Milwaukee-based
ManpowerGroup recently named
Becky Frankiewicz as president and chief strategy officer, giving her responsibility for the global workforce solutions company’s efforts in innovation, commercial strategy and the infusion of artificial intelligence.
Frankiewicz delivered the keynote address at BizTimes Media’s annual Women in Business Symposium on Aug. 21 at the Brookfield Conference Center.
The theme of this year’s symposium was “leading through uncertainty.” Ahead of her remarks, Frankiewicz discussed leadership, dealing with uncertainty and the impact of technological change with BizTimes managing editor Arthur Thomas. Below is a portion of their conversation, edited for length and clarity.
BizTimes: How do you personally, when there’s no clear path forward, how do you approach decision making?
Frankiewicz: “Well, I’m not sure my style differs on if there’s a clear path forward or not. I think decisions, particularly for leaders, decisions are big. They’re impactful. It’s why we sit in the chair. But one of the things I’ve learned to do is I’m a student of myself, and so I know what I’m good at and I know what I’m not good at. And yes, I’ve tried to develop the things I’m not very good at, but there’s a certain point where you call it and you say, ‘OK, I’m going to start hiring the people around me that actually complement my weaknesses.’ And that’s what I do and I’m serious about it. … I hire for holistic thinking. And I think with others, I’m at my best when I’m sitting in the room thinking with my functional partners. And yes, at the end of the day, I’m paid to make a lot of decisions. I do not analyze those alone, and I do not make them alone, although the responsibility is mine.”
We’ve had a lot of economic uncertainty through the first half of the year. What leadership qualities are particularly essential during those periods where we don’t really know exactly where the economy is going?
“I would say synthesizing inputs … I’m not talking about senior, junior, I’m talking at all levels. We all have to be much more externally minded than I would say we’ve ever had to be … We don’t get this luxury of I’m just going to think about my widget or my product in current context. You have to lift up your head and look around. And so, you get so many inputs then that you have to be able to synthesize those inputs into decision making. Otherwise, you’re paralyzed by all the information and you cannot do that. You have to be able to say, I’m going to take an open aperture and then I’m going to close it and I’m going to make a decision based on the information that I have.
“The other one, I would probably say informed courageous risk taking because the informed comes from the outside-in kind of perspective. You have to get to a point where, for me, if I can see 70% of my way there, we’re going to move because if you wait until 100%, I’ve done over analysis and I’ve probably missed my window. At 70%, I’m directionally correct, but if I’m wrong, I still leave myself enough room that I can course correct.”
What are major trends you’re seeing in the workforce and how might those differ across industry or across geography?
“So even the way you ask the question’s interesting because historically we would say there’s huge differences around geography, sectors, industries or verticals depending on the language you use. Big differences. … If you think about the impact technology is going to have, it’s horizontal. It’s not just this vertical is going to be impacted. … We often say AI is going to replace jobs. It’s not exactly true. AI is a fluid capability that underpins business processes and takes some actions that are part of people’s jobs today ... but it’s rare to think it takes whole jobs. That’s one of the biggest things that I would point out is that technology is now transversal and it equalizes impact across industry with some rare outliers.
“The other thing that we’re seeing from a very macro perspective, I’d say two more. One is the retirement of the baby boomers. That’s not new, but we’re coming to the end. … The third macro trend I would say is this idea of soft skills as the future skills are moving at the pace of technology, that future capabilities that are going to be durable are going to be soft skills because the hard skills, we’re going to learn, unlearn and relearn on a regular basis.”
What are the skills you and the team at ManpowerGroup are seeing as important as the adoption of AI and its capabilities advance?
“We did a whole research paper on this … the question we asked is what’s a digital leader? We didn’t know what we would get out of that. We were, I guess, a bit surprised to say 80% of the things that are core to leadership remain, things like data analysis, bringing others with you. Those things remain. The new parts that came out are around informed risk taking. And my favorite is unleashing the potential in others. And when you think about for a digital leader, what does that mean? It’s because none of us are going to have the experiences that we can build upon to say, ‘Hey, I’ve done that exact job, therefore I know how to make the decision in the future.’ Leaders just have to be chief question officers. We have to know the right questions to ask because we’re not going to have all the experience that gives us that data. This idea moving forward is going to be much more about curiosity in terms of leadership.”
