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Here are five choice articles from the business press to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about a new lost generation, hiring an outsider for major reorganization, troubled print media, social media, and reading the org chart.

From Business Week: The Lost Generation
"Bright, eager—and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can't grab onto the first rung of the career ladder. Affected are a range of young people, from high school dropouts, to college grads, to newly minted lawyers and MBAs across the developed world from Britain to Japan. One indication: In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has climbed to more than 18%, from 13% a year ago."

Wally's Comment: The people who think hard about these things are worried about damage to the people who are at the age where they would normally be experiencing their first job.  They're worried about damage to the economy, too.

From the Toronto Globe & Mail: When a complete stranger's better suited than the boss
"Companies that are hoping to break out of the current economic doldrums are better off bringing in a complete stranger to lead a reorganization rather than promote a new leader from within, a new study recommends. That may not be good news for executives who are hoping to make a move into the corner office in their company, but it's a finding that executives hoping to switch fields might want to highlight in their job search, says Adam Galinsky, a business professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who led the research team."

Wally's Comment: This is a good article, but remember that it discusses research on executives who were intended to lead reorganizations. That's actually a pretty narrow slice of the executive labor pool.

From Strategy+Business: Reinventing Print Media
"Among its other effects, the global recession of 2008–09 is catalyzing a permanent change in the media landscape. After years of gradual audience erosion, the pressure on newspapers and magazines has accelerated. Severe cutbacks in conventional advertising — even when subscriptions or newsstand sales are robust — are slicing deeply into publishers’ revenues and shredding profitability. And it has affected print more than any other medium: Although overall advertising revenues fell by mid-single digits in 2008, newspapers, consumer magazines, and business-to-business trade publications saw print advertising declines of two to three times that. Performance has worsened so far in 2009."

Wally's Comment: This is an especially timely article, since Conde Nast announced this week that it would close Gourmet and three other magazines. Forbes also had a piece with "thoughts on the demise of Gourmet."

From INSEAD: Social media analysis: a new way of listening
"Social networking is a fast-growing online trend that is changing the media landscape, particularly in the way in which consumers and companies interact with each other. These sites enable community participation and include blogs, discussion forums, social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as consumer review sites. No editor is required, which means the content is not controlled and publishing costs are always near zero."

Wally's Comment: Note the last line of the opening paragraph of this piece. That makes a wholesale move to social media seem tempting in light of the rising expense of print. But don't be fooled. Unless you want robo-conversations and angry customers, you're going to have to devote some people and other resources to social media if you want any real benefits.

From Kellogg Insight: Reading the Org Chart
"Much like an architectural blueprint, a firm’s organizational chart can reveal important insights into the inner workings of the firm. Managers, analysts, and consultants can easily glean information about the structure—and even draw inferences about a firm’s culture—by knowing both the number of levels in an organization and the size of teams reporting to each person on the chart. Research by David Besanko (Professor of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management) and colleagues Pierre Régibeau and Katharine Rockett (both of the University of Essex) suggests that analyzing a firm’s organizational structure can also reveal much about the competencies and areas of competitive advantage within the organization."

Wally's Comment: The org chart can tell you a lot about a company. In my experience it gives you the most recent self-image, which may be decades old and may be dysfunctional. What the org chart won't help you identify are the people with great influence, but no power position. People with critical knowledge and relationships, but no position, are effectively invisible to the org chart. To spot them, you might try some social network analysis.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.