Grow Your Business

Have you changed how you approach your business in the last few years? Have your products and services shifted to meet a changing customer expectation? What kind of new innovations or initiatives are you working on to increase market share? Most businesses are operating quite differently than they have in the recent past and they may no longer have the right talent fit for these new approaches.

To retain your top talent in a free agent market it is critical to know how to align your business strategies with the right talent. One of the greatest frustrations to both employees and executives occurs when the talent is a mismatch with the strategies of the company.  Granted if you are transforming an organization there will be a period of time adjusting the alignment of strategy and talent, and as long as everyone is being continuously informed of this transformation while they are going through it, they will tolerate that ambiguity for a time.

The Right Talent with the Right Initiatives

Look at the five top initiatives that are driving your business this year. I’m guessing your marketing is taking a more Internet and social media focus. I would imagine your customer care is elevating for better communication, less wait time and customer expectations are setting a greater need for directly communicating with a knowledgeable employee. I am willing to bet you have moved innovation up the ladder of priorities. These are the types of changes most organizations are seeing to be competitive at the speed of change. As you upgrade your initiatives to reflect the increasingly competitive marketplace you have to ask, is my talent upgrading with the expectations?

Once upon a time longevity was a desired trait in employees but at the pace of change today longevity is only as good as the employee is willing to upgrade his skills. Let’s say, you have a marketing director that has been in that position for 20 years. Good for him, but how well does he understand the seismic shifts happening in marketing with social media? Does he know how to use a QR code? Does he even know what a QR code is? If you have a marketing director who still places ads in the newspaper and on local cable channels as his first choice for his budget dollars, you have to ask if he is the right talent for the times.

To execute your initiatives with maximum returns you have to have the correct fit of talent for the desired results. If you want to be innovative, create an innovative work environment and employee innovative minds. It’s time to evaluate your talent and see how well they match with what you are trying to accomplish.

The Right Talent with the Right Customers

How well do your customer-contact employees relate to the customers you are trying to attract? How well have you defined the “new customer?” Are you attracting a particular demographic of customer? Typically, customers today want to deal with an employee who has very good interpersonal skills and is knowledgeable of the products and services being offered. Customers calling call-centers want quick answers and an easily understood person to speak with.

Now look at your workforce. Are your customer-contact people the most personable? Do they enjoy solving problems for others? Can they handle a confrontational conversation?   Are your employees capable of sending away an unhappy customer satisfied with the response they received to their complaint? The brutality of customers’ comments take a specific type of person with the talent to manage these situations. It has less to do with their technical abilities and much more to do with their talent to communicate and interact with the customer. Are you still asking for job experience on your job applications? Experience no longer speaks to capabilities in the new economy. Hire for talent, you can train for skill.

The Right Talent with the Right Leadership

I met with an executive of a company who proudly told me, “I am president of a pure cutting-edge innovator company. I surround myself with innovative thinking people. I absolutely love the creative process.” Then why were the majority of his current innovative creative-thinking employees significantly dissatisfied? Why were those who left in a mass exodus the year before so vocal about their negative experience under his leadership? It seems this executive felt that innovative thinkers suffer from unbounded thinking and can easily be distracted and miss deadlines therefore they need a tight structure and someone to provide discipline to the process.

This speaks to the fear of many command and control style managers: If I don’t contain them, nothing productive will get done. The fact is, innovative thinkers do not work well in cages or with someone cracking a whip behind them. Yes, a tiger in the wild will roam the wilderness, but putting him a cage or in the circus under a constant watchful eye does not make him a better tiger. Creative people need room to roam, innovators need to be able to work through the process, and talent needs an environment that allows them to grow. Understanding the talented people you are leading is most important to unleashing the best their talents have to offer. Some talent works best in a private office without interruptions, some talent likes open unbounded work space, and some talent must have constant human interaction. Know your talent needs. Know how to lead them and know how they fit well with your initiatives and you will create a comfortable work environment and create great success for the organization.

Every business executive talks about innovation, the need for innovation, they have to innovate or die, and some say how great they are at innovation, but their innovations never reach the customer in time. Why is this the case? Because when innovation is expected because it’s the most important word in Buzzword Bingo, it fails to have the passion to see it through.

Talk is cheap, ideas are free, and intent is easy.

If you want to truly give your customers some meaningful innovations follow these rules to S.T.A.R.T. Something.

S.     Show Initiative

If your best innovation is covering ground your competitors have already walked, you are not innovating – you are catching up. Creating a Phone app? Are you the first to have this? Who else in your industry has one? Is your app doing the same identical things? There is no competitive advantage to being next in line, but you probably need this simply to stay competitive. True innovation comes from showing initiative. For example, being the first to take a customer pain and figuring a way to eliminate it. Start simple, take an internal process that is painfully slow and fraught with pain points (errors, internal bickering, etc) and tackle it once and for all. True innovation doesn’t come from copycats; it comes from those who strive to be unique in the market place.

