Future Teams

Welcome to Executive Leadership Insights by Shields Meneley Partners, your twice-a-month newsletter that focuses on management issues for today’s C-Suite.

The future of talent will need more creativity! I work with chief executive officers and C-level executives in career transition and that provides a window into trends when it comes to talent. Something quite eye-opening happened recently where one of my clients was interviewed with the company at the top of his list and he was told there was nothing there. During the interview process, he got to know more about the products, services, and management, and quickly ascertained a leadership need. But while there he recognized that they had a gap in area that they were not working in. So, what did he do? He invented the job.     

He actually created a job outline, and even did some calculations based on data that he could find, discovering the position would actually become a revenue generator and in essence pay for itself. Within five days, he had an offer from that company. He recognized something that was not there, took a chance, and happily discovered the company was willing to take a chance on him. Company leadership recognized he was an exceptional talent and they wanted him on the team, but he had to create his own job. 

The same kind of thinking needs to happen in the marketplace. If you are selling X, what is X going to look like once this pandemic is over and is it actually matching what the consumer needs or what you think the consumers are going to need at that time? This is important because if companies just go back to doing what they were doing before, with just a few more people working remote, they will miss the boat.

That is not all.

Leaders today need to consider what culture means in the future. Management needs to think about what that word means for their companies, how they are going to be more inclusive, especially in a climate where teams will increasingly become more work-from-home oriented and colleagues will not be near each other physically. This may become even more problematic because the kind of employee who will be sought after post-pandemic will most likely be quite different than the person who was recruited beforehand. 

The bottom line is that human resources teams need to be thinking about these issues now because everything is going to change in the post-pandemic marketplace. If you are not sure what the future looks like, get the data and create it! 

 Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter and we hope you found it insightful. We encourage readers and subscribers to join in the discussion by adding your thoughts in the comment section below.