Grow Your Business

Sitting in my exit row seat in a plane next in line to take off I hear a phone ring behind me. The man in the center seat didn’t turn off his phone as instructed and proceeds to carry on his phone conversation. The lady beside me says to the flight attendant sitting in the jump seat right in front of us, “The guy behind me is talking on the phone!”

The flight attendant shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, and throws up his hands and says, “Nuthin’ I can do.” As we turn onto the runway he adds, “It usually never affects the plane anyhow.” USUALLY???

Have you ever noticed bad employees stay with you for a long time (because they have nowhere else to go, which is an article in itself as to why you allow them to say!) while your best employees are being poached and given opportunities by your competitors even in these challenging economic times?

Like the best companies in every industry, your organization should be on a constant search for better talent to strengthen your team. The talent wars will determine the success of any organization competing in this new economy. Before trying to attract and hire top talent you need to ask yourself three critical questions that will determine the quality of the talent you can attract and more importantly, get to stay. Are you really ready for top talent?

Question #1: Why do you want top talent?

When I ask this question of audiences I get responses such as, “They will make my team better. They will save me money. They will produce more. They will help my bottom line.” Every one of those answers is true from a manager’s standpoint, but not one of them will get that talent to stay with you. The correct answer to that critical question – Because I want that employee to have a life-changing work experience works for us.

What does a life-changing work experience look like from a top talent’s point of view? As one human resources director told me of an actual experience she witnessed; when the employee is leaving because her husband was transferred and she is crying in her exit interview saying things like, “I will never find another place to work as good as this one.”

A life-changing work experience is about how connected the employee is to the work she does, the people she works with and the opportunity to exercise her talents. She wasn’t crying over a lost paycheck, she was crying over a lost work-experience. This is why you want to hire top talent so you can provide them with that type of connection to what they will get paid to perform. If you can’t provide that experience, your top talent will not stay and frankly you have some things that need to be done to create that work environment.

Question #2: Are you hiring talent or filling jobs?

Filling jobs means you are interviewing when you have a job opening. Hiring talent is bringing on board a person who has talents you highly value and finding a place for them to fit your organization. When you are filling jobs you have a box you need to put someone in. It’s restrictive and based on a job description that has more to do with the mechanical aspects of the jobs rather than the fit of the person to the workforce or the culture of the organization. A job reports directly to a boss, has specific duties to accomplish and after a short period of time the owner of that box refuses to perform duties outside of the job box created for them to fit in.

Talent is more free-flowing in top talent-attracting organizations. When they hire talent they hire an individual to perform that talent anywhere in the organization that can benefit from those skills. Find someone who has a knack for solving complex problems with simple solutions? Why limit them to a box of one job title? Let them roam the organization as a solution-provider for anyone that has a need for that skill. The company is better off, the employee is better off doing that thing he is best skilled for, and everyone benefits!

Question#3: Are you willing to change the hiring and retention process to keep your top talent?

Top talent should be hired based on a talent description, not a job description. Recruits should be asked to demonstrate their talent, not submit a resume. Do you really care how they look on a piece of paper? As fast as business is changing, you want to determine how they are going to perform their talents for you in the future. Request a demonstration and conduct a team interview to see how well they are going to fit.

To retain top talent you will need to abandon a recent pillar of managerial structure: Treat everyone the same. One size does NOT fit all. Top talent expects to be managed and lead differently than the middle of the road talent employee. Managers need to be taught how to manage the elite and yes treat them differently than the rest. (Again this can and will be an entire article later.) When you insistent on managers treating everyone the same you appeal to the lowest common denominator which means you dumb down your organization and you lose the elite talent.

If you want to attract and retain the best of the best, you have to provide the work environment to keep them on your payroll. So the next question is: Are you ready for top talent to work for your company?

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.

Last Friday night over cards with friends I was asked, “What’s the point of Twitter?” Before I could respond, a guy waded into the conversation by saying, “There is no point. Who cares what I had for breakfast?”

I realize so many people feel the same way, and they totally are missing the point and the value of social media.

Talk with anyone who owns their own business, or is a solo practitioner, or is looking for a job. They will tell you the two most important tools they have are their network and their reputation. Both of these are built today with social media. Without question, Twitter contributes to building your personal brand.

How you use social media, what you say, and the pictures you post will all become part of your permanent record. Not participating will also speak volumes about your brand.

“I have a good job, so I have no need to build a personal brand, right?”

There is no such thing as job security in the digital age; therefore, everyone, regardless of current position, should be building their personal brands because your business worth is becoming more and more predicated on your “Google juice” (getting a high representation in a search for you.)

