Regrouping after the Summer Reset

Many of us take time during the summer to have some much needed downtime, to regroup, recharge, and come back healthier, happier, and more focused on what we’d like to achieve both personally and professionally during the last leg of 2022.

With increased talks of an impending recession, profit warnings up by 66% as compared to the same period last year and supply chain and cost stresses continuing to bite, naturally there may be more questions than normal about what lies ahead. Leaders will likely need to continuously adapt their thinking in order to navigate a future successful path for both themselves, their teams and their businesses.

Resilience will be a key attribute which differentiates those teams that will thrive in an increasingly  difficult environment. It will come down to their ability to flex and adapt, to make the most of opportunity, and to mitigate risk. Successful teams and their leaders will be able read changes in the market, take prompt action, and make informed decisions to adapt business models. Being able to spot problems quickly, being able to absorb the hit, and still being able to get up and go again will be essential for future success.

If you haven’t had time for reflection, here are some useful questions to dwell on to help you build that resilience and prepare for what may lie ahead.

What are we doing well? What needs improvement?

Typically, leadership teams begin brainstorming their goals for the following year during Q3 and Q4, so now is the perfect time to take stock of your business’s, your team’s, and your own strengths and weaknesses. Be honest and critical so that you can strive for actual measurable improvement and spend the final portion of the year ironing out any flaws. That way, when the time comes to move into the new year, you will be better placed to proceed with agility instead of getting caught up with troubleshooting.

What will a recession mean for businesses?  Are we ready for it? What can we control?

A recession has been looming for a while now, and it’s only a matter of time before it hits. If our friends across the Atlantic offer any indication, this will happen sooner rather than later. According to a recent Goldman Sachs prediction the UK will go into recession by the end of 2022 and will keep contracting in 2023.  It also predicts that the UK economy will contract by 0.6% in 2023.  We have all become well acquainted with disruption—especially over the past two and a half years—so this recession will be the latest in a long string of challenges businesses and executives have faced. But if being blindsided by the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that there is value in scenario planning ahead of time.

Businesses still have time to adapt their strategy to soften the blows a recession might bring. Difficult decisions will be made, and tough conversations will undoubtedly be had. Preparing for the latter in advance can help to ensure they go as smoothly as possible. This blog can offer some advice for navigating these discussions successfully.

What skills will be most valuable for senior executives while finishing out this year?

For executives looking to make things happen for both themselves and their teams, it is important to appreciate a different approach to the prevailing market will be needed. Knowing how to present your leadership value and focusing on strengthening your personal digital brand is increasingly critical in a digital world.  Hopefully as part of your summer reset you were able to assess your goals and set a few actions towards achieving both your teams but also your own personal career development. Our coaches recommend taking a holistic approach to deliver a game changing career move and not just a quick change for the sake of something different.

Keeping a focus on skills is crucial for staying relevant in the marketplace and navigating any difficulties that lie ahead. Based on what we’re seeing now, it’s safe to assume that understanding the technological landscape across your market will continue to be valuable, as will what have traditionally been known as ‘soft skills.’ This includes capabilities such as communication, creativity, and empathy. All of these will likely come into play as we continue to navigate ongoing challenges with talent, face difficult decisions, and rethink our approaches to upcoming disruption.

Developing resilience doesn’t happen overnight. Leaders need to be willing to take time out to reassess and flex as needed. The next few months may be understandably rocky, but taking the time now to plan ahead and evolve your thinking will prove beneficial in the long run. You had a nice reset this summer, but now it’s time to channel that energy into finishing the year on a strong note.

If you’d like our team’s help in building a game changing team, enhancing your leadership capabilities and driving greater impact within your organisation, get in touch with us about our Leadership Development services.

With ongoing disruption in the marketplace, many businesses and their leadership are facing pressures to continue delivering results amid financial challenges whilst likely having to make hard executive outplacement decisions and handling difficult conversations with their people.

If the businesses that we have widely viewed as recession-proof or too promising to fail are struggling, you would be naïve to think that your own organisation will not face some tough decisions moving forward. The pandemic was the first domino tipped in what is likely to be a series of economic peaks and valleys over the coming years. With that in mind, it is no longer a matter of if tough financial periods will come to pass, but rather a matter of how to properly navigate these situations with your people as they arise. It is likely that leaders will be having difficult conversations more often, and there is real value in learning how to master this type of communication. So, how do you do it? What do you need to consider?

Types of Difficult Conversations

In the current climate, the top challenging conversations that our clients are finding their leaders need most support with are:

• Informing an employee that their performance is not at the right level: Turbulent times are the most inopportune moments for performance to slip, though this may happen as the personal impacts of financial strain and the stress to deliver weigh on your employees. Other times, an employee’s performance might be good, but has the potential to be great. In a time of disruption, you need all team members performing at their very best and as a result, you may have to have some difficult conversations about performance. These conversations may not just involve your junior or mid-level staff. Often, peers or individuals in senior roles may also not be performing at the necessary level as businesses aim to evolve and grow, which requires them to change their style or upskill to keep up. The pressure will certainly be on for senior roles in a position of responsibility in an economic crisis, and there is no room for complacency.
• Informing an employee their role is at risk: Letting an employee know that their role is at risk can induce anxiety for both the person receiving the message and the one delivering it. Honesty is always the best policy when communicating with your people, but you need to decide what level of information to share to avoid causing more harm than good. On one hand, the news may instill necessary pressure to perform at a higher level. On the other, the employee may shut down under the stress. These conversations can go either way and vary by employee, so it’s important to anticipate and plan in advance.
• Confirming to an employee that their role has been made redundant: This is the conversation that no employee or manager wants to have. Letting someone go is one of the most difficult people decisions a leader will have to make, and the situation becomes much more heightened when there are financial stressors at play. Your reasons may be business performance based or financially focused, yet neither will come as much consolation to whoever you must let go. Executive outplacement conversations are the most challenging to master and require the highest levels of empathy and consideration.
• Informing an employee that they aren’t getting a salary increase, bonus or a promotion: Being made redundant is a tough blow to bear but having one’s career progression halted can be just as upsetting. In most organisational structures, hard work and loyalty tend to yield reward in the form of financial compensation, a new role, or both. Not receiving these expected incentives as a form of recognition might feel like a bit of a slight to the employee and can negatively impact morale and individual contributions.

A Checklist for Handling Difficult Conversations

Businesses appoint individuals to positions of leadership to provide their people with trustworthy figures to lean on in times of trouble and to embody organisational purpose. Effective leadership is increasingly difficult to deliver and comes with a lot of responsibility.  A number of leaders don’t receive adequate support to deal with change during turbulent times, and therefore may not feel practically or emotionally ready to deal with these challenges when the moment comes.

So how can leaders prepare themselves for these challenging conversations, and successfully deliver sensitive news?

• Don’t close the gates of communication: It can be tempting to shy away and communicate less frequently and less openly in situations where the leadership team lacks clarity, as the feeling is often to wait until there’s more certainty to share. Avoiding the situation often makes it worse, builds resentment, and can damage the credibility of the leadership team. If anything, your people need to hear from their leaders more frequently during these times, even if it’s just to say that that situation is being addressed and more information will be shared as it is gained. Clear, regular, and transparent team communication are more important than ever, no matter how ambiguous the situation.
• Plan out the conversation in advance: Oftentimes, the hardest part of having a difficult conversation is knowing where to start. Therefore, it is usually helpful to decide on your objectives for the meeting in advance, list the main topics you wish to cover, and indicate how you want to connect them all together. You do not need to script the entire conversation beforehand, but it might be helpful to keep a mental list of a few specific messages that you want to convey. Determine how you are going to open the conversation and rehearse to build your comfort levels.
• Understand the three levels of processing: When planning your discussion, understand that there are potentially three levels of processing all taking place within this singular conversation. The first is the Factual Level, or the basic facts of what’s happening. The next is the Emotional Level, which is how the employee feels about the news being delivered. The final level is the Identity Level. This is often the most complex and tricky level to navigate as it involves what the employee feels the topics of this conversation say about them as a person. Being let go or told that one’s performance is not meeting an expected level can feel very personal. By understanding that these three levels of processing will be happening simultaneously and working to anticipate what points you may need to make at each level will enable you to be much better prepared.
• Be empathetic but remain emotionally steady: While you do need to maintain your professionalism to keep on track during these conversations, it’s normal to have some uneasy or sad feelings about having to deliver tough messages. At the end of the day, we’re all human. You need to acknowledge what you are feeling within yourself, but do not allow these emotions to lead to stress responses, frustration, rumours, or other non-productive behaviour. Team members are always watching and taking their cues from their leaders. While it’s okay to let that vulnerability shine through in the form of empathy and understanding, how you show up in times of crisis matters to your people. As a leader, you’re not required to be unapproachable or unfeeling, but you do need to keep collected. Your people need leaders who seem calm in the face of chaos to provide reassurance and stability. Let the recipient of your bad news know that what they feel is okay and that while you empathise with them, as a leader you have a commitment to remain emotionally steady for the rest of your team. Your ability to remain collected in these tough moments will be of benefit to those who will be looking at you for cues.
• Anticipate the hardest parts: If starting the conversation is the hardest part, then finishing it is a close second place. What will you say to bring the meeting to a close? How will you manage if the person is still upset? You may choose to open the discussion up for questions to give the employee a chance to share their perspective or gain closure. If holding a conversation about performance or a role being at risk, it might be beneficial to end by agreeing some actions. What can the employee do to improve their standing? What outcomes will you be looking for post-meeting, and by when? If letting an employee go, you may choose to acknowledge their hard work and contribution whilst recognising the emotions they’ve expressed. Where internal or external support such as career transition or outplacement services are available, discuss the benefits of this support and next steps. The objective is to end on as positive a note as possible, even if spirits are low. In the best-case scenario, your message will be accepted and the conversation will close with a level of understanding. But it’s also important to prepare for the worst. Emotions may run high, and the employee may react poorly. Anticipate any feelings of anger, shame, anxiety, or sadness and determine how you might react to those emotions. By preparing for the best- and worst-case scenarios, you’ll be ready for anything in between.

