preparing people for the future

Jean M. HiltropVisiting Professor, IESE, Universidad de Navarra,Avda. Pearson 21, 08034 Barcelona, Spain

Preparing peoplefor the future

. This article reviews some of the keychanges in organizations anddiscusses their implications formanagers' careers.

. A pro®le of the skills andcompetences required of futuremanagers is introduced as well asthe swamp metaphor to describe thedif®cult challenges which managershave to face in order to survive andprosper in the new businessenvironment.#1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introduction

In recent years, organizations have comeunder increasing pressure to change. Muchof this pressure has stemmed from develop-ments in the economic environment such asincreased international competition, deregula-tion, slower growth and, in some cases,

declining markets. In the future, theseeconomic pressures, coupled with a varietyof social, demographic and technologicaltransformations, are not likely to go intoreverse. If anything they will probably intens-ify in the next decade as the need for¯exibility, competitiveness, speed and

productivity improvements becomes evengreater. This means that as we move into the21st century, we may realistically expect that:

Organizations will become much more

demanding places to work. In a recentbook on the future of organizations,Mohrman and Mohrman (1993) argue thatin the coming decades, employees increas-ingly will be expected to do their work,think of ways to improve it, contribute tolearning and change efforts, and managetheir own ongoing learning processes.

Organizations will become much more

ambiguous places to work. The large-scale restructuring and re-engineering ofthe 1990s have forced many organizationsto re-examine some of the long-standingbene®ts and career opportunities offeredto employees. Even in the public sector,where job security has traditionally beenhigh, the social and economic develop-ments of the late 1980s and early 1990s

Organizations have comeunder increasing pressure

to change

# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change, July 1998

Strategic ChangeStrat. Change 7, 213±221 (1998)

have been of such signi®cance that thetraditional approach to human resourcemanagement, in which hierarchies, jobdescriptions and career planning are seenas a key feature of successful managementand organizations, no longer holds true. Asa result, many of the factors that havetraditionally supported and reinforcedfeelings of psychological success, includ-ing job security, increasing levels ofincome, and the status that derives fromone's position and employer, have becomeless accessible and more chancy.

The `psychological contract' between employ-

ers and employees will change dramatic-

ally. Table 1 lists some of the keywordsused by a group of middle managers todescribe `the understandings people haveregarding the commitments made be-tween themselves and their organisation'(Rousseau, 1994). In its most naked form,the new psychological contract says:

There is no job security. You, theemployee, will be employed as long asyou add value to the organisation. Inreturn, you have the right to interestingand important work, the freedom andresources needed to perform yourassignments well, pay that re¯ectsyour contribution, and the experienceand training needed to be employablehere or elsewhere (De Meuse andTornow, 1990).

This trend reaches its logical conclusion in arecent statement by Jack Welch, CEO ofGeneral Electric, who contends that GEoffers its people a `one day contract'(Mirvis and Hall, 1994).

Increasingly, a `self-reliance' orientation will

pervade the employment relationship.According to Charles Handy (1989), thesigns of the future are that the employeewill not sign up for a career, and theemployer will not assume long-term care-taking for his or her personal income. Onepossible scenario is that a large group of(professional) people will become, in asense, subcontractors to their own

organizations. They will be used whenthey have needed skills and can beexpected to be moved or re-moved fromjob to job as needs change. Hirsch (1987)has likened this situation to an employ-ment strategy which economists call `freeagency'. In this strategy, individuals at-tempt to maximize their personal statusand income by selling their individualtalents to the highest bidder. Their senseof identity is linked to their profession,rather than to speci®c companies, teamsor functions: they are professionals ®rst, ateam member second.

Implications

What are the implications of these trends formanagers? What are the new skill require-ments? How can managers prepare them-selves for the future? Obviously, we do notyet know all the answers, but using currentmanagement thinking and reviewing a grow-ing number of books and articles, which deal

Table 1. Keywords used by a group of 104 middlemanagers and professionals to describe the changingpsychological contract.

