THE NEW AGE WORKER

The days when careers started and ended in retirement with pension packages have all but dissolved.

While this is not a revelation to many of us, it’s the fallout and emerging new norms we all face.

A few moments spent researching industry trends, forecasts, and the brave new world illustrates the need to both understand and react to the realities of the 21st  century. While not entirely new, the terms mobile worker, flexible and interim have gone from prognostication to reality.

The recession of 2008 has had a profound impact on the acceleration of these new realities. Tighter budgeting, the volatility of the downturn and prolonged recovery have many employers reluctant to hire full time, but their needs for expertise and specialization remain a corporate necessity.

Did the change begin with the disenfranchised worker who suddenly found their career job was eliminated through merger/acquisition or rightsizing or the realities of a global workforce where competition comes from every corner of the world? Was technology the catalyst? Or perhaps it was a more pragmatic economic view of how today’s corporations remain economically viable. Regardless, two things started to emerge - the experienced worker and the now undermanned corporations struggling to make do with less. Enter the new age workers: skilled, capable, and more than ever wanting to be in charge of their destinies.

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HOW INTERIM MANAGEMENT IMITATES BASEBALL'S RELIEF PITCHER

Writing as an unrepentant baseball fan, I was watching that glorious Game 6 World series game and Tony LaRussa’s Merlin-like mastery of his relief pitchers’ for specific challenges in order to gain the pivotal win. As a reminder, LaRussa designed and used the entire bullpen with speed and aplomb to meet specific challenges, where the relief pitchers were used for particular needs (i.e. using a left hander to get a left handing hitter or bringing in a sinker ball pitcher to get a double play). It struck me that the relief pitcher was in effect a forerunner of the use of interim management. The use of the relief pitcher to the degree LaRussa did in a key situational role in this World Series has rarely been seen, but will be in the future. Thus we saw in baseball a major paradigm shift of game management strategy that will be adopted in order for the team to "seal the win", which is the objective in both baseball and business.

Business leadership has traditionally looked to interim management when faced with unexpected business situations, much like a baseball manager uses relief pitchers to deal with an immediate issue. The model for interim executive management is to fill short term vacancies, take on projects or mentor staff. This should now be looked at in a much broader and strategic way in that the interim managers can be used to aid the company in delivering situational skills and experience by upgrading the executive team on a short term basis without having a short term event trigger the hire of an interim executive. This role can be titled Executive Advisor and can be aligned where the work is focused.

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ALL INTERIM MANAGEMENT MODELS AREN'T CREATED EQUAL

As someone who has lived interim management for the past eight years, it has been intriguing for me to see how other professional services or consulting firms have added “interim” as a service tab on their websites to capitalize on a growing worldwide trend. In reality, when you ask the question (and I have many times) you find out that the truth is they once offered it as a service but don’t really now, or it has become simply an extension of their executive search model. The executive registers with organization X, he/she is uploaded to its database and if an opportunity arises for which they could be a match, full or part-time, they might get an interview.

When I’m asked why some of the big multinational search firms who do interim can’t seem to make it work in Canada, or the US for that matter, to any great degree, my answer inevitably is “because they don’t offer   executives the opportunity to collaborate on integrated client based business solutions”.  We don’t view this as a trade secret, but rather extremely logical in its benefits for executives and clients alike.

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PERSPECTIVES ON SUCCESSION PLANNING

WITH THE FAMILY BUSINESS
Every family business comes to a point in its life when it becomes necessary for the current generation to find a successor due to age, health or other interests. It is a well known fact that passing the torch to the next generation in the family does not always lead to the most successful continuation of the business, especially with regards to the third and further generations. Usually, firstly, because the later generations have not invested their own blood, sweat and tears into creating and growing the business, and secondly, because each successive generation has grown up sheltered from the reality of the business and industry in general.

In witnessing successes with the third generation and beyond, it is often because the newer generation received an appropriate education and then worked in the real world for a few years before coming home to the family business. Another positive indicator is when the older generation agreed to a fixed period of mentoring before they would step down and lived up to the agreement. When these factors don’t happen it can lead to business disaster and personal tragedy.

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SASKATCHEWAN GETS THREE F'S

Article written for Osborne by Paul Martin of Martin Charlton Communications.

Even pessimists are finding it difficult to produce a Saskatchewan economic statistic that is negative. Investment is at record levels, the population is growing faster than the national average and consumers are showing no signs of flagging confidence.

For many years the Canadian province described as the easiest to draw but hardest to pronounce was  something of an economic laggard. Often characterized as the gap – that space between the Winnipeg and Calgary airports – the once sleepy province is now an economic dynamo.

The big drivers in the Saskatchewan economic story are to be found in the resource sector. First it was oil and gas powered by the dual engines of growing global demand driving prices higher and a faux pas in Alberta where tinkering with the royalty regime sent industry players scurrying for new plays. Saskatchewan’s Bakken project, located southeast of Regina, turned out to be the winning suitor for these new players.

Then came potash. An emerging middle class in China and India, a huge population base with rapidly rising disposable income levels, provided an additional catalyst. One of the first things the nouveau riche seeks is an enriched diet. Growing demand for protein prompted farmers globally to increase their output. Saskatchewan, of course, has plenty of farmers so this development lifted the agricultural sector. But farmers everywhere also wanted more fertilizer to feed the Pacific Rim’s new consumers and potash came into its own.

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