Success in a leadership role involves being calm, open, and steady, all while painting a clear vision for the future. The expectation is that you will treat everyone fairly and equitably and hold individuals accountable when they cross a line or aren’t delivering what’s needed for the team to come out on top. This can be difficult to do when economic stressors are weighing on you, the business, and your people.

Difficult decisions and challenging conversations come with the territory of modern leadership, and our current economic conditions will mean having to do so more often. Remember that you are the steady rock for your people in these times, but you are also still human. Check in with yourself, be clear on your objectives and outcomes, and prepare for every possible scenario to approach these situations as successfully as possible.

Each March, organisations populate social feeds with praise for their female colleagues in celebration of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day. While a nice gesture and a much-deserved celebration of women’s success, in many cases it can highlight the ongoing challenges that female professionals experience all year long.

Our Rialto Executive Career Coaches work closely with some of the world’s most accomplished, successful, motivated, and qualified female executives to advance their careers. Despite their acclaim, achievements, education, accolades, and positions, many of these women express feelings of an ever-present glass ceiling above them and limiting how far they can climb and what they can accomplish. But where do these feelings stem from, what limitations construct that ‘ceiling,’ and how can women break through?

A Seat at the Table?

It’s no secret that diversity is one of the biggest issues businesses face. In February 2022, the UK Government published data that revealed that the FTSE 100, 250 and 350 all improved the number of women in leadership roles in 2021. 39.1% of UK FTSE 100 board positions are now held by women, a massive increase from 12.5% just 10 years ago. This increase has allowed the UK to leapfrog over countries such as Norway, which has mandatory representation quotas, to become second in the international rankings for board representation. There are over 700 more women in leadership roles in the FTSE 350, and the number of women in Chair roles rose to 48, up from 39 in 2020.

While these statistics show that we are moving in the right direction, when examined closer it becomes clear that we still have a long way to go. While 39.1% of FTSE 100 board positions are now held by women, there are only eight female chief executives in that group and no women of colour. When you expand the field to the FTSE 250 where many more board roles are available, you might expect representation to be higher as well. Yet, women in boardroom roles for the top 250 companies is lower that the FTSE 100 at just 36.8%. In the FTSE 350, a reported 72 companies are still below the previously set 33% target for women on boards. Overall, only 1 in 3 leadership roles and around 25% of all executive committee roles are held by women.

How Much Are Women Earning?

When examining compensation, the chasm between genders deepens. According to the latest ONS report at the time of publication, in 2021, the gender pay gap among full-time employees was 7.9%, up from 7.0% in 2020 but still lower than it was pre-pandemic at 9% in 2019. The largest closing of gender pay gap between now and before the pandemic was found among managers, directors, and senior officials, showing that female executives are beginning to become more fairly compensated but are still not paid as equals. It would appear that there is a long way to go in order to close this gap, as the ONS data indicates that the largest gender disparity is among the highest earners with the 90th percentile of full-time men’s earnings sitting at an astounding 16.1% higher than those of females in the 90th percentile.

The gender pay gap often varies wildly at the individual company level, as was evidenced on International Women’s Day 2022 when a Twitter account called ‘Gender Pay Gap Bot’ (@PayGapApp) spent the day retweeting UK companies’ #IWD22 messages with their median hourly pay gaps.

Over 100 companies were retweeted on the day across sectors such as government, higher education, sport, healthcare, professional services, retail, and more. Some of the figures were pleasantly surprising. Both IT company Infosys and the UK House of Commons were revealed to have gaps of less than 1%, with several other organisations paying their female staff equally or higher than their male counterparts. Among the highest paid are the women of Barnet Council who are paid an impressive 25.5% higher median hourly wage than their male colleagues and broadband company Hyperoptic whose female staff earn more than double at 55.8%. However, the bot revealed more bad than good, highlighting huge gaps for organisations such as McKinsey (22.3%), Sheffield Wednesday Football Club (41%), Refuge Charity (32%), the Daily Express newspaper (22.5%), Loughborough University (23.2%), the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (30%), and most hypocritically, women’s lingerie brand Boux Avenue (31.4%).

The hourly wage gap is only part of the challenge that female professionals face with compensation. Having to choose between family and professional success is an unfortunate decision that many women end up facing at some point in their careers. As men move up the pay ladder, women fall behind by either staying in lower paid positions, reducing their hours, or both to take on the responsibilities of raising their families while others will choose to drop out of work entirely.

According to recent market research, nearly six out of 10 women (58%) say caring responsibilities have stopped them applying for promotion or a new job and one in five (19%) have left a job because it was too hard to balance work and care. Over time, this imbalance of familial obligations has led to more men in senior roles and some very damaging mindsets. At the core of the issue is a longstanding assumption that senior roles inherently require long hours and constant availability, and thus cannot be done flexibly or part-time. Academic research into the matter has found that long working hours have been proven to be inherently gendered and to exacerbate the gender pay gap. Over time, these mindsets have led some women to believe that they need to sacrifice one in favour of the other and have created biases in employers that female executives may not be ‘up for the job.’ Both of these beliefs are untrue.

Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

Representation and imbalanced compensation are two of the most apparent and most widely addressed issues surrounding women in the workplace, but any female professional can attest that it is so much more than that. We asked our Rialto Executive Career Coaches which challenges they often see expressed by their female coaching clients, and for their career advice for overcoming these hurdles. Here is what they had to share:

