Facing a different future

This season is always a nice time to take inventory of the things we learned and things we want to improve. As the year ends, people are both excited and apprehensive about the future. We need to learn the lessons of the past and prepare ourselves for the future.

Peter Drucker, the dean of modern day management, says “the best way to deal with the future is to create it.” This management guru lived an amazing life. Every business consultant quotes Drucker and without him, there won’t be many business gurus roaming the earth.

Drucker practically invented the management consultancy industry as some experts would claim. And at age 86, Drucker wrote 10 more books and thus, a fitting testimony that at that age, he was still inventing his future.

Charles Handy is known as a business philosopher. This well respected executive who used to work in the oil industry churned out many books. Handy says, “The future is no longer a continuation of the past.” That statement is dramatic in itself, and in another book, Handy says, “The future is already here long before tomorrow arrives.”

I have been doing public speaking for years. It’s not unusual for me to be invited to do whole day training in the work place.

The HR people would say, “Francis, we would like to have you for one-day training. This is for our key executives and high potential leaders.” And I would respond, “That would be lovely. I would love to do that.”

“The session would cover eight until five.” I am used to that but there is a twist. The HR people would then say, “Actually Francis, it will be from eight in the evening until five in the morning.” That is something totally different from the past. This describes the future that we are experiencing now.

I have to reinvent myself for the future as well. There is a need to bring Values Training in the workplace and not just in life and living. The young people working in the BPO sector need to be trained in this area specifically with money management high on the list.

So my desire for convenience and comfort will have to give way to the importance of accomplishing the task. This requires a lot of reinvention from me responding to a totally different future.

I also see an area of concern that needs a lot of improvement.

From a New York conference years back, Jack Welch said, “My main job as CEO is to develop talent because the best team with the best players always wins. Unfortunately, leadership development is very low in a company’s set of priorities.”

 In the same conference, Jim Collins said, “Many company executives still look at leadership training as soft skills training.” Maybe this is the reason why they don’t support it as much. How could you possibly respect something that is labeled as “soft” and allocate some budget for it?

Tom Peters, who happens to be a personal favorite of mine, said, “Today, soft is hard and hard is soft.”

I have noticed that only the most progressive business organizations in our country continue to invest in leadership development. Maybe this is the reason why they constantly remain on top of their field. Others still think this “soft-skills” training is not essential because an investment in this training cannot yield immediate visible returns.

John Hayes says, “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and undervalue the things we cannot.” The lack of leadership training will make leaders unprepared for a future that is already here even before tomorrow arrives.

If innovation and creativity aren’t the drivers of your organizations, then you may be in trouble. If your leaders are still fighting turf wars and defending the past to the death, your business is on its way to certain demise.

The future is no longer just a world of quality or numbers or technology; it is a world of inspired workforce pursuing growth and innovation.

Great people want to work with great people. Low achievers want to be with people like them. Prepare your people and your organization for a future that is no longer a continuation of the past. There is so much work to be done. God holds the future but we need to be able to read the signs.

(Start the New Year right with Francis Kong learning leadership and life skills as he present Level Up Leadership on Jan. 21-22 at EDSA Shangri-La Hotel. For further inquiries, contact Inspire at 09158055910 or call 632-6310912 for details.)