Author Archives: yendor01

The Gift of Time

Posted on January 11, 2010 | 2 comments

Imported Photos 00033Author:
Yendor Felgate – Emergence Consulting

I am continually reminded in my coaching that folk remain under pressure as we enter the new year. Rather than refreshing over the holiday period, many of us have brought our work, life and family challenges straight into the new year.

We probably don’t sufficiently acknowledge in difficult times that it requires huge amounts of additional energy and effort to produce the same results. This means that if we do not change the way we work and live, time will vanish even faster and we will not achieve as much.

In an effort to work smarter and enjoy the journey more in our never ending search for better results, I offer two approaches that have benefited me personally.  The first refers to the gift of time and the other is about living in the moment.

“Stop, Start, Go” Test

I often ask people what they can stop doing.  This tends to be an uncomfortable question.  Few of us seemingly want to stop being ridiculously busy.  It is almost as if being busy is the same as being valuable.  Being busy in this sense is both addictive and a habit.  As with all addictions, it is seductive and comes at a price.

The test is an easy one.

  • List all your activities for the last week.
  • Identify those activities that directly relate to your purpose or objectives.
  • The rest you can stop.

The difficulty is implementing this. The world will simply not understand at first what you are doing. However, keep going, they will catch on.

This is a tremendous team building opportunity.  Not surprisingly, people respond better to this than the traditional approach of being told to do more, or being harangued about needing to improve.  It does, though, require a willingness to simplify.

Simplicity is about having clarity on what is really important, rather than dumbing down.

Stop

The next hurdle is being told that there is nothing that can be stopped.  Let’s test this.  We ran the stop, start, go test on executive meetings at a banking client.  By simply doing away with unnecessary meetings and reducing meeting times, we gave back 20% of executives’ time.  How valuable would this be to you and your organisation?

Some other thoughts on stopping:

  • Stop emailing instead of doing real work
  • Stop doing things in triplicate
  • Stop being accessible 24/7
  • Stop asking your team leader to sign or see everything
  • Stop rework
  • Stop second guessing others
  • Stop worrying about things you have no control over

Start

Start saying “NO” to things that are not important.  The discomfort arises when we ask people when last they said ‘no’ to anything.

The conversation often starts with I cannot stop anything (you already know the answer to this) and ends with I cannot remember when last I said ‘no’.  Start saying “YES” to important things, but just be clear on what this is.

There is of course an art to saying “NO” and includes things like:

  • Not taking other people’s monkeys
  • You cannot live other people’s lives for them
  • Empowering others to make their own decisions
  • Sharing knowledge and information for others to implement

If people understand that you are trying to help them to help themselves, saying “NO” is easy.  Just remember, ‘no’ means ‘no’.

Go

The point is not to fill the time you have freed up with more work.  The “GO” aspect is about getting and keeping your balance.  You get the balance that you deserve.  In other words, if you allow work to intrude, you end up working.  The “GO” adage is go live your life.

This is almost impossible unless you live in the moment.

Living in the Moment

Living in the moment is a coaching term that refers to acknowledging and being present – the here and now.  When I ask this question, I am often told that “of course I am here and focused”, “just let me check my email”.

I think being able to parallel process is a wonderful gift, but the larger skill is ensuring people receive your full attention.  If you are not sure what this means, then watch children at play.

By being in the moment, you make better decisions, people respond better and you are more alive to possibility, than by keeping half your mind on the next meeting, and the next…….

I look forward to hearing your stop, start, go stories, so please share them with us.  Here is to the possibility of living in the moment this year!

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Resourcing in Southern Africa

Posted on July 20, 2009 | 1 comment

Imported Photos 00033Author:
Yendor Felgate – Emergence Consulting

Recessionary times have dramatically impacted the volume and level of resourcing opportunities available in Southern Africa.  Anecdotal evidence from resourcing companies we engage with or have trained over the last 6 months, suggest that in the first half of this year we have seen vacancy levels oscillate between 30 – 60% less vacancies.

The impact in Southern Africa has been uneven, with the obvious exceptions being Angola and Mozambique, where local environments and skills shortages continue to fuel resourcing opportunities.  The relatively small markets of Namibia, Zambia and Botswana have slowed, with a number of companies placing moratoriums on new or replacement hires. These markets are highly susceptible to any slowdown in the worldwide demand for commodities, even impacting governments, who tend to be the largest employers.

South Africa is by far the largest resourcing market in the region and has been similarly impacted.  The knock on of the slowdown in the region has led to increased Southern African applicants applying for South African jobs.  In turn South African companies increasingly look to apply job moratoriums in the work place, with an overt South African first policy. When speaking to companies, many are literally ‘holding on’, using natural attrition to right size their businesses.  Our sense is that this can only go so far, and that we will see a range of corporate restructuring in the South African market in the last of half of this year, despite the perceived upside of hosting the World Cup next year.  Such a dramatic market change has impacted applicants and recruitment companies alike.