• Speak Up: Due to the aforementioned lack in representation, female executives often find themselves in the company of people who are not like them. Often, this can lead to feelings of imposter syndrome, and may discourage some female executives from speaking their minds. Historical ideas of ‘femininity’ have conditioned us to believe that women who take charge, freely speak their opinions, and essentially behave in the same way as their male counterparts are viewed as off putting, bossy, cold, calculated, or worse. These are damaging societal ideas that we are progressing away from but have yet to fully overcome. For male executives, before you judge your female counterparts for speaking up, our advice is to consider whether you would ever think twice about doing the same. For female executives, our advice is to remember that you were hired for your role because of what you have to offer. By keeping your ideas to yourself or not speaking up when something is off, you are doing yourself, your position, your organisation, and your stakeholders a disservice. We know that telling you to ‘speak up’ is sometimes easier said than done, but just remember that that is what you are there to do. Standing in your power does not make you aggressive, pushy, loud, or rude. It just makes you good at your job!
• Build Alliances Carefully: Getting your voice heard is much easier when you have the right support in your corner. But again, women are often surrounded by people who don’t look, think, or act like them. Much has been said about the idea of ‘women supporting women,’ but men need to do the same. Unfortunately, there are some people whose biases run too deep and too stubborn to be swayed, but you’ll find that not everyone is working against you. Instead of wasting time trying to change minds that are unwilling to budge, choose your allies wisely and try to find strength in numbers instead. It’s a sad truth, but some people may be more open to hearing the same idea in a different voice. At the end of the day, the best interest of the organisation needs to come first and biases should not get in the way with that. You’ll find peers who agree and who will back you, helping to get your voice heard all the way through the top of the organisation. You are better off spending your time building and strengthening relationships with these individuals than you are trying to get through to someone who seems unwilling to really listen.
• Don’t Undersell Yourself: If you are putting in the same amount of work at the same level as your male counterparts, then there is absolutely no reason why you should be paid any less. Historically, asking your peers about their salaries has been considered ‘impolite’ or taboo, but there is really nothing wrong with doing so. Having these conversations is the best way to benchmark and to create transparency about whether or not the team is being fairly compensated. Ask the question. You’ll often find that your colleagues are happy to share their figures with you, and those who aren’t will decline and that’s that. Knowing what you could be earning within your same organisation, level, or department compared to what you actually are earning helps provide you with leverage for negotiation. Do not be afraid to ask for what you deserve. If others at your level are being paid higher, it’s often not because they were more qualified or were offered that. It’s often the case that they were simply more willing to ask for it or negotiated after receiving an initial offer. Our advice is to research the market. Use sites like Glassdoor to benchmark what others in your role earn in your city. Take all of these figures with you into salary or raise discussions. Know your number, and don’t back down. If you present these figures to your employer and they are unwilling to close the gap, do not be afraid to move on to a company that will value your work and compensate you appropriately. Women are often told that our contributions, skills, knowledge, and experience are ‘invaluable,’ but that praise isn’t quite enough. All of those factors combine to create a monetary value for the organisation, so why shouldn’t they create monetary value for you? Put a price on your skills and contributions, and do not sell yourself short.
• Set Boundaries: Women have often been the ones to sacrifice for the sake of family, but that doesn’t have to be the case. If the pandemic taught us anything, it is how to achieve better balance. The pandemic’s enforced remote work helped to challenge the misconception that senior executive roles cannot be done flexibly, and hopefully hybrid working becoming the norm will help to support this even further. Hybrid and flexible working models have made it much easier for working parents to be present for their children. This applies to both male and female caregivers, which in turn has helped the responsibilities of childminding become more balanced. However, women are finding it easier now to be both parents and professionals in these models as they do not require a choice between the two. Hybrid is also helping professionals draw clearer lines between their working and home lives and better manage both. This new era of work will likely see professionals regardless of gender setting higher standards and demanding more from their working life. It is essential that female executives determine what their non-negotiables are and stick to them. If flexible working models mean not having to sacrifice, then push for that. Now that we know most of our jobs can be done from anywhere, there is no reason to sideline oneself for the sake of having a family. If your current employer is not willing to work with you on that, perhaps it is time to find one who will. You are not asking for ‘too much’ by having boundaries and not settling. You’re simply commanding the respect you deserve as both a professional and a person with a life outside of their career.

For any real change to happen it’s not just women who need to speak up, demand more, set boundaries, or work together. Male executives, especially those with influence on personnel decisions, need to look inwards to challenge their own biases and assess how those beliefs and opinions might be impacting their decision making. Employers need to actively promote diversity and equality in their organisations rather than just talking about it. We can all do better to be more empathetic, to challenge what we see happening around us, and to speak in support of those we feel are being treated unfairly. The longer we continue to let the ‘status quo’ continue simply because it might not be effecting us directly, the thicker and thicker that glass ceiling gets and the harder it is to break through. Change starts and ends with us all.

At Rialto, we often stress the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) for the future of business. We published a white paper on the digital imperative, discussed how to navigate your career through technological change, outlined strategic priorities for leadership, made predictions for AI’s role post-pandemic, and highlighted some of the ways that AI can help with leader’s people management challenges. This technology has impossibly vast potential that is finally coming into mainstream acceptance, meaning that innovation is happening at a rapid pace with changes happening frequently.

There are a number of forward-thinking leaders who got on board early and are now exploring more advanced applications of AI, but the majority of global business leaders are just beginning on their journeys. In this article, we aim to bring leaders up to date with the state of AI as of Q1 2022, and put this into context in terms of what may be expected of their role during the adoption journey of AI in transforming business models.

The Current State of AI

AI adoption has only continued to grow in the past year, with more businesses and their decision makers coming to grips with this technology. In McKinsey’s latest State of AI survey, 56% of all respondents reported AI adoption in at least one function of their business, which is an increase of 6% from the 2020 survey. Gartner’s Second Annual Emerging Technology Product Leader Survey found that the majority of respondents (87%) predict industry-wide funding for AI will increase at a “moderate to fast pace” throughout 2022. Their survey also found that a third of global organisations with plans to adopt AI intend to invest $1 million or more into the technology over the next two years.

Zooming in on the UK, it seems as though businesses of all sizes are betting on tech for their recovery and growth efforts. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) recently published a report on the current and future use of artificial intelligence by UK businesses, which found that around 15% (432,000) of all UK businesses have adopted at least one AI technology, while around 2% (62,000) are currently piloting AI and a further 10% (292,000) plan to adopt at least one AI technology in the future. 68% of large companies, 34% of medium sized companies, and 15% of small companies have adopted at least one AI technology.

IT and telecommunications (29.5%) and legal (29.2%) currently have the highest rate of adoption, while hospitality (11.9%), health (11.5%), and retail (11.5%) represent the lowest adoption rates in the UK. In terms of actual use cases, the DCMS report found that AI solutions for data management and analysis are the most commonly adopted with 9% of UK firms having adopted them. This is followed by natural language processing and generation (8%), machine learning (7%), AI hardware (5%), computer vision and image processing and generation (5%) tools. Looking ahead, the DCMS report predicts that expenditure on AI technologies could increase to between £27.2 billion and £35.6 billion by 2025. By 2040, that figure could increase to between £50.4 billion and £127 billion.

This reaffirms what we already know: AI is inevitably the future of business and the majority of leaders will need to become more confident in utilising AI. The increase in adoption rates indicate that the resistance to transformation is dwindling as many of the hold outs enter the exploration phase and the more forward-thinking businesses transition to application or explore further AI projects. For transformation projects to be successful, there needs to be buy in and involvement at every level and department. Whether your organisation is just embarking on its AI journey or looking ahead at what other problems this technology can solve, there will certainly be impacts on your specific role and function.

The Role of Senior Leadership

CEOs

The role of the CEO or top executive of the organisation is that of both decision-maker and champion. These executives are tasked with delivering results to various stakeholder groups, while also serving as the public face of the business. The two entities are so deeply intertwined that the failures of the organisation are often considered to be the failures of the CEO in the court of public opinion. Plotting, strategising, and delivering a change project is a massive undertaking and a huge responsibility for the CEO. Getting it right will ensure happy stakeholders and customers, but getting it wrong could have major career consequences.

Of course, any transformation plans should come from the board as a whole, but it is often the CEO who has the final say. Typically, they are also the ones responsible for selecting which tools to adopt, sometimes with input from the CTO or other knowledgeable parties. However, not every organisation has a tech expert on hand to advise, and CEO or top exec might have to go it alone. Therefore, it is essential that these leaders have a strong understanding of AI and its capabilities so that they may make informed decisions about the future of their organisation. Continuous learning and upskilling will be valuable to professionals in all functions, but for top leaders especially. Seeking out training, keeping up to date with the news, or pursuing a proper course on AI can make a massive difference. The most successful leaders are those who realise the world is changing around them and work to change with it.

But arguably more important is the CEO’s role as a champion of change. Wherein staff in the organisation will need to adapt to working alongside these tools, the CEO is not likely to see their role massively reshaped by AI. Instead, top leaders will need to focus on getting the rest of the team on board and encouraging a willingness to give this technology a try. Change is uncomfortable, and there will likely be staff who resist the introduction of new tools. The team will be looking to their leadership for guidance and reassurance, and the CEO is about as senior as it gets. Your people will be looking to the top in order to assess the legitimacy of these new mandates. Does it seem like you truly believe in what you are saying? Are your words telling one story, but your actions telling another? Top executives need to lead by example. If you want your people to buy into new initiatives, then you yourself need to practice what you preach and truly understand what you are asking for.

The Rest of the C-Suite

The rest of the C-Suite serve as the top representatives for each of the business’s various functions, including Marketing, Finance, Operations, Technology, Sales, Growth, and so on. Individually, these executives are responsible for their individual departments and all the staff and activities that fall under their domain. Collectively, these leaders must unite these individual pieces to work towards the best interests of the business. If the sum of its parts is successful, then the senior leadership team could be considered successful as a result.

At this level, you may find yourself less concerned with the day-to-day use of automation tools in your role and more focused on the ‘why’ of it all. It will be your responsibility to determine what role technology will play in your function, give input into the tools that will be introduced, and help to form a business case for adoption and transformation. But more important than that, your role will be to champion and to help shift the rest of the organisation towards an AI mindset. While the CEO may serve as the main spokesperson for your company’s transformation efforts, it will fall on you as a top-level executive to reinforce that message within your division of the company. It is crucial for the senior leadership team to present a united front when it comes to change management. That way, the message is clear and reinforced. Communicate clear expectations with your team so that there is an unimpeachable understanding of roles and responsibilities. Depending on the structure of your organisation, you may choose to funnel this message down via your managers, but your stance as the head of your department should never be in question. Help form the plans and stick by them once they are introduced. Otherwise, you risk losing all confidence from your team and your project may be doomed before it even has a chance to begin.

