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Great Time to be Latino?

I read this article in the Harvard Business Review Blog (Hispanic Talent Is the Future for Big Companies) the other day and started pondering about the position that I am in right now as a Latino. One notion that struck really hard was this:

By 2050, Hispanics will represent over half of the nation’s workforce.

I look around at Cummins HQ and we have a much diverse group of people representing almost all nations from around the world.  We want to harness as much diversity as possible, I have written about that some time ago.

Tapping into this rapidly-growing pool of workers will require a mix of traditional values and forward-thinking practices. The important role work plays in creating paths for upward mobility in many Hispanics’ lives suggest that companies should emphasize well-thought-out career development options – attractive promotion possibilities and access to resources required to attain them. To the extent possible, career advances should be accompanied by status-related recognition, including titles or other symbolic designations (such as badging) that can be easily shared with an extended community.

The article notes to companies that their future lays in taping into this segment of the population, to do this they will have to change their culture.  I would agree that:

  1. Latinos are a growing demographic in the United States, there is no denying this is true.
  2. Companies don’t really have a strategy for this demographic, other than going to conferences like NSHMBA.

Having said this, I don’t think that they really need to cater to my demographic; they should be MORE demographic agnostic. Knowing that Latinos like to be recognized, does not mean that as a company we need to have new ways of recognizing.  Even worst, targeting Latinos to these programs.  I am sure that there are other cultures / demographics / backgrounds that DO NOT like these public demonstrations of recognition.  I am not saying that companies would want to abolish the recognition either.  Companies need to set guidelines, processes and procedures for the good of the company.

Just like I would not think it would be fair to cater to another demographic element of the population, I would not want the company to put special procedures for me.

Had this article been about how do we recruit Hispanic talent that is currently being lost because companies are not recognized in Hispanic groups.  Or how can companies demonstrate they are truly committed to diversity.  That would be something that would be compelling, but telling companies they need to change their culture to cater to one group is simply unacceptable.

 

 

 

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First Year at Cummins

Having officially signed my yearly review, I can say that I have completed my first year at Cummins. I started in May, so my first year is only of 8 months of work. I will not bore you with the details, since most are internal work I have been doing, but will frame my activities as Stop, Start, & Continue evaluation of my work.

Stop

  • Wasting time in low importance activities
  • Making poor food choices during the work day

Start

  • Developing new skills through established on site training
    • Project Management
    • 6Sigma Training
  • Networking more
  • Participating in Affinity Groups at work

Continue

  • Focusing on results
  • High quality work
  • Being involved with recruiting: Student Information, Intern Mentoring, Job Placement, and New Hire integration.
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Love What You Do

I can’t say that I enjoy working on engines, just go and see my car and you will know.  I have never changed the oil in my car.  I did change the breaks in my car once in college, and later found out I put them wrong.  I like the tough of mechanics, but I have so little knowledge that I just never do it.

Now I work for Cummins, a company that makes engines.  Most of the people that I interact are mechanical engineers.  The other day I asked someone if they had a mechanic that could help me with something in my car, he looked at me funny, thought for a bit then said: “I’ve never taken my car to a mechanic.”

But despite my limited knowledge on the line of work that the company engages in, I love what I do.  I enjoy making plans and developing strategies to complete the work.  I love learning about engines and how they operate.  I can’t imagine the work that goes into creating some of the machines that Cummins produces, some are so big and complex.

My hope is that as time progresses I will be able to learn more about the products Cummins produces.  I want to take some classes that will teach me about engines and get my hands dirty.  Recently I traveled to Houston where we have a plant that focuses in the Oil and Gas Market.  It was fascinating the engineering work that goes into some of the products that are manufactured in that plant.

I guess in the end what matters is loving the sphere in which you operate.  Those engineers working on those engines, need people that create the business plans that will allow them to continue the work they do.  I love what I do, and I’m trying to do my best.

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Multinational teams – Are they doomed from the start?

Jeane Brett in her book, Negotiating Globally,  writes the following:

Teams bring essential resources to big, complex tasks. Teams can produce creative ideas, meet deadlines with quality products, and negotiate decisions that generate corporate growth and prosperity. Research shows that when team minorities dissent, majorities are more likely to generate original and novel solutions to problems. Organizations grow faster when top-management teams engage in constructive debate. Companies with top-management teams that engage in debate have a higher return on investment. Cross-functional, new-product teams are more innovative when they have a lot of disagreement about task design if they have a norm for open expression of doubts or if they engage in collaborative problem solving. Constructive controversy, the open-minded discussion of opposing views for mutual benefit, appears to be the key to creating value during multicultural team decision making.”

As I’ve spent last year and this year working with groups that come from different backgrounds and different countries I can see the value in multicultural, multinational teams.  Continue reading “Multinational teams – Are they doomed from the start?”

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First 30 Days

NewbieSo it’s been about 30 days since I started working here at Cummins and so far it has been a wonderful experience. Today I’m writing from Des Moines, Iowa visiting Cummins Central Power , one of Cummins Distributors.  I feel fully immersed in my job, and although I’m still a newbie, I am contributing.  The book The First 90 Days although very good, almost seems written for a high executive and not for a newly minted MBA Graduate, but there are a few things that have shaped my experience in the past 30 days.

