The Weekly Pulse is my content curation and my highlights from readings, books, podcasts, insights, and everything I discovered during the week.
So, let’s go with some discoveries from the week!
#1 – The Core Competence of the Corporation
#2 – Great Attrition or Great Attraction? The Choice Is Yours
#3 – The Artificial Intelligence Revolution
#4 – The Benefits and Risks of Rehiring a Boomerang Employee
#5 – The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures
The Core Competence of the Corporation
Source: Harvard Business Review
Author: C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel
Summary: Core competence is the collective learning in the organization, especially the capacity to coordinate diverse production skills and integrate streams of technologies. It is also a commitment to working across organizational boundaries. Organizing around core competencies requires a radical change in a corporate organization.
3 Highlights:
“… If core competence is about harmonizing streams of technology, it is also about the organization of work and the delivery of value. .…“
“… We believe that senior management should spend a significant amount of its time developing a corporate-wide strategic architecture that establishes objectives for competence building...”
“… Top management must add value by enunciating the strategic architecture that guides the competence acquisition process. We believe an obsession with competence building will characterize the global winners of the 1990s…”
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Great Attrition or Great Attraction? The Choice Is Yours
Source: McKinsey
Author: Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger
Summary: More than 19 million US workers—and counting—have quit their jobs since April 2021, a record pace disrupting businesses everywhere. Companies are struggling to address the problem, and many will continue to struggle for one simple reason: they don’t really understand why their employees are leaving in the first place. A record number of employees are quitting or thinking about doing so. Organizations that take the time to learn why—and act thoughtfully—will have an edge in attracting and retaining talent.
3 Highlights:
“… Along the way, many senior executives will be challenged to reimagine how they lead. The skills that made leaders effective before the COVID-19 pandemic—strong coaching, mentoring, creating strong teams—are just table stakes for the challenge of the months and years ahead….“
“… By not understanding what their employees are running from, and what they might gravitate to, company leaders are putting their very businesses at risk....”
“… This trend not only is poised to continue but could get much worse. Among employees who said they are at least somewhat likely to leave their jobs in the next three to six months, almost two-thirds added that they would do so without lining up new jobs….”
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The Artificial Intelligence Revolution
Source: Wait But Why
Author: Tim Urban
Summary: When we imagine the progress of the next 30 years, we look back to the progress of the previous 30 as an indicator of how much will likely happen. When we think about the extent to which the world will change in the 21st century, we just take the 20th-century progress and add it to the year 2000. This was the same mistake our 1750 guy made when he got someone from 1500 and expected to blow his mind as much as his own was blown going the same distance ahead. It’s most intuitive for us to think linearly when we should be thinking exponentially.
3 Highlights:
“… What we do know is that humans’ utter dominance on this Earth suggests a clear rule: with intelligence comes power…“
“… AI, which will likely get to AGI by being programmed to self-improve, wouldn’t see “human-level intelligence” as some important milestone—it’s only a relevant marker from our point of view—and wouldn’t have any reason to “stop” at our level…”
“… When it comes to something like a computer that improves itself, we might seem far away but actually be just one tweak of the system away from having it become 1,000 times more effective and zooming upward to human-level intelligence…”
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The Benefits and Risks of Rehiring a Boomerang Employee
Source: MIT Sloan Management Review
Author: Ben Laker
Summary: While no organization plans for a valuable employee to exit, it can be incredibly beneficial — for the company as well as the employee — when they return after some time away. These returning employees already know the organization’s ins, outs, and nuances, and understand the employer’s expectations and company culture. In a job market where talent competition is at an all-time high, looking to those already familiar with your organization could be a competitive advantage for a few key reasons.
3 Highlights:
“… Boomerang employees, who offer the benefits of both external perspective and internal knowledge. In today’s competitive job market, your best next hire may be a rehire...“
“… The most significant risk of rehiring boomerang employees is that they could leave the organization again, forcing it back to square one. Setting up a boomerang hire for success thus requires some extra planning…”
“… When rejoining the company, a rehire will expect the same processes, organizational structure, pay rates, and the like to remain the same — but expectations that go unmet can drive dissatisfaction…”
Access the full Weekly Pulse reading here >>
The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures
Source: Harvard Business Review
Author: Gary P. Pisano
Summary: A culture conducive to innovation is not only good for a company’s bottom line. It also is something that both leaders and employees value in their organizations. But despite the fact that innovative cultures are desirable and that most leaders claim to understand what they entail, they are hard to create and sustain. This is puzzling. How can practice apparently so universally loved—even fun—be so tricky to implement?
3 Highlights:
“… Because innovative cultures can be unstable, and tension between the counterbalancing forces can easily be thrown out of whack, leaders need to be vigilant for signs of excess in any area and intervene to restore balance when necessary…”
“… Leaders need to be on the lookout for excessive tendencies, particularly in themselves. If you want your organization to strike the delicate balance required, then you as a leader must demonstrate the ability to strike that balance yourself…”
“… Many people will be excited about the prospects of having more freedom to experiment, fail, collaborate, speak up, and make decisions. But they also have to recognize that with these freedoms come some tough responsibilities…”
Access the full Weekly Pulse reading here >>
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- Weekly Pulse by William Meller | Special Edition, 2023
- Weekly Pulse by William Meller | Week 51, 2023
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