HR Director

When undergoing a transformation project, ‘people costs’ need to be factored in alongside the costs of the technology itself. According to the DCMS report mentioned previously, the 432,000 UK companies who had already adopted AI in 2020 spent a total of £46.0 billion on labour associated with the development, operation, or maintenance of those technologies. The average labour spend was £24,400 per small business, £1.7 million per medium business and £3.1 million per large business. This overall expenditure is predicted to increase to between £80.2 billion and £103.2 billion by 2025, and between £185.2 billion and £456.0 billion by 2040.

HR Directors (HRDs) will likely be the ones tasked with managing this expenditure, whether it be via onboarding new talent or upskilling existing staff. When adding talent to the team, it will be essential to look for baseline technological skills, but attention should also be paid to the types of capabilities that technology cannot match in order to create a well-rounded team. These are what we typically consider to be ‘soft skills’ such as communication, creativity, strategy, and so on. If adding new talent to the team is too costly, investing in the people you have is a strong option. Upskilling initiatives will likely fall under HR’s domain

Beyond ensuring the right talent and skills are on hand to cope with new technologies, AI tools can also be used to help facilitate a lot of these processes. AI can help to automate some tedious activities that eat up time for HRDs. For example, AI can help with document verification and data entry, scheduling staff, managing leave, setting up meetings and appointments and automating communication with prospects and current staff. Automation can be introduced to various stages of the recruitment process to streamline the experience for the candidate and save time for the HR team. But further than that, AI can help with a major challenge HRDs currently face: retaining their staff in the wake of the Great Resignation.

AI can be leveraged here to gain insight into the mindsets of current staff. How satisfied are your people? What has motivated them to stay, or what is driving them to leave? AI can help provide answers to these tough questions, and also provide insight into the needs and desires of the market. Often, these tools can signal HRDs to potential problems before it’s too late, allowing them to potentially intervene and retain. Investing in existing talent is a draw for people to stay, and HR will likely be tasked with leading any upskilling or retraining initiatives for current staff. E-learning platforms can help support these training efforts by tailoring the materials to suit individual needs, helping to ensure that staff are grasping the information and that HR’s training budget has been used effectively. While the directive for upskilling may come from higher up in the organisation, HRDs should expect to be the ones the board turns to in order to help figure out the logistics and oversee the process. It is recommended that anyone in this position take the time to learn about some of the tools available in preparation.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the greatest technological advancements of our lifetime, and its impacts will be felt across industries and job functions. However, AI is here to assist and augment, not replace and make redundant. This technology can achieve remarkable things, but not without the assistance of human intelligence. These projects will only be as successful as the teams driving them.

After coming to grips with the idea that AI is something you need to explore, we recommend focusing on building your skills and understanding. Knowing that AI is important and actually believing in its potential and the benefits it can bring to your business are two very different things. Your mindset can make or break you when it comes to delivering change, regardless of your role in the organisation. As a senior executive, you need to ensure you buy into what you are looking to achieve before you can ever expect your team to buy in. You need to walk the talk if you want your people to follow.

Who of us hasn’t looked around a meeting room, a networking event, a classroom, or a conference and felt out of place at some point in our lives? It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially in a professional setting.

Perhaps you’ve recently been promoted, switched to a different function or sector, or have just moved company to a more ‘prestigious’ or well-known organisation. Perhaps your meteoric rise to the top happened so quickly that you never had time to pause and assess along the way. Maybe you’re sat at a table with people who are older than you and have been doing their jobs for way longer than you have, or alternatively you find yourself surrounded by people who are younger and sharper.

If situations like these make you feel like a fish out of water or cause you to question your place at the table, it is likely that you are one of the millions of professionals who experience imposter syndrome. But what is it really, how can you be sure you have it, and what can you do about it?

Identifying & Understanding Imposter Syndrome

In the dictionary[1], the imposter syndrome is described as “a psychological condition that is characterised by persistent doubt concerning one’s abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one’s ongoing success.” Essentially, it’s a feeling that occurs when we benchmark ourselves against our peers and believe that we somehow do not measure up, even if that isn’t the case. Some symptoms include increased anxiety, stress over potentially being ‘caught,’ and in severe cases, depression. This fear and panic often leads to stagnation and performance losses, which can severely impact one’s career.

How can you tell if you have it? It might not be immediately apparent. However, if your internal script includes thoughts along the lines of “Oh my God everyone here is brilliant…. and I’m not,” and instead of shutting them down you agree with them, that is a pretty good indication.

All of us experience some form of imposter syndrome at various points in our lives, but may not have had the right words to identify the feeling. In a survey of 1,000 UK professionals, 85% expressed they suffer from imposter syndrome[2]. 25% reported feeling as though their success was pure luck, while 15% felt they were only in their role because their organisation was understaffed.

The sensation affects people of all genders, ages, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds and statuses, but is known to hit some groups harder than others. Various studies have shown that women are more likely to be impacted, as are those from non-white ethnicities and younger generations. Of the 85% of UK workers who reported suffering from imposter syndrome, 90% were women. In that same survey, millennials were nearly twice more likely to attribute their success to luck or understaffing than their baby boomer counterparts. When you think of the current diversity issues facing the FTSE 100 and the corporate world in general, it makes sense why these individuals. These are still very white and male dominated spaces, with older and more experienced people at the top. Members of these groups may find themselves amongst these peers and fixate on their differences, rather than on what they bring to the table.

That said, this is not just a female, BAME, or young person problem as it is often perceived to be. Absolutely anyone can be affected, not just these groups. Even some of the world’s top business leaders, athletes, government leaders, and other public figures widely considered to be one of the ‘best’ at their craft face these feelings of inadequacy, with the likes of Sheryl Sandberg, Howard Schultz, Serena Williams, Albert Einstein, Michelle Obama, David Bowie and more all having spoken out about their struggles with this mindset. At the end of the day, we are all just human and battling our own insecurities.

Our Advice

In our experience, imposter syndrome is more common the more successful you become regardless of age, demographics, or background. This has become more prevalent in recent years thanks to COVID-19’s restrictions on personal networking and an increasing number of individuals reaching senior positions at an earlier stage in their career. But how do you prevent those insecurities from stunting your growth? Here are the top 3 tips we share with our clients struggling to overcome their own mental hurdles:

• Understand that Benchmarking is Subjective: No one has ever criticised someone who climbed Mt. Everest for not earning it. There’s a silent, universal understanding that this is a major accomplishment that involves lots of training, preparation, hard work, and determination. Our careers are a much more subjective experience, but is it not the same thing? Didn’t you also have to train, prepare, and work hard to get where you are today? While there are 17 known routes to the top of Everest, almost everyone climbs it via one of two routes and likely will have faced either similar or the same set of conditions, obstacles, and challenges as those who made the trek before and after them. Careers are not like that, and so that makes it harder to compare ourselves to one another. Think of all the different places you could be from, schools you could attend, courses you could take, people you could have in your network, and work experience you could possibly obtain. The possibilities are endless, and therefore no one will ever have the exact same combination of all these factors as you do. There are a limited number of ways to get to the top of Everest, but a million different ways to build your career. Understand that your journey is uniquely yours and is valid, even if it doesn’t quite look like the journeys of those in similar roles.
• Challenge and Change Your Self Talk: Very rarely is outside criticism the source of these feelings, and imposter syndrome is most often the result of the things we tell ourselves. We think ourselves into downward spirals and enable these negative thoughts to continue to persist without challenge. When you catch yourself thinking these things, try to flip the thought. Ask yourself why you feel that way, what evidence you have to support it, and if that thought is really true. We are often our toughest critics and lack the same patience and compassion that we might grant to someone else in our same position. Become consciously aware of the conversation going on in your head when you’re in a situation that triggers your impostor feelings in order to stop them in their tracks. For example, instead of thinking, “Wait until they find out I have no idea what I’m doing,” tell yourself “Everyone who starts something new feels off-base in the beginning. I may not know all the answers but I’m smart enough to find them out.” Show yourself the same grace you would show to a loved one if they voiced similar doubts in themselves.
• Fake It to Make It: And if taking control of your thoughts doesn’t have the desired effect, take control of the situation. Now and then, we all have to fly by the seat of our pants, and usually this improvisation is one of the best ways to figure things out. Instead of considering “winging it” proof of your ineptness, learn to do what many high achievers do and view it as a skill. ‘Fake it until you make it’ is a worn-out phrase, but its message still rings true: Don’t wait until you feel confident to start putting yourself out there. Courage comes from taking risks. You just might find that you know more or are more capable than you think.

