CEO roundtable

 I was invited to the CEO roundtable discussion which is organized by Human Capital leadership Institute (HCLI) today. This is 4th annual conference and 9 CEOs and 2 professors were invited and discussed -theme " Accelerating Talent Development for Global Asia.

 My point is as follows;

In Asia, the economy has developed rapidly from the mid 1980s, A lot of countries in Asia have changed from the places of production to strong consumer markets.  Various consumer sales channels have been established like department stores, mass merchant supermarkets and so on.  These channels have contributed to the change of lifestyle and consumer behavior in these countries.

 During the 1990s, “Generation X” emerged and started joining companies. They experienced their countries’ development and skill development working in these companies.    Generation Y is now entering the workforce and making an impact.  Here come the kids of the 80’s that have grown up with the internet and Simon Cowell on TV...  The Asian Generation Y has notable characteristics comparing to Western countries because it was more economically developed in their time than the previous generation. This generation is rather keen on environmental issues and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). They value “Work Life Balance”.  So “Work hard for your future” has little meaning for them.   

This generation is not only our potential customer but also an important and necessary source of talent for our future success.  We need their diversified ideas in our complex business circumstances.  So how do we nurture these talents?  We feel that the best way is still OJT (On the Job Training) to give real experience with meaningful roles and challenges that develop skills to drive the business.  The important point to remember is that OJT will only work well when we use the right roles.  It wasn’t a problem to supply these development positions for those young talents during times when the country or company was growing rapidly.  These young talents developed quickly to management positions in the early stages of their career.

 Now it is challenging for Generation Y to be trained in the same way as Generation X because the sense of value and the development stage of the country and company is different.   

Our overseas’ assignments are highly competitive globally so that we can recruit and develop global talent as well as local talent.  Our current challenge is how to identify and rotate these globally potential talents.   Needless to say, no company will attract these talents without a clear company mission and vision.  It is important that the mission and vision have to be well communicated.

Each year, we take ‘the engagement pulse’ of the organization through our “Global Employee Survey”, and use this in the KPI for all our managers to continue our focus on building up a strong organization.  A half yearly 360 degree “reflection survey” also helps managers understand where they can develop.  We can see from our global survey data that ES (Employment Satisfaction) has a positive correlation with CS (Customer Satisfaction).　If our employees are not motivated and ‘showing up’ for work, then we see this also coming through in our customer satisfaction and brand equity scores – especially where we look at front line scores for ES.  In order to build a stronger organization to grow sustainably, we include not only financial KPI but also employee satisfaction, brand and customer equity into the KPI of our balanced score card.

 Taking the ‘new normal’ of an unpredictable business environment and different sense of values into consideration, a hybrid management and leadership style is required nowadays.  One aspect of this hybrid is the skill to operate business with a hands-on style, the other aspect is the skill to empower and motivate the staff to run the business.  Sometimes the former is called “management in the transformation time” and the latter is called “management in the normal time”.

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