Impact Jobs.

The latest research to come from "What workers want in 2012", surveying students and prospective employees looking to enter the work force along with employed Gen Y, Gen X and Boomers looked at aspects of life goals, job satisfaction and the need to make an impact. The need to make an impact for some was more important than having kids, more important than prestigious careers and for many, more important than wealth. Seems the lack of wealth required, came from the idealistic young, not yet cynical from years at the coal face, but others employed, indicated that making a difference and doing good would certainly allay their need to have continuous financial gains.

Students and prospective employees were willing to take pay cuts to work for organisations that fitted with their image of themselves and whose values were aligned with their own. Boomers, who long ago set the bench mark for caring in the 60s, were the biggest demographic willing to volunteer outside of work and willing to boycott products or companies they did not agree with environmentally or who they thought lacked social responsibility. They were also the leaders when it came to wanting the right work life balance to achieve maximum social and environmental impact within their work environment.

As usual, women, no matter the demographic, cared more than men and 30% indicated they would take pay cuts to make a difference in their jobs. Men being the capitalistic pigs they are, were in the minority when taking pay cuts to make a difference, with only 19% indicating they would make that choice. For men, working at Playboy, was not one of the options but it would have increased the desire to make an impact and perhaps shown them in a better light statistically?

In the end, statistics can be read many ways but what can't be denied is the overall feeling, especially from prospective employees, the desire to make the world a better place to work in and live in. In hindsight, it sounds a lot like a bunch of 60s kids rallying against the war, standing up for civil rights, figuring out what being green was all about and generally wanting a better planet. The causes may not always be as obvious or pointed today, but people in general want to care more, know more and make a difference in their work environment. After all, what legacy do you want to be remembered for, getting the invoices in on time or making your work place better for others.

Socially and environmentally responsible companies will be the winners as they attract the brightest, the motivated and the compassionate. The 2012 Ethisphere Institute list of the world's most ethical companies, based on ethics and compliance programs, reputation, leadership and innovation, governance, corporate citizenship and responsibility will be the ones attracting the above future and current employees. Not all companies on that list are just about saving the planet, as global entities, Gap, Microsoft, Ford, eBay, Target , Cisco and UPS show you can be "a player" and still make a difference.

Still dying but not dead.

Advanced book binding 101 was always the joke, when talking about athletes taking easy classes to get credit points to pass. I don't know what they are taking now that the death of books continues its global tour. Since last year, when we first talked about e books published overtaking traditional books published, the emphasis for online has increased to the extent that when searching for the death of books, you now end up with over 12 million matches. That's millions of articles and insights on the end of paper published books as we know them, along with bemoaning the rise of the online devil, killing an established part of our lives.

Everyone has read the rudimentary story about the e-shift and how it is affecting the entire publishing industry and all the sectors that service that sector. Book seller to the world Amazon, has long since jumped the shark tank and now sell more e-books than papyrus models and without making the joke passé, Kindle has made kindling of its paper competition. Jeff Bezos is not the devil, just a successful entrepreneur who has disrupted a legacy industry and found ways to make more books available online in more than one iteration.

If we are reading more, regardless of the form it takes, surely that's a good thing. The idea of a book just in paper will become a nostalgic memory of dog eared pages, occasional paper cuts and libraries daunting in their scale of collection. Print will remain and the faithful will hunt out limited printings but when your favourite author goes online and stays online, the choice becomes more obvious. Books have been around my entire life but history shows us otherwise and paper has only been prevalent since the mid 1500's.

It will be interesting to see if Bezos will be enshrined like Gutenberg, who changed the way stories were passed on from animal skins to the printing press. For aside form creating chaos within the publishing industry, Amazon and a raft of others, has created the opportunity for anyone to tell their story and be published online. No longer is a book the domain of the serious author with his leather elbow patches on display, waiting for Hollywood to take out an option on his story.

Today we all have the opportunity to write, to tell stories, to inform, to critique and to express opinions and insights, no matter how small the reading circle may be. It's not all Pulitzer or Nobel Prize winning literature but just about all of it finds an audience, even if that audience is only a mother or a close friend. The lament regarding the death of books needs to be replaced with the joy of possibility and opportunity, for anyone to tell their stories. Best sellers will come to mean something different in years to come with no capital expense required to publish, the audience size could be global, local or even family.

After all, whose mother wouldn't want to see their kids in print and having one person read and appreciate your writing is sometimes enough to make it feel like a best seller. Books aren't dead, they are alive and thriving and coming to a tablet, a reader or even a phone near you.