In the past Today

Long term Immediate resultsSecurity FlexibilityPredictability UncertaintyEquality IndividualityCertainty High riskTradition Constant changeFairness Personal gainStability EmployabilityInterdependence Self-relianceMutual trust OpportunismCompany loyalty Professional loyaltyDoing well Doing betterShared responsibility Personal accountabilityTitle and rank Making a differencePay for status Pay for resultsTolerance Impatience

How can managers preparethemselves for the future?


214 J. M. Hiltrop

with the future of organizations, I believe thefollowing implications can be identi®ed:

More stress

There is no doubt that these trendsÐwhetheractual or anticipatedÐplace immense press-ure on employers and employees alike and theresult is increasing dislocation among people,opportunities, and the mechanisms to con-nect them (Nicholson, 1996). For example,the results of a survey by Demos, an indepen-dent think-tank, revealed that 28% of Britishmen work more than 48 hours per week, onein four managers takes work home severaltimes a week, and 60% of men and 45% ofwomen usually or sometimes work Saturdays.The result is that time off for stress-relatedillnesses has increased by 500% since the1950s, and 86% of women workers say theynever have enough time to get things done.

A new career perspective

In the short term, the changing work environ-ment may affect only a small group of peopleand companies in knowledge-intensive indus-tries where innovation determines marketleadership, such as consulting, ®nancial ser-vices and software development. As McCrim-mon (1997) puts it: `Not all organisations willbecome clones of ®lm production units,where diverse specialists converge for one-off projects, only to disappear into the nightonce the ®lm is in the can' (p. 17). Even infast-innovating industries, such as softwaredevelopment there will continue to be a placefor general managers wherever execution ofcomplex tasks is more important than innova-tion. In the longer term, however, it is clearthat most managers will have to re-examinetheir career aspirations and adapt their expect-ations of the organization to avoid the experi-

ence of psychological failure. According toBridges (1994), this means that managers willneed to develop a new career perspectivewhich he called `vendor-mindedness'. Heargues that

`being a traditional, loyal employee is nolonger an asset. It has, in fact, turned into aliability. So you will need to stop thinkinglike an employee and start thinking like anexternal vendor who has been hired toaccomplish a speci®c task' (p. 59).

New skills and competences

When conducting our research for The Acci-

dental Manager: Surviving the Transition

from Professional to Manager (Udall andHiltrop, 1996), we asked a group of seniormanagers `What do you think will be the keyfeatures of effective management teams in thefuture?' Extrapolating from their responses andexperiences, we concluded that managers ofthe future will need to focus on the followingsix areas:

. Visioning and planning skills. In times ofconstant change, effective managers needto generate a picture of the future, whichincludes a place for the organization andits staff. It may not be possible to supportthis vision with detailed long-term plans inthe same way as in the past, but providinga clear view of a future for the organiza-tion, together with plans to translate theoverall vision into operational reality, iscrucial as a point of focus and commit-ment for staff.

. Information handling skills. One of theconsequences of the IT revolution hasbeen the massive increase in the amountof information which can now be gener-ated at work. The problem is often notwhat to collect, but what to ignore.

Time off for stress-relatedillnesses has increased by

500% since the 1950s

Most managers will have tore-examine their career

aspirations


Preparing people for the future 215

Clearly managers of the future will need tobe able to use new technology to gen-erate, select and digest the informationthat they need.

. In¯uencing and negotiating skills. Effect-ive managers have always needed goodin¯uencing and negotiating skills, butmanagers will ®nd themselves relying onthese skills more and more as a centralway of getting things done as the relation-ships with customers and suppliers arebecoming more complex, resources arebecoming scarcer, and responsibility andauthority are moved downward in theorganization.

