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Change Is Just Beginning: How Leaders Can Focus On Meeting 2021’s Challenges

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Archives, Executive Education, Global Trade Daily

Change Is Just Beginning: How Leaders Can Focus On Meeting 2021’s Challenges

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Business leaders dealt with massive and rapid change in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but many small businesses and chain stores didn’t survive.

As a new year begins amid much economic uncertainty, companies that successfully navigated 2020’s turbulence can’t rest, and they need engaged, forward-thinking leaders who can keep adjusting and focusing on the right factors in a volatile business environment, says Doug Meyer-Cuno, ForbesBooks author of The Recipe For Empowered Leadership: 25 Ingredients For Creating Value & Empowering Others.

“We live in a VUCA world,” says Meyer-Cuno, referring to the acronym standing for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. “We need to adjust to how fast things are changing. It means companies adjusting to AI technology, electric cars, and hub-to-hub freight liners that are driver-free. Every company needs to think out of the box.

“Leaders, therefore, need to be fast at making decisions to compete in tomorrow’s world. They’ll have to challenge themselves to look into the future and find ways for their company to not only keep pace but stay ahead of the curve.”

Meyer-Cuno offers the following ways for company leaders to meet the frequent challenges of change in 2021 and beyond:

Align change decisions with the company vision. Meyer-Cuno says many entrepreneurs and CEOs forget the importance of setting a vision for their organization, and that makes decisions in the midst of massive change more difficult or less thought out. “Reaffirming the vision must be a priority every day until it becomes part of the DNA of the company culture,” Meyer-Cuno says. “Everyone in the company must ask themselves why the organization exists. They must ask themselves this question so often that the answer is ingrained in every decision they make. Once they do, it’s possible to navigate the uncertainties of change as a unified group.”

Be more intentional with your vision, mission and core values. “Some financially successful companies lose their compass,” Meyer-Cuno says, “which shows why it’s vital for your company to be always intentional with its vision, mission and core values. They are the standard-bearers for the organization’s reputation as well as performance. The companies that will make it in the future are the ones who can push data, processes, products, and services through the pipeline the quickest. Alignment around your vision, mission, and core values are crucial in developing a company capable of great speed and agility.”

Empower your employees. Though it’s important for leaders to often come up with the ideas and planning to chart direction, Meyer-Cuno says the most effective leaders tap into the talented and smart people around them, pick their brains in their areas of expertise, and implement their ideas. “You must empower employees not to be yes men,” he says. “Ideally, you want a group that thinks, not groupthink. Encourage debate and participation from everyone. The really talented people out there want great leaders capable of empowering them.”

Don’t put up with attitude problems. High performers who set their own rules and don’t adhere to core values aren’t worth keeping around, Meyer-Cuno says, due to the damage they can inflict on the culture. “When you’re in a leadership position,” he says, “it’s vital to the success of your team that you live what you preach. If you don’t, nobody else will either. Demonstrate boundaries and what it means to do the right thing by showing you won’t accept non-compliance from your mavericks or high performers. Taking that action will serve to further empower your teams.”

“At this critical crossroads time for many businesses,” Meyer-Cuno says, “leaders need to reevaluate how strong or fragile their company foundation is and whether it is well- equipped to handle the battering winds of change.”

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Doug Meyer-Cuno is an entrepreneur, mentor, and ForbesBooks author of The Recipe For Empowered Leadership: 25 Ingredients For Creating Value & Empowering Others. He founded a food ingredients distribution company, Carolina Ingredients, and expanded it into a nationally recognized and award-winning industrial seasoning manufacturer before it was acquired by Mitsubishi in 2019. Since then he has founded Empowered Leadership, which helps entrepreneurs, business owners and CEOs scale their companies by empowering their teams. Meyer-Cuno earned his BA in International Commerce from Furman University and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management program.

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Global Leaders Require Transactional Leadership Style

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Transactional leadership means just what it says. It is a quid per quo type of relationship between the follower and leader – a carrot on the stick approach. Two prominent scholars by the names of Antonio Marturano and Jonathan Gosling in the University of Rome and the University of Exeter believe that the effectiveness of this leadership style is dependent on two conditions: one being that the current differences in organizational hierarchies and structures are totally accepted by subordinates and the second being that all the employees are able to work towards a mutual exchange of benefits in which they are rewarded for achieving determined goals.

It is somewhat reactive, however, because a benefit can be held back or taken away if the follower did not achieve the determined goals. Scholars look at it as a passing fancy, a myth, or a schematic diagram that has not been tried and true. Unfortunately for scholars, this is not true. Millions of managers were trained in transactional leadership and it has advanced into an organization’s success-both from a performance and management level.

There is a plethora of leadership theories and models that attempt to consider leadership as an enabler of firm performance. There’s an increased emphasis on the important role of leaders when interacting with followers and stakeholders. Transactional leadership involves determining the tasks, rewarding goal achievement, and punishing failure in attaining goals. Transactional leadership style is a new performance paradigm evident in organizations today. Understanding this dimension from a transactional leadership and performance paradigm may provide a significant realization bridging this important field of leadership and management.

Some scholars such as James MacGregor Burns, Edwin Hollander, and Arthur Jue illustrate that transactional leadership is successful in developing mutual exchange between leaders and employees in organizations. This leadership form actually assumes impersonal interactions in a reality where leaders do not consider higher humanistic desires or relationships between leaders and followers. This form of leadership is still based on the grounded theory that does not explore a desired probable situation. While it has its limitations, it is still widely used in organizations. This leadership style is very popular among practicing managers today. Transactional leadership is linked with organizational effectiveness, particularly in terms of achieving goals. The key is for managers to use it sparingly, on occasion, when new details and tasks are assigned but not as the main type of leadership.

