Idea's space

Thinking out of the box.

Some of great ideas are coming on an unexpected way, and we want to get absolutely an idea for a new project, for a new book or article we want to write, the inspiration is not there. As we are used to say, an idea is not coming alone. Sometimes, ideas are coming because we noticed something around us, or we heard about something. And from this event, we start to think about it and suddenly an idea is coming.

It is now around two years that I am publishing articles on this blog, and the ongoing concern and challenge is to know if I will be able to publish an article with an acceptable quality level within the deadline I fixed. The ideas finally are coming, but as mentioned earlier not alone. There are coming easier, if we have an intensive activity. I would like to share some useful tips and conditions in my mind helping us to find inspiration.

• Break the routine. Each of us, we have repetitive activities and duties. We are doing this tasks as we had been programed to do it. This repetition of the same activities become a routine, routine that is the opposite of thinking out of the box. By changing some habits, you will probably discover new things or you will do them on another way.
• Develop your inspiring network. We can be inspired by inspiring people. Inspiring people are people who build their own life, their own experience, and who thought about what the way of life they chose, brought to them. By sharing their experience and ideas with you, you can feed your own ideas or project. We are closed to the mind mapping process, where words or ideas can make you think about closed ideas or things, and help you to build or move forward your own project, your own life.
• Move time to time to another environment. As freelance, I am used to work to the customer office, or at home. Recently, I spent few day in a co-working space. By working there, you break the routine, you move to another working environment where the configuration of the room or the design will inspire you, will bring some positive energy to you. It is also an opportunity to meet other people having different jobs, with who you can talk about your projects, share ideas, and maybe build a new project with them.
• Be curious, eager to learn and start new activities: the most experience you will have and the most curious you will be, the most opportunities of new ideas you will gain. The curiosity will bring you to discover new things, to learn, and to expand your knowledge. Each things you can learn can be the raw material of a future project, or idea, or a new activity.
• Take the time for leisures and sports. By doing a sport, or watching a movie, reading a book,  you move your spirit to another horizon. By being too much focused on something, you are loosing visibility and do not see the things on a global way. When for instance, you try to solve a problem and you are stuck, then, move your brain to something else, or do a break. Take the opportunity to do sports, to decrease your stress, or just make a walk in a park or in the woods. By taking distance from the problem, you will see it on another way and find the solution you was looking for.

Inspiration and ideas are something we can work on it. Inspiration is something implying a movement, we are inspired by something. It means that we have to maximize the source of inspiration, and you only can organize this process. It is a long and ongoing process, but sometimes, it can bring interesting results.

Success and perseverance.

Everybody wants to reach success. The question is to know what is precisely success. Have we each of us the same definition, the same view of success? This question needs to be answered in order to know what success is, but also where success is. We reach success when we are realizing a dream. We have dreams we want to realize in our personal life. There are different kind of dreams, and the ways to reach them will probably be different. We can dream to have a family, to have children succeeding in their studies, to travel around the world. We would like also to succeed in our professional life, to have an enjoyable work and to earn enough money to cover our daily needs. This is an overview of what could be success, but does it mean that these things we are dreaming are successful on themselves ?

The success is a question of values. What are the value we are sharing? In our society, most of the time, success is associated to wealth. Bill Gates, for instance, is seen as a successful man by founding one of the most large software companies, Microsoft. But does it mean that the creation of a company is a dream shared by everybody? This is a question of value, of interest. To meet the success, is to meet the goal you are dreaming. Your goal will be function of the value you are believe in and the activities leaded by your values. There is no success, there is only your success, and your success will not be necessarily the success of somebody else. I already talked in another post, about this Belgian theater founder and actor, Michel Kacenelenbogen, who was first owner and founder of a company. His initial goal was to create a theater, and he founded first a company in order to earn money, to be able to create this theater, to realize his dream. He realized his dream, by founding “Le Public”, a theater with an innovative concept, financed by his own revenue and a part of public subsidies, and where you can find a restaurant after or before the spectacle. This was his dream, and this is his success, but his dream is not probably yours and your success neither. The question of values and goals is important, because what you are considering, or what is the society considering as a success, could be only an illusion. I want to mention here an article I read recently in a magazine, about a business man who was dreaming to drive a Porsche. He made a bet that he will have a Porsche when he will be 30 years old. On way, he bought the Porsche, but he realized after that, that he put a lot of pressure on his shoulder and on the shoulders of his collaborator to maximize profits and to reach his personal goal, and that finally, the car he bought was an illusion of success. The success was more in the business he developed and in all the things he learned by building it every day.