. Creativity and learning. In future, indi-viduals at all levels of management willneed to demonstrate that they can addvalue by generating and developing newknowledge or solutions to problemswhich cannot be solved by traditionalmethods. This will have implications forthe development of new leadership stylesand organizational cultures. Many man-agers say they value, even require, creativ-ity and innovation from their co-workers,while at the same time they discouragerisk taking and do not tolerate mistakes.

. Teamworking and leadership. Increas-ingly, managers will have to rely on theirteam(s) of co-workers and trust them tofunction to quality assured standards withminimal support and supervision. Thiswill require a special kind of leadership,where leaders mobilize commitment toenable performance, provide technicaland social support, and at the same timepromote teamwork and facilitate change.

. Change management skills. Clearly,managing change has been a key featureof successful management for some time.However the traditional approach tochange in which the manager acts as thecaptain of a ship sailing through calm seas,seeing a storm, successfully navigatingthrough it and then returning to calmwaters again, no longer holds true. Onesenior manager described his role as being`more like white water rafting, than sailingcalm seas'. In future, the result of change

is highly unlikely to be a new safe andsecure island, and future managers willneed new skills to cope with rapid andcomplex change in an increasingly turbu-lent environment.

The future manager pro®le

In a recent article, Weiss (1996) argued thatthe implications of these trends on the newgeneration of managers are far-reaching. Hestates that as individuals seek employment,they will need to develop new and creativegoals. They need to search for different anduntraditional ways of achieving job satisfactionand motivation. They must re-evaluate thebalance between work and family. They mustbe able to recognize the critical stages ofsusceptibilities to in¯uence and also be awareof periods of transition and stability. Theymust be resilientÐambiguity and career bar-riers will be common in their work life. Theymust know themselves well and understandthe current work environment better. Theycan expect career identity changes over time.They will learn new management behavioursover their career. They must learn the art oftaking calculated risks and be willing tochange. They will need to adjust to a newand precarious nature of loyalty to and fromorganizations. And, they will need to ®nd waysto minimize and deal with feelings of dis-content and of being locked in.

Figure 1 captures many of these themes intothe new career perspectives and requirements(Kiechell, 1994). According to this model, themanager of the future must have four corecompetencies:

Be an expert. In the literature, the organiza-tion of the future is often portrayed as anetwork of connected goals and struc-tures, with a lean central core servicing

Future managers will neednew skills to cope with rapid

and complex change


216 J. M. Hiltrop

various units, alliances, and outsourcedfunctions. In this structure, managers'roles are those of portfolio specialists,whose job or income security comes ®rstand foremost from having high expertisein a particular ®eld or subject that isessential to the business (Nicholson,1996). This means that managers mustcontinuously engage in learning and self-development in order to keep pace withchange and adapt to the evolving needs ofthe organization.

Be a networker. Successful managers of thefuture will be richly connected to a widediversity of other experts, professionalsand groups of people that complementtheir capabilities, provide perspective andenable them to cope with complex issues.This requires the ability to effectivelycommunicate across functional borders.The key competences that future man-agers need to acquire are those that buildmultidisciplinary teams and break downboundaries between functions, divisions,cultures and organizations. On this view,some commentators have heralded thearrival of the boundaryless career, as jobsand structures are being transformed(Allred et al., 1996). So we can expectthat people who are only interested intheir own speciality will have a harder andharder time doing interesting work withcolleagues and other professionals.

Be self-reliant. The changing psychologicalcontract is one widespread indication ofthe pressing need for people to becompetent at managing themselves. Inmany large organizations, the paternalismthat existed in the 1960s and 1970s hasgone so that people simply cannot rely onsomeone else to take responsibility fortheir career and development. For manymanagers, particularly those with seniorstatus, this may require them not only todevelop new skills and competences, butalso to replace the underlying assumptionswith which they de®ne psychological`success' and `failure'. For most people, ajob is a primary source of meaning andorder in their lives (Bridges, 1994). Thecompany and position they belong togives them wider recognition than in theworkplace and contributes to their iden-tity and status in society. It is not surpris-ing, therefore that people can ®nd itdif®cult and painful to disengage fromthe psychological bene®ts that a securejob provides and become more self-reliant.

