Harvard Business

You've heard about the African Renaissance, right? The Aid Bosses, once the unquestioned successors in Africa to the joint heirloom of Mother Teresa and Lord Clive of Chennai, are finding it harder and harder to get face time with the political grandees in our wheeling and dealing capitals. The Chinese are fawning all over our oil and copper, forcing once-aloof Westerners to write treatises about why China's engagement with the continent isn't all marshmallow candy. These concerns get polite nods here and there but, mostly, serious Africans ignore them and firmly redirect the conversation back to private equity, or franchise deals, or something along those lines. Bottom line: Are you game or are you out? And have you heard that we have more mobile phones than any other continent besides Asia?

The curious thing, though, is that Africans aren't basking in a perpetual high. The fact that the continent is tired of being lectured to and treated as a curiosity to sate the intellectual pretensions of Westerners doesn't mean that Africans are blind to the challenges they perceive as obstructing every aspect of their continent's development.
Take any newspaper printed in Africa any day. Whether you are in Dakar or Asmara, the wailing and ranting brims over; doomsayers and purveyors of gloom compete for the prize of most pessimistic outlook all morning, noon and dusk on local radio, Facebook and — where such media has been cordoned off by overzealous political police — in the backseats of tightly packed mini-buses.

Most savvy Africa-watchers reconcile these two divergent narratives like this: The prospects are brilliant, but the infrastructure is lagging. They affirm the imminence of socioeconomic transformation, but express doubt that the physical carrying capacity is strong enough to support equitable growth, job creation, and social harmony.

But there's a new, alternative narrative out there that can be summarized in one word: leapfrogging. The leapfrogging argument takes off where the stalemate between the infrastructure pessimists and the entrepreneurial optimists ends. It is rooted in the notion that infrastructure can be hacked.

In much the same way that Africa's lack of significant telecom capacity was a boon rather than a hindrance to the emergence of mobile telephony, its lack of legacy infrastructure for everything ranging from waste management to energy utilities could provide the appetite — non-existent in the West — for genuinely transformative, future-friendly reconceptualization of the very notion of infrastructure.

Technology and new concepts of living, as well as progressive notions of urbanization, industrial capitalism, consumerism, ecotourism, and renewable systems, could meld to fashion a new shared-growth paradigm. Such a paradigm, proponents argue, can easily bypass the clunky, wasteful, inequitable, and socially non-scalable physical infrastructure legacy of the West, propelling Africa, uniquely among continents, into a true 21st Century style of civilization.

This is a concept way ahead of the crawling pace of empirical evidence. No wonder its exponents often sound and look more like New Age sages than Jeffrey Sachs. But it is possible to begin a preliminary examination by focusing on the narrow confines of one's trade or cause.

I run a multinational enterprise with multiple partners and super-demanding clients. The technology systems that undergird this effort are far-flung. I am expected to integrate my tools into complex global supply chains of international drug producers to solve the local problem of counterfeiting. I have had to run worldwide social marketing campaigns in the past in order to attract attention to our work in what could be dismissed as obscure backwaters of the global system. I still spend much of my time traveling from conference to conference in the West to meet people who can help my work succeed (I started thinking about this blog post on a train bound for Davos).

I am required to do all this on a shoestring budget and a super-lean staff. And I do it from Africa. I have a dozen friends in rather similar situations.

Leapfrogging is the umbrella name for the systems available to us today that make all this possible. Cloud computing, social media, new professional paradigms such as social entrepreneurship, below-the-line marketing and a host of novel realities have transformed the global context for Africans with their eyes set on continental and beyond-continental scale.

Secondly, beyond opportunity and flexibility, the level of productivity possible in the operations I describe above has been boosted several-fold by the growing proliferation of next generational models in finance, banking, and logistics. The people whose activities I have described in the preceding paragraph are actually more efficient in their use of resources due to a fundamental change in the notion of value. They are indeed achieving more with less compared to their Western counterparts. This is genuinely world-changing in its potential.

So case closed then: Leapfrogging rocks, and once its full bloom encapsulates Africa the world is our oyster. Sadly, it isn't that simple.

Let me give you an example. State-run lotteries are among the most moribund industries in Africa. In Ghana, the government tried to address the despicable mess its lottery found itself in by banning private lotteries. That, predictably, did not stem the decline.

Some new entrants smelled opportunity and moved in to carve a niche in mobile-based lotteries. The sweet spot was of course they needed no unwieldy agent network or cash redemption facilities. But just when the new system was on the verge of take-off it was quickly discovered that the entire legal and regulatory system as set up does not in fact allow mobile lotteries to function.

Despite the opportunity being so glaring, not a single mobile-driven lottery infrastructure has emerged in any African country. If this is the case with lotteries, think of the even more regulated sectors of health and education, or more politically charged sectors such as agriculture.

Quite clearly, while leapfrogging might contribute powerfully to hacking physical infrastructure, it is less useful when it comes to soft (cultural, social, regulatory etc.) infrastructure. Therein lies its limitation in driving the African Renaissance.

So what is my one big idea?

Leapfrogging is a set of tools and techniques, not a conceptual or ideological description of the socioeconomic evolution of Africa now or in the near future. What matters is how entrepreneurs and innovators, especially social innovators, employ this set of tools within prevailing constraints. That, and not the poetic power of a renaissance motif, will transform Africa, one entrepreneurial triumph after another.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center The Next Generation of Global Leaders.

Companies doing business in China constantly struggle to convert brand awareness into loyalty. A marketer will invest furiously to ensure that his or her brand is part of consumers' consideration sets — only to see them swayed by a slightly cheaper price, a flashier promotion, or a more aggressive in-store salesperson. Many marketers wonder just how to attract and retain Chinese consumers when they are so promiscuous.

Chinese consumers will only consider buying brands they trust and like. According to a recent study we conducted, 45% of respondents believe that well-known brands stand for better quality and safety — many more than the 31% and 27% of American and French consumers who responded similarly. But, despite their preference for established brands, the Chinese always shop around extensively.

The number of consumers who choose from among a distinct set of brands (whom we call repertoire loyalists), and the number of brands that are in their repertoire, are both rising. The average Chinese consumer now chooses from between three and five brands in each product category compared with two to three brands a couple of years ago.

Still, there are signs that it's possible to build a loyal following around brands in China. One sign is the increasing sophistication of consumer tastes and preferences. At the end of the day, brands appeal to emotions; consumers need to see themselves reflected in the brand in some way. For a long time, penny-pinching Chinese consumers — many buying certain products for the first time — focused only on a brand's functional aspects, such as whether it does what it promises; how safe is it; and what's a good price to pay for it.

That's changing, as consumers in China also seek the emotional benefits that a brand can offer. What's increasingly tipping the scales between brands is which one makes consumers "feel good," "feel special," or "stand out in the crowd." Our survey shows that as opposed to 8% in 2009, 19% of Chinese consumers purchasing chocolate in 2011 chose a brand based on emotional considerations such as it "made me feel good."

Dove chocolate, for instance, has built a successful brand in China by creating a positioning for itself as an indulgence for women. These consumers are looking for more than just chocolate; they want to feel that they're treating themselves to a well-deserved reward. Dove has become the leading chocolate brand in China, with a market share of over 50%.

Rising urban incomes are playing an important role in driving the shift from the purely practical to the emotional. As consumers become wealthier, they care less about the functional attributes of brands, so rising incomes are often correlated with brand loyalty. For example, among consumers who earned more than RMB 8,500 (U.S. $1,300) a month, 26% buy only one brand of mobile phone compared with 21% across all income groups. In fact, across product categories, the proportion of higher-income consumers who are brand loyal is five percentage points above the average proportion.

To be sure, marketers shouldn't overlook the need to get the basic brand promise around features and quality right. Consumers do need the reassurance that if they splurge on chocolate, they can count on the product being safe and healthy. However, with consumers looking for something more, brands will also have to address less tangible desires. Marketers who better understand Chinese consumers' less rational drivers will have a better chance at winning them over tomorrow.

Why are you here? It's arguably life's most important question, but is it one you ask yourself?

I recognize it's a question some people might view as self-indulgent, while others would see it primarily through a religious lens. But is there any part of an answer we could all agree on?

