JimCarroll

“Don’t Mess with my Powder, Dude: Managing People and Projects in The Flat World”

May 25, 2007 by JimCarroll

Tenrox, a company that provides companies an intgelligent infrastructure for rapid workforce management, has invited me to keynote their September 2007 user group conference in Bloomingdale, Illinois.

The title we’ve worked out, based on a story I often tell on stage: “Don’t Mess with My Powder, Dude: Managing People and Projects in the Flat World.” It’s related to the number of talks I’ve been doing within the overall theme of “What’s Happening with Our Workforce.”

read the Tenrox press release
previous blog post, “What’s happening with our workforce?”
Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills here

Organizations are coming to realize that talent management is going to be a critical issue, and I have a wonderful track record in positioning this on stage.

Innovating in the high velocity economy

May 23, 2007 by JimCarroll

What does it mean to function in the high velocity economy?

It’s all about learning to operate at high speed — particularly given the rapid rates at which knowledge obsolescence is occuring, due to the rapid advancement of science.

In this video clip, from a presentation to 2,000 engineering and technical staff in Orlando, Jim puts into perspective what it means to operate at high velocity.

The new mourning …..

May 22, 2007 by JimCarroll

In the last year, I have been the keynote speaker for three different conferences of funeral and crematorium directors.

As with any industry, I’ve focused on the wide variety of trends that will impact them — and yes, I’ve provided them guidance on innovation and creativity. These folks are the “ultimate event planners” — they are called upon to organize extremely complex affairs in a dramatically short time in very difficult circumstances. We could all learn from their resourcefulness.

One of the trends I’ve spoken to them about is what I’d come to call “the new mourning” — that is, how the younger generation I call Gen-Connect has a different relationship with the process of mourning.

We’ve all seen it; 9/11, Virginia Tech and elsewhere — spontaneous, large public gatherings, where people deal with an unforeseen tragedy by coming together. Technology — cell phones, instant messaging, email — results in an often instant and large-scale social means of dealing with tragedy.

It’s one thing to talk about a trend; it’s another thing when you witness it literally in your backyard. Ten days ago, a young rugby player died after an altercation near the end of the game — at the high school that my home office looks onto. My son and I had been at the game just ten minutes prior. When we heard the sirens, we knew that something was not good.

Through the next six days, I came to witness firsthand the ‘new mourning,’ as his teammates, classmates, teachers, friends, neighbors and strangers gathered in various ways, at various times, spontaneously, instantly, silently. My son went to school with his younger brother; we visited the memorial that the kids assembled, several times.

Earlier this week, the kids at the school returned to the field, and played a game. The neighborhood has laughter, cheers, noise and happiness once again, but the neighborhood has also forever changed.

As someone who speaks on trends and the future, I do know this: the new mourning is very, very real, quite substantially different — and is yet another example of how quickly our world around us is changing.

Innovation and the new workforce

May 21, 2007 by JimCarroll

I’m keynoting the annual IHRIM (International Human Resource Information Management) professional association in about an hour here in Houston, TX; I’ll have an audience of about 1,000 or so.

My talk today broadly revolves around the issue of “what’s happening with our workforce.” I’m taking the audience on a tour of the key drivers which impact organizations today, whether business or government,

velocity: business is just plain fast, and our workforce must cope with that
change capacity: there’s a big disconnect in how quickly some people can deal with rapid change compared to others
idea instantaneity: we’re in a new world in which ideas or issues can quickly speed out of control, or work to our advantage
knowledgeability: in which global insight is increasing at a furious pace, leading to ever larger pools of knowledge
innovation opportunity: such rates of discovery lead to massive new opportunities with bringing new products and services to market
idea discovery: our interconnected world now allows unique ideas to gain a global audience in a flash
consumer spontaneity: the low attention span consumer is fleeting when it comes to loyalty to brand
business intensity: operational excellence is the name of the game, given an economy which simply runs “fast”
skills availability: all these trends that it is going to be more difficult to access skills

My key point for the audience: When we are thinking about deployment of skills , we must be thinking about:

Attracting the right skills …… at the right time … for the right purpose
Providing for business flexibility in a time of rapid change
Establishing a constantly shifting, evolving “workforce on demand”
Enabling this with sophisticated tools, infrastructure and skills access capabilities – managed by folks such as the IHRIM

These are issues I’ve covered extensively in my analysis, Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills here

Innovating in the era of instant obsolescence

May 17, 2007 by JimCarroll

We’re in the era of instant obsolescence: can you innovate fast enough to keep up? Can you keep up, when faster is the new fast?