Another aspect of the transactional leadership style is that managers using this style are passive by exception or laissez-faire when applying leadership. Laissez-faire is characterized by managing the situation where a problem has occurred, and leaders take a reactive approach to correct mistakes or to overcome problems. This was uncovered by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton in the management grid research and still has importance in clarifying the type of transactional leader in some instances. Transactional leadership style has been critiqued by scholars as a leadership approach that is not concerned with proactively identifying or preventing problems. Transactional leaders do advocate for knowledge sharing and joint problem solving with subordinates.

Laissez-faire leaders do not possess high commitment in seeking the proposed solutions jointly with their subordinates. When such leaders assume the responsibility or intervention to solve problems, they rarely consider the empowerment of their employees to assist in problem-solving and goal setting. To overcome this obstacle, a scholar at the University of Aalborg by the name of Josef Frischer suggests that leaders today should empower followers to engage in problem-solving.

Therefore, transactional leadership can be used to review the tasks, goals, and requirements of subordinates. Leaders would begin using transactional leadership to set goals and determine tasks and then, when time allows, move toward more transformational leadership and place more emphasis to engage followers. This supports the approach for leadership to generate two sides of an X and Y-axis. On one side is the concept of leadership that creates change through taking a process-oriented (transformational leadership) and the other as more of a relationship-oriented approach (transactional leadership).

Thus, transactional leadership does affect organizational performance by achieving business goals. And four scholars by the names of Timothy Obiwuru, Andy Okwu, Victoria Akpa, and Idowu Nwankwere affirm this relationship. They shed light on the critical role of transactional leaders in enhancing non-financial performances, particularly in terms of improving organizational commitment. Transformational leadership provides a frank appellation of the importance when beginning a leader-follower relationship, downsizing, upsizing, onboarding, and making significant changes to the structure and organizational improvements, but leaders must be aware of its limitations.

Just as leaders need to be both autocratic and democratic at times they also need to be both transactional and transformational at times also. Knowing both styles and when is best to use them is an important concern here and will defunct the myth of transactional leadership as being an adequate style of leading in and of itself.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

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5 Ways HR Can Make Diversity and Equality Central to Succession Planning

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Women are making progress in corporate leadership. A record 41 female CEOs are scheduled to run Fortune 500 companies in 2021.

Along with this positive news about diversity and equality in the workplace, business observers think another good example was set by a male CEO deciding to step down in 2021. Zalando’s Rubin Ritter said he is leaving his position so he can put his wife’s career first.

While these actions atop corporate structures signal steps forward for women, the challenge at many companies remains how to create a culture of diverse and equal succession planning at all leadership levels, says Jennifer Mackin (www.jennifermackin.com), ForbesBook author of Leaders Deserve Better: A Leadership Development Revolution and a leader of two consulting firms.

“Diverse teams are built through a focused and strategic succession plan, which identifies the best talent early on and commits to developing those people over a long period of time to replace leaders who inevitably leave,” Mackin says.

“It’s been proven that executive teams with varied backgrounds and leadership styles offer important advantages to businesses. And the C-Suite must drive the succession planning strategy in order to maximize the process.”

Mackin offers five ways for companies and their HR departments to create a culture of equal and diverse succession planning:

Intentional emphasis by top leadership. Through her experience working with many organizations, Mackin has found that even among companies focusing on diversity and inclusion, most haven’t hit their goals. One of the problems, she says, is a lack of clear initiatives backed by leadership. “Many companies don’t implement a succession plan consistently,” Mackin says. “If current leaders don’t have the time to devote to it, it comes back to bite the company when potential replacements aren’t properly prepared. It requires a culture change, where top leadership embraces diversity as a foundational part of the succession plan and the company’s future growth.”

Commitment for the long term. Mackin says it can take three to five years for a company to have sufficiently prepared people for their next move. Yet many companies find themselves in a position where they lose a key executive and they haven’t planned well enough ahead for the transition. “Succession planning is a long, detailed process that takes into account all the demands of the job while determining who best to fill it,” Mackin says. “That requires documenting key knowledge and skills needed for success, and the company identifying  support and development needs to make the replacements ready for their new role.”

Focus on all leadership roles at all levels. “A sound culture top to bottom relies on the HR team to ensure that potential leaders at each level are thoroughly prepared,” Mackin says. “That requires a broader development plan for every individual in the organization.”

Measuring performance objectively and subjectively. Mackin says consistent and high-performing employees who keep improving and take on more responsibility may have the right stuff for leadership. But determining how to objectively measure the performance of a possible future leader is critical to the overall process. “It is difficult to create a succession plan without objective data and leadership coaches, who can extrapolate that data and know what it means in terms of leadership capability,” Mackin says.

Share company plans with leadership candidates. “Sharing the plan shows employees that the company is thoughtful about their future plans, is willing to invest in employee development, and that there are opportunities to work toward,” Mackin says. “Communicating and outlining all roles will help others aspire to gain the knowledge and skills they need to fill them in the future.”

“Diversity and equality need to be a cornerstone of succession planning,” Mackin says. “That kind of culture starts at the top and never stops, showing that real progress means everyone’s included.”

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Jennifer Mackin (www.jennifermackin.com) is the ForbesBook author of Leaders Deserve Better: A Leadership Development Revolution, and a leader of two consulting firms – CEO of Oliver Group, Inc. and President and Partner of Leadership Pipeline Institute US. As an author and speaker with over 25 years of consulting experience, she is a recognized leadership development influencer, having worked with CEOs, human resources managers, leadership development leaders, entrepreneurs, and other senior leaders in all industries. She earned her BS in marketing from Indiana University and her MBA from Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University. 

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Corporate Culture, Knowledge Management and Talent Management: How Are They Linked?

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This article portrays a more detailed picture of the effects of corporate culture on knowledge management and talent management that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past.

How Corporate Culture Elevates Knowledge Management?

Culture is the resource that builds upon the foundation that helps organizations prosper. Edgar Schein, one of the prominent management scholars, describes corporate culture as a “pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”

Corporate culture is, therefore, reflected in shared assumptions, symbols, beliefs, values, and norms that specify how employees understand problems and appropriately react to them.