Stuck in the middle with you.

Who listens to the seat belt talk, when they sit down in a plane? I'm not sure, as Seth Godin points out in a recent article, there is anyone left in the world, who doesn't know how to put that clip into that buckle and pull low and tight across the waist? Yet flight attendants stand there with their favourite seat belt held at eye level and go through the spiel again and again and again. The airlines sight safety rules requiring the message be told ad nausea because you never know who might be on a plane for the first time. If you can get on a plane, the likelihood you arrived by car or have driven in a car, is high, and correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a car have the same seat belt concept we are talking about on the plane?

We've all heard it before in companies and situations where change needs to happen and the myopic reply "but we've always done it that way" comes flying back at you. It's the easiest comeback in the world, to stay stuck in the middle where equilibrium is the most comfortable but where you have no opportunity for change, challenge or achievement. The race to the middle, the race to mediocrity and "not rocking the boat" has become the realm where individuality and creativity go to die. In today's uncertain times people have become even more conservative in their views and actions, and the hunker down mentality is pervading all sections of industry, sucking everything into the middle.

Yet this is the time to look for change opportunity. After all, successful business people and entrepreneurs didn't achieve only on sunny days when things were going good, everything was rosy and without turmoil. The current uncertain global situation will throw up new businesses, new entrepreneurs and new product and services that will surprise people who can't find their way out of the middle. What's holding us back? Inertia, cynicism, fear, futility, peer group pressure, legacy thinking and complacency keeps the list growing, holding us back from change and success.

The only things that engender change are chaos that requires action for survival or the spirit of the individual in authority, willing to show dissent, take responsibility and bring about consequences that lead to change. Finding all three qualities in company employees can be difficult but if you look at the leading companies of today, you'll find individuals who have pushed the proverbial away from the middle. Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), A.G. Lafley (P&G) and Tony Hsieh (Zappos) have all disrupted their business models and that of their competitors because things don't always need to be done the same.

You have an opportunity to bring about change in your work place, even if it is only in quantum amounts. Likely you have a better picture of what your company can do better, because you are closer to your clients than the boss, you are in the field every day and you encounter the change required to bring about your future success.

"Clowns to left, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you".

What are you waiting for?

BYOD.

I see it everyday as people juggle technology, carrying multiple phones, multiple PCs and creating multiple hassles about how many pockets they need to carry the stuff? Seems everyone has their favourite pieces of technology, which they feel give them the edge in speed and productivity but more often than not, it is banned at work. Most people I know, now carry at least two phones because the company issued phone is nowhere as much fun or interactive as their choice. So why would companies not want their employees engaged and productive? Reasons from security to cost savings have limited companies who eventually, will have to bow to employee pressure to BYOD.

The push for BYOD (bring your own device) is gaining momentum within all areas of the corporate world and some surveys like Aruba IT, show Europe with a two thirds adoption rate for companies allowing their employees to bring at least some kind of device to work. The majority of IT managers covered in an another survey over 11 countries, indicated BYOD had serious competitive advantages with 60% of employees bringing a device of choice to work and 80% of companies looking to allow BYOD within the next 24 months.

The most obvious choices for BYOD, have always been phones but tablets will soon overtake the laptop as far as the professional is concerned, especially when looking to bring their best productivity to work. The early adopters will always be IT companies like Cisco, who are calling BYOD the "intelligent network". Companies are looking at cost reductions along with engagement and productivity gains from the BYOD tidal wave but much needs to be done to have fully integrated systems that can handle the plethora of devices chosen by employees.

The number one issue that companies have with the BYOD movement is in the area of security and trying to keep secure enterprises from falling into the wrong hands. Security has a lot to do with company culture and the understanding of employees for the need and value of company IP and no matter what technology is being used or mandated, it won't make a difference if someone really wants to screw with your security. Surveys have found that WiFi policy and the openness of the airwaves is a bigger problem than what kind of technology is being brought to work.

If companies can get it right, the productivity gains to be had from BYOD far out weigh the concerns around security, as employees wipe out the line between work and play, to be always connected, always engaged and always enjoying the experience. After all, the time spent with technology engulfs us all, so why shouldn't we at least work with our technology of choice? The devices we choose become an extension of ourselves and allow us the freedom and flexibility to multi task, work and play at the same time and not be as judgemental about the amount of work done.

