A week from today we’ll all be basking in the excitement of the 2011 Human Capital Summit. We will have experienced three days of the most compelling, cutting-edge, progressive human capital thought leaders that exist in business today. From Dan Pink, to Vineet Nayar, to Gary Hamel, to practitioners from Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, SAS, and so many more – we’ll hear from the best of the best on how we as talent management professionals can reactivate our workforces to meet the challenges of tomorrow. We’ll rethink our workforces, we’ll learn how to reengage and retain them, and we’ll close with how to reinvent our management and leadership. What better way to round out the experience then by hearing from Deloitte’s Molly Anderson on shifting from the old, outdated Corporate Ladder to the new, more modern Corporate Lattice?
For those of you that don't know me, I am a Deloitte Alum and some of my favorite elements of that organization are around their progressive programs and initiatives for women and career development. Like many other Deloitters, these are the things that drove me there initially.
Cathy Benko and Molly Anderson, co-authors of the best-selling business book: The Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work share perspectives from Deloitte as well as other leading organizations that have implemented this new way of thinking about career advancement and management and have enjoyed new levels of engagement and productivity in their organizations.
This concept, the shift from Corporate Ladder to Corporate Lattice, is arguably this generation’s biggest contribution to the world of work. The premise of the book is that the corporate ladder is a concept firmly rooted in the industrial era – which represents an outdated, one-size-fits-all view of work. Benko and Anderson argue that today’s world is different, – pace of change is faster, work is increasingly virtual, collaborative, and dispersed, and globalization and technology are creating organizations with fewer rungs and more options for how the work gets done. Not only is the workplace fundamentally different, but the work itself is different, and the workforce has changed. Workers’ needs, expectations, and definitions of success don’t match those of the homogeneous workforce of the past.
So, what then is the lattice? The authors describe The Corporate Lattice as being more than a theory, it is a model and mindset that makes sense of the forces transforming how careers are built how work gets done, and how participation in organizations are fostered. Central to this model is the changing role each individual plays in directing his/her own lattice journey.
Sounds pretty important, right? It is, and whether or not it immediately feels relevant to your organization – think about this: more than 20% of US employees no longer go to a traditional office space each day. In fact, 82% of the companies on the Fortune’s 2011 100 Best Companies to Work For offer telecommuting options. Work in the public sector? This has implications for you too! In the past few months, the federal government stepped up its own efforts to expand options for how work is done when President Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010.
This session is a ‘must see’ as we'll hear how this transition to lattice ways of working have a significant productivity pay-off, potential to reduce real estate and energy costs, opportunity to improve business continuity even in severe weather or natural disaster, and so much more. But it doesn’t end there– managers need to rethink the way they manage in order to make this a success.