As I get older, my belief that less is more grows stronger. For twenty years I have been in and around the world of hiring. Yes, I am so old that my degree is in personnel management and I fell for the lure of human capital too. But buzz words always create a buzz for a little while, right?

Based on my line of work, I am asked multiple times a week about hiring systems. What are the best practices? Should I use tests and assessments? How do I determine fit? Is it skills and experiences that matter or is it competencies? How do I improve my hiring success? Can it be validated? Is it legal? Is it the right thing? Should I reference? Why do you have folks observe their jobs? Too many thoughts. Too complex. Just too much.

For me, it comes down to attitude. We will hire a positive person over experience. We will take a “half full” person over those with the “half empty” view any day. We all control our reaction to life. A negative person blames and and says woe is me. They don’t handle change well.

A positive person deals better with change. They smile their way through tough times. They are easier to be around. They take less energy to deal with, to live with, to manage, to be with on teams. So put away your check book and stop reading every hiring book.

Let’s learn to keep it simple, to keep it positive or leave the open job unfilled.

I have been thinking a lot about how any business creates a sustainable competitive advantage. Some folks call this a choke point. Verne Harnish fans might recall how Rockefeller “choked” his competitors in the oil industry by owning the distribution of his oil, because he bought the barrel company that oil used to be shipped in, which controlled his costs. But sometimes advantage comes from within.

Inside advantage comes from leadership and the way leaders have organized your business. Steve Jobs and Apple were able to clobber Sony with iTunes. Most people don’t realize that Sony had a two year head start. Sony had all of the artists and a history and track record of making cool, hip electronic products. After all, they did create the Walkman!

But Sony was built like most companies. The music business had one set of leadership who had their own P&L, their own agenda and their own ego. And of course the electronics division had all these things “going for them” as well. This “silo-ing” of interests meant they could not compromise and find common ground for the greater good of the entity.

But not Apple. Apple has one P&L and a leader that made collaboration happen across sales, marketing, design and engineering. There were and continue to be less silos than other businesses. And not only did they get iTunes and the iPod to market when others could not, but the departments had common interests, high quality interaction and discussions, speed in making decisions and shared learnings. There was no BS. They limited the building and protecting of fiefdoms. Instead, they all contribute to the success of any organization. Those grey areas waste so much time, energy, resources and money.

Sounds easy to be more like Apple than Sony, right? Yes. Until you go back to your organization and see all of the silos, fiefdoms, and leadership egos that are in the way.

Who would have thought that teaming and collaboration was actually so contrarian and rebellious?

One year ago on Super Bowl Sunday, I felt like my world was changed, dented, bruised, and altered forever. 365 days ago at 12:30 pm, I got the call that you never think about or expect. Frankly, I never thought getting this type of call was even a remote possibility. My business partner stopped by our office on a Sunday afternoon to grab something and called in the best panic/non-panic voice I’ve ever heard. “Chris, this is Chris, just get to the office now!”

I arrived in 5 minutes flat to see water rushing out our front door in a torrent. Our office was pitch black and cold. The noise and the smell — Oh, I can still remember it all vividly. Alarms, water rushing, lights flashing. The smell was that acrid burnt plastic or fork in the microwave smell. All-in-all it was just an onslaught to my senses. And to my emotions. Here I was, just hours away from enjoying our national holiday; watching the super bowl, eating wings and discussing the year’s best and worst commercials. And than WHAM! Fire and water are quite an unpleasant combination. Gnarly, actually. The damage kept us out of our office space for almost two months. And I lived through every single agonizing step with insurance company, landlords, electricians, plumbers, remediation crews, telecom and IT companies, furniture companies… You name it, we dealt with it.

BUT there is something amazing in all of this. It was the best possible thing to happen. In one of my new, favorite books, Zen and the Art of Happiness by Chris Prentiss, Chris writes, “everything that happens to me is the best possible thing that can happen to me. That when you find yourself in a trying situation, that’s when you go to work, reminding yourself of this truth and causing yourself to act as though whatever is causing the difficulty is for your maximum benefit.”

