If you’re looking for a job – don’t apply here.

One of the things I’ve noticed when working with successful business owners and executive leaders in large corporations is that they know who to hire. They look for certain characteristics in the person they put on the team. One of the first things they try to determine (once the skills are out of the way) is whether or not the person is hunting for a job or a position of responsibility.

If the candidate is looking for a job, they don’t go any further with the interview. If the candidate indicates that what motivates them and gets them up every day is a position with responsibility for which they are held accountable, then the interview continues in earnest, with success factors and lots of questions. The open ended questions will focus on how to figure out if the candidate takes responsibility for the consequences of her/his decisions. “What was the single biggest failure you’ve experienced professionally and what did you learn?” “Can you provide an example of  how you made an uniformed decision and then went back to correct it to take the project down a new path?” “Give me an example of how you allowed hard data analysis to override your instinct when making a business decision.” The candidate had better be prepared to give substantial examples that can be verified.

As you might guess, the person asking these questions isn’t looking for someone who is simply wanting to come in, do what s/he is told, let others take responsibility and go home at five. Nor is the hiring manager looking for someone who always sees outside forces or internal bureaucracy as getting in the way or causing failure. No, this manager or executive is not hiring someone for a job. Instead, they are looking for a person who takes responsibility; one who analyzes situations and is willing to look at data with fresh eyes. This manager is likely building a team that isn’t afraid of admitting mistakes, pointing out areas for improvement, or being the bearer of “bad news.” They are looking for a professional.

Let’s look at the other side. If I am a candidate who thrives on being in a position of responsibility, believe in being held accountable, and believe in being “data driven,” then I would want an interview to proceed as outlined above. If the hiring manager isn’t asking questions that lead me to believe they are looking for a professional, then I might take the initiative to ask some of the questions myself. I’d be very tempted to ask, “How will you know that the candidate you hire is successful?” What would you expect to be accomplished in the first three months and how will you measure it?” “How would you describe the culture of accountability in your organization?” If the manager fumbles the answers to these questions, this is not a cultural match for me and I may want to move on. That’s a very difficult decision, especially in these times. However, to settle for a job when you are looking for responsibility and a career position is going to hurt you in the long run.

Readers of this blog will not find too much surprising in this post. Yet, I see hiring managers make the same mistakes over and over again. I also see senior executives taking jobs in a panic – they have bills to pay and a family to support. Here is where I see the problem manifest most often – hiring a salesperson or sales manager. Sales people have a built in aversion to accepting responsibility for failure. Now before you fill my in-basket with hate mail, let me admit that I have come up through the sales ranks and managed a multi-channel sales team at several companies. I found myself succumbing to the very mindset that I’m suggesting isn’t healthy. There’s a simple and understandable explanation for this stereotype of the salesperson (apologies for those of you who have figured this out and grown out of it). A salesperson always faces more rejection in the average day than many people face in a year. They have to build up a thick skin. They have to accept the rejection, BELIEVE that it isn’t personal, and move on to the next opportunity. That understandable need tends to create a habit of looking outside of our own actions for the reasons for failure. We have to guard against that eventuality and admit that while understandable, it is not acceptable to ALWAYS assume the failure is not ours. As the hiring manager for a high functioning sales team, I found it very challenging to dig down and get to the point of “when are you accountable for the failure of a sales initiative or forecast”; both for my sales team (including myself) and with prospective candidates for the team. It turns out getting there was crucial for a successful hire.

So back to the beginning statement. If you’re looking for a job (no responsibility, just put in the time, collect a paycheck and go home), don’t apply here – even if the position is for the assembly line. If you’re looking to take responsibility for your actions, hold yourself accountable and are willing to grow, then let’s get started on what it will take to be successful. Be ready to give examples of how you’ve made mistakes, accepted the responsibility for them and learned from them. Be ready to demonstrate how you are open to various views of and conclusions derived from the same data. If you’re successful, we will be building a highly functional and exciting team. In my book, that’s better than a job any day. Even in this horrible market.