I agree that BYOD has competitive advantages for staff engagement, but to truly motivate staff, companies need to reconsider their BYOG policies. Fridays have never been the same since HR cleaned out the booze cupboard.

When in Rome.

I feel for Angela Merkel and the whole EU catastrophe, especially with countries threatening a walk out if the northern EU countries don't come up with a bail out solution containing a lot of money. It continues to be a clash of cultures that meets head on at around lunch time because that's when everyone in the Med countries, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal head off for a nice glass of vino, some pasta, paella or moussaka that Momma made and then a long afternoon nap. I can see Angie now, as she diligently works the morning meetings, looking for solutions to then sit on her hands for the rest of the afternoon as the boys fill up on wine and bread, napping, dreaming of past glories, only to return when the day is finished as far as Angie is concerned.

It's a simplification and lots of people make fun of the whole siesta scenario but it feels so real after spending a few weeks in a small Italian hill town in the Abruzzo region. No tourist buses frequent the thousand year old church and piazza, no capital works take place in the town and the number of men gathering in the piazza, not doing anything, increases every day. It's a pace so slow, it's hard to see any change on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and in the old Australian vernacular, it seems no one is getting stuck into anything, as it's too hard to fight centuries of Laissez-faire attitudes and the right to take a four hour nap in the middle of the day, every day.

Coming from a corporate background, where you need twelve hours a day just to get through the emails, the indifference to the situation seems all the more frustrating when not just this town, but all towns in the Med countries shut down without thought for what these naps mean to the future. It seems they are happy to snooze into the next decades hoping that someone or some country will come up with solutions as long as they don't involve change. Change to cultural norms and change to working attitudes that don't involve a basket of bread, a glass of red wine and a kip every afternoon.

I can still see Angie sitting there, waiting for someone to join in after lunch. The trick for her will be to figure out an enterprise bargaining agreement to get rid of the mid day down time and find something worthwhile to replace it with? So what could be better than a long lunch with alcohol followed by a nap, every day? I'm struggling to come up with any suggestions but I know if the cycle isn't broken somehow, the need and the opportunity for change will be a long time coming and I'm not sure the northern EU countries will be patient forever.

OMG it's nearly one o'clock, best head back to Nonna's, as the cannelloni won't last with a couple of cousins coming over, and what if they take all the beds, my day would be ruined (pardon the Roman pun), if I don't get a couple of solid hours sleep. No telling how I'll fit back into work when I get back home? When in Rome.

La Famiglia

As I sit in the piazza of a small Umbrian town watching old men congregate round the war memorial, the bars open, siesta ends and families fill up the town. It's a small town, middle class, blue collar, doing it tough in today's Europe. Yet there is none of the aggressive attitude found in other Euro-zone countries looking for blame in sliding economies because here family will always matter more than work or the lack of it. Family bonds are strong here and they overcome the depressive nature surrounding lack of employment, unfinished capital works and homes half finished. It took four hundred years to finish the castle on the hill, so there will be plenty of time to finish the house, when times improve.

The Romans had it right, centuries ago, when they looked to increase time away from the fields, eventually turning it into leisure, lounging around the villa peeling grapes, watching Saturday afternoon gladiatorial contests and working on new pasta styles. Things were starting to look up for a work life balance, if only the Brits hadn't come along with that dam Industrial Revolution, we'd still be enjoying the villa lifestyle and making sure family was at the top of our priorities.

How often do we talk about the balance between work and life or family? How often do we attend conferences with so called lifestyle experts, espousing their latest tome on how to manage our time more efficiently? How often have we asked ourselves, what am I still doing at work or why am I still doing emails at 10 at night? We keep asking the questions but don't seem to be coming up with any definitive answers.

None of the above questions are being asked around the piazza as the waft of freshly baked bread and pasta sauce thin the crowd heading home to a full family table. None of the above questions matter, if there is a family or town event happening today, tomorrow or next week. As far as the Italians are concerned, there will always be time for work, maybe not today or tomorrow but soon, because first they take care of family and friends before any other pressing matters.

Many in the corporate world, say the choice of family over meetings, emails, constant connection and corporate success, is the reason Mediterranean economies are in the state they are in. They see the different priorities as lack of motivation and engagement, and as signs the work won't get done in time. Time has a different meaning here and because corporate timeframes aren't adhered to, doesn't mean the work won't get done.