I know it is crazy, but we determine internally whether we are happy and how we respond to the world around us. On this fateful day I chose to lead. And to be happy. I had spent twenty years practicing leadership for challenges like this. This was my chance to show it and I recognized it immediately. And it was positively going to be the best possible thing. They were tough days and weeks and it was the hardest leadership time ever for me, but I liked it. People noticed. My staff noticed. And it turned out to be the best possible thing.

We had no choice but to alter how we do business. We made a hard left turn going really fast. We had to adopt new technologies over night. We had to risk. Some of my staff had to work from home and the rest piled into a small conference room where we could all hold hands at times.

What happened was a gift. CBI Group is stronger top to bottom. We have technological advantage. I know that CBI Group can survive and thrive in any environment, well, because we have. And I know it was my choice that day, to become negative and distressed or I could lead. And lead was the best possible thing.

Culture requires trust. For a leader to delegate they must trust their team. For team members to work on a team together, they must trust. Staff need it and want trust to be able to follow you. Try getting someone to do anything for you without it. Any relationship, personal or business, requires it. In a time of growth the ranks can swell, new staff arrive, new vendors are required, and more and more projects exist with real deadlines and budgets. This when trust matters the most. And perhaps, is the hardest to come by.

This critical time is when culture can really make or break your company. Trust comes from shared experiences and common belief. In many ways, our work belief comes from the culture of the business. It is probably why we joined the team. It might even be what we love about our work. And most likely will be why people leave. Trust and culture can shift as leaders change.

For me, culture exists so that everyone has an idea on what to expect in terms of behaviors or norms. We have a set of simple credos and guidelines that are there for everyone to count on and use when I am not around. Which, I hope is often… Not for lack of want for time in my office, mind you. But because the world requires it. Trust happens when we all know the playbook. When we know what to expect from our teammates.

For me as founder and leader of several businesses, I wanted a company culture that was honest and real. Where trust came from folks being themselves and being willing to trust that they can be that way without repercussion. I also dreamed of a place where we are one team with a focus on customers and that this charge unified us and made us equal in status and focus! Eleven years later, I can proudly say it exists. Some years better and stronger than others, but it exists nonetheless.

And through it all my team trusts, the culture!

If you ask me, this is the year of the leader. My goal for 2012 is to be a better one and I plan to focus more on the teaching and coaching aspects of leadership. But I also think this should be the year of the leader for a host of practical reasons. To start, some think it is CEO’s, pop stars and sports figures that should get all of the attention for the money they make and the value they create. Sometimes that value is entertainment value but all types of leaders create business value for the business that they represent.

I propose that anyone with leadership skills and credentials are creating real value in today’s market. In my years of experience, true leaders are hard to find and worth every penny they earn. As businesses large and small emerge from the tough times of the economy, there are less leaders to go around for all of us. Business stopped “producing” them formally as less dollars and time went to formal training and coaching programs. Fewer entrepreneurs started businesses and had the experience of learning as they started their company.

Don’t believe me and think my logic is faulty? My business solves recruiting problems and we see many organizations dealing with their leadership gap by hoping to hire the talent from the marketplace and away from others in their industry.

So with such a shortage I would like to proclaim 2012, the year of the leader. We need to recognize and reward the good ones and start to identify people with future leadership potential.

I would consider myself a leader. I am confident enough to say I am good one; and humble enough to say I got here by making mistakes and learning from them. I am dedicated to being the best leader I can be. But ask me and others how to make one? Well, that is not an easy discussion.

So this blog starts a research project for me. I would love to hear your thoughts on two simple questions.

1. What traits make up leadership to you?
2. And how do you develop and cultivate leaders in your company?

Simple questions, tough answers. Would love to hear from you and I will share what I learn through this blog in a few weeks.

Get involvement when you hire. Make everyone in the office aware and give them a role. We recently had candidates in our office to observe the role they were going to interview for. You do have observation as as a part of your hiring, right? Most don’t. Time is too precious; speed is too important. I am here to tell you that hiring slow is the smartest thing you can ever do.