There is no cure-all for imposter syndrome, and it is likely to come and go throughout your career. The best thing you can do for yourself is to work on building your own confidence and periodically stepping back to appreciate how far you have come. Take time to track and recognise your success, which will help you to more confidently say ‘yes’ to opportunities. For some, this confidence might come from being around fellow colleagues in networks. Sometimes those around us are able to see us more clearly than we can see ourselves during our moments of doubt. When these feelings set in, ask for feedback from those you trust and whose opinions you value. If this is helpful to you, it is worth remembering that you are not the only one who may be feeling this way. As a leader, there are likely other members of your team battling their own insecurities, in which case you should strive to be the type of leader who ‘pays it forward.’ Be that mirror for your people, just as your peers help you see yourself.

For others, validation from your network might not be the key, in which case it might be helpful to take on a mentor or coach to help build your confidence and adequately benchmark your success. If you fall into this camp and would like some help navigating your career progression, get in touch with our team.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impostor%20syndrome

[2] http://hrnews.co.uk/85-british-workers-suffer-from-imposter-syndrome/

Organisations are beginning to put their plans and objectives into action.

From our conversations with our clients, it seems that Covid 19, inflation, talent scarcity, government funding support and policy uncertainties are creating increased challenges to boards.

As a result customer centricity is high up on the strategic agenda for many businesses in 2022.

And it makes sense.

After two challenging years of working to stay afloat, the time has come to build back better and enter the next era of business. Customers are central to the success of these efforts, but their habits and demands have changed along with the market these past few years. They are savvier, choosier, and more digitally-driven than ever before. In order to become truly customer centric, leaders need to tap into what it is that drives customers and influences them to return time and time again.

We asked our experts to share the top challenges they find our clients experiencing when aiming to become more customer centric, and to share their advice for overcoming these hurdles. Here’s what they had to say:

Top Challenges to Customer Centricity

• Learning to Unlearn: Many top executives got to where they are today through a long and successful career journey. The downside of that is that many reached their post years ago and settled in, sticking to what works. The practices may have historically helped to drive the business forward in challenging periods, but today’s market and customer is like nothing we have ever experienced before. We have never been this digital, this globalised, this actively communicative across various platforms and mediums, or this spoilt for choice with who we do business with. As a result, leaders may find that the practices they previously relied on to evolve their offering may no longer suffice and that they have to unlearn everything they thought they knew about the market, their role in it, and the customers they aim to serve. This can feel uncomfortable and unsettling for some, especially those who have adopted a sort of ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ mentality throughout their tenure. There is no room for stubbornness or ego here. To change the organisation and its practices, its leadership team will need to go within and address the attitudes and actions that are holding them back.

• Listening In: The best way to learn what your customer wants is to listen to them, but the acts of ‘listening’ and gathering business intelligence have evolved alongside the rest of the market. There are so many different ways to do this and to do it constantly. Your customers are communicating with your sales and service teams, browsing your website, talking about you on social media, reviewing you online, having conversations with their peers, and so on. That generates a lot of potential insight, but also a lot of noise. The challenge then becomes sorting through that intelligence, finding trends, and prioritising. It can be hard to delineate between what you are hearing and what is actually important to your customers. There may be a temptation to want to fix everything all at once, but that is not always possible or practical. The challenge for leaders is to take a moment to assess what they are hearing,
• Making Sense of Customer Data: All these customer conversations and activities create vast amounts of valuable data for the organisation that helps to paint the picture of what the journey looks like and where it could be improved. Businesses have access to an immense amount of data, but often fail to use it properly. The challenge leaders face is ensuring they have access to the right information and are using it to their advantage. Advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence will be a big help here, but leaders need to get on board with these tools and develop an understanding of them. The pandemic helped push many laggards towards new tech, but most businesses are still in the exploratory phases of their digital transformation journey. Executives need to push past any remaining hesitations towards technology and get to grips with it and soon, otherwise a lot of potential and valuable insights will continue to be missed out on.
• Generating Buy-In: The previous challenges were concentrated primarily on the leadership team, but true customer centricity flows evenly throughout every area of the business. Yes, leaders may have to unlearn, tune in, and make sense of the market demands, but their staff are the ones putting these lessons into practice. If your own people don’t buy into your vision and what you are trying to accomplish, how do you expect your customers to buy in? Not only do leaders need to be able to access all this data and make sense of it, but they also need to be able to present it to their people in a way that tells a story and brings the customer journey to life in a narrative way. Every member of the team from the board to the interns need to be aligned with the vision. The story told to an organisation’s people is the story that will ultimately be told to its customers. There can be no crossed wires. The sales team shouldn’t be saying one thing while IT says another, marketing says something different, and customer service is on a different page entirely. Every department, whether it is directly customer-facing or not, should know what the customer story is and the role they each play in delivering it. Creating that level of alignment at scale can be a major challenge for leaders, especially if the business has historically been insular across departments.

Top Tips for Overcoming Challenges to Customer Centricity

Thankfully, all of these problems are possible to overcome.

At The Rialto Consultancy, we have worked with leadership teams over the last decade in order to help them unlearn what they know and get their people on board. Here are our experts’ top tips for achieving greater customer centricity moving forward:

• Embrace Radical Empathy: It’s time for being human to come back into fashion. The pandemic bonded us all through mutual struggle, and as a result we all became a bit more understanding of one another. The pandemic and its challenges may not be over, but even when it eventually does come to an end, we need to remember that we are all just people. We have feelings. We have challenges. Take the time to be a bit more forgiving and understanding, not just of your customer but of your people. Practice patience and work to see things from their perspectives. That way, you can avoid friction and work more collaboratively to tackle problems.
• Expect Imperfection: Part of being human is making mistakes, learning from them, and continuing to try. The most successful customer centric leaders are those who understand that things won’t always be perfect, and who are accepting of this. What’s important is becoming more fluid and adapting to what comes. With so many different touchpoints and conversations happening all at once, things will inevitably get overlooked or you might feel tempted to try to fix absolutely every complaint brought to your attention. That is not feasible, and leaders need to come to terms with the fact that they might not always have the answers. Instead, be more curious and more tactful about how you address problems and prioritise.
• Understand the Journey: Do you know what it is like to be your own customer? What does the journey look like? What steps and processes do your customers go through when doing business with you? What is it like to complete a purchase on your website, or file a complaint with your customer service team? Every member of your team, not just leadership, needs to know what the journey looks like firsthand. Recently in the US, news broke that food delivery service DoorDash would be requiring every single one of their employees across all departments, including their CEO, to deliver one order each month. The reactions to this were mixed, with some staff outraged that they would be made to do the ‘lowliest’ job of the organisation, while others praised the initiative’s empathetic benefits. Your organisation may not go to these lengths to create an understanding of the journey, but at the very least your entire team should know what your process looks like from the perspective of your customers. That way, you can identify problems from the inside in order to fix them, and ensure that the people interacting the closest to your customers understand exactly what they are experiencing.
• Engage More: In order to listen to and understand your customer, you need to interact with them. Often, executive leadership has very little direct contact with the customer and instead are fed by intel from those ‘on the ground’. Their understanding of their customer comes from reports and second-hand news. By increasing their own direct interaction with the customer, leaders can build that all-important empathy and understanding.
• Trust and Empower Your People: Even if you are more actively engaged with your customers, the majority of the interaction will still fall on your team. Leaders need to trust their staff and find a way to empower those closest to the customer to best advocate for them. This is much easier to achieve if there is alignment across the organisation and a consistent story being told.
• Advocate on behalf of Your Customer: Advocating for the customer shouldn’t only take place during direct interactions. The customer’s perspective needs to be represented in every conversation, always. Someone should be playing ‘devil’s advocate’ on behalf of your customer in every meeting, strategic conversation, presentation, and so on. Instead of focusing on what’s in it for the business, someone always needs to be asking what’s in it for the customer. The more people you have asking this question, the better. Not only that, but everyone should be able to answer it by the time the conversation is done. Weaving this practice and mindset into absolutely everything helps ensure that the customer is always put first. When the customer is properly catered to, everything else will fall into place.

Becoming customer centric cannot happen overnight. It will take time, patience, experimentation and innovation to get it right. However, the organisations that dedicate the effort to get it right will have an easier time navigating what comes next with greater agility the support of their customers.