By definition, success is something positive, and because success looks like positive, people are dreaming of success, but are often considering the positive side of success. Regarding the two case I explained before, we have not to underestimate the challenges and issues people had to face to reach their goal. To build a company, or to found a theater remains a challenge and a risk. As Peter Drucker quote says: “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” Some entrepreneurs failed in their projects, learned about that failure and restarted new projects in another way and reached the success. The failure you can meet could be part of a success, if you learn from your failure.

And let us talk about your talent. You can reach a goal or a success by expressing and developing talent. Your talent is one of the key components of success. There are some people saying that everybody can do everything if we want. Personally, I do not totally agree with this statement. We can only succeed by doing things we are motivated by. We have also to reach a level of talent which depends of our capabilities and abilities to acquire the knowledge. There is a huge difference between to be able to play piano, and to play as Mozart was playing. Let us remember also another Peter Drucker quote saying that “It is better to work on your strong points to pass from competence to excellence, than to work on your weaknesses to pass from incompetence to mediocrity.”

But finally, what is success ? Success is the realization of projects you are dreaming. It is only you who can decide and determine what will be a successful life. Maybe you will not see it immediately, maybe you will note that things you were believed as success are just illusions. But each goal we are fixing is function of our passed experiences and of an anticipation of the future, based on new values we discovered and acquired. It is only you who can see yourself as a successful person and not the others.

The passion to learn contributes to the human being development.

Education is an important pillar of our society, in term of social, economical and cultural development. Education is the basic tool allowing everybody to be first a human being, to develop himself, to have a job and to be integrated in a society where he can share, communicate with other people. But a statement needs to be done: everybody is not equal in term of education, and some people are not succeeding very well in their studies. The chance for these people to be integrated in the society and to live in harmony is lower.

There are many reasons why some people does not succeed in their studies, in their life. There is a first reason which is a social reason. Children who are living in a family where the parents have a low education level, will face more difficulties to acquire a higher education level than their parents. But it does not mean necessarily that they cannot succeed in their education. There is probably a question of temper. The ones will show more will and perseverance to succeed, the others will be quickly discouraged. Here is the need to have a performant education system, where teachers can play an important social role, contributing to help everybody to meet success in the education.

Let us have a look on the needed ingredients to build a strong educational system. A first condition is to have passionated teachers. As in many jobs, the passion is a key factor of success. The passion brings the motivation to increase your skills and capabilities in areas of interests, and leads you to give the best of what you can do. The passion is something you can transmit, you convince the other because you are convinced yourself. In education matter, passion is something you have to transmit. Some teachers show lack of passion, which is not an example to motivate children or students. The learning process needs efforts, where we have to cross over difficulties, and students have to be motivated to cross over difficulties, to face challenges. Challenges are what we have to face during all our life, and what make us more self-confident. Education has also to prepare the children to face this.

Another important condition to motivate students and to bring them to success in their educational process, are the educational skills of teachers. It is important to be able to explain things on different ways with examples. Some teachers are able to explain complex matters by making comparisons with simple concepts, with concrete things, allowing the students to visualize more easily the teached matters, the explained concepts. But it is also important to explain what is the utility to study matters. What I am saying here, is not that there are useful and useless things to learn. It is not a fact but a wrong perception the children have, and they are wondering why they have to learn things which seem to be useless. They are judging it as useless, because they don’t perceive the goal of learning it. I will take the example of mathematics. I remember teachers explaining theorems, formulas, hypotheses, and logical developments. But at that time, I had the feeling that the only goal to learn these things was to get enough points at the end of the year, to succeed in the examinations, and to have a qualification. I had the chance to have later a professor in the university who was illustrating mathematical concepts or equations with concrete examples. It was much more easy to understand theoretical concepts with practical examples.