Hiring sales people is difficult for everyone. We just launched our Sales Recruiting Division to help companies with this issue. As the economy turns, good sales people will be harder to find and even harder to identify. CLICK HERE to get a Free Success Factor Snapshot for your sales position.

For more information on hiring top talent, read our best-selling book (0ver 10,000) You’re NOT the Person I Hired. CLICK HERE to read reviews.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after business advisor and mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Growing and Retaining Productive Employees

Recently, on one of the e-mail lists to which I subscribe, a colleague mentioned that he had been counseled by one of his mentors that the best thing he could do for his good employees was to fire a bad employee. Sounds harsh, yet it is true that for the greater good, we have to sometimes admit that we will not be able to help an underperforming employee to make the grade. It’s best for them and for the organization if we “make their services available to industry.”

I admire the companies for whom I have worked that have gone out of their way to make sure that they did everything possible to help their employees be productive and happy. They provided training. They moved people from one place to another. They provided internal mentors or professional coaches to both high performing employees and those who needed to “push on some growing edges” for the sake of their career. But what I and others appreciated the most was that they were also willing to set some goals and if they were not reached, the employee was dismissed, compassionately.

I have found that this view of “tough love” approach to employees is particularly difficult in small businesses. In many small businesses, employees are like family, except they get a salary and benefits instead of an allowance! The problem is that we should never hire someone we cannot fire, and family members, real or adopted, are extremely difficult to let go. Now is the time, however, to really pay attention to and begin action on shaping your corporate culture to be one based on performance, consistency and fairness – at all levels.

I know that many of us have been forced to “cut to the bone” during this recession. You may well believe that there is no room for more cuts, and perhaps you are correct. That does not mean, however, that your culture is one that will support an understanding of performance, consistency and fairness going forward. All of your executives, managers and employees know that you were “forced to downsize” in order to stay alive. They will not see your actions as being performance based so much as needing to cut costs, unless you truly did reduce your workforce based on performance. Perhaps you used the seniority or LIFO (last in, first out) method to make your decisions. If so, your employees do not believe that their performance will influence their employment with you – so no loyalty either.

If you believe you have really made the reductions in force using performance as the main criteria, then you don’t have a problem. If, however, you were not consistent and fair in how you reduced your workforce, then you will have a very difficult time as the economy turns around and people are willing to change jobs. Many of us are dealing with workers who are sticking with us, even though they are not particularly happy, because they know they do not want to be “on the street with a resume” at this point. They feel overworked, burned out, and in need of something exciting to pick up their spirits. How will you keep the good employees, the ones that are the most productive?

I recommend two things that are a bit counter intuitive. First, be ruthless in getting your employees to stop doing things they and you can do without. Stop making that report you’ve always looked at but on which you base no business decisions. There are likely many other tasks with which you can do without. Unburden your employees by making sure that no expendable or marginal tasks are continued. Nice to have no longer cuts it.

Second, and more on topic, begin now carefully, consistently, and fairly evaluating employees for performance and how well they adapt to change (like letting go of tasks). You must not allow poor performers to stay in the organization or you will totally demoralize your whole workforce. I’ve said before that there are many good employees, excellent employees, who are either available now or because their present employer is not as enlightened as you, will be available if they know you are prepared to bring them on board. It is a good time to build a winning team comprising your best players and the best players who have yet to be hired.

To help companies and hiring managers identify some of the things that managers can do to retain their best talent we have put together for you to download our 8 Level Retention Matrix. This matrix will help you identify whether or not your managers are doing what it takes to retain your best talent.

If your managers do some, or most of these, you won’t lose your talent to a recruiter. Your competition will.

You can also download for free our most popular chapter on sourcing top talent from our best-selling book, You’re NOT The Person I Hired. CLICK HERE to download your free chapter.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after business advisor and mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Jobless recovery – been there, done that.