Last week, the United Nations closed their annual conference on climate change, known widely as COP26. By the end of the two-week summit, diplomats from nearly 200 countries had reached an agreement known as ‘The Glasgow Climate Pact’ to work together towards global sustainability goals. There was a great feeling of optimism as government bodies and major organisations announced their pledges, targets and commitments throughout the summit, with 60 of the UK’s FTSE 100 companies joining the UN’s Race to Zero campaign. One in three of the largest public companies in G20 countries now has a net zero target, up from one in five last year. After the summit, one thing is clear: climate change needs to be at the top of the strategic agenda for businesses moving forward.

So what does this mean for leaders? Now that pledges have been made and some regulatory standards have been outlined, what is the next step? How can you ensure that your organisation is helping to make the world a greener place rather than just ‘greenwashing’?

Following Through on Promises

While it provides a good basis for setting targets, many critics of The Glasgow Climate Pact feel that it lacks the regulatory muscle to ensure change. As a result, some feel it falls on the businesses who made pledges to make good on those promises, and for the rest of the private sector to play along.

As many leaders know, making a pledge or setting a goal is just the beginning. The challenge is in the follow-through.  With net zero targets becoming a prominent part of the conversation, expect to see businesses incorporating climate goals into their strategic plans for next year. Many may choose to use the guidelines outlined by government pledges, and others may choose to go further or reach for achievable ‘quick wins’ that can easily be accomplished. But given the new focus on climate change on a global scale, businesses can no longer get away with having no sustainability targets whatsoever.

Getting Beyond ‘Greenwashing’

Not only is acting on climate change important from a regulatory standpoint, but it also matters to your customers. A survey[1] conducted by Deloitte in May 2021 found that 65% of respondents expect CEOs to do more to make progress on societal issues, including reducing carbon emissions, tackling air pollution, and making business supply chains more sustainable. Rather than leaving it to businesses to be the change, customers are willing to act on their beliefs. 23% of consumers surveyed by Deloitte say they will switch to buying products from an organisation that shares their values on environmental issues, 42% have changed their own consumption habits to match their stance on the environment, and 21% have encouraged others to switch to a company whose values align with their own.

It is clear that customers want to do business with organisations that stand for something, but there is a difference between taking a stance and actually acting on it. In this case, being all talk and no walk could be classified as ‘greenwashing.’ This term is used to criticise businesses who go to great lengths to market themselves as being ‘eco-friendly’ and use PR initiatives to seem as though they are taking tough action on climate change, when in reality they are doing very little. In recent years, corporations such as Volkswagen, H&M, BP, Nestle, ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and even IKEA have all come under fire for this. Customers are quick to see through the smoke and mirrors to the true story, and leaders need to not underestimate their audiences.

Actions for Leaders

With all this in mind, what do leaders need to know and prioritise moving forward? The first step is to take this issue seriously and understand that this is not just the latest buzzy trend in the marketplace. This is an issue that affects us all and requires swift and decisive action. As a business leader, you play an important role in driving change. Your people, your stakeholders, and your customers are all looking to you to lead the charge and set the course for how to proceed. Here are our tips for doing this effectively:

• Get Up to Speed with Expectations: Big businesses weren’t the only ones who made pledges and set targets at COP26. It is worth reading up on the targets that were agreed in The Glasgow Climate Pact and the targets set by the countries your organisation operates in. What are they aiming to achieve, and when? Even if there are currently no set, mandatory regulations that require your organisation to meet specific targets or behave a certain way, it is always best to understand what the bigger picture looks like. You and your team can use the government’s goals as guidance when plotting out your own climate strategy, and work towards the targets they have set out on a macro level. This is a means of playing it safe as well. Just because no mandatory regulations may have been set, they could be at any minute. If you aren’t already working towards these targets, regulations may make it so that you have to adjust very quickly to catch up. Instead, it is better to operate as if the targets outlined are already law so that if and when they actually do become enforced, you will already be on the right track for compliance.
• Be Realistic: As we have discussed, making a public pledge is a good start for signalling your stance, but you need to ensure your words aren’t empty. Do not overpromise and underdeliver. When creating a climate strategy, take a look at where you can actually deliver results. This might be a series of quick wins to get you started as well as some longer-term initiatives that will be rolled out over time, but everything you are proposing needs to be achievable. No business is going to reach net zero overnight, but every organisation has small actions they can take to start working towards that goal. Take an honest look at your business and where you can improve and start there.
• Don’t Shout About It: While you should be transparent with your audiences about your stance on climate change and what your organisation is doing about it, there is no need to shout it from the rooftops. It is always better to practice rather than preach, as your customers are more interested in your actions than your words. Communicate that you are taking action and be clear on how, but do not make that the central component of your marketing or media unless what you are doing can match up to the hype. Otherwise, you may be accused of greenwashing and lose a lot of credibility and trust in the market.
• Champion Change: As a leader, your people are looking to you to take charge and set the tone for change. They aren’t going to buy into the vision if it seems like you don’t. If you are going to set forth initiatives and make sustainability a key component of your organisational identity, then that change needs to start with you. Be clear on what the stance is and what expectations the team needs to meet. Provide clear actions to follow so that everyone knows what role they play. Ensure everyone is aligned on the vision and why it matters. Adjust your own personal habits if you find that they contradict what you are looking to achieve. It can be little things to start, such as carrying a reusable water bottle or becoming more conscious of how your actions contribute to your own carbon footprint. When you lead by example, you become much more credible for your people to follow.
• Keep Up to Date: The UN’s climate summit only happens once a year, but sustainability is an ongoing conversation. There are new developments constantly, and if you are going to truly become a champion of climate change it is important you stay up to date. Incorporate checking for new updates or research into your regular newsgathering activities. Just as you should be keeping tabs on your industry, you should be keeping a finger on the pulse of climate change. By building an understanding of what’s happening, you may come to find that you need to make some adjustments in your own knowledge or capabilities. Do you need to educate yourself on any specific topics to help better inform your strategy? Do you need to better understand a topic in order to effectively communicate to your team why they should care about it? Do the regulations require you to adapt your approach or capabilities as a leader?

Sustainability is a top-of-mind business issue, but one that requires firm action. It matters not whether you feel the responsibility for leading the charge falls onto the government or the private sector; we all have a role to play. Leaders need to act as champions for change to ensure that their organisation is doing their part and not making promises they aren’t delivering on. The world will be a better place for it.

[1] https://deloitte.wsj.com/articles/consumers-expect-brands-to-address-climate-change-01618945334

The workforce landscape today looks quite different to what we saw back in March 2020. Since then, we have seen the unemployment rate fluctuate, predictions about the economy change like the weather, and a shift in the way we do business. Most organisations are battling an increasingly competitive marketplace, navigating disruptions in their supply chains, and adapting to changes in their customers’ habits and needs. Though the situation appears to be looking up, it is likely that businesses will be grappling with these challenges and impacts for many months to come.

As a result, most leaders recognise that there is an imperative to look at and think about ‘work’ differently, including what it really means, how it’s done, and where it is done. After operating in survival mode for the past year and considering these issues from a place of uncertainty and instability, many organisations will feel it is time to establish a more constant and stable foundation. The organisations that will come out on top are those who seize this moment to shape the future of work, developing new business models and ways of working that successfully encompass their purpose, goals, and vision while also improving the customer experience.

At the core of bringing these plans to life and enacting the vision day-to-day is the business’s people. People now need to be valued more highly than capital, or at least on par. Business leaders need to be thinking about the contributions their people can make, how their people need and want to work, and what their people need to do to help the business reach its objectives. This is where strategic ‘workforce planning’ can and should come into play because oftentimes, the most impactful change starts from within.

What is Strategic Workforce Planning?

Strategic workforce planning involves pulling together a coherent and agile plan that blends business strategy, people, data, and technology in order to make workforce composition and capability decisions that meet the organisation’s financial, productivity and customer targets.

During the planning process you may uncover a need to make some restructuring decisions, but there is far more to strategic workforce planning than hiring new talent or making redundancies that, if not thought through, can also create the risk of losing existing talent. These plans need to encompass how you intend to meet current demands in a sustainable, timely, and cost-effective way and they will likely require you to take an honest look at your existing workforce to spot risks and opportunities. If meeting the demands of the business means growing a specific area of it, do you intend to bring in new talent or invest in what you already have? Do you have the right skills in the right roles? Are there internal promotions you could make, or talent that would be better utilised in a different area of the business? Do you have the right expertise on your side in the necessary areas?

