This is more about being a great employer, in order to get the very best from your employees. Think about every conversation had at a party by your employees about working for your company. Your employees (front line AND backroom) are both your salespeople and your potential cheerleaders. The happier they are the better they do at work. But if they have a bad time, they are going to let people know about it. Especially once they get hold of a twitter account…
This year, the first of the baby boomers are eligible to hang up their hats and step into retirement. So what are they planning to do with their time? Can one have a purposeful retirement?
My hope is that they will develop a retirement ‘portfolio’ (like I have a work portfolio) that consists of leisure, leadership and legacy. Because let’s face it, at 65 people are potent. They have experience, are highly qualified, generally well resourced and as of soon, they have a lot of time on their hands. After 6 months of playing golf and gardening, they might start asking “is there more to retirement than this?”. Some will serve on boards, and although I think that governance is an important place to have their experience and expertise, I also hope that there will be more active transference of knowledge being brokered.
One ship drives east and another west
With the self same winds that blow
Tis the set of the sails and not the gales
That decides the way to go
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life
Tis the will of the soul That decides the goal and not
The calm or the strife.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
I think the world of work is set to change in drastic ways, and that we should be preparing our people, our systems and our governance for the shift.
The Conchords were right. Robotic beings are set to rule the world. Well, at least the World of Boring Meaningless Work that No Human Gets Excited About.
I’ve watched The West Wing. I know how compelling “saving jobs” is as a campaign lolly - saving anything makes someone sound heroic. But c’mon. We really have to move beyond ‘jobs for jobs sake’. If our politicians were being responsible, they would help reset our expectations about what our working lives will consist of in the future, and build that into their rhetoric; “purposeful work for all!” Let’s get the robots to clean the loos.
Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
This video gets to the very heart of what being a purposeful young professional is all about. We need to transform our business to harness the potential of our employees sense of purpose. Otherwise, we are not fully ‘employing’ a person, and we miss out on all the potential gains of what that person can bring. This is what was at the heart of Alto’s Good Fridays.
Today’s U-turn by choc industry giant coupled with the latest youtube viral video has given me the last smidgeon of evidence that I need to back my personal belief that Human Beings Can Do Anything They Put Their Minds To.
In less than a fortnight, tens of thousands of people outraged over the injustice of the milk solids being replaced by palm oil have exerted enough influence to see a tail between legs apology from Cadbury.
Isn’t it weird that it takes us being incensed about something as seemingly trivial as recipe changes to a luxury food item to discover the profound environmental impacts of our food choices, but also to begin to understand the potential power and influence of our collective consumer voice and preference?
