As the Recovery Takes Hold, What Are We Seeing in the World of Business?

Today I would like to discuss what we are seeing from the consultant’s standpoint with businesses around the world. What are we seeing now that the recovery, slow but steady, is starting to take hold?

There are basically three things happening overall with businesses today. By the way, this isn’t regional or industry-specific. Literally across the board, we are seeing a couple of key things play out that are not industry specific, not region specific, not just in the United States, but with our clients around the world.

First we are seeing some very major projects emerge that were put on the back burner as far back as maybe 2006 or 2007. At the time, people felt the downturn coming. They became more cautious about investing, and some major initiatives were put on hold; strategic projects that most businesses would normally be moving forward. Now we are starting to see those projects come to the forefront. Not only that, but the projects that were put on the back burner five years ago suddenly need to be done yesterday.

The second thing involves the strategic thinking that has been put on the back burner. People really battened down the hatches during this challenging economic time, and now they are ready to move forward. They want to start looking long-term at what’s going to happen down the road. Strategic thinking is back!

Third is the acquisition of talent and the retention of talent. When I was first introduced to American Entrepreneur Radio, I was known as “A Gen Y Guy”. My first interview was with Ron Morris, who was completely fascinated with this topic of Gen Y and how they are reshaping so many things in business today. So he was really interested in Gen Y and I had written a book on the subject. However, after I wrote the book, we went into a worldwide recession, and the interest just kind of waned.  People really weren’t all that concerned about how to attract and retain the next generation of talent.

Fast-forward five years. In the past 30 days, I have been to Austin, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Denver and Los Angeles talking to legal contingencies, young president’s organizations, Vistage and other major corporations about this phenomenon of Gen Y. And at this point in time, there is a really deep understanding that we may have missed the boat a little bit. We didn’t think about this strategically enough at the time the economy had us not even considering adding new talent. Now we really have to make this move. In the book we talk about anytime you’re doing anything, you have to have understanding, awareness, and alignment. Now there is a strong understanding that we really need to go after Gen Y.

All things said the bottom line is understanding, awareness and alignment. Organizations should strive to gain a deeper awareness of what they need to accomplish, and the most challenging part is creating the alignment. If companies are going to attract and retain the best talent out there, they need to be seamlessly aligned from every angle. Everything should line up from how talent is recruited to how people are interviewed and so on, maintaining alignment every step of the way.

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