Kubica LaForest Consulting

Archive for October, 2011

Talent Management and the Talent Gravity Organization

Monday, October 31st, 2011

Our series on the Talent Gravity Organization focuses on helping you compete successfully in a talent shortage market place.

In past blogs, we discussed the importance of a strong brand to attract interest from prospective job candidates. We discussed culture (the way we do things around here) as an added attractor for future job candidates.

So now you’ve got their attention (brand), they liked what they saw during the interview (culture) – what’s next? How do you close the deal and not have buyer’s remorse – or a disappointed new employee?

Talent Management. It’s the third keystone in a Talent Gravity Organization. And talent management starts with selection. (Remember your brand and culture brought them to the point where they are interested in talking to you about employment.)

We recommend eight components for a successful talent management program:

1) A formal Talent Selection process

2) An Orientation / Onboarding program (supporting transition and swift assimilation to your organization)

3) A Performance Review System (evaluating and providing timely and meaningful feedback to the employee)

4) Opportunity for Learning and Growth (whether training is part of annual goals identified by and with the employee, a learning management system, coaching, off site training or opportunities for certifications)

5) An Incentive, Reward, and Recognition Program (engaging staff to help develop and employ a meaningful incentive and rewards program)

6) Management Training (preparing new/promoted managers for their role as leaders verses staff, line or field workers)

7) Leadership Development (to establish and promote emerging leaders for your succession plan)

8) Succession Planning (identifying and developing the leadership pipeline of successor candidates for exec and mid management roles)

Talent selection and retention is a longitudinal process; it’s not an event. You do not hire an employee and just assume they will start contributing day one. That is an incorrect assumption and a contributor to what is often referred to as a “hiring mistake”. It can also be an on-boarding mistake and that one is on the employer.

Remember, the process is not over when you hire a new employee, it is not something you check off of your To Do list as you move on to the next task on your list. It’s a process that starts – not ends – with the job offer.

Careers must be developed, nurtured, guided, and promoted.

How is your talent management process? Do you have the eight components in place, and if you do, do you make it a strong selling point in the hiring process?

In the changing demographic of the employee population, talent management is becoming a critical differentiator to attracting talent.

For more information on talent management and our unique model for business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

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Posted in Business Growth & Entrepreneurial Strategy, Leadership, Talent Management: Selection & Development | No Comments »

Culture and the Talent Gravity Organization

Friday, October 28th, 2011

In Monday’s Blog (http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/blog/2011/10/the-second-keystone-of-a-talent-gravity-organization/), we introduced Culture as the second keystone in a Talent Gravity Organization and provided some examples of a positive culture and a negative culture.

US Airways offers a credit card where you get 30,000 miles when you sign up and use your card for the first time. Sounds good until you discover that US Airways has one of the worst (26%) miles redemption program in the business. (And miles aren’t banked until you pay a start up fee of $80, which they don’t tell you up front either.) The brand (promise) and the culture (delivery on the promise) don’t line up well. Want to know who has the best: Southwest.

Now if you are an air traveler and have flown US Airways and Southwest, compare and contrast for yourself. Southwest has a great brand, a great culture, and it’s fun to fly. And if you were an employee looking for a job, where would you look first – Southwest. Southwest is rated #1 as the best airline to work for. It’s also profitable and gets a 5 star rating from J.D. Powers and Associates on customer satisfaction.

None of this happens by chance: the stronger the culture the stronger the gravitational attraction for future employees.

So how is your culture? If you don’t know – ask. Ask your employees, and here’s a potent way to do it: Conduct a climate survey that combines both a standardized electronically administered questionnaire supported with interviews with a randomly selected group of employees.

The results from the survey and interviews should be presented to the executive team – not just the CEO – with an analysis of findings and a listing of what the employees feel would improve their employment experience at your company. Then act on the information you have, including sharing the results and your plan with the employees. Follow-up and transparency are important to help employees feel you care and are acting upon their feedback. Miss this and next time they won’t engage, and skepticism will grow.

If you are not assessing the climate within your organization and you are frustrated with turnover and the inability to find qualified candidates, realize that it’s your decision (or lack of it). Just don’t waste other people’s time complaining about the lack of qualified candidates. People like to work with good people, they like to enjoy their work environment, they like and deserve to feel good about whom they work for – both the company and the boss. And this comes when you marry a positive brand with a positive culture. Remember, you can’t improve what you choose not to notice.

For more information on culture and our unique model for business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it!

Posted in Business Growth & Entrepreneurial Strategy, Culture Building: Creating a Talent Gravity Organization, Talent Management: Selection & Development | No Comments »

The Second Keystone of a Talent Gravity Organization: Culture

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Last week we introduced the first keystone of a Talent Gravity Organization – Branding. Today we introduce the second: culture.

