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Last week we looked at the talent being lost as a result of profiteering by for-profit trade schools and colleges. But what of American talent graduating from America’s top schools?

We know that America needs talent. We need talent in all walks of life; we need talent at every level of business, but some of our best talent is being lured away by Asia, Inc.

The lure is coming from Chinese, Korean, Japanese and other Asian corporations; they are successfully recruiting, wooing and hiring the best and brightest at top tier business schools all over the country.

“There is a sense that the center of gravity is shifting,” says Julie Morton, Booth’s associate dean for career services. … “This has never really happened before, except in little spurts, where you have a fairly large group of talented, recent MBAs asking for assignments in China, Vietnam, India,” says Jeff Joerres, CEO of global staffing firm Manpower. Adds Richard Florida, professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management: “I don’t think many of us thought Asia would become the destination for top Western talent—but it is.”

Part of this shift is recession driven, but the ’shifting center of gravity’ is cause for concern.

It’s not that the skills and knowledge acquired from international work isn’t valuable, of course it is, but it means that talent is lost to America for the next five years, give or take, when we need it most.

Additionally, foreign students are returning home to found companies, rather than staying in the US. That isn’t comforting considering that immigrant entrepreneurs founded 25.3 percent of the U.S. engineering and technology companies established in the past decade, according to a 2007 study from Duke University.

A bit of recession silver lining comes in the form of B-school grads taking an entrepreneurial path when they can’t find a job.

And there is a bipartisan (believe it or not) effort to gain talent by creating a “founder visa,” a two-year visa for any immigrant entrepreneur who can secure $250,000 in capital from American investors. After the two years are up, the person could become a permanent resident if his or her business has created five full-time jobs in the U.S., raised an additional $1 million, or hit $1 million in revenue.

But they are a long way from passing the legislation.

I find it sad that amidst all the rhetoric and hand wringing our so-called leaders in Congress do little-to-nothing—usually in the service of lobbying groups or an inflexible ideology that sees only the past and has little concern for the future if it involves change.

Image credit: budgetstoc on sxc.hu

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The economy is improving a bit, enough that companies are doing some hiring. And, just as in the past, the same idiotic attitude is surfacing.

It starts with a reference to the need for employee engagement and that ‘experts’ say that the companies with the best long-term success rates retain and grow their human resource base from within the company to ensure it.

But when a company fulfills its human resource needs by hiring from the outside, in most cases, it’s picking up the “rejects” from other companies.

And that part sends me ballistic.

Of all the totally wrong-headed attitudes I’ve heard on the subject of hiring, there is only one that is comparable and, in fact, they go hand in hand.

During every recession I’ve seen the theme is that the only employees worth hiring are the ones who are still working.

Even now, in a recession that dwarfs the previous ones and companies have cut 50% or even more of their workforce and are still cutting, those who are laid off are tagged as “dead wood” or “difficult.”

My blood still boils when I remember the excellent people who were completely trashed by that attitude.

I do agree that growing people from within is good company policy; however, there are dozens of reasons why a company not only would, but should, hire at levels other than entry.

• No company can go through significant growth and not hire from the outside—it’s a given part of that growth. For example, most startups and high-growth companies have neither the diversification, nor the depth, of talent needed when growth kicks in, so they hire at all levels.
• Hiring strictly at entry level and promoting only from within can create a hidebound culture steeped in a not-invented-here mentality, not only for products, but for processes—as happened at both IBM and HP.

There are dozens of other reasons (think about your own experience), but the reject and the dead wood attitudes are not among them.

The dead wood/difficult premise is BS, flawed, short-sighted and plain stupid.

The common belief that “stars” are independent of their circumstances just doesn’t stand up to analysis.

Most people work to the quality of their managers and the validity of the company’s culture—if they don’t shine it’s because they aren’t engaged; give people good managers and good culture and they can all be stars.

It is beyond stupid to lay work quality issues at the door of employees with no consideration of management or culture.

Image credit: TheTruthAbout… on flickr

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Do you have the courage to hire people with quirks? Those who are unconventional or have unconventional experience for the position? Will you hire someone who is flawed in some way?

