“My team is so inwardly focused because they have all been remote for the past 4 years they don’t know how to function away from their computers,” said the exasperated leader when asked about his biggest challenge in 2024 and beyond. “If we don’t start to help them understand what it means to have an external orientation, we will be doomed.”

During a recent set of interviews with business leaders as part of the process of building a new leadership simulation, we heard multiple leaders share their frustration about the inward focus of their key managers and how it was eroding the capabilities and the value proposition of the organization.

As part of our work, we created a new module on 10 things an organization can do to create an external orientation culture.

The end of September signifies many things including the end of the summer and the end of the business 3^rd quarter. It also signifies a host of new things such as the school year and football season. In the business world, this is when things get serious. It’s literally the 4^th quarter and if your business is down, it’s time to put some points on the board as time is running out. If your business is up, it’s time to maintain and then carry that momentum into the next year.

In another month or two all of the pundits and so-called experts will start writing their end-of-year, “year in review” articles and blogs and many of them will say basically the same thing.

So, I am going to beat them to the punch and share some early thoughts about the year in review from a learning and talent development perspective.

During the past few years, Advantexe has been involved in the design, development, and delivery of Coaching simulations to tens of thousands of people and process leaders. All of the simulations have a goal of providing participants with the opportunity to learn by doing as they practice having coaching conversations based on various coaching models. 

Before starting a project where we are delivering a coaching simulation, we have a serious conversation with the client about making sure they aren’t developing skills that coach for failure. It is a provocative approach, but one that our clients truly appreciate. Here’s why… 

There is a fundamental problem with most coaching frameworks and the way the organizations embrace them. Typically, the first step of coaching is setting goals and objectives and then having a dialogue about how to best achieve them. The fundamental problem is that most organizations aren’t providing the basic business acumen skillsneeded by every employee to understand their own business strategy and the financial skills to measure their success.

As the dust settles on J&J’s recent separation of their fast-moving consumer healthcare products business, there is increased momentum and pressure for other big pharmaceutical companies to re-think their business portfolios.

I am 100% certain it will be a topic of discussion in many of our upcoming business acumen programs and several of our pharmaceutical business simulations actually allow participants to spin out product lines and entire businesses to see the impact strategically and financially.

There is a new phenomenon sweeping the corporate landscape. Companies are reassigning workers to new roles and leaving it up to them to figure out what to do next. It works like this; one day, you get an email that your current job role has been eliminated, but you haven’t been fired. You have a new role, most likely a hybrid role of doing 100% of two other jobs that have been vacant or are important enough to shift resources toward. These changes leave managers and employees confused, angry, and checked out.

Welcome to the concept of “Quiet Cutting.” This concept is an offshoot of the “Quiet Quitting” movement where workers quit their companies and hang around long enough to get paid a good salary while they find a new job which only lasts for 9-12 months until they silent quit again or they are terminated for poor performance.

Quiet cutting effectively allows companies to cut jobs, trim costs, and reorganize without actually laying off workers.

Forbes Magazine has been keeping a running list of all the companies that have been doing restructurings (including layoffs) during the year and it includes IBM, Adobe, BioGen, Salesforce.com, and many others.