Knowledge is the raw material of intellectual and social development. All what we are learning at school, in mathematical, physical, chemical sciences, literature or history, are the basic components to understand or to build more complex concepts or knowledge. But it is also important to show the brought added value of the combination of skills, of disciplines. We can see today new jobs which were not existing some years ago, but which are only a combination of existing jobs and skills. Let us take the example of somebody who is a qualified translator and who has passions of IT and can make programs. By combining two skills sets, he can create translation programs or to work in the online translation industry. The added value of such combination will be a motivation to learn and to develop other skills. For instance, in our globalized world, a stylist who want to present creations in foreign countries like Italy or United Kingdom, could be find more motivation to learn languages, because she has a concrete reason, a concrete motivation to learn it.

As I mention before, education goal is first to become a human being, to build our personal development, to become first the actor of our own life. The role of the education system is also to help children to develop interest areas and to help him to build their own life. The development of interest and curiosity will contribute to develop motivation, and drive people to passion. Passion is an essential component of self-development. Passion leads people to move their limits forward, to encourage them to face new challenges. Passion is also something teachers have to transmit. And to transmit passion, I am coming back to the first point I presented here, to have passionate teachers communicating the passion to learn.As in many areas, passion is a key factor, and the passion to learn can lead you to unlimited new horizons. Let us give the key of passion to learn to the new generations, giving them the opportunities to conquer their freedom.

The "Motivation machine"

Professional organizations are publicising figures about employment on a regular basis. Even these last times, things seem to be going better because the economy is recovering from the financial crisis, there is always a same finding. This finding is the difficulties that companies have to find and recruit some specific profiles. The lack of talents is a brake for the local economical development, and the problem will probably be more important in the coming years with the baby-boomers who will be retired. What are the reasons of such situation?

A first reason could be a weakness in the performances of the education system. An inefficient education system induces a lack of qualified people. Let us remind that a strong education is the basics of an harmonious personal development for people. Before to be workers, we are first human being and we are going at school to be first educated people, to be ourselves. By benefiting from a strong basic education, we increase the possibility to move to a larger range of studies at high school or university, and to have access to a larger range of jobs.

But is the education level the only reason of lack of talents? And what about remunerations? In this particular difficult time, it is often told to people that the salaries level has to be maintained. I know people around me applying for new job, who were asked to work with a salary decrease around 30%. As freelance consultant, I received some assignment proposal for a rate lower of 36%, and one of them was for a large company in the banking sector where the bonuses allowed to the top management did not know such decrease. By mentioning this, should not we allowed to think that the problem of missing profiles is not due to a lack of talent but to a lack of motivation from talented people. Some studies show that salary level is not the most important thing people are looking for, but they hope to have a decent salary for the job they are doing and for the related constraints they have to assume. Some people want one job or another, and are choosing the one that is well paid, what is understandable. But if there is no salary difference between that job and the one they really would enjoy to do, why would they continue to do it? Sometimes ago, I read some testimonials in such way about people launching their own activity, and telling that they will not probably earn more money but they will have the advantage to be their own boss.

The lack of motivation and lack of talent induce negative consequences on the economy. When some profiles are missing, companies are relocating activities in other countries. The fact that salaries are always dumped, induces a negative impact on the local economy. When people have a lower purchase power and that they are pushed and encouraged to consume, they begin to contract credits they cannot reimburse. We have seen the consequences with the financial crisis of 2008. But apparently, some people have a short mind.

The talent development is an ongoing process, producing short, mid and long-term effect. The talent development is a process having to be improved and worked on both sides. Ourselves, we have to develop our talents in order to evolve, to increase our potential and our knowledge, to get more opportunities. But we have to know that we will have possibilities to use our talent and that our talents and efforts will be correctly rewarded. That is the reason why companies, managers have to promote talents and to define clear goals and challenges, as opportunities where people can express their talent and be part of a nice project. It will make the difference between to have people who are doing their job because they have to, and they have to earn money and the one’s who have the feeling to contribute to a common project. In the second case, there will be clearly added-value for people and for the company.

