THE BEAUTY IN CONTRAST

 Life has two sides-the stern and lax. The contrast in life “A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” Ecclesiastes 4 to imagine that everybody has a serious side as well as a lax one. Moses Mukisa says “There is a call in every crisis” Ironic, huh?

 Jerry Komagum goes on to assert that within every school bully is a soft traumatized heart. The beauty of the contrast in life is that it cuts across all sectors. JP Morgan one of the men that built America stated that every business man, however rich, has a price! You just have to find it. Something he proved when he purchased “US Steel” from Andrew Carnegie at $480 million!

Oh! the beauty in the contrast of Life!

Let’s redirect our thoughts to a simple contrast of a teacher and a stand-up comedian (both noble professions). Guessing that you can distinctively tell which one is lax and the other serious, think about why you would rather spend thirty minutes listening to a comedian rather than a teacher. Simple, the comedian uses a satirical approach to bring forth a major point whereas the teacher does exactly the opposite. The former will in most cases tell a funny and hilarious story of a lady in a taxi and from this story one is able to learn a lot. In contrast, the latter normally uses an approach of the major issues before bringing in the satirical approach.

This acknowledges that every life issue is best addressed if attacked from beneath. From the basics, the simplicity, the lax bit in everything and then onto the complexities of life. Proponents argue that the best way to market a product is to relate with the customer on a personal level (depositing into their emotional account) before moving onto the complexities of the product.

Management similarly follows a similar principle. The ability to understand and address Human resource related issues is surely handicapped if we put the complexities at the fore front. There is need to understand them from the basics of their life onto the complexities of bettering their performance. Only when we make endeavors to understand what pertains the individual lives of our human resource and appreciate how they influence their performance will we be able to better their performance.

Master how to make contrast work in your favor!

ORGANISATION TO MOVEMENT

A week ago I attended a motivational session where Moses Mukisa gave insight on how to sustain an organisation for over 500 years. He shared about the difference between an organisation and a movement with the church as his major example of a movement given the fact that it has been in existence for more than 2000 years. On this note I will share some tips on how we can convert our human resource into a movement using the same tactics Christ used to grow and develop the church.

The Business Dictionary defines an organisation as a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need and pursue collective goals where as Merriam Webster defines a movement as a group of diffusely organised people or organisations striving towards a common goal relating to human society. One would therefore wonder how they can get their human resource from just working towards collective goals to further getting diffused into each other working towards a shared goal. With an existent thin line between the two, this is how Christ did it;

Jesus while on earth called together twelve disciples that helped him spread the gospel in some parts of the Jewish and gentile lands while he taught and prepared them on how they would continue to spread the gospel after his departure. Mathew 16; 18 “…Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…” Managers and employers ought not only to use the assistance rendered by the human resource to enable them reach their targets but also develop task force that can continue to move the organisation forward even in their abs ensure.

 In Mathew 6; 9-13 he teaches the disciples how to pray the right way. Many times our human resource goes astray which may at times necessitate training. The manager should therefore teach the human resources “how to pray” by taking them through refresher courses or even pre-induction training in order for them to sustain the organisation. The Lord’s Prayer also enabled the disciples understand the basics of their faith which implies a need for the human resource to understand and own the vision of the organization.

In John 14; 16 Christ promises to send the disciples a helper to help them spread the gospel. Even after delegation of work, managers ought to play a mentorship, patron ship and supportive role with the human resources in order for them to ably sustain the organisation.

The church as a movement continues to grow and spread all over the world and this is greatly attributed to the foundation on which it was built. Therefore organisations that are rooted with human resources having a sense of “a movement” stand higher chances of crossing over to different generations.

MANAGING A MULTI GENERATIONAL WORK FORCE

The lord our God in Ephesians 2; 14 encourages us to live in peace no matter our differences! One would reflect upon the viability of this message, especially with today’s work places having an average of four generations according to Forbes. Difference in communication styles and mindsets being the major sources of inter-generational conflict today, managers continue to battle with minimizing and mitigating these conflicts.

With the baby boomers preferring the rigid face to face communication, technological advancement has come in as a major aggravator of the conflict since it allows the millennials practice their online communication. Similarly, the boomers’ competitive and hardworking mindset in contrast to the millennials’ cooperative and smart working does not narrow the conflict any thinner.

