Talent Theft: The New Edge In Business

It's not hard to make the case that the very best people in the industry, if they're not working for you right now, are working for someone else.

It's the same reason that "Now Hiring" or "Help Wanted" signs or ads should NEVER be a part of your recruiting strategy. The people who respond to these ads and signs respond because they are available. There's a reason they are available.

What you want is to steal away your competitors' best people - and there are two very good reasons for that:

1. When you want to hire high performers, you will need to let go of your low-performers to make room. That means that if the low-performers want to continue working in the industry, they will likely end up working for your competitors.
2. When news gets out that the highest-performers in the industry work for you, customers will gravitate to you. Also, once it becomes known that all of your former low-performers are working for your competitors, who would want to do business with them? Bottom-line: if you want to steal your competitors' customers, steal your competitors' best people.

Recruiting is finding the best talent in the industry and then going out, making them an offer and enticing them to come work for you. But here's the caveat: if your organization is known for being underhanded, dishonest and lacking values or ethics, no great performer will ever come to you. You will attract only the talent that couldn't find work elsewhere and those whose morals might be in line with yours.

Instead of viewing recruiting as stealing, start thinking of it in the same way you would run a successful sports team. You hire the best players you can. But that means you have first got to figure out where they are. So that means no more Help Wanted signs. They look amateurish and what high-performer, with incredible success, would be tempted to respond to a window sign or newspaper want ad?

If you want to attract the winners, you have to start managing like a winner. Create that Culture of Excellence first and great talent will be easy to attract. But, if you want to hold onto your mediocre talent because you don't want to hurt good people, then you had better create a strategy that takes them from mediocre performer to high-performer. Invest in them and they will invest in you. Manage.
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Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

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The Ethical Attitude of Consulting

Do you know the difference between "ethics" and "work-ethic?" I'm sure that in your head you know the difference but probably a little harder to put into words. So let me help you. Simply put, "ethics" are the internal gauge of what makes something right or wrong for a person. "Work-ethic" is the level of intensity that someone has for their job or whatever task they might be working on. That's a simplification but apt.

So, if someone were to solicit advice to help them improve work-ethic, would you be likely to offer some long diatribe on "ethics" in the workplace or would you offer some solutions to perhaps help make people more engaged in their work?

A question was asked on the LinkedIn business networking site recently that addressed "work-ethic." A Leadership Development Consultant, a Management Consultant, a Director of Franchise Sales and others didn't pay attention and gave long answers about how important "ethics" are in the workplace while offering not one word that addressed the question. The Consultants got it wrong: one who addresses "Leadership" and the other "Management."

Consultants are contracted by companies to help better their workplaces and are paid handsome funds to improve them. But, you can't help if you don't stop talking long enough to listen to the question. (Even after two other members offered clarification on the question - "work-ethic" not "ethics" - people still answered it wrong.)

They were sloppy. They gave opinion without reading the question. They assumed. Now, they look like an opinionated, loud-talking, look-how-smart-I-am, smarmy amateurs. And they did it in front of millions of readers.

There are more people talking than there are listening. You know that. You probably work with some. People don't think before they go off half-cocked, shooting off their mouths. Some of them call themselves Consultants and are too quick to offer answers to questions that they themselves don't fully understand.

People who willingly take on contracts that they are clearly underskilled for may have a good work-ethic but not good "ethics." If it's not your area of expertise, you can't offer expertise - just mediocrity. If it's not your area of expertise then, before you do damage to an organization, do the "ethical" thing: pass.

Oh, and try to understand the question before you start talking. You look much smarter when you do. Details.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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The Attitude of Reality TV

Let's not be confused here, organizations don't have values. Corporations don't have values. Businesses don't have values. They may have a culture but a culture is not values.

It's the individual who has the values not the collective. Therefore, it's the people who come to work each day that have the values, not the organization they work for. Individual values create an organizational culture. Erode personal values and you erode the corporate culture.

Over the last ten years, we have witnessed a substantial erosion in personal values which has led to questionable organizational culture. People are caring less about others and more about themselves now than they did 10 years ago. A recent Adecco survey pointed out that a shocking 41% of Gen Y's are willing to sabotage others and lie and cheat to keep their own jobs. These are the future business leaders of tomorrow? Think twenty years down the road when these same 41% hold management positions and positions of influence.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Turn on Big Brother, Survivor, The Apprentice, any reality TV show and watch manipulation, backstabbing, blackmail, lies, cheating and ganging-up in action. Decent people don't win these shows. They get crushed. The nasty win the prize money. This is what parents allow their kids to believe is real life in the work world because there's no discussion about values after the show is over.

It's time for us to make up for the lack of personal values that parents aren't giving their children. How about designing personal development courses right in the workplace that deal with values, ethics and morals? If something isn't done soon, almost half of new-hires are going to change the decency of your work place and your corporate culture. Otherwise, we're all in deep sewage. You don't want to work for the 41% who think it's OK to lie, cheat, steal and blackmail.

