You’re Running Out of Time to Upgrade Your Team

Have you taken action yet to identify which roles should be upgraded?

In April, I put up a blog posting titled “Hiring 101 – Use the Recession to Upgrade” suggesting that you should be using the Job Market Recession to upgrade a few selected roles in your organization. I provided a few ideas and recommended paths to begin this process.

Have you started yet?

Probably NOT!

Why? What’s holding you back?

I have yet to come across a management team that didn’t have at least one or two under-performers.

Raise your hand right now if you’ve got someone on your team that is not living up to your full expectations of performance.

Why have you not yet moved on trying to find their replacement?

I’ll restate in this blog posting the idea I put forth a few months back:

You’ve got a unique window of opportunity to acquire talent in this recession that you may never again in your lifetime be able to capture at an affordable level. Force yourself to rank the members of your team, and start down the path of upgrading your weakest members.

Here’s a few other articles you might be interested in on this subject of whether or not to upgrade your team:

Forbes Interview of Me on Using the Recession to Upgrade

Internet Radio Show Broadcast talking about Upgrading Your Team

Food for thought:

Do you have the role you are going to upgrade identified?

Do you have a plan in place of how you’ll find this new person?

What is your precise timeframe for letting the current person go and having the new person start?

What is your contingency plan if your first few sourcing ideas don’t surface the caliber of candidate you desire?

Have you made this a major priority – or are you just crossing your fingers hoping things get better?

What is the first action item you’re going to take right now to begin upgrading a role or two on your team?

Don’t be left behind!

Don’t be the one who has the worst team because you didn’t take action when you had the opportunity.

Your window of opportunity to acquire better talent is very small. The window is closing. I give it another 4-6 months and you’ll have missed the upgrade train. Fewer candidates will be open to talking with, you will not have enough money to offer them a better opportunity, and you’ll be stuck with the same average performer dragging down the rest of your team.

What a depressing scenario I just painted. Don’t let this happen to you.

I would love to hear what your doing to upgrade your team with the best talent possible. Start thinking like a coach trying to maximize the success of the team. It’s all about the talent. You could be the world’s greatest manager/coach – but if you don’t have the talent that can deliver your expected outcomes – then you’ll never have a strong enough team.

Barry

PS – Your first step should be to define the expectations you need in the role – not a traditional job description – which is worthless from the perspective of managing and predicting success. Download a few of our FREE Success Factor Snapshots to see how this is done.

Related posts:

1. Hiring Managers Upgrade Your Team NOW – Radio Show
2. Hiring 101 – Use the recession to upgrade
3. Top Strategy in a Down Economy: Upgrade Your Talent