Continue reading “First 30 Days”

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Say YES to the Offer

YesToMBA-Final

So you have yourself an offer, maybe even a few, so which is YOUR offer.  TLC has a show called “Say Yes to the Dress,” and if you have a woman in your life you  have seen it.  So in the show they tell the bride that all their dreams will begin to come true as soon as they find THE Dress.  To find the dress they have to try a few on and then they’ll KNOW if is THE dress.  The show also goes into a few basics and that is what I want to address today.

Know Your Budget

This includes 2 things, first how much money you need, second how much you can get.  If you are 35, married and with 3 kids your needs are different than if you are single in your 20’s.  So how much can you get, well weigh in your experience in the field and the resources you have available.  Know that there will be positions that will have higher salaries by their own nature and there isn’t anything to negotiate.  Know if you have limitations, you can’t expect to get paid a premium if you decided that you don’t want to relocate and want less travel.  So understand all the other things that have led to the number on that paper.

Look for what you like, you can do alterations on the small things

When you first see the offer you will probably look for 3 things:

  1. Salary
  2. Signing Bonus
  3. Variable Compensation

We all want to see that 6 figure number in the salary and a good compensation and a double digit percentage on the Variable Comp.  The thing is, those 3 things are the things that you can do alterations on; the other things on that paper might have more weight and less leeway.  Here are some:

  1. Title, were you expecting Manager and got Analyst? or Assistant?
  2. Salary Grade, does your salary grade represent the seniority that you expect? How soon can you change?
  3. Location, YES it matters? Is the cost of living comparable to the salary? Will you be happy there? Does it fit with family? lifestyle? social?
  4. Manager, Do you know the manager? Will he/she help you or sink you?
  5. Relocation, Does the relocation outweigh the location? Will it be adequate to move the family
  6. The OTHER benefits:
    1. Health Insurance: For some this might mean everything
    2. Pension, Savings, Retirement Plans: Are you getting free money? Are you interested?
    3. Perks: Parking, a Car, tuition, Options, Stock, etc

So see the total package, compare on all levels other offers.  What can be changed, what cannot.  Total dollar value might be very similar, but what are the things that are most important to you? On the things that matter most, which one do you like best?  If you find something you don’t like, put on your negotiation hat and see if you can fix it.

Picture yourself in it

So you can’t put on the offer, but picture yourself with that offer.  Can you see yourself driving in Austin or Minneapolis. Do you want to see the seasons or just hot and humid? Make a budget with the salary and see if you could live with that money.

Get an opinion, but you make the decision

You like to get an opinion, do it. Go talk to someone, maybe a mentor or you dad.  Some like to talk to a professor or career counseling to find out if the job is right.  What ever you do, don’t let them make the decision for you. The decision is yours, and yours alone.  I know, you have a spouse and I would involve them in everything and the decision is together, but I’m not talking about how to run your marriage.  What I want to make clear is that your friend will not have to live with your decision, and most opinions will be based on the numbers on the paper and not with your feelings about the location, your manager and your 45minute commute.  So be a big boy/girl and decide for yourself.

Finally, YOU have to LOVE it

Again as the wedding dress you have to fall in love with the offer.  You need to feel like that offer was meant for you.  Will the offer be perfect, probably not, but it needs to be perfect for YOU NOW.  Now you can send your acceptance letter and start focusing on your job.

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Why I will say YES to a Cummins Full-Time Offer

Globe_NAmericaFirst, I don’t have a full-time offer from Cummins, I still have about 4 weeks left on my internship.  Today I was thinking, if I had an offer would I accept it?  Then I came up with a different question, Even if I don’t have an offer, would I tell Cummins that I would accept any offer?

The answer that came to my mind was very powerful.  The answer is YES.  Would I work for free? NO. Would I work without any benefits? NO.  So, clearly I wouldn’t work for Cummins under any circumstance, but here is why I’m not worried about saying yes before knowing the offer:

  1. Even knowing that I will say YES, Cummins will offer me a competitive compensation package, because that is the right thing to do.
  2. Any position that I am offered will be as good as any other starting point.
  3. I will not be pigeon holed into a set area of interest, I will be able to move and find the areas that challenge and interest me.
  4. Within Cummins I will be able to fulfill my desire of becoming an international executive.
  5. Cummins is interested in being my career partner, and I am interested in building value for Cummins in the short and long term.
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Erwin Miller

In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.” — J. Irwin Miller

I will have to agree, but I have always known that character, ability and intelligence are traits inherited from Our Father in Heaven.
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A day without my computer

So I forgot my computer today at my home. What was I to do. My wife had driven me to work, so there was no way to get home. So I decided to do an experiment, see if my backup solution was adequate. I borrowed an old machine from IT, and logged on.

1) All work files are stored on a server, here in my office. So all current documents were readily available.
2) Email I have 2 account. One is on an exchange server, and current email is stored on the server. I do a weekly backup, and stored both locally, on an external disk, remotely. I didn’t have the local copy so I went and used the one on the external disk. My other account is on gmail, so I didn’t have to do anything, webmail rocks.
3) Some files that I only had on my laptop, had not yet been backed up, so I turned to my faithful MOZY backup. I went to the online service, logged in and did a web restore. I selected the files that I needed and in a few minutes I had them.
4) My local backup was even good to listen to some music during the day.

In the end, I realized that my laptop is not more than a thick client, only used for processing, but not storage. If I were to loose my laptop I would lose my configurations, but not my important files. Although I realized today, that I should include my desktop in the backup. I had to search the web for some files that I had downloaded recently. So tomorrow a few clicks and Mozy will go at it.

BTW, and so excited that I won a full year free with Mozy, they rock!