Data, Digital, Discovery - the Future of Innovation - Dr Ralph Kerle

Two recent examples show how digital disruption is having a huge impact on traditional businesses and business models and how rapidly innovation as a practice and process will need to change to keep up with the impact. Over the last two years, one of Australia’s largest publicly owned talent management organizations has seen one of its major client’s spend fall from A$30million per annum to $15million per annum, with expectations the total spend year ending 2012 will be around $5million. For any company this is a huge drop in revenue and as the Managing Director said “It is not only a huge drop in revenue for us, it is a huge drop in revenue for the total HR industry in Australia.” This contraction has come about because of the disruption and emergence of digital technology in the HR market, specifically LinkedIn.

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Breaking Through Organizational Impediments To Innovation - an HR Industry Case Study

It has taken a decade for social media to finally deliver on its promise of democratising the work place. We might not have the paperless office but we certainly have free social media that poses a huge problem for the revenue, profitability and very existence of service driven organizations. The problem now for services organizations is not when to change but what to and how. This means organizational innovation is no longer an imperative. It is a must do. Yet, organizations find it extremely difficult to implement innovation as it requires strategic, tactical and behavioural change and to align those elements can be an Herculean task. This difficulty was highlighted recently when I was invited to a meeting with the MD of one of Asia-Pacific’s leading HR services companies. The MD has responsibility across all divisions for revenue, is passionate about innovation and recognizes the HR market is changing rapidly

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Work Beyond Borders - IBM Global Chief Human Resources Officers Study 2010

Entitled Work Beyond Borders, the 2010 IBM Chief Human Resources Officers Study says the three main concerns of CHROs globally are

• Cultivating creative leaders — who can more nimbly lead in complex, global environments
• Mobilizing for greater speed and flexibility — producing significantly greater capability to adjust underlying costs and faster ways to allocate talent
• Capitalizing on collective intelligence — through much more effective collaboration across increasingly global teams.

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Why good bosses tune in to their people - McKinsey Quarterly - Leadership - Prof. Bob Sutton, Stanford

Why it matters Your success and influence as boss depends on correctly reading those with whom you interact most frequently and intensely. Because your leadership style reverberates throughout the organization, ultimately it will bolster or undermine company performance and culture. What you should do about it The first and most important task is to convince others that you are in charge, otherwise your job will be impossible and your tenure short. Second, boost your subordinates’ performance by “watching their backs”: making it possible for them to learn, take intelligent risks, and feel pride and dignity along the way.

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Boards of Prevention - Why Leaders on Boards Should Be More Active in Overseeing Risk - Michael Schrage

Corporate directors can – and should – play a much more active role in overseeing risk and avoiding major crises. In July 2007, as once-giddy financial markets began sensing that something might be horribly wrong, the top executive of the then-largest financial-services firm in the United States justified his bank’s “party hearty” attitude toward risk. “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated,” Citigroup’s Chairman and CEO Charles Prince told the Financial Times. “But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”

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