Trust, responsibilities and motivation, ingredients of teamwork.

In the economical world, where the competitions become harder, the key factor maintaining companies in a leadership position, is the performance level. Performances of companies or organizations are related to the motivation of the personnel. The motivation is generated by different factors.

First, it is important that people have a clear idea about the content of their function, their mission, and have clearly defined objectives, mid and long-term career perspectives. This is a reason why the recruiting process is a key factor contributing to a potential long-term collaboration. Indeed, the content of the function and the targets have to match with the employee expectations. A recent study performed in the Belgian work market shows that people are according more importance to challenges and career evolutions perspectives than to the salary packages.

A second point is the trust given by the management to the employee. When people are trusted, they have the feeling that management believes in them and about their capacity to work autonomously. I remember some years ago, I was working as accountant for an American company. My boss was on holiday, and we had to face a serious trouble with the IT during an upgrade process. A part of the data’s was lost because the backup systems did not work properly. Two weeks of data were lost, and the last accounting monthly closing disappeared. I contacted a controller at the head quarter in the U.S. I explained the situation, and he told me that I would have a better overview of the situation than him, and that if it was necessary, I had to look for temp people in order to come back to a normal situation. Fortunately, an IT company where we sent the hard disks retrieved the data and we were back to the normal. The instruction of the controller was a real challenge for me, but also an evidence that he was convinced that I would be able to manage the situation. This trust evidence was a source of motivation for me. If people believe in you, you believe in yourself and are motivated to face challenges and take responsibilities. But it is obvious that we have to respect the given trust and the merit of trust is a daily exercise.

A third point is to give responsibilities to the people. When you trust on them and when you know that they can work on an autonomous way, then you can delegate tasks and responsibilities, which is a key point in term of management. We are used to say that if somebody is able to perform a task or a process at around 75%, then you have to delegate it. By delegating, you are giving higher responsibilities to the people, and showing that you trust on his capabilities. You offer him also an opportunity to learn and to increase his capacities and competences.

Recognition of the work done is another important factor of motivation. We know that successful project achievement can only be done by a hard contribution from each member involved in the project. Most of the biggest challenges are achieved by hard work provided by the project team. More than a bonus or a salary increase, the recognition and the feedback about the provided work is important to motivate people.

And what about team spirit? People can only give the best of themselves, if they are working within a team where members are moved by team spirit and by the will to reach first the common goal. When people are working together and want to achieve the common goal, it means that everybody can achieve his own goal related to his function and contributing to the common goal success. In such way, people have the feeling to be really part of a team and of a project where their work is recognized.

All these points show that trust can generate a win-win relationship between employees and employers, between partners. Trust can increase the motivation and the will to take responsibilities. It is in fact a contract where each partner have to respect the clauses.

Self-confidence & responsibility, ingredients to feed change?

When change is considered as new opportunities by some people, it is seen as a danger by others. Change is a question of mind and some people are not used to change. But the question to be asked is why there are not used to change. Or maybe why have they no motivation to operate changes.

If we are going back to many years ago, and maybe still today in some public organizations, people were supposed to do their job as it was told to them. They were not allowed to take initiatives or to change some rules. The change was only driven by some managers or responsibles, and the employees were only allowed to do things as it was decided. But is it still possible to manage things in such a way, in a fast moving environment? No, it is not.

The development of technologies has an important impact in term of organization in companies and institutions. Each change of operating mode needs also some changes in term of people management. But in order to drive this changes successfully, people have to be motivated by changes. It is only possible if some conditions are met.

• Function and job description: people needs to have a clear job descriptions, to have a good picture about their function in the company and the implication of their work within the organization

• Targets and objectives: Peter Drucker was saying that management by objective works if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time, you don’t. If people know their objective, they can organize their work to reach the objectives.

