If you have ever had to hire for any position whatsoever you know it’s imperative to consider exactly what the requirements are before you start interviewing and even better to write them down. Additionally, writing them down keeps them from being too fluid and forces you to consider what you actually need when faced with a candidate you really like who doesn’t have them.
The better you are at analyzing and understanding your team’s weaknesses and future needs the better you become at hiring the right person at the right time and for the right reasons.
There are many managers who can’t be bothered to expend the time and energy required to do this and that goes a long way to ensuring the candidate’s (and the manager’s) success.
These managers often shoot for the stars, but quickly roll over, drop the standards and settle for the first warm body that passes by.
Doing so damages the team, imperils whatever projects are being done and even jeopardizes the company’s future by reducing quality and shipping shoddy goods.
Our nation’s schools are responsible for manufacturing the future workforce.
Much of the executive management are choosing the road of least resistance and dropping standards in an effort to raise production numbers.
The result is the same—reduced quality and shoddy goods.
The difference is that there is no alternative supply. Eventually, as the economy improves, you will have no choice but to buy those goods.
The solution for investors is to force management to improve quality, not lower the metrics to look good.
Image credit: Design and Technology Student on flickr
Great Place To Work just released their Best Places to Work rankings for large, medium and small companies in countries around the world. So out of the thousands of companies how are the best places to work chosen?
Our approach is based on the major findings of 20 years of research – that trust between managers and employees is the primary defining characteristic of the very best workplaces.
At the heart of our definition of a great place to work – a place where employees “trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with” – is the idea that a great workplace is measured by the quality of the three, interconnected relationships that exist there:
The relationship between employees and management.
The relationship between employees and their jobs/company.
The relationship between employees and other employees.
In other words, it all comes down to trust and culture.
The funny thing about trust and culture is that the managers at all levels who strive to build trust and work create great, fun, inclusive cultures are reading this and nodding their heads, while those that don’t are clicking off to another site, because all the proof in the world won’t change their minds.
Imagine the level of idiocy required to blind people to studies such as this.
The North American winners in each category may surprise you—they certainly surprised me.
NetApp is the #1 large company;
Ultimate Software is the #1 medium company; and
Badger Mining Corporation is the #1 small company.
Ever wonder which companies are at the other end of the spectrum? The companies where the culture ranges from suspect to toxic and executive compensation outrages both employees and the rest of us?
It is reality that bloggers, coaches, academics, and other gurus write about how to engage the workforce, build cultures, develop leaders, motivate, and increase retention; companies pay substantial amounts to coaches and consultants to develop and implement programs; management agonizes on how to increase productivity through better use of its human resources.
It is reality that many companies are moving to “just in time” workforces; using temps and contractors at all levels with no health insurance, no vacation, no benefits—hire when you need them and dump when the project is done.
Business Week offers a comprehensive overview of this trend in a cover story entitled The Disposable Worker.
The forecast for the next five to 10 years: more of the same, with paltry pay gains, worsening working conditions, and little job security. Right on up to the C-suite, more jobs will be freelance and temporary, and even seemingly permanent positions will be at greater risk.
Obviously, there are people, especially at more senior levels, who have no problem with this approach; they relish the movement, change and challenge.
But they are the minority.
Everything described in the first paragraph is geared for companies that actually hire their workforce.
Typically, it’s a different set of experts who advise companies on outsourcing and temp workforces.
I ask you:
What will motivate workers to contribute at the level needed in today’s competitive global enviornment when they have nothing vested in the company?
Why should people who may not be there tomorrow put forth the initiative that underlays all leadership today?
How do you engage people when they have no idea how long they’ll be around?
In short, how do you get people to care when they know without a doubt that the company doesn’t care about them?
Many of this week’s posts will revolve around culture, so it seemed apropos to start the week with some interesting views on culture.
Louis V. Gerstner, former CEO IBM, says,“The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.”
Many experts are coming to that realization—decades after the average employee figured it out.
They didn’t use that term 30 years ago when I was a recruiter, but candidates talked about wanting to work where they “felt comfortable” and “fit in;” where they were listened to and were happy.
Edgar Schein, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, says, “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.” “If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.”
Robert Mintz said, “The crimes alleged at Enron were not the acts of a few greedy senior executives, but truly was an indictment of almost the entire corporate culture.”Of course, it was those same greedy execs who fostered that culture.
Jane Howard said, “We believe it’s our responsibility to create a unique corporate culture. If we do that well, we believe we’ll have enthusiastic employees. If we have enthusiastic employees, we’ll have loyal customers, and if we have loyal customers, we’ll have a sustainable business.”
Shades of Tony Hsieh, who built a culture so powerful that other execs pay him to learn how to implement something similar in their companies; “Our No. 1 priority is the company culture. Our whole belief is that if we get the culture right, then everything else, including the customer service, will fall into place.”
Zappos is a long way from fast food, which is often considered the bottom of the cultural heap, but many execs in that industry are hyper aware of culture’s effect. As David A. Brandon, CEO of Domino’s Pizza said, “You can’t overcome a bad culture by paying people a few bucks more,” something that management ought to remember.