It’s one thing to have a good, or perhaps even a great brand. But brands are the promise. For a Talent Gravity Organization brand repute is what gets future employees interested in you. It’s what gets them to knock on your door.

But just like in the market, your brand can bring clients (and future employee prospects) to the door, but then what happens? Do you keep the promise, or is it all fluff?

Remember the advertisement Wendy’s put out in the 1980’s with the grandmotherly actor looking at a fluffy bun, and saying, with more than a hint of dissatisfaction and crankiness: “where’s the beef?”

Well, future employee prospects will do the same thing to you in 2011. You can’t serve up a “fluffy bun”; you need serve up the beef (please no disregard to our vegetarian readers).

Future employees need to be excited about what they see when they meet you. If they see:

The interviewer late for the interview
The interviewer unprepared
The interviewer talking negatively about other interviewers the candidate will be meeting
The interviewer complaining about lack of support from the executive group or from other departments
A somber atmosphere within the company

None of these send a positive message (and yes each one represents a real situation).

Candidates want to have their expectations met. They want to see and hear:

Excitement about where the company is going
Frequent talk about team and “how we get things done”
Success stories – how we win in the marketplace
Stories about the successes of employees both in a job-related context and in a personal context
Well prepared and interested interviewers

None of these cost money! They are the by-products of a company with a strong culture.

Do you know what your culture is? Do you know the experience interviewees have with your company? If you want to compete effectively for scare talent and continue to grow your company – you better.

For more information on culture and our unique model for business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it!

Posted in Culture Building: Creating a Talent Gravity Organization | No Comments »

Branding and the Talent Gravity Organization

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

In Monday’s blog (http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/blog/2011/10/the-four-building-blocks-of-a-talent-gravity-organization-starting-with-branding/) we wrote about Branding as the keystone of a talent gravity organization.

We have seen the impact of brand deterioration in Netflix, Yahoo and recently Bank of America. We’ve written about Netflix and Yahoo in previous blogs. Bank of America is a new entrant into the brand deterioration – irritate the customer – category. As many of you know, Bank of America announced a $5 charge per month for using a debit card.

The Bank of America blames the new debit card fee on the Dodd-Frank legislation, which caps the fees banks can charge when their customers use their debit card. So the customers are angry.

The issue with customer reaction to Netflix and Bank of America is the way the changes were done and the reasons used, which have now infiltrated and likely deteriorated their brand.

Contrast this with companies building their brands: companies such as Apple, Google, Zappos, Zynga, Southwest. These companies, at least so far as we can tell, are working to build their brand in the marketplace. And, at the same time, their well-aligned recruitment strategy helps them build a competitive position in the job market.

Companies with strong positive brand recognition can leverage that brand recognition into strong brand name job advertising: the stronger the market brand the stronger the brand name job advertising potential.

Interestingly, strong brand name job advertising is focused more on the internal qualities of the company and its work environment: its culture. HR Management Guide (http://www.simplehrguide.com/recruitment-strategy-and-competitive-position-on-the-job-market.html) reports that competitive position in recruitment is about:

Building the impression of the unique approach to employees
Strong corporate values
Value of employees as human beings
Quick decisions made
Innovative solutions for employees to increase performance and productivity
Success celebration.

Brand serves as an attractor – it gets the attention of future employees. But culture begins to draw them in.

In Monday’s blog we will discuss the second keystone of a talent gravity organization – Culture.

For more information on branding and our unique model for business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it!

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The Four Building Blocks of a Talent Gravity Organization: Starting with Branding

Monday, October 17th, 2011

In a recent blog (http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/blog/2011/10/small-business-growth-at-risk-addressing-the-talent-shortage-by-establishing-a-talent-gravity-organization/), we introduced the concept of a Talent Gravity Organization.

We use the term gravity because it aptly describes what an organization is creating to attract – high potential talent to best position it to deliver in the marketplace. There are four components in our model to help you build a remarkable company. Today, we start with your brand.

We know from our high school physics that physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. So metaphorically we are saying that future employees are attracted to your organization based on its mass. And we define organizational mass as:

Your brand
Your culture
Building strong strategic leadership
Embedding sound management practices in the organization
Competitive compensation and benefits
A learning organization
A business that celebrates and recognizes the greatness of their employees

We all like to be associated with something great, something that others identify as great. It’s part of human nature. If you had a choice to work for Google or Yahoo, which one would you choose? Based on our experience, the overwhelming choice would be Google. Why, Google has a great brand, it’s well recognized world-wide, it is on the Best Places to Work list, and the stories about the Google’s work environment are legendary. Yahoo on the other hand, fired its CEO over the phone, is trying to decide what it wants to be, its place in the market, and whether or not it wants to sell itself. No wonder people choose Google over Yahoo.