T.     Try Stuff

If you feel the need to hit the Bull’s eye every time, you are standing too close to the target. Innovation comes from a series of failures and missteps that create knowledge to be better on the next attempt. This is why I hate “zero defect” corporate cultures. That mindset eliminates the best innovative ideas and efforts. When you can’t fail you only reach for the sure thing. Instead, create a culture of “try stuff” and watch how ideas get bigger and better and the execution of those ideas improve with every attempt. It’s how real innovation occurs.

A.     Attack Issues

Innovation implementation rarely reaches great heights because people tend to avoid risk, play safe and go for the sure thing. To innovate you must fully attack the issues you are addressing. It might get a bit messy, a few toes may get stepped on in the process, and someone’s feelings might get hurt. So be it. To win the battle with your competitors must first win the battles in-house. Half-hearted efforts never win the big prize and innovation isn’t worth trying if there isn’t a full on attack of the issue you or correcting with your innovation.

R.     Re-evaluate Everything

A large stumbling block to innovation is the transition from the vacuum of a lab to the dirty real world. Innovations don’t stand alone; they can bump into everything else that works with the old rules. The old policies, procedures, department design and even the old technology can be called into jeopardy with true innovation. This is why it is important when pursuing significant innovation to examine every impact a successful launch can have.

T.     Transparently Communicate

When you show initiative, try stuff, attack issues, and re-evaluate everything you have completely challenged the status quo. People like the status quo because they know what to expect, have figured how to be successful, don’t like risk and know where the pain is. Which is why innovation needs a marketing campaign every step of the way. The best marketing campaign for innovation is transparent communication. Let people hear the story along the way, encourage them to buy in, and share the benefits the overall organization will experience once the innovation is the new status quo.

Innovation is a defining tool for the new economy for every organization, especially in well-established industries. Don’t simply play follow the leader – START Something.

Companies have a tradition of luring away top executive talent from the competition. Free agency has changed the entire landscape of professional athletics as teams constantly fight for talent. The talent wars are now reaching the trenches, and companies are taking off the gloves and aggressively going after top talent at all levels, regardless of who they are currently employed by.

Because employees now know they are potential free agents, they are looking for the best package, not just more money. Who are the people you would hate to lose? It’s time to use these five best practices for retaining your top talent so they aren’t as eager to see if the money is greener on the other side of the fence.

1. Give them a quality team.

Top talent wants to work with other top talent. The best talent wants to be part of a team awash in great talent. Why? Because they know they will be challenged to improve, they know the best coworkers understand how to pull their own weight, and they will respect those they work with.

Your top talent is looking for more top talent, and so should you be, if you want to keep what you currently have.

2. Provide perks they value.

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People love to enjoy new technology they can buy, but they are loathing going through the efforts to create it in the work place. What are these barriers and how do we need to overcome them?

We don’t do that here

How many great ideas have died because people didn’t believe the idea could fit who they were? To compete in today’s business climate, innovation barriers need to fall. Whether the discussion is about service delivery, product innovation or experimenting with a completely new direction, openness, eagerness and curiosity are the skills required to bring great new ideas to fruition.

Ford is working on voice recognition technology, individual modifications of the instrument panel, and driver preferences that can be transferred between cars using a USB thumb drive. They didn’t used to do that, but they do know. They are asking themselves: How can we make our cars a killer app?

What if you could pay for car insurance by the mile?

What if your doctor could check your vitals remotely?

What if you were able to buy power only when it was the cheapest?

All of these innovations will be here very soon because people in those creative organizations know “We can do that here” is the answer to all innovation questions.

We can’t afford it

If people waited until they could afford it, most couples wouldn’t have babies, most contractors would never build a building and most entrepreneurs would never start their businesses. A lack of funding is a weak answer to an important question – How bad do you want it?

If you want it bad enough…

Create a compelling proposal that is strong enough to convince someone to offer capital.

Create a joint venture where a number of people come together to pool resources to drive this idea to the top.

Sometimes the negative responses you hear on your proposal is something worth listening to. How can you recraft the innovative idea to improve it, redirect it or retool it to be a better idea? Negative feedback isn’t always something to overcome. Sometimes it’s a guide to creating the best idea. How badly do you want it?

In traditional times I used to joke about Ready, Shoot, Aim managers who were not getting all the facts before they started to make decisions. In the new economy, at the pace of business today, that is how we do things and it can have great results or disastrous consequences, but is there any other way?

If a company waits until they get a product perfect before launching it, the product will never get launched and the company will miss the window of opportunity. Actually, this isn’t a new story. The first telephones, televisions and light bulbs have been upgraded and improved since their inception. The difference is those inventions took decades to improve. Today we are improving technology and product creation by the nanosecond.

The capability of mobile phones, the quality of web sites, and the ability to sell by the Internet has dramatically changed in the last 20 years, and changes are only happening at a quicker pace.

If Apple had waited to get the iPod perfect, we still wouldn’t have seen one because the technology keeps improving. Arguably, having a less Read more »