Tamara Erickson is an expert in collaboration and innovation in the workplace. With extensive research on the evolving workforce and employee values, her focus lies in how successful organizations can foster innovation through collaboration. As an author, Erickson has been honoured with the prestigious McKinsey Award and has contributed numerous articles to the Harvard Business Review. Her book trilogy delves into how individuals from different generations can thrive in today's ever-changing work environment. Erickson's refreshingly positive approach offers actionable advice tailored to your specific learning objectives. Her highly regarded blog, "Across the Ages," addresses the challenges and opportunities that arise from the talent shortage and shifting employee values, providing valuable insights to corporations. Harvard Business Review has recognized her for her groundbreaking ideas on effective leadership across generations.
In her engaging speeches, Erickson covers various topics, including innovation in the intelligent economy, building collaborative organizations, employee engagement, global generations, the upcoming "Re-Generation," and debunking outdated assumptions in modern organizations. She also shares valuable insights on effectively leading a multi-generational workforce and offers practical strategies for creating a culture that embraces individuals of all ages.
Four generations are working together in today’s workplace—and a fifth is on the way. Each brings unique assumptions to the job. As a result, events in the workplace are often interpreted differently by individuals in different generations. What may seem like good news to a Boomer might well be an unsettling and unwelcome development to a member of Generation X. Things that members of Gen Y love often seem unappealing or frivolous to those in older generations.
We are on the brink of an important transformation. New technologies are making their way into the workplace, offering significant improvements in generating, capturing, and sharing knowledge, finding helpful colleagues and information, tapping into new sources of innovation and expertise, and harnessing the “wisdom of crowds.” Over time, these collaborative technologies will change the way work is done and the way organizations function. They will shift the way we interact with people on our teams, find external expertise when it’s needed, and share ideas and observations more broadly.
The next demographic wave is almost ready to hit the shore. Children who are 15-and-under today have been influenced by a very different set of global events than those that shaped the ideas and preferences of people in their late teens and 20s today.
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?
Today’s organizations are ripe for change. Over the next several decades, we’ll see very different business entities evolve. Why? Because Today’s organizations were designed in response to conditions that no longer exist. Do you still think loyal behavior at work will lead to a lifetime of protection and care from the corporation? Of Course not. But many of our cherished talent management practices that are based on tenure, from pension plans to perquisites, like vacation, are holdovers from the days when this old assumption rang true.
A highly engaged workforce has never been more important. Much of the work today requires an individual’s discretionary effort—people have to choose to innovate, share knowledge, and provide extraordinary service. Many employees, particularly those in younger generations, are less motivated by money than the connection they feel to the work.
