In the recent global Connectivity Scorecard produced by Professor L. Waverman from London Business School in collaboration with LECG and Nokia Siemens Networks they have again studied how countries stack up when it comes to “Useful connectivity”

Connectivity Scorecard is a global ICT index – the first of its kind to rank 50 countries not only on their deployment of ICT infrastructure but also to measure the extent to which governments, businesses and consumers make use of connectivity technologies to enhance social and economic prosperity, so called “useful connectivity”.

Connectivity Scorecard 2010 highlights the continued need for investment in information and communications technology (ICT) to stimulate a return to economic growth. Here is the top 10 list for 2010. If you’re interested in comparing the development over time I suggest you visit their homepage and download the whole report.

With the winter Olympics just starting I was hoping that this list would be as contagious to the medal count as is a flu in a kindergarten. Bring it on.

In a recent research study conducted by the Conference Board it’s concluded that in 2009 the global productivity fell by 1% on average which is the first time in 19 years it’s declined as measured as output per worked hour. On a global basis it is expected to grow by more than 2% in 2010.

There are significant differences between different regions that are noteworthy. In the US productivity (in per hour terms) actually grew 2.5%. This was explained by how companies in the US quicker and more drastically reduced their workforce to make the cost side of the productivity equation smaller. Productivity growth in the US is projected at 3%.

It’s interesting to contrast this to the European productivity growth that turned negative in 2009 where output per hour fell 1 percent.

“These are unusually large differences in productivity growth between the United States and Europe,” said Bart van Ark, chief economist of The Conference Board. “U.S. employers have reacted much more strongly to the recession than their European counterparts in terms of cutting jobs and hours. In 2010, both Europe and the United States will see higher productivity growth coming out of recession. However, a jobless productivity recovery is the most likely scenario in both regions.”

It’s also very interesting to see how for example the Chinese market at the same time had a productivity growth of 8.2%.

Good luck with your growth and productivity gains in 2010.

To execute you need to make sure your staff knows what to do and are doing it. At some level it’s that simple.

I read this blog from a recent customer of ours http://www.core3solutions.com/home/ A small niche IT -solutions provider.

As a small business in a service industry, productivity and profitability depend almost entirely on our employees performing at their full potential. The challenge is then how do you effectively manage performance? How can a small organization streamline human resources through meaningful performance reviews, aligning employee goals to organizational goals, and make informed decisions when recognizing top performers…

For them the answer is to leverage our Business Execution software.

By the way you have to check out Roxie – their Director of Entertainment

What do you really know about your employees? Of course you know their basic employment information – Name, SSN, Race, Sex, etc…   You may even have some insight into their performance levels, but do you know enough to confidently say that “we do/do not have to correct human resources to execute our strategy?” If the answer is no, then why not?  The irony is that I would bet that somewhere in your organization you have a record of all tangible assets – every desk, laptop, truck, and printer that your company owns.  Beyond simply that, I would also bet that someone could probably tell me when those assets are due for maintenance, lease renewal, or replacement.  How is it possible that an organization likely knows more about their fleet of trucks, than they do their fleet of drivers?  It’s simple really.  You can liquidate, depreciate, and amortize your hard assets.  There is no shortage of regulations on how to do so, when to do so, and (for those that slept through General Accounting class) why we even do so in the first place.   Intangible assets on the other hand aren’t as simple.  You can’t sell or trade them (except in Professional Sports), you can’t depreciate them over time, and other than basic labor laws, they really don’t come with many instructions.   This is fine except for the fact that these intangible assets are generating a highly disproportionate amount of value for your company and shareholders.    Your ability to grow revenues, reduce costs, create shareholder value, and successfully execute your company strategy is directly related to your willingness and ability to truly know your talent.