Executives can manifest themselves as change agents who manipulate corporate culture with the aim of improving knowledge management. Organizational culture includes three dimensions of collaboration, trust, and learning. Executives can facilitate collaboration by developing relationships in organizations. Executives can contribute to the cultural aspect of trust, by considering both employee’s individual interests and the company’s essential needs. Also, executives identify the individual needs of their employees and develop a learning culture by intellectually stimulating them to generate new knowledge and share it with others. Executives can, therefore, highly manipulate a firm’s culture to conform to the needs and expectations of strategic goals and objectives.

Knowledge management is enhanced by providing further opportunities and information sharing. Executives can enhance knowledge sharing by providing access to knowledge, and stimulate new ideas and knowledge generation, transfer an individual’s knowledge to other members and departments and improve knowledge capturing, storing, and accumulating, aiming at achieving organizational goals. Executives can propel knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas and solutions for new and demanding issues that come up constantly in our hypercompetitive economic environment. By doing this, executives can build a strong corporate culture to share experiences gained by imitating, observing, and practicing.

Executives have found that corporate culture impacts knowledge management through facilitating knowledge sharing throughout all levels of the organization. Corporate culture focuses on defining and recognizing core knowledge areas, sharing organizational knowledge, and scanning for new knowledge to keep the quality of their product or services continuously improving. Therefore, corporate culture is an essential requirement of corporate learning by which knowledge is shared among people.

Particularly, the three cultural aspects of collaboration, trust, and learning play a critical role in enhancing the effectiveness of corporate learning. For example, collaboration provides a shared understanding of the current issues and problems among employees, which helps to generate new ideas within organizations. Trust towards their leader’s decisions is a necessary precursor to creating new knowledge. The key is for executives to inculcate a culture of trust and transparency of knowledge sharing within organizations so that information can be found and used instantaneously.

Moreover, the amount of time spent learning is positively related to the amount of knowledge gained, shared, and implemented. Therefore, executives can reshape, and in some cases, manipulate corporate culture to facilitate corporate learning within departmental and business units of organizations. Executives can now see how corporate culture constitutes the foundation of a supportive workplace to share and synthesize organizational knowledge and subsequently limit the gaps between success and possible failure.

How Knowledge Management Elevates Talent Management

Executives have found that knowledge management is modifying behaviors resulting in newer insight and knowledge. Changing the existing behaviors of followers generating new knowledge is a key factor in improving a firm’s competitive advantage. This is a fact but it happens through the way talented employees are managed by executives. Why is this, you may ask? Because knowledge management is a process that leads to acquiring new insights and knowledge, and potentially to correct sub-optimal or ineffective actions and behaviors that cause companies to spiral out of control.

Executives need to first support this approach for knowledge management. Talent management in organizations is the ultimate outcome of the knowledge management by which it is created and acquired by connecting with others that want to share successes and failures. This leads to converting acquired knowledge into organizational processes and activities to improve or discontinue processes that either contribute or inhibit success. Many executives see talent management as an outcome of various factors such as knowledge management and a climate inspiring innovation and creativity within organizations. However, a more comprehensive approach needs to be introduced to put together the various aspects of potential contributions to talent management.

Knowledge management requires various processes such as knowledge acquisition, collaboration, dissemination, sharing, generation, and storage to acquire knowledge within an organization. A question remains: how can we establish the relationship between knowledge management and talent management?

Well, there are scholars that highlight the strategic role of knowledge management in enhancing the effectiveness of talent management. For example, one scholar by the name of Bayyavarapu at the University of Western Ontario suggests a learning-based approach to talent management to understand how knowledge management is related to various practices of talent management. More importantly, the effective implementation of talent management requires the sharing of best practices and experiences among employees. Knowledge management improves organizational processes by sharing knowledge that can increase both follower engagement and personal development.

Executives can, in fact, enhance knowledge management when they would like to concentrate on sharing it to empower followers in order to build a learning climate. Most importantly, knowledge is managed through “learning by doing” which is more engaging. Executives around the globe realize that they play a critical role to achieve the best learning climate and for improving knowledge management that creates learning and growing the organization. Engaging followers and getting them to participate in knowledge management activities is an important part of talent management. Thus, knowledge management positively impacts the effectiveness of talent management through facilitating knowledge sharing by all executives and employees of the organization. Shared knowledge can contribute to the development of a learning organization in which people continuously grow and develop both personally and professionally. Executives require people who are engaged and inspired to meet the demands of day-to-day operations.

For now, executives can develop conducive learning climates that foster collaboration and knowledge management in which knowledge is shared and exploited. Unshared knowledge is like lettuce in the refrigerator—if eaten and shared, everyone enjoys it, if not, it could go bad and not have any use. Executives found that shared knowledge enables companies to improve knowledge management, and that talent management is highly dependent on stimulating continuous learning within organizations. Executives play a crucial role in elevating talent management by enhancing knowledge management to empower employees to pursue organizational goals.

The following figure provides a snapshot of how executives steering corporate culture enhance knowledge management and talent management.

In Conclusion

Insufficient consideration of the impact of knowledge management on the organization’s talent management has been also exposed. Thus, I suggest that scholars take our ideas and continue to conduct research using executives as the focal point so that academic scholarship can meet the needs of managerial implications at the higher echelons of organizations worldwide.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

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Archives, Executive Education, Global Trade Daily

How Lifelong Learning Is Becoming A New Version Of The MBA

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When higher education looks back on 2020 in decades to come, the year of the pandemic could be viewed as a turning point for MBAs and other advanced degrees.

COVID-19 forced a nationwide experiment in online learning, and one lesson stemming from that experiment maybe that furthering your education doesn’t necessarily need to mean paying high tuition to earn a formal post-graduate degree.

“We all need to be lifelong learners if we hope to achieve our goals and lead a fulfilling life,” says Kimberly Roush, founder of All-Star Executive Coaching (www.allstarexecutivecoaching.com) and co-author of Who Are You… When You Are Big?

“But that can mean many things, and because of the pandemic I think it’s become even more clear that the ways we approach educating ourselves don’t need to be stuck in the notions from the past of how learning takes place.”