I've found a very simple one for myself, and it's provided me in recent years with an increasingly powerful sense of clarity, inspiration and even joy. It's this: I'm here to add more value to the world than I'm using up.

I use up resources every day — the gas I burn driving my car, the heat and electricity for my house and office, the food I eat. So how do I put more back into the world than I take out?

I spent the first 45 years of my life accruing value — trying to earn enough money to feel financially secure, sufficient success to feel respected, and enough relationships to feel safe and loved. I'm not especially proud of that, but I also know that some of my motivation was practical and human. Some of it, sadly, was compulsive.

To the extent that I felt I didn't have enough, I didn't imagine I had a choice about how to live my life. I was operating from a sense of deficit and I felt relentless hunger to fill that void, both financially and emotionally.

I was externally successful, as a journalist, but I didn't feel particularly good about the work I was doing. Eventually, and fortunately, I finally hit a wall — a point at which I was so unhappy with my life that the desire to do something I deeply believed in eclipsed the fear of starting over in a completely new career.

Today, I resonate deeply with the parable of the faithful servant, from Luke 12:48, which ends this way: "To whom much is given, of him much will be expected."

I have yet to meet any person who gets lasting satisfaction from earning way beyond what he needs. Accumulating more and more eventually, and invariably, delivers back less and less. It's literally self-defeating.

I had the benefit of a comfortable upbringing, a great education, parents who modeled hard work and serving others, and people who believed in me along the way, even when I didn't always believe in myself. I stood on the shoulders of many people, including ones who enjoyed far less good fortune than I did.

I believe in the law of reciprocity. Much was given to me. The reason I'm here, now, is to give back.

For more than a decade, I've had the amazing experience of waking up every morning excited to get to work. Partly, it's that I have the freedom to do what I do best and enjoy most, and to keep getting better at it. Beyond that, it's that I get to use my talents in the service of helping people build better lives and decrease their suffering.

The advantage I have is that I run my own business. What if you work at a job that doesn't allow you to do what you do best and enjoy most, and that isn't intrinsically inspiring?

At a company I frequently visit, there is a woman who works at the entrance and hands out the tickets for valet parking. She's worked at her job for years. When I pulled up a couple of days ago, it was freezing outside, and she was all bundled up. Even so, when I got out of the car she greeted me effusively, as she always does.

She called me "Sweetheart," she gave me a huge smile, and her energy lifted me up. As I was walking into the building, I heard her do the same thing for the next driver, and she sounded just as heartfelt.

This is a woman who knows who she is, and why she's here. She adds value in the world. She doesn't for a moment let the limits of her job stand in her way.

I'm inspired by her. She reminds me that knowing why you're here, and who you want to be, isn't a part-time job. The challenge is to live out what you stand for, intentionally, in every moment.

I fall short, frequently. Who doesn't? When that happens, my goal is to notice, as quickly as I can, to take responsibility for whatever I've done, and to make amends. I know why I'm here.

An interview with Andy O'Connell and Scott Berinato, editors of the Idea Watch section of HBR and The Daily Stat.

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Since Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, we've recognized the importance of tuning into social and emotional factors in the workplace. But many popular depictions of the workplace don't show any evidence of that sensitivity. Mad Men, Wall Street, and others impress that in business, only the strong survive.

But emotional intelligence implies that successful leaders should be nice. And while being nice may have social benefits, does it pay?

The key is in how agreeable you are. Timothy Judge, Beth Livingston, and Charlice Hurst examined this trait in a paper [PDF] in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology this year. By way of background, conventional personality research defines agreeableness as two related qualities: (1) the extent to which you value getting along with others, and (2) the degree to which you are willing to be critical of others.

Using earnings data, the researchers found that men who rank high in agreeableness make substantially less than men who are less agreeable. Across studies, this difference was as high as $10,000 per year. Conversely, women's earnings were less affected. There was only a small earnings difference between women high and low in agreeableness, and it was often not statistically reliable.

So, why do these results differ for men and women? And why do nice guys finish last?

There is a stereotype that when men lead, they make decisions without concern for what other people think. Indeed, a final study in this same paper asked people to evaluate potential leadership candidates. Agreeable men were rated least attractive as potential leaders.

And as for nice guys (and to a lesser extent, nice women) finishing last, let's recall the two related qualities of agreeableness. Concerning a value for getting along, career advancement requires a willingness to ruffle feathers from time to time. Good leaders need to be able to tell people things that they do not want to hear. And honestly, putting yourself forward for a promotion means putting yourself before others.

Career success also involves being critical. While some managers may want to surround themselves with people who obediently agree, most want those who will find the flaws in a plan before it is implemented. Less agreeable people are prone to give this kind of criticism.

Of course, this is not license to be a jerk at work. The data also suggest that people lacking agreeableness are more likely to lose their jobs than agreeable ones. There is a big difference between being disagreeable and being unpleasant.

So, what can you do, whether you're more agreeable or not?

First, get to know yourself. There are plenty of quizzes out there to measure the "Big Five" personality dimensions. Find one, take it, and get an objective sense of how agreeable you are.

If you are more agreeable, go out of your way to find the flaws in plans that you hear. Put aside your personal relationships and think about what can go wrong. It helps to imagine that the idea is going to be implemented by another company, to help separate the people from the ideas. Next, find ways to express your concerns. People can be upset with you for a day if they recognize the long-term value of your advice. Express your concerns with empathy, but directly. Try practicing giving negative feedback with a friend first, before doing it for real.

If you are more disagreeable, balance criticism with empathy. Remember that it is difficult to hear criticism of your ideas and your performance. You can be firm while still recognizing the impact of your message. If you think you're developing a reputation for being unsympathetic, practice giving bad news to a friend. Find out which parts of your delivery are causing people to bristle. A strong leader can guide without being mean.

Nice or not, without a doubt you can still be a great leader — you just have to adjust your strategy.

The most painfully awkward debates I hear in ostensibly innovative organizations revolve around "crazy ideas." When unexpected challenges arise, what ideas are acceptably crazy? Which ideas are too crazy? Which ideas are so crazy that no one looks at or listens to their champions quite the same way ever again?

Consequently, top management teams tend to be the Goldilocks of crazy: They don't want insane, and they don't need conventional; they want their craziness to be "just right." Defining those crazy zones is one of the most difficult but more important cultural decisions innovation leadership teams can make. Crazy ideas, of course, can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

But where should they come from? What I increasingly observe are intensifying "make vs. buy/open source vs. proprietary" conflicts between getting outrageous ideas from inside the enterprise versus acquiring them from external eccentrics and lunatics. Crazy ideas create cultural — and political — quandaries for organizations. Outside-the-box eccentricities are OK coming from the inside. But truly "crazy" ideas — ones that tempt fate and taunt taboos — appear better off and safer coming from the outside. Accessing crazy ideas may matter more than generating them.

A superb illustration comes from a Nobel laureate physicist and Secretary of Energy Steve Chu's decision to put together a crisis team of outside experts to brainstorm approaches for handling Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor. A trove of recently released emails indicate that this outside group had no shortage of crazy ideas. Noted physicist Richard Garwin (who, not incidentally, was long a member of the Jasons, the Pentagon's elite "crazy ideas" advisory group) proposed setting off a controlled shaped charge to breech the concrete shield protecting the steel containment structure, so cooling water could be pumped in from the outside. An internal Nuclear Regulatory Commission scientist described the idea as "madness."

Put aside (for the moment) its technical details. Look instead at the provocative innovation question it effectively raises: Does the Department of Energy/Nuclear Regulatory Commission want its people coming up with ideas that its own internal experts declare mad? Or is it smarter — politically, culturally, and organizationally — to position those technocracies as skeptical and discriminating consumers of crazy ideas, instead of their originators?

In short, organizations frequently have both institutional biases and incentives to avoid developing crazy ideas. Real craziness is what gets outsourced. It's too risky to be seen as too crazy.

