call your state legislators if there's something you're passionate about, and figure out how to volunteer, how to get engaged. Call your United Way.” 

What you will learn in this episode: 

  • What a Chamber of Commerce actually does
  • Some of the big trends Christy is paying attention to when thinking about how the workforce is changing and how it’s impacting citizens
  • A look at some of the initiatives the city of Chattanooga has going on, including Velocity 2040
  • Christy’s view of the future of jobs and AI and automation
  • What Christy believes the city of the future looks like
  • What citizens can do to help shape their own city
  • What role business plays in the future of cities

Contact:

Velocity 2040 Information: https://velocity2040.com/welcome/

Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce: www.Chattanoogachamber.com

 

Direct download: Christy20Gillenwater20podcast20done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:21am PDT

Looking around at the world today it is so easy to get down, be negative, give up hope, and have a bad attitude. But in order to be successful in this new world of work it is crucial to be optimistic. We have to be positive, otherwise we lose our desire to take action and move forward.

So how can we be more optimistic when things seem to be so dark and crazy all around us? One thing we can do is to focus on the things we are grateful for. Come up with a list of 5 things each day that you are thankful for and think about those when you are stressed or overwhelmed. We can also think about what impact we can have and things that we can do to for our family, our community and our organizations that can make a difference. And maybe we need to limit the time we spend on social media or the time we spend watching or reading the news.

It may seem like a challenging thing to do, but it is so important to our success, in work and in life, that we be optimistic.

Direct download: Optimism_Is_Crucial_To_Our_Success_In_The_Future_Of_Work.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 2:31am PDT

David Epstein is the author of two top 10 New York Bestselling books, The Sports Gene and Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, which is the topic of today’s discussion. David has a fascinating and very diverse background that led him to write both of these books.

David has a Master’s degree in environmental science and journalism. While he was in college studying to be a scientist he was also a competitive runner. When one of his teammates died in a race, David decided to merge his interests of science and sports together to figure out what happened and why extremely fit athletes can suffer sudden cardiac arrest.

While investigating the disease he ended up writing for Sports Illustrated. During his time at Sports Illustrated he wrote about things like the only living Olympian to have survived a concentration camp and the revelation that Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez was using steroids. He was also asked to speak at a conference about sports development where he and Malcolm Gladwell, Author of Outliers: The Story of Success, debated the best route to success in sports.

Through his research David has found that the best success comes from athletes who have a “sampling period” early on in their career. They don’t focus in on one sport, they try a wide variety therefore learning a broad range of skills and techniques. This goes against the typical view that athletes should train and specialize in one sport from early on in order to master that one sport.

David then applied this same theory to see if it was the same in the workplace as it is on the field, and his research showed that while specialists still have a place and they are still needed, they have been overvalued in our society whereas generalists have been greatly undervalued. It is generalists who are most likely going to triumph in the future of work.

David says, “If you go back through periods in history, there are times of more and less specialization. But, I'm thinking about it much more in a modern sense. I think some of that made sense, some of the science of management efficiency. Because, as industry grew, people were facing pretty repetitive challenges, or what the psychologist, Robin Hogarth, calls kind learning environments. Where you're doing the same thing over and over, the feedback is very clear, next steps are clear, all the information is available, and the feedback is always accurate, and so on, and patterns repeat.That made a lot of sense for industry, and I think it also influenced things like education, because that was preparing workers for that type of work, and so on. It totally made sense. But, I think in the knowledge economy, people aren't facing those repetitive challenges the same way, and they're having to re-invent themselves over their career.”

If you are a specialist now, David says, it’s never too late to make changes. But you don’t have to change the industry you are in to become a generalist. The problem comes when we get into a rut and keep doing the same thing day after day. After awhile of this we plateau, we stop growing and learning. We have to keep challenging ourselves and get out of our comfort zones.

“I don't think we have to think about taking flying leaps all the time. But, for me, I am, at all times, basically running little experiments to keep trying to triangulate what types of projects and work fit me. I'm just doing that all the time, and I'm sure I will for the rest of my life.”

What you will learn in this episode:

  • What led David to write both of his bestselling books
  • Why generalists are more successful leaders
  • How you can develop your range
  • When did the idea of specialization start and why

 

Direct download: David20Epstein20podcast20done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 12:48pm PDT

We tend to talk about technology as if it is its own entity that has its own mind, mission and agenda. “Technology is going to replace our jobs, it is going to get out of hand, it will take over the world!”

But the truth is we have control over technology, it is our choice how we use it. We can decide whether we want technology to replace us or augment us. There are already a lot of great organizations, like Accenture, Amazon and McDonald’s, making the conscious decision to use technology to augment their people.

Technology is a tool, how are you going to use that tool? Are you going to let it replace jobs, or are you going to find innovative ways to use technology to help your people get their work done?

Direct download: will_technology_replace_or_augment.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:15am PDT

Martin Migoya is the Co-Founder and CEO of Globant, an IT and Software development company that uses the latest technologies transform organizations. They have worked with companies such as Disney, the Met Police in London, and the MTA in New York. Globant was founded back in 2003 by four founders and today they have almost 10,000 employees in 16 countries.

Creating and maintaining a culture with a handful of people is one thing, but how has Globant scaled that culture while growing to almost 10,000? Martin explains that one of the main goals of their culture was to go against the typical command and control system that a lot of the professional service industry has always had.

