Lifetime Employment - Apply Here

Since the 1950s, Japan's labor markets have been characterized by several distinctive features. Perhaps the most notable among them is "lifetime employment," the practice at large firms of hiring workers directly out of school and retaining them until a mandatory retirement age (originally age 55, now around 60 for most companies).

From Job Security in Japan: Is Lifetime Employment on the Way Out? - Brookings Institution

Lifetime employment used to mean staying with a company until retirement. However, as the workplace has evolved, few workers are interested in staying at a single company until retirement. The chart below shows how dramatically this effect has played out in different countries around the world (with Americans staying on average only 4 years per job).

The question of lifetime employment has therefore shifted to the possibility of being employed (at any company) until expected retirement. The challenge of staying relevant in the workforce has been exacerbated by concerns over the rapid shift of manufacturing and service sector jobs to lower wage regions around the world.

What can you do to stay employed, and not become a victim of these dynamic shifts in the global economy?

For my answer, I build on my three fundamental beliefs, except replacing company with employee. Thus:

1. Customers always choose the best available

2. The best is always changing

3. Only employees capable of change are sustainable.

In simple terms, your company can't guarantee you a job, your government cannot, not your union rep, nor your boss. Only customers guarantee jobs, and only so while you are creating value for that customer.

• Who is your customer? Today? In the future?
• What does that customer want? Will want?
• What skills do customer needs imply are necesary and how will they change over time?

To stay relevant and experience lifetime employment, you must have answers to these questions and a personal development plan that allows you to change faster than your customers (employers) are changing. That I argue is the only way to ensure you have lifetime employment!

Fundamental Beliefs - Guiding principles for strategy

I am frequently asked about the most important factors that shape my views on strategy. And to that question, my answer is always simple. I am driven by three fundamental beliefs:

1. Customers always choose the best available

What is best is defined by each customer. It could be price, availability, specifications , or some other variable. Whatever the utility curve the customer is using to determine their preference, they will choose the best they can afford, from what's available, wherever they can find it.

2. The best is always changing

The best changes over time because customer preferences change, what competitors offer changes, or because what companies provide to their customer changes.

3. Only companies capable of change are sustainable

The inevitable conclusion is that companies must change. And, they must change faster than the customers are changing in order to stay relevant.

For me, the only constant is change!

Innovation

Innovation is not about fixing what is broken, it's about breaking what is "fixed"!

Reinterpreting Drucker

Entrepreneur's define tomorrow and understand today. They live both forwards and backwards. Entrepreneurs invest themselves in making the tomorrow they care about. They imagine a reality and expect more than others think possible.

From Elizabeth Edersheim Blog

How many people do you know could reinterpret Drucker, and make his work relevant again? You would have to be brilliant, and my friend and former partner Elizabeth Edersheim is one such person.

I first met Liz when I joined McKinsey in 1986. She was already a storied "thought leader" in Operations. Armed with a Ph.D. in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was shaking up traditional thinking in the world of operations strategy. I later joined her, as we partnered to build New York Consulting Partners into a world class transformation advisory service. We served some pretty amazing clients such as market leaders Arrow Electronics, Colgate-Palmolive, Clairol, Motorola and Symbol Technologies and the Thomas H. Lee portfolio companies - First Alert, Healthometer and Mr. Coffee, among others.

Analysis comes easily to Liz. She is fact-based, hypothesis driven and a brilliant thinker. To top it all off, every word she writes (and she has written several highly acclaimed books) has been honed many times before it gets committed. I know from personal experience working with our then editorial team, through whose hands every client review had to be filtered, that great communication was at the heart of every successful change management program.

If you want a sense of how brilliant people think, check out her blog, or read one of her books:

"The Definitive Drucker" (Elizabeth Haas Edersheim)

"McKinsey's Marvin Bower: Vision, Leadership, and the Creation of Management Consulting" (Elizabeth Haas Edersheim)

The Benefits of Color blindness

Color blindness, a color vision deficiency in animals, is the inability to perceive differences between some of the colors that others can distinguish. It is most often of genetic nature, but may also occur because of eye, nerve, or brain damage, or due to exposure to certain chemicals.

Color blindness is usually classed as disability; however, in selected situations color blind people have an advantage over people with normal color vision. There are some studies which conclude that color blind individuals are better at penetrating certain camouflages.

WWII teams that analyzed aerial photographs were looking for unusual patterns, so a color blind person could prove useful. From an evolutionary perspective a hunting group will be more effective if it includes a color blind hunter (one in twenty) who can spot prey that others cannot.

Excerpts From Color blindness - Wikipedia

I discovered I was color blind early on. It wasn't hard to think of this condition as a disability. Art was a difficult class, and my hopes of becoming a doctor were not likely when during biology I could not really discern some of the key points the teacher was trying to highlight.

Over the years though I have found my affliction to have more benefits than deficits. Not just in the ways identified through technical studies, but in many less obvious ways:

• An appreciation for the subtler shades
• Uncolored perception
• Recognition that what what I see may not be the same as everyone-else
• Discovery of facets of humanity that were more important than color

So you see, if you are trying to innovate, solve problems bigger than your current thinking, you may need some color blindness. Don't always focus on the most obvious colors, but look at the subtler shades, and embrace diversity of thought!

Think Different - The Fosbury Flop

You may have seen the recent Visa Olympics commercial featuring Dick Fosbury. He is famous for what is now known as the Fosbury Flop - a high jump made backwards over the bar, with which he won the Gold medal in Mexico, 1968.

Innovation requires looking at the problem from a completely different angle than previously used. When you are stuck, and can't think of a solution to an impossible problem, try the Fosbury Flop.

Talented Marketing Executive

During my years at Arrow Electronics, I met and became friends with Tom Thorson, an incredibly talented Marketing Communications Executive. He ran some of the most creative meetings (which were especially important when you are trying to Jazz up over 1000 sales people during a merger kick-off).

More than his keen marketing eye though was his sense for music, graphics and an eye for a great photograph. Every few days I get an email from Tom with several shots he had taken recently. They are always beautiful, well composed and worth soaking in. I always look forward to seeing what he has done lately. Here is one he sent me recently:

He can be found at Tom Thorson Marketing and Design Consulting. Salute Tom!

Places I Have Visited

I travel a lot and wondered how much of the globe I had actually covered. Fortunately, I found this tool online. The result? Still many places to see.

visited 50 states (22.2%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Proud

An appropriate title for my first post.

The word reflects how I felt when our thirteen year old returned from her mission trip and informed us over our dinner about her new endeavor. She had seen a movie about the children of Uganda - "Invisible children", and was so touched, she was compelled to do something for them.

She would use her talents to make jewelry and sell to her friends. All profits would go to the children. She built her own website: Jewelry for Joy and she recruited her little sister. They are making some beautiful stuff and are off to a great start!