When was the last time you Googled yourself? That’s right, put your name in the search box and see what comes up. How many times did you appear on the front page of the listings? Did you even appear on the front page of the listings? How many pages deep did you have to search before anything about you appeared?

If I can’t find you in a Google search looking for you, you are brand-less to the world. Who you are and what your skills, talents and capabilities are matter in today’s business environment. Companies are shifting to a more talent-focused approach to hiring and promotion than the old school experience-based hiring approach. Why the shift? Because everything is changing so dramatically that experience is becoming of lesser value compared to skills and talents that apply to current job demands. So what if you have 15 years of experience working with outdated technology? It just doesn’t matter anymore.

So how do you make yourself relevant? By building your personal brand.

Building a personal brand is tough. There are over 845 people in the United States named Russell White (and I think every one of them must have a Facebook account.)  One Russell White was a Heisman Trophy candidate out of California. Another is a gospel singer. Yet another is wanted for armed robbery. So how do I jump above this crowded space to grab some Google Juice and make my brand heard?

Start with creating distinction. I use my middle initial (Russell J White) in most everything I do. That gives me traction on Google with Russell White AND I dominate the first two pages of search results when people search “Russell J White.”  Personal branding takes time, consistent effort and participation in a number of social media outlets. In this article I don’t have time to go into all of the most obvious social media opportunities to build your brand such as with LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the importance of blogging. I’ll save those for future articles, but I do want to answer my card-playing friend’s question about Twitter.

Twitter

How do I use Twitter to build my personal brand, reputation and network? I simply treat it like a conference hospitality suite. Talk a little business, talk a little fun, and share information. Unlike a hospitality suite conversation, people can find everything you tweet, so keep it clean and friendly — use it to develop your reputation, not harm it.

Think before you tweet.

Many employers check the public record of Twitter streams of employees as the proverbial fly on the wall. It gives a great insight to the thoughts of the individual, how they approach life, and what is important to them. It will also reveal how they view work and relationships and how they communicate. Many celebrities and professional athletes forget the permanence of a tweet and how fast they can be shared. It’s hard to believe how 140 characters can ruin a reputation and cost someone an endorsement deal.

So what do I tweet?

Information you think your followers will find interesting. Monday at 9:04 am, I tweeted that Jim Tressel had resigned and included a link to the Columbus Dispatch article. On Memorial Day, thank those who serve us in the military. I have commented on the storms we are having, that I will be attending the next tweetup, and that I will be going to an upcoming concert if anyone wants to join me.

I will let people know where to find this blog article with title and link. The last blog article I posted someone retweeted it (copied the link and sent it to all of their network, thus building my exposure!) Like I said, a little business, a little fun and sharing information.

Respect the power of Twitter and use the medium to your advantage.

My Twitter account name, @BizWizTV, has over 6,000 followers and is growing. I use that account to specifically refer to my BizWizTV.com television channel where I post weekly three-minute videos. Google still sees my name tied to that account as it is registered in my name, so I still get good juice. Your Twitter name should speak directly to either who you are or what you are talented doing or, in my case, a specific destination that is about me.
Solely because of Twitter I have made many local connections with business owners, and I am offered a number of free networking events, lunches and meetings known as tweetups that have helped my business, my knowledge and my network.

As Twitter is maturing, it is far less about “what I had for breakfast” and more about breaking news stories, making meaningful business connections, and gathering meaningful information that speaks directly to my interests. Twitter is a great tool to build your business reputation, build your network, and build your brand. That is why I think it is the most underused tool in the traditional business person’s toolbox.

Have you ever been to a Meetup? Tweetup? Flashmob? Social Media event? What about using Foursquare to connect with people in the same location you just checked into?

Do you even know what these are?

These gatherings have no attendance requirements and have no annual fees. You pay as you go for the events you want to attend and sometimes they are simply free.

Rotary groups have an attendance requirement and a rigid schedule of meetings at least twice a month. Chambers of Commerce are constantly struggling to come up with services to justify membership. Both require annual membership fees. Why? Mostly to support overhead that may no longer be necessary. This is what is wrong with these groups: the model no longer fits the business world. Today’s business world is fluid, leaders are schedule challenged, and people only want to pay for exactly what they want and attend only those meetings that interest them.

Tell me I’m wrong – have you never gone to a Rotary meeting only because you felt you had to even though the presenter was of no interest to you?

Tell me I’m wrong – when it came time for your annual chamber dues check to be written, have you hesitated, wondering how to justify spending the money since you no longer feel you are getting your money’s worth?