Of course, as anyone following global trends in manufacturing, software development, and customer support well knows, outsourcing dynamics create their own dysfunctional dependencies. Firms lose the ability to innovatively manufacture, modify their systems on the fly, and build bonds with key customers when they overcommit to outsourcing. Similarly, organizations lose the ability to discriminate between — and gain insight from — usefully crazy ideas when they take asylum in outsiders. When organizations aren't careful, the craziness becomes predictably comfortable and comfortably predictable. Even worse, some organizations institutionalize their "crazy" and create a petting zoo of provocative eccentrics.

IBM, for example, had its "Fellows," who were tasked with assuring the computer giant would never be blindsided by technological surprise. The (cruel) joke I was told in T.J. Watson Labs was that these Fellows had access to everything at IBM but budgets. The problem with "designated crazies," of course, is that everyone expects them to live up to their designation.

Admittedly, a crazy idea — like beauty — is in the eye of the beholder. And, like obscenity, most executives think they know it when they see it. But in industry after industry, seemingly crazy ideas are playing a greater disruptive role in shaping competition. That's why the innovative organizations I know struggle with whether they want "crazy" as a core competence or as an accessibly outsourced option.

How does your organization manage the craziness conundrum? Are you a leader in defining the right kinds of crazy for your enterprise? You'd be crazy not to.

Michael Black is an American employee working in China for one of the country's oldest and most traditional consumer products manufacturers. Michael has been in China for two years and has done quite well. He's mastered the local language, been very successful in meeting his performance goals, and believes that he deserves a promotion.

Michael is a bit uneasy "tooting his own horn," but he also realizes that if he doesn't do it, no one else will.

When meeting with his boss to argue his case, Michael explains how he has met or exceeded all of his performance goals over the past two years and how he has also been a good overall contributor and team player. He explains how much he enjoys his work with the company and how excited he would be to take on the challenge of the product manager position. The conversation ended on a positive note and Michael felt very good about how it went. So good in fact, that he was completely dismayed to hear absolutely nothing back from his boss — for weeks, and then months. He was so frustrated that eventually he ended up leaving the firm.

So what went wrong? Michael seemed to be acting quite appropriately. He was confident without being boastful, clear and straightforward about his interests and goals, but also being respectful and polite towards his boss.

In fact he was indeed quite appropriate — if he were in the US. In China, however, self-promotion works quite differently, and because of his lack of knowledge about these key cultural differences, Michael was set up to fail.

What people sometimes don't realize is that although overt, direct self-promotion is a singularly American phenomenon, self-promotion itself is universal. However, the key is to understand how it is done on a local level — which means according to local cultural values and norms. For example, in China, the preferred communication style is much more indirect than in the United States. Think about how directly Michael communicated his message, saying that he has "met or exceeded his performance goals" and how "excited he would be to take on the challenge of the product manager position." In the United States, where "getting to the point" and being a "straight shooter" is culturally valued, such confidence and initiative is admired. In China, however, it would be seen as too direct — putting his boss in the uncomfortable and face-threatening position of having to deny such an overt request or acquiesce to what feels like an inappropriate demand from a lower-level employee. Finally, in addition to being overly direct, Michael's actions were also immodest. Chinese would never extol their virtues to a boss in this way.

So how can the Michaels of the world self-promote to advance their career, while also being modest, deferential and indirect at the same time? It feels impossible, but it isn't if you follow the following advice:

Tip 1: Be patient

In Chinese business culture, the best way to promote oneself is to simply do good work. The underlying idea in China is that results speak for themselves, and that employees who do good work will ultimately be recognized.

Tip 2: Develop your networks

Another effective way to promote yourself in China is to have someone else do it. Social networks, or Guanxi, in China are critical to advancing one's career and promoting oneself in the corporate setting. It's important to work on developing strong contacts with influential people who can advocate for you behind the scenes. That way, you can benefit from self-promotion without suffering the cost of doing so in a direct and immodest manner.

Tip 3: Adapt your own communication style

Learn how to self-promote in a manner that is indirect and modest. Instead of setting up a meeting with your boss, learn to self-promote in a more discreet and indirect style. Rather than presumptuously suggesting a promotion, learn how to be a modest and deferential employee — and that, in and of itself, will enhance your reputation and put you in line for positive feedback. These new behaviors may feel inauthentic at first — after all, Americans are schooled on the importance of assertiveness and self-promotion throughout their lives. However, people can and do learn to "switch" their cultural behavior, often with surprisingly effective results.

Tip 4: Find a better fit

Finally, if all else fails, change companies. Many companies and leaders in China nowadays have a more Western orientation. This is especially true for private companies founded by the younger generation of Chinese professionals with experience working or living in the West.

The overall message — no matter which foreign culture you find yourself in — is to "go local." Do your best to find out how self-promotion is handled in that local culture and adjust your behavior accordingly. By doing so, you are enhancing your ability to move seamlessly across the global economy and increasing the chances of creating positive impressions in any cultural setting.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center The Next Generation of Global Leaders.

What would you think if a job candidate sent you a resume listing six jobs held in the last four years?

Some of you would probably have an instinctively negative reaction: "This is someone who can't make up her mind or settle down — probably a flake. In 'my day' everyone knew that you couldn't change jobs more often than once every two years."

Or would you have a more sympathetic interpretation? Perhaps that this is evidence of a candidate who is willing to take risks and seek out new opportunities?

Resumes must be truthful — if you've had six jobs in four years, you need to say that. But, ideally, whether you've had one job or ten, your resume should also tell a story. The descriptions that you choose to highlight can make a significant difference between an impression of logical exploration and mindless chaos.

Imagine a resume that listed these positions, all held within a short period of time.

• Bubba's Bar and Grill, a neighborhood restaurant. Waitress.


• Primrose Advertising Agency, a small agency serving biotech start-ups. Researcher.


• Rimrock Stables, a hunter-jumper facility with over 50 horses. Stable operator.


• Flintstone Quarry, a firm selling granite and other home countertops and tiles. General manager.

What do you think? Is this someone you'd be eager to interview? What type of position would you image this individual would be qualified to fill?

Now, consider how you'd feel about the following version of the same person's experience. Would you view this candidate differently? Would you be more or less inclined to arrange an interview? Now what position do you think this person might fill?

• Waitress and apprenticing manager at Bubba's Bar and Grill — While working as a waitress, developed an interest in restaurant management. Took advantage of the owner's willingness to teach the basics of purchasing and cash management. Handled responsibility for opening and closing the restaurant two days a week.
• Manager of the market research team at Primrose Advertising Agency — Conducted business research and managed the activities of a six-person team of analysts. Developed strong team management and project management skills.
• Operating manager of a customer-service-oriented facility at Rimrock Stables — Managed all day-to-day operations of the business; oversaw a staff of ten, supervised the quality of all services to insure the safety and satisfaction of clients (both horses and riders), negotiated with suppliers to obtain the lowest prices, and handled all financial records and bookkeeping.
• General manager of a successful, independently-owned business at Flintstone Quarry — Managed all aspects of the $15 million business, from customer acquisition (building on my advertising experience) through customer-oriented delivery of high quality products and design services. Responsible for a staff of 25 and complex customer relationships that included designers, contractors, and home owners. Increased operating margin by 5 basis points while growing revenue 10 per cent year over year.

If it's not possible to tell a story with the job descriptions themselves, tell it in the cover letter. (Yes, you do need to provide a cover letter with all resumes.)

Make sure your resume tells a logical and compelling story of the moves you've made, what you've learned, and what you've accomplished. Help the next employer draw a line to your next dream job.

In my consulting work with large, multinational companies, I see a pervasive anxiety among managers who have trouble finding people for skilled positions, no matter what industry or region. At the same time, employees are just as stressed about the growing skills gap, Accenture research shows, and most of them are unclear about which skills they need to advance their careers.

There's a lot at stake here. The mismatch between the skills that companies need and the capabilities of people applying for job openings can result in delays in product releases, lower customer satisfaction, and loss of revenue. For instance, at one U.S. medical-device maker, a planned new heart defibrillator had to be scrapped after five years of expensive effort because the company's quality engineers did not meet federal requirements — due to their inadequate knowledge and skills.

