Tamara Erickson

Award-winning Author; Expert on Organizations, the Changing Workforce, and Generations at Work

BIG IDEAS

• Innovation & Collaboration: Bringing People and Ideas Together
  At the heart of innovation is the combination of two previously unrelated ideas. Creating the capacity for innovation in your organization means encouraging collaboration: namely, sharing knowledge and working together to create new ideas. The paradox: many of the best ways to encourage collaboration work against innovation! How can you balance both? Based on ground-breaking research—one of the largest and most rigorous studies of collaborative behavior within organizations—as well as years of experience with innovative organizations, three keys emerge: building the capacity to collaborate, asking great questions, and introducing sufficient diversity of thought and capability. Chances are high that many of the organizational practices needed...are exactly the ones you’ve de-emphasized in recent years. Learn specific ways to build collaboration among your employees, the importance of “great questions,” and new approaches for introducing diversity of thought. This presentation identifies the highest-priority investments and practices used to build an organization skilled at successful innovation.
• What are they Thinking?! Navigating the Multi-Generational Workforce
  Three generations are working together in today’s workplace—each bringing different experiences and assumptions to the job. As the talent shortage grows, it’s increasingly important to create a culture that is welcoming and engaging for talented individuals of all ages. Based on years of in-depth research–and three books–on the changing workforce, Tammy Erickson helps audiences understand the underlying evolution of the assumptions each generation brings to work.
  
  Some of the insights include:
  Boomers– Are you Boomer? If so, here’s the good news: an unanticipated life bonus–extra years, filled with opportunities. Boomers are a member of the first generation that will experience a new life stage–a significant period of healthy, active adult life after your children leave the nest. Boomers may decide to launch a new career, start a business, work as a “cyclic” contractor, or turn to volunteer work.
  Gen X– Gen Xer’s have traded the idealism of the Boomer generation for realism, tempered by value-oriented sensibilities that will help them serve as effective stewards of both today’s organizations and tomorrow’s world. They will force nations to produce more than they consume and fix the infrastructure. At mid-life, they are well-prepared to serve as pragmatic managers, applying toughness and resolution to defend society while safeguarding the interests of the young.
  Gen Y– Technology guides their assumptions about communications, what they choose for careers, how they do work, how and where they learn, and their expectations of organizations they join. They have a desire to live life “now,” as well as high expectations for leadership opportunities. They do not stay very long. Tammy’s research shows that more than a third of all Gen Yer’s in the workforce today are currently and actively seeking a new job!
  
  Contributing rich data and unparalleled research with her optimistic point of view, Tammy offers practical strategies and actionable insights so that audiences of all ages will better understand each other.
• Avoiding the Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent
  A seismic shift is occurring in the workforce. Globally, several decades of declining birth rates are catching up with us. For the first time in modern history, the number of jobs created could begin to outstrip the number of people who desire to participate in the workforce, creating not just a temporary imbalance for a year or two, but a sustained, systemic scarcity over the decades ahead. And when you add a skill set filter over the raw numbers, the potential shortages look even more alarming. We’re at a tipping point. Over the next several years, most corporations will begin to experience a talent shortage. It will affect the relationships we forge with employees, the opportunities ahead for us and our children, our approaches to education, our philosophies toward retirement, and the fundamental way we live out our lives. In this presentation, Tammy offers a deep understanding of the composition of the future workforce, characteristics and expectations of the four generations in today’s workforce, and actions to attract and retain great talent.
• What Does It Mean to Work Here? A Signature Experience for Extraordinary Engagement
  Engaging your employees is not about copying another corporation’s best practices. Case studies of firms that have achieved extraordinary levels of employee engagement point to a provocative conclusion: there is no single best practice. It makes sense. Psychodemographic research clearly shows that individuals want very different things from work; work plays many different roles in our lives. Companies with extraordinary employee-employer relationships leverage these differences: they know who they are—and it’s not all things to all people—understand their current and future employees as clearly as most companies understand their customers, and demonstrate who they are vividly, with actual practices or events (not through slogans and posters). World-class companies create Signature Experiences, distinctive elements of the employees’ experience that dramatically illustrate the values that make them unique. These Signature Experiences become powerful ways to encourage self-selection and reinforce values, leading to retention. The result: high engagement, high customer satisfaction, and high productivity...and relationships that capture both hearts and minds. Tammy delivers examples of some of the unique approaches organizations use to achieve high levels of employee engagement. She also helps audiences understand the six psychodemographic segments that describe our relationship to work, and she provides specific ideas for creating Signature Experiences.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Tamara J. Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and widely respected expert on collaboration and innovation–on building talent and enhancing productivity–and on the nature of work in the intelligent economy. Her work is based on extensive research on the changing workforce and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations innovate through collaboration. Tammy has authored or co-authored numerous Harvard Business Review articles, including “It’s Time to Retire Retirement,” winner of the McKinsey Award, an MIT Sloan Management Review article, and the book Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent. She recently completed a trilogy of books on how individuals in specific generations can excel in today’s workplace. Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation, What’s Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead and Getting the Career You Want and Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work.