There is a lot of talk about the “jobless recovery.” Well, I’ve been there, done that – back in the 70′s. Seems like the glass half-empty versus the glass half-full syndrome to me. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re in transition or out on your own trying to “drum up business,” this is a very tough economy. Bear with me on this though; even if the real unemployment rate is close to 20% rather than the 9.8% number being bandied about, that means 80% of the people are still employed. And if 3 million people were let go last month, but the unemployment number stayed the same, then that means that 3 million people were hired. Okay, you get where I’m going with this.

If you’re in transition and looking for your next great position in the corporate world, what are you to do to make yourself the next person hired? To begin with, if you’re reading this post then you’re off to a good start because you’ve found the best blog for researching what you need to do. Between Brad, Barry and their team, the information they post here about how to go about finding your next position will be invaluable. And since I am not an HR, recruiter or retained search person, I will leave all of that to them. However, I can give you a bit of perspective of the hiring manager.

I am very lucky to be able to work with a great set of business owners, company presidents, CEOs and senior executives in a wide variety of businesses. I can tell you what I am observing in the small business world. You can take that information, marry it to what you learn on this blog from the search/recruiting professionals and come up with a plan. Here is what I’m seeing.

Money is tight. Hiring at this point is going to be done at a very slow and deliberate pace. Part time employment or outsourcing work to 1099 independent consultants is what is happening now. Are you able to take advantage of that trend? Can you do some outstanding work as a part time employee or consultant that will make you the lead candidate when full time employment is justified?

My advice to business owners in this economy is to be ruthless in “husbanding your cash.” Do not waste money on bad hires or employee turnover. I advise them to make sure they do hire when the time is right, but to make sure they take their time, define their success factors and are deliberate in finding the right candidate. If you, as a candidate know that many employers are taking that point of view, what can you do to help them reach that goal while at the same time helping yourself? When you are presenting yourself to a prospective employer or on-line or to a search firm are you focused on yourself or on their challenges? Are you appearing confident and results oriented or self-interested and perhaps “desperate for employment”? Clawing our way back to profitability is going to be a very long process for all of us. Employers can’t afford to make mistakes. You have to convince yourself and them that you are the right person, understand their challenges and can be successful in resolving those challenges.

On the employer side, have you ever assessed the full and true costs of a bad hire? Few companies take the time to conduct this assessment. I think if could be they are afraid of the results. If you can handle it download our Cost Of A Bad Hire Worksheet. CLICK HERE and be sitting down when you complete the worksheet. A respirator near you is recommended.

LinkedIN is a powerful tool for hiring top talent. Join our Hire and Retain Top Talent Group. There is a wealth of articles and discussions for you there. CLICK HERE to join.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Initiating and managing change

People speak a lot about change these days. As you read this, you are exhaling atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen that just an instant before were locked up in solid matter; your stomach, liver, heart, lungs, and brain are vanishing into thin air, being replaced as quickly and endlessly as they are being broken down. The human skin replaces itself once a month, the stomach lining every five days, the liver every six weeks, and the skeleton every three months. To the naked eye, these organs look the same from moment to moment, but they are always in flux. By the end of a year, 98 percent of the atoms in your body will have been exchanged for new ones. Literally, you are not the same person from year to year. Why then, amidst all this change, do we often seek to eradicate changes in our lives, our organizations, our business processes, and in our environment?

Buddy, can you spare the change?

No, you cannot spare the change and neither can your organization! You are in fact changing and your organization will also change. You and it will change or you will die and even death is a process of change. And in today’s modern business world, to focus on the business issues, the pace of change has accelerated to the point of almost blinding speed. It continues to accelerate.

We all know that this is the case, and we all know that it is technology that is driving the acceleration of change. Advances in communication have made our world one global market. We face competition from the same global markets in which we seek the lowest cost labor for our own products. Many of our customers and employees purchase products and work to design products and services from the comfort of their homes. Information (and disinformation) is readily available to all who have access to the internet, and in the industrialized nations of the world, a majority of the people have gained that access one way or another.