The Résumé Is Dead

What is a résumé? It’s nothing more than a collection of things you’ve done in your work life – a sort-of “eulogy” at work. Oh sure, it may also point out some skills that you were allowed to use while on the job but it really gives no indication of your aptitude, your natural talents nor your values and attitudes toward the work world.

Michael Bloomberg, NYC Mayor, once said, “You are not paid for what you have done in the past. You are paid for what you’re about to do in the future.”

Isn’t it interesting that you (boss or HR professional) decide who you want to interview is based purely on what your candidate may have done in the past – not what they are about to do in the future.

Why is the résumé dead?

• There is no indication from a résumé of what heights could have possibly been reached – only what someone has been given the opportunity to do.
• There is no indication from a résumé of what a candidate is capable of learning – only what they have learned in the past, what school they graduated from and what pieces of paper (degrees) they may hold (relevant or not).
• There is no indication from a résumé that a particular candidate could be the next great leader for your organization – especially if never given the opportunity to lead.
• There is no indication from a résumé of how brilliant a mind may be when hidden behind average grades and average positions in an organization – especially if the candidate was kept down by a tyrant boss.
• There is no indication from a résumé of values and ethics being paramount – especially if only ever given a lowly entry-level position and no opportunity to provide input.
• There is no indication from a résumé that a candidate is a decent human being – credentials on a wall don’t make you decent.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: The workforce is changing. Baby Boomers are retiring and Gen Y is here to stay. In a few years, Gen Y will be taking over management positions and leadership roles and the organizational structure that we know today will be dead – along with the résumé.

The great leaders of tomorrow and those who will change the world, including your organization, will be the people with ideas and those who will challenge the standard workforce strategy. They won’t be hired because of their résumés. And as long as you continue to believe that the résumé is the best way to find a suitable candidate to fill a position, you will be eating the dust of the organizations who have found a way to attract people with brains, ideas, values, ethics and a shared-effort philosophy. These people are found in chat rooms, blogging, e-networking, texting and hanging out with those of like-mind.

Who do you think would bring your organization a higher degree of greatness: a person looking for a job (armed with a résumé) or one who is already sharing ideas with others (armed with a Blog, followers and a huge network)? Which of the two choices do you think would give you better results in the future?

The résumé is dead.

One Person Makes Every Decision

Here’s a question that was posed to me this week: what do you think is the major cause for an organization suffering unnecessary employee attrition or turnover?

I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people would point the finger at: bad hiring, bad management, poor wages, stifling organizational culture, not keeping promises, misrepresentation of the work involved or failure to align with the corporate vision or mission statement.

There are a ton of possible reasons, most of them pointing the finger at a nebulous position or something else. Have we lost sight of the prime component here? Don't we undertsand that as long as we blame an entity or a position that we can’t quantify, that we will continue to face the same issues?

What about the employee who “needs” daily ego-stroking? Is it management’s job or the responsibility of “culture” to ensure that needy employees get their daily dose of Vitamin “Ego?” Not every single employee is cut from the same cloth. Just because they may have attended the same school doesn’t mean they have the same qualities and values as the next person.

HR needs to stop considering candidates for interview primarily from resumes. The world is changing. The new generation of worker bounces around from job-to-job looking for a fit. The new generation of workers doesn’t interview as well as older workers (unless they can interview by text message). The new generation of worker doesn’t even think like their interviewer (generational gaps). Can your HR department figure out what makes this worker tick?

Ask yourself this question: when your place of business has an opening, does it simply hire a body or does your place of work see the value and skill-set in a potential candidate and make a place for that person? There's a difference. Discover what your people are really good at and encourage them to do what they do best. Then hire someone else to do the work not being done but make sure they want to do it.

Want to change the culture? Change the people. I’m not talking about firing the lot. I’m talking about providing tools that employees could grow as people, could get better, more confident, build their individual self-esteem, improve their decision-making capacity, improve their communication skills and improve their daily dispositions and attitudes. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know. It’s soft skills training. But if you really want to grow your organization you will first have to grow your people.

Organizations work fine. It’s people who screw them up. Fix the individual and you will fix the organization and the performance of the organization. But unfortunately, we’ve become a society of finger-pointers and blamers. And in doing so, it’s easy to blame an entity or a title (department) for the results.

In fact, some will actually argue with me that it’s got to be harder than just making the people better. My response is; have you tried it yet? Have you fully experienced poor results from actually implementing some sort of personal-development culture within your organization and can, from a place of experience, say it doesn’t work because you’ve actually tried it?

Attitude Adjustment: If you don’t make a change on the focus of the problem, you will never solve it. Every decision, every success and every screw-up in every organization can be traced back to just one person. Improve the person and you improve the decision. Improve the person and you improve the work. Improve the person and you improve the performance. Improve the person and you improve the attitude towards the job. Improve the person and you improve the attrition rate. Simple huh? Now stop blaming “management” for not allowing this to happen and go talk to the one person who can make the decision. It all boils down to one person – always.

Boss Tip #6 - Keep Your Mouth Shut

Over the Christmas holidays, I ran across an article in the Winnipeg Free Press that claimed that 27% of employees said that their bosses made negative comments about them to other employees and other managers.

