us how critical it was that we retain what made us unique by recognizing that we could not create the future by recreating the past. “New Ideas” represented the go-forward strategy based upon creativity, imagination, ingenuity and courage. I believe that this balance must be reached if organizations are going to be competitive going forward regardless of their pursuit.
It is of utmost importance, both in today’s global economy as well as our local communities, to find talented performers. Although much has been written about the need for hiring quality employees, it’s obvious that much is lost in execution. During the last several years, I have been associated with over a hundred different organizations, and I’m shocked at the lack of emphasis on recruiting, hiring, finding, and keeping good people. I’m even more surprised at the lack of participation of senior management in this most critical function. Finding and keeping good people must be the number one priority for all organizations!
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to address a large group of human resource senior executives. I asked the audience, “How much time do you spend in the recruiting phase of your job?” Their responses both surprised and disappointed me. By their own admission, they spend most of their HR time getting non-productive, disgruntled employees out of their respective organizations. As the dismissal process becomes more complex, messy, and costly, the solution is clear: Why not spend more time up front on selecting the right employees?
In 2006, we surveyed the more than fifteen hundred executives who attended the Center for Leadership & Executive Development programs over the previous six years. They said their number one concern in the upcoming year was the hiring and retention of talent. Your strategic and operational priorities must center on getting the best people to work with you. If this isn’t senior management’s primary goal, then the company will falter and personnel will not be a priority for the rest of the organization. As president/CEO of The Berry Company, I spent at least thirty percent of my time involved in selection and retention strategies and personnel engagement.
Finding and keeping good people must be a personal priority for every individual in the organization.
I once asked a large group of first- and second-level sales managers at The Berry Company how many of them had personally recruited a salesperson, just one, over the last twelve months. The question produced a paltry twenty-five percent show of hands. The truth is, even in companies where hiring and retaining good people is the number one priority, this focus can still slip away in the hectic pace of business if it is not constantly reinforced.
I’ve never been opposed to college recruiting, job fairs, online recruiting, newspaper ads, and so on. While I support these resources as part of a recruiting strategy, too often they are the painful result of not effectively engaging your employees in the recruiting and selection process.
Your best employees are your best recruiters. Why? First, who knows the job and what’s required to be successful better than your best people?
Second, “winners run around with winners!” With high levels of employee engagement, you will increase your odds of attracting those prospective employees who are experiencing success in their own careers but weren’t aware of the wonderful opportunities awaiting them at your company. I always loved to disrupt people’s lives by making them aware of what they were missing by not being at Berry!
To quote Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
1 OBSTACLE Poor Selection
As the journey began, we ran into our first obstacle in addressing our first priority, people. We were guilty of poor selection. We had developed two bad habits that impeded our efforts to re-build the division. The first is something I call “the body count.” Under the pressure to get the work done on time, we would forsake all we knew about making quality hires and simply hire “bodies.”
In the yellow pages world, the only thing as important as meeting our advertisers’ and telephone customer’s revenue expectations is getting the directories published and distributed on time. We backed into our sales schedule by determining market penetration, productivity standards, and the number of salespeople required to meet those publication dates. Even though we didn’t have the sophisticated assessment tools available today, we had the ability to hire those who offered the most potential… when we were patient.
Every business has its own deadlines and commitments. You know yours and probably feel that same pressure when facing a crucial deadline to make certain you have someone in place to get everything done. You seek someone with “experience and a proven track record.” As the dates grow closer and that position remains unfilled, the criteria for candidates becomes “experience preferred… but not necessary.” Soon it becomes “just need a warm body.” This is a recipe for eventual disaster. Deadlines have a funny way of warping our vision.
The second problem is what I describe as the “You haven’t worked for me yet” syndrome. Back then, I thought we could change people. I would even sign off on hiring direct descendants of Charles Manson and say it’s going to be okay because they haven’t worked for me yet!
Of the hundreds of case studies, business publications, journals, and articles I’ve been exposed to, none is more appropriate in supporting our first truth than the work done by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman at Gallup and published in their best seller First, Break All the Rules. In their chapter “The Decade of the Brain,” they confront this most important issue of attempting to change people:
How much of you can be changed? If you hate meeting people can you learn to love icebreaking with strangers? If you shy away from confrontation, can you be made to revel in the cut and thrust of debate? If the bright lights make you sweat can you be taught to thrill to the challenge of public speaking? Can you carve new talents?
Many managers and many companies assume that the answer to all of these questions is “Yes.” With the best of intentions, they tell their employees that everyone has the same potential. They encourage employees to be open and dedicated to learning new ways to behave. To help them climb up the company hierarchy, they send their employees to training classes designated to teach all manners of new behaviors—empathy, assertiveness, relationship building, innovations, strategic thinking. From their perspective, one of the most admirable qualities an employee can possess is the willingness to transform themselves through learning and self-discipline. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The world’s great managers according to Gallup share quite a different approach, which leads to this mantra:
“People don’t change much.
Don’t waste your time trying to put in what was left out.
Try to draw out what was left in.
That is hard enough.”
The research was compiled by Gallup from interviews with eighty thousand managers. It validates what we learned in 1981, both intuitively and out of necessity, and has become the single most important lesson any parent, leader, coach, or friend can ever grasp: I can make you more than you are, I just can’t make you something you’re not!
Poor selection is far too often associated with managers and leaders spending precious time trying to change others and not recognizing that
People don’t change!
More importantly, even if they could, we don’t have the time or skill to change them.
What are the qualities and attributes that our very best people possess? What is the common thread running through all of our talent? A few years ago, I read this line:
