Ignite! Newsletter -July 2007 (a)

A view from the future

The Ken Blanchard Companies has just released the results of its 2007 Corporate Issues Survey: A Five-Year Look at the Trends and Issues Organizations and Leaders Face. A special feature of this year's survey was a question asking participants—which consisted of 1,091 human resource, training, and line managers from a range of companies, industries, and countries—to identify what they feel are the most critical organizational, managerial, and employee development issues they will be facing in 2010. The results provide a fascinating first look into the issues companies expect to be facing in the years ahead.

Top Organizational Challenges

At the organizational level, respondents identified increasing competitive pressure, growth and expansion plans, and a lack of workers with needed skills as the three top challenges they expect to face in the years ahead.1

In subsequent questions designed to understand why these specific challenges would be the most daunting in the years ahead, respondents identified the pressures to stay ahead of the competition in an increasingly competitive market, coupled with an inability to differentiate products and services from competitors as key drivers. Also identified were global challenges and how increasing growth, productivity, and performance standards were stretching people and resources thin.2

Top Managerial Challenges

At the managerial level, respondents identified selecting and retaining key talent, developing potential leaders, and building customer loyalty as the biggest challenges looking ahead over the next three years.

Selecting and retaining key talent was seen as the number one challenge of the future primarily due to a perceived shrinking of the labor pool—especially among highly skilled workers. Respondents are concerned about the general lack of necessary work skills and the increasing costs of locating and recruiting the people they need to make their companies successful. The second challenge, developing potential leaders, was driven by the age of current leaders in most organizations and impending retirements. This is creating a concern in many organizations that they will not have the type of highly skilled leadership they need to develop strategies and people to ensure profitable growth in the future. Building customer loyalty was identified as the third key challenge cited most often because it was seen as a sustainable differentiator and true competitive advantage in a business environment where customers have more choice than ever before.

Top Employee Development Challenges

At the employee development level, respondents identified three critical skills that they feel will be most important in 2010; managerial skills, customer service skills, and interpersonal communication skills.

An interesting connection linked the drivers for these three employee development skills back to the organizational and management challenges that respondents had identified earlier. Driving the need for improved managerial skills were:
•　Growth needs
•　Anticipated openings for critical leadership positions

•　Leadership's impact on retention and development of
         employees

Each of these drivers had been identified earlier as a key challenge at the organizational or management level and it appears that HR professionals and line managers are already making the link between employee skill development and its impact on meeting future business needs.

The second most cited challenge—customer relationship skills—also had drivers that linked back to organizational and management needs. Respondents identified customer relationship skills as important because it:

•　Creates competitive advantage in the marketplace
•　Improves customer loyalty and retention
•　Is essential to future success and growth

In looking at the business environment three years from now, respondents see a trend toward the commoditization of products and services that will make it difficult for companies to differentiate themselves from an ever-increasing number of competitors. Improving the customer service skills of employees is seen as one of the ways to address this.

Finally, good interpersonal communication was identified as a key skill all managers and supervisors needed because everything else flows from success or failure in this area. Anecdotal comments show that conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and basic communication skills are all important components supporting the development of interpersonal skills. Also identified as an emerging issue driving this need was the lack of communication skills among younger workers, and the new challenges posed by technology-influenced communication styles.

Fastest Growing Challenges

In addition to identifying the top challenges human resource, training, and line managers expect to face in the years ahead, the survey also identified which challenges this same group expects to increase in importance over the next three years. Looking at the data from this point of view provided three additional challenges that forward-looking executives will want to keep an eye on.

The first is changing technology, which was identified as a current challenge by only 30% of the respondents, but which increases to 48% for 2010. This seems to signal that a perceived “technology rest period” companies may be experiencing now will be shifting forward again in the future. To deal with this, respondents expect that improving employee technology skills will be a bigger focus again in the future (from 30% in 2007 to 36% in 2010). The other fastest growing challenge identified is innovation, increasing eight percentage points from 25% in 2007 to 33% in 2010. Once again the drivers for these challenges are the needs for increased productivity and performance—as well as changing technology—driven by an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Looking Ahead

At The Ken Blanchard Companies? we believe that the seeds of the future are planted in the present. Forward thinking companies looking to stay ahead of the game should always be on the lookout for emerging trends and opportunities. Looking more closely at the present realities and comparing it to a visualized future state is a good way to identify potential gaps as well as opportunities. Evaluating your company's current strategy for each of the key challenges identified in the 2007 Corporate Issues Survey is a good place to start. Is your company prepared to meet the organizational, management, and employee development challenges that have been identified? If not, take some time today to reflect on where you stand and where you want to be in the future. As Peter Drucker wisely identified, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Footnotes::
1. Looking forward three years to 2010, respondents were asked to select their top four issues from a total of eight possibilities.
2. At the organizational, managerial, and employee development level, respondents were asked to identify which one of eight issues they felt was most critical for their organization to address and why. Further information on survey methodology together with complete survey results are available online by accessing the 2007 Corporate Issues Survey。

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