Now just picture this: lining up 100 bosses in a row, having 27 of them step forward and accusing them of talking about their employees to other employees behind their backs. How incredibly juvenile and malicious is this, really?

I couldn’t believe what I read. It was sourced from the College of Business at Florida Sate University who surveyed some 700 people in a variety of jobs. This was only one of their findings. But this is the one that surprised me the most. Bosses? Talking badly about employees to other employees? Jeez are we still in high school?

It’s time for these bosses to start growing up. What possible good can come from talking to employees about the performance of other employees? You can only hope, as a boss, that the person you’re telling doesn’t clue in that in five minutes you may be talking to someone else about him or her. Gossip is one of the most demoralizing factors in any office. And when that gossiper is in a supervisory position, the company is in big trouble.

Employee morale drops. Performance numbers fall. Attrition rises dramatically. Training budgets become stretched to the max from having to hire so many new people. The company will have a bad reputation with its employees. And once it becomes part of the corporate culture, good luck finding qualified people willing to work there.

If this gossiper sounds like your boss, risk the loss of your job by going over their heads and demanding a change. The boss that talks about their people to other employees needs to be fired today. If their immediate supervisors are reluctant to do something about it, they should be fired too.

And if you can’t find a way to make senior management do something about the problem, then plan your exit strategy and perhaps consider doing what they do: talk to others behind their backs – others like the media.

Nothing solves a problem quicker than the watchful eye of the general public and a subsequent drop in business. No business can afford to keep loose-lipped bosses in their ranks. Business, be prepared to take your lumps if you choose to keep these poor excuses for mentors on-board. There is no excuse for this kind of behavior from anyone in a supervisory capacity. Doing nothing condones the behavior and actually fosters more.

Make sure your supervisors are skilled in the art of tact, confidentiality and diplomacy. If you don’t, you’ll pay – one way or another.

A Motivational Speakers Convention?

Did you know that there is an association of motivational speakers? Can you imagine what it would be like to attend the annual convention of motivational speakers? Well, sorry but you missed it. It was last weekend.

OK, to be fair, it not actually called the motivational speakers association. It is an association of professional speakers. They met in Vancouver this past weekend. I didn’t attend for two reasons: 1) I actually had an audience to speak to while everyone else was at the conference, and 2) well, I’m not actually a member of the association.

I used to be a member. Over the time that I was an active member of the association, I learned that there are some practices of the association that I am in opposition with at a values and principles level. I had a difference of opinion, so I left.

In the association, every member is welcome to work toward his or her CSP - Certified Speaking Professional designation. (It really carries no weight when you’re being considered for a job – trust me.) It is possible to become a Certified Speaking Professional within the first six years of ever being a speaker. All you have to do is make enough money over five years ($250,000-$675,000) doing enough presentations over five years (100-250) and have had enough clients over five years (25-100). Then you do the normal stuff: attend the convention every year (32 Continuing Education Credits), pay your membership dues every year for six consecutive years ($400/yr), get 20 clients to write you nice letters about how good you were (over 5 years) and pay a $375.00 US application fee. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Pass that criteria and you can be a CSP. (Honestly, for the speaker who is doing this full-time, the criteria is pretty simple).

Even though there is a committee who supposedly watches the speakers in action, and even though there is a questionnaire that is sent to clients hiring the speaker asking them to rate the speaker on preparation, delivery, thoroughness and professionalism, nowhere will the speaker ever be asked for what kind of results the client received. And that is where I take issue with a certification of any kind: where the certification is based on everything except the results the attendees experienced.

When I say results, here’s what I mean: if you’re a sales trainer, after you finished your seminar, how much did sales increase? If you’re a productivity trainer, how did productivity increase as a result of your session? If you’re a motivational speaker, how well did your session inspire the attendees to reduce the number of sick days over the next year?

Those are results. Results are what tell the story of whether or not a speaker should be certified as a professional – not how much money they make. Money is a lousy way to keep score.

And it shouldn’t be other speakers who sit on the selection committee for certification standards, it should be the meeting planners who hire speakers who should determine who is certified professional and who is not. (There is an organization called MPI – Meeting Planners International. These are the folks who should be handing out the hardware.)

If you’re half ways decent in marketing, can live with $1000 per speaking presentation (unbelievably low price for a professional speaker – more like a starting speaker), you could find yourself doing 50 presentations per year to charitable organizations and community groups. Do it for five years and you’ve made $250,000 speaking to 250 separate clients and organizations. You ought to be able to get at least 4 nice letters per year from clients and several who say that you were professional. You could do this part-time and still become a Certified Professional. You don’t even have to be very good. And that’s my issue.

Don’t even get me started on becoming a member of the speaking Hall of Fame. That’s an award given by your peers when they think you’re at the peak of your game, even if you’re not. After you get the Hall of Fame, there’s nothing left to earn.

Personally, I think the speaking industry is in too big a hurry to congratulate themselves on a job well done – even if it isn’t well done. Oh, and that thing about getting results for the attendees? Don’t mention that. They’re a little touchy on that one.