• Team spirit: personal objectives are part of global objectives, the objectives of the company, of the organisation. Global objectives can only be reached if people are working together on an organized way. It implies to know how to work, who is doing what. Let us keep in mind that there is no personal success without common success.

• Responsibilities: By defining a function and goals for each people, you are giving responsibilities. With the development of technologies, where each function requires more skills and capabilities than before, each people is playing a key role, but need to have the feeling that this role is taken into consideration by the management. People assume and are motivated to take their responsibilities if it is recognized by the management,

• Feedback: Feedback is important. If people are doing mistake or are not going in the direction of the assigned goal, colleagues or management need to give feedback about what is going wrong, analyse the reasons of the mistake, and to discuss about the appropriate actions to be taken. We are learning more from our mistakes than from our successes. It will help people to anticipate potential mistakes and to be more proactive, and to increase the quality of work.

• Self-confidence: By assigning clear goals, by helping people to reach these goals and by recognizing the added value of their work, people have the feeling to be part of the organization and become more self-confident. This self-confidence will make that they will not hesitate to take initiatives to improve the processes of the organization. It is clearly a win-win situation, where people are acquiring added value and the organization benefits from the work quality of dedicated people.

As we can see, change is not something we can decide in one day. It is not only a question of mind but also a question of culture of the organization. It is obvious that culture is conditioning people, but in a fast moving environment where flexibility become a key factor of success, people can only face revolutions if they are used to work within an evolution process. And in an environment where flexibility and adaptability become important factors of success, it is obvious that people have to be used to work within an evolution process.

Seniors as mentor for juniors

The belgian business magazine trends.be published recently an article about a survey organized by Acerta Marketing Intelligence, about seniors employees. It appears that the trend about the work of the seniors is progressing on a positive way. Indeed, around 33% of companies are considering to keep the collaboration with their talented senior employees for a longer time and extend their active life. This is a positive sign given by companies, showing a change of mentality and vision. There are of course legal restriction to the extension of professional life, but some possibilities are existing and could be interesting for the economy.

These time, most of countries have to face with the problem of retirement and the payment of pensions. The proportion of retired people compared to active people is increasing and in a few years, the payment of pensions could be an issue. But the increase of retirement age is unacceptable for some politics and for trade unions. They consider that people have merited to stop to work and to let the jobs to the youth. We can agree on such view, but does it mean that everybody is happy to stop working?

The extension of the professional careers could be an advantage for the economy and for the people too. Here are some positive points:

• The freedom to still work. Some people enjoy to work, because they like their job, and they always look for learning and progressing in the live. The age of retirement is something subjective. Age is a question of mind. There are people who are still young in their mind even if they are sixty years old.
• Benefit for the health. Some studies showed that people pursuing a professional or a volunteer activity have a better psychic health. They can still work on a project, concretize a goal. Nicolas Hayek, the founder of Swatch, was used to say that like the artists, the entrepreneurs will never be retired, they just move to another function. Each people has to be the entrepreneur of his life, and should be allowed to continue a professional activity if he is still motivated.
• The flexibility. The Seniors who want to continue to work, would maybe work on a part time basis, which could match with the needs of companies. The companies could contract the seniors for specific projects needing only a part time activity. This flexibility should be a win-win deal. The companies would benefit from the expertise of the seniors following their needs, and the seniors could still contribute to the economical activity and to maintain a positive work-life balance.
• To act as a mentor. The academical background is important to face professional challenges, but the years of experience is also an asset. In a fast moving environment, we have to learn everyday. The seniors could contribute positively to the juniors career development. The juniors learned other things at school or university and will have different approach than the seniors. On the other hand, seniors have a lot of practical experience, giving the advantage to anticipate and to be more pro-active in certain situation. Seniors have more experience and knowledge, juniors have ideas and technical skills. By working together on a project, they can combine their competences and provide innovative and added valued solutions.
• To share enthusiasm. By working with the juniors, the seniors who are still motivated to work, will show their motivation, their enthusiasm, what will be an example for the junior. If work is considered as a constraint, your life will be worse than the hell. First you have to chose the job you like, and to get the change to work with inspiring people.
• A complementary financial revenue. The retirement allowance are lower than the paid salaries during the professional career. If a retired people can earn a complementary revenue, he can still maintain a certain level of life, which is positive for the economy. He can still contract services contributing to his wellness. In Belgium, a important part of the retired people are living under the poverty level.