 So how do you do it?   Here’s a hint, why not simply imitate processes that they engage in during their time outside of the office?   In the very new future your company is going to have to shift to Enterprise 2.0 much like the internet shifted to Web 2.0.    Your employees are very good at sharing ideas, collaborating across functional lines, and engaging in valuable conversations with their peers.  The problem is that they’re doing this in their personal lives much more than their professional ones.   Take Facebook for instance.  In one week this year, and estimated 5 million people posted “25 Things about Me” to their profiles.  That’s literally 125 million facts that people shared in 7 days.  Were all of those items valuable?  Of course not, but what if Companies could harness that type of collaboration?  Do they even know 5 things about their People?  I’m not talking about their dog’s name, but do they know who speaks Mandarin, has a background in Investment Banking, or aspires to be a Chief Strategy Officer?   What would that type of knowledge sharing and collaboration do for team building?  Goal Setting?  Or just the overall ability to Execute?   The potential value is almost limitless, but only if companies start to realize that this level of collaboration only happens in an environment of transparency, one without the traditional barriers of silos and org charts that “compartmentalizes” their workforce.    The companies that understand Enterprise 2.0 are likely to be the “winners” in the coming decade.

Last week I was talking about instant feedback as a means to drive engagement and productivity. I just read this new piece of research from the UK where they YouGov surveyed 2100 employees and found that actually only 24 per cent said that their employer had clearly articulated their 2010 objectives to the workforce, while a third (32 per cent) even doubted there was a plan for their business at all.

According to an adviser David MacLeod to the group behind this research Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis) there’s a huge loss at stake.

“This is just one example of how poor employee engagement can put the brakes on improved business performance. If leaders don’t explain where the business is going and what it’s seeking to achieve, how can people be motivated or know what they’re meant to contribute? Clear goals are a key ingredient for achieving performance and productivity – but worryingly this research suggests many employers haven’t yet grasped this for 2010.”

MacLeod further said that the financial benefit of engaging with staff is very real – if employer actions raise engagement by just 10 per cent, they could typically increase profits by up to £1,500 per employee per year.

Well I don’t know the details behind this particular study but it’s very consistent with tons of other research on the topic of the financial benefit from increasing people’s engagement levels from helping them know what to do. After all who’d argue that not knowing where the company’s heading nor not knowing what to do would make any sense at all.

Full post on the study results can be found here.

Eriks note: This is a guest post by Meri Gruber a leading expert on business execution. She blogs on the intersection of innovation and business execution at www.competingonexecution.com

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CEO’s continue to rate execution excellence as their top challenge. But what does “excellence in execution” actually mean? The CEO wants to turn the wheel and have the ship respond, but according to extensive research repeated year after year, only 10-15% of wheel turns get the ship moving in the intended direction. This means most ships are positioned poorly to weather a storm, and are also very likely to miss the trade winds of opportunity.

This disconnect between the captain, crew and ship is what I call the execution gap. Nobody argues there isn’t an execution gap in most companies. No one argues the execution gap isn’t costly – after all 85% of financial performance comes from execution. The big question is why? Why is there an execution gap? The basics of good business execution are thoroughly researched and described:

• Business alignment and
• People performance.

Excellence in execution requires an organization aligned around simple and clear business values. But the best practices on business alignment and people performance fly in the face of many of our deeply held but unexamined assumptions about leadership, teams and motivation.

There is a whole body of research around these deeply held but unexamined assumptions – social proof, fixed mindset, the liking effect, our oversimplified models of human behavior to name a few. Each of us has our own unique set of these assumptions, and companies are challenged to get complicated messages across such a diverse backdrop.

Excellence in execution is infrastructure, because processes and tools can incorporate and model best practices in execution to a degree and with a speed and flexibility not previously achievable for most organizations. And the results are clear. Companies that use processes and tools that incorporate execution best practices outperform their competitors.

Business execution software platforms like SuccessFactors propagate the company strategy to help the crew prioritize the one thing they need to do today from the 10,000 demands on their time. Crews who understand the priorities can apply their own wisdom and judgment – an execution best practice that increases company performance and individual motivation.

Together with social media software platforms like Spigit for internal innovation and Jive, SocialText, PBWorks, and Yammer for internal collaboration, these execution platforms create huge opportunities for companies to get their execution culture right and get it implemented. Internal collaboration and innovation tools create a dialogue within the company, allowing all crew members to inform the strategy and improve processes. Social networking communities, blogs, forums and Twitter let companies extend their culture and values beyond the organization and engage with their customers at a whole new level.

