August 2008 | Bigg Success

Monthly Archives: August 2008

How to Attract and Retain the Next Generation of Talent

Written on August 27, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Business, Communication

soft_skills Beloit College recently published their eleventh annual Mindset List about this year’s crop of incoming freshmen. Check it out to understand the perspective of the Class of 2012.

For example, Jay Leno has always been the host of The Tonight Show for this group. Bring up Johnny Carson only if you’re prepared to explain who he was!

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Putting it into con-text

We have a friend who thinks they lack social skills. He believes they’re so busy texting that they’ve never developed the ability to communication personally.

We disagree – we think they’re very social. A generation before, we e-mailed or called someone on their cell phone instead of texting. In our mind, the only difference is the medium used.

We wanted to dig a little deeper to fully understand the perceptions of young people in their late teens and early twenties. After all, they’re the ones who will be coming to us for employment in the near future.

The Media Center at the American Press Institute calls this group of people the “Content Generation” – they use text, videos, and photos (often generated from their cell phones) to connect and inform.

Understanding the paradigm

They have witnessed September 11, corporate scandals, mass layoffs, sweat shops, the burst of the dot.com bubble, and now the subprime mortgage crisis.

When they think of the future, they realize that they will have to fund their own retirement while they start and raise a family. Since their parents are older than previous generations, they will also likely have to care for them at some point in their lives.

The workplace for the next generation

All of these things impact the jobs they will choose. They don’t expect to stay at the same company for their entire career. They won’t necessarily take the job that pays the most either – they’re looking for more than money.

This generation grew up with Tom Peters and the idea of Me, Inc. They understand personal branding and seek lifelong employability. So two of the most important components of a good job are:

Personal and professional growth – They want a job that helps them develop skills that will be valuable in their career and at home.

Work – life balance – They want a job that allows them to enjoy their lives now. They’re not willing to wait until they retire to “live”.

They want to work for people in a company that truly values its employees. These people live the values they talk about. They follow through on what they say. They’re authentic.

For example, if you say you’re “green”, you better be green. You recycle. You use energy-efficient light bulbs. You work to reduce paper use. And that’s just the start!

We admire them because they’ve figured out some important things already that we didn’t have worked out at their age. They have a lot of potential. Time will tell if they live up to it.

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Next time, with the Democratic Convention wrapping up, we’ll talk about donkeys. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Are Twenty Somethings Getting A Bad Rap?

(Image by sintex, CC 2.0)

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Track Your Time with this Popular Toy

Written on August 26, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Personal Growth, Time Management

legos We read a very interesting post by Michael Hunger at the Better Software Development blog. What we learned from Michael is that sometimes it pays to think inside the box! He uses Legos to track his time. You have to see his illustrations to really understand it. So go to his site and check it out!

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His system

He puts a whole week on a single 8-peg by 16-peg base. He uses a different colored 1-peg by 8-peg piece for each day of the week. He breaks each hour into four 15-minute segments. So each row has a maximum of four blocks across, one for each fifteen minutes. If you work eight hours, you’ll have a max of eight rows high, one for each hour.

Then he assigns one of the nine colors to each project. He checks his start time and end time and then places a block for each fifteen minutes worked on that project. So if he worked on two projects in the first hour, for half-an-hour each, he would have a row with two colors in it, one color for each project.

The result

The overall result is that, at the end of each week, he can look back and see exactly what projects he worked on and how much time he spent on each one.

We loved how you could see what you worked on with a quick glance. It really pops. It’s in 3D, so it brings time management to life. You can get a real sense of accomplishment by seeing exactly what you’ve worked on.

And it’s fun! Who doesn’t like playing with Legos?

In fact, Michael’s been using this system for four months and can only come up with one disadvantage – his co-workers keep coming into his office and disassembling his blocks!

Plan vs. actual

He points out that you could easily use this system to plan your week. You could determine what projects you need to work on and plan for how long it should take.

We thought it would be great to use one base for your plan for the week. Then use another one as Michael does to track your time. Then you could compare your plan vs. actual at a glance.

Identify time wasters

Instead of using the different colors for projects, consider using them for categories – the ways you spend your time. For example, one color could represent time at work, another could be for commuting time, yet another could be for watching television. You pick the categories. At the end of the week, you’d have a great visual of how you spent your time.

All kinds of other uses

There are a number of other ways to use Legos as a system. For example, why not track your diet. Use a different color for each food group and track the number of servings. You’d know at a glance if you have a balanced diet.

Why not track spending with Legos? Use different colors for different categories so you see where your money goes.

What are some ways you can think of to use Legos as a tool?

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(Image by Michael Hunger)