Fortunately, American companies have part of the solution for the skills gap right at hand — if they reverse the long-term trend of paring back training. An Accenture survey of 1,088 U.S. workers and unemployed citizens tells the story: The majority of workers surveyed (55%) report that they are under pressure to develop additional skills to succeed in their current and future jobs. But only 21% say they have acquired new skills through formal, company-provided training during the past five years; only 6% have participated in training through podcasts and other informal mechanisms.

While employees take the responsibility to develop their own skills, they're not getting good guidance from employers about exactly which skills would be most beneficial. As a result, they tend to focus narrowly on technology skills, the Accenture survey reports. Few people have updated other in-demand skills such as problem-solving or analytics.

American companies need to get creative about addressing the skills challenge. There are plenty of ways to find or develop the right people without spending enormous amounts of time and money. Based on Accenture's research and experience helping companies build their bench of talent, here are five ways for companies to close the skills gap and improve their competitive position.

Mine the existing workforce for hidden talent. Most large companies are surprised to learn that many of the skills they need already exist within their own organization. Only a third of Accenture's survey respondents said that it is easy to move to another job within the company where their skills would be used well, and only about half said that their employers even document their skills at all. Employers should gain a detailed understanding of employee capabilities and design processes to support internal job mobility. Designing more flexible career paths allows companies to easily deploy people to different roles where their skills are in demand.

The Hilton Worldwide hotel chain documents every employee's specific skills, including languages, education, experience, property experiences, local market connections, and affiliations with boards and non-profits. This has been quite useful for matching needs with people internally — such as someone who speaks the Cantonese dialect to help the company penetrate new markets in China. "We're creating an internally mobile talent market where there is a natural push and pull for skills," says Matthew Schuyler, Hilton's chief human resources officer.

Organizations can also use new technologies such as that offered by start-up UpMo to capture in a searchable database employees' skills, preferences, career aspirations, desired roles and work locations, and more. The technology dynamically matches employees with internal job and skill-building opportunities based on changing business priorities.

Look for people who can learn quickly. Focusing only on highly specific skills is important for certain positions such as a cardiologist, where perfection is demanded. But in most cases, the highly specific can be taught to strong generalists. For example, if companies try to find someone with experience implementing a particular accounting software package, that mind-set might cause them to overlook candidates who could readily perform the task, based on their knowledge of accounting or of other packaged software programs.

Specific skill backgrounds have also been proven to be one of the least important predictors of job performance. Far more accurate are, first, competencies (a person's general communication ability, as compared to expertise in PowerPoint presentations) and, second, cultural fit with the organization. Indeed, one competency shown to have a high correlation with performance is learning aptitude — the ability and willingness to learn quickly.

Use analytical techniques to find and cultivate talent. Innovations make it easier to find high-performing people quickly and more cheaply than traditional practices. Competency, skills, or cultural fit assessments on the front end of the screening process can supplement an initial, résumé-based screening.

Some companies, including Google, are broadening their search by screening candidates based on the quality of their work or their personal biography — not only where they went to school or what work experiences they've had. Google might, for instance, ask biographical questions shown to be statistically correlated with top performance at the company: Have you ever set a world record in anything? Have you ever started a club? What Internet mailing lists do you subscribe to?

Redesign work to suit existing skills. There are several ways to restructure work either to require fewer skilled people or to get more flexible in deploying skills. For instance, AltaMed Health Services, a large community health center in southern California, couldn't recruit enough registered nurses. In response, AltaMed redesigned its jobs to concentrate the most highly skilled portion of the work into a smaller number of critical jobs. Instead of having registered nurses interact directly with patients, AltaMed placed them in leadership and teaching roles to oversee licensed vocational nurses and certified medical assistants, positions that require significantly less training and skill but for which there is a greater supply of talent. The center bridged a skills gap without compromising the quality of patient care.

Go digital with training. Development and learning don't have to consist of costly processes with long lead times. Recent off-the-shelf digital innovations make it easier for employees to continuously acquire skills in the context of their everyday jobs.

At Hilton, service staff ranging from housekeepers to desk clerks to managers are expected to learn new technology skills so they can help guests with basic computer questions. Although the company provides formal training through an e-learning facility, it relies primarily on consumer technologies for on-the-spot informal training. For example, shared iPads allow employees with a problem to look up solutions used by other service workers that are posted on corporate versions of Facebook or YouTube. They can also access short, bite-sized learning applications immediately relevant to their current need.

The talent shortage can sometimes be of a company's own making and by tapping an arsenal of innovative and readily-available solutions, those same companies can help solve their own skills gap. That's in their own interest, of course, but it will also help to put eager Americans back to work and improve the career paths of current employees.

You may have noticed something was missing throughout the nation's most social sporting event of the year. The Super Bowl in-game broadcast had zero social media TV integration.

With more than a billion people on Facebook and Twitter alone, many of them watching the game, this was a missed opportunity. Why did NBC and the NFL miss the boat? Likely, the common internal social media struggles got in the way. Incorporating social media into the epic annual broadcast would have created adversity internally. It's not the way they've always done it and, therefore, it's uncomfortable.

But while the network and league lost an opportunity to innovate the viewing experience, many advertisers took advantage of integrating social media within their pricey ads. By doing this, the advertisers garnered more reach and engagement.

Slapping Twitter handles and Facebook URLs on the TV screen, however, is no longer enough for socially-savvy television. Social media users can now dictate the outcome of live TV shows, create its content, and most notably, impact ratings. Throughout the succinct two-year history of social television, successes and failures have taught practitioners three valuable lessons:

1. Keep it organic. The golden rule of social media is to deliver value when, where, and how your audience wants to receive it. With Social TV, the audience is providing value right back. Naturally, viewers are talking about their favorite (or least favorite) TV shows and sporting events. So, let them talk back when, where, and how they want to. It not only provides a temperature on opinions and sentiment, but also extends content into a perpetual conversation with social media keeping the buzz alive even after the show is over.

For example, The X Factor realized that their highly enthusiastic following on Twitter had strong opinions about the show's contestants. Viewers didn't necessarily care if the TV show itself was listening to their opinion; they were naturally sharing their thoughts, feelings, likes, and dislikes in the interest of a social viewing experience with their peers. After monitoring this behavior and listening to viewers, The X Factor became the first show ever to harness that conversation's inherent power and let viewers vote via Twitter direct message. This provided a convenient and direct means for loyal viewers and tweeters to voice their opinions in a meaningful yet official way.

2. Offer low-barrier engagement. It's not a new concept for television shows to host contests highlighting viewer submissions. However, with the evolution of Social TV, the entry process is now far more accessible.

Jimmy Fallon is one of the pioneers of this concept. In the prehistoric age of social TV, Fallon trail-blazed by providing Twitter hashtag prompts to viewers and airing the most creative and hilarious responses on-air. Why was this so innovative? It kept the viewers in their own space. Fallon's call-to-action required little effort; a simple, witty one-liner in a tweet could be your chance at late-night stardom.

What was the benefit for the TV show? Viewers were now entertained at an incremental level. They were participating with the show — and invested in the next evening's show — to see if their tweet was highlighted within the broadcast. Simply said, they were elevated one notch up on the loyalty ladder. Many of the hashtags even became trending topics, which garnered accelerated awareness for the innovative hashtag game and even more paramount, the show itself.

3. Measure and share real-time results with viewers. TV networks and shows can put their finger on the pulse of viewer engagement before, during, and after a show airs. It's traditionally believed that word of mouth is the most influential form of marketing. Consensus matters because it saves time and provides clarity. In the same way we look for book or music recommendations from friends, we turn to social media to hear about the next big thing. Traditional media outlets are becoming valuable editors of the social media space, using their expertise to tell their viewers what they should be consuming according to general consensus. This strategy also proves valuable to advertisers who can make more informed decisions about when, where, and how they want to advertise on TV.

As the 2012 presidential election approaches, voters will be keeping their eyes on their own network's opinions more than political pundits or government officials. Said pundits and officials should, therefore, provide a new form of value by packaging and delivering these organic results to their audience.

It's important to note that experimenting leads to best practices. The entertainment offering is only limited by the imagination of the producers.

I want to write a screenplay.

I wanted to write one last year, but other work took more time than I expected, and I kept pushing "write screenplay" off my to-do list.