Finally, research from Harvard Business School’s John Kotter & James Heskett found that culture has a major effect of the bottom line, “We found that firms with cultures that emphasized all the key managerial constituencies (customers, stockholders, and employees) and leadership from managers at all levels outperformed firms that did not have those cultural traits by a huge margin.”
I have 5 stories for you today about CEOs, two who don’t and four that do.
Pundits (consultants, academics, bloggers) are fond of lauding CEOs for their vision and skill at imparting it to their followers—Richard Fuld, Bob Nardelli, Jeff Skilling, Bernard Ebbers, Dennis Kowalski, the list is long—but after their meltdown you hear only from the Monday morning quarterback crowd.
But if you want to sort the true stars from the others, you need to take a long-term look—not Wall Street’s typical quarter or even a decade—at more than the stock price.
Moreover, you need to look at the down times; the times when the economy sucks, yet the CEO still finds ways to foster a great culture and stoke innovation—not just cut staff and threaten execs with termination if they don’t make their numbers.
For better or worse, it’s not in the vision or the leading, it’s the doing.
Our first story is should be a familiar name to all of you. Remember Sandy Weill? The man who drove the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 and whose deal making built CITI, the colossus that never really jelled. He was named “C.E.O. of the Year” in 2002 by Chief Executive Magazine, but that was then and this is now.
In today’s cutthroat business world how many CEOs would lift a finger to save their competition? Ted Baseler, CEO of Chateau Ste. Michelle did exactly that when freezing temperatures wiped out the grape harvest in 2004. He didn’t just save his competition; he’s credited with saving the entire Washington state wine industry. Baseler is the quintessential big picture guy.
“We want Washington known. All of it. We’re not about to fight over whose bottle of wine gets sold. We’re competing with Napa, with France. We’re not competing with Washington wineries.”
My last offering is an interview with Pete Peterson, co-founder of Blackstone Group, looks back on s storied career and offers his insights as to what’s needed to “rebuild the American dream.” There’s a video (that refuses to embed) and a PDF of the interview (requires free registration). I think you’ll find it interesting.
First, I had reason to contact CrystalTech (my host) and had another great experience. In spite of being acquired over the years (twice, I think) tech support has always been fabulous. The reps spend as much time as necessary on the phone with me until this tech dummy understands.
Second, I came across an old video that, along with being hilarious, is a graphic answer to what customer service is NOT.
I think if I read one more op-ed piece saying the path to improving US education is paved with better teachers I’ll scream.
I’m not saying that good teachers aren’t important, but I don’t believe that teachers are the root of the problems.
Before I start with examples, let me ask you this: how well would you perform if you were
terminated for insisting that projects not only be done, but done on time;
poorly compensated in comparison to most people with similar education and experience, but in other industries;
subject to pressure, tirades, insults and having people constantly go over your head to change your decisions; and
shown little respect by your direct reports, indirect reports and management.
Does that sound like an environment that would encourage you to do your utmost? I actually find it surprising that there are as many good, dedicated teachers as there are.
Staying with the current analogy, direct reports = students, indirect reports = parents and management = administrators.
Teaching is like any other form of work—it thrives in a good culture, sags, wilts and gives up in a bad one.
The Dallas Independent School System is a good example of what is happening. DISD is where the teacher was fired at the instigation of parents for being too tough and giving homework—the fact that the kids scored well on tests didn’t count.
It’s DISD that hired new teachers in 2007 with no way to pay them leading to a $64,000,000 budget shortfall that grew to about $84,000,000 in 2008. Their solution was to layoff the teachers—no damage to the administration idiots—maybe they all took math from teachers who passed them rather than lose their jobs.
Her rise in DISD in a span of three years has been frowned upon by some observers. She was making $87,000 as a division manager in 2006 and ended her career grossing around $140,000.
Some DISD trustees had questioned an organizational chart change that left her husband overseeing the department that she worked in. Her boss was reporting to her husband.
Ya think?
And then there is the saga of Taylor Pugh, AKA Tater Tot, who was growing his hair so he could donate it to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients—but his suburban Dallas school saw it as reason for in-school suspension for violating the district dress code.
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Back to our analogy. How engaged, productive and innovative would you be working for a company where management performed similarly?
Dallas isn’t alone; it has plenty of company across the country.
So before ranting and blaming the dismal state of US education on teachers, check out your district and state administrations—and then look in the mirror.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
If you have ever had to hire for any position whatsoever you know it’s imperative to consider exactly what the requirements are before you start interviewing and even better to write them down. Additionally, writing them down keeps them from being too fluid and forces you to consider what you actually need when faced with a candidate you really like who doesn’t have them.
(or small ones)
Great Place To Work
It is reality that bloggers, coaches, academics, and other gurus write about how to engage the workforce, build cultures, develop leaders, motivate, and increase retention; companies pay substantial amounts to coaches and consultants to develop and implement programs; management agonizes on how to increase productivity through better use of its human resources.
Many of this week’s posts will revolve around culture, so it seemed apropos to start the week with some interesting views on culture.