Putting people at the heart of any restructure is what will separate a successful attempt from a high risk one. The people in question will include both your internal and external stakeholders, such as your staff and your customers. All stakeholder groups have specific needs and roles to play in the function of your business, and the complex and wide-ranging needs of these varying audience groups may require deeper expertise in topics such as employment law, social planning, engagement, psychology, or consumer behaviour. Identifying the areas that need strengthening and working that into your plans by allocating the appropriate workforce resources will go a long way in helping restructuring efforts or transformation projects to succeed. Putting the building blocks together now ensures that HR teams, line managers, and business leaders have the opportunity to implement a smooth with mitigated risk.

A People-Centric Approach

People are one of the biggest if not the biggest expenditure of most organisations. Maximising the potential in this area is crucial, not just for the sake of your investment but also for the sake of your organisation. While strategising and planning happens at the top, your staff are the ‘boots on the ground’ actually bringing these plans to life. The C-Suite may determine what customer targets need to be met, but it’s the organisation’s employees who interact with those customers on a regular basis and have a direct responsibility for accomplishing the goals set by the higher ups. The people you choose to put in those roles matter.

Each member of the C-suite normally represents a different specific function of the business, whether it be Marketing and Sales, Operations, Technology, Diversity, Innovation, or even People, but they cannot properly fulfil their roles without all of the individuals representing different roles, specialisations, and functions throughout the organisation. Managing a dynamic workforce and supporting capability development that spans the entire business is a central challenge for leadership to overcome and relies heavily on successful communication.

Communication and Culture

In an ideal world, every business experiment, innovation, restructure, or project would run smoothly, effortlessly. Unfortunately, organisations don’t always have all the answers needed in order to make that happen and today’s environment is too dynamic to enable such change. As a result, successful firms are relying on their workforce to be part of the journey and play an active role in developing solutions to the problems that arise.

A key component of keeping a people-centric approach is not just assuming what’s best for your staff or customers, but actually communicating with them and shaping a fully inclusive culture. Don’t assume that your staff automatically have the skills you need, and attempt to identify which areas seem to be lacking. Don’t deliver your plans as edicts and expect buy-in, either. Allow your workforce to be architects of the organisation’s future structure and culture. Clarify and communicate an inspiring vision of what success looks like and how it will be measured, solicit employees’ opinions, listen to their contributions, take feedback on board and allow it to inform the strategy, and share impact measurements as they’re achieved. Ensure individuals know what is expected of them in terms of action and behaviour, and the role that they play in the bigger picture.

It would be remiss of the leadership team to not include elements of organisational culture in their strategic workforce planning. Focus on employee satisfaction in order to dam the flood of staff dissatisfaction or turnover and to build brand goodwill. If the last year has taught us one major HR lesson it is that one uniform way of working may not be the most effective approach for all staff. It’s worth rethinking ways of working to be more stimulating or providing staff with an environment that supports them in how they want or need to work, whether that environment be a designated office or a remote location. If skills gaps have been identified, encourage continuous learning or support upskilling initiatives. By investing in your people, you can broaden your horizons rather than narrowing them and build an environment that engenders a sense of purpose.

The most progressive employers will give their people a choice to join them on this new journey, or to bow out. Those employees who are not committed to the vision should be allowed to go with grace and without spectacle. After all, once they are no longer your employee, they could very well become your customer or a key thought leader in your industry.

The Role of Staff

While the brunt of strategic workforce planning will fall on the leadership team, there are a number of actions staff can do in order to support these efforts and ultimately shape their own career paths and future contributions.

The first and most imperative is to keep up with trends and identify future-focused skills that may be of long-term value to the organisation or may become a requirement for their role down the line. This provides a bit of leverage for the individual during organisational cutbacks and having these skills already on the payroll may help minimise leadership’s need to recruit new talent in order to meet their goals.

Once the new business models or plans have been introduced and the expectations have been clearly outlined, staff should take stock of their own behaviours to identify what needs to change in order to support a potential culture shift. It might involve becoming more open-minded to change, collaborative, communicative, innovative, or curious.

Finally, the people-first focus should not only be a leadership priority. As mentioned, it’s the staff who work most closely with the customers and who have the most first-hand knowledge of what their needs, priorities, habits, attitudes, or behaviours might be. It’s important to understand how these influences might impact the business on a large scale in terms of its products, services, profits, messaging, and so on. However, it’s also valuable to be able to maximise this knowledge on an internal basis in order to further your own career and help inform wider strategy.

In order to create impactful and widespread change for the business, the process often needs to start at its core with its people. From top to bottom, an organisation’s people play a crucial role in driving success, and therefore need to be one of the first areas considered when developing plans and solutions. But in order for a business to get the most out of this resource, it’s crucial to invest the time into proper planning, the resources for proper skills development, and the effort of cultivating a culture worth buying into. This may be a challenge for some Leaders, but it can make all the difference.

We have reached an interesting point in our professional lives. The digital revolution and its implications coupled with the economic and societal aftermath of the pandemic have presented organisations with a new set of critical of challenges to overcome. The responsibility may fall on the board or a group of key decision makers to carve a successful path forward and present solutions for helping their organisation to stay relevant in the future. While those plans may look different for every business, it is clear that strong and engaging leadership will be crucial for success in whatever comes next.

But what makes an effective and successful leader? What skills, capabilities, and attributes do they possess that inspire others to follow their lead and buy into their vision? How do these individuals seem to effortlessly navigate even the most challenging circumstances?

The harsh reality is that not everyone is cut out for leadership, and not all who attempt it will be successful. We work very closely with global leaders of all backgrounds from organisations of varying types and sizes, and while there is no clear-cut formula for what makes a leader successful, several patterns have emerged.

Here are the five factors that most often result in leadership success, as identified by our ongoing research and multi-disciplinary team of specialists:

1. Mastering Buy-In

Good leaders have the ability to engage teams in facilitating change within the organisation, and know that speaking in edicts and assuming that their word will be taken as law is not the same as generating buy-in. Similarly, you cannot expect automatic buy-in on your initiatives simply because of your position in the company. Mastering buy-in is all about building strong collaborative relationships with the people you need to have on your side and giving all a voice in shaping the future.

Networking and fostering your connections over time helps to build a strong reputation and rapport. Good networking helps build a basis of trust and support that can help you to win new business or engage staff more effectively. These connections will not only enable you to win support more easily, but also allow you to gain understanding and perspective that can help to inform the plans and initiatives you create.

The most successful leaders are constantly looking for patterns, opportunities, and problems across their teams, industry, and markets that they can leverage to help further their business objectives. They are skilled at assessing concerns by asking the right questions and listening effectively. However, the challenge top leaders face is getting others to also understand these issues, see the opportunities to be gained, and get on board with making any necessary changes. It goes beyond persuasion. The most successful teams are those who truly buy into the bigger vision and purpose and are committed to delivering impact. It falls on leadership to create and encourage those attitudes.

2. Communicating Effectively

Of course, if you want people to buy into the plans, objectives, and initiatives you are proposing, there needs to be clear communication of what you are looking to accomplish and how. Leaders are tasked with managing countless relationships throughout the organisation, the industry, the community, and perhaps even the world at large. Learning how to convey the right messages to these various groups so that everyone truly understands and can act accordingly is a major skill for leaders to develop.

Effective communication is vital to gain trust, create alignment, and drive change. Without it, objectives get lost, vital information can be misinterpreted, relationships suffer, and unnecessary hurdles are created.  Being able to communication across multiple channels authentically, consistently, simply, and clearly is what separates a successful leader from the rest.

The best performing teams are typically supported by an environment that enables them to feel safe and enthusiastic about sharing their ideas and allows them to work through problems collaboratively and constructively. Strong leaders encourage and seek out the opinions of their people, and they take the time to actually listen. Staff usually have a deeper insight into the day-to-day workings of the business and the needs of the customer than those at the top of the organisation do and can provide a much-needed reality check when proposing new ideas. Leaders should encourage these discussions and take feedback on board in order to ensure their initiatives will actually provide value to the organisation.

3. Delivering Results

Making plans and setting objectives is only half of the battle. How well do you actually deliver on them? In our blog about leading with purpose, we discussed the idea of ‘walking the talk,’ or essentially practicing what you preach. If you are making promises to your team, your customers, and the organisation’s other stakeholders, there needs to be action attached.

You could have every sought-after soft skill there is, but at the end of the day success boils down to delivering results. In order to do this, get clear on expectations and responsibilities, clearly define your goals and determine what metrics you will use to measure individual and team. What is the value of your initiatives, and how will others experience it? Success will look different for every project and every leader, but some good areas to observe for benchmarking include efficiency, profit, productivity, leads, and satisfaction levels.

Your effectiveness as a leader hinges on your ability to not only make plans and get the team involved, but also to turn your ideas into positive outcomes. That sends the message to your team and your organisation’s stakeholders that you are trustworthy, dependable, and can follow through. All of these contribute to deeper trust and easier buy-in in the future.