The possibility to continue to work is an interesting and positive alternative which should be given for those who wants to continue to work. Work should not be seen as an obligation, but also as a right. Work is often seen as a constraint, but our life is full of constraints. The challenge of live is to live with these constraints and to be creative to face them. By learning from the constraints, we are reaching the freedom, the freedom to chose our constraints.

Corporate Social Responsibility, for a better world.

Today, we can see a lot of companies investing time and funds in Corporate Social Responsibility. I was recently asking the question on a forum if such programs are the concretisation of a philosophical culture or by the motivation of a positive marketing image. This question suggests a cynical intention of companies to do a positive action for business purposes. If sometimes such question is asked by some of us, it is probably because the Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives goals are a bit in the opposite of the company goal, it means to make profit. And the other question is to know if the final goal to implement Corporate Social Responsibility programs is to contribute to a positive social action or if it is to develop a positive marketing image. It is always easy to criticize such initiatives by saying that it was not done for a good reason, in this case for social purpose. But such initiatives make cense when the strategy and the philosophy of the company is in accordance with such actions. In other words, could we believe to the valuable reasons of a CSR program of a company when this company is firing people in order to maximize profit?

Do not forget that companies needs to make profit in order to ensure the development and the sustainability of their activities. Do not forget that there cannot be efficient social policy without strong economy. Both are linked, but companies would have to integrate all the dimensions, social, economical, development, people management, motivation…in their corporate values. In a lot of case, it implies a change of paradigm. Is the economy there to serve people or people have to serve the economy? As I already asked in other articles, is a economy sustainable when companies are cutting jobs to make more profit and when you reduce the purchasing power of people? In such context, does the CSR appear as a cynical way to gain respectability? Such a paradox does not appear as positive. But we have maybe to see here the possibility to develop another business model, where all the components have to be taken into account, in order to show a more coherent image. There is already existing companies and business based on the Social economy model. These companies are integrating different values, and sometimes more constraints to develop a sustainable business. But this kind of environment initiates most of the time more creativity, and particularly when the people are motivated and subscribe to the company project. I remember an article about an IT small company based on a cooperative model, where each employee could acquire shares of the company and have a vote to the board of directors. This model shows interesting advantages. The CEO of this company was mentioning in the article that with such company model, he could be fired by the employees, and that he was taking more time to make proposals and taking decisions. But on the other side, the employees are more involved in the project and have more responsibilities on their shoulders. It is not forbidden to think about the possible changes that CSR could produce on the way to do business.

Does it mean that every company cannot implement Corporate Social Responsibility in order to avoid critics? Certainly not! Such initiatives have to be encouraged and have not to be criticized. But I think that a CSR program starts within the company, by taking care about a range of value, like people management, employee wellness and personal development, environment concerns. Such program can contribute to reduce costs and to increase the employee commitment. These programs could be nice challenges if the ones who initiate them, want to do it with efficiency and reach a valuable goal. It offers a positive contribution for those who needs some help in particular difficult time, and contributes to give a positive feeling of usefulness for those who contribute to the realisation of such programs. For programs where people are dedicating time as volunteer, it is a good experience to face challenges, to be confronted to some difficult situations. This kind of experience is invaluable and brings a positive contribution in terms of education. Probably that a lot of us, we lost one day our job and we had to face difficult time. We had probably chance to have people around us giving supports and encouragement. We don’t have to forget this. It is important from time to time to give assistance to people, but also to help them to take a new start. As said previously, there is no social without economy, and no economy without social. Before to be consumers, we are first human being.

Volunteer workers

As member of the board of a small non-profit organization, the board of directors had recently a discussion with the project manager about the difficulties to manage a team of employees and volunteers. He was explaining the daily conflicts and tensions he has to manage, which is not an easy task for different reasons.

