The 21st century workplace

The 21st century workplace is here.  It's technology driven.  It's global and multicultural.  It challenges old success and leadership paradigms that advocate for one winner and many losers. It requires excelling in three specific areas:  Innovation, Cultural Competency and Collaboration.

Being innovative can be as easy as finding the fastest way to complete a routine task to solving an intricate problem that has pestered employees for years.  The key element for anything to be considered innovative is the perception that it is different from what has been used or tried in the past.  In other words, the newness combined with the effectiveness of the idea is what makes it innovative.  Think the iPhone.

Being culturally competent can take several meanings.  The most popular description is the ability to interact and work effectively across cultures.  Then the question becomes: what is a culture?  Simply put, culture refers to the set of norms, values, beliefs and traditions followed by a group of people.  In this context, culture generally describes different ethnic communities (e.g. Latinos, Asians).  However, culture can also refer to other types of groupings:  small businesses, large corporations, start ups, government agencies, etc.  These organizations have a distinct set of values and ways of conducting business and making decisions that differentiate them from each other.

Being collaborative is a phrase that is thrown around a lot.  Collaboration is not easy.  It requires trust among team members and the willingness to support one another.  The traditional way of working and leading has been the total opposite.  So, this is the one trait that requires significant individual effort to start and group follow through for it to happen.

Some questions to ponder:

• Does my current professional experience show signs of these traits? How? What concrete examples can I offer a prospective employer?
• Which of the three is my dominant trait? Which would I like it to be?
• Whom do I know (personally or through the media) that embodies these traits?

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