Executive Insight

Philadelphia Area - Charity Golf Tournament at Commonwealth National Golf Club, May 13.

Founded in 1982, Special Equestrians is a non-profit therapeutic riding program serving children and adults with disabilities in the Philadelphia area. Set on more than 40 preserved acres in Warrington Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a state-of-the-art facility features 28 stalls, indoor and outdoor arenas, families and volunteer’s lounges, conference space, a therapy room, and administrative offices. The Sensory Trail is a special feature of the grounds, offering interactive experiences for horse and rider.

More information, schedule and sponsorship opportunities:

Download 2013 Special Equestrians golf tournament

What Shareholders Should Know about CEO Succession Plans, and Why.

A copy of my presentation yesterday at the 2013 Activist Investor Conference in New York City.

 

What shareholders should know about ceo succession plans, and why. from Charlesmore Partners International

Released: Fortune Magazine’s Best Companies to Work For, 2013

The list of good employers on Fortune’s prestigious annual list stays consistent this year with Google retaining the top spot and just a couple of newcomers to the top 10.

Rank	Company	Job Growth	# of Employees
1	Google, Inc.	N.A.	53,546
2	SAS	5.6%	6,373
3	CHG Healthcare Services	4.7%	1,378
4	The Boston Consulting Group, Inc.	18.6%	2,314
5	Wegmans Food Markets, Inc.	8.3%	43,927
6	NetApp	7.8%	7,426
7	Hilcorp Energy Company	47.7%	1,012
8	Edward Jones	-0.9%	35,114
9	Ultimate Software	18.7%	1,440
10	Camden Property Trust	13%	1,896

See Full List

Source: CNNMoney

Reputation Capital - The New Currency of Collaborative Consumption

Rachel Botsman discusses the trust-powered marketplace empowered by new media. The importance of building a reputation trail and its value.

The Activist Investor Conference 2013

The Latest on Activist Campaigns, Corporate Defenses, Legal & Regulatory Issues

The Activist Investor Conference is an annual gathering of the most important group of activist investors, corporate governance specialists, advisory firms, proxy solicitors, and corporate board members. The agenda features a full day of technical education on the latest activist investment strategies, their impact on corporate performance, legal and regulatory changes, and studies of effective proxy campaigns and successful corporate defenses.

Conference Topics

• The Activist Toolkit: What Methods are Activists Using to Successfully Influence Reforms
• The Impact of Governance and Activist Investing on Equity Returns
• The Current Proxy Activism Landscape
• Proxy Fights in Canada: Activism North of the Border
• Different Types of Activism: Operational, Boardroom, Governance and Takeover Activism
• Successful Public Relations Strategies for Activism Campaigns
• When to Use a Vote No / Withhold Campaign
• How to Determine When a Company is an Attractive Target for an Activism Campaign
• Negotiating the Proxy Contest Settlement Agreement
• Successful Strategies for Engaging with the Board and Management
• What Shareholders Should Know about CEO Succession Plans
• Changing Trends in Corporate Governance: Elections and Advisory Votes
• The New Breed of Activist Investors: What is their Impact on Policy, Governance and Executive Pay?
• Multi-Constituency Directors and Issues Surrounding Shareholder Representation on the Board
• The SEC's latest requirements for 13D filings
• Activism in Closed-End Funds
• Examining Advance Notification Bylaws

Agenda

Register

Venue

W New York - Union Square
201 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 253-9119

In the heart of Silicon Alley, where cutting edge technology and international business thrives, stands W New York - Union Square. Step outside and head in any direction, and within walking distance you will find the very best of New York waiting for you.

A limited number of discounted rooms have been reserved for conference attendees. Book your room early because after the room block sells out the special rate may not be available. Click here to book your room online or call The W Hotel directly at (212) 253-9119 and mention "The Activist Investor Conference."

Globalization Not as Prevalent as Many Believe, a New Report on Global Connectivity Asserts

Globalization continues to feature prominently in political debates, business strategy deliberations, and in everyday life. The dialogue, however, is seldom backed up with hard data, the authors of a new report on global connectivity assert.

The new report from logistics giant DHL finds that the world is less globally connected today than it was in 2007, and global connectedness also falls far short of the levels commonly assumed by business executives and the general public.