We also know that disruptive technology provides leaps in competing products which totally transform the markets in which we move. The classic example is that of the buggy-whip. While focused on making the best buggy-whip in the world, the manufacturer does not see that automobiles will soon obviate the need for buggy-whips. The whole market disappears. Personal computers have totally changed the corporate information system market and have gone on to fuel the changes in how we as individuals use information and communicate in our personal lives. To not anticipate these disruptive technologies, or at least recognize and respond to their impact, is to invite corporate obsolescence.

Why do we fight change?

While intellectually we all know that change is inevitable, that there is no such thing as security or stability, we often have a difficult time accepting that things must change. My experience is that as long as someone perceives that a forthcoming change will increase their authority in the organization, they will embrace the change. If the perception is that authority or power will be lost due to a change, then all stops are pulled to avoid the proposed changes. Rarely do employees willingly make a personal sacrifice in stature, authority, or power for the general good of the organization.

Sometimes the opposition to change may be due to change overload. Perhaps an employee is dealing with an overwhelming amount of change in his or her personal life; children moving away to school, divorce or simply dealing with relationship strains at home, illness in the family. Under these circumstances, employees may well look to the workplace as the only point of stability in their lives. They spend fifty percent of their waking hours at work, and if everything else is in turmoil, they want desperately to have work be the haven from change.

Institutionalizing Change

As if it isn’t enough to deal with the outside forces of technology and globalization of markets, we now have to deal with the institutionalization of change within our corporations. Management initiatives such as Six Sigma and the ISO9000 programs demand continuous improvement. It’s impossible to imagine improvement without some level of change. Relentless pressure to increase human productivity demands changes in our business and management practices even if we determine that our products and markets are well defined and viable.

The essence of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is alive and well today. The name, BPR, has been misappropriated for those who would simply downsize their organizations. Yet the original intent of a careful study, measurement, and radical reorganization of a company is still employed today; we just call it something else! Leadership teams have also recognized the need to make continuous incremental rather than radical changes for many of our business processes. Regardless of how we make the changes, change we must if we are to survive and thrive.

Shaping the Corporate Culture

How well change is managed in an organization depends on the skills of the leadership team. Not only do they need to understand the organization and the requisite changes, but they must understand their employee’s capacity for change and the capacity of the organization itself to support and promote changes.

Mr. Michael Mussallem, Chairman and CEO of Edwards Lifesciences, often speaks of “actively managing the corporate culture.” Part of the company credo is that; “We will celebrate our successes, thrive on discovery, and continually expand our boundaries.” Continually expanding boundaries implies not only technological but organizational change. To actively manage the corporate culture means not only ensuring that the corporate ethics is understood and managed as a process, but that the leadership team affirms and promotes an environment that encourages individual responsibility and a capacity to change the business processes.

So are you ready to embrace change when it comes or are you one who “fights” the changes? What is the culture of your company with respect to change? Do you fit in?

Take a quick assessment of your company’s culture and see if it fights change. Have all your key managers take this same assessment. Then evaluate and discuss the differences. CLICK HERE to download a free culture assessment.

Change starts with an effective hiring process. You must have the right people on the bus. This 8 Point Hiring Methodology Assessment tool will help you build a hiring methodology in your company that attracts top talent. CLICK HERE to download your free assessment.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

The roast beef story . . .

A newly married couple was beginning their first Sunday meal preparation. The young woman began preparing a wonderful roast of beef while the man was preparing the vegetables. As they worked, the man noticed that the wife sliced off both ends of the roast and then rolled it in spiced flour. Curious, he asked, “Why did you do that?” “Do what?” “Slice the ends off the roast,” he responded, “Does that make it juicier or something?”

“Well, I don’t really know. Mom always does that when she cooks a roast.” So they called her mother and were amused to hear that she also didn’t know why the ends should be cut off the roast. It turns out it was because “your Grandmother always did that and so I do too.” Of course they called Grandmother and heard a hearty laugh when they asked her “why do we always cut the ends off the roast of beef before cooking it?” After Grandmother got control of her laughter, she exclaimed, “I can’t believe you guys are doing that! The only reason I did that in the early years is because your Grandfather and I had only one roasting pan and it was too small for a roast big enough to feed us all.”