Harvard’s and Columbia’s business schools are already adding certificates and lifelong learning to their programs. Instead of immersing themselves in a degree program for a compact period of time, students have the option to stretch their learning out over years, latching on to what meets their current needs.

That kind of approach fits well with the goals and lifestyles of many business leaders, says Roush. She offers a three-month group-coaching program for executives in transition called “Back In the Game,” which provides business leaders with a chance to continue learning and honing skills to help reignite careers thrown off track by the pandemic.

Roush has advice for those who want to keep adding to their knowledge base throughout their careers, whether that’s done through a certificate program, a one-time online class, coaching sessions, or a more formal degree:

Think deeply about yourself and your goals. Allow yourself the time and space to reflect and get off autopilot so you can be deliberate and intentional as you move forward, Roush says. “We tend to be all about drive and action,” she says. “Reflecting on ourselves is something that often gets overlooked. In some cases, people don’t have the tools to do it effectively.”

Strive to be a learner, not a knower. Some people are “knowers” and others are “learners,“ Roush says. “Knowers feel compelled to know the answer, a sign of an insecure ego,” she says. “In today’s world, of course, it’s impossible for any one person, or any one leader, to know it all. Knowers operate more out of control than out of curiosity. They do not really lead so much as they manage.” Lifelong learners, on the other hand, have a predisposition to be curious. “They have a healthy ego,” she says, “so they have no problem saying, ‘I don’t know the answer, but let’s figure it out.’ ”

Recognize that your joy for learning can impact others. When business leaders are learners, this creates more of a partnership approach with employees, who feel empowered as a result. “The focus is on working together,” Roush says. “It all stems from that natural curiosity. By asking ‘what’ and ‘how,’ leaders encourage more conversation—and more learning by everyone.”

Understand that self-improvement doesn’t always involve major change. Roush has worked with many executives who made adjustments in their careers, but those adjustments need not be dramatic.  “Often, people have been deliberate about their career choice and love their field; they just have gotten caught up in a part of it that they don’t like,” she says. “Sometimes, it’s just a matter of getting back to their roots and remembering what they love about their job and allowing themselves to focus far more on that. You don’t necessarily have to make the big right turn and completely change what you’re doing. You’re not necessarily on the wrong path; you may just have hit a rough stretch or don’t know exactly where you are.”

“Great coaches are always still learning too,” Roush says. “I’m constantly looking for new opportunities to learn and grow and I get to learn from every person I coach – we learn together.  One thing I always want to do is spread the word about the power that resides within each of us if we reach for our potential.”

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Kimberly Roush is the founder of All-Star Executive Coaching (www.allstarexecutivecoaching.com), which specializes in coaching C-level and VP-level executives from Fortune 100 companies to solo entrepreneurs. She also is co-author of Who Are You… When You Are Big? Roush, a former national partner with a “Big 4” public accounting firm, brings more than 30 years of business experience to her coaching including extensive work with C-suite executives, boards of directors, and audit committees. She offers a program called Back In the Game (BIG), which is a three-month group coaching program for executives in transition. Roush also is a keynote speaker and leadership facilitator, and is a Charter Member of ForbesSpeakers.

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Datebook: Here’s Our Roundup of the Latest Logistics-Focused Conferences

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IMTS Spark, Now through March 15, 2021, Virtual

imts.com/spark/

One of the manufacturing industry’s most anticipated events, the International Manufacturing Technology Show, has, because of the COVID-19 crisis, gone from an in-person, one-time event to an ongoing, fully virtual showcase of leaders in manufacturing technology.

Shipping & Logistics India, Dec. 20-22, Chennai Trade Centre, Chennai, India

10times.com/logistics-expo

The event’s goal is to identify and strengthen the industry’s role in the economic development of India, to reinforce the industry’s commitment to society, to create awareness, and support the industry’s efforts on quality, environment, energy management, and consumer protection.

Midwest Association of Rail Shippers Annual Winter Meeting, Jan. 20, 2021, Virtual

mwrailshippers.com

Presented twice annually, the open forum for discussion and resolution of rail transportation issues brings together railroads, shippers, receivers, and rail supply companies.

Marine Money London Forum, Jan. 22, 2021, The Dorchester, London, UK

10times.com/mmlf

The industry’s most important international ship finance forum promises guest speakers and opportunities for attendees to learn from experts in maritime finance, investment and capital formation.

Temperature Control & Logistics Forum, Jan. 26-28, 2021, Virtual

pharma-iq.com/events-temperaturecontrolledlogistics/

Presented 100 percent online for the first time, the event includes one day of pre-qualified meetings and two days of thought-provoking keynotes, case studies and panel discussions.

Logistics, Feb. 25-27, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India

10times.com/logistics-newdelhi

At the exhibition on logistics solutions, services, and supply chain management, a special focus will be placed on the industry’s direct impact on the efficiency of business in India as well as newer technologies that cut costs and/or boost efficiency.

Smart Ports Russia, March 24, 2021, President-Hotel, Moscow, Russia

10times.com/e1s5-k3ds-5sf5

This conference focuses on sea, river, and dry ports and terminals, port administrations, as well as companies operating in related industries. Port managers and owners, CTOs, top managers responsible for the innovative development and modernization of ports and terminals are the target audience.

GreenTech in Shipping USA, April 20-21, 2021, Hilton Miami Airport, Miami, Florida

10times.com/usgreentechshipping

This conference features topics such as environmental regulations and sustainable development, ports and green technologies, future fuels, engineering solutions for better efficiency, repair, retrofit, and ship modifications, ballast water treatment solutions, and more.

WEBINARS

Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT) Webinars

On demand at conect.org

CONECT, a nonprofit, member-based business association for companies involved in international trade and/or transportation, presents these webinars on current issues facing the international trade community: ”The Brave New Post-COVID World;” “U.S.-China Trade in a Time of Crisis;” “The Coronavirus Effect: Real-Life Strategies for Mitigating Its Impact;” “China Tariffs Mediation: Section 301 Exclusions and Country of Origin Strategies;” “Staying Compliant in a Time of Supply Chain Disruption;” and “The Trade Wars and Minimizing Duties.”