The leaders at Globant use a very unique method to give their employees autonomy and internal mobility. The company is made up of what they call Pods and they currently have around 1,200 pods. Each pod is made up of a group of 8 to 20 people, depending on the project they are working on. The pods can stay together for a few months or even up to 14 years, whatever is needed for the lifetime of the customer and project they support.

These pods each create a pod constitution by having all the members of the pod meet and discuss the values and principles they would like to hold and they discuss what will be needed in order to make the customer happy. During this discussion they also assign roles--they decide, for example, who’s going to be the accountant, who will be the entrepreneur,who will be the teacher, etc…

Globant is also supportive of internal mobility inside of the company. They help and support employees who want to move from one role inside of the organization to another, even if they are completely different, say going from finance to entertainment. They also support employees who want to change cities. Globant is located in 40 cities and employees are free to change if needed.

Martin says it is difficult to allow complete autonomy and mobility, but it is something very important to Globant and it is a huge part of their culture. Martin shares that even though anything is possible, there are some limits.  He says, “The first thing we ask people is, okay, you want autonomy. You need to behave like an adult so if you're finishing a project and you have the next six months within that project, you need to finish it. You need to commit to that. Otherwise, it's not autonomy. It's misbehaving like a kid. All right?”

Globant also got rid of the typical annual employee survey years ago and now they use a feedback tool called BetterMe, which allows for constant, real time feedback. They have found that using this method provides more meaningful feedback and they now have 20 times the feedback that they received using other methods.


What you will learn in this episode:

  • What it’s like to work at Globant
  • How they make internal mobility easy for employees
  • The result of getting rid of annual engagement surveys inside of Globant and what they do instead
  • Martin’s view of the global state of AI
  • Martin’s advice for leaders around the world looking to transform their organizations.

Contact Info

Globant.com

Books: The Never-Ending Digital Journey: Creating new consumer experiences through technology

Embracing the Power of AI: A Gentle CXO Guide

Direct download: Martin20Migoya20podcast20done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:39pm PDT

If you are a sports fan and you watch games on TV, whether you like football, soccer, baseball, hockey, etc...you may be amazed by how fast the commentators get their information. They are constantly getting real time stats so they can keep viewers informed throughout the game.

During a recent conversation with Mihir Shukla, CEO of Automation Anywhere, he brought up this point about sports and he related it to organizations, asking why we don’t have this capability within organizations to have real-time, constant stats.

Think about how this capability would change the way we work. It would change the way we make decisions, it would change the way we lead organizations, it would change the speed at which we can keep up with competitors.

Direct download: Real_Time_Data_And_Decision_Making_Inside_Of_Our_Organizations.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 12:35am PDT

Jim Clifton is the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, an American analytics and advisory company founded in 1935. Jim has been the CEO since 1988 and under his leadership Gallup has expanded from a predominantly US based company to a worldwide organization with 30 offices in 20 countries. Gallup is made up of 2,000 professionals plus 35,000 contract workers across 160 countries.

Jim is also the co-author of a new book called It’s The Manager, which is based on data Gallup has collected from their largest study on the future of work. The book examines 52 discoveries found from that study that point to why managers are the biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success.

From the Gallup study Jim and co-author Jim Harter found six things that have been done in the past that most organizations still seem to hold on to. These six things need to be changed inside of organizations immediately in order for organizations to stay relevant and successful in the future of work.

One of these six changes Jim talks about is the shift from working solely for a paycheck to now the need for purpose and meaning at work. The things that employees want has changed over the last few decades. When Jim was starting out in the workplace in the 70s and 80s he says he wanted 40 hours a week and a fair paycheck out of work, that was it. His main dream and focus was on getting married, having kids, having a nice house, etc…

But now with the new generations coming into the workplace they don’t have the same dreams and aspirations as Jim and his generation did.

“My generation got married like 15 years earlier on average than this generation. We had a bunch of kids and we also owned our homes. But all of that means that when I went to work, I really wasn't concerned with what the mission or purpose was of the organization. I mean this is a striking difference, but now I'm staying with millennials because they're 40% of the workplace when they come to work. They're saying, my life now merges with the workplace, not with my family, and I need to know that if I'm going to spend all this time here, how does that fulfill that need? Because my job is much more a part of my life than any generation ever.”

Another change that is pointed out in the book is the need for managers to focus on employee development instead of employee satisfaction. Jim says, while there is nothing wrong in providing perks for employees, it should not be the reason employees come to work.

There’s been a rising trend in organizations believing that they need to provide ping pong tables, latte machines, nap pods, free lunch, etc...but employees want to have a real purpose behind the work that they are doing. Employees want to know that the managers are going to work on their strengths and help define a development plan and help them grow inside of the organization.

As stated in the book, “When you have great managers who can maximize the potential of every team member, you have delivered on the new global will: a great job and a great life. That is the future of work”.

What you will learn in this episode:

  • What Jim’s first job was and how it changed his life
  • The biggest changes Jim has seen in the workplace over the past few decades
  • The difference between a coach and a manager
  • Jim’s view on perks in the workplace
  • Why organizations use workplace practices when there’s no data to support that they work
  • A look at the research and findings for the book, It’s the Manager

Contact Information:

It’s The Manager on Amazon  

Jim Clifton on LinkedIn 

Direct download: Jim20Clifton20podcast20done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:38am PDT

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