Why you should never stick to the subject and always follow your intuition

I have two presentations lined up with a common theme: one is on Green IT and the other is on recruiting in a digital world. So what's the common theme you might wonder... Well, it's the Generation Y. I admit, I never stick to the subject - that's probably why I am asked to take the stage in the first place.

When doing some research - yes statistics still prevail upon intuition - I stumbled upon some interesting survey results from Experience, a US job site for college students and graduates. The survey reveals that Generation Y job seekers favor environmentally-friendly companies. This does not really come as a surprise for Gen Y connoisseurs but the final stats however, does show an interesting twist.

• 81% of Gen Y find it important to work for a green company
• 79% say they will be more likely to accept a job offer at a green company over another company

I still believe that they will favor the not so green companies if the wages and company car are better but this is a clear signal: You'd better add a line or two on the environment in your company's mission or potential recruits will lose interest.
The bottom line is simple: going green is not only an environmental imperative it will also help companies to save money in the long run and attract the right type of people.
It is a bit like a corporate hattrick if you ask me but apparently I am one of the few seeing it this way.
But what is the state of Green IT in the first place? I will present some figures during a presentation next week but I have a feeling that there is still a large disconnect between companies that say they go green and the ones actually living it the green way.

Unless there are some statistics out there proving that 80% of the company executives have going green on the corporate agenda - I just follow my intuition like John Naisbitt prescribed: Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data. And my intuition says that there is still a lot of work to be done before we really put our money where our mouth is.

Y fusion?

Many IT organizations deal with a serious skills shortage - the labor market is volatile, people come and go and valuable knowledge is lost as a result of retiring boomers.
Some of them also struggle with their image: they are not seen as companies that promise exciting career paths or steep promotion opportunities.
The IT shop of bank I used to consult for ran a survey on their image and attractiveness as a potential employer : the survey revealed that 70% did not even know that the bank had such a large IT organization (exceeding ten thousand IT workers). Second confronting point was that most respondents thought of an IT sweatshop in terms of bureaucratic, slow, risk averse, regulatory, no career opportunity. Image is everything... in your face right.

IT marketing - the mechanics for using marketing best practices in IT communication - will help in improving your image as an employer. If you succeed in understanding their values, what they stand for and care for, you can pimp your IT marketing with their language - using their vocabulary to become (emotionally) connected.
Connecting with Generation Y can create an enormous innovation potential for the firm: for these digital natives technology has become a second nature .
Unfortunately bureaucratic, process-oriented, regulatory and the like are not the most appealing set of values to catch the Gen Y's attention. These people are community beasts, love their bling bling tech gadgets, think in terms of global consciousness and connectedness and are in touch with mother nature. For them, job security reads job diversity, Long term career path is traded for short term flexibility and continued learning and job loyalty is being thought of in terms of months rather than years.

Creating a new habitat where these millenials feel comfy in will take time - it is matter of a culture change at all levels of the organization. Say bye to authority, rank or level and hi to community, power groups and work-life balance.

I am convinced that we can make IT a sexy career alternative, if we are prepared to rethink our organizational models and underlying philosophy. We will have to adapt our corporate ecosystem to cater for this new breed of knowledge workers - no more caging in cubicles but giving the possibility of creating, exploring new spaced and interconnected thinking (don't know what it means but it sounds nice, doesn't it). The next gen workforce will only feel happy @ work, if it is close to their personal habitat.

If you dare to rock and roll your culture, then you can start jamming with these new kids on the block... Combine it with a right-brain recruitment campaign and you have all the necessary ingredients for a Y fusion

generation Y and the 2.0 gene

I read a good article on Web 2.0 and how its adoption by the investment banking industry is influenced by the ghost of compliance. click here for further reading.

Whereas many other industry sectors can easily open the gates and deploy their 2.0 initiatives, FSI is struggling with an additional inhibitor namely compliance. For those not familiar with compliance in the financial services industry, I take the liberty to quote the online financial dictionary Investorwords : The state of being in accordance with the relevant Federal or regional authorities and their requirements. In the context of financial services, the most important compliance rules come from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Most large financial services companies have compliance teams whose role is to take an independent stance in making sure that the company is following all the necessary rules and regulations. Typical compliance topics include insider trading regulations, Chinese walls, audit trails, four-eyes principle, transaction history logs, audit trails, risk profiling and Mifid.

The one million dollar question is now how you can roll out enterprise 2.0 if security, reputation, data protection and conflict of interest are at stake whereas web 2.0 stands for sharing, freedom of opinion, openness...

FSI providers like Fargo Wells, Citi, Morgan Stanley, ING US, JP Morgan have already seen the light and have a couple of web 2.0 initiatives live or in the pipeline - at least for internal purposes. After all, business benefits are obvious :

1. You retain knowledge and information in an environment which is susceptible to high employee turnover
2. You can improve cross-boundary collaboration in an industry which is driven by global consolidation
3. You incentivise creativity, innovation and business development as you give your human capital the opportunity to connect and collaborate freely and across product areas

Deploying Web 2.0 vis à vis your customers can also give you a competitive advantage as you become more accessible for your clients. No need to do the call center queue or go to your local branch as all answers can be found online. Nothing new so far...

Personally, I believe that becoming twopointzero will not be an option but an imperative for banks if they want to reach out to the Generation Y. These digital natives will force organisations to rethink and adapt their business models if they want to attract new talents or customers. They are used to tools like chatting, VOIP, social networking and online collaboration so companies that cannot equip them these technologies will have a hard time appealing to them... compliance or no compliance.

It will be a challenge for the conservative banking industry to embrace this line of thinking but there is no other option. Bank 2.0 will not be a nice to have but a must have in a not so far future.