In July 2005, the Canadian Management Centre sponsored a Global survey by the Human Resources

Institute to answer a number of questions, including: How are leadership challenges changing? Which leadership skills will be important in the future? And, how to nurture and develop leadership?

According to the survey, tomorrow’s leader will soon be history if his or her staff are not bringing creativity and innovative ideas to the table every day as part of their roles. Innovation can no longer be the territory of “lone mad scientists” toiling away in obscurity.

What are your thoughts on how to increase innovation in your organization? Is it a top down change in philosophy? Increased training? All thoughts welcome…

-Bruce Peer, President & Managing Director- Canadian Management Centre

One piece of feedback we continuously hear in our training sessions is this…

"My boss thinks they are a much better communicator then they really are…How can I change this.”

While we can’t go into all the different ways of working better with your boss in this post, we can now statistically backup that these seminar participants are not alone.

According to survey data from marketing research firm RoperASW; Managers are much more likely than their employees to think they’re good communicators, . While 55% of employers said they consider themselves to be effective communicators, only 35% of workers concurred with the assessment. Further, while 8% of employers acknowledged that they need to improve their communication skills, 35% of employees said their employers lacked good communication skills.

What tips do you suggest for better workplace communications?

According to expert forecasters Marvin J. Cetron and Owen Davies, the likely face of tomorrows organizations will concentrate on:

• Fewer management levels,

• fewer managers and

• more dependence on collaboration among specialists

Downsizing, restructuring and outsourcing will continue to flatten organizational structures, and managers with increased spans of control may need to assure that older workers with valuable banks of corporate knowledge remain in the workforce.

Do you agree with these predictions?  What effect do you see the aging workforce having on the economy?

The importance of effective communications has been seen to contribute to the bottom line- According to results from a study conducted by Watson Wyatt, companies with exemplary employee communications programs passed along a 26% total return to from 1998 to 2002. This number is a stark contrast to the -15% return from companies with the least-effective communication programs.

Tell us what your organization is doing to increase the effectiveness of their overall internal communication?

Skepticism among workers about the credibility of information from employers/management runs fairly high among 1,000 workers polled by consulting firm Towers Perrin. And while nearly 90% of the respondents indicated that they are "prepared to hear the truth" about the status of their employer and their jobs, the question of whether they would accept the information without reservation remains.

Employees’ Opinions About Their Workplace Communications

Source: Towers Perrin

How an organization brings its products or services to market rather than what it brings to market - will be the strategy that provides a competitive edge in the future, according to brainstormers from the World Economic Forum and Harvard Business Review.

This shift in focus from supply-side innovation is necessitated by the continuing compression of life cycles for new offerings. An organization’s ability to craft relationships with customers will greatly influence its success.

Demand-side innovation may mean discovering surprising new opportunities for growth, such as when Hewlett-Packard introduced economical mobile telephones to rural India. Or it might mean revisiting an organization’s economic underpinnings, such as when automakers pursued a financing revenue stream over sales. Another strategy is appealing to customers on an emotional level, such as when automaker Saturn used "family portraits" and "reunions" to seal relationships with new customers. The targeting of new customer segments, inviting customer interaction in the design of new products and personalizing offerings based on customer preferences are all methods increasingly being used to innovate on the demand side.

(Thanks to our friends at Harvard Business Review [Rayport], February 2005, pp. 17, 21-22)

Chris Ramey, the CEO of the Ramey Agency in Ridgeland, MS, has found that monthly, formal staff meetings are no substitute for getting together with a few employees around a table and sharing thoughts over a meal. He developed the Bacon, Eggs and Chris program in order to communicate more effectively with employees of the advertising/public relations firm and stop rumors before they spread out of control. At Bacon, Eggs and Chris meetings, Ramey meets six or fewer employees at a time with no agenda except to eat breakfast together so he can listen to what they have on their minds and answer questions. He has found these breakfasts much more likely than structured meetings to foster open communications and elicit honest dialogue. "It’s a chance to ask and answer questions," Ramey says. "People have felt more comfortable asking questions with four or five people around the breakfast table than in a room full of staff members at a staff meeting."

Here’s a common problem that arises for all project managers!

The Accenture Institute for High Performance Business suggests that the lack of realization that change is crucial or insufficient commitment on management’s part can doom a change initiative.

The group interviewed managers from 14 industries, receiving the following feedback about why plans for change were waylaid or results fell short of expectations:

o                    insufficient buy-in that change is needed (64%);

o                    no champion for change among senior management (44%);

o                    poor reward system (36%);

o                    unable or unwilling to restructure (31%).

Adequate preparation and training for managers is a definite asset to avoid these consequences.

Employees want to hear the truth - good news and bad. And increasingly, they are likely to bristle when presented with spin.

"These spin measures might be well-intentioned efforts to preserve the fragile filament of the workplace, but bosses often torch them. The instruments of corporate spin are [now] tattered euphemisms such as ‘rightsizing’ or ‘merger of equals.’ Fired executives get to leave ‘to pursue other interests,’ but laid-off staffers are trimmed ‘fat’ or cut ‘deadwood,’" reports the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, prettying up a crisis such as firings or layoffs with picnics, skits and free food doesn’t wash with many workers.