Kubica LaForest Consulting

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

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

This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 5:37 am and is filed under Brand Building, Culture Building: Creating a Talent Gravity Organization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.