Sparks: Think Beyond Borders: How to Cultivate a Global Citizen Mindset With Solvay CEO Ilham Kadri

Mike Ettling, the CEO of Unit4, a software company with around 2700 employees in 26 countries that designs and delivers enterprise software and ERP applications including finance management, accounting, talent management, and student management modules. Today we are focusing on how leaders can create a sense of purpose and meaning for their employees. __________________ This episode is brought to you by my friends at Unit4 a cloud based enterprise software company which is built around a single premise. Give your people the means to focus on what matters, and the people they serve will benefit. If you want to free your people so that they can focus on the things that matter check out Unit4.com or better yet take a list to the speech their CEO Mike Ettling gave by visiting www.unit4.com/experience4u --------------------- Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

16 Des 20211h 1min

My dad taught me an important lesson: we should all enjoy our mistakes. It can be hard to have this positive outlook on life, but everyone should learn how to enjoy their mistakes. Here are some tips on how to start doing it: Realize mistakes are common. A lot of people forget that nobody is perfect. When you realize that mistakes are common and everybody makes them, it removes some of that pressure from you. Remember failure is just a state of mind. Failure is ultimately how you think about the mistake that you made. Realize that it happened and that you should move on and progress and go on to the next thing. Focus on what you learn. Instead of viewing something as a failure, why don't you ask yourself what you learned. Enjoy, laugh, share, and move on. ------------------ This episode is sponsored by Namely. Whether you have 50 or 1,000 employees, Namely HR helps you maintain a great experience for the entire employee lifecycle. They offer onboarding, performance management, intuitive benefits enrollment, and much more - all on one connected platform. Learn more about making the switch to Namely by going to Namely.com today! --------------------- Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

15 Des 20219min

Erica Dhawan, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and the best-selling author of a very timely book called Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance. She is best known as the leading authority on 21st-century collaboration and teamwork in a digital-first workplace. Today we are focusing on how digital body language is all the new cues and signals that have replaced traditional body language. Humans rely on body language to connect and build trust, but with most of our communication happening from behind a screen, traditional body language signals are no longer visible. ------------------ This episode is sponsored by Namely. Whether you have 50 or 1,000 employees, Namely HR helps you maintain a great experience for the entire employee lifecycle. They offer onboarding, performance management, intuitive benefits enrollment, and much more - all on one connected platform. Learn more about making the switch to Namely by going to Namely.com today! --------------------- Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

13 Des 202153min

Be a perpetual learner if you want to future-proof your career. Being a perpetual learner means understanding and acknowledging that you can’t rely on educational institutions or organizations to teach you everything you need to know to be successful. A perpetual learner is somebody who takes learning into their own hands. They take their growth and development into their own hands, and they learn how to learn. They acknowledge that what they learned in the past is not necessarily going to carry them forward in the future. Here are three daily practices of perpetual learners: They ask questions Why is something being done like this? Is there a better way for us to do this? Can we be more efficient with this? Can we save money without having to do this? They make time to figure out the answer to questions. They apply the things they learn in their lives and their organization. Do you do these practices yourself? --------------------------- Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