COVID-19 & the Last Mile: Rethinking the Approach to Demand Fluctuations

On demand at eloqua.eft.com

Speakers from GEODIS, SEKO Logistics and Scandit & Shipt discuss: technology solutions to deal with variations in demand and improve customer experience; leveraging a digital first software approach and more.

Immediate and Long-Term Supply Chain Moves for Forward-Thinking Brands

On demand at info.leancor.com/logistics-network-design-and-deployment

LeanCor provides a current state assessment and future state vision of your network that maximizes profitable customer service at the lowest total cost.

Supply Chain Visibility

On demand at reutersevents.com

Experts from Domino’s, Ryder System, T-Mobile and CFI/TFI International discuss risk and resilience, customer experience and efficiency gains, among other topics.

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10 Ways to Make Knowledge Transfer Between Employees Effective

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Your business’s success lies in your ability to get the right information to the right people at the right time. Miscommunications can be greatly detrimental to your organization. Knowledge management systems are designed to streamline your information sharing experiences for your business. 

As your organization grows and evolves, it becomes necessary to duplicate the knowledge of the existing staff. Such preemptive measures cushion you and your business when a founder or employee leaves, with their absence risking the sustainability of the organization. Knowledge sharing platforms facilitate continuous communication among the different divisions in your business for smooth operations, even during large transitions. 

This exchange of knowledge, using either audio, video, or text, inspires collaboration, which, in turn, increases productivity. An efficient knowledge transfer system allows you to capture and save vital information for use by future generations. Information sharing systems leads to better decision-making, innovation, and performance in an organization. The process’s essence is to create new knowledge that can help better the organization moving forward. 

Here are 10 methods you can use to transfer key information between the employees of your company effectively. 

Using Technology

Embrace knowledge sharing technology to capture and save vital company or business information. Technology automates the captured information in a variety of formats for safekeeping’s sake. Knowledge sharing tools are capable of removing any duplicate information collected from many employees. Additionally, it’s advisable to encourage your employees to start a social media group where they get to collaborate and exchange information. 

Training your employees

Training is paramount for duplicating the existing employee’s knowledge. It helps keep the knowledge alive if an employee were to depart and the company doesn’t have a ready replacement. Organizations need to operate with a back-up plan in the event that the most experienced IT guy or any other core employees choose to leave. 

Your organizations can’t afford to get caught flat-footed, and that’s why you always need to keep training programs running non-stop. If you don’t have sufficient resources to pay for your employees’ formal training, you can try the less expensive e-learning experiences. 

Promoting networking

Nurture a culture where your employees regularly meet up to exchange information in your organization. Plan for events that bring about teams from different divisions of your company for improved information collection.

These informal gatherings are a great way for your employees to pass on key information to the younger staff. For instance, having a water-cooler at the office or an employee lounge can encourage your staff to congregate and, in the process, exchange information. 

Using formal documentation

Transferring key information in your organization is an intricate step-by-step process. One slight misstep and you risk undoing all the past gains. There are several tools such as Word Docs, Excel Spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations, that you can use to store knowledge. 

That said, you can capture valuable knowledge, without shelling out the big bucks, in a simple and pain-free process by making use of free downloadable PowerPoint templates. A huge perk of most free slides is that they’re easy to use, even for employees who have no experience in making presentations. These are highly customizable, so you can tailor them according to your knowledge-transfer needs.

Armed with the right documentation tools, your employees have a simpler time outlining the procedures in a process. These tools also make it easier for the teams to track their goals. Documenting the process uplifts the morale of the team members. 

Encourage your employees to take and share notes during office gatherings and watch how the overall productivity peaks from then on. 

Leveraging other employees’ knowledge

Hiring consultants to develop an effective knowledge transfer system in your organization is another great idea. Bear in mind, however, that the consultant may eventually leave. Therefore, it’s prudent to get this consultant to share their knowledge with specific employees. The employees will, in turn, carry on overseeing the knowledge transfer practices instituted by the hired consultant. 

Collecting data

Accurate employee data and information is critical when creating efficient knowledge-sharing systems. Use spreadsheets to collect vital info such as the employees’ names and their importance to the organization, the impact of the information known by these employees, and the resources needed to impart that knowledge to other employees. 

Make use of mentors

Mentors, whether short or long-term, play a critical role in disseminating key information in your organization. Mentorship is a great avenue for organizations to transfer implied and underlying information from one generation to the next. 

Enabling employees to gain experience

Getting hands-on experience from a more experienced team member is a simple way to learn about an organization’s history and culture. Guided experiences are perfect for transferring those skills that require a more practical approach, such as auto mechanics. 

Promoting the use of virtual simulations 

Organizations have upped the game, and they’re now using augmented reality and 3D animations to train their employees. This modern technology confers plenty of rewards to the employees and the owners as well. Augmented reality and other impressive technology tools promote the transfer of knowledge within an organization. 

Keeping track of results

Use knowledge management tools to assess the signs of progress, if any, of your knowledge transfer plans. Tools such as Pipedrive and Hubspot allow you to track your performance progress by setting up benchmarks. As you grow and evolve, make sure you regularly assess your organization’s knowledge transfer practices and their effectiveness.  

Benefits of Knowledge Transfer 

Knowledge transfer systems facilitate the capturing and eventual dissemination of key knowledge across your business. Employees obtain better access to the saved information as the system streamlines communication in an organization. These practices boost confidence and productivity in employees. Knowledge transfer systems enable faster decision-making. 

In Conclusion

Investing in a knowledge transfer system is a must for businesses. This system helps automate and streamline capturing, saving, and analyzing information surrounding your organization’s culture and systems.

Effective knowledge transfer builds stronger, happier, and healthier organizations. Creating a robust knowledge-sharing culture involves several key steps, such as identifying and collecting information, capturing and saving knowledge, transferring and sharing the information, and applying that knowledge. 