Others point at lessons to be learnt from where I sit in the piazza and that somewhere in the middle of both the corporate and family cultures, lies an optimum lifestyle choice. I agree but the choices to be made are often difficult and a step too far in either direction makes it hard to come back to a middle ground where life balances best. Perhaps I'll start with some freshly baked bread and a bowl of pasta before answering those emails.

That's Entertainment.

Having just spent an inordinate amount of time sitting in an aluminium canister, hurtling through the air at 850 KPH, with nothing to do but eat and drink, I feel justified in providing some insights into the world of entertainment at 35,000 feet (how come we still use feet in the sky?). The first inflight movie was shown in 1921 and I'm not sure much has changed since then, except the screens are now individual so you can see the entire movie, not just the top half over someone's head in the seat in front. More movies, more music, more TV shows and the list goes on to try and cater for 500 individuals the airline so desperately needs to keep seated.

The "more" is what airlines aim for and this is also the greatest challenge they have, as the ability to match what is available to people, either end of a flight, from the Internet is unassailable. People have become so used to their own technology providing entertainment, information and connection, that to step onto a plane is to step back in time. A good book, now no longer carried in paper, may be the only recipe to counter average movies and TV on screens so small, even our grandparents had bigger ones.

With all of the technology people are carrying on board it seems a waste not to be able to use it. None of this technology can be found in the seat back and for airlines it's the opportunity to pare down the weight and not carry tons of entertainment technology, not have the maintenance headache and most of all not have complaining passengers when it inevitably breaks down mid flight. The only relevant channel to all passengers has always been the flight path map to watch how close they are to getting off and turning on their own technology.

Internet has been on board since 2004 when Boeing launched ConneXion with Lufthansa but with so few capable devices, compared to today, it flopped. Speed was also an issue in 2004 but with LTE speed capability available today, airlines are gearing up to replace their small screens with our small screens. Most analysts are saying 2015 will see all major airlines with Wifi capacity to have 500 people doing their own thing on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and whatever may be the flavour of the day. Airlines will save all that money they spend buying movies, save all that money on weight by removing screens and no doubt pass on the savings to their delighted passengers. My good friend, Qantas Captain Tony Weston, pointed out the complexities and the enormous costs involved, regarding satellites required to make this happen but unless the airline alliances get together to tackle the challenge, they will continue to be commoditised until someone else comes up with a solution. Ryan Air will no doubt be happy to pass on the charges.

It's time to move on from being limited to that best seller carry on, providing an alternative to on board technology failure and lack of content. In the end, it's the airline's job to get us from A to B safely, not to entertain us with yesterday's technology. After all, when was the last time you chose a carrier for the movies playing?

Fact or Fiction.

Data dumps, death by power point, graphs and spread sheets ad nausea and the telling signs of drooping eyelids. All signs the presentation isn't working, no matter how important or how interesting the information may be to you. Today we are inundated with data at such a pace that retention of the data is causing anxiety and people not retaining anything as they spiral into data overload. Yet if you asked people how much they remember from childhood stories read to them by their parents, consensus would see most recite large chunks of stories told 20 or 30 years ago. So why can't we remember last week's power point presentation?

Story telling is not new in the corporate world but it is gaining credence as psychology gets more involved and over the last few decades has shown stories have more power over the mind. Especially when it concerns changing attitudes, values and beliefs through story telling persuasion. Fiction may be stranger than fact but we want to believe the story more than we want to believe the data.

Psychologists are pointing out the potency of a good story, showing how absorbed we can become and how much we drop our guard. As opposed to always having our arms crossed when assaulted with raw data and information. The compelling story weaved around company values, people or products is driving today's market leaders such as Apple, Facebook and Google. Once upon a time a young Harvard student decided to get back at being dumped by his girl friend and changed online connections forever. Once upon a time two young men decided to change the face of the personal computer from their garage. Once upon a time two young men decided to change the way we searched out information by just asking the right question. Each one of those stories continues to this day and no matter the complexities of the information involved, people stay engaged because of the story.

The psychologists tell us that fiction works to alter the way we process data and information and the more involved we are in the story line the more absorbed we are in the information. This total engagement, scientists tell us, can also lead to detecting fewer falsehoods in story lines and this is the part that concerns many in the corporate world. For a listener that concern should only be raised if the story teller has no credibility and the "expert" in the title has no real CV to back it up.

I know from the stories I tell, if a salient point needs to get to an audience I make sure to weave the information in such a way as to touch them personally and make the story as relevant as possible to their situation. Story telling is a powerful, persuasive art form that if used for the "forces of good", can transform the ordinary to the extraordinary. That's what we remember when we hear "once upon a time".