When candidates observe different roles in the business, they are able to get comfortable with my team. This is great stuff. They can ask informal questions. They can build rapport and relax. Some people learn by seeing… sometimes more action and less talk is good. This simple practice can make or break a hire. The candidate will open up! They’ll confide in my team that she was unemployed and lied on her resume, that he was going to ask for more money than he made in his last job, that she was just biding her time until a real job that she wants opens up, that they were curious if they could work from home right away and get an advance on their first paycheck too. And oh yeah, is the boss for real around here?

So I kid. But there is truth in there too. I have exaggerated the many things that have come out of observations. Yes, I know the negative ones are just so much more fun to talk about, but great things come out of it too. Good, honest candidates realize they are not ready for the role and they tell you so! Great candidates share that they thought the job was, well, different than they saw and they let you know! And they are often a fit for other roles with different needs.

My belief is that you choose candidates by letting them have some say in choosing you. Most of us can tell a technical skill fit; however, after 40 years of Placers experiences behind a Burkhard staffing leader the rest is very, very tough to do really well.

Let your village help you hire. Let the evaluation of candidates start with by integrating with your team. When applicants call, when they sit in your lobby, when they observe your working environment, they are evaluating you and your team. When you make your staff hiring decisions, be sure to bring the village members together for a full evaluation from many different perspectives!

Maybe you have begun to take some notice of the changes in the economy of late? Unemployment is going down as the job creation machine that is small business is starting to crank back up, AGAIN. In fact, article after article says it the same way… this is no big deal, just small business adding a job or two (just check USA Today article from last Friday). What the heck? It’s time to take the risk and go for it! This is a huge deal… Business just lived through THREE years where each and every hire was scrutinized. Every dollar of payroll challenged. Let’s not forget where we have been, people. This is great news… Risk!? Frankly, this is not something that anyone has had any appetite for.

What do rules have to do with hiring? It has to do with culture. Sometimes a business has people priorities. Companies now are focusing on attracting and hiring employees. This is hard enough for companies that may have never done it very well to begin with. One or two hires? Not really a core process and talent of most small business. Big business and hiring? This is my business. And business strategy and leadership drive how recruitment is done in the business.

However, I take issue with what happens as business grows. Staff numbers swell, the old patterns of doing things are challenged and people issues creep back into the business. Business adds growing and keeping employees to the arduous task of hiring them. But how you deal with your company and its rules, says a lot about you as a leader and the culture of your business.

Most create a rule or policy every single time something goes wrong. I have a theory I was taught eons ago. It is the 99 and 1 theory, for every 99 people that will do things right, one probably will not. How much energy does your company spend on the one that does wrong? This is where your rules, policies, and compliance standards creep in.

In my company, with an Outside-In culture, we want to have cultural values that are our set of simple guidelines to live by. Not too many rules. I expect my employees to use them to make decisions without me. Leaders must catch folks doing the right things. That is our real purpose as leaders. Outside-In companies “self-patrol” themselves. Employees that are outliers are surrounded by the right behaviors from the cultural majority. They learn and norm or leave. Just as it should be.

A set of rule books don’t survive. But don’t misunderstand me, having clarity in your company is important. Employees gain in spades with clarity. You just can’t create a piece of legislation every time something happens. It doesn’t work when our politicians do it. Legislation does not have anything to do with enforcement or execution. How many pieces of legislation are misunderstood as government began to roll it out?

Let your employees think. Have basic values. Let them drive the business. And for goodness sake, don’t let one ruin it for 99!

Thousands of people hours later, we are proud to show off our new e-home at an old address. We’ll keep this brief because our site mostly speaks for itself, but we hope you enjoy the new design of the site, a look and feel that better represents who we are. Our aim was to build the site from your perspective – to help you, our visitor, have easier travels through our site so you can find what you want and learn about us along the way.

Please send any comments, both good and bad! While this is site is a vast improvement from our last…

2011 Website Snapshot

…we are still open to changes and improvements.

Thank you for visiting!