Be resilient. We now operate in such aturbulent environment that no arrange-ment is permanent. In this scenario,people who prefer stability and/or linearprogress in their careers, and who in thepast have best ®t the available jobopportunities, are liable to become thenew losers (Brousseau et al., 1996). What

Figure 1. The future manager pro®le.



people need (both for their organization'ssake and for their own) is the ability to livewith high levels of uncertainty, to bendand not break and to bounce back quicklyfrom failure and disappointment.

No doubt some people are better equippedthan others to cope with these requirements.For instance, people vary enormously in theirability to cope with the uncertainty, stress andanxiety associated with a personal crisis or

disruption. Some individuals seem to crumbleunder pressure, while others positively thriveas the going gets tough. According to Maddiand Kobasa (1984), there are three elementsthat characterize a highly resilient individual:

. Feeling in control of one's life, rather thanpowerless to in¯uence external, capri-cious, or even malicious forces. Resilientpeople tend to interpret stressful situa-tions positively and optimistically, andthey respond to change constructively.They take responsibility for their actionsand feel that they are in charge of theirown destinies.

. Feeling committed to and involved inwhat one is doing, rather than alienatedfrom one's work and other individuals.Resilient people not only feel that theychoose what they do, but strongly believein the importance of what they do.

. Feeling challenged by new experiencesrather than viewing change as a threat tosecurity and comfort. Typically resilientpeople prefer change to stability and viewchallenging experiences as a necessarystep toward learning. They tend to havehigh tolerance for uncertainty andperform best under stress. As a result,

their propensity to illness and emotionaldysfunction under stressful conditions isconsiderably below the norm.

So being resilient is much more than feelingin control of one's own life. The belief that onecan in¯uence the course of events and beingcommitted to the search for new and interest-ing experiences, rather than stability, is centralto developing high resilience. Resilience, inturn, engenders self-con®dence and the optim-istic view that bad situations can be improvedand problems overcome. Con®dence in one'sown ef®cacy produces low fear of failure, highinitiative, willingness to take risks, and persist-ence under adversity, all of which create moreresilience under pressure (Whetten et al.,1994).

The swamp metaphor

In our workshops with managers from bothpublic and sector organizations, we havedeveloped the swamp metaphor to describethe dif®cult changes that many managers haveto survive in order to prosper in a newbusiness environment (Udall and Hiltrop,1996).

The swamp metaphor is one of leaving asecure place, an island, and crossing a water toa new island, hoping that it offers the samekind of security but not really being too surewhat to expect. In order to cross a swamp oneneeds to be able to swim through the `wateryplaces', have lifelines to pull you through, orstepping stones to lift you from the `boggybits'. Similarly, in order to be an effectivemanager one needs the relevant skills (likeswimming) help and support (lifelines) toperform well. In the swamp, irritators andchallenges are all around. The irritators (in theform of ¯ies and mosquitoes) include eventsand people who distract you from their dailytasks and roles. The alligators are the pres-sures and challenges of growing internationalcompetition for goods and services, localcompetition for public services; governmentregulations and social policy initiatives, seniormanagement decisions; increasingly sophisti-

People vary enormously intheir ability to cope with

the uncertainty, stressand anxiety


218 J. M. Hiltrop

cated technology and changing attitudes andexpectations of staff, bosses, customers andsuppliers.

Given the overall mix of managerial compet-ences required by changing organizations,

many managers may feel that they are tryingto cross a swamp. For instance, a seniorproduction manager told us:

I'm tired. Every time I think I have some-thing under control they change the goalposts. There are so many people wantingdifferent things from meÐI don't knowwhether I'm coming or going and I haven'tgot time to ®nish anything.