Remember buying an entire album or CD for the one or two songs on it you really liked? Today people pay by the song, when they want it, 24/7. No more paying for what you don’t want to hear and no more waiting on store hours to buy it. Business gatherings are now the same way.

I have attended open invitation gatherings of local business people connected by Twitter (tweetups). I have made great connections over these lunch gatherings.

What exactly is a tweetup?

An organizer announces on Twitter a gathering at this restaurant at this time on this day. Those available and interested come and exchange business ideas over lunch. All of us know the best exchange of information at any chamber event or Rotary meeting occurs in the side conversations, so why not just have those? That is what a tweetup is to our group. Sometimes we have 12, sometimes we have over 30. The point is it is fluid, come if you can, and you only pay for your lunch. Simple and organic. No annual fees or restricted membership.

I also attend social media events. For these I pay a small fee. Once again no membership dues, I only pay for a ticket to attend those meetings that interest me. I obviously don’t get to as many meetings as I would like because of my schedule. Business travel just doesn’t allow for it. Were I paying an annual fee or had an attendance requirement, I’d probably drop out of the group, and that is what is causing Chambers and Rotary groups to lose members.

As one CEO told me when he got a letter from Rotary informing him his attendance was lacking, “They say they want movers and shakers, but today moving and shaking is very different from the 1950s.” Needless to say, he dropped his membership.

In addition, the younger generation of upcoming leaders are more expense focused, more immediate results oriented and more mobile. They do not identify as closely to their geographic location, traveling freely for business and pleasure and often working for companies hundreds of miles away.

I argue that membership fees are a trap for bad programming. If your meetings or offerings were that awesome, people would flock to your meetings and pay to get in Like TED conferences.) The fact is the majority of the people attending current functions are doing it out of obligation, not desire, because they have been trapped by membership fees. As more and more people are realizing that, memberships decline.

If Rotary groups and Chambers of Commerce want to increase involvement and attendance of younger, more active leaders, they need to create better programs and drop membership requirements, attendance requirements and overhead. Flash gatherings and meetings of substance are thriving with business leaders who make a difference. The traditional model just needs to be updated to attract them.

I have said a hundred times — luck happens when opportunity meets preparation. I’ve heard others say luck is another word for hard work that pays off. I’ve also noticed those who say these things are the ones who have benefited from good luck.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he found that success was largely impacted by good fortune. When you were born, who your parents are, and those you had a chance encounter with. Not to mention shifts in the world that adjusted the road to success in your direction. What was previously thought of as grunt work, was now a valued process. The work didn’t change, the focus of the world simply shifted.

None of us want to believe our success came from simply good fortune. But how else can you explain the meteoric rise of the formerly homeless golden-voiced Ted Williams? He was pan-handling on a street corner like many others in this country. A newspaper person shot a video of him, sat on it for five weeks, and then posted it on youtube where it took a life of its own.

I embrace the story of Mr. Williams; I think it is wonderful for him. But it wasn’t an intersection of preparation meeting opportunity. It was good luck.

My largest contract in my career came as a result of luck. It was a chance encounter in an airport club room. I’ve struck up hundreds of conversations in airport club rooms. If skill was involved I would have many more contracts of that size and would spent a lot more time in airport club rooms! It was just good fortune that someone was speaking to the right person at the right time who was interested in what I was offering.

Unfortunately luck also has a down side.

Consider the story of the 9 year old girl who was born into a major league baseball family, had been profiled in a book about children who were born on September 11, 2001, and then was asked by a neighbor to attend a congresswoman’s meet and greet with constituents in Tucson on January 8, 2011, where sadly she was shot to death.

She did not ask to be born into a wealthy, high profile family, she was one of a select few born on that day profiled in the book, and there was no action on her part that caused her death other than to simply be there. It was pure bad luck.

In poker the top players calculate the odds in how to proceed in playing a hand. When long odds hit against you it is referred to as taking a “bad beat.” By the same token when long odds fall in your favor in the poker world it is called a “suck out.”

With a 52-card deck odds can be calculated. In life, odds are so variable as to be incalculable, but it doesn’t mean bad beats and suck outs don’t exist. Life is filled with luck.

Does that mean I am saying sit, wait and see what life brings to your doorstep? Not in the least! We have to put ourselves in play to allow positive impact to occur. But I am saying before we reject people because of their standing in life, we should consider luck had a large hand in the outcome. By the same token, before we get caught up in all of our own successes, we should be thankful at our good fortune. I am sure you can think of a hundred decision points in your life where you got the fortunate break and had that decision gone the other way; you would be a very different person for it.