About a decade ago, I had an epiphany about whole systems thinking when my project team and I were asked to figure out why an effort to digitize the company’s backup data systems was failing. After reading about the business trends of companies converting tapes to CD-ROM, an executive at my company thought that he could save the company millions by digitizing data onto CD-ROM instead of storing larger tapes at a third-party storage facility. After six months of running on the new CD-ROM-based platform, however, the company’s savings were negligible, nowhere near expectations. When the troubleshooting team compared our process to that of companies that had successfully lowered their back-up storage costs, they quickly discovered the problem. While moving to the CD-ROM approach was a good move, it was only one of the significant changes that other companies had instituted across their whole back-up storage system. We had looked at only one piece in the data-storage chain.

Since then, I have repeatedly observed how companies – in many different situations and in many different environments – fail to understand the entire context of a problem. This is especially the case with many diversity efforts. Diversity consulting leaders such as Linda Stokes, CEO of the Orlando, Fla.-based firm PRISM International, say piecemeal efforts with narrow scopes are very common in the world of corporate diversity — usually resulting in frustration and failure. Read the full story

Quantifying the return on investment when it comes to your career can be as straightforward as punching numbers into a calculator. But numbers are not enough, says Lisa Whaley, a former IBM vice president who turned her B.S. from the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) into a lucrative 22-year career with the technology giant. She said she was successful, in part, because she made regular common sense assessments along the way.

“The original plan was to work for a few years then go to law school or get my MBA,” said Whaley, author of Reclaiming My Soul From The Lost and Found a story of her journey from a successful executive to a woman in despair trying to find happiness. “Every time I’d get to that point – where I thought I needed more training or such – I would get a promotion or I was working on some great project. So I never did it, but I still did well. I realized that had I stopped to get the MBA, it would not have brought me anything at the company.” Read the full story

By Calvin Bruce, M.A.

“Amid the twofold pressure of pending retirement in senior executive ranks and the increasing value of intellectual capital and knowledge management, it is more necessary than ever before for organizations to plan for leadership continuity and employee advancement at all levels.”

– William Rothwell, Corporate Succession Planning

It’s commonly understood that one of the essential missions of a forward-thinking company is to preserve the corporate integrity, leadership capability, and financial resourcefulness of the organization in the event something unforeseen happens to one or more key executives. This is why, in firms of all sizes, it’s important to have “key-man insurance” in place, as well as other legal and financial instruments to maintain the continuation and well-being of the corporation. A consulting firm specializing in corporate succession planning (CSP) points out the elements of planning analysis that are especially beneficial for family-owned businesses: Business objectives, family dynamics/objectives, owner/manager estate plans, key-employee compensation, business valuation, transition financing, tax planning, estate liquidity, active/inactive family-member issues, and senior-generation retirement security.
Read the full story