Increasing global connectedness can be a powerful lever for improving prosperity, the report suggests and that limited and faltering global connectedness imply that strengthening countries’ connectedness offers large untapped potential to help accelerate economic recovery.

Global Connectedness is defined in the report as the depth and breadth of a country’s integration with the rest of the world as manifest by its participation in international flows of products and services, capital, information, and people.

Depth measures how much of a country’s activities or flows are international versus domestic by comparing the size of its international flows with relevant measures of its domestic economy. For example, to assess the depth of Hong  Kong SAR (China)’s merchandise exports, its exports are compared to its GDP: Hong Kong’s merchandise exports-to-GDP ratio is 187%, the highest in the world and 37 times higher than Nepal’s (the lowest – only 5%).

Breadth complements depth by looking at how broadly the international component of a given type of activity is distributed across countries. To illustrate the importance of incorporating breadth into assessments of global connectedness, consider inbound tourism in the Bahamas. While the Bahamas ranks first in terms of the number of inbound tourists per capita (a depth metric), more than 80% of those tourists come from the United States. Thus, while depth of inbound tourism in the Bahamas is high, its breadth is limited, especially when one notes that less than 15% of outbound international tourists worldwide come from the United States.

The 2012 DHL Global Connectedness Index measures and analyzes the global connectedness of 140 countries, covering 99% of the world’s GDP and 95% of its population.

Source: DHL

Read the Report

Education to Employment: Designing a System That Works

• Globally, seventy-five million youth are unemployed and young people are three times more likely than their parents to be out of work.
• Half of youth are not sure that their postsecondary education has improved their chances of finding a job
• Only 43 percent of employers can find enough skilled entry-level workers and estimates suggest that by 2020 there will be a global shortfall of 85 million high- and middle-skilled workers

Around the world, governments and businesses face a conundrum: high levels of youth unemployment and a shortage of job seekers with critical skills. How can a country successfully move its young people from education to employment? What are the challenges? Which interventions work? How can these be scaled up? These are the crucial questions.

A new report from McKinsey attempts to answer them. To do so, it developed two unique fact bases. The first is an analysis of more than 100 education-to-employment initiatives from 25 countries, selected on the basis of their innovation and effectiveness. The second is a survey of youth, education providers, and employers in nine countries that are diverse in geography and socioeconomic context: Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The report’s findings include the following six highlights:

• Employers, education providers, and youth live in parallel universes – or to put it another way, they have fundamentally different understandings of the same situation.
• The education-to-employment journey is fraught with obstacles - not least of which are cost, work relevancy and job access.
• The education-to-employment system fails for most employers and young people – positive outcomes are the exception rather than the rule.
• Innovative and effective programs around the world have important elements in common – most particularly when education providers and employers step into each others’ worlds.
• Creating a successful education-to-employment system requires new incentives and structures – distributed information, collaborative endeavor and systems integration.
• Education-to-employment solutions need to scale up – leveraging interactive technologies and employer-valuable curricula.

McKinsey started this research recognizing the twin crises of a shortage of jobs and a shortage of skills. In the course of it, though, it realized the need to take into account another key shortage: the lack of hard data. This deficiency makes it difficult to even begin to understand which skills are required for employment, what practices are the most promising in training youth to become productive citizens and employees, and how to identify the programs that do this best.

The authors conclude, “The journey from education to employment is a complicated one, and it is natural that there will be different routes. But too many young people are getting lost along the way”.

Read the report

Source: McKinsey Center for Government

New Study Finds Millennial Generation’s Power to Influence Is Increasing

Seventy-Four Percent of Millennials believe they influence the purchase decisions of their peers and those in other generations, a new study from PR firm Edelman finds.

The study provides updated insights around the ambitions and beliefs of the Millennial generation, born between 1980 and 1995, building on its 2010 benchmark study, 8095®. Encompassing interviews with 4,000 Millennials in 11 countries, 8095 2.0 revealed that 74 percent believe they can inspire the purchase decisions of peers and those in other generations. The new study was issued to better understand the evolving roles of brands in Millennials’ lives and how cultural changes like the global recession are impacting their behaviors.