8 Des 20218min

Nathan Rawlins is the Chief Marketing Officer of Lucid, a software company with around 1000 employees that designs online visual collaboration applications. Its products are utilized in over 180 countries by more than 30 million users worldwide.  Lucid's online applications bring people together over the web from anywhere in the world to work together on a shared canvas.  Nathan joined Lucid in 2017 as the CMO to show the world the benefits of working visually. Prior to joining Lucid, Nathan led worldwide marketing activities for Puppet and helped scale Jive through an IPO as he directed product marketing and brand. Lucid was named Best Led Companies in 2021 by Inc. Magazine and was named Best Workplace in Technology by Fortune for a second consecutive year.  I have known Nathan for many years. We were reminiscing about how software has changed communication and collaboration for people over the years.  The shift has been to social ways of communication more so than collaboration. Communication has evolved pretty dramatically over the course of the last decade. What is Lucid's leadership philosophy Every company has core values and its own culture. One of the exciting things about Lucid is that early employees codified the importance of the company and said, we need what we are doing to work, we like working together, we like doing what we are doing. Let's figure out the essence of that success. And that turned into the values created at Lucid.   Teamwork over ego is one of our core values. And I would imagine, if you were to talk to people at Lucid, you would hear it from virtually everyone because it's this core idea that we need to win as a company.  Another value at Lucid is innovation. But the way that we apply innovation is vital. After I joined Lucent several years ago, I noticed this early on, a highly experimental culture with an acceptance for learning as we go along.   Interviewing at Lucid we look for those core values. People can come from very different backgrounds; they can have different approaches, they need to, we want that level of diversity. But it's essential that the people we hire adhere to the core values, value teamwork over ego, and value innovation and creativity. So the second area Lucid focuses on is creating a structured leadership training course.  We have a 100, 200 and 300 level series of training  every people manager completes to ensure that we understand everything from managing effectively and how to motivate teams.  Trends that are top of mind for Nathan The type of collaboration, the way that we collaborate needs to shift to allow for a high level of complexity, dialogue and interconnection. Another trend we are seeing is more companies are shifting to agile ways of working not just within software development. Companies are pushing for more self directed smaller teams where they can work with more autonomy. And that's fantastic. It does present an interesting challenge.  We've talked about silos for decades. But for most of that time, we've talked about it as if there are a handful of silos in a company. When teams become more agile, you can actually create 1000s of mini silos. The need for a system of record for what you're trying to build becomes vital  so that as teams work together, they have the common blueprint for what they're trying to accomplish. As work is handed off from team to team, it can be more effective. So you bring those two things together, the fact that we're building very complex projects, and doing it in a way where we have very nimble agile teams, and it makes it so that we need to rethink the way we go about having these conversations around collaboration. The future of work look We certainly have talked to many companies that are shifting to completely virtual collaboration, in particular, because of the current environment. What we found is that many of them are saying, even if we get back together at some point at scale, what we have learned over the course of the last year and a half will cause us to collaborate differently when we're all in the same room.  The other shift is in the preference for the way that we work. Bringing a team together on a virtual board, where they can brainstorm what needs to be built.  Developing software that has capabilities where you can break into virtual rooms, and  have a sticky note exercise and come up with the ideas. One idea may be to build a mobile application.  So instead of having an email chain about what needs to change, a team can jump into a diagramming application  together and build out the flow for that customer support process. All the way through you have this new place where people gather on this virtual board, and they can work side by side, even if they aren't face to face. Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

6 Des 202146min

Here are my 5 best pieces of career advice for young people. 🥂Taste test When you are young in your career, most of the time you have no idea what you want to do. So try out different jobs before you commit. It’s important that you enjoy what you are doing. 💪Build your own ladder You don't have to follow the template that everybody tells you to follow. You can build your own career. The first step in doing this is to build your own personal brand. ✋Life is too short to be miserable Why would you want to spend any of your time being miserable? If you don’t like your job, do something about it. 🧭Make your own decisions There will be a lot of people who will tell you what they think you should do. You can take feedback of course, but the important thing is to make your own decisions. Ultimately, you have to do what makes sense for you. Nobody is going to look out for you. 👥Be self-aware You need to know your strengths and weaknesses. The more self-aware you become, the more growth and opportunities you’ll see. --------------------------- Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

