Managing Leadership^®

The past week or so has seen some interesting observations and cautions on trends shaping the evolving workplace. They cover the ground from what is perhaps a surprising expression of an old, forgotten idea, to efforts to understand a powerful new demographic trend, to cautions about one of the ways we transmit knowledge across the generations in the midst of all this change.

Women molding work. Earlier this year, we noted here that The Economist had coined the term “womenomics” to describe the growing presence of women in the workforce, and to argue for a rationalization of compensation and tax practices in order to encourage this welcome development.

Management-Issues has taken up the issue to describe how women are changing the way these workforces are run. The piece seems to use an unfortunately simplistic right brain, left brain metaphor to depict the differences between male and female approaches to work. But maybe not – view the piece yourself and see what you think.

Mentors molding managers. Mentoring seems to continue struggling along. It has an inherent sense to it, but can be devilishly difficult to actually make work in practice. This WSJ piece discusses some of those difficulties and ideas for surmounting them.

I would suggest that a particularly important reason for organizations to study this management development tool is the very demographic tumult that the world of work is undergoing presently, only hinted at by the previous item. From the role of men receding to parity to that of the baby boomers beginning to exit altogether, big changes are afoot. Mentoring can help transmit not only accumulated experience and wisdom to those stepping into the traces, but also their thinking and instincts to those still in charge, further informing that experience and wisdom.

Work molding workers. Many people have been interested in the idea of the workplace offering a laboratory for testing ideas that can improve society, generally. Some even see the workplace as potentially the perfect microcosm of society.

This BusinessWeek article describes how the Google approach to management harkens back to Peter Drucker‘s early thinking in this area. You will be reminded of the practices of other iconic companies, but the suggestion is fair enough that Google is preeminent in putting so many of them into effective practice.

Since humankind first developed the economic capacity to support specialists, the philosophers among them have thought about how to best organize society. Now, managers are being looked at as the pathfinders in that role. Not a bad tradition to take on – but, when you’re a pioneer, you’d best watch your step!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of that, stop over to Inc.com for this piece offering some clues as to why pathfinders may be in front, but they’d better not be alone.

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