CBI Group – Leaders in Recruitment

I was honored to be the speaker at last night’s DelMarVa SHRM event. View the presentation above or download using the link below.

“The Economic Tsunami: How Businesses Are Rethinking Recruitment & Retention.”
Delmarva SHRM – Economic Tsunami Presentation

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Times are tough. Business is down. The recession is still lingering. Everyone is a little tired of being tired. The winter seems to never end. As a Leader I often talk of (and enjoy being in) the leadership hot seat. On second thought, perhaps not all of the time…

After the winter we have had in the Mid-Atlantic, many of us are happy to enjoy the “little things”, like sunshine and temperatures above 50 degrees. But for most of the winter, it has been hard to live without the heated seats in my SUV. Let me say, these are not your average heated seats. These get hot. Really, really hot. So hot that my son Josh and I often have contests on who can take the heat the longest. Remember as a kid taking a red hot candy and putting it under your tongue? The seats are that hot. Who wins? It’s 50/50 on most days. The truth is, we often think, “this can’t be healthy”. Is it possible that something is wrong here and that we could achieve second or third degree burns? No, of course not.

Then the special safety recall notice came in the mail. To quote it, “the front seat electric heating elements on your vehicle may overheat and cause an interior fire or result in injury under certain operating conditions”. I hope you can imagine how we have laughed about what we thought was just a funny household game. Now, the potential is there – we could actually catch fire and get the burn that we have been teasing about for years.

Since my words often about leadership – I guess my leadership hot seat will never be the same…

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The other day, I was leaving the office and heading to a wonderful lunch with my wife. No business talk, no talk of teenagers and braces or obligations and plans. Frankly the weather was ugly – raining and 34 degrees. NOT the day to spend much time outside. Then it happened. As I was leaving our parking lot I noticed an older gentleman with a cane walking around his car ankle deep in water, mud and melting snow. His car? Stuck in the mud, having missed the turn due to rather poor visibility and driving conditions. The gentleman’s wife was in the car and she could not get out without the use of a walker.

Do I drive away and continue with my plans? I only have an hour for lunch. Did they notice me? Someone else will stop, right? We all fight this internal dialogue. Trying to get their car out of the mud and waiting an hour with them for AAA was easy. In fact, it started to feel great. What struck me was how good it felt to help someone who needed it. To walk by, take notice and do something about it.

As I was standing outside, I started to think about this story and think about our habits as leaders. As leaders we know how to plan our days and stack meetings on top of one another. We let the world know how self-important we are by the pace we push and the company we keep. However, who on your team is stuck in the mud and cannot get out? Who needs us to stop, take time out of our day and help? How many times as leaders do miss opportunities to serve by rushing right past someone who needs us?

Later that day, I stopped what I was doing and I went around and actually looked at each employee. I asked them how they were. Offered to help. I listened. Not sure how many “cars I got out of the mud”. However, it felt as good as my earlier community service!

As a leader who have you stopped to actually help today? Go take action now! It costs little, yet pays huge social dividends!

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Every organization that I come across today – whether they are partners, vendors, clients or prospects – all rank driving new revenues and raising their top line as a top goal of their organization. Today’s organizations have lost more than 6 years. What do I mean? Most business are operating with top line revenue numbers in line with their 2004 reporting and staff levels on par with where we were in 2000. The toll of the recession has been six years of economic penalty and taken us back almost 10 years in terms of staff growth.

What do I do as a small business owner? Rethink sales? Make more commitments to marketing? Maybe add new services or kill non-performing offerings? All of us are in need of more and new customers.

Most simply increase their sales activity. We tell sales staff to make more calls. To see more customers. To send more emails. It is just a numbers game, right? The more you do the more you have in potential sales pipeline. Not!

I propose that we need to rethink the notion that more effort will get you more result, as there is a point of diminishing returns. Most importantly, is your sales process as customer friendly as the rest of your company; do you treat sales like you treat paying customers? Are you “earning the right” to build new relationships?

