Blog Posts — Page 15

Recruiting — The Black Art

In professional sports, considerable resources are spent scouting new prospects and eventually landing them in the organization. Those that manage professional sports know that you truly do “win it in the draft”, and they take their recruiting process seriously enough to make it a key source of competitive advantage.

With very few exceptions, other businesses do not do nearly as well. Many (perhaps most) organizations manage the recruiting process about as well as George Bush manages the English language. It might be entertaining, but only for the same reason you would slow down to look at an accident scene on the side of the highway.

It seems that many organizations of all shapes and sizes improvise their way through this important process. What makes this most surprising is that every time an organization goes to the market to hire, they put themselves at considerable risk: risk to reputation, as well as legal risk if they mismanage the recruiting process badly enough.

A meaningful discussion of this important subject would take much more space than I have here, but here are five ideas to improve the recruiting process in any organization:

Take it seriously — it’s very expensive to get it wrong. The Journal of Compensation and Benefits estimates the cost of turnover at 1.5 to 2.5 the annual salary of the position. So when your new recruit doesn’t work out, and leaves after three months, there is a real cost to the organization.
Know what you’re recruiting for. If there isn’t a comprehensive job description, you need to write one – before you even place an ad. You need to know what results the position should be achieving, and what competencies are required to do the job well.
Separate your needs from your wants. I recently read a job advertisement in the paper for a public sector organization that wanted 20 years of experience, and multiple university degrees for a job they were only willing to pay $45k per year. That person does not exist. Decide what your “minimum price of entry” requirements are, and categorize everything else as a “want”. In other words, it would be a bonus if the person had that experience or competency.
Get rid of bad recruiters or hiring managers. Anyone who seems to power trip or get perverse pleasure out of making candidates squirm should be removed from the process. If you find yourself with such a recruiter or an HR person – fire her. If it is a hiring manager, insulate them from the process, and seriously consider firing him/her, too.
Make the match. Remember you are being evaluated every bit as much as you are evaluating the client. Allow the candidate to ask questions; Tell people what to expect; follow up with everyone; always check references.

As best I can tell, most organizations recruit poorly not because they don’t know what to do, but rather because they choose not to do it. This is at your peril.

By the way – Jed and I have done a podcast and a topic bundle on effective interviewing. Hopefully you find it useful.

A Bad Boss Can Kill You

A 2009 Swedish study tracking 3,122 men for ten years found that those with bad bosses suffered 20 to 40 percent more heart attacks than those with good bosses.

Wow – glad I’m not Swedish. I’m actually looking for the complementary study that shows how bad employees shorten a supervisor’s lifespan. Maybe Hell really is other people.

So – is there any truth to the above study, or is it more silliness cranked out by academics looking to dabble in the real world by grabbing a headline? I’m sure the research would speak for itself, but what is instructional about its findings?

No one would dispute that stress will kill you, but how does a bad boss equate to stress? The obvious thing to do here is to list off all the poor qualities of a bad boss, and draw a parallel between their bad behaviour and their employees’ stress. In reality, stress merely exists, and our reaction to it makes it unhealthy.

So I am willing to believe that a bad boss will kill me, but only if I give him/her enough control over me that I react poorly to the stress they are generating. I can’t control their behaviour, but I most certainly can control my own behaviour, and my reaction to theirs.

Or I could move to Sweden. I hear it’s nice.

Business is a Contact Sport — Wear a Cup

At the risk of coming across like The Cranky Middle-Manager, I have a couple of grievances to air on how people interact with each other in the workplace. It seems that people claiming that they work in a “toxic environment” is all the rage as of late. In a minimum of cases, this may be truth, but in far more circumstances, it seems as though anytime someone doesn’t smile at you at the water cooler, you’re entitled to claim a horrible work situation.

The truth is that anytime you are in a workplace of more than one person, there are going to be disagreements and compromises. And contrary to much of the hype you read in the popular media, sometimes work will be a drag. To quote Jed’s dad, “If it was supposed to be fun, they wouldn’t call it work.”

I believe the root cause of this problem, is most people’s incompetence in dealing with conflict. Many people believe that conflict is bad, when in fact it is neither good nor bad, but merely exists. People’s response to conflict can make the situation bad.

Some people respond to conflict by becoming aggressive and overbearing. Others choose to avoid conflict like it was a toilet seat at the bus station. Both responses are destructive and will not improve or resolve whatever situation has caused the conflict to emerge.

Interestingly, in my experience I see the most common response to conflict to be one of either avoiding or yielding. Both are poor responses to conflict in almost all cases. If you are inclined to respond to conflict in this way, it is time to grow a pair and act like an adult. Issues need to be confronted and dealt with.

It doesn’t mean you are always going to get your way, but at the very least you will have some confidence that you have attempted to constructively resolve workplace conflict, rather than letting it get pushed underground to fester.