Similarly, a physician who became hospitalmanager told us:

The resources available to manage with areconstantly shrinking, the requirement forproducts/services changing, the demandsmade on their time are constantly growingand it often feels impossible to manage thepresent, let alone plan realistically for thefuture.

Adapting to change, like crossing a swamp, isnot always smooth. It is almost inevitable thatyou make mistakes (you may fall into theswamp); there will be set backs (you get stuckin the mud), and there may be discomfort(you get your feet wet). However, in theabsence of ®rm stepping stones, managerswho are crossing the swamp may bene®t fromsuch things as mentoring, coaching and feed-back, before feeling con®dent and competentagain in their new role (reaching the new ®rmground).

Conclusions: thriving in aturbulent future

In a turbulent and ever-changing businessworld, replacing the skills and competencesthat have provided people with jobs andcareers for many decades is quickly becominga necessity, not an option. Although there willcontinue to be places for all types of careermodels (from the traditional `linear' model tothe more recent `roller coaster' model), insome industries and organizations only those

focusing on change and those emphasizingcontinuous development and adaptation willsurvive. As Morgan (1988) puts it:

More than ever the world is in ¯ux. Andorganisations and their managers mustrecognise the necessity of developing themindsets, skills and abilities that will allowthem to cope with this ¯ux.

These qualities include visioning and planningskills, teamworking, negotiating skills andhaving a self-reliance orientation. Increasingly,managers will need to promote creativity andlearning, effectively using the vast amounts ofdata which have come available with theinformation technology revolution, and learnto live with complexity and ambiguity.

Although I believe that development of theaforementioned skills will be crucial formanagers in the future, doing so will noteliminate uncertainty and stress from themanagerial role. On the contrary, sustaining avision while not being certain how you willachieve it, processing vast quantities of infor-mation, fostering creativity and learning,negotiation with customers and suppliers,and, at the same time, relying on teams ofco-workers to deliver high-quality products andservices are all potentially threatening to one's

Many managers may feelthat they are trying to

cross a swamp

Replacing skills andcompetences is becoming

a necessity



personal sense of security and well-being. Sohow can managers maintain their health and atthe same time cope with an increasinglyturbulent and demanding environment? Arecent study by Quick et al. (1990) of executiveperformance under stress suggests there are®ve attributes that characterize successfulsenior managers and professionals

. Intellectual curiosity. Being intellectuallycurious expands a person's understandingof the world, providing perspectives aswell as knowledge for problem solving.

. Physically active. Managers who arephysically active dissipate stress-inducedenergy while at the same time developinga stronger, more ef®cient cardiovascularsystem.

. Balancing work with non-work. Man-agers who balance work with non-workactivities place their work in a larger,broader context of life which gives themperspective and reduces psychologicaldependence.

. Seeking social support. Supportiverelationships provide managers with themeans to meet a variety of their emotional,informational and evaluative needs, essen-tial to healthy functioning.

. Creating systematic change. The peopleat the top need to be able to create anenvironment that is challenging, pro-ductive, creative and emotionally healthy.

For many managers developing these attri-butes may require them not only to developnew skills and attitudes, but also to challengethe underlying assumptions with which theyhave managed themselves and other people(Udall and Hiltrop, 1996). It may also mean anincrease preparedness to take risks. In futurethe result of change is unlikely to be a newsafe and secure island, and managers will needto take `calculated' risks to cope with rapidand complex change in an increasinglyturbulent environment. The new island, there-fore, will, have limited `®rm ground' and itsfoundations will be under constant threat oferosion.

Biographical note

Jean M. Hiltrop is a professor at IESE,Universidad de Navarra, Barcelona. Previouslyhe has worked at the University of Leuven inBelgium, the Copenhagen Business School,and the International Institute for Manage-

ment Development (IMD) in Switzerland. Hecurrently is leading an international researchproject which compares and contrasts themanagement practices of organizations inEurope, Asia and the United States.

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