Over 60% of Asia-Pacific respondents to the new BlessingWhite research survey on leading technical professionals, say that retaining technical and professional talent is their biggest headache.
 
The research suggests that technical professionals ? IT staff, engineers, medical professionals, financial analysts, scientists, product designers, lawyers and many others ? are a special breed: demanding, challenging, intellectually agile and sometimes insular and uncommunicative with those outside their circle. Retention worries are worst in high-tech and manufacturing organisations.
 
Perhaps they leave because they are poorly led? While 83% of people leading technical professionals agree that coaching and developing their team is important less than half (46%) rate themselves as any good at it. They say they are better at the 'soft' skills though like 'building trust with my team' (78% claiming to be good at this) and 'building collaborative relationships throughout my organisation' (66%).  It appears they are good at being nice but not so good at coaching people and providing interesting and innovative work. And being nice isn't enough to make the good people stay.
 
Based on the research BlessingWhite believes leaders of technical professionals who want to improve the performance of their teams should:

• be leaders of people, not managers of projects
• understand what makes technical professionals tick
• be just enough of an expert to lead, not do
• increase their influence outside of their team or department.

The survey took place over a six-month period in 2005 and 2006. BlessingWhite surveyed 898 leaders of technical professionals. Leaders from more than 30 organisations in a wide range of industries across 4 continents representing more than 10 functional areas took part. A copy of the full report will be provided at the presentation. 

Time:     19:00 - 21:00  Nov.16, 2006

Venue:   Room 105, A3, CEIBS

Language: English (without Chinese interpretation)

Mr. KEN SIMPER

MBA (Macquarie University);BSc. (U of Qld); Dip. Educ. (QLD)

BlessingWhite is a global consulting organization with headquarters in Skillman, New Jersey, USA. Ken, who has been working with BlessingWhite consulting processes and programs for more than 20 years is based in Australia.  He leads the Blessing White Asia-Pacific Executive Team which in turn supports a growing network of Business Development and Consulting Associates from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, India, Malaysia as well as Australia. 

Over a 17 year period Ken was Managing Director of DDI Asia-Pacific and then Vice President Operations for DDI North America.  He has extensive experience with the assessment center method and the design, development and conduct of behavior modeling learning programs. 

Ken's broad consulting and training experience includes corporate planning processes, corporate culture development, assessment, selection and performance management systems, career development programs, and leadership development.  He is a founding member of the Australian Cultural Imprint Research Group, involved in the development of organization change processes and leader development programs.

Ken is a strategic business consultant who is able to help senior executives make the link between human resource systems and processes and the organization's bottom-line.  He has consulted with organizations on strategy and structure, facilitated workshops and conducted presentations in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, South Africa, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Philippines, China, South Korea and Indonesia. 

Room 105, A3, CEIBS

No.699, Hongfeng Road, Shanghai

CEIBS Alumni Relations Office

Jenny Chen

Tel: 021-28905130