I know I'm not alone in struggling to make incremental progress on long-term projects or goals. How do you get started when you have "all the time in the world"?

Maybe you have a project with no deadline, like my screenplay. Or maybe you have a deadline that's months away — like preparing a speech, developing a business plan, or designing a training program. Perhaps you have a habit of procrastinating on projects with generous schedules until "next month" is "next week" and suddenly your long-term project has morphed into a panicky, short-term stress-inducing nightmare?

Doing something big and important is rarely as simple as just getting it done. Often we don't know how to start and, even when we do, we rarely already have all the knowledge and capability we need to see it through. Also, we almost always have more urgent things to do and so we push off long-term goals.

I know the basic advice: break the work into smaller, more manageable chunks, focus on the next small step that will move you forward, set intermediate deadlines.

It's good advice. But, in my experience, it's not enough.

Because, ultimately, the reason we procrastinate on a big, long-term project isn't just because we have too much time or don't know where to start. And it's certainly not because we think it's not important. In fact, it's the opposite.

We procrastinate on that big project precisely because it's important. So important, in fact, that we're too scared to work on it.

I've never written a screenplay. I don't know how to format it. I don't know how to structure the story. I don't even know the story I want to tell.

I'm afraid. Afraid that I'll fail. That I'll spend a lot of time on it — while other more immediate things don't get done — and it will be terrible, anyway.

I'm also afraid of the opposite: That I'll just dream about it but never actually work on it. Which, paradoxically, discourages me from starting it. If I'm never going to get it done, why start?

My screenplay isn't just mundane work; it's work I care deeply about. Almost all big projects fit into that category — even the report your boss asked for that you might think you don't care about. That's because a big project is a mirror. It reflects your thoughts and effort and even character. It has your signature on it. Failure in a long-term project isn't just a work issue; it's an identity issue. Is it any wonder that we procrastinate?

So what's the antidote?

Don't ignore your fear. Acknowledge it. As soon as you know you're going to give that speech or design that training program, take a quiet moment and experience the fear that comes with the importance of the project. Maybe you're afraid of getting up in front of all those people to give your speech. Maybe you're afraid of failing in your new business. Maybe you're afraid that your training design will expose how much you don't know. Maybe you're afraid of letting other people down.

Resist the temptation to minimize your anxiety. That's a false macho response and it lacks courage. It's also counterproductive; it gives power to the fear, almost guaranteeing that it will haunt you and prevent your progress.

Here's why acknowledging your fear works: You're scared because you expect a lot from yourself and you're afraid you'll underperform. When you acknowledge that fear, you're acknowledging that you might not have all that it takes to meet your expectations; you might not have all the tools, information, skills, etc. Admitting that, in turn, reduces your expectation of getting it perfect right off the bat.

And lowering your expectation of getting it right is the key to getting it started.

Acknowledging your fear also serves another, crucial purpose: it informs you. By recognizing that you don't have all the tools, information, skills, and support to see the project through, you're identifying your next, manageable step in getting started: rounding up the tools, information, skills, and support.

Even if it's not your choice (e.g., your boss committed you to do it) — commit yourself to it fully. Recognize that it will be a reflection of you and admit that you care about it. Even if you don't care about the project, you do care about your work and, in this moment, your work is the project. Make it one of your top five priorities. When you make the project one of your top five priorities, you're also — and just as importantly — choosing what's not a priority. If you have too many important things on which to focus, you'll never get to the big long term one. So slash your list until you're left with only five.

I use a six-box to-do list — each box represents one of my top five priorities and the sixth box, labeled the other 5%, is for everything else. That last box shouldn't take more than 5% of your time. One of my five boxes always represents a long-term priority, which, for this year, contains my screenplay.

Now you're ready for the standard advice: Break the work into smaller chunks and make sure you know how to do the first chunk. Set an intermediate deadline. If you need other people involved, get them involved early, as commitments to others helps you take your deadlines seriously.

Finally, decide when and where you're going to accomplish the first chunk and make an appointment with yourself in your calendar.

When you sit down to start your work, you may feel the resistance — fear — come up again. But now you know what it is. Acknowledge it and it'll be easier to move into the work.

There's one more thing. Share your fear. Some people may think you're a wimp. But that hasn't been my experience. Telling others you're intimidated by something you have to do gives them permission to feel — and maybe express — their own fear. I find that people are gracious, supportive, and empathetic.

And that support, it turns out, helps us all get our most important work done.

Four longtime Yahoo board members, including the chairman, are leaving the company. In this one move, Yahoo is trying to make a clean break from the past — signaling that they are primed to reboot. It's a much-needed and long-overdue step on the path to shifting trajectories.

The Pattern of Failing Organizations
Larger organizations follow a fairly predictable cycle when failing. It starts with denial. The proverbial "we're so awesome and our CEO is a rockstar so we're invincible" dynamic. Typically, this lasts some period of time (years, even decades) after having a lot of success.

Resistance typically follows. Even as the organization gets some indications — data, facts, patterns — that say things are changing, they resist the need to change themselves.

At some point, they start to accept that change was needed and start to talk about it at every strategy meeting and analyst call. That was Yahoo two-three years ago. Wall Street knows they aren't serious (so did their employees, partners, customers) because they didn't change anything in practice. If people don't spend their money and time on the new, it's clear they really aren't committed to actually changing. So this stage is just about talking 'n wishing, as if they wished someone else would come along and make those tough choices for them.

Here's how that plays out in terms of stock price and earnings per share, comparing Yahoo's performance with Apple's when the situations were reversed. Last week, Apple beat the already upbeat market expectations, with record revenues of $46.3 billion and earnings of $13.87 per share. Yahoo's results were, in comparison, limp, with Q4 revenues of $1.17 billion and earnings at $.24 / share.

One skyrocketed, and one struggles.

After working with dozens of complex companies and observing hundreds more, what I've learned is that the companies that create the next big thing are the ones who go beyond talking about doing things differently; they work through the denial, resistance and inaction, and truly shift and adapt. After all of the struggle, they finally both decide that they must, and they actually do.

This appears to be where Yahoo has just arrived. A shift. Some movement in saying that what's worked in the past isn't working anymore, and it's time for a change. Bravo. Finally.

This shift could be called "feckless to fearless." Feckless is when a company doesn't know its mission, is weak in its decision-making, and thus ineffective in its output. Fearless is seen in bold moves, created by people who trust one another, and backed up by accountability. This shift is the difference between freaking out at the possibility of an imperfect bold bet and making the worst of all choices: zero bold bets. In actually bringing in new talent and letting them lead you to new edges, instead of just saying it's time for a new approach. It's deciding to stop talking about the competitive threat, and instead asking what it will take to leapfrog those competitors. It is worrying less about getting it right, and more about getting started — now.

All of this comes down to confronting fear: the fear that reminds us, "that's never been done before." The fear that says "that's not my department" or "I didn't get that email." Instead, we need to embrace fearlessness, turning people loose to create strategies, disruptive innovations, and next-gen business models. Here's what that looks like:

Makes bold (even if they are little) bets. Fearless organizations risk creating things that surprise, delight and that stand apart. They are willing to let go of nostalgia to try creating something new. They understand that the "play it safe" alternative won't be enough to create the next big things.

Become learning machines. They have the spirit of entrepreneurship (that Paul Graham has described as missing after Yahoo started to grow) — with people inventing and creating. They'd make some mistakes, and learn and do it better the next time.

Make collaboration an imperative. When an organization knows the direction (the why of the organization), everyone can connect what they do to the big picture. And that kind of alignment doesn't stop at the "walls" of an organization's perimeter but allows those organizations to be permeable in working with communities. Much like Apple has done with its app platform, or TED does with its TEDxcommunity. Clear, shared purpose makes customers more than just transactions, and team-members more than just payroll recipients.

None of this guarantees success; but it does give you the muscle to keep trying. And it's this cultural difference that is the difference between RIM, Nokia, Bank of America, Gap, HP, Groupon, Kodak and so many others — and the Apples, Amazons, and IBMs. (We may credit Netflix's desire to embolden its people and their fast responses to public failures as key acts of fearlessness and why they'll bounce back from their chaotic 2011.)