Burning Bridges.

Unless you are caught in the energy and resources cyclone, the economic landscape can be challenging when it comes to the job market. You need every contact you've ever made, you need every friend you've ever had and you need every opportunity to showcase your talent and skills. On the flip side, you will not have abused any of those friendships or relations, ever, so that everyone you talk to is willing to help you succeed in finding your next great career. Today a lot of those showcase opportunities are web based because no matter how many functions, dinners and events you attend, you could never reach as many people as you can with one high profile online splash.

So it still amazes me that people are prepared to reveal their under belly of snarkiness and leave inappropriate commentary in online feedback sites. Sure, not everything posted on the web is worthwhile and we all agree the dross far out weighs the quality but why even take the time to live on the negative side when it comes to replies and comments that could, will, come back to haunt you? I mention this in light of a trend occurring in the job market where unsuccessful candidates have been caught out slagging companies that did not employ them. Slagging the company product and vision in forums, feedback sites and social media to make themselves feel better about not achieving the desired outcome of being hired by said company.

From an ethical and moral stand point it lessens the character of the commentator but more importantly is taints them forever as someone, somewhere, will always remember their footnote of infamy and as we all know, the net never forgets and comments can never be wiped. The burning bridges analogy seems lost on the net generation and it's likely because they work on the many fishes in the sea analogy with so many relationships online, they know, there is always another person out there willing to connect for a job or a connection to a job.

I know everyone has had similar experiences feeling slighted by who they saw as a future employer of choice. Everyone interviewing for a job has forecast themselves into the corner office way before decisions had been made and become disillusioned when disappointed by the decision not going their way. Yet most move beyond the disappointment because the human spirit is nothing if not optimistic and next time, next year, next job are the catch cries that keep people moving forward.

Ranting and raving online can certainly be considered moving backwards as it achieves nothing and provides future employers with ammunition to shoot down prospective employees who have not thought past the last net post. With a tightening of job markets everywhere except the quarry called Western Australia, it behoves people to put more thought into releasing their disappointments in other areas. Other areas of release such as alcohol, kicking the dog, punching the wall and beating on a family sibling are outrageously inappropriate but they won't be known by your next employer, unless you post the pictures on Facebook. Think before you print.

Go Home.

There has always been a factory mindset about what constitutes a work day. Australia often leads world bench marks in hours worked per week and we pride ourselves on time put in to do the job. Still is this where we want to be after 200 hundred years of social change in the work place? The factory act of 1802 deemed it unfair for children 9 to13 working more than 8 hours, while 14 to18 year olds were only allowed a maximum of 12 hours, all the while not mentioning the 15 hour days their parents put in 7 days a week. How far have we come? Sixty hour weeks are still common in many sectors even though most contracts have 45 hour working weeks.

Is there so much work that we can't go home? Is there a shortage of capable workers that the work can't get done? Do we still have a factory mind set about clocking in and clocking off! Is it a case of being seen at work for requisite hours to show time put in, regardless of results? Or are we just afraid to go home before the boss?

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer for Facebook, was recently applauded and congratulated for leaving work at 5.30, so that she could spend time with her family. The fact that applause follows what should be de rigueur for work days is the concern. The expectations for employees today does not leave much room for sympathy when it comes to what is important outside of work. For many it feels like we have saved the children from the pits but we have gladly taken their place.

The blurring of lines between work and life outside of work have now been mostly obliterated by technology and there seems no going back to normalcy or to what our forefathers fought for when lowering the work hours. I see no normalcy in my friends and colleagues who find fewer opportunities to work less and who are reticent to take too much time away from work. The hours still mount up, especially in the sales oriented areas where the expectation is a day of meetings and a night of back up into the CRM.

It all ends with the "how productive am I and when am I most productive" question and "what tools are available to make me more productive" question? So analysis like simple time and motion studies along with figuring out what works best for you, within the constraints of your employer is an obvious start but the big buy in will always have to come from upper management if you want to go home on time.

Could be, the trick is you don't go to work one day a week and then you don't have to worry about the stares when you pack up at 5.30. This of course will only work if your employer has moved beyond the industrial revolution and is not stuck on seeing you sit at a desk every day. The changes don't have to be that drastic if you can make technology work for you and don't let it override the need for constant massaging and interruption.

The applause for Sheryl Sandberg has died down but it should continue, so that outmoded work practices come to light, 200 years after we started working on them.