4. Setting Standards for Wellbeing and Professional Development

Leaders are the most visible figures in the organisation. Depending on their level or role within the organisation, they may even be the public figurehead for the business. That responsibility comes with a unique set of pressures and expectations. The way a leader behaves, carries themselves, and manages their role is a reflection on the organisation and has been proven to directly impact staff’s attitudes and performance.

That is why it is vitally important for leaders to set a good standard and model the behaviours and attitudes that they would like to see reflected throughout their organisation. This includes being aware of and open about their own strengths, weaknesses, and limitations as not only a leader but also a person. Leaders carry a lot of responsibility, and that comes with heavy expectations. By looking after their own wellbeing, leaders are able to send an important message about the importance of mental health and work-life balance. While we may be in business to create a profit, we are not alive to be in business. Those who lead with emotional intelligence, mental agility, empathy, and humanity are more likely to be viewed favourably by the people they are looking to gain the support and trust of.

Because of the added pressures and responsibilities, leadership can often feel isolating. While a big part of the job is creating and managing relationships in order to further business objectives, it is important for senior leaders to create their own support network. The most effective leaders recognise that they cannot and do not have to go it alone. Having formal confidants such as other board members, trusted colleagues, a mentor, or a career coach can help to provide professional support when the stresses of the job begin to pile up. Outside of work, having an informal network such as friends and family helps to provide personal support and encouragement when needed.

Additionally, successful leaders know and understand that the only way forward is through experimentation, exploration, agility, and open-mindedness. At times, progress will require even the most experienced leaders to unlearn old habits in favour of new future-focused practices. The best leaders are those who are constantly evolving and adapting. These leaders seek out opportunities for continuous learning and encourage their teams to do the same.

5. Embracing New Technology and AI

Of course, technology is one of the most vital areas for reskilling and retraining. With our increased reliance on digital technologies and the rapid adoptions of new tools such as artificial intelligence (AI), proficiency in digital skills has become a must-have. It is vital that leaders familiarise themselves with these tools so that they can champion them within their organisation. As with any major change, there is likely to be pushback from some members of staff. Along with the other capabilities already discussed that help to build trust and credibility, a leader’s ability to reasonably explain the uses and benefits of emerging technology can go a long way for getting the sceptics on board. Once that happens, the organisation is able to better keep pace with the evolving business landscape and ever-changing habits and increasing expectations of their customers to deliver long term value.

Again, there is no fool proof formula for successful leadership. What sets effective leaders apart is a willingness to continuously learn, evolve and adapt, effective communication and listening skills, strong relationships, and a focus on the future. Focusing your attention on the five areas above will position you and your organisation well for long-term success.

The past year has been challenging for leaders everywhere, even surpassing the 2008 financial crisis. It has forced executives to adapt to professional and societal change at record speed. Waves of change altered the modus operandi, and the way customers and clients behave, requiring a new mindset, changed behaviours and in some cases, innovative operating models.

Some leaders responded by casting aside pride, bureaucracy and tradition to enable new positive behaviours that drove rapid change and helped their organisation stay competitive. This period proved to be a true ‘trial by fire’ lesson in digital transformation, consumer behaviour, and compassionate leadership. As a result, some of the most effective leaders were those who adapted swiftly to become more agile, decisive, innovative, digital and data savvy, collaborative, customer-centric and empathetic.

While some elements of our professional lives may return to the way they were before COVID-19, many aspects have changed permanently. If the Government’s plans are successful and truly irreversible, we will have no choice but to address them sooner rather than later. What lessons can be learned from the workforce to lock in the best practices developed during the pandemic, and how can they successfully combine with the ways we worked pre-COVID? How do we do this successfully when teams are split between remote locations and the shared office? Here are our top tips for successful leadership in a hybrid working environment.

The ‘Best’ Best Practices

What really constitutes ‘best practice’? Is it what works best for the most amount of organisations, creates the most profit, or causes the least friction? Normally what becomes considered ‘best practice’ involves a combination of these factors, but it can also vary on a case-by-case basis. Government and trade bodies give us regulations that serve as macro benchmarks, and there are a few that have become engrained in overall working life and were very prevalent pre-pandemic. For example, working from an office was the standard for most organisations.

But then during the pandemic, certain things became best practice out of necessity. Working remotely or from home is a prime example. When nonessential businesses were given no choice but to close their doors due to lockdown and the stay-at-home orders mandated working from home wherever possible, having the ability to log in remotely and continue to get work done was a saving grace that allowed staff to continue on with the essential activities of the business. But what happens now that these restrictions have lifted? Organisations and their leaders will need to assess the benefits and determine the best course of action. Was working from home successful simply because it was a necessity, or were there notable changes in morale, efficiency, and productivity?

This transition period requires leaders to take stock and be honest about what best serves the organisation’s objectives, its customers, and its staff. This may require letting go of preconceived notions and long held biases or beliefs about what best practice truly means.

One of the most valuable resources a leader has is the team. Open up a dialogue with staff to discuss what is and is not working. What elements of remote work do they like, and what benefits have they seen? Have they found a better way of doing things this past year? Do they even want to go back to the way things were? With their feet on the ground, your team’s feedback and performance will give you the best idea of what should or should not be considered best practice.

What you learn from your staff and what you have observed over the past year can be weighed against what you have traditionally done in order to determine the true best practices for your organisation. However, the only way for this to be successful is to be honest and to leave your own biases behind. Embrace agility and new ideas, whilst keeping your focus fixed on the future and the evolving needs of your core stakeholders and customers.

Creating Alignment and Clearing Communication Hurdles

Many major organisations have already announced their intention to allow staff to continue working remotely at least some of the time.  Many others are poised to follow suit. If you have determined this to be the best course of action for your business, your challenge is now to embed your new best practices into a hybrid work environment.

When all staff work from the office it is perceived to be easier to monitor performance and impact, and it enables easier collaboration between teammates. When staff were working from home, they all had no choice but to rely on email, video conferencing, and collaboration platforms to communicate with no in-person elements. A return to the office with a hybrid model will split the workforce between locations and may cause communication hurdles or confusion. Not only that, but how can you monitor impact and individual contribution this way?

In our consulting work with organisations, we at The Rialto Consultancy have found that the issues that most organisations have with mindset, impact, and performance stem from poor or ineffective communication and lack of alignment. Overcoming barriers to clear communication will be an essential first step for implementing hybrid working models effectively and creating much-needed alignment across the entire organisation.

You cannot have everyone on the same page and aligned if no one knows what the business’s goals are or what is needed to achieve them. Now that you have hopefully identified what is to become best practice in your organisation’s new normal, you need to be sure that all members of the team have a full understanding of what will be expected of them. Set standards for behaviour and benchmarks for performance, making time and putting systems in place to monitor whether or not these are being met both when the employee is in the office and at home.

It may require extra effort to level the playing field to make sure that communication is consistent across locations. When hosting a meeting in the office with the staff who are physically present, determine how remote staff can participate and ‘be present’ in a similar way. Will you require additional facilitation and means of sharing communication. Likewise, if hosting a meeting virtually, encourage in-office staff to gather and dial in together. Make sure that all parties are granted an equal opportunity to speak and share perspectives and ideas and foster an environment where they feel encouraged to do so. If an in-person conversation lends some valuable insights, recap and share on the Slack or Teams platform as routine to keep remote staff looped in. It may take reinforcement and frequent check-ins to ensure everyone is clear and nothing is missed.

This might seem difficult to accomplish and may take some getting used to. But once this in-depth level of communication has become standard behaviour, it will be much easier to keep the team on track and monitor progress. Thankfully, the technology we are fortunate enough to have access to can smooth out the transition and make hybrid working more seamless overall.

Easing the Transition

Technology has undoubtedly played a critical role over the last year, and it will continue to be essential in order for hybrid models to be both feasible and successful. But even after a year of relying on it, technology can still cause friction, annoyance, and discomfort. Is your staff ready and willing to work this way? Are they willing to potentially adapt their own communication styles in order to make sure all members of the team stay in the loop?

Of course, communications will be crucial to success here as well. Ask staff about their concerns and hesitations with the new model, and work with them to ease their concerns. Clearly communicate why the organisation is choosing to implement a hybrid work model, how it is expected to work, what communication channels will be needed, and what outcomes are expected to be achieved. Making staff feel included and heard as part of the process will go a long way to creating a culture that supports and embraces change and innovation.

There will undoubtedly be some grey areas and ambiguity throughout the transition period. By following the advice above, leaders will be better armed to help their team settle comfortably into a hybrid working model as a part of the culture.