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“There’s No Elevator to the Top” by Umesh Ramkrishnan, Portfolio, $25.95. How would you like to pick the brains of top executives to find out how they managed their careers? That’s exactly what Ramkrishnan, a noted executive recruiter did. Executives from Aetna, Coca-Cola, Dell, Fidelity, Lenovo, PepsiCo and other firms share what worked — and didn’t — for them.

The one thing that binds their stories: Building a career resembles rock wall climbing — going “up” by moving sideways, diagonally and sometimes even down to gain the toeholds and handholds of learning experiences.

Here are some key takeaways: Listening goes well beyond feedback. It’s an opportunity to show those around you that you acknowledge and appreciate their expertise, experience and concerns. Listening builds the highway leading to trust and respect, and adds the allies you’ll need on your climb.

The best time to advocate for change is when the company is doing well. It’s not a case of discarding what’s working; rather it’s an opportunity to leverage the momentum of a strong position to get to another level. Change emanating from strength yields more positive outcomes. When change is forced (i.e. when the firm is losing), it’s driven out of fear and lack of momentum; it’s rare that positive results come when backpedaling.

You can only play your A-game when surrounded by A-players. You need the best people to extract the best from you. They fill in your gaps and help eliminate your blindspots.

Written in an engaging, almost-conversational style, it feels like you’re having a lunch discussion with these movers and shakers.

Read the full article here.

Building and managing a talent base across multiple geographies, including mature and emerging markets, is a continuing challenge for global corporations. Emerging markets in particular often present new hurdles, almost universally including shortages of senior and specialized executive talent, even as regional operations are growing rapidly.

When the portion of corporate revenues generated in emerging markets amounted to a few percentage points, it was easier to downplay the significance of such challenges. That is no longer the case. As an ever-growing portion of the revenue of global businesses is earned in emerging markets, corporations must direct new attention to fully understanding and appreciating those markets and the unique talent management requirements that must be met in order to operate effectively in target regions.

Today, a global talent imbalance persists, with mature markets facing high unemployment amid economic malaise, while emerging markets experience talent scarcity amid more rapid economic growth. And although it is a significant challenge to recruit and retain expert, experienced executives across the globe, that is especially the case in emerging markets, where senior and specialized talent shortages are the norm. Amid rapid growth, multinational corporations need well-informed and thoughtful strategies for navigating the talent markets of these pivotal economies, as well as targeted development programs that will build the emerging markets leaders of tomorrow.

Read the full article here.

With world-class organizations leading the way, HR is playing an ever more critical role in enabling corporations to achieve their strategic objectives by developing and implementing those human capital strategies that will best enable them to respond to the significant economic forces, competitive realities, and demographic trends that are shaping today’s and tomorrow’s possibilities.

In industries and regions around the globe, developed and developing economies alike, human resources executives increasingly are serving as thought leaders and essential business partners to chief executives, boards of directors, C-Suite executives, regional and country managers, and other members of worldwide leadership teams. As the value of this management trend becomes more apparent, companies are expanding their vision of, and commitment to, strategically oriented human resources.

For a profession that was once most closely associated with administrative functions such as benefits and compensation, this is nothing short of a transformation. As one of the most impactful management developments in today’s global marketplace, the trend first took root in North America and Europe, soon spreading to other developed economies such as Australia. It is, however, rapidly gaining momentum in emerging markets throughout Asia, Russia and Central Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Indeed, the HR landscape is rapidly evolving. In developing regions across the globe, exceptional growth opportunities are combining with razor-sharp competition and highly complex talent challenges in ways that demand–and deeply benefit from–the insights and involvement of strategically minded, broadly experienced, and culturally sensitive human resources executives.

Within emerging markets, this expanding role of HR is scarcely surprising, whether this change is taking place within global or regionally based corporations. That’s because talent truly does deliver the competitive edge in these economies, where speed is of the essence in capitalizing upon new and unfolding business opportunities, and the demand for qualified professionals far exceeds supply.

Read the full article here.

The human resource department — the corporate home of hiring, firing, compensation and employee benefits — is undergoing a major transformation. Technology has automated basic functions, forcing HR to reshape its identity.

Boards are demanding higher-level HR executives to become strategic partners in dealing with new regulations and the problems facing companies battered by the global recession. And the financial crisis has forced companies to evaluate their management teams and revamp entire workforces for a post-recession economy.

The challenges are great, and a new kind of HR executive is emerging to meet them, in the process turning our traditional concept of human resources on its head. Five major forces are driving the changes that will end HR as we know it by the year 2020:

1. Technology Changing the Game – For decades, technology has been helping companies automate basic HR functions. Through employee self-service systems via intranets, employees can access the information and support to manage their own health benefits, 401(k) programs and day-to-day HR transactions. Companies have also been reducing costs and staffing requirements by turning to outsourcing providers to handle benefits administration, payroll, employee education, workforce analytics and recruitment-process outsourcing for junior-level positions.

2. New Rules – The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 riled the business world by setting new standards for all U.S. public-company boards, management and public-accounting firms. Nine years later, the debate goes on about whether the law really improved governance or added excessive costs and hurt U.S. competitiveness overseas.