As we reflect on the year, it seems that many entrepreneurs focus on what we did NOT accomplish. We have visions of perfect days and weeks where we cross everything off the list of to-do’s and it seems that unless we reach perfection, it’s all about what went undone. It isn’t natural for us to stop and celebrate, to recognize our achievement. This is wrong. Without celebration and joy it is so hard to build momentum, to gain confidence in your team. And worse, when a leader does this, you become the “what’s next” boss. I find it harder to produce fun and happiness without celebration. I have heard employees complain about too much celebration, however, they usually have fun anyway. Everyone wants to be a part of something when progress is made and acknowledged.
 
So, for an entrepreneur’s resolution: stop your team and ask them to review their successes (and if you must, their disappointments too) but stop to enjoy the reward of what you did achieve. I promise it makes a difference.
 
You can do this for yourself as well. Every January first, I sneak down to my home office while everyone but the dog sleeps in — and I do a full review of my year. I think in terms of business, family and my many roles as father, husband, brother, sister, etc. I think about my physical pursuits and well being. I dream of hobbies pursued and those I wish to pursue. I think about places I want to go and things I really want to do. I even think about my mental health and spirituality and how I am doing. I think about all of these things from a place of progress to celebrate my wins.
 
This my favorite day of the year and the most luxurious thing I think I can give myself. It’s time to think about me and those that are in my sphere of influence. Great and magical things have come from this. In one year, I lost 40 pounds. Two years ago, I hiked 747 miles and finished a 36 mile competitive hike, finishing 10th. Another year, I spent time with a special loved one that I had lost touch with. I am still impatient. Years of reflection and goal setting haven’t helped that but I have hopes for that goal this year.
 
Not to be too preachy, but there are so many self help gurus and experts in this area. My approach is not new. It is a little bit of Covey, a pinch of the Dream Manager book and the Rockefeller Habits too. And wow, this is my 20th year of doing it? Wondering how I kept track of that? In 1991 I decided that I would start my own business and it took me 10 years to launch CBI Group in 2001!
 
Happy New Year and Happy Thinking!
 

Who doesn’t like something new to wear, a new car to drive or something fun to show off to friends, family and neighbors alike? As most of us start to unwind for a long winters break, CBI Group will get something new under the tree this year. Like most things worth waiting for; our marketing team finally gets to unveil our new website next week! Twelve months and thousands of people hours later, we hope you like what you see. We do!
 
It all started with a simple comment. “Chris, your site does not come close to you and your company’s level of professionalism and expertise. Your brand is better than your company’s.” The truth hurts sometimes. But now we have a sense of style and a sense of humor. What we do is solve problems and with our new website, that is clear. We are not a formal bunch and our words and pictures finally illustrate that. Looking for staffing expertise? Our site is designed from our customer’s perspective, just like the recruitment solutions we build.
 
Frankly, we have not liked our website for years. Like most sites for small companies, our site was barely more than a brochure for the business. If I said one time, I said a hundred times that we do not create new customers through our site. It’s just a money pit, a shiny new toy that gets set aside all too quickly for the next one. And who has time for marketing anyway? I discovered that we do. Our business has great and unique ideas and expertise. This content now has a home. And we will soon be proud to share much more of it and to drive new viewers to the site.
 
Over the last year we have come to realize that marketing is different today and is constantly changing. Without sounding trite, the Internet has changed marketing forever. Marketing is now Outside-In. Marketing can be personal and customized for the masses. Marketing is dynamic and flexible. The web makes it so. Gone are those days of wasted brochures and printed materials. Marketing can be quick and experimental. A campaign doesn’t work? Change it up. Find a typo? No problem, fix it. With blogs and social media, all of us can speak directly to our prospects and customers. Marketing can be honest and direct. Just look us up, not everyone adores us. No kidding.
 
So if you don’t have a Chief Marketing Officer, I’d think about hiring one or taking on the role yourself. When is the last time you went to the Yellow Page book to find something? Not recently. Search engines rule the world. Now we can be proud to come up in that Google search! And you can too. You just need time, resources, the energy, and some money. Put something shiny and new under your company tree in 2012!
 
Check back next week for our shiny new toy!