1 Des 202110min

Bob Chapman is the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, a global supplier of manufacturing technology and services with over 12,000 employees. Bob was named the #3 CEO in the world by Inc. Magazine and Barry-Wehmiller is studied by business schools and organizations around the world because of their unique culture and Bob’s truly human leadership style.  I have had the pleasure of speaking with Bob on many occasions. I had him on the podcast back in 2015, I interviewed him for my book, The Future Leader, and I interviewed him for my online leadership course. Bob truly cares about his people and he feels personally responsible for every single one of them.  He is passionate about truly human leadership, but that hasn’t always been the case. When he first started his career, he led in a more traditional way and stuck to what he learned throughout his MBA journey. But Bob says he had three revelations back in 1997 that “awakened his senses to a higher calling in business”.  --------------------------- There are 6 trends that are transforming leadership forever do you know what they are and are you ready for them? Download the PDF to learn what these 6 trends are and what you should be doing about each one of them. These are crucial for your leadership and career development in the future of work! --------------------------- Three revelations that changed Bob’s leadership style Starting back in 1997 Bob experienced three events that caused him to shift his view on leadership and led him to think about how business could be the most powerful force of good in the world if leaders simply cared about the people they have the privilege of leading. The first event occurred when Bob traveled to a company in South Carolina that Barry-Wehmiller had acquired. He arrived at the office very early and he was grabbing a cup of coffee as the employees arrived. They had no idea who he was so he was able to observe them, and as they were coming in they were talking about March Madness, who won the most money, what teams had won, etc… and people were happy and casual. But the closer the clock got to 8:00am, the more and more serious they got. Bob said he could literally see the fun draining out of their faces. And over time as Bob kept thinking about that moment he tried to figure out why work couldn’t be fun. Why do we go through our work week thinking “I can’t wait until Friday so I can get out of this place”.  Since then he has worked to find things that aligned value creation with fun inside his own organization. The second event happened one Sunday as he was leaving his church and he realized the pastor only had the congregation in front of them for one hour a week, but as business leaders we have employees in front of us 40 hours a week. And Bob realized what an impact business leaders could have if they took time to care about their people and impact their communities.  The third event was when Bob was attending a wedding and he saw the father walking his daughter down the aisle to her future husband. And the father smiled and said “I give my daughter to be married to this man” and he looked at his daughter proudly and hugged her and then went to sit by his wife. But Bob, who has walked his own daughters down the aisle, realized that’s not what the father really wanted to say. He really wanted to tell the man “this is my beloved daughter and you better take care of her and never hurt her”. He realized that every father and mother loves their precious children and they want what’s best for them. And at that moment it hit him that every one of his 12,000 employees is someone's precious child. Their parents want them to lead lives of meaning and purpose and joy, and that is the responsibility of leaders inside of organizations.  What to do if upper management doesn’t lead in a truly human way Barry-Wehmiller is doing a lot of unique things because of Bob’s truly human leadership style. They don’t do headcounts, they do heart counts, they have training on empathetic listening, employees feel safe because they know their leader cares about them.  But what if you are a mid-level or entry-level leader inside of an organization and upper management doesn’t hold these same views? Bob has been asked this question before and he likes to think of it as a scene from the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy, the tin man, the lion, and the scarecrow are all in search of something they need and so they go to see the wizard to get what they need. It turns out the wizard is just a wise old man, but he tells them they already have what they need, they just need to use the gifts they have. You don’t need permission from upper management to be a better leader and put your people first. You just need to embrace these philosophies and live them out. And it’s possible that as you start to lead this way others around you will take notice and make changes themselves. But you can definitely start with yourself.  --------------------------- There are 6 trends that are transforming leadership forever do you know what they are and are you ready for them? Download the PDF to learn what these 6 trends are and what you should be doing about each one of them. These are crucial for your leadership and career development in the future of work! --------------------------- Two pieces of advice from Bob’s long career as a leader Bob has been a leader for several decades and over the course of his career he has learned a lot. Two of the biggest things he has learned along the way are: There is no relationship between what something costs and what it’s worth Everybody that works for you is someone’s precious child that has been placed in your care He also believes that leaders need to be grounded optimists that provide their people with hope. Your people need to be able to put their faith in you and know you won’t let them down.    --------------------------- This episode is sponsored by Workplace from Meta. Whatever you bring to work to help you be you, Workplace celebrates it. Our familiar features help everyone work together in new ways. To make your place of work a great place to work, visit workplace.com/human Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

29 Nov 202139min

You need to view working at your company just like being in a relationship. Whenever you're in a relationship, you're inevitably presented with a choice. Do you keep the relationship going? Is it something that you turn into a long-term relationship? If you decide you want to fight for that relationship, then you have to fight like hell to make it work. Are you going to overcome the obstacles and work on the problems you're faced with? Then you have to do everything you can. Working for an organization is the exact same thing. Are you going to try to make things work? Or are you going to jump ship? Whether you are in a personal or a professional relationship, it is the same thing. You need to decide if it's a relationship worth fighting for. And if it is, fight like hell to make it work. --------------------------- This episode is sponsored by Workplace from Meta. Whatever you bring to work to help you be you, Workplace celebrates it. Our familiar features help everyone work together in new ways. To make your place of work a great place to work, visit workplace.com/human Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com  Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob

24 Nov 20214min