Welcome back and welcome to 2019!  I hope everyone had a restful break, had a chance to spend quality time with friends and family, and are ready to make 2019 the best year ever!

During the break, I had a chance to do some research and reflection with a focus on the business issues and challenges business leaders and professionals are thinking about (or should be thinking about!) as we start the New Year.  As most readers of this blog know, my emphasis is typically in the areas of Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling and I try to provide both thought provoking ideas and actionable insights so you can do something different almost immediately.

As this year comes to an end and business leaders prepare for 2019, it’s time to start thinking about the trends and issues impacting the world of talent development.  The world of talent and development ranges from the C-Suite setting and executing strategy to the Talent Development departments creating and executing the talent strategy... to the new manager who needs new skills to manage a team of people who don’t report to her.  It has never been more exciting to be in this space and I believe we are on the cusp of several major breakthroughs that will arm organizations with the talent they need to effectively compete in disrupted global marketplaces.

This is the time of year when many organizations are coming down the home stretch and working  diligently to optimize their financial performance for the 4^th quarter and the end-of-year.  After the “close”, leaders will share with their investors and employees the “final” financials sometime during January.  The big indicators of success include revenue, revenue growth, profit, margin growth, cost reductions, and cash positions.  And all of that is good…

In the pursuit of perpetual learning and development about the important topic of Business Acumen, a question from one of our Software as a Service (SaaS) clients recently came our way: “Are there any patterns or observations we can make from a strategy perspective that we can learn from to make our business and skills better?”

As part of a recent Advanced Business Leadership program, we conducted a breakout session on the challenges of providing feedback in today’s turbulent business environment.  With so many companies implementing flatter more matrixed organizations, a team, project, or process leader could have dozens of employees working together without clear and distinct lines of reporting.  In these situations, the focus is always solely on the work and rarely on people's development.