CEO’s no longer have to shout over the wind while crew members rush around trying to find and do their jobs, making their best guess as to what direction to set the sail. CEO’s can now steer an interconnected ship. The crew is connected to the CEO and to each other. The crew also has connections to the outside world that they can bring into discussions of the ship’s performance.

The execution gap is real, and is costing you money. The problem is not strategy, or analysis. “People know what to do but don’t do it”. Create a backbone for excellence in execution with tools and processes that model your values and incorporate best practices and you’ll fly across the seven seas.

You know we’re always talking about the execution and that nothing else is more important to drive business results than that. Obviously execution is about getting things done and the question then is rather who is executing?

I read the result from this survey from our friends at McKinsey & Co. where they found that there’s been a shift in how individual leaders lead during the past year. Respondents say that during the crisis, they have seen far more leaders focus on monitoring individual performance. This is a trail you have to walk carefully though. Leaders going micro managing and monitoring progress on activity are up for some problems.

As the respondents in this survey also notices it’s really about inspiring others and defining expectations and rewards. We talk about this as a manager’s duty to monitor and measure performance but really manage potential. Helping individuals on the right track to get all their inherit talent to propel the business forward. The more you use your talent potential the more output and the more it grows. No one really signed up for doing only part of what they can anyway. Anyway hopefully we got some good coming out of this current storm are the same ones they say will help their companies thrive in the future. The right people want to get it done so help them with that or get out of their way. If they don’t then yes you change that or you get them out of their way.

By Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ

Note to managers: Employees need a lot more feedback about their performance. According to a new study by Leadership IQ, 51% of employees don’t know whether their performance is where it should be. That’s pretty shocking, so I’ll say it again: We asked 3,611 workers across 291 companies to respond to a series of survey questions, including the question “I know whether my job performance is where it should be.” The results? 51% Disagreed while only 21% Agreed (27% were in the middle).
How is it possible that half of employees don’t know whether their performance is where it should be? Well, the other questions in our study provide some clues.

We asked employees about the amount of interaction they have with their boss, and a whopping 66% of employees said that they have too little interaction with their boss. Only 18% said they have just the right amount and even fewer (16%) said they have too much interaction with their boss.

Alright, so you might be tempted to think that you should walk the hallways giving your employees pats on the back to make them feel better. But not so fast. This study revealed that employees don’t just want warm-and-fuzzy interactions. While 67% of employees say they get too little positive feedback, 51% also say they get too little constructive criticism from their boss. That’s right: Employees are desperate for information about their performance—good, bad or otherwise.

Employees want to know how to improve and grow; they want to perform their best. Ultimately, employees know that the economic stakes are high, competition is intensifying, and that jobs (and even companies) are at risk. Smart employees know that as their performance improves, so too does their future (including bonuses, job security, choice assignments, and more). And thus they want lots of information about how to optimize their performance.

While we’ve been talking about the Quantity of feedback that employees get, this study also revealed just how poor the Quality of feedback can be. Employees not only said that they’re not getting enough feedback, they also said that the feedback they do get isn’t terribly effective. In our study, 53% of employees said that when their boss does praise excellent performance, the feedback does not provide enough useful information to help them repeat it. And 65% of employees say that when their boss criticizes poor performance, they don’t provide enough useful information to help employees correct the issue.

As we outline in our upcoming book “Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your Employees to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More,” employees need information about their performance that is Timely, Specific and Candid (i.e. they need a little TSC). This means employees need real-time feedback that catches issues before they balloon and opportunities before they get missed. They need feedback that tells them exactly what to do more and less of, and they need that information truthfully.

Too many leaders delay feedback because they’re trying to figure out how to spin it, sugarcoat it, or bury it. For example, may managers try to squeeze a negative performance critique or correction between layers of positive reinforcement. In our upcoming book, we call this the Compliment Sandwich, and it doesn’t work. It’s like trying to tell your kid to get off drugs while praising him or her for mowing the lawn last Saturday. It’s a crazy mixed message that gets zero results.

A professional athlete can get dozens of bits of feedback during a practice or game. A student gets constant feedback throughout the day. But it’s not uncommon for a typical employee to go months without any meaningful feedback about their performance. We say we need our employees to perform at higher levels than ever before to help turn the economy around, but how are they supposed to perform when they’re not getting nearly enough feedback about what they’re doing right (which needs to be repeated) and wrong (which needs to be eliminated)?