Would you hire a ‘cracked pot’ for your team?

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.

At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.

But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream.

“I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house”‘

The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?”

“That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.

For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.

Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

Managed correctly, appreciated instead of tolerated or, worse, homogenized, the idiosyncrasies of your team, the unusual backgrounds, your cracked pots, are what push productivity, juice creativity and drive innovation across the board.

And often it’s another’s management failure that gives you the opportunity to increase the strength of your team.

So cherish the pots you already have and never hesitate to hire another.

Image credit: Blind Grasshopper on flickr

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Last month I wrote a post at Leadership Turn on the incredible stupidity executives have exhibited by focusing on the Boomers and Gen Y, while ignoring the depth of talent available to them in Gen X.

Based on the comments I really hit a nerve.

A few days ago I received an invitation to review a new book. I’m not accepting it, so I want to make it clear that I have no idea whether it has value or not—this is not a book review.

But the fact that it was written, whether it’s good or not, proves to me that the stupidity I referred to previously is worse than I thought.

The book is “Millennials Into Leadership: The Ultimate Guide for GenYs Aspiring to Be Effective, Respected Young Leaders at Work.”

I don’t disagree that companies are prone to throwing people into management roles and expecting them to swim, but I also don’t believe that reading a couple of books takes the place of a decade or more of experience even when that experience isn’t coupled with the kind of development that companies should do.

I’ve worked with thousands of managers at all stages of their careers and the majority all say the same thing.

Few talk about having a mentor or working for extraordinary managers; most say they learned what not to do working for poor managers and did the opposite when they were promoted—they learned by doing.

Leadership/managing isn’t at it’s best as a DIY function. Books can discuss the tools and even describe how to use them, but that is a far cry from doing it.

I don’t like waste and that is exactly what is happening.

Current management wasted the Gen X resource and rather than admit the error and reclaim the resource they look to a new, larger generation to come to the rescue, while books such as this make that generation believe they are ready to do it.

Now is the time to change that pattern. As the economy turns around business can turn around their attitude and recognize the need to utilize their Gen X resources and develop Gen Y beyond what they will find in popular books.

Image credit: HikingArtist.com on flickr

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Philip Mydlach wrote a great article saying that to create a better environment, where creativity and success can flourish, the management team should be like a fudgsicle—consistent all the way through.

Your management team’s behavior sets the tone for the entire corporation. So it better be consistent, predictable and true to your core values.

Absolutely true, as is the need for clearly communicating those values and not tolerating managers who don’t support them.

But achieving your fudgsicle is easier if you include a preliminary step that Mydlach doesn’t mention.

That step is using your culture as a filter in all your hiring—especially when hiring management and most importantly the executive team.

10 years ago I wrote and article for MSDN about how to use company culture as a screening tool to avoid hiring turkeys of any kind at all levels.

With the sighting of “economic green shoots” this seems a good time to revisit it (with some updating).

Don’t Hire Turkeys!
Use Your Culture as an Attraction, Screening and Retention Tool
to Turkey-Proof Your Company.

Companies don’t create people—people create companies.

All companies have a culture composed of its core values and beliefs, essentially its corporate MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), and it’s why people join the company and why they leave.

Generally, people don’t like bureaucracy, politics, backstabbing, etc., but when business stress goes up, or business heats up, cultural focus is often overwhelmed by other priorities.

In startups, it’s easier to hire people who are culturally compatible, because the founders first hire all their friends, and then their friend’s friends.

After that, when new positions have to be filled the only people available are strangers.

So how do you hire strangers and not lose your culture?

Since your culture is a product of your people, hire only people with matching or synergistic attitudes. The trick is to have a turkey sieve that will automatically screen out most of the misfits and turn on the candidates with the right values and attitudes.

Here is how you do it.