It’s a Jungle Out There

I found this clip on YouTube that is a hilarious/sad commentary on many workplaces. Happy Viewing.

Is There Hope for Introverts?

Other than questioning someone’s parentage, is there a faster way to insult someone than calling him an introvert? Isn’t introversion something that we need to cure people of by sending them to the Dale Carnegie Course?

Many organizations have invested in some form of psychometric instrument that indicates whether people have a preference for introverted or extroverted behaviour, but that hasn’t stopped the vast majority of people from throwing around these terms without actually having a clue as to what they mean.

People hear “extrovert”, and they think: outgoing, friendly, social, capable, productive, normal.

People hear “introvert”, and they think: shy, withdrawn, anti-social, illusive, dysfunctional, wall-flower.

The problem with these descriptions is that neither is particularly accurate, and it infers that people are capable of only one set of behaviours exclusively. There is also a connotation that Extroverts will excel in business to a much higher degree than Introverts.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins reveals the qualities that his research has shown as effective in running great organizations. Interestingly, many of the qualities of “Level Five Leadership”, are found more naturally in people with Introverted preferences.

You might also be surprised who may be a closet-introvert: High-profile leaders, television personalities, sports stars, maybe even one of your friends, neighbours, or family are introverted. They’re everywhere, so beware – you never know when they’ll want to slink into the back corner of a meeting room, and silently wish everyone would stop talking at once. Or perhaps pray that someone will listen to them for 20 seconds before interrupting them. Worse yet, they may think about something before responding to a question creating that awkward few seconds silence.

So you may be wondering where I fit on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Grid.

As someone who spends a lot of time talking to groups of people, and a person who worked in television (for a short and spectacularly unsuccessful period of time), I am rarely accused of being an Introvert.

I prefer to label myself as a Recovering-Extrovert. We might need to create a new scale for measurement.

Chicken$hits Can’t Be Effective Leaders

Far smarter people than me have written about what is required for effective leadership, but this week I have been reflecting upon the most necessary ingredient: courage.

I have had the pleasure of interacting with many leaders of varying quality over many years, and all of them have at least a few obvious strengths, but the common denominator in the truly outstanding leaders, are those who handle awkward, difficult or downright scary situations head-on. They don’t always get it right the first time, but the outstanding leader does not back down because she fears reprisal from her boss, peers, direct reports or some other stakeholder.

It is amazing how many people have a strong need to liked by those who report through to them. The relationship between a boss and his/her employees should always be respectful, but it does not need to be friendly. Many leaders hate to deliver bad news, or say “no” to people. Other leaders won’t deal with performance issues because it might involve a difficult conversation, or let an employee who should have been fired years ago get away with perpetual sub-par performance.

This is exquisite BS.

It is a form of dishonesty, and certainly demonstrates a lack of integrity when leaders fail to engage in difficult conversations. Progressive organizations have figured this out, and gotten rid of managers who are afraid to get rid of people.

The right thing to do is rarely the easy thing to do, but it is the burden of leadership. If you are too chicken$hit to do the right thing, then you should either grow a pair, or wait to be fired. The choice is yours

Your Smart Phone Could Get You Fired

There’s lots of media coverage this week of smart phones – iPhone for the continuing saga of the iPhone 4, and Blackberry for the UAE’s refusal to use them based on security concerns.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should come-clean now on the fact that I came late to the smart phone party. I had a perfectly good cell phone, and no one was able to convince me that a smart phone would make my life any easier. In fact – quite the opposite:

“You need a smart phone so you can get your email anywhere, and always be connected. The only thing I don’t like is that my phone reception is not very good.”

Sorry – that’s at least two strikes against the smart phone

1) I don’t want to always be connected. In fact I look to actively be disconnected

2) Why would I buy a phone with the limiting function being the telephone itself? It might make a mean frappuccino, but I would prefer it to make phone calls.

I finally relented and bought an iPhone because it effectively condensed four devices I regularly carried on business trips into one (phone, iPod, Palm Pilot & GPS). The bonus feature was that as a middle-aged white guy, I instantly felt cooler with a gadget from Apple.

So once I had the new smart phone was I perpetually connected, as I feared? No.

Not because the technology limited me in any way from staying connected, but because I often either ignored it or turned it off. I am able to do so because I’m not part of a big corporate food-chain where I would be lead to believe that my very existence on the planet is contingent upon me being absolutely indispensible to my employer.

As a contractor of services, I am generally exempt from things like anxiety about job security (because I don’t have any). But it got me thinking about why people feel they need to be connected all the time. It is nothing more than illusions of grandeur if you think that no one else can do what you do. If you are one of the few that has made yourself indispensible then your business is not sustainable, and we should probably fire you anyway.