Will Yahoo turn this around? Can't tell yet. We've seen one fearless move so far. They need to make the hard decisions about investment decisions (especially around mobile), business models, and community-centered approaches.

But here's what they can look forward to if they do. It took only five years for Apple to be seen as a leader in the phone space. In that time, 75% of mobile industry's profits and 40% of its revenue was built from a business line that did not exist 5 years ago.

Yahoo, once a pioneer in online communities, needs to act less like the 800-Lb Gorilla of yesteryear, and more like a fighter in a comeback challenge — lean, resilient, and fast. And that is the lesson for all of us: when fear rules in the work culture, ideas are weak, stillborn or hidden. And crucial innovation never takes place.

I've been learning a lot from Danny Kahneman's great book Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman is the world's leading expert on human judgment and decision-making and the only non-economist to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (he's a psychologist by training), so his insights and conclusions should be taken seriously. In Thinking Fast and Slow he collects them and explains them to the non-specialist. Read it and you won't look at the world the same way again. And you and the world will both be better off for it.

In particular, we'll all be better off if we stop placing so much weight on the intuitive judgments of 'experts' -- those who have risen to the top of their professions or hierarchies due, typically, to some combination of education, experience, tenure, previous success, and moxie. The business world, of course, is full of experts. We have financial analysts, product planners, business unit managers who hire people and assemble teams, marketing VPs, and an endless variety of consultants, pundits, and gurus.

And their 'expert' (read: intuitive) judgments - about whether a stock will rise, how a new ad campaign will go over, how a competitive battle will play out, which products will succeed in the marketplace, whom to hire and promote, and so on - should be received with great skepticism. In fact, they usually shouldn't be received at all.

This is because human experts are overconfident, inconsistent, and subject to a swarm of thoroughly documented biases, most of which they're not even aware of. What's more, in many cases they're making their confident predictions in areas where accurate predictions just aren't possible. If anyone tries to tell you what the price of gold will be in six months, or who's going to be on top of the high-tech industry in 2020, excuse yourself as quickly as possible.

Kahneman's book lays out all these hard truths in great and unignorable detail, and I've written about them a bit (here and here, for example).

The most common response to these truths, sadly, is a simple refusal to believe or act on them. Another is to acknowledge the limitations of experts, but to say that we don't really have any good alternatives to them.

Don't believe it. A great deal of excellent research (initiated by people like Paul Meehl and Robyn Dawes) shows how easy it is to beat the 'experts,' at least in those situations where an accurate prediction is possible (in other words, not the stock market or the future of the high-tech industry eight years hence). All you have to do is find a few measurable things that are correlated with what you're interested in -- for example, an extroverted personality is correlated with success as a salesperson -- measure them objectively, and use them to create an aggregate score. You don't even have to worry too much about how much weight to give each measure relative to the others when constructing the score; equal weighting works really well (a finding that astonishes me, given how many stats classes I've been in).

Of course, more sophisticated approaches can increase predictive power, and in our current age of big data more and more things are easy to measure; it used to be hard to hear the voice of the customer, for example; now it's echoing across the entire Internet. So there are fewer and fewer reasons all the time for relying on expert judgment. In the business world, decision-making based on intuition and gut feel should be driven out as ruthlessly as the Spanish Inquisition rooted out heretics (and for much better reasons).

The primary techniques for accomplishing this will not be torture and the auto-da-fé, but instead clear thinking and competition. Kahneman's book is an admirable example of such clear thinking. Smart companies and their leaders will read it and change themselves accordingly. The superior performance they'll enjoy as a result will eventually cause their rivals to adapt or die. Not immediately, and not quickly enough, but eventually.

Imagine you're looking for a new job. Right now. You have a first-class strategy. You're off to a good start.

What are you thinking as you approach potential employers? The excitement to land a position with your target company may have given you the energy to prepare thoroughly for interviews, but it also can have a downside. People with a lot riding on the interviews may feel pressure. They may not sleep well the night before. When they meet the interviewer, their handshakes may be moist with perspiration. They may look nervous. They may stumble when asked questions.

Others are crushed when no one calls back or when there's no offer. They feel they've failed. They learn little from what happened. They're immobilized about what to do next.

Don't let this happen to you.

Take a lesson from MBA student Erika. As graduation approached, she thought the two job offers she most wanted were in the bag. They nicely matched her academic work, and she'd prepared thoroughly — including making a presentation to one management group on what she thought were their most important challenges. But they both made offers to others. Fortunately, she bounced back:

It was really hard. School was ending in a month. It felt like a deadline. I was stressed out. But you can't do that. I was prepared. Doing the presentation at the first company I met showed me I could add real value. I did 20 interviews across these two companies in a single week in late March. Before I was confident in my ability, but not in my ability to articulate it. After the interviews, I felt I'd be fine in any interview.

She started a new job search with optimism. A man she knew casually from one of her schools' labs was starting a company. He wasn't looking to hire someone like her, but after they talked, he imagined a new and suddenly high-priority business role that was a good match to Erika's talents. She didn't find a job for herself. She created her job.

Or take Edward, 31, a man with student loans, a new mortgage, and a third child on the way. He lost his private banker job with a Wall Street firm during the financial crisis of 2008. "The hardest thing was telling my wife," he said. "She fell down on the couch and cried for most of an hour. For two days, I didn't sleep."

Edward had no interest in the two financial firms who approached him about jobs. They were more of the same. But then he learned he could be an independent financial adviser while contracting to a service firm to handle administrative, registration, and legal requirements. Within 24 hours of signing on, he was up and running.

Being terminated turned out to be a blessing in disguise, but events might have taken a different course. He might have slid into depression and self-doubt. But that didn't happen. He realized, "I'm not in a combat zone. This is peanuts. How dare I get hurt by this?" This former soldier recalled one of the premises of officers' training — "adapt and improvise." That's what he did over six weeks. He set himself up independently and now is enjoying the result.

There is randomness in job searches. Not every step will be successful. It's easier said than done, but here are three ways to build resilience:

1. Prepare in a first-class way. Prepare and execute a sensible plan. Develop a winning personal value proposition, and execute it with energy. Your plan may not have worked yet, but confidence comes from doing what you know is right. The only way you can deserve to fail is if you don't prepare.


2. Detach. Maintain a healthy distance from the result. Do everything you can to initiate contact or prepare for interviews, but don't get overly committed. You'll do better in meetings. You'll learn from any disappointments. Take the perspective of the Greek Stoics, the Buddha, or the Alcoholics Anonymous program whose Serenity Prayer has advice for job seekers just as it does for people needing help with addiction: "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." (For a fuller discussion, I recommend The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.)
   
   Moreover, a lack of success may have nothing to do with you. Who does the interview, how skilled he is at it, and what kind of day he's having can affect the decision. Or there may only be a single job opening rather than several. Or management may have promised the job to an internal candidate, and outside interviews are only a required process.
3. Learn and adjust. Reassess if your plan isn't working. Maybe you're reaching too high for now. Maybe you're not approaching people in your network in the right way. Learn from what's happening and adjust. That will keep you focused, targeted on success, and productive.

How do you build resilience and bounce back from disappointment in a job search?

Imagine the world in 2030, more resource-constrained than ever—but then suddenly benefitting from a breakthrough approach to harnessing wind energy. What if the person capable of hatching that innovation is, today, a middle-school girl in a village in Ecuador? Will it happen? Or think closer to home: If the cure for cystic fibrosis is just waiting in the mind of a girl in your community, will it ever see the light of day?

If we could only put the same level of resources into inspiring girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that we do into discovering America's Next Top Model, the chance wouldn't seem so remote. At the very least, the proportion of STEM professionals who are female—currently, in engineering, a paltry 11 percent—would grow.

It's no secret that we need more women in STEM. Our economy's major employers compete for the female graduates we do produce. So what's holding back the supply?

Some people look at the gender composition of graduating classes and conclude that girls just aren't as interested as boys are in engineering. If girls don't want to be computer scientists when they grow up, some ask, isn't that their choice? But I have the proof that they do, under the right circumstances. When the bell rings at the end of the day at schools in Oakland, CA I see a wave of girls heading for after-school programs, eager to stick around and do science.