An interactive, engaging keynote presenter, Tammy consistently earns high praise. In fact, she was the #1-rated speaker at SHRM's 2006 Annual Conference Master Series. Tammy offers a fundamentally optimistic point of view, along with fascinating trends and actionable counsel. Perhaps more importantly, she will build-to-suit, depending on your learning objectives. Her blog, Across the Ages, appears on the Harvard Business School Publishing site where it is the highest-rated blog. Her entries address how the talent shortage and shifting employee values will create opportunities for individuals—and challenges for corporations that aren't prepared! Tammy's article "Leading Across the Ages" was one of Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Ideas of 2008. HarvardBusiness.org created a Best of 2007, a collection of the editors' favorite content from the entire year. Three of the 19 selections are based on Tammy's work.

A Closer Look at Tammy

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Tammy's current research agenda?

In her own words:

There is a lot happening in our world, particularly in our work world. Some people view that with a sense of doom and dread, but I don’t. I see tremendous opportunities ahead for both individuals and corporations, provided they are ready to take advantage of the shifts under way and adapt approaches and practices.

My current research agenda includes continuing exploration of the trends that shape tomorrow’s corporations and the values of the individuals who work within them. My view of the future is grounded in extensive research on changing demographics, employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations collaborate and innovate. I have always been very interested in technology, how it is changing the way people work and live, and how organizations function as a result.

Although my most recent work has focused primarily on the changing workforce, my career more broadly has involved issues associated with building and managing successful organizations. I started with work in classic business strategy, but quickly focused on developing strategy for firms in which the success of their investments in technology/R&D was a key determinant of their strategic options (pharmaceuticals and others). This led me to work on how to make those investments more successful and strategically aligned and eventually to my first co-authored book Third Generation R&D: Managing the Link to Corporate Strategy. Today my work continues full circle with continuing themes of understanding the implications of technology, the forces changing organizations, capturing people’s passions, and becoming more innovative.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Tammy's expertise, and what's ahead on her schedule?

In over 30 years as a researcher and advisor to senior executives, Tammy has worked with global organizations throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, helping them become more innovative and effective.

Her work today includes a great deal of "light bulb" work–helping senior executives understand the key issues that will affect their businesses by looking at events in new ways and identifying insightful and thought-provoking patterns. Although not (primarily) a futurist, Tammy’s work does include discerning and describing interesting trends.

Based on solid research, Tammy’s work is well-grounded and academically rigorous. It is also fundamentally optimistic, driven by the perspective that there are tremendous opportunities for both individuals and corporations who take advantage of the great changes that are occurring around us and adapt their approaches and practices. Working primarily with senior executive teams, she provides actionable counsel for business results and offers smart advice on how to capitalize on the changes around us.

Tammy is also a gifted and passionate teacher. Her work includes designing innovative curricula and teaching in a number of executive development programs.

Her colleagues at BSG Concours work with client companies to develop effective talent strategies and design engaging employee experiences.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Tammy's thinking and inspires her work?

• Those with insight into patterns, trends, technologies and organizations of the future–Peter Drucker, Thomas Malone, Jim Collins, John Seely Brown, John Hagel
• Those who understanding effective organizations and individuals within–Lynda Gratton, John Boudreau, David Garvin, Dave Ulrich, Peter Senge
• Those with a unique perspective on engagement–Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jim Loehr
• Those who understand the demographic and workforce trends–Ken Dychtwald and her colleague Bob Morison

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Tammy's must-read list?

Books that provide a unique perspective on or describe a pattern of historical events, such as Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond and books that offer provocative views of the future, such as The Future of Work by Thomas Malone.

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Tammy tap into to feed her mind and fuel her creativity?

Edge Perspectives with John Hagel (http://edgeperspectives.typepad.com/)

Edge (http://www.edge.org/)

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (http://www.thelongtail.com/)

Applied Abstractions by Espen Andersen (http://www.espen.com/weblog/)

The Becker-Posner Blog by Gary Becker and Richard Posner (http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/)

The Gig by Nadira A. Hira (http://thegig.blogs.fortune.com./)

OUTREACH
What are Tammy's pressing questions, and on which topics does she seek your feedback?

How will organizations change over the next decade? How do they need to change to take advantage of the technologies that will be available and respond to the way the today's workforce prefers to work? How can leaders create organizations that are innovative, collaborative and engaging—as well as highly productive and successful?