8095 Refreshed from Edelman Insights

Global findings from the study include:

• The global recession has fundamentally changed Millennials: The economy is a key factor in Millennials’ lives and within their community. In fact, economic stability is the number one hope that Millennials have for their country. The troubling job market also has created a new breed of Millennial entrepreneurs, with 48 percent of Millennials saying that owning their own business is a top life goal (76 percent in Turkey and 65 percent in Brazil).
• Millennials are alpha-influencers:  Seven in 10 believe it is their responsibility to share feedback with brands when they have a good or bad experience.
• Millennials are surprisingly open to brand engagement and advertising, if brands have the right approach: Only 3 percent of Millennials thinks all advertising is boring, and 80 percent want brands to entertain them – the ability to co-create products and services (40 percent across 11 countries) being the most popular way.

Why Millennials Matter

According to the World Fact Book, the median age of the world population is 28, which falls within the Millennial generation and there are more than 1 billion Millennials around the globe. As the first generation to grow up inherently digital, it is also a group that has information at its fingertips and expects two-way dialog with preferred brands.

The Evolving Role of Brands for the Millennial Generation from Edelman Insights

While Millennials share many traits and behaviors, they are more diverse ethnically, economically and socially than any other generation in history. They are more connected by being grounded in a global network with perspective and purpose. They have instant access to one another and to information. They are aware of and believe in their own voice and power. They are each a unique and powerful member of a generation that by 2025 will amount to 70 percent of the global workforce. The time to pay attention to Millennials is now.

Source

More Information

Ostrich or Eagle? The Stark Choice Facing Organizational Leaders

Peter Drucker was once asked about the accuracy of predictions.

“I don’t predict,” he responded, “I look out of the window and identify what is most visible, but not yet seen.”

In 1987 the Hudson Institute published its seminal report, Workforce 2000. Ten years later it reprised the analysis with the publication of Workforce 2020. In between several important Harvard Business Review articles covered similar ground, though taking more of a global view. By the end of the decade, McKinsey’s War for Talent was capturing considerable executive attention.

Each took a long-term view of the confluence of societal trends, demographics, education sector deficiencies, globalization, technological advances and workforce supply & demand. Each warned advanced-economy government, business, labor and education leaders that, absent the collaborative development of fresh solutions, trouble lay ahead. In parallel, business thought-leaders like Peter Senge, Meg Wheatley, Charles Handy and Gary Hamel were challenging conventional wisdom and urging that new realities required fresh thinking.

The rest is history.

Fast forward to 2012. Several substantive and insightful new reports have been published this year that center on contemporary and impending global labor market discontinuities. They all cover somewhat related ground from different vantage points and paint a picture of the present that is quite consistent with that of the earlier forecasts. Importantly, each warns leaders in both advanced - and now also in developing economies - of the considerable economic and societal consequences of failing to act to solve the challenges ahead:

• Help Wanted: The Future of Work in Advanced Economies, The McKinsey Institute, March 2012
• Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives - A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies, OECD, May 2012
• The World at Work – Jobs, Pay and Skills for 3.5 Billion People, The McKinsey Institute, June 2012
• False Summit – The State of Human Capital 2012, The Conference Board and McKinsey & Company, October 2012

This 2012 body of work is serious stuff. Its antecedents were serious too, but in the end issue-avoidance and short-term-ism - regretfully – brought the future home to roost.

Here’s the rub. Unless we pay attention and do something proactively to respond to these dynamics, organizations will increasingly struggle and competitiveness will continue to erode.  Form will follow function, we know this. The pivotal question is who will be ostriches and eagles this time around?

Clearly, we have a Point of View. We hope that executives earnestly examine the strategic implications of these forces and build out strategies and capabilities to future-proof their enterprise.

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Charlesmore Partners International specializes in organizational strategy. We have a track-record of building high performance organizations and experientially-developed methodologies that help organizations get ready for the future.

More information:  +1 215.353.6472 or connect@charlesmore.com.

Frameworks Can Limit Our Mindset

An inspiring Tedx talk by Nilofer Merchant on inclusivity. Important insights on choices, inclusion and value creation.

As they say, never mistake the edge of the rut for the horizon.

More: NiloferMerchant.com