Meet the girls participating in Techbridge. They tinker and use tools, and take apart things like lawnmower engines and hairdryers to learn how they work. They build their own green houses and learn about renewable energy. They make solar night lights, and in doing so learn to solder. And while it isn't their intention when they start, they also make mistakes—and learn to appreciate how mistakes are part of the process. They develop the confidence to persevere. As they team up for design challenges, they especially like to learn in the company of other girls.

Techbridge is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, CA, whose mission is to promote girls' interest and skills in science, technology, and engineering. We do this through the programs we run, and by developing resources for others—teachers, role models, families, and partners like the Girl Scouts. We know the first step is engagement, letting girls have fun with the projects we introduce. Research shows that an early interest in science or engineering is a better indicator of the likelihood of pursuing a career in these fields than grades. But we can't stop there. For a girl to translate an early interest into a passion for becoming a mechanical engineer or biotech entrepreneur, she also needs early exposure to women who hold such careers. We need to provide girls with role models.

Techbridge can't do that alone—role models are busy working in places that have recognized and snapped up their talent. We can do it, however, with partners from industry. When major employers not only provide funding for our after-school programs but also support employee outreach, girls gain access to role models like Chevron geologists, Google programmers, and Intel engineers—all of whom have visited our after-school programs and led activities that offer a glimpse into their careers.

Role models make the difference by connecting with our girls on a personal level and sharing their passion and the personal stories of how they came to be the professionals they are. They help dispel stereotypes about engineering and who can be a computer scientist. Their enthusiasm conveys that these careers are personally and professionally rewarding. The work they describe shows that as a scientist or engineer you can make the world a better place—an aspiration for many girls.

We have to go out of our way to provide such models because too few girls have made their way into technical fields in the past. We can't count on a girl's having a STEM role model already in the women she knows well—her mother, relatives, and neighbors. When a girl meets a woman succeeding in STEM, it expands the range of careers she considers as she imagines her own future.

We know it works. Last year's evaluation of Techbridge's impact showed increases in participating girls' skills and confidence. Now, 90 percent of them believe engineering is a good career for women, and 89 percent think teamwork is good for solving problems. And guess how many are more interested than they had been in working in science, technology, and engineering? No fewer than 83 percent.

Results like this are what keep us working energetically to build corporate partnerships—even when we experience the occasional dispiriting setback. We've seen, for example, a corporate field trip that we had perfected over the years suspended as priorities there changed. In a downturn-related layoff, our liaison to another company lost her job. Some of the best role models we've attracted, and many we've invested to develop (because role modeling is a skill built by training, too) find it difficult in this tough economy to leave their workplaces and volunteer in afternoon programs.

The companies most likely to stay the course are those who value the payback in the long term. They know that the middle schoolers who come to their site are the next generation of workers, and that among them may be the one whose idea will revolutionize their business.

If your organization is an employer of science, engineering, and technology talent, please do what you can to reach out and inspire a girl. Do it by supporting programs like Techbridge that offer STEM programming in and out of school. But also do it by encouraging the women on your staff to be role models—to visit a classroom or host a field trip. Show that you value outreach by providing support and training for it, and even better, by mentoring a girl yourself. Not only will you discover how much students learn from role models and field trips, you'll discover how your organization benefits in return. We hear from role models how much their outreach deepens their sense of connection to their job, their staff, and their field. Corporate recruiters tell us that top talent is more attracted to organizations that believe in workers getting involved and giving back to their community.

Returns like this are hard to quantify, but we never hear from corporate partners that they aren't worth the investment. Girls who go through Techbridge programs have a habit of returning years later and telling us how a role model they met in middle school, or a field trip in high school, turned them on to engineering. When they faced a roadblock—a challenging class, a less than supportive study group —they remembered what a role model taught them. And they didn't give up.

Great service is always a differentiator, even more so when people are hurting. The service companies that thrived coming out of the Great Depression — think Macy's and Disney — figured out how to take care of their customers in a climate of fear and uncertainty. The fog of recession may be starting to lift, but most households and businesses are still feeling vulnerable today. History makes a compelling case that serving customers with integrity — delivering steadfast, predictable service quality — can translate into outsized loyalty and market share when the economy commits to a comeback.

But service costs money, and there's still less of that going around. Adding more frontline people, for example, adds weight to your cost structure that customers can't easily absorb right now. In other words, your market's unlikely to pay you extra to cover your investment in customer caretaking. So how else could you fund it? Below are five strategies to free up the resources you need to compete on excellence and empathy:

1. Underperform. It turns out winning service companies aren't great at everything. They're bad at some things, often very bad, but the pattern isn't random. It's tightly mapped to the priorities of their customers. Service leaders tend to over-deliver on the features their customers value most and under-deliver on the features their customers value least. Walmart offers rock-bottom prices and fantastic product variety, but asks its customers to give up convenient locations and Zen-like ambience. Walmart's lighting is unforgiving, but you won't find a better bang for your retail buck. What would your customers be willing to give up? What would you have to give them in return?
2. Streamline the back office. One way Zappos funds its legendary service is by relying on a very lean operation. Back-end cost savings get invested in front-end excellence, which means that shipping's free and a kind, competent Zappos employee has the cultural freedom to stay on the phone with you as long as you want. Customer call length has even become a badge of honor at the company's 24-hour call center — last we checked, the record was eight hours on the phone with a new widow whose husband had been in charge of buying the children's shoes.
3. Simplify the front office. The more complex the service task, the harder it is to focus on customer needs. Let's go back to that call center. A typical call center employee (who doesn't work at Zappos) is asked to manage up to eight different screens at once, while being timed on how quickly he or she can hang up the phone. This makes it difficult to respond to the demands and anxieties of the human being on the other end of the line. Simplify your employees' jobs, and your service levels will improve. Figure out how to go from eight screens to four screens, and put away the timer.
4. Defy the cost/service tradeoff. The ultimate goal is to lower costs in ways that also improve service. Consider a classroom. A class is more cost-efficient than private tutoring, but it also improves the experience by letting students exchange ideas and learn from each other. Group therapy works the same way. Can you reduce any of your costs in ways that would also benefit your customers? One place to start looking is at the time involved in a customer-facing process. Speeding things up usually saves you money, while making customers happier. Everybody wins.
5. Put your customers to work. Self-service is on the rise in almost every service industry we've studied. The reason is clear — asking customers to pump their own gas, bus their own tables, or perform any other task your employees once did can indeed save you money. But the trick, once again, is to design self-service in a way that actually improves the experience. Use airline check-in kiosks for inspiration. Airlines' most demanding customers actually prefer to check in and choose their own seats on efficient touch screens than to deal with an airline employee, however cheerful, at 6:30 in the morning.

We've seen these five strategies work in a wide range of service industries, from insurance to travel to high-end retail. What are cost-effective approaches to service that you've seen or used?

To deliver more value, the human resources function needs to spend more time accelerating operational improvement and less time on its traditional administrative and compliance activities. As Randy MacDonald, senior vice president of HR at IBM, told me, "It's important for HR to decide what is core and non-core. Administrative responsibilities such as getting paychecks out on time are not core. In HR, we need to focus on what is important."

Exactly how can HR accelerate process improvement?

Bring people into HR with extensive operational improvement experience.

To get the "people" part of process improvement right, HR needs employees who can go toe-to-toe discussing operational changes with line managers. HR professionals need credibility to challenge line managers on whether they are improving the attitudes and skills of their people at the same time they're redesigning their jobs.

In a previous post, I told the story of Tony Scibelli, vice president of HR and operations at Faxton-St. Luke's Healthcare, who wove continuous improvement into recruiting, rewards, and training at this central New York community hospital. Scibelli restructured the HR department by hiring a director of organizational development from the outside (since they didn't have this function) to help people adapt to process changes. The director oversees training and education, helps teams on group problem solving and team building, and oversees employee engagement. And Scibelli brought in other talent from outside the hospital industry and outside HR. Scibelli himself came from the retail sector.