How many things are we doing in our businesses that are no longer necessary, no longer efficiently done or are downright damaging to our processes because “that’s the way we’ve always done it?” Do you have a practice of reviewing all of your processes from time-to-time to make sure that they are needed, effective and efficient?

Here’s something to consider in both your personal and business life. Implement a practice of annually or twice a year sitting down and thinking about what you will “Stop,” “Start,” and “Continue” doing from that point forward. Pay special attention to what you will stop doing. As employees, we often will fight this practice since we worry that if we don’t have to do something, then our employers won’t need us. Especially now, with the reduction in force that most companies have experienced, it is critical that we unburden the remaining employees by making it mandatory that they find tasks they can stop doing without jeopardizing customer service. As employees, we need to embrace the concept that we can add value by eliminating unnecessary or less than critical work.

Be ruthless in stopping less than critical work. Be stingy about what you decide to start doing. Make sure the new tasks are goal achieving, effective and integrated efficiently with the rest of the system. And celebrate what you decide to continue doing – that means (hopefully) that those tasks are critical to success, effective and efficient.

Is your culture one of team work and does everyone in your company agree? Have them take our Company Cultural Assessment. CLICK HERE to download your assessment.

Is  your hiring methodology designed to attract top talent and weed out those candidates that embellish? You can download our 8 Point Hiring Methodology Assessment Scorecard and find out. CLICK HERE to download.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Loyalty . . . to what?

I’m reminded, from time-to-time, of the inequality of expectations between employees and employers with respect to employment. Especially in the small to mid-sized businesses, the owners are often frustrated with employees who do not seem to put effort into the business. They don’t have a sense of “ownership.” Well, that’s because they aren’t owners, and usually aren’t treated as owners.

On the employee side, they feel that it’s quite alright for them to give two weeks notice if they get a better offer elsewhere, but at the same time seem to think that as long as they want to stay, they should be able to do so. If the employer lets them go (for whatever reason), they feel that somehow it is unfair. Of course, this is not true of all employees nor do all business owners despair over employees not acting as if the company is their own. However, there does seem to be anecdotal data to back up my perceptions.

This situation first came to my attention many years ago as I worked in the semiconductor industry. We had facilities in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale and San Jose). I often heard managers complaining that employees were more than willing to leave for a slight raise and join another company. It seemed to be easy to do in the valley and it seemed to be true; and it made me wonder. So I started asking some questions of the engineers, marketers and sales people who left our company and those still with us. The picture became a bit clearer. It seems that there was a lot of loyalty – but the loyalty was to a particular product line or architecture rather than a company. So if I considered myself a Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) kind of guy, I would go where all the exciting things were happening in that field. Likewise if I considered myself a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) person. If I was skilled and excited about one architecture and the company began to emphasize the other, I eventually left to find another employer in line with my talents and passions. This kind of “loyalty to a concept” was even more prevalent in the software and Internet companies.

So managers needed to change the context in which they interpreted the content of their experience with respect to “loyal employees.” If an engineer or sales person believed in a certain product or architecture and we began to de-emphasize that particular product, then we could expect to see folks leave for greener pastures. On the other hand, if we kept pushing the envelope and introduced new products and improvements to existing products, then our employees were “loyal” and mostly content.

Discovering this different view of loyalty led to some insights that served some divisions very well. As long as they were able to stay at the leading edge of product development, they kept the best employees. They found that salary and other monetary rewards were not the biggest motivators. They had to be competitive, but by and large, it was an exciting environment in product development that the employees appreciated and which kept them happy and inspired.

So as we work our way out of this recession and employees begin feeling as though employment changes are possible, how will you hold on to your key players? Do you know what your employees are loyal to? Since they don’t own the company, it likely isn’t the company itself that inspires them. They may be grateful for the company and the employment it provides, but what are they really passionate about?

Is your culture one of team work and does everyone in your company agree? Have them take our Company Cultural Assessment. CLICK HERE to download your assessment.

