Posts Tagged “Change”

It sounds so simple. Determine goals, establish rewards, measure performance, and recognize achievement. These four steps seem almost too basic to merit a blog posting. In reality, however, many organizations forget the basics. WorldatWork’s Sales Compensation Practices 2008 report, a survey of over 400 compensation and human resources managers, tells the story. 

According to the study, 76% of companies change their sales compensation plans every year. This wasn’t a surprise to me. Additionally:

• 58% of these organizations communicate these changes directly to front line sales managers.
• 14% communicate directly to the salesforce.
• 13% take a decentralized approach.
• 7% do nothing.

The fact that 42% of companies don’t communicate these changes directly to front line sales managers was a shock to me.

I share the following thoughts, not as a change management practitioner, but as a former salesperson and sales manager.

• Salespeople are reward-driven. Granted, so are lots of other people, but salespeople live and breathe for their rewards. Do not keep the potential for rewards a secret.
• If a salesperson thinks you want dohickeys pushed and widgets are a second priority, you will get it. If you changed your mind, tell their managers that compensation is now tied to widgets and not dohickeys. Don’t let there be any confusion about priorities.
• Everybody’s most important point of contact is their manager, but in sales, the point is magnified many times over because of their “remote” nature. Show the manager respect and it trickles on to the salesperson. Leave the manager out of the communication loop, morale will suffer.

I’m a little biased, but many managerial rules of thumb are magnified in sales. Salespeople are willing to achieve great things for your company, but need management basics executed particularly well. Your revenue stream and customers deserve nothing less. Leaving managers out of the communication loop makes no sense.

The first Obama-McCain debate hit on one of my favorite topics - the difference between tactics and strategies. Between the two candidates, they managed to say the words “strategy” and “tactic” about 35 times - all in reference to the Iraq troop surge. We even got the perennial zinger, “I’m afraid Senator X doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy.” (I’m intentionally avoiding a conversation over who might have been right or wrong. If you want to form your own opinions, a transcript is available at this link. This is post about two words - not two candidates.)

A little Googling shows disagreement over the word “strategy” is not new to our presidential debates. George Bush and John Kerry were debating virtually the same topic in 2004.

BUSH: I listen to our generals. That’s what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.

GIBSON: Senator?

KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component. 

A little more Googling yields some text (claimed by quite a few different authors) on the differences between military strategy and tactics:

Broadly stated, strategy is the planning, coordination, and general direction of military operations to meet overall political and military objectives. Tactics implement strategy by short-term decisions on the movement of troops and employment of weapons on the field of battle. The great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put it another way: “Tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war.”

Strategy and tactics, however, have been viewed differently in almost every era of history. The change in the meaning of these terms over time has been basically one of scope as the nature of war and society has changed and as technology has changed. Strategy, for example, literally means “the art of the general” (from the Greek strategos) and originally signified the purely military planning of a campaign. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, with the rise of mass ideologies, vast conscript armies, global alliances, and rapid technological change, military strategy became difficult to distinguish from national policy or “grand strategy,” that is, the proper planning and utilization of the entire resources of a society–military, technological, economic, and political. Tactics have always been difficult–and have become increasingly difficult–to distinguish in reality from strategy because the two are so interdependent. (Indeed, in the 20th century, tactics have been termed operational strategy.)

Now that nearly everybody has weighed in, let me: One person’s strategy is another person’s tactics. It all depends on the relative position of the people involved and how the objective is being defined.  Let me give a personal example.

I have an objective to retire at a reasonable age. To meet my objective, I have a strategy to limit expenses and maximize savings. Within this strategy, I have a tactic, called: “turn off the light when you leave a room.” This tactic is emphasized to my children on a regular basis.

If, however, you ask my children, they will tell you that turning off the lights is clearly a strategy. To them, turning off the lights results in a marked decline in dad’s crankiness. It is a major maneuver - a surge, if you will - in the balance of power and peace within the house. Their objective is different than mine. In short, strategies exist to meet an objective and tactics fit within a strategy.

Bush and Kerry were talking about different things: winning a battle and winning a peace. McCain and Obama were also talking about different things: McCain was answering a question about “the lessons learned in Iraq” and Obama was talking about broader issues.

It will never happen, but I wish I would hear more people say, “You mention ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics.’ Could you define what you mean by those words so we all have the same understanding?” Now that would be unbelievable change!

In our last post, we wrote about the large demographic shifts underway in the U.S. Baby Boomers are queuing up for the exits. That post was about the labor pool’s age groups. In other words, who will be available to work.

This post discusses the shifts in who will be working by age group – in other words, the level of participation in the labor market. In November 2007, The Bureau of Labor Statistics published their Labor Force Projections to 2016. 

Over the ten years between 2006 and 2016,

• There will be an average annual decline of 0.1% in the overall labor force participation rate.
• There will be an average annual decline of 0.6% in the 16-24 year old labor force participation rate. This decline is a continuation of a long-standing trend in lower levels of participation among teens and young adults. In short, analysts believe this group is spending more time in school.
• There will be an average annual increase of 0.1% in the 25-54 year old labor force participation rate. Increases in this group are projected to come from women spending more time in the workforce.
• There will be an average annual increase of 1.2% in the 55+ year old labor force participation rate. This increase is being driven by older people being healthier than in years’ past, longer expected life spans requiring additional savings to fund retirement, increasing costs of medical care, and increases in the Social Security retirement age.

In upcoming posts we will write about the implications of those changes and how organizations are acting in the near term to address the implications.

Our clients are worried about the coming “tsunami” of workforce retirements. Baby Boomers are queuing up for the exits, and with their departures they take invaluable knowledge about how to perform work effectively and efficiently. The people entering the workforce operate under a new behavioral model. Large-scale disruptive change is in the air.

In this post we will write about the projections for the workforce of the future. In upcoming posts we will write about the implications of those changes and how organizations are acting in the near term to address the implications.

In November 2007, The Bureau of Labor Statistics published their Labor Force Projections to 2016 with the sub-headline, “more workers in their golden years.” The phrase is an understatement.

In the ten years between 2006 and 2016,

• The 16-24 year old workforce will shrink 0.7% per year or nearly 7% over the ten-year period.
• The 25-54 year old workforce will expand 0.2% per year – or 2.4% over the ten-year period.
• The 55 and older workforce will expand 3.9% per year – or more than 46% over the ten-year period.