Organizations are also required to regularly assess the applied knowledge-sharing measures to weed out any redundancies.

If you realize a particular approach isn’t delivering the expected results–for example, your social media strategy–immediately revise your plans.

Avoid waiting to the last minute to replace your experienced workers if they’re about to retire or complete their tenures. Be smart and develop a knowledge-sharing culture of duplicating skills within your organization today. 

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How Management Consultants Can Fix Knowledge Management

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There is a scientific, philosophical, and organizational side to knowledge that executives should at least be aware of in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. Scientific knowledge is objective and manifests itself as provable and verifiable knowledge or truth, while philosophical knowledge clarifies that truth is inaccessible. The key for executives is that organizational knowledge, unlike scientific and philosophical knowledge, focuses on enhancing effective performance. Answering the questions executives often ask: “What works?”

Based on this view, this kind of knowledge empowers the capabilities of an organization, and actively improves its competitive advantage in the marketplace. Executives are already aware that organizational knowledge takes an objective approach and can positively contribute to a firm’s performance. This is why executives care whether knowledge is organizational or not? The simple answer is that if organizational knowledge is not shared and managed, companies may become obsolete, taken over, or acquired. The key is how to use this knowledge, enhance it, distribute it, and capture it.

Every executive is held to the grindstone of maximizing financial and non-financial measures—their careers are tied to company performance measures. Every executive also knows that company performance measures can illustrate whether knowledge management is contributing to bottom-line improvement. This article articulates a different approach and introduces a new perspective of knowledge management by showing how knowledge management consultants can help companies to better manage knowledge, meaning that organizational knowledge is power and can be used as an asset when competing with rivals. This is my experience of working with a team of top-level management consultants around the globe.

Consultants can look at three-step processes of knowledge accumulation, integration, and reconfiguration. This model to managing knowledge reflects a more strategic and practical perspective, as it is process-oriented and most applicable in the context of leading organizations. Consultants know that applying this model is advantageous and good sound strategic implementation. In this model, organizational knowledge is accumulated by creating new knowledge from organizational intellectual capital and acquiring knowledge from external environments. In the process of knowledge accumulation, the exchange of knowledge with external business partners can develop innovative environments.

Consultants can play a strategic role in expanding knowledge accumulation by applying incentives as mechanisms to develop a more innovative climate and managing effective tools to acquire knowledge from external sources. They can particularly develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Acquiring knowledge about new products/services within our industry.

-Benchmarking performance with competitors or industry.

-Using feedback to improve subsequent practices.

-Utilizing teams (e.g. committees or management teams) to manage knowledge resources.

-Developing and implementing education or training programs.

-Carrying out a career path program or recruitment program to acquire experts.

-Conducting organizational events (such as a “knowledge contest” or “knowledge fair”) that promote knowledge activities.

Secondly, consultants can improve knowledge integration by facilitating knowledge sharing around the organization. In fact, they can positively impact knowledge integration by creating expert groups and enhancing dynamic relationships among employees and departments and within companies. A systematic process of coordinating company-wide experts will enable companies by developing a more innovative climate within organizations. Further, it can be seen that some qualities indicating a high-performing expert group (such as trust and reciprocity) are highly overlapped with the definition of organizational effectiveness describing organizational capabilities in creating trust and reciprocity. Based on this view, it could be argued that effective coordination of company-wide experts itself can provide a significant contribution to organizational effectiveness, thereby developing a climate that all leaders aim to create. In particular, consultants can develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Monitoring or controlling organizational knowledge to keep products or services in line with market requirements.

-Regularly assessing knowledge requirements according to environmental changes.

-Linking the knowledge sharing system using various software and programs.

-Defining “core knowledge” or “core competence” areas.

-Using expert groups to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of organizational knowledge.

-Disseminating organizational knowledge among employees.

-Rewarding individuals or teams based on the quality of knowledge generated.

Thirdly, the knowledge within organizations needs to be reconfigured to meet environmental changes and new challenges. In this process, knowledge is globally shared with other organizations in the environment. Consultants can promote knowledge reconfiguration by improving networking with external sources and developing relationships. Further, they can also inspire organizational members to network with more successful companies. It is evident that networking with external business partners improves effectiveness, thereby providing directions for chief executive officers to develop a more effective corporate vision incorporating various concerns and values of external business partners.

Moreover, it is believed that networking with other companies contributes to the effectiveness of learning, which in turn empowers human resources by creating new knowledge and solutions. Accordingly, the process of knowledge reconfiguration can play a crucial role in enhancing organizational effectiveness. Especially at the corporate level, consultants can develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Creating knowledge alliances with suppliers, customers, or other partners.

-Sharing knowledge management visions and goals with external partners (such as suppliers and customers or other partners) to develop collaborative activities, shared goals, and trust-based relationships with them.

-Extending (or linking) knowledge-related policies or rules (measurement, rewards) with external partners (such as customers, suppliers, or other partners).

-Linking our knowledge-sharing system with external partners (such as customers, suppliers, or other partners).

-Facilitating and implementing activities such as conferences, contests, seminars with external partners.

In conclusion, organizational knowledge must be guarded and not shared with the competition. Any leak of such information may expose the organization and increase the operational risk. The three processes of knowledge management mentioned above, when carried out correctly, can prevent further operational risk in today’s knowledge-based economy.

One important dimension that all leaders world-wide can learn from this article is that knowledge management consultants can help clients’ companies to address the current gaps in knowledge management performance and improve their competitiveness in today’s uncertain business environment.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

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In The Digital Age, Leadership Is More Important Than Ever

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There are some executives that like to look at academic journals but unfortunately, the crossover literature has not reached them enough. I attempt to blend scholarly concepts with real-world applications. For the executive’s corner, I place a great deal of emphasis on the literature of leadership and information technology as two significant indicators for financial performance. This article adds to a relatively small body of literature but pays homage to the scholarly contributions. I highlight the direct impact of leadership on financial performance, and also simultaneously portray the indirect contribution of leadership in improving organizational outcomes by implementing information technology as another important component of organizational performance. This article actually investigates the crossover potential of scholarly research and how it can be applied in the organizational boardroom.

