There are many people who believe we are just a few years away from self-driven cars.  They point to the technology, the changing social norms, changing economic situations, and of course the impact on energy as driving factors of the driverless car.  I personally have my doubts because I think driving is equal to freedom and the notion of some faceless entity controlling the cars on the road and where we are going feels unaligned with people’s independent spirit.  But we will see over the next ten years or so…

In the meantime, there is an emerging similar concept that is beginning to take a foothold in many business organizations; self-driven performance management dialogues.  In our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business world when too many managers are overloaded and under resourced, talent development often takes a backseat to everything else.  This week, while conducting a Fundamentals of Business Leadership business simulation workshop, I had the chance to emcee a conversation between a company executive and the emerging leaders participating in the learning.  The topic of the module was on taking self-ownership of the performance dialogue and I thought it was one of the best sessions I’ve been a part of in recent memory.

Welcome to the July 4^th, 2019 holiday weekend.  Coincidently, this holiday also occurs right after the  end of the second quarter which means we are at the midpoint of the year.  This is the point of the business year where we now have good insights into what has just happened with the business during the first 6 months, and what we think is going to happen over the next 6 months.

After three days of running a complex global pharmaceutical business simulation that spanned three regions (US, Europe, and China), three therapeutic areas including oncology, 9 products, a Sales team, a Marketing team, Medical Affairs, Operations, Manufacturing, HR, and the finance department, the 60 participants of the high potential leadership program were exhausted.

The “Sunday Scaries” are real and it’s an affliction impacting millions of workers around the world.  Without a remedy or treatment, the condition will continue to worsen and spread impacting global productivity.

There is a significant amount of research on this disease an some of the causes of onset include:

• Anxiety about going to work on Monday because there are deadlines and obligations
• My boss is mean and expects too much from me
• The hour-long commute to work
• Netflix not working correctly
• Remnants of the Saturday night hangover

There are hard solutions and easy solutions to curing these terrible Sunday Scaries.  If you think your boss is mean, spend some time openly and honestly trying to figure out why and if there are things you are doing that would prompt the negative perception you are detecting.  If your commute is too long, then move closer to the job or get a new job.  If your Netflix isn’t working reboot it and try again.  If you are constantly enduring hangovers, stop drinking and staying out late every night of the week.

While I was conducting a Human Capital Management planning session for one of my clients, the extremely successful Vice President of R&D asked the questions with the utmost of respect and sincerity; “I really don’t get this competency thing. It all seems like platitudes and buzzwords that are somehow supposed to make us feel good about something that I’m not sure of.  Can someone explain to me why I should care about a competency model?”

It’s a fair question and one that I hear quite often from other line managers who are often involved in approving a competency model and then participating in the training programs that typically come soon after either directly or indirectly by sending direct reports to the training sessions.