Firstly this has slowed down the use of non-South Africans in the South African market, which is a big blow to encouraging Southern Africa as a region, to utilise skills co-operatively.  Our view is that companies and recruitment agencies continue to miss significant upside opportunities in the hiring of African talent, both in terms of pricing and value add.

Secondly, the South African recruitment market will go through a significant restructuring of the players offering recruitment services.  The larger companies will consolidate during this period, with some of the more adventurous ones looking to expand in the region.  Small to medium companies are under pressure, with some already closing.  In order to survive, these entities will increasingly need to come up with different customer propositions or products.

We see the market differentiating between low cost producers and the higher end players, who increasingly operate in a more consulting role, with a wider range of products or services.  This period will be very difficult for ‘traditional’ players, who want to simply ride out the storm, as margins will reduce in tandem with the recession.  This will be exacerbated by the trend of companies accessing candidate databases directly and using social networks in lieu of recruitment agencies.

The third impact will be an escalation of tension between stakeholders around what it means to employ people.  Governments will look to protect full time employment, whilst the market will intensify their search for labour flexibility.  This tension has already erupted in Namibia, with the recent banning of labour broking and the South African government is also looking to do the same.

This brings us back to the question of where next for commercial recruitment.  We have a two scenario view.  The first or low road suggests that recruitment becomes unattractive as a commercial venture with the banning of labour broking and the commoditisation of recruitment.

The second scenario is hardly a high road, but one that will benefit those recruitment companies that look to diversity their services and become low cost producers when mining their candidate IP.  This implies a significant change in current recruitment approaches, pricing and funding models.

In the short term, our sense is that a complex combination of the two is occurring currently.  None of the above in our mind necessarily benefits applicants and we think that recruitment professionalism will be increasingly under pressure.

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Talent in Ghana

Posted on May 12, 2009 | 4 comments

Imported Photos 00033 Author:
Yendor Felgate –  Emergence Consulting

The traditional wisdom on Africa is that there is a one way passage for talent to more ‘developed markets’. Experience suggests that a continuous ‘brain drain’ is occurring, where talented professionals are being ‘denuded’ from home markets, exacerbating an already tenuous scarce skill situation.

Change is Coming

Recently I hosted a talent management workshop in Ghana, where I am starting to see signs that things may be changing.  This is not say that the ‘war for scarce skills’ does not exist or that the predominant trend has changed, but rather we are seeing a more complex picture emerging.

The change may have started even before the impetus of the global financial services meltdown, if anecdotal evidence from headhunters and resourcing specialists working in Africa are accurate.  Ghana may be a useful case in point to begin to understand the emerging changes in talent behaviour and the resultant complexities for business in Africa.

Recent Trends

Ghana is a democratic West African country that has been independent for over 50 years.  Traditionally the country has been economically reliant on commodities and natural resources, though is diversifying rapidly into financial services and telecoms.  Recent trends suggest an increasing level of foreign direct investment and interest from the region in the opportunities offerred by Ghana.

In the past, global education and career opportunities were valued over local organisations and career paths.  The first change to this dynamic was the rapid expansion of Nigerian banks and the telecom revolution in Ghana. Both sectors are large consumers of talent and ‘overheated’ the local and expatriate skill markets, largely by paying aggressively.

The second major trend is the exciting opportunities for entrepreneurs.  This has attracted interested from first and second generation Ghanians based outside the country.  Initially, this took the form of direct investment, but is increasingly involving Ghanians leaving corporate roles outside Ghana, to take up local opportunties.

The final trend is the global instability in ‘developed’ job markets, where many Ghanians are now looking to return to corporate and professional roles within the country.  The perceived ‘gap’ between global and local has diminshed significantly.

The net result is that many corporates in Ghana are able to compete for talent more effectively than before. I think this is the real change – global players may now not be the automatic default choice for African talent. African business has a window of opportunity they can exploit. However, the complexity lies in the detail.

The challenge is that good people have many opportunities both locally and regionally they can explore in corporates and on the entrepreneurial front. My sense is that this has less to do with money, but the personal connection people make to these opportunities.  In my language, an holistic employee value proposition is more important the ever.

What About Pay Levels?

Ghana Pay Ranges

Total Compensation in Ghana

Pay levels amongst leading employers in Ghana are competitive, but relatively low when compared to more developed countries, and also to many countries in Africa.  As you can see from the illustration, total annual compensation in Cedi ranges from about 5,000 to 20,000 Cedi for support staff positions, while pay for professionals varies from approximately 24,000 to 80,000 Cedi.

Source:
Birches Group LLC Survey of Leading Employers – September, 2008

In Summary

The difficulty most Ghanian businesses face is that they are not used to working with the intangible concept of the employee value proposition and tend to want to compete on remuneration, whilst keeping relatively conservative management practices.  This is changing, but I hope it is sufficiently rapid to fully utilise what may be a very narrow period of talent parity.

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