3. Multi-level Succession Planning - Succession planning is always stated as a board priority, but the National Association of Corporate Executives reports that 50 percent of boards do not have formal plans for CEO replacement. Cautionary tales abound when succession, hastily planned or decided on the sole basis of who is next in line, creates disruption, excessive turnover and shareholder unrest.

4. The Three Percent Rule – While many organizational experts call for succession planning in large companies to include executives 10 layers deep, others suggest that every company regardless of size should concentrate on the top three percent of employees as the critical assets that drive the business — assets that need to be constantly educated, evaluated, motivated and rewarded.

5. A New Kind of HR Leader – The rise of the CHRO — Chief HR Officers, participating in the highest levels of decision-making — confirms the seriousness of boards of directors in elevating the role and capabilities of HR leadership. While historically CHROs were added to boards as a way to add diversity, companies in recent years have begun to add top-notch CHROs to broaden their perspective on organizational issues and expertise in talent matters.

When the first Internet bubble was starting to really cook, I decided it was time to exit corporate America and try my hand at starting a business.  Armed with a partner, an idea and some capital we dove headfirst into creating a technology company combining an online destination, internet connectivity and digital photography.  Voila, the connected digital picture frame was born.

At the time, we didn’t know how to create a piece of consumer electronics, had no experience in any kind of retail sales and little more than a hobbyist’s love of photography.  With a team of six people we turned our idea and imagination into a finished product – a consumer online destination, an innovative consumer electronics device in a box and our first retail partner, Amazon.com.  All, in about seven months.

More than anything it was due to two powerful forces:  First, it was the power of a small team that actually allowed us to get more done, more quickly with tremendous productivity.  Second, what we didn’t know actually helped us – along the way many people with greater experience told us we could not build and distribute a new consumer electronics device in anywhere near the timeframe we did.  But, being so new to the space, we were unencumbered by the conventions of the industry and its culture.

I learned the tremendous power of small teams, unencumbered by the wrong kind of knowledge and directed by the right kind of knowledge, with focus and purpose can make the biggest impact; whether in a large corporation or a fresh start-up the power of small and free can accomplish a great deal.

I returned to corporate America sometime after this experience and found the same power could be tapped into even in a large organization.  Success hinged more on identifying the handful of people who could be stirred to harness their passion and energy than marshalling whole organizations with process and procedure.  Over a series of positions at the Walt Disney Company, I had the opportunity to inject change into the company and it almost always came down to leveraging the impact of a small group no matter the size of the actual organization I was a part of or running.

At Disney Online, I had been on the job a few weeks when I was charged with a total re-launch of Disney.com.  Our timeframe was six months from go.  The task was daunting, remake a sprawling website that represented the front door of a huge brand, integrated with multiple large businesses around the Walt Disney Company (movies, television, parks, consumer products, etc…).   We launched the site in seven months (pretty close) and we did it with a very small core team.

Though it may seem trite and even corny – I think the best approach is to be small and think big.

Having worked at a wide variety of companies ranging from software technology startups, to huge companies like Apple, Dell, and Samsung, I have learned that it takes way more than a group of great user experience professionals to make products that have great user experiences. I would say that the three most important pieces to creating great products are all influenced at the company level. These three pieces are organizational structure, ability to leverage ideas from everyone in the company, and a culture of questioning.

The most important factor in creating great products is a culture of questioning, and it is probably the most subtle. Two aspects are involved in great experiences; working out all the fine details and being creative about how to make the best tradeoffs for customers. By creating a company culture that expects everyone in the organization to question what they are doing, and makes it OK for anyone to ask “why” when something doesn’t seem right, each decision will be checked and re-checked to make sure it is the best possible approach to solve a customer issue. This will ensure that all details have been completely thought through and all the solutions have been evaluated before going to market. This aspect is very subtle because it actually goes against fast execution. Typically, companies with a culture of just doing what they are told are great at fast execution, but not so great at user experience. The trick is obviously balancing the amount of questioning to fit the type of business you are in. Once there is an established culture of questioning, then the next piece becomes really important.

The second most important piece is organizational structure. If you want to build products that customers love, you must create an organizational structure that fits with what the customer cares about. Too many technology companies are organized by the types of technologies they are working on, which leads to groups in the organization building the best technology, not the best customer experience. The major driver for organizational structure needs to be empowerment and accountability for customer delight. Each group that exists in the company needs to have a clear understanding of who their customer is, and what value they are bringing to that customer. It is only in this type of environment that everyone in the company can be empowered to improve the customer experience. The secondary organizational principle is that each group must have the resources and complete responsibility to create that experience. This will allow for each group to be held accountable and remove finger pointing, which keeps hard customer issues from ever being solved.

