Leadership and People Management
Developed and emerging economies face increasing workforce shortages. This makes skilled migrants an important part of the global labor market. We know that skilled worker migration has significant consequences for nations and firms. For example, in the US, a migrant arriving at age 25 with a college degree pays about half a million dollars more…
Leadership and People Management
Having just returned from our annual family skiing trip I have been reminded of how important it is to conserve and restore your energy resources. A few consecutive, full days of skiing can easily sap your physical energy. But we all know that our mental energy is a finite resource as well. And sometimes it…
Leadership and People Management
As 2023 draws to a close, I would like to look back and ahead as I have done in past years. The ancient Roman god Janus—the god of beginnings and endings, gates, transitions, time and, duality—is not only an apt metaphor for this yearly review but it is quite fitting for the global mobility landscape…
Leadership and People Management
Summer is meant to be hot. Indeed, more often than not vacationers might complain about the lack of sufficiently warm ‘beach’ weather or the rainy days that interfere with their planned activities. Yet, with increased regularity we are also experiencing dangerous heatwaves and their impactful consequences. Just a couple of weeks ago southern Europe was…
Leadership and People Management
In my last blog post, I wrote about Johann Hari’s latest bestseller Stolen Focus. In the book Johann creates urgency about the collective collapse of our ability to pay attention. His main premise is that our decline of attention is not a fault of everyone’s lack of willpower, but rather a result of systemic forces,…
Leadership and People Management
What are the essential skills in the 21st century? A quick internet search suggests that these are skill sets that enable success in a globalized and technological world. As such, we can think of soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence, which all help to manage an increasingly collaborative and diverse work environment.…
Leadership and People Management
We are experiencing a rapid transformation of the world of work. Just within the few last years we have seen a dramatic increase in virtual work, gig work, different forms of collaborations beyond organizational boundaries, and artificial intelligence. All these changes guide new thinking about how work could and should be done, and organizations are…
Leadership and People Management
Five years ago I wrote about the automation of jobs, as it was already a prominent and somewhat anxiety provoking topic back then. In 2018 the general sense around automation was that even though robots are there to do more of the easier and ‘linear’ tasks, for example replacing cashiers in the grocery stores, more…
Leadership and People Management
In early 2021, labour markets witnessed a huge wave of job quitting, which was termed ‘The Great Resignation’, and much has been written about it. Now, we are approaching the end of 2022 with a newly emerged term, ‘quiet quitting´. In contrast with the ‘loud quitting’ of the resignation wave, ‘quiet quitting’ seems to be…
Entrepreneurship
• With a $26 trillion size globally in 2021, the retail sector is experiencing an adoption of technologies to improve consumers’ omnichannel experiences. • The "phygital” concept, growing in the retail industry, blends digital and physical experiences into one. • The startup WOW develops a sandbox of physical and digital spaces to test startup technologies.…
Very personal and compelling piece. Interesting what Mike says about Europe’s capacity to assimilate other cultures compared to the US – regional identity as latent prejudice. We don’t have the educational or institutional mechanisms in place to manage this.