Either way, if you’re one of those managers that is constantly connected to your workplace, you should work to wean yourself off this addiction. Work, like all other recreational drugs, should be used only in moderation.

Selecting Managers

Some kids grow up wanting to be a fire-fighter, a police officer, teacher or doctor. I wanted to be Mr. Rogers. No eight-year-old will tell you she wants to be a manager when she grows up (and if she does, get her into therapy top speed). Yet there are more managers than there are fire-fighters, police officers, teachers and doctors combined by a factor of ten or more.

So how does this happen?

If management were a profession like others, someone would go to school to study the vocation of management, apprentice for some period of time, and then be deemed fully capable of executing as a manager. MBA schools have failed to do this effectively, and the vast majority of companies develop their managers in a haphazard fashion.

Most people end up as managers by going into to some line of work for which they show some aptitude, and then are promoted to oversee others doing similar work. Somewhere along the line, they might take a course or two, and some companies may even send their high potential new managers to business school.

Most organizations make the critical mistake of assuming that because someone is a proficient practitioner of a certain trade that she will be a good manager. Organizations need to change their focus away from the technical aspects of a particular function (or group of functions), and instead focus on what skills a manager will need to be successful in that environment.

If more than half that list of competencies is focused on technical aspects of the industry or job, then it has been done wrong.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a big fan of pulling people with no industry experience, and placing them in key management positions. I don’t think this approach has worked very often. If organizations are serious about having great management, then they need to select people for management positions with the core competencies required to manage in that environment, and then continually develop them.

Either that, or select tall guys with brown hair, who wear blue shirts. That works too.

Summer and Pretending to Work

One of my favourite work assignments was a project based in Philadelphia that was a joint venture between an American Company and a British one. One would think the similarities between these two countries would keep cross-cultural issues to a minimum, but as anyone who has worked in both countries will tell you, the differences are more than merely adjusting to funny accents.

One of the first wrinkles that needed to ironed out was the fact that Americans take about 3 weeks vacation a year in increments of no longer than 5 days, and their British counterparts have two or three times that holiday entitlement.

While the Brits would jet off to Southern Europe for 3 weeks at a time during the summer, the Americans would be at the office working the same excessive hours as always. Interestingly, the productivity of the two groups was about the same.

This got me to thinking about how we work in North America, and how much of the time we are pretending to work. Lots of people will take offence to the notion that they are not really working, but in reality the bulk of the work at many organizations takes place in just a few weeks per year.

January through May are good production months, except for a few days around Easter and Spring Break. June through August, many people are not at work at all, and those that are working show up, but really have one eye to the outdoors and their next BBQ. September and October are usually about budgeting and planning, and while some will argue they are critical to the business, it distracts from the actual running of the business, and often adds far less value than it costs in time and effort. Finally November and December work gets done, but with the distractions of Christmas and (for the Americans) Thanksgiving.

So as a manager, how do you reconcile that the few people that do show up in July and August are probably just pretending to work? You don’t. It’s part of the deal, and most organizations don’t fall apart as a result. The real question to ask is whether the work being done the rest of the year, when the entire staff complement is in place and working at capacity has any value.

Anyway, I better take a quick lap around the office floor (holding a piece of paper, and walking quickly) so as to maintain the appearance of work, before someone figures out I’m part of the masses pretending to work during the summer months.

Why the FIFA World Cup Doesn’t Matter

In most corners of the world, South Africa is currently the center of the universe, and bars and restaurants on six continents (and perhaps a research station on the seventh), are packed with crazed fans cheering for the team or nation of their choice. Even in North America, where Football (not Gridiron) rarely attracts any attention, people are paying attention to the World Cup.

Some time in July, there will be a new world Football champion, and the sport will then fade into relative obscurity for the next four years. This is because Soccer doesn’t matter… at least to people in the United States. The Canadians have a marginally more international view of the world, but they are largely stuck with the baggage their big-brother to the South leaves them with.

Business in North America is largely conducted the same way. It stands to reason that when the world’s largest single economy by a wide margin is located on the North American continent that people would not be compelled to look beyond their own neighborhood.

However, the times are changing. Much like the disintegration of the Roman Empire, the economic dispersion precedes the rest of the empire, and businesses in North America would be well advised to look abroad – not only for market opportunities, but for management help as well.

This may seem like heresy to many Americans and Canadians, but there are European, Asian, and South American organizations that are exceptionally well run – they may even do some things better than their North American peers.

Health care industries are an excellent example. Both the United States and Canada have incredibly dysfunctional health care systems. If you don’t believe me, look at any global ranking, and see where these two countries place. In most northern European countries all their citizens have access to care (unlike the United States), and they have a mixture of public and private care that ensures the rationing of care is kept to a minimum (unlike Canada).

If Governments and businesses in North America could see past their own myopia to other parts of the world, a great number of business and social problems could be addressed.

Tell me I’m wrong….