As President Obama challenges Americans to ‘win the future,’ consultant Eva Jenkins urges American businesses to foster innovation with an open corporate culture where ‘legacy’ knowledge holders and ground-breaking thinkers are given equal respect.
Washington, D.C. (February, 2011) - The innovation to help American businesses ‘win the future’ will only come about when corporate leaders create a culture of respect between workforce generations says consultant Eva Jenkins. “Over and over, we have seen innovation strangled by leaders with a single-minded focus on organizational profitability and entrenched senior managers looking to safeguard their own bank accounts,” she says.
Jenkins is a leading D.C. consultant on business and staffing topics, and the driving force at VIP Innovations. She works with companies to maximize their ‘human capital’ and fine-tune organization communications strategies to ensure that the landmark ideas of up-and-coming workers are given the same consideration and respect as those who offer ‘legacy’ knowledge.
A four-generation workplace is unique to the 21st Century. Jenkins believes that a major roadblock to innovation in the new millennium is a lack of generational respect that is experienced by workers themselves and reinforced by management. “Without mutual respect and a commitment to motivate everyone to forge ahead, a culture of innovation in companies cannot succeed,” says Jenkins. “It must be a joint effort which should be led by senior leadership.”
The four generations in today’s workforce are:
It’s quite common for people of different generations to have trouble understanding and valuing one another’s culture and communications styles. But in a business environment, this lack of understanding creates a ‘segregated’ workplace. “Traditionalist, Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, Gen Y’ers, each line up with their peers and eye those outside their age group with suspicion and a lack of respect for each other,” reports Jenkins.
Because they may be unaccustomed to new ways to approach problem-solving and uncomfortable with their lack of knowledge in that area, Traditionalist and Baby Boomers may label the progressive thinking and ground-breaking ideas that their younger employees offer as ‘impulsive’ or ‘too risky.’ By the same token, the Gen X and Gen Y workers may dismiss the input of older employees as ‘out of touch’ or ‘rigid.’
But Jenkins points out that “Innovation is the intersection of the past and present that leads to the future.” Because of this, Jenkins says management must publicly acknowledge the contribution of each generation, applaud the unique strengths brought to the table by workers of different ages, and encourage everyone to share their viewpoints as a way to make a strong team even stronger. “It’s vital that corporate leaders understand the value of the different generations and then communicate that value to their mangers as an organizational philosophy and goal...with specific activities to help achieve that goal,” she says.
One key activity is to replace the traditional corporate culture of fear-based performance evaluation with an environment of support-based performance coaching.
Traditionally, performance reviews are performed once or twice a year, and generally linked to salary compensation. This immediately creates an atmosphere of apprehension and distrust rather than growth.
Jenkins points to examples of employees rushed through an evaluation with a lack of consistency in feedback from managers whose primary goal is to ‘get it over with.’ Other performance appraisals are comparative, ranking employees against each other based on performance which is the very antithesis of team-building.
“In truth, the employees on the receiving end of an evaluation are likely to be hungry for feedback that they have not received often...if at all. They are often shocked to learn that the tasks they performed weren’t the ones the manager wanted,” says Jenkins. “At the same time, managers are concerned that bad employee performance evaluations reflect badly on themselves, so they short change the entire process and render it ineffective.
Currently, performance evaluation casts a manager in the role of a judge and an employee in the role of defendant. But performance coaching turns a manager into a coach...someone who is rooting for the employee to win for himself or herself, as well as the organization...and it turns an employee into a motivated team player.
Another objection to a once-a-year performance evaluation model is its backwards-focused nature. Once-a-year performance evaluations look almost exclusively at past performance and seldom include any time for looking ahead to new goals and challenges.
This is important because identified goals – which are the ‘stretch goals’ – give employees the confidence to try new things and to learn from their experiences. When people are confident that they can try and fail, it frees their thinking and unleashes their creativity.
Bobby Kennedy is perhaps best known for his statement, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” And in response to President Obama challenge to Americans in his State of The Union address to ‘win the future,’ Jenkins believes that it is imperative for American businesses to foster innovation with an open corporate culture where ‘legacy’ knowledge holders and “ground-breaking” thinkers are given equal respect.
“People need to come together and join forces in order for this country to succeed,” observes Jenkins. “But in politics as well as in business, leadership is sometimes slow on the uptake. When that happens, leaders must be willing to stand aside and give their people the freedom and the power to guide the way.”
Eva Jenkins is a leading consultant on business and staffing topics, and the driving force at VIP Innovations in Washington, D.C. Her goal is to position clients so that they may respond to, and more importantly anticipate, the precedent-setting ‘human capital’ challenges that face businesses as they evolve. She is also co-author of Conversations on Success, a collection of powerful interviews with accomplished entrepreneurs in a variety of industries.
Contact:
Eva Jenkins
VIP Innovations
(571) 247-5830
www.vipinnovations.com