In the future, investor reputations, belongingness, cultural scaling and alumni will be what differentiate the fast corporate gnomes from the mules chewing ruminant.
Investors will become more human-oriented and will in the future be much closer to their organisations so that they can take temperatures on the indoor climate. They will also be able to name or to know the top talents in their respective portfolios.
I think it’s going to be hotter than ever to be a sustainable investor.
Because the sustainable investor has the power to opt in and opt out of members of his/her company portfolio – based on both environmental and human sustainability – and can thus choose to scale only sustainable environments in the organisations he/she names and invest money in.
So the sustainable investor will be hot. A role model that will attract a following of global talent because he/she will be recognized for growing sustainable corporate cultures.
Cultures that are appealing to the talents of today and the future, which require more and more than a competitive recruitment package and favorable employee benefits.
The talents of the present and the future choose workplaces based on their soul projects.
Here, personal values are top shelf product and they must be compatible with the values that investors demonstrate in relation to their way of guiding their respective corporate cultures and managements along the way.
If the values are compatible, the talents will date the hot investor by becoming part of his/her portfolio of companies.
That, in itself, gives the hot investor a huge competitive advantage. Because instead of his/her portfolio of companies using resources to attract and retain talent independently of each other, the hot investor will be able to unfold an umbrella over the companies and create career paths for his total talent pool.
This can be done by investors jointly running talent management and succession planning in close cooperation with the portfolio’s respective HR departments.
The result could lead to a chain of internal talent mobility in the investor portfolio, which in itself is attractive for talent to be a part of, because it allows it to develop in several different companies with the same ownership circle.
Imagine if corporate portfolios become each other’s lever for growth because talents are career-jumping across the same portfolio.
Alumni, who is the equivalent of loyalty clubs for former employees, must therefore in the future be thought of more strategically into the top down of investor circles and their respective portfolio of companies instead of being wheeled dishes that are invented one by one bottom up. There is gazelle propulsion in this, and in the future there will be stronger races than ever.
The latest Microsoft survey shows, among other things, that 41%, globally, are considering a job change. At the same time, recent reports from McKinsey, Deloitte and others highlight that belongingness cultures, driven by empathetic leadership that can grow the individual exactly as the individual is, are becoming more important than ever.
For 2/3 of future skills that become the most in demand will be the so-called interpersonal, soft skills – talents, with a primary representation of soft skills, require empathetic leadership in order to realize their full potential.
It paints a clear picture of the need for the leader that so many have been crying out for years: The conscious leader!
The leader who knows himself and who is passionate about growing people and has the empathy to make people feel safe on their respective growth journeys.
At the same time, these reports highlight the following skills as a prerequisite for well-trained gazelle legs: 1) cooperation; 2) compassion; 3) to be agile in ambiguity.
What is underestimated time and time again is that the hen and egg in being able to ‘be agile in ambiguity’ depends on whether there is enough cooperation and compassion.
For collaboration and compassion is absolutely crucial when 2/3 skills are in favor of the soft skills that become the demand of the talent profiles that will show the way forward.
The profile type here is energized by environments in which he/she can be safe, and security comes from trusting collaborative relationships that house compassion – and when the talents are safe, the agility comes with it quite naturally.
A lack of agile cooperation and compassion therefore weakens the value chain at lightning speed and invites silos and power struggles within the organizational everyday life. Whereas older talents often choose to stay and persevere in such cultures – gradually demotivated and burnt out – younger talents, by comparison, leave the workplace faster.
This group of talents will therefore name the A and B team companies.
For the talents here, demands on the quality of 1) sustainable business investors, 2) conscious business leaders and 3) corporate cultures in which they can feel a sense of value with their unique beings and principles.
They cannot be bought or maintained for money. Because they don’t negotiate with their values.
Companies’ ROI, or Return On Investment, must therefore be reinvented in terms of the attraction of talent, and the starting point must be what is the talent’s ROI.
It will be exciting to follow which companies who will adapt to this new world and who won’t. I think the next three to four years will show us all clearly who differentiates themselves as the A team’s fast gazelles and who differentiates themselves as the B team’s mule chewing ruminant.
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