Now, considering our component one –What are you doing about your brand? You don’t have to be a Google, an Apple or some other billion-dollar company. What you have to be is different and remarkable in your niche. How you choose to present yourself to your market will either encourage or discourage candidates. Consider this:

What’s your message to the marketplace?

What’s your promise?

How is it different?

And, how are you getting that message out? (website, articles, talks, videos, podcasts, position papers, testimonials, etc…). Yes a small company just starting out can catch the attention not only of the market but also from the people who you want to attract.

Contrary to current fear-based economics and projections, there are more jobs available in select areas than there are qualified people to fill them. So to grow, you need to fill them, and you will only do that if you are a place people are standing in line to become a part of. And it starts with your brand.

For more information on branding and our unique model for business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it!

Posted in Brand Building, Culture Building: Creating a Talent Gravity Organization | No Comments »

The Question of Management’s Necessity in Small Businesses

Friday, October 14th, 2011

Is Management Really That Important? In our work with small businesses we do get many variations of this question.

And we hear it in small businesses that:

Don’t believe an organizational structure is needed
Don’t believe in titles (and clear job roles with position descriptions to match)
When the person who runs the company believes that he/she is fully capable of running the company and making all the decisions themselves
When no one, other then themselves, truly understands the business and what is required for it to be successful
And when there is a belief all employees should act and feel the way they act and feel – have the same commitment.

While we find these beliefs are usually strongly held, they are unrealistic for today, unless you are a soloprenuer. Why? Because growing a successful company and holding beliefs such as these are incompatible. Now you may know a company who has these characteristics yet is successful in your opinion. In our experience, loosely run (and some even anti-management in philosophy) companies like this are rare, and many more are lying in the junk pile of broken companies than are positioned as a successful player in the marketplace.

In Monday’s Blog (http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/blog/2011/10/small-business-growth-at-risk-addressing-the-talent-shortage-by-establishing-a-talent-gravity-organization/), we talked about the Kaufman Foundation survey that revealed 21% of the entrepreneurs interviewed said that one of their biggest impediments to growth was managing fast growth. What we don’t know, and the study didn’t reveal, is why. Is it because of the issues raised above or is it because they just can’t seem to put a management structure in place fast enough? Is it because they lack management talent, or is it because they won’t enable management talent to perform to be accountable?

If you are not planning how you will management your company through the ensuing inflection points, you are planning to fail.

You know (or should know) that as your company grows, it will need management and management support structures to deal with the growth. It should never come as a surprise and it should be planned for in advance.

Wherever you are in your business life cycle – new start-up to a fast growing company, plan on how you will manage the company through its growth phases. Plan well in advance. Planning in advance will also help you select the employees you want to help you grow – employees with skills that can evolve as your business evolves. See our article on hiring for fast growing companies. http://www.ere.net/2009/09/11/hiring-for-fast-growing-departments-or-companies/

For more information on business growth and talent management, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com.

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Posted in Business Growth & Entrepreneurial Strategy, Management & Management Transitions | No Comments »

Small Business Growth – At Risk: Addressing the Talent Shortage by Establishing a Talent Gravity Organization

Monday, October 10th, 2011

In our recent blog, The Slow Leak in Job Creation by Small Business, http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/blog/2011/09/the-slow-leak-in-job-creation-by-small-business/, we discussed the findings from a Kaufman Foundation study (published July 2011 by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation). It provided a mixed report on small business job generation potential. One issue it did not address, but we mentioned in our blog, is the impact of the gap between the education of the workforce and the skills needed to do the work.

The educational gap was revealed in the latest Kaufman survey, as was the challenge of managing a fast growing business. http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/high-growth-entrepreneurs-plan-to-continue-growing.aspx

The survey, conducted with entrepreneurs at the Inc. 500 Conference found that the biggest impediments to growth are:

Finding qualified people (40%)
Managing fast growth (21%)
Accessing capital (16%)
Sluggish economy (13%)
Taxes (4%)
Regulatory uncertainty (3%)

Finding qualified people and managing fast growth represent 61% of the impediments facing fast growing companies.

Finding qualified people will continue to plague the marketplace for the next few years.

It will take time for the educational system to catch up with the new marketplace demands. You have two choices as an entrepreneur and small business owner:

You can complain about it and about the shortcomings of the educational system – the “ain’t it awful” syndrome
You can focus on becoming what we call a “talent gravity organization” and make choosing your company the decision of choice.

It’s like musical chairs. When the music stops some chairs will be empty – your goal is be ensure that it’s not your chair that’s empty!