• Your sieve is an accurate description of your real culture.
• It must be hard copy (write it out), fully publicized (everyone needs to know and talk about it), and, most important of all, it must be real.
• Email it to every candidate before their interview and be sure that everyone talks about the culture during the interview and sells the company’s commitment to it.
• Everybody interviewing needs to listen carefully to what the candidate is saying and not saying; don’t expect a candidate to openly admit to behaviors that don’t fit the company MAP, since she may be unaware of them, may assume that your culture is more talk than walk or consider it something that won’t apply to her.
• Red flags must be followed up, not ignored because of skills or charm.
• Consider the various environments in which she’s worked; find out if she agreed with how things were done, and, more importantly, how she would have done them if she had been in control.
• Whether or not the candidate is a manager, you want to learn about her management MAP, approaches to managing and work function methods.
• Probing people to understand what their responses, conscious as well as intuitive, are to a variety of situations reveals how they will act, react, and contribute to your company’s culture and its success.

Finally, it is up to the hiring manager to shield the candidate from external decision pressures, e.g., friends already employed by the company, headhunters, etc.

Above all, it is necessary to give all candidates a face-saving way to withdraw their candidacy and say no to the opportunity. If they don’t have a graceful way of exiting the interview process they may pursue, receive, and accept an offer, even though they know deep down it is not a good decision.

A bad match can do major damage to the company, people’s morale, and even the candidate, so a “no” is actually a good thing.

Remember, the goal is to keep your company culture consistent and flexible as you grow. From the time you start this process, you need to consciously identify what you have, decide what you want it to be, publicize it, and use it as a sieve to be sure that everyone who joins, fits.

Use your cultural sieve uniformly at all levels all the time. If someone sneaks through, which is bound to happen occasionally, admit the error quickly and give her the opportunity to change, but if she persists then she has to go.

Do this and watch retention, creativity, productivity and morale surge ever higher.

Stop doing it at your own risk.

Image credit: daveyll on flickr

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These are dangerous times for companies. Not only is the economy in the pits, but some employees are ‘getting even’ when they’re laid off or terminated.

“The fired technology director for LifeGift Organ Donation Center pleaded guilty in Houston federal court on Thursday to illegally accessing her employer’s computer and deleting files including organ donation database records.

After being terminated, Danielle Duann, 51, repeatedly gained access to the LifeGift network and intentionally caused damage that cost the nonprofit Texas organ procurement group more than $94,000, officials said. A charity spokeswoman said the files were retrieved and no lives were put in jeopardy.”

This kind of action isn’t new; software ‘bombs’ and bugs have been planted with the threat of activation and disgruntled employees have held company information hostage as bargaining chips. But obviously, as damaging as these are, there’s no comparison to the employee who returns with a gun and starts shooting.

Sometimes the action is obvious, but when it’s more subtle, as in hostage information, managers often find themselves giving ex-employees the benefit of the doubt.

During a discussion with a group of CEOs recently KG Charles-Harris said, “But while I used to give people the benefit of the doubt about their awareness of their inherent prejudices, I have learned that they are most often aware of the consequences, but don’t care.  If one is aware of negative consequences of one’s behavior, but don’t care about the effects on others, it must be akin to maliciousness…”

Although I don’t disagree with KG, there are two prime points on which I wanted the group to focus.

No matter how brilliant an interviewer you are or what additional resources you utilize there’s no guarantee that at some point you won’t find yourself in this situation. People aren’t open books and more importantly they often act out from stresses and slights—whether real or imagined—so it’s not worth beating yourself up unless you consciously ignored red flags during the interview process or reference check. If you did, then let it be a lesson learned and move on.

Preventatives, not paranoia, are a much more productive focus.

For example, there are dozens of free technology resources on the Net that people use every day with no thought for the ramifications of control.

Companies need simple policies, not bureaucratic nightmares, when setting up document and information sharing resources, such as whiteboards, Google docs, wikis, etc., with the goal being having whatever it is always in the company’s control.

This is critical because life happens in the form of jury duty, emergencies, accidents, etc., not just the rare vindictive employee, and your company needs to keep going.

I’m no expert in this area, so look for a guest post on preventatives soon.

Image credit: flattop341 on flickr

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