People, Performance, Profit

People

Something big has been happening in the world in recent decades, for earliest 60's. This isn't something you'll hear about in the news because it's not just one event. It's a series of events ,good or bad, that are happening gradually and sporadically, but early signs point to a mega world power shift, which could end up being as important as the Industrial Revolution, increasingly affecting us all, in one way or another in the years ahead. Previous Industrial Revolutions have increased the power of human muscles using physics or water energy or fossils fuels energy. Now the Digital Revolution will increase the human mind power.

From the lathe to the laptop

The tools of the modern business laptop, cell phone, and PDA stand in sharp contrast to the predominant tools 100 years ago: plow, wrench, and pen. Over the past 50 years, in the United States, the percentage of manufacturing and farm jobs has dropped by nearly 70 percent (to 13 percent of the total work force), while the professional, business, and information work force has nearly doubled (to 15 percent). When Peter Drucker originally articulated the idea of a "knowledge worker" in 1959, he described people who applied knowledge to their tasks in a direct and unique way. One important differentiator of the knowledge worker is that he or she owns the means of production. Unlike blue-collar workers who do not own the factory equipment that they use to produce products, knowledge workers own the knowledge and skills that they apply to data to create information. Knowledge workers for some, a term now synonymous with "professionals" as a segment of the work force accounts for 25 percent or more of such industries as financial services, high tech, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and media and entertainment, "in some cases, undertaken[ing] most typical key line activities." As the PC revolution took hold, it became apparent that work itself was changing. The percentage of people working with data was increasing, and was no longer limited to the creation, collection, and forwarding of that data to knowledge workers.
The demographic crunch
Demographic trends show an aging, shrinking work force in most of the developed world over the next 50 years. As the work force matures, businesses will have to maximize the productivity of their remaining workers while retaining them in the face of increasing competitive pressure. As competition heats up for talent, businesses will have to increasingly cater to the desires of all their people, increasing focus and resources on HR functions while ensuring that the culture of the business is one that attracts and retains the best people. In addition, it’s important for businesses to capture as much knowledge as possible before the experts, the fonts of wisdom, and the masters of process retire. At the other end of the demographic curve, the "Net generation" that is coming into the work force today has lived its entire life in the digital era. These people have never known a time without computers, cell phones, and the Internet. E-mail, the Web, interactive video games, instant messaging, and mobile devices are as natural to kids today as the wired telephone, television, and ballpoint pen were to the previous generation. They are fluent in the most current technologies used to trade information and collaborate, and they communicate around the clock. They expect their work to be as connected as their play. Businesses that understand and embrace this new "digital lifestyle" will certainly enhance their ability to attract and keep this new generation of employees, while benefiting from the increased connectivity and communication.

Performance

Business success, business results
Those running businesses, however, have to deliver success: grow revenue and profits, satisfy customers andstockholderss, and successfully navigate the perpetual winds of change. For each business and for every employee the particulars may differ, but the outcomes that drive business success tend to remain the same: creating loyal and profitable customer relationships, inventing and enhancing products or services, managing a business in the most efficient way possible, and building high-value connections with partners and suppliers. The emphasis may vary, but every business must focus on these outcomes. Whether closing a sale, designing the next great product, or discovering a way to squeeze inefficiency out of the supply chain, success depends on the people in a company. Rarely in business does total victory or complete catastrophe stem from a single decision. Rather, success or failure is based on the cumulative impact of a myriad of decisions and actions by a broad range of people. Are the systems, tools, and culture of the business enabling people to make better decisions? Does the business get its people the right information so they can delight customers, create new products, or work with business partners, whether they are at a desk or on a cell phone thousands of miles away? Does the business culture help break down barriers so people can work more easily with each other? With partners? With customers? Are the right priorities, organization, motivation, and leadership in place to drive success? Does the technology that supports your business adapt to change so that your people don't have to?
People matter
Even though many of today’s tasks are automated, people remain the heart of any business. People develop relationships and close deals. People make insights and improve products. People work together to make the thousands of small decisions that collectively add up to success. Finding, developing, and retaining the right people is a crucial and increasingly difficult task for today’s businesses.

Profit

You see Einstein once said, "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." With confluentsence of global events colliding as they are, Dali's art seems qupresentlyient. Speaking of overestimating the value of money: there's a good reason why we have loss aversion-that is, why we hate losses more than we like gains (roughly twice as much hatred for that love). Let's use basic structural physics as an analogy. Forgive the pun, but I think visualizing this helps cement the concept. Imagine building a structure. Now think of your net worth as a pile of bricks. You've got big bricks on the bottom that make a foundation and successively smaller bricks stacked on top. The more you are worth, the less valuable each marginal dollar might be. In our analogy, the smaller each successive brick gets. Well now if you had to remove a brick from the top of the structure, it would be a larger brick than whatever the next brick you would add to it. Thus the pain from loss is greater than gain.
Profit, from Latin meaning "to make progress".