Executives will also see that cultivating effective technological initiatives requires developing leadership within companies—not only at the higher echelons of the company but at every level. In light of the increased pressures of the global workplace that inspires executives to exert effective change at the organizational level, this article points out the vital importance of leadership in reshaping and, in some cases, manipulating a company’s internal resources to have access to higher performing technology within companies.

The focus of this article is based upon the critical role of leadership which allows a rich basis for understanding the mechanisms by which knowledge integration and financial performance are influenced. Scholars repeatedly uncovered leadership impacts on knowledge integration and financial performance. This article articulates a different approach. I simply extended the current literature by showing how executives can contribute to knowledge integration and financial performance by fostering effective technological platforms. These two factors coupled with leadership are presented as a new approach for executive implementation.

I also suggest that executives embrace leadership. Leadership influences some of the spans of control of executive responsibility. My primary focus is on one factor (i.e. information technology) but there are many more important components of the managerial function that can be enhanced when leadership is embraced. The key here is that there are positive effects of information technology, knowledge integration, and financial performance.

Executives will also see that I expand upon the subject matter of a company’s internal resources. Through articulating the impacts of leadership on information technology, I add to the current and extant literature. Insufficient consideration of the impact of leadership on the companies’ internal resources has been exposed and I attempt to address this concern for the first time. For executives, this article can portray a more detailed picture of the effects of leadership on information technology, knowledge integration, and financial performance that have been mentioned but not placed in a model in the past.

Leadership and Information Technology

The only thing we know is technological change is on the rise. With the inception of new technology and services quickly becoming obsolete, executives are staid with managing the future that is somewhat evasive.

Executives can develop relationships and interactions within companies, set desired expectations, and inspire employees to identify further opportunities in their business environment. When executives view information technology as a vital important organizational resource that facilitates organizational communications and improves the search for knowledge, they begin to see opportunities for successful business ventures.

Executives also spend a great deal of time conceptualizing strategic endeavors, and scholars affirm that the strategic role of leadership is enhanced when the implementation of information technology successfully occurs at the right time and place. Thus, executives raise the levels of awareness on the importance of technology and empower employees to improve the effectiveness of information technology implementation within companies. Therefore, executives can positively affect information technology implementation within companies. Executives must understand that leadership can highly support information technology to improve knowledge integration and financial performance and, therefore, remain competitive.

Leadership and Financial Performance

Executives develop organizational communications aimed at providing valuable resources for all employees. Thus, executives can enhance knowledge sharing among employees and stipulate knowledge to be shared around the company. Sharing the best practices and experiences could positively impact aspects of organizational performance such as innovation and providing learning and growth opportunities for employees. Empowered employees can also enable a company to actively respond to environmental changes and collective-interests. The key idea is to identify employee’s needs and show concern for both organizational needs and employee’s interests concurrently.

When executives show concern for the employee’s individual needs, individuals begin to contribute more commitment and they become more inspired to put extra effort into their work. This extra effort improves the quality of services, customer satisfaction, and impacts the return on assets, sales, shareholder value, and improves operational risk management.

Executives can also inspire employees by setting highly desired expectations. A higher level of follower expectation can enhance productivity and perhaps decrease organizational costs. Scholars agree that executives positively affect financial performance through improving the price of stock, decreasing costs, increasing sales, improving innovation, increasing the rate of responses to environmental changes, improving the quality of services, along with a stronger customer focus and developing learning opportunities for employees. Thus, leadership is positively associated with companies’ financial performance.

Information Technology and Financial Performance

Information technology significantly contributes to company financial performance. Scholars acknowledge that information technology is an important enabler to effectively implement organizational processes. Communication technologies can, in fact, reduce paper-based transactions for companies that can potentially decrease costs and subsequently improve profitability for companies. Furthermore, it can be seen that communication technologies contribute to companies to effectively identify opportunities in the business environment that leads to identifying the best opportunities for investment in the industry that potentially leads to improve financial performance for companies in terms of return on investment (ROI).

Decision-aid technologies as another kind of information technology can also help companies to effectively create more innovative solutions for their organizational problems. Executives can, therefore, build a high-performance company through implementing information technology.

Information Technology and Knowledge Integration

Information Technology is the new competitive advantage and the companies that embrace it will survive while those that do not will find their companies facing possible acquisition. Information technology is a resource for knowledge integration. With knowledge integration, executives can sustain current operations while preparing future endeavors. Information technology, as a competitive resource, encourages employees to embark on technological facilities such as shared electronic workspaces to provide new ideas and possible solutions for solving problems. Problems that may leave a company to debunk and less competitive.

Scholars found that the lack of innovative workplaces adversely impacts the company’s capability to integrate knowledge, and they suggest that companies use information technology to successfully facilitate knowledge integration. Information technology, therefore, plays a critical role in integrating knowledge by executives and is also aligned with the knowledge-based view of the firm which not only builds upon the dissemination of information but also how it is restored and retrieved.

Some Lessons for Executives

This article theorizes that leadership has significant effects on information technology. It follows that cultivating effective impacts on information technology is assisted by developing leadership within companies. The practical contribution of this article lies in explaining how executives influence information technology.

This article suggests that information technology constitutes the foundation of a supportive framework to improve knowledge integration and financial performance. In fact, it can be argued that if information technology is not completely supportive of knowledge integration, companies cannot expect to benefit fully from knowledge management projects.

Both in theory and in practice, information technology is depicted as an important enabler for knowledge integration and financial performance. Scholars noted that a strong alignment exists between the success of knowledge management projects and information technology implementation and found that knowledge management projects are more likely to succeed when companies develop and use broader technological infrastructures. This article goes further and provides elaborative insights for executives by modeling how information technology mediates the relationship between leadership, knowledge integration, and financial performance.