Similarly, $49 billion home improvement retailer Lowe's hired Cedric Coco, senior vice president of learning and organizational effectiveness, from a general management background. Coco joined Lowe's HR function after a career that included process improvement and "Black Belt" experience at GE. He staffed HR people onto process improvement projects and added outside consultants with experience in performance improvement.

Streamline and offload HR's lower-value administrative services.

Managers of HR administrative services such as payroll and benefits need to focus on running a consistent, reliable operation at low cost. To do this, they need standard, simple, automated procedures. IBM's corporate HR function reduced 8,000 HR software applications (largely focused on the HR needs of individual IBM country units) to fewer than 1,000. That freed up huge amounts of time that HR spent on process improvement. Large organizations often use shared or outsourced services so that other entities can handle these responsibilities. Faxton-St. Luke's Healthcare implemented a new HR system to eliminate much administrative work.

Build an organizational development group in HR that includes operational improvement.

In response to my post on why HR doesn't typically lead change, many people suggested separating the compliance, transactional, and administrative roles of HR (e.g., in a group called "Personnel") from the more strategic improvement responsibilities (e.g., in a group called "Talent Development and Performance/Innovation/Productivity Improvement"). I agree. To focus on operational change, HR needs a department dedicated to it, as at Faxton-St. Luke's Healthcare and Lowe's. The group's objectives: Find ways to accelerate operational changes driven by new strategies and new business processes by developing people for new roles. Unlike the "Personnel" people who run a tight operation, these "Organizational Development" people should be change agents with a bias for operational innovation. And in addition to typical organizational development groups focused mainly on leadership development and training, this group should have operational improvement skills.

Martin Memorial Health Systems, a community healthcare system in Stuart, Florida, hired a process improvement expert as director of performance excellence in 2008. A year later, he selected three internal facilitators to form a performance excellence group, which reports to the head of HR. Their mission is to develop a pipeline of process improvement projects. For example, they've had great success in increasing patient flow through their emergency department, resulting in 0.7% of patients that leave without seeing a physician due to delays, which is among the top 10% in the country. They've also reduced turnaround time between cases for their operating rooms to 15 minutes, all while maintaining best in class quality outcomes in their Voluntary Hospital Association core measures peer group. Amy Barry, chief HR officer, told me that one of the secrets of their success has been developing internal people to facilitate rapid improvement workshops. By implementing the ideas they came up with, people achieve ownership and pride to sustain process changes.

Of course, like other corporate functions, HR needs to continue to do a good job at core administrative functions, and line managers won't accept offers of more value-added services if those basics aren't covered. And providing administrative services and ensuring HR policy compliance can be all-consuming and comfortable. It's easier to take orders from line managers and be a good service organization or enforce HR policies than it is to be proactive and take risks helping with the people side of operational change. But HR will continue to miss opportunities to deliver value if its leaders won't take some risks and drive the people side of operational change.

Questions: What HR functions have you seen refocus their activities on process improvement? How did they do it, and how did they fare?

We recently convened a team of 21 millennials from various GE businesses and functions around the world for a special three-month assignment: identify ways to attract, develop, and retain talent in the future. We named the effort "Global New Directions," and we knew we'd picked the right people almost immediately when they told us that they didn't want to retain employees, they wanted to inspire them.

The generation entering the workforce today is uniquely connected digitally and socially attuned to the forces of change and common purpose. But what's the best way to unleash their potential? Anticipating their needs is one of the great tasks of leadership development and an area of sustained inquiry at GE. At Crotonville, our corporate university, we're addressing this challenge through an evolutionary leadership curriculum, breakthrough learning experiences, and a transformational environment. We're essentially reimagining a vision for the global nexus of ideas. And we're always looking to broaden the dialogue.

Hence the Global New Directions group — which, after weeks of intense effort, proved faithful to its ambition to inspire. Its members presented several recommendations to my team, and ultimately to Jeff Immelt, our chairman. Here are just a few examples:

• Leveraging gaming technology to create a new channel that connects the world to GE in a fun and engaging way, helping to educate prospective employees about the company and its economic and social values. Developing new channels for recruitment and interaction is especially important in areas where our brand is less well known.
• Creating a personalized suite of benefits, providing greater flexibility and choice to better meet the needs of a global, diverse workforce.
• Enhancing our performance-management system with new tools to help employees navigate their career at GE and identify a wider range of opportunities across the company. Processes that allow for more just-in-time feedback and coaching, which the next generation considers to be highly desirable, round out the enhancements.
• Expanding our leadership-development and accelerator programs and connecting participants across those programs in order to support a broader base of culturally adaptive global leaders.

We are now implementing these key recommendations.

Our Global New Directions colleagues intuitively understand and typically demonstrate that tomorrow's leaders want more than a career — they want a calling. They want to do things that matter, and they're passionate about making a difference on the job and in their communities. Often cited for their expert use of technology, next-generation leaders are really about creating deeper connections — one reason you'll likely find them giving back by supporting local charities, building homes for neighbors in need, helping disadvantaged families, and mentoring students to excel in school and in life. At GE, we're proud to support these aims through robust volunteerism, grants, and charitable-giving programs, which have driven well over $500 million in donations over the past few years.

Results from a new study, 2012 GE Global Innovation Barometer, indicate a more collegial and personal view of leadership and business now rising through the workforce. It found that companies are moving beyond the traditional, closed model of innovation and embracing a new paradigm that is more collaborative, creative, and focused on delivering local solutions. Moreover, business leaders agree that great innovations in the 21st century will be distinguished by shared value — addressing both human needs and the bottom line — versus delivering profit alone.

What kind of leaders will be most effective in this novel and shifting landscape? I believe they share five common characteristics, core values that we at GE, through decades of evaluation and refinement, have found to be predictors of success:

1. Tomorrow's global leaders possess an exemplary external focus — they collaborate not only with customers but with a wide range of stakeholders including governments, regulators, NGOs, and community groups.
2. Leaders are adaptive and agile, clear thinkers who are not only decisive but able to connect strategy to purpose in a way that fosters commitment.
3. Leaders possess both the imagination to innovate and the courage to implement — they're willing to take risks to champion ideas.
4. Leaders are inclusive — it's the only way to build great teams.
5. Leaders constantly seek to deepen their expertise and motivate others to do the same.

Great leaders never stop evolving. And in the end, they do the one thing that makes the biggest difference: They help others thrive. By creating development opportunities that align with their guiding values, we can equip leaders at all levels to overcome tomorrow's challenges and inspire them to navigate the complexities of a new age with clarity, courage, and integrity.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center The Next Generation of Global Leaders.

The most successful innovators are consistently portrayed as possessing a passion that borders on dogmatism. They work tirelessly to bend reality to achieve their vision, with Steve Jobs and his "reality distortion field" serving as the prototypical example.

There's no doubt that passion is a critical component of innovation. After all, innovation is awfully hard work, with plenty of false starts. Rosabeth Moss Kanter teaches that everything can look like a failure in the middle. Mike Tyson puts it another way: "Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face." Passion is necessary to keep pushing when the punch inevitably lands.

And without passion it's hard to do something that's meaningfully different from what has been done before. It's next to impossible to prove that a new idea will work. Passion and intuition are necessary ingredients for disruptive success.

But leaders overseeing innovation efforts inside their companies need to be careful of mistaking passion for competence. The philosopher George Santayana defined a fanatic as someone redoubles their effort when they have forgotten their aim. We've all encountered the innovator who keeps pounding the table, insisting that his vision is right despite mounting evidence (and bills) suggesting otherwise.

Passion only matters if it leads to an innovation that delivers impact, whether that impact is measured in revenues, profits, improved process performance, or something entirely differently. This is one reason why good venture capital investors dole out capital in stages. They are waiting to see if the vision that looks so great on paper bears any resemblance to reality.

When I'm evaluating entrepreneurs and their ideas, I look for "innovation bipolarity," a version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's first-rate intelligence: "the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Entrepreneurs should be able to argue passionately that their idea will change the world, and then, without skipping a beat, honestly assess the risks standing in the way of its success and describe what they are doing to mitigate them.

Of course, there are examples of dogmatism and fanaticism triumphing in the face of healthy skepticism. But that's not a scalable approach to innovation.

Eric Ries, entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School, explains how to find the human causes of technical problems.