Is  your hiring methodology designed to attract top talent and weed out those candidates that embellish? You can download our 8 Point Hiring Methodology Assessment Scorecard and find out. CLICK HERE to download.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Networking . . . Part (3)

If you’ve been following the posts on this blog, you will recognize the similarity between the comments I have made about the art of networking with the comments made on the sales process. The sales skill ladder has four rungs: Product Based Selling, Solution Based Selling, Consultative Selling, and finally Trust Based Selling. As I’ve mentioned with respect to sales, the first three rungs are salesperson oriented. The fourth rung is truly, genuinely, authentically, client focused. We have the clients best interest at heart. It’s the same for networking!

The networking ladder might be: Card Based Networking, Group Based Networking, My Strengths Based Networking and finally Trusted Relationship Networking. As before, the first three are focused on you and the highest rung is truly focused on helping others and trusting that what goes around will come around – without having that in the forefront of your mind when networking.

On the first rung, the so-called networker believes that s/he has had a great evening when they leave the dinner event with 25 or more cards. What a great night! Well, I highly doubt it. What that person has is a bunch of cards, but no knowledge of the persons giving them the cards. How could they? 25 cards in a couple of hours? How much time did they spend asking questions to find out how they could help the other person?

On the second rung, the networker is targeting a special interest group which makes things a bit more comfortable to contact people because there is a “common interest.” You can build on that common interest to develop a relationship. My observation is, however, that few people practice the art of finding out what they can do for the other person. They are still focused on their own needs.

On the third rung, the networker is now aware that they need to be showing how they add value. So they tend to speak to others about what they can do to solve common problems companies might be experiencing. However, the conversation is still focused on them even though they are touting their added value. This conversation is fine with someone who asks you how they might find potential employment/client opportunities. But it is for AFTER they ask you to explain, not before.

The fourth rung of the networking ladder is where the accomplished networker spends most of her/his time. They ask lots of questions about the other person. They are genuinely interested in the other person. They are the ones who leave a huge dinner event with only three cards. They’ve spent a minimum of 20 minutes with each of those persons getting to know what they do, how the came to be where they are, what their interests are, and what is going on in their lives that might offer an opportunity for assistance of some kind. They make a promise to do something to help the other person and then they make sure they do it. They are careful to choose groups and events that will attract the people they want in their network. They are all about developing trust and serving others. Authentically, with no quid pro quo expected.

This is definitely not a new concept. I’ve observed that very few sales folks, even highly effective sales folks, understand Trust Based Selling. I’ve noticed that the most effective networkers DO understand Trust Based Selling and they carry it over to their networking activities. Those who fail at networking are also pretty poor sales people; they are inconsistent in their results and their customers are not at all loyal.

Here are some resources on these topics:
Never Eat Alone – by Keith Ferrazzi
Trusted Advisor – by David Maister
Trust Based Selling – by Charles Green
Other great resources might be Think and Grow Rich (mastermind concepts), How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Tiberias Success Factor.

What are you doing to network properly? Are you building long term relationships or collecting contacts?

Download our 8 Point Hiring Process Assessment Scorecard. Use this to ensure your hiring methodology is as effective as it can be for 2010.

Would all your employees describe your culture the same way? This a critical when networking and hiring. Our Cultural Assessment Worksheet will help you ensure you have a consistent understanding of your business culture.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Networking . . . Part (2)

In a previous post, I got on my soapbox concerning networking etiquette and what I believe networking really is all about, and that is building trust and long term relationships. I mentioned that it is a long and difficult process. It is also highly rewarding. If you buy into my concept of networking, then you are also likely recognizing that you can never stop networking; even when gainfully employed.

This situation, continuous networking, is not at all unlike the dilemma I discovered when I founded my consultancy. While I’m delivering services, I’m not marketing. Inevitably, I’d wake up one day and realize I had “no place to go.” And then I’d start the long process of marketing again and hope that something turned up soon. The same is true if you’re a “W2 employee” and you let your network lapse while you are focused on your job at the company you serve. At some point, you will realize it’s time for you to “move on,” and you’ll have to scramble to build your network.