Earning the right involves building relationships. Earning the right means you must focus and shift to consultative sales. Earning the right is about learning about your new customer’s business. Earning the right is about being authentic. It is being credible by doing what you say.

Earning the right is NOT just about doing more.

If you are thinking about how you go to market and how you differentiate your business in the early stages of your companies relationships than perhaps you should do an “earning the right” audit.

Go sit next to your sales force. Are they earning the right or simply doing more of the same?

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For some reason as leaders we have it in our heads that work must get done a certain way. Yes, we all embrace expense management tools that keep our costs flexible. We have been educated to use a contingent workforce. A blend of temporaries, contractors, outsourcing or co-sourcing to manage the ebbs and flows of work, and frankly workers, is a necessity today. Peaks and troughs get steeper and come with ever increasing frequency. Leaders need to do anything and everything to keep ahead of the curve.

Yet we have short memories. We have big egos. Leaders never forget the pain and challenge of reducing staff, right? It sticks with us for a long time. Have you ever gone to a funeral and been so moved that you spend days talking about living life to the fullest and that our “problems” of the day are not really problems at all? That lasts for few days… How about your News Years Resolutions? I just saw a statistic that less than 30% of folks are still sticking to their resolutions for the year and it is only 6 weeks into the year. I think you get my point. It is the human condition; we survive by moving on.

We follow a similar path with how we staff our organizations. Successful leaders are optimists. It is how we attract talent, investors, customers. We are successful because of this outlook and view of the world. As things get better we will hire more staff. We will get jazzed and intoxicated about business again. We will take our eye off the payroll and headcount figures we now review weekly.

Right now the US economy is in a recovery, albeit slowly. My words might even seem silly; however things will creep along and continue to improve. Some day you will forget. The time is now to plan to do it differently. Never has their been a better time to keep your business more flexible, adaptable and responsive. We are all testing new business models right? We are driving topline while we micromanage expenses. Your staff has never been more open and accepting of change. Oh, how survival brings people together against there common enemy.

And you know what the workforce expects it. People understand that they must fend for themselves & manage their own careers Clint Eastwood Style, but are you ready to embrace it? Or will traditional mindsets and mores about work and careers drive you to repeat the over-hiring mistakes of the past.

The leader than learns the lesson will win. Pure and simple.

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Some lessons are hard to learn; others hard to remember. There are some definite “old/new” realities of the workforce and the workplace. Go back a few decades and imagine your favorite Clint Eastwood movie. Clint is riding into town on his trusty horse. What do you see? Blacksmiths, General Store Owners, Saloon Proprietors and, of course, the town Undertaker. There is a common thread to their careers; they had to manage them on their own. Even a hired gunslinger was 100% responsible for their career path. Clint made it work. These were the original entrepreneurs. As leaders and business owners today we have to help employees today embrace this “old, new” way to manage their careers. We do this by running our companies with flexible approach to getting work done. This is your competitive advantage today; you have one in place now right?

We all know that eventually Clint’s world changed. Cities grew around the Industrial Revolution. People moved to the cities in droves to improve their lot in life. They gave up career control and gained good wages. Over time career path, quality of life, benefits and retirement became perks for this new way to work. And for many, many decades it worked famously – 30 years and the gold watch. It became the American dream. Ask the workforce today and they know they must manage their own careers! The workforce knows that loyalty is a promise that business can no longer live up to. Why? Because people are outliving companies.

What happened to the parental company? The speed of change in business used to be manageable. The world was small. Competition somewhat limited. Then it all changed; the world got smaller, technology makes us faster all of the time. Communication is now instant. Competition? We all know; it is everywhere. We should study history in order to make sense of the present.

As competitive as finding work is today with 6 people for every job there is a real opportunity to think differently about your career;

- Do you have a career agent to help guide you through this new world?
-Are you taking steps to improve your skills?
-Are you thinking like an entrepreneur?

When Clint road through town, each small business owner saw the opportunity in starting their saloon or store. They were in control of their career. Are you?

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