Beyond Job Boards: Targeting the Source @ http://bit.ly/6apRA.

What the article does not delve into, is how critical networking is. But it does offer a view into the future with stats including that about 50% of Facebook’s new hires come through referrals.

Get out there!

While it may be true that organizations are cutting funding for “training programs,” that is not the case when it comes to grooming emerging leaders. According to the 2008 Bersin & Associates Leadership Development Survey, a study of 400 organizations conducted last October by the Oakland, CA-based talent management research firm, 40% of those polled, said their spending on leadership development has remained the same, while about 36% of the organizations said their budgets were slated to increase this year.

Training dollars overall may be decreasing while companies may be shifting their priorities to leadership. Bill Pelster, a principal at the Seattle office of Deloitte Consulting, says senior executives are concentrating on what their organizations will look like 12 to 18 months from now, so the cash for development is still flowing for key executives. “They know that this (recession) will end and, at some point, the need to expand or grab talent and market share is going to be there.”

Companies are pickier about where to invest–reducing classroom training but increasing other development vehicles, such as virtual training, coaching or blended learning. These companies are expanding newer approaches such as one-on-one coaching, self-diagnostics and management teambuilding workshops to further their leadership development programs.

Today companies want a stronger marriage between leadership development and everyday work experience and to scale access to leadership development to promotable line managers. “The more customized an experience can be to an individual, and the closer it is to the work that [he or she does] every day, the more effective it is,” says Kathy Kavanagh, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ managing director for learning and education.

Peter Cappelli, director of the Wharton School’s Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania sees a silver lining in a bad economy—in that “stretch assignments” are an effective and practical method of leadership development and are especially relevant and effective now. “Seize the opportunity of having to do more with fewer people,” he says. “You’ve laid off somebody at the director level, then a couple of the senior managers start splitting up some of those tasks, and taking on some of them as stretch assignments.” As long as someone is there to “hold their hands a little bit,” Cappelli says, they learn by doing, and the organization is helping to address potential succession gaps.

In many cases, outside executive coaches are the “hand holders” of the emerging leaders assigned to these stretch assignments.

Source: Human Resource Executive, June 2, 2009

I have used 10-10-10 very powerfully in my own life.  Let me an example to demonstrate how 10-10-10 works

1) Should we relocate from Austin to the Bay Area after husband receives an offer from Google?

Context: My husband and I met as MBA students.  Both quite ambitious, we moved to Austin, because he had a job offer at Dell and I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial.  We married in Austin and started our family there.  We had an incredibly close circle of friends, and I had a thriving practice with mainly local clients.   Given  how affordable Austin, we lived a very comfortable life and I was able to have both a satisfying career and still have flexibility to spend substantive time with our daughter.

Decision: As much as we enjoyed Austin, my husband’s specialty was high-tech operations and Silicon Valley beckoned.  Google extended a fantastic offer to relocate to the Bay Area, right around the time we were expecting our second child.  He got his job offer the day we came home from the hospital with baby #2, welcomed by a 2 1/2 year old big sister.  We had a big decision: do we relocate?

10 minutes: In the short term, we’d be losing a circle of friends that were like a family… with this circle of friends we went through the evoluation of being single, then couples, then parents together.   It took 10 years to build.  We’d also be going down a few rungs in terms of quality of life, moving from a 3,000 SF McMansion to an 1,100 SF duplex unit, plus basic living expenses that were up to 50% higher.  I’d be starting from scratch professionally and losing a very powerful network in Austin.  There was still the excitement of the job opportunity with Google, the cultural opportunities and diversity of living in the Bay Area, and the easier prospect of getting the grandparents to visit us and help us out with childcar!

10 months:  This time consequence I knew would be the hardest.  I was starting from scratch in terms of understanding neighborhoods, schools, pediatricians and parks for the kids.  My career would be on hold till I found quality childcare (which took one long, painful year for my youngest).  We would  miss our friends and the support network we had in Austin.  We would feel the stress of living in the very competitive Silicon Valley.

10 years: Everything became clear thinking a decade ahead.  I knew I’d find fantastic caregivers and schools for the kids.  Even just two years in, my coaching practice has grown many times the size of my business in Austin.  The professional opportunities for both my husband and me are unparalleled in comparison to what we could have in Austin.  It is a breeze to get the grandparents to come for longer term visits year round (vs. the moratorium of visiting Texas anytime between May- October!).   Between visits from our friends and an annual visit to Austin (and, of course Facebook!), our Austin ties remain close.   Every weekend is like a vacation given the natural beauty of the Bay Area.  I miss the afternoon I would spend with the children during the week, but my husband and I are embracing the quality time of evenings and weekends.