To describe the context, we have to know that some employees are hired in a reintegration framework. These people lost they jobs in the past, they lost the workless allowances. It means that these people are socially weakened. This reintegration program help them to find again a place in the society, to trust themselves and to reintegration the job market. These people need to be managed with clear objectives and instructions. Within the organization, these employees have to work with volunteers, and as mentioned before, the collaboration is not always on the top.

On one side, we have employees who are linked to the organization by a work contract, with clearly defined duties and objectives. They know that if they are not respecting certain rules or defined duties in their work contract, they can be sanctioned. On the other side, we have volunteers who have no specific contractual link and duties, but only a moral commitment. The tensions who are appearing is that some volunteers are doing what they want to do, and not always what has to be done. They do not accept any remarks from the employees, and the employees have difficulties to accept remarks from volunteers “who have no specific obligations and who are there for their own satisfaction and not to sustain the common goal.”

By observing this situation, we think immediately to the necessity to define goals and objectives of the organization, and to describe how each person can operate and interact to make the assigned project feasible. By describing clear goals and assigned roles to the team members, employees as volunteers, we have to ask them first if they are subscribing to the project, if there is a matching between the needs of the project and their expectations. This is an essential condition to be filled by the hired employes, but also for the volunteers. I would say that this condition is more important for the volunteers who are only linked to the project by a moral commitment. They have to understand that they have to contribute to the project on a efficient way, to operate on a collaborative way with the employees. By doing like this, they are contributing to the achievement of the targets of the organization, but they are helping also the employees hired in this reintegration program to achieve goals, to trust themselves and to empower their social links.

This situation shows how it is important to clearly define and explain what are the objectives of a project and what are the objectives of each member of the project team. They have to perceive that each project has to be structured and organized, and that each member of the team has to play a specific role. The projects are taking place in an profit or non-organization, where structure, organization and team spirit are the essential key factors of success, and that there is no personal success without common success. Peter Drucker was used to say: “Management by objective works, if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time, you don’t.”

Picture source: http://www.benevolat01.org

To hire at the lower price, a good deal?

Recently, I attended an event organized by a recruiting partner. These events are always the opportunity to meet colleagues and to exchange news and informations about the business trends. If we can hear and read about better results for the economy, it seems that the situation remains difficult regarding the job offers, even for permanent jobs than for interim management opportunities. I was discussing with a colleague looking for new opportunities, and she told me that she received some proposal and had some interviews, but that the offered salary for a proposed job was ..40% lower than her last salary! On the other side, I read in some newspapers than top salaries apparently remain unchanged compare to before the financial crisis. Where is the mistake?

For the time being, there are a lot of available candidates on the market, which has a negative effect on the salaries level. And of course, companies try to hire the cheaper candidate. But is it really a good deal to hire somebody with the minimum salary, and for some candidates a lower salary than their previous assignment? Maybe on a short term basis but what about the long term?

The question is what about the project of the company. Does the company wants to have a long term collaboration with the employees? If the employee finds an opportunity where he can have a better salary, he will leave the company. This means that you will have to hire somebody else, spending and loosing time to restart a recruitment process, and increasing your recruiting costs. More than this, the time spent by your employee during the few months he worked for your company is a pure loss, and a part of the know how is lost.

A recruitment process should include the same criteria than an investment. One parameter is the price, but the other parameter is the quality of services I will get for the money paid. You want to have the better ration quality-price, but think about the quality you really want to contract. Think also about the motivation of your employee. The salary is a part of the motivation, and the productivity and the work quality will probably be better if the salary level meets the candidate expectations. Think also about the fact that a long term collaboration with a candidate means a better knowledge and control of the processes, the business, and gains of productivity.

The solution to give the lowest salary is not the best one on a long term basis. As an investment, you will analyze the return on investment you will get from the disbursed amounts. Consider your employees as an investment, on which you can expect a good return. We never talk so much about human capital than now, but human capital seems still to  be stillconsidered as a cost and not as an assets. By paying bad salaries, you underestimate the human capital. And as you know, if you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys.