With a Little Help From Obama

We can definitely learn a lot from Obama; his audacity, optimism, and even presentation skills. However, I am not suggesting that you copy him. If during your next HR update to management you were to begin by saying,“Make no mistake ladies and gentlemen, the path that lies before us is fraught with hardship, yet lays the claim to something greater, more powerful that resides within us all…”then I am certain that you’d get more than a few strange expressions. Someone might even check if you are late on important medication. No, the point of this article is to take a look at some of the great principles that Obama uses, so we can convert them into our own style. As the tile of this article suggests, here are four Obama skills:

How will you be working in the next 10 years?  

It’s incredible to believe that as recent as 10 years ago e-mail was still more of a youth fad than a credible business communication tool. Today, it’s impossible to imagine a working day that does not involve hours spent clearing one’s ‘outbox’  and deleting copious amounts of ‘spam’. Worse still, when the internet ‘goes down’, work practically stops. Such is the importance of this technology.

In 10 years too, the mobile phone has evolved from a two-tone colour display into a true personal digital assistant (PDA), sporting every function once only available on a PC. We plan our life, buy stocks, ‘text’ our friends, roam the net, listen to ‘podcasts’

and occasionally make phone calls. All this in the comfort of our favourite coffee shop, restaurant, or even sitting on our home toilet. Ten years ago, if you had a laptop you were a high-paid executive. Today, a laptop is part of the business uniform – for everyone. Also, a laptop is now just that, small enough to sit on your lap.

Ten years ago it doubled as gym membership. And in 10 years our business language has evolved. We now ‘hot desk’ at work, Skype with our colleagues and Google our clients. We use a 3G network to ‘tweet’ our movements, MSN our staff that we’ll be late into the office, while at the same time maintaining a personal profile on social media, such as Facebook, Linked In, and Xing. Never before have we faced such huge technology changes in such a short amount of time, and all this in only 10 years.

So where will the next 10 years take us?

One of the highlights on the HR calendar is the annual China STAFF Awards. Held since 1998, the awards aim to promote and recognise individuals and companies whose dedication to the HR profession are acknowledged by their peers. The last awards, now in their 11th year, were in November last year. Network HR takes a look at who is being recognised as the leaders in China’s human resources community.

                             And what you should be doing about it

     by Morry Morgan