In the last few years, I’ve interviewed CFO’s and CIO’s with companies that have achieved rapid market growth, all of them customers of SAP. This includes such global success stories as J. Crew, Body Armour, Adobe, Purdue Pharma, Hunt Oil, Lennox, Jazz Semiconductor, Merit Energy, and others. SAP has had me in to keynote a wide variety of events, and host panel discussions with these senior executives. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to explore what innovative companies do in rapidly changing markets.

I recently lead such a discussion, both online and at SAPPHIRE 07 in Atlanta, under the theme, Velocity, Agility, Complexity, and Flexibility: The Four Key Drivers for Competitive Advantage. I interviewed CIO’s and senior IT executives with four high-growth hi-tech companies: Entegris, Intervoice, Avocent and Citrix (and it Atlanta, Checkfree.)

One of my opening comments: “We’re in the era of absolutely instant obsolescence. We can’t afford to take a week to roll up the sales numbers … we have to know what’s happened in the last 10 minutes.”

All of these organizations are faced with the challenge and opportunity of the high-velocity economy. Rapid growth, collapsing product lifecycles, and the need for a focus on” time to market.”

They provided wonderful insight into how they innovate in order to stay ahead of the market, manage global supply chains, build a cohesive, collaborative culture, and provide for real time insight into their business.

What do these organizations do in terms of innovation? Several things:

operational excellence is a major focus
there are high expectations for growth, and an IT infrastructure that enables such growth
they have a need for instant, need driven relationships with their partners
they focus on rapid agility for new market demands
they are religious on “fast time to market”
they focus on quick marshalling of resources to accomplish velocity
they provide for instant scalability, given market volatility and rapid change

Innovation, and the big “what-if’s?”

May 15, 2007 by JimCarroll

I’ve long posted this challenge to my clients: can your organization deal with the rapidity of change? Brands, product, marketing campaigns, skills capabilities, the depth of your bench: it can all go out of date, really, really fast. The art of innovation includes asking yourself: “what-if?” And you can’t limit your thinking, in terms of the potential of the “what-ifs?”

In the context of this and today’s announcement of the DaimlerChrysler de-merger (for want of a better phrase): Wow! Things happen quickly. Two years ago, I spent time with some folks at this iconic global brand. There was a lot of discussion about the “what-if’s.” But maybe the probing within the organization wasn’t deep enough, as to where the “what-if’s” could go.

Now the brand has become undone — and it’s a brand that is set to be something from the “olden days.” It happened to Sony too.

And consider The Google Car and Massive Market Disruption. I started it as a joke on stage. It’s perhaps more real by the moment.

The question of whether your brand is from the olden days is an essential one, because the answer to the question shows how far you are willing to go in assessing the “what-if’s”. Obviouly, the DaimlerChrysler situation is far more complex: legacy costs, an innovative but ultimately doomed workforce, a failure with the massive cultural issues in making a global merger work. But is it that much different that the rapidity of change being faced by any organization today?

Consider this: two years ago, it was pre-Katrina. Oil was cheap, gas was plentiful, and everyone was always going to drive a big SUV.

Today, green is in, volatility rules, and — well, lots of people still drives big SUV’s. Except more and more of them aren’t made by American icons. Brands get tired, not for lack of trying, but for lack of challenge as to the severity of the rate of change.

In the high-velocity economy, there’s no room for complacency. That’s why constant, relentless innovation is critical. At least, it gets people thinking as to the “what-if’s.” Because today, the big “what-if’s” can quickly become the “as has now happened….”

JimCarroll

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.