On that note, managers need to negate the blanket stereo types concerning the different generations and handle them in respect to their personal needs. Darren Kyeyune, a millennial sports journalist believes the first step to reducing these conflicts is appreciating the existent cross-generational differences. The managers should therefore be flexible enough in their expectations from the different generations. It would be a fable for a manager to believe that a baby boomer can learn to work with the windows XI operating system with as much ease as a millennial therefore implying a need to appreciate their differences and manage them accordingly.

Cross generational transfer of knowledge is very crucial and this justifies why many managers today need to adopt workplace mentorship programs where the millennials and the X-ers can be mentored by the boomers. Furthermore, there is need to adopt a number of work patterns such as flexi time and telecommuting that would enable generations like the Millennials who strongly subscribe to the new psychological contract ably perform work tasks from anywhere. Such patterns are even more helpful to the x-ers who in this age dominate parenthood.

“The glory of the youth is in their strength” Proverbs 20; 29. This is why managers need to actively engage the Millennials at work since it is their God given right as youth to keep engaged. Research proves that Millennials will enjoy their jobs more especially if they are greatly subjected to contextual work performance where they perform tasks outside their job description. Millennial engagement at work can further be spiced by involving them in teamwork since they are highly intrigued by team involvement.

Just as conjugal rights wouldn’t be enjoyed in the same recurrent style, Millennials have a natural tendency to easily get bored and lose interest in case of monotony. This implies the need for managers to apply different approaches of job design such as job rotation to keep their flames burning vigorously within.

With a new generation “Z” cropping up, it is paramount for managers to re position their approach towards handling multi-cultural conflicts in order to save organizations  lots of labor turnover, low productivity and poor staff rapport in the future.

A MULTI GENERATIONAL WORKFORCE

 The world`s population is continuously becoming multi generational as we grow to over 7.4 billion people. As a result, our workforce is greatly experiencing conflicts due to the difference in generations and mindsets.  We closely focus on how these different generations we have are continuing to influence our work behavior today.

Baby Boomers (51-70)

They are referred to as baby boomers because they were born during a boom of births after World War II. Stereotypes around this generation are that they are very difficult to manage because of their superiority complex and belief that they have been in the game for long.

 With these boomers dominantly taking over the public service and political offices in countries, their experience always comes in handy as it is “the best teacher” and guides them in making good political decisions for the Country.

 Furthermore, the boomers play a vital role in the cross generational transfer of knowledge through interaction with other generations. With their rigidity and negative attitude towards change, many of these baby boomers have outlived their stay in the workforce by going past their retirement age which has also led to increase in youth unemployment.

The tough global economy has therefore led many into individual ventures such as agribusiness whilst some continue to tassel out with employment.

Most saddening is their pre-dominant ignorance about technological advancement that results from their negative attitude towards learning new skills.

Generation X “X-ers” (36-50)

These were born right after the baby boom during a period within which their parents worked so hard to stay afloat and take care of the many children that had been born during the baby boom. This perhaps explains why the X-ers strive to have a very strong sense of family that they did not have. X-ers are motivated by good causes. This is evident in the fact that most social enterprises and Non-profits are started by their generation.

 They greatly value constructive feedback and prefer flexible work schedules since most of them during this age have families and desire to have a work-life balance. Their preference for flexibility often leads some of them to start their own businesses in order to have control over their work lives.

 According to “Work Place Warfare” by Ellisa Collie, the x-ers are best placed at work places because they are the most suitable for leadership since they combine their knowledge with the experiences that are passed on from the boomers.

They have a positive attitude towards change and this has enabled them adapt to the ever changing technological world giving them a favorable spot in this competitive workforce.

Millennials “Generation Y” (16-35)

With countries such as Uganda having 78% of its population below the age of 30, it is ironic that the Millennials occupy a small portion of today`s workforce. Many employers attribute this to their alleged arrogant, unethical, selfish and lazy work styles. If these allegations are anything to go by, it should be noted that they originate from the fact that the “Generation Y” has grown up with mobile phones tied to their ears and computers right in their faces. This has made them very lazy since whatever they want is just a click away from the internet.

 On the other hand, employers that have mastered the art of handling Millennials are reaping big due to the generation`s strong desire to learn, great multi-tasking ability, extreme creativity and high productivity.

 Furthermore they are awesomely comfortable with technology. They require constant financial and morale stimulation and this explains why the financial sector experiences a 25% millennial labor turnover annually according to Bernard Salt.

There is great need for managers to understand and appreciate the needs of these three different generations and work towards harmonizing them for a higher quality of productivity.