Monday, January 28, 2013

Never Go Shopping When You’re Hungry: The Perils Of ‘Impulse Buying’ When Recruiting

hungry
Here’s a recent newspaper article about impulse buying. They say you should never go shopping when you’re hungry. You get too much of the wrong stuff that you don’t need that does you harm and that you’ll regret. It’s the same with recruitment. I mean metaphorically hungry though, of course. Mind you, it’s probably not good to recruit when literally hungry either. Who knows what lowered blood sugar levels will do to your concentration as you stare at, and steer through, the dross, irrelevance and incomprehensibility on many applicants’ CVs?

The inherent problem is that many bosses recruit precisely when they have a vacancy. Of course, duh! BUT that is when they’re experiencing all the downside of having that vacancy – extra workload, inconvenience, lowered morale of those who remain and are doing that extra work, the ramifications if there were negative circumstances surrounding the departure of the previous incumbent, etc. So often, too often, there is a disproportionate drive to ‘get the vacancy filled.’ That’s totally natural, totally understandable and definitely something a brain-based boss would be mindful to manage. Clearly if the maths says that there should be more people to do the work, you need to recruit, but that is quite different from simply filling a vacancy via automatic replacement. Vacancies are always going to arise and workplace leaders should always have a part of their time allocated to thinking about the ‘what-ifs.’

Vacancies present a chance to re-evaluate the team’s set-up. Does it need to be filled at all? Should / can that role be changed? Should / can other roles be changed? Could others step up and a lesser role be back-filled? Yes, there is a cost to being a person down, but there is a greater and longer-term cost in recruiting with reckless pace and haste and getting it wrong or missing out on team enhancement opportunities.

If you do go shopping when you’re hungry, remember, beggars can’t be choosers. (Thank you ’2-for-1 cliche sale!’)

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Employee Entanglement

tangled
It’s a new year so is it time for a new leadership buzzword? I have got to start inventing new words or phrases. Here’s an article that introduced me to the term ‘Employee Entanglement’ as the better thing beyond mere ‘Employee Engagement.’

I was quite prepared to put on my cynical hat and mock yet another buzzword that some author or consultant had invented to be a guru about. I’m not saying that Employee Entanglement isn’t that but, based on this brief article, I like what he’s saying, it seems to be a fresh and novel way to catch attention about a timeless and essential approach to leadership and I want to read more.

The article cites a book by Ramon Benedetto, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and co-author of It’s My Company Too! How Entangled Companies Move Beyond Employee Engagement For Remarkable Results. I haven’t checked it out yet. I’ll do so though. The Kindle sample chapter awaits me.  I’m intrigued. Nevermind judging books by their covers, many of us can’t get past the title. And this is a good one.

The article’s final paragraph nicely sums up Benedetto’s key point, “So if leadership is wrapped up in a command-and-control mentality, they’re not going to achieve success. Instead, they need to foster a trust-and-track type approach: hire the right people and give them the ability to succeed.” Sounds very engagementy to me with its strong autonomy references. I applaud the attention-getting because it’s getting attention for something very worthwhile.
That said, they definitely want to you to buy the book and the subsequent speaking and consultancy but, hey, who doesn’t?

Happy new year everyone – the time when many of us resolve to give things up like smoking, over-eating and making unachieveable resolutions.