Finally, in order to innovate and deliver products that customers really want, it is important to develop a process that makes it easy for anyone in the company to get their ideas about a product to the appropriate decision makers of that product. By first creating a culture of questioning, you will have every employee in the mindset of improvement. It is a common fallacy that one person can be “the innovator”. Great ideas are really a numbers game, and the more people you have thinking about a problem, the more likely you are to find an amazing solution. However, without a process for all those ideas to get to the right people, you won’t be evaluating the best solutions and people will eventually just stop thinking about the things they know they can’t actually influence. Typically, the problem for companies is not that they can’t figure out how to capture all the ideas, but getting these ideas to the right people. This is usually due to the fact that it is hard to map ideas that come from a customer viewpoint to the organization. However, if you have already solved the second key of organizational structure, then this problem becomes a lot easier to resolve.

In summary, if you are an executive that is looking to make changes in their company to improve the user experience of their products, don’t make the common mistake of trying to create one user experience group and think that will solve the problem. First, focus on the high-level cultural and organizational issues, and then hire great user experience professionals into all levels of the organization to make sure each group has the resources required to create great experiences. Over time these user experience professionals will help everyone in the company become a user experience professional in their own way.

It seemed inconceivable. How could Disney, a large company steeped in established traditions and successful business models, move nimbly to innovate in a marketplace that was being redefined by disruptive technologies and entrepreneurship? Yet, it could. It did happen with the television division. Over the last five years, we decisively shaped the media industry through a series of deals and products we brought to consumers. We consistently delivered on industry firsts which set the standard for what consumers should expect from content companies as well as the industry template for business terms that positioned us for future growth.

The decision to stream culture-defining ad-supported broadcast tv programs on the Internet was swift and the implementation of that product vision even faster. Who would have thought that a small internal team at an entertainment company would take only 60 days to build and launch a consumer Internet business on ABC.com? And within five weeks launch the ABC Player for iPad app, that was both a creative and technological achievement?

When I led the newly formed digital media team five years ago, I wanted them to walk and talk like a startup. I wanted us to be united by a clear vision and fueled by the team’s passion. We had to break some china, but also be respectful of the history and lessons of our business. We had to become the startups we saw come out of Silicon Valley that aimed to topple our industry, but armed with the experience and insight of being insiders in the entertainment community. We could adapt and change, but on our terms. We needed to be the change we wanted to see. I had to create a culture within the new group – one that could support the actions that needed to be taken but one that could also live harmoniously within the larger corporate culture.

This required us to be entrepreneurial and never take our position for granted. We looked at resources sparingly, focused on immediate returns and scalability in everything we did. We never took our eye off the big picture and always pushed for implementation approaches that allowed for flexibility in tactical changes. Communication was continuous, clarity required, and decisions needed to be quick. I also learned to my team’s credit that they all had a spirit of entrepreneurship within themselves and relished the opportunity. Those who didn’t were not able to keep up and ultimately didn’t stick around for the ride.

Much too often, “traditional” and digital businesses were characterized as having competing agendas. For us, this was not an option. And within a large, matrixed company such as ours, my job was the steer the team to work effectively by giving them quick decisions, yet always having an understanding of the broader business strategy. The end result was the ability to move with speed from a product delivery standpoint, to be relevant to our consumers, and to align these initiatives against the television division’s overall business objectives.

Getting to this point required visualizing the change, the dynamic we wanted to see. We all needed to have this goal in our heads – it would affect the way we communicated, collaborated and managed. It has to come from each individual’s inner drive to take those steps and the job of a leader to set the example, to coach and encourage.

Albert Cheng
Executive Vice-President, Digital Media
Disney ABC Television Group

In-house social media departments are no longer to be found only in consumer or technology companies and commonly requested senior roles include Directors of Social Media and Online Community Relations or Chief Digital Officers.

Over the last few years, most companies have been forced into the build-or-buy decision: do they train from within, go outside for talent or commission digital marketing agencies as a bridge to their internal function?  The tide has finally turned as social media becomes more widespread and companies are buying talent inhouse – with digital marketing agencies, consumer goods and media companies providing a ready (though small) pool of experienced talent.

Dimitri Tsmados, Partner at CTPartners, shares insight and tips here: http://www.hrmasia.com/news/features/in-house-social-media-specialists-on-the-rise/108586/

For the senior manager or executive concerned it is a time for making careful assessments about the task ahead, and winning the trust and confidence of those around them before implementing any changes.

Chris Seabourne, Partner at CTPartners shares insight with HR Review here: http://www.hrreview.co.uk/analysis/analysis-hr-strategy-practice/how-to-successfully-make-it-through-the-first-100-days-in-a-new-role/28556

The power of technological advancement to transform an industry or a business function has long been recognized. But rarely has new technology had the kind of impact upon the business models of so many industries and corporate functions as has the advent of digital media. In some cases, such as publishing and print media, digital media has upended a company’s core business model. In other cases, digital tools simply offer new and improved capability for internal communication and organizational efficiencies.

And for many companies, the opportunities for commerce and external communication offered by digital media are now remaking business tactics and strategies connected to sales, marketing, pricing, branding, customer service, crisis management, and more. That’s true for industries ranging from financial services to retailing, and for companies making consumer products ranging from shampoo to sports cars, and just about everything in between. As goes almost without saying, digital companies themselves are continuously revisiting their business models, considering new offerings to feed the seemingly insatiable consumer appetite for digital products and services. Read more at http://www.ctnet.com/CTNet/TheFirm/TrendTalks.htm.