This article reveals that executives actively deploy this organizational resource (i.e. information technology) to improve knowledge integration, and it is quite understandable that leaders are better suited to enable knowledge management projects within companies through channeling knowledge management efforts into employing supportive information technology. Therefore, this article suggests that it is critical that executives understand that leadership supports information technology implementation to effectively manage knowledge management projects.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

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Executive Leadership, Culture, Strategy: How Are They Aligned?

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Executives are faced with challenging economic conditions today with global competition increasing and the need to be number one or two in an industry or fail to keep up with the market place. This new economic environment may have a negative emotionality that can seriously reduce people’s capabilities in changing and overcoming challenging situations.

To offset the negativity associated with widening the gaps of success and failure, executives that act as leaders can manage a firm’s internal resources (corporate culture and corporate strategy) and use them as an important driving force for business success. This may be the answer executives need but may also lack the fundamental fortitude necessary to be an all-encompassing model to predict customer satisfaction, employee or follower satisfaction, and financial profitability. Executives that embrace leadership around the globe realize that they have a positive impact on corporate culture, corporate strategy, and play a critical role to achieve the best climate for implementing strategic changes that create learning and growing the organization. This effective leadership will be covered in-depth throughout the rest of the article with the main focal point being introduced here as the simple application of executive leadership.

How Can Leaders Leverage the Power of a Strategic Approach?

Leaders across the globe have found that corporate strategy is critical to business success. A corporate strategy could be the most important component of success in this ever-changing business environment of today.

Executives evaluate the success of a corporate strategy. The corporate strategy reflects the degree to which a company can expand and determine the right pathway to success. The key function of a corporate strategy is to help executives with the achievement of goals. In this context, corporate strategy is becoming the forefront of success in corporations worldwide. Success, therefore, is dependent upon how executives formulated their organization’s strategy. Thus, corporate strategy has been a focal point of the executive span of control but has not been associated with leadership enough to make it an integral part of organizational success.

One outcome of corporate strategy is to connect knowledge with other companies that want to share successes and failures. Leaders can inspire organizational members to network with more successful competitors by sharing successes to build alliances and not only enhance competition but communicate best practices as a way of keeping the highest standard of operation in the industry. In doing this, leaders implement corporate strategy to develop relationships with external environments to identify new opportunities that occur in an ever-changing hypercompetitive marketplace. Leaders, in fact, implement corporate strategy to expand the growth opportunities available to organizations that may be challenging but important to close the gap between success and failure. This leads to converting acquired knowledge into organizational processes and activities to improve or discontinue processes that contribute success. Therefore, leadership is pertinent to corporate strategy implementation and an organization’s success.

Does Corporate Strategy Really Build Corporate Culture?

Executives focus on individuals as the major source of knowledge. This shows how followers tie together so that they can impact the sharing, storage, transfer, and application of knowledge within organizations. Executives, therefore, see these connections, and the related shared knowledge and memory, as central to the effectiveness of corporate culture. Executives know that corporate strategy through sharing individual knowledge around the organization can positively contribute to building a strong corporate culture. Therefore, executives should build an atmosphere of trust and openness and use corporate strategy to convert individual knowledge into valuable resources. This will allow their organization to close the performance gap and help it prosper. The key is for executives to inculcate corporate culture within organizations so that information can be found and used instantaneously. Corporate culture enables organizations to promote the depth and range of knowledge access within companies.

Corporate culture is enhanced by providing further opportunities and information sharing. Executives can enhance knowledge sharing by providing access to knowledge,  stimulate new ideas, transfer an individual’s knowledge to other members and departments, and improve knowledge capturing, storing, and accumulating, aimed at achieving organizational goals. Executives that employ corporate strategy can propel knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas for new and demanding issues that come up in our hypercompetitive economic environment. In doing this, executives can employ corporate strategy through implementing coaching and mentoring practices by sharing experiences gained by imitating, observing, and practicing.

Executives that use corporate strategy have found that it builds a strong corporate culture by facilitating knowledge sharing throughout all levels of the organization. Corporate strategy focuses on defining and recognizing core knowledge areas, coordinating expert opinions, sharing organizational knowledge, and scanning for new knowledge to keep the quality of their products or services continuously improving. Corporate strategy, therefore, is an essential requirement of corporate culture by which knowledge is shared among people.

However, executives may lack the required corporate strategy to interact with other organizations or distrust sharing their knowledge. Executives are, therefore, clearly the right focal point for developing networking with environmental components by adopting a corporate strategy to develop relationships and interactions. The key here is to inspire their organizations as a whole to develop networking with more effective enterprises through employing corporate strategy directed at connecting knowledge with other companies. Executives are finding that corporate strategy creates a shared understanding of problems which can develop an effective corporate culture that enhances the knowledge sharing process.

Through the corporate strategy, executives can build a climate inspiring followers to share their knowledge, and facilitate the knowledge sharing process. Thus, executives can apply corporate strategy to enhance knowledge sharing among human capital and stipulate knowledge to be shared around the organization and with other companies. The following figure provides a snapshot of how leadership, corporate strategy, and corporate culture are linked in companies.

In Conclusion

Executives can now see how leadership not only directly supports corporate strategy but can also cultivate an effective strategic decision-making process, enabling corporate culture within organizations. Leadership has a significant effect on an organization’s internal resources. Executives can also see that cultivating an effective strategic plan coupled with cultural issues requires developing leadership within organizations—not only at the higher echelons of the organization but at every level. Thus, in light of the increased pressures of the global workplace that inspires leaders to exert effective change at the organizational level, this article points out the vital importance of leadership in reshaping an organization’s internal resources to have access to more effective strategic initiatives and higher performing culture within organizations.

This article also suggests that both internal resources of corporate strategy and corporate culture constitute the foundation of a supportive workplace to improve business success and reduce operational risk. Standing on the shoulders of scholars before us, I indicate that corporate strategy and corporate culture are major internal resources for business success and support the positive impact of these two vital factors on business success.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.