Monthly Archives:
August 2011

Generation Y (born between 1978 and 1994) have a unique set of characteristics that challenge many managers. As a baby boomer, Managing Director and a Gen Y Executive Assistant working together every day, we are very aware of the differences of our behaviours and world views. Gen Y employees are becoming a significant proportion of the workforce and they bring a distinct culture into a workplace that can be used for positive advantage or cause considerable difficulty.

Gen Y employees tend to be enthusiastic, engaged and ambitious and can make practical, innovative contributions to their employers. While their confidence sometimes outweighs their skills they are often fast learners, pragmatic and enterprising. Peter Sheahan, in his book, “Generation Y: Thriving and Surviving with Generation Y at Work”, describes gen Ys as “stimulus junkies” who need fast-paced, varied, exciting work, have multi-tasking abilities and a tendency to get bored easily.

Gen Yers also have a reputation for being demanding, impatient, materialistic and at times, manipulative. They tend to disregard seniority, experience and authority and have little inhibition when it comes to questioning existing tradition and protocol. They want their leaders to earn respect rather than expect it. Throw in a dash of self-centeredness, the need for constant feedback and instantaneous communication and take away good old fashioned organisational commitment and you can have a very difficult to manage employee on your hands.

Gen yers want a flexible work week, an opportunity to do work that makes a difference, excellent market –competitive pay, … Continue reading →

Integral Development has recently grown thanks to the incredible efforts of all involved during the last year.  We have some new faces joining us and we’ll be introducing you to them all in the coming weeks, but the big news today is the great new look our office has been given!

Gone are the rounded cubicle style desks we had and in their place is this amazing sleek central desk.  We can now seat up to 10 people which effectively doubled our workspace without increasing our footprint.

The low central partition enables us to work closely together and collaborate more easily, and the feedback so far has been very positive.

Keeping everything up above the desk actually increased the amount of workspace for each person, and with dual monitors there’s more room to work than ever.

Now we just need to see how long we can keep them clutter free!

How are top companies adapting their strategic planning processes to address today’s competitive reality? This was the questions that lead to this report by Boston Consulting Group (BCS). The study involved in-depth interviews with executives from leading companies, secondary research, and tapping into the experience of many of BCS’s partners.

Business leaders are struggling between whether or not they should put the primary focus on strategic speed or foresight. Speed offers compelling advantages in today’s changing world. However, a focus solely on speed implies more reacting and less innovation. Foresight enables you to become more innovative and to differentiate yourself. While developing foresight is more challenging today, the rewards are potentially much greater.

The important question today is, “How do you adjust your strategic planning process to develop more foresight and to improve your speed?”

Stretching the Engagement Model

“Those who believe that strategy is the exclusive preserve of a corporate brain trust are increasingly in the minority.” Too often strategy development is too data collection focused and not enough thinking and dialogue. Generally in organizations there is a distinction between the “thinkers” and the “doers.” This distinction proves to unproductive for everyone.

The “most effective strategies are the result of co-creation at multiple levels.” Everyone’s best thinking is needed. Helping everyone to develop strong strategic thinking skills is vital.

Successful companies are moving away from strategy simply constituting monologue Powerpoint presentations provided once a year in an “all-hands” meetings. The Powerpoint presentations focus more on sharing facts and metrics … Continue reading →

The following 19 points build a case for how emotional intelligence contributes to the bottom line in any work organization. Based on data from a variety of sources, it can be a valuable tool for HR practitioners and managers who need to make the case in their own organizations.

1. The US Air Force used the EQ-I to select recruiters (the Air Force’s front-line HR personnel) and found that the most successful recruiters scored significantly higher in the emotional intelligence competencies of Assertiveness, Empathy, Happiness, and Emotional Self Awareness. The Air Force also found that by using emotional intelligence to select recruiters, they increased their ability to predict successful recruiters by nearly three-fold. The immediate gain was a saving of $3 million annually. These gains resulted in the Government Accounting Office submitting a report to Congress, which led to a request that the Secretary of Defense order all branches of the armed forces to adopt this procedure in recruitment and selection. (The GAO report is titled, “Military Recruiting: The Department of Defense Could Improve Its Recruiter Selection and Incentive Systems,” and it was submitted to Congress January 30, 1998. Richard Handley and Reuven Bar-On provided this information.)

2. Experienced partners in a multinational consulting firm were assessed on the EI competencies plus three others. Partners who scored above the median on 9 or more of the 20 competencies delivered $1.2 million more profit from their accounts than did other partners – a 139 percent incremental gain.

3. An analysis of … Continue reading →