Through 10-10-10, I realized the following:

• Going to work full-time was the right decision for me.  To balance my demanding schedule, I think I am even more fully present for my children and my husband now. I am teaching my children that professional satisfaction and success are important.  I love what I do and know that I contribute meaningfully to both my family and society at large.
• Moving to the Bay Area gives my husband much more flexibility and accelerates his career path.  He’s in the thick of the action and can build his network in ways unimaginable in Austin.
• The children are benefiting in a number of ways.  We have at least one set of grandparents / family visiting for about 30% of the year which is priceless for the children.  We are able to immerse the children to Mandarin and Spanish and raise true global citizens.  We are teaching the children that they are loved and are capable of anything, yet they are not the center of the universe.  They will be confident being surrounded by adults and caregivers who love, respect and encourage them.
• I realized my fundamental parenting values: it takes a village to raise a child; children should not be the center of the universe; children need to learn early on the basic principles of self-reliance surrounded by trustworthy adults.

See the 10-10-10 blog post for more context: http://sasha360.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/suzywelch10-10-10/

Examine the Consequences: 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years

The crossroads of tough decision… they can change our life forever.  Decisions like: Do I return to work or stay home with the kids?  Should I take this job for the paycheck, or do I hold out for the dream job?  Do I stick out the marriage after the affair or go for a divorce?  Should I go back to school and get another degree or attempt to advance without one?

When I first saw Suzy Welch‘s 10-10-10 article in O Magazine, I immediately saw its impact.  Finally, a way to strategically think about decisions, by thinking of their consequences: in the short term (10 minutes), foreseeable future (10 months), and long-term (10 years).

Values Driven

Forget about the deadly 2 “G”s (guilt and gut) which a tinge decision making with fear and other people’s expectations of us… and consider instead the consequences.  What makes Suzy’s process so compelling, is that it is based on values.   Consequences become your personal consequences… not your mother’s, not your neighbor’s, not your boss’… they become a manifestation of  your authentic values.

I agree with Suzy in that values are something that are as unique as your fingerprint.   In addition to the brilliant simplicity of the 10-10-10 , Suzy’s book, which she’s currently promoting on book tour. One of the best parts of her 10-10-10 book is the section on how to excavate your values (see Chapter 3. Authentic At Last: The Values Equation of 10-10-10).  She offers several getting-right-to-the-heart-of-it questions to exhume your values:

• What would make you cry on your seventieth birthday?
• What do you want people to say about you when you are not in the room?
• What do you love most about how your parent(s) live?  What do you hate most about how your parent(s) live?

10-10-10 is truly life-transforming in it’s simplicity and completeness.  Suzy Welch walks you through anecdotes that delve into uses of the process in career, marriage, friendship, and parenting.  Next time life gives you a lemon, use 10-10-10 to make lemonade.

For a personal example of how I used 10-10-10 to make a big family decision: http://sasha360.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/10-10-10-example/.  Suzy offers several examples of her own in her O article.

Human beings naturally band into groups—and as soon as such groups form, members start to dislike one another. This pattern appears repeatedly in humans and other primates, for that matter.

To succeed, you must cultivate respect for others. Teaching respectfulness is certainly a promising means of fostering tolerance, and many schools and organizations put it into practice by requiring students of various backgrounds to work on joint projects with shared goals. With this kind of foundation, students can continue to cultivate tolerance and respect when they graduate to the workplace and political realm.

Having a mindset of respects allow relationships, on a micro-level, organizations, countries, and even entire movements, on a macro-level, to achieve things unthinkable in an us vs. them framework.   Marriages work because of respect.  Schools grow stronger on the foundation of respect.  King, Ghandi and Mandela showed us the power of the jiu-jitsu move of countering hatred with respect and changed the course of history.

Read Howard Gardner’s: Five Minds for the Future and any of Daniel Goleman’s EQ books to learn more.  In the meantime, find the snarkiest co-worker, neighbor, etc… in your life, and show them respect instead of contempt, and see how things change.

Korn Ferry Institute : Conducting a Successful Job Hunt>>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao

Starring TJ Thyne & Vicki Davis. Writer/Director/Composer – Kurt Kuenne. Winner – Best Narrative Short, Cleveland Int’l Film Festival, Winner – Jury Award, Gen Art Chicago Film Festival, Winner – Audience Award, Hawaii Int’l Film Festival, Winner – Best Short Comedy, Breckenridge Festival of Film, Winner – Crystal Heart Award, Best Short Film & Audience Award, Heartland Film Festival, Winner – Christopher & Dana Reeve Audience Award, Williamstown Film Festival, Winner – Best Comedy, Dam Short Film Festival, Winner – Best Short Film, Sedona Int’l Film Festival.

http://breakthroughinnovation.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/innovalue/