So how do we address this situation? I have no silver bullet to offer. My sense is that the only thing to do is to make sure you keep a core group of maybe ten to twenty really close relationships alive and well no matter what you are doing. That way, it will take less time to reconstruct a meaningful network when the time comes. Find ways to stay in touch and help your key network relationships. Send useful articles, keep up to date on what they are doing, meet for coffee or a quick, early breakfast. Stay focused on them.

There may be some help here in using the now “hot” technology of social networking software. It’s amazing how well LinkedIn works to help me stay in touch with colleagues. I’m now exploring using this blog, Facebook, and Twitter as a way of staying in touch and providing value. I’m not sure what will finally shake out as being the most effective, but I’m giving it the good old “college try.” You might want to explore using technology to help you keep in touch with your network as well. Remember though, it’s about providing value, not self-serving.

Data I’ve seen in multiple places indicates that “C-Suite” positions last an average of 24 to 36 months. “C-Suite” executives do not find their next assignment on Monster or other media. They find it through their network. So you’ll need your network every 2 or 3 years and it takes a year, minimum, to build a solid network of colleagues. It’s not what you know, it’s not even who you know. It’s really who knows you. And as we’ve discussed, that means you have to be genuinely interested in knowing and supporting those in your network first.

Download our 8 Point Hiring Process Assessment Scorecard. Use this to ensure your hiring methodology is as effective as it can be for 2010.

Would all of your employees describe your culture the same way? This is critical when networking and hiring. Our Cultural Assessment Worksheet will help you to ensure that you have a consistent understanding of your business culture.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Networking . . . Part (1)

I’ve managed, somehow, to develop a network of colleagues who will often refer folks to me for many different reasons; potential clients, business owners, and increasingly executives in transition. This economy has become very challenging for everyone.

What strikes me is that there is so little knowledge about what networking really is all about. Many very accomplished salespeople, executives, business owners and “C-suite” folks THINK they know, but the evidence is to the contrary.

I receive a fair amount of “introductions” to people through e-mail. It’s another sign of the times and I too use e-mail to introduce people. After one such recent introduction, the person introduced contacted me by e-mail. Attached was a very detailed resume (bad in itself) and another document of “target companies.” The body of the e-mail said essentially; “Hi, I’m glad so-and-so introduced us. I’m working to expand my network. I’m a high level executive . . . blah, blah, blah!” This went on for a couple of paragraphs and then the person asked for three or four names from my Rolodex that might be good contacts for them.

Then came the clincher: “I know networking is about helping others. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you.” Right. Ninety-nine percent of first communication is about you, 1% is an after thought, throw away sentence acknowledging the recipient and that’s going to fly? I think not.

Networking, properly done, is always and only about what you can do to help the other person. Not about getting something for yourself. The person above did not have permission from me, did not yet know me, and should never have assumed I care about his plight/resume/target companies or anything else. I certainly am not going to introduce him to my network of trusted colleagues (who in turn trust me not to waste their time) based on that e-mail and attachments. Here’s a hard message for folks in transition to internalize: “Nobody cares about you.” . . . . Yet.

Instead, in building your network, it is critical to be authentically interested in helping the other person. The universe is indifferent, but generally fair in that “what goes around comes around.” You can’t fake this. It will be sensed that you are being manipulative – “S/he’s only acting interested because s/he wants something.” You have to build trust, give me a sense that you have my best interest at heart (or at least don’t intend to just “use me.”)

That’s why it takes a very long time to build a network. If you are introduced to me by one of my trusted inner circle of colleagues, then you have a leg up. Don’t destroy that budding trust by assuming you have permission to sell me something or ask me a favor.

So how do I go about this myself? Well, not perfectly for sure. Here’s what I attempt to do and actually do accomplish when I’m at my best. I would write that e-mail when Joe introduces me to Sue, copy both and say something along the lines of: “Hi Joe and Sue. Thanks for the introduction Joe. I am always willing to reach out to someone in your network of colleagues. Sue, I’d love to know more about what you’re doing these days. Joe introduced us believing that in some way our relationship might be beneficial. Do you have any time over the next couple of weeks for a quick cup of coffee or a phone call? Let me know and we’ll try to match calendars.”