To help ensure this, we encourage you to become a talent gravity organization: a place that draws people to you, as people are drawn to work for Google and Apple for example.

Building a talent gravity organization requires working on:

Your brand
Your culture
Building strong strategic leadership to establish strategic growth plans
Embedding sound management practices
Being competitive in the market place with compensation and benefits
Being a learning organization so people that come will stay and grow with you
Being a business that celebrates and recognizes the greatness in your employees

Interesting, as you build a talent gravity organization, you will also be addressing the second impediment to growth – managing a fast growing company.

In the weeks ahead we will explore what’s required to become a talent gravity organization.

For more information on business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it!

Posted in Business Growth & Entrepreneurial Strategy, Culture Building: Creating a Talent Gravity Organization | No Comments »

Do Happy Employees Lead to Happy Customers?

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

Maybe.

We hear a lot about happiness in the workplace and how happy employees lead to happy customers. Well not so fast. Before you start on an initiative to make employees happy in the workplace, let’s think for a moment about what we mean by a happy employee.

What makes an employee happy? Here’s some common things we hear:

My compensation is good (and usually desired/expected greater than what it is)
Flexibility in schedule – I can come in when I want and leave when I want
My boss doesn’t micromanage me
I have time for personal calls, email and social media use
I can do whatever I want to make the customer happy
I can reach my highest personal potential (yes, it is usually that vague)

Our point here is that happiness is a difficult thing to gauge in employees. Happiness can be an elusive concept.

Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, wrote a best selling book: Delivering Happiness, A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. And there’s little doubt that Zappos is a great business with loyal and happy employees and customers.

In 2001 Michael Hammer and James Champy wrote a best seller: Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. They provided examples of how reengineering dramatically improved performance. What happened after that?: poor results from reengineering projects and the rise of a new term for reducing the workforce – reengineering.

Our point is that too often a success in one business (using an interesting and often intriguing idea) does not necessarily transfer into a success in other businesses. And sometimes its intent is grossly misunderstood and therefore poorly and unsuitable applied.

Our focus and our challenge to you is to look deeply at your business. Assess the satisfaction level of your employees. Understand what you, as the employer, need to do to make a more satisfied workforce. And a basic though excellent way to start is simply to ask them (verses assume or apply general ideas from other businesses). When was the last time you sincerely asked your employees how they are doing? What’s working for them; what’s not? What else they need to perform their function and ideas for improvement for them and ultimately, the customers?

Do we believe that satisfied employees lead to satisfied customers? We do. We just stop short of using the elusive term – happy.

For more information on business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it!

Posted in Customer Service, Leadership | No Comments »

Your Business Through the Eyes of Your Customer

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

How you see your see your business doesn’t matter. How your customer sees your business matters.

In a study conducted by Bain, they found “that while 80% of the managers (who participated in the study) believe they are highly differentiated in their core market, only 8% of customers, when asked, agreed.”

How do you describe your business differentiators?

We have outstanding customer service
We have the best customer response rate in the business
We complete our projects on time and on budget
Our executive team is second to none
Our employees are the best in the business
Our product blows away the competition
It’s hard to answer that question because we have no competition

Who says? Unless your customer says, it doesn’t matter what you say. But if you actually believe what you say in the absence of customer based feedback, you are raising a barrier to future success.

Hubris and the proverbial “head in the sand” behavior do not help grow a business. There are enough external factors and economic challenges as it is; you don’t have to add to your business challenges by being detached from reality.

Another problem you create is the dissonance between your culture and your brand. If your brand touts these superlatives, yet your customers disagree, you have clear evidence that your culture – the way work gets done around here – doesn’t support your brand.

And what makes this so problematic is that telling yourself and your employees how great the company is creates one of two problems:

Lack of credibility with your employees – simply they don’t believe you
Employees who buy into the hype and see no reason to do anything other than what they are doing

If growth is important to you – ask your customer how you’re doing. And listen carefully. The information your customer provides is your road map for improvement and growth.

For more information on business growth, see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it!

Posted in Business Growth & Entrepreneurial Strategy, Customer Service | No Comments »

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Archive for October, 2011

Talent Management and the Talent Gravity Organization

Culture and the Talent Gravity Organization

The Second Keystone of a Talent Gravity Organization: Culture

Branding and the Talent Gravity Organization

The Four Building Blocks of a Talent Gravity Organization: Starting with Branding

The Question of Management’s Necessity in Small Businesses

Small Business Growth – At Risk: Addressing the Talent Shortage by Establishing a Talent Gravity Organization

Do Happy Employees Lead to Happy Customers?

Your Business Through the Eyes of Your Customer