One final note: Not only do employees need lots of great feedback to improve their performance, they also need it to stay engaged in their jobs. According to our study, employees who said they didn’t get enough feedback were 43% less likely to recommend their company to others as a great organization to work for.

There are things that human nature always seems to be keen on talking about. One of them is the weather. I just looked at Facebook and counted 8 of the top 12 posts talking about the rain in CA. The other area is of course the economy.  And the number of articles and posts on that is too much to even count. Both the weather and the economy have something in common…yes they affect us personally and in business, BUT you as an individual and business leader can’t do anything about either of them. That’s right, a lot of observing, talking and, for sure, adjusting of plans and clothing, but again we adapt to it.

As a business leader your job right now is to make sure that as the economy recovers (though we hear and see different outlooks on how fast and how soon), you are making the most out of it. Sit on your butt and take for granted that you’ll just grab a good, and maybe disproportionate, share of the increased demand, and you’re in for a big surprise. In a recession the strong survive and come out stronger. Customers are even more demanding and competition is stiffer. Especially from those looking to grow at your expense.

Whatever your plan for incremental business accelerating your growth with the recovering economy, there’s one thing you really need to make sure happens within the organization. In lieu of the weather and the economy, you really can do something about how you execute on your strategy. Your job is to make sure that you drive commitment and targeted action to what matters most: the execution of your strategy in this recovering economy.

We invite you to share your stories and ideas for maximizing your recovery in this economy here on the business execution blog

You’ve probably seen the recent news declaring the end to the recession, or technically the end. The news has been met with little or no fanfare since most people still feel like it’s a recession and likely will for quite some time. However, for Businesses, it does beg the question:  “What now?”

Here are my 3 tips for an effective recovery:

1.  Strategic Agility does not equal Execution Agility

Many economists are predicting a U-Shaped (i.e., Slow) recovery as opposed to V-Shaped (where you crash and then immediately soar upwards).   U-Shaped recoveries require Companies to have tiered strategies  to take advantage of growth opportunities regardless of how slow/fast a rate they occur.    This means that your 1st Quarter strategy probably won’t apply in the 3rd Quarter.  Assuming that you have a plan (most companies do), then the next step is to make sure that your employee’s understand the plan, what they need to do to support the plan, and how to re-focus when the plan changes.  Put simply, it’s no good to have “Strategic Agility” if you don’t have “Execution Agility.”  If in Q3 of next year your employees are still executing against your Q1 plan, then you’re going to leave significant value on the table.   Companies with the best Business Alignment will win in the recovery.

2.   Let People Inform the Strategy

You should seriously consider taking a talent inventory of your current (often downsized) organization.  A lot has happened in the past 2 years:  Workforce Reductions,  slashed development budgets, and artificially high productivity (due to unemployment).   If your CFO and Head of Sales are the only two people attending strategic planning sessions, then you’re going to devise a plan with which you simply don’t have the resources to execute.  World-Class People Performance is still your best bet now and in the future.

3. It’s Time to Make Amends

If you’ve cut headcount, frozen pay, slashed benefits, decreased hours, etc… Then at some point in the near future you’re going to have to start to make amends.   People are grateful to just still have their jobs, but that simply won’t be enough over the long-term.  Your employees don’t just view work as a transactional relationship (a dollar’s pay for a dollar’s work) — According to David Rock, author of “Your Brain at Work,” what drives high performance is a person’s social and emotional connection to work.    The recession has in many cases forced a transactional relationship as people worry about their futures, their jobs, and their families.   According to Rock, Status and Fairness (equity) are two of the main drivers of performance.   I would argue that the economy has focused employees needs for status and equity outward (”Two of my neighbors lost their jobs, I’m just happy to have mine”), but at some point in the near future they’ll return their focus inside the four walls of your organization and you better be ready.  You’ll need to make sure you get ahead of the curve in terms of recognition and reward or you’ll likely lose many people as their employment options increase.   Put simply, you need to reengage the workforce.