I would then go out of my way to figure out how I can do something to help Sue. Find an article or perhaps make an introduction to someone else that would be mutually beneficial. I would only share about my own situation and how Sue can help me after she asks for that information. Which will only be after she has some feeling of trust that I’m not focused only on me and my own needs. If I’m focused on my own needs, then I don’t have her best interests at heart. If I don’t have her best interests at heart she cannot trust me to do what’s right, only what works for me.

Think about this. If you are introduced to someone as a possible beneficial relationship, do not burn the bridge with the new connection by being focused on yourself. Also, when you “blow the introduction,” you will cause damage to the person who introduced you in the first place. They won’t make the mistake of bringing you into their network again. This takes time. This is difficult. This takes lots of energy because you really do have to do something for someone else, not just hang your resume on every phone pole. If you’re going to try to network, then learn the intricacies. This is not a game for amateurs.

Download our 8 Point Hiring Process Assessment Scorecard. Use this to ensure your hiring methodology is as effective as it can be for 2010.

Would all of your employees describe your culture the same way? This is critical when networking and hiring. Our Cultural Assessment Worksheet will help you to ensure that you have a consistent understanding of your business culture.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

The Silence is Deafening

Have you ever noticed that organizational change initiatives are sometimes “sabotaged” by objections about which you had no clue? All of a sudden, out of the “clear blue sky,” comes a storm of reasons why a particular change can’t be made. They all seem pretty trivial. What’s behind them? When you ask, the silence is deafening.

Have you identified the topics that are “off limits” in your organization? It’s highly unlikely that you are without them. In their recent book, Reframing Change, Latting and Ramsey talk about how resistance to change is not because people don’t like change. It’s because people don’t like being changed. People may have reasons for not wanting to support a particular initiative that are not at all clear to project leaders. One example given was the initiative taken on by a middle manager to change the time of the group staff meeting. His boss was holding them late in the afternoon and they sometimes went past 6 PM, making it difficult for employees with children or adult care responsibilities. Should be easy; it’s a reasonable request.

But it turns out the task is not as simple as just changing the time of the meeting. For lots of reasons, it’s much more complicated and the project expands into investigating quality of life for employees along with flexible work hours and other “family leave” issues. Push back came from someone who was normally an early adopter. It finally becomes clear that all the discussion of “family leave” was very difficult for this person who was in a same gender relationship. The unspoken rule at this company was “don’t ask, don’t tell.” So discussion of how to accommodate change to the employee benefits was difficult at best.

There is a proverb from Spain that claims “Those who stay silent do not say nothing.” How do we create a culture in which it is safe to uncover, discuss and learn about the taboo topics? They may be around the human resource questions such as domestic partner issues, expected overtime, or extra effort to “get ahead,” poor performers who are kept on because they are family members, or reporting misconduct by people in powerful positions. They may have something to do with perceptions about who supports a given business process thereby making it “sacrosanct.” What is important is to make sure the culture we create allows for safely uncovering and discussing these issues.

We can start with the obvious in shaping our corporate culture. We can make sure that the bearer of bad news is not summarily shot. We can make sure that supervisors and managers are not defensive when policies or procedures are questioned. We can make sure we gather performance information in a 360 degree fashion throughout the organization. And we can make sure that the HR department is a fair advocate for employees, not just the executive team. If our organization is open to learning at all levels, is willing to seek and actually listen to feedback, then we will have a vibrant, changing and improving organization.

You will not retain good employees if your culture is one of “hide and seek information.” What are the rules in your organization? Do you surface the “not discussable” issues and make them visible? Do you have a formal, anonymous whistleblower program? Is your suggestion box really used?

Download our Free Company Culture Assessment.  Does everyone in your company define your culture the same? Use this tool to find out. CLICK HERE to download.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising of Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.