Dear Colleague,
The greatest challenge of every business boils down to one thing - attracting the best people available and retaining them. Through them, products are created and improved, sales plans are achieved, and profits are realized.
Creating a company full of rising stars is the most difficult challenge businesses face today. Termed "human capital," it is the key source of competitive advantage in every single area of business. It differentiates companies and sustains success.
Human capital is the sum of your people's strengths, weaknesses, creativity, relationships, formal education, and life experience. This collective organizational brain trust has the potential to meet the current challenges and identify the future opportunities...if it gets accessed.
Companies have to take responsibility to identify, coach, and continuously groom new leaders to sustain their competitive advantage. In doing this, three issues come to the forefront in almost every company:
- Too much time is spent on the problem people
- Your best people are taken for granted
- You don't plan for growing your own skills and strengths
Here's the approach we recommend to retain, engage, and grow your rising stars, including yourself. In the list of safe harbors, this is the safest strategy.
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If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.
— General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, US Army
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Are You Ignoring Your Rising Stars?
Office furniture, computers, and technology depreciate by the day. To quote Dilbert " That computer is almost 78 hours old. Time to replace it."
Real estate, stock prices, and earnings are in constant flux. There is so much outside our control and influence as leaders and team members.
So where do you put your time, energy, and money? What is the safe bet? If you are in a leadership position, investing in your rising stars and investing in yourself are the smart ways to allocate assets.
Most forms of quality education provide a return of six times the original investment.The educated and incented employee literally appreciates in value to an organization. He or she provides the increased horsepower to solve current issues and is the best guarantee for the future. Products become commodities and lose value in the marketplace, but smart and educated people will re-think and out-think a declining market position.
The first question is... are you spending too much time on the under-achievers who simply aren't motivated to get better? Who is responsible for their growth? While everyone deserves a chance and an even playing field to achieve, accountability goes both ways.
One of the things we find in our practice is that new hires, at all levels, often will not ask questions; therefore, there is an assumption that they know more than they do. The pressure to keep up a facade masks the gaps. Pride gets in the way, and they do not become subject matter experts in their role. They languish, often get antagonistic, and do not become the rising stars that they could be. Instead they become problem employees.
Disengaged or actively disengaged employees do not offer much of a future to an organization. So set expectations early and continuously provide the tools for growth and expertise for everyone from hourly to senior level. Re-claim your disengaged people with the excitement and renewal of relevant training and development, and watch the value they add. If they still do not step up, invest in those who will.
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"Technology has leveled the playing field. The differentiation and the true competitive advantage are high performing teams."
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The second question is... are you taking your best people for granted? This is especially dangerous when they are not complainers. Often the leaders in a company just talk and do not ask for feedback. One of our most successful CEOs seeks feedback from her best people with two questions... What two things am I doing wrong? What two things am I doing right? Rather than staying in an ivory tower of being less than informed about the reality of the business, she gets feedback regularly from everyone who reports to her. She will ask these two questions at staff meetings, during one-on-ones, and on the airplane. She will also solicit feedback from hourly employees who are "touching the elephant" at a different place.
Heavily engaged, high bandwidth people know what their leaders are doing right and where improvement is needed. Listening to your people has a two fold benefit: they know they are not being taken for granted, and you get the benefit of their point of view. We only get two eyes to look at this world. Great leaders want more than their own pair of eyes to see and understand the world of business.
The third question... has to do with your future. What are you doing to increase your skills, leverage your strengths, and add value to the company? Some of that will be answered when you create a culture rich with feedback. The other part that needs to be answered is how to get informed on what is relevant and meaningful to your growth.
Great leaders stay informed in a number of ways... membership in professional organizations, webinars, conferences, letting others on the team take the lead while they sit back and observe, committing to be a subject matter expert then seeking the right counsel to do so. Leadership growth is accelerated with intention. The mere passage of time will not accelerate learning. We get better through experiences and figuring out what lessons can be learned.
Here is a straight-forward development process that we use in our consulting and coaching practice to help leaders and teams grow:
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The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or different answers.
— M. Scott Peck, Author
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- Step One - Identify Key Talent. Spend the time identifying skills sets and how they map to roles and responsibilities.
- Step Two - Establish Career Goals. Sit down and find out what your key talent wants to do in your organization and how they would like to be developed.
- Step Three - Create Development Plans. Plan challenging assignments, training, cross-training, and on-the-job learning.
- Step Four - Coach and Measure Progress. Create an environment of regular coaching and recognition. Spend time every month with your top performers to review goals and set new ones.
The future has a way of arriving unannounced. There is no security or safe harbor in what is no longer meaningful or relevant. Genuine security resides in growth, self-discipline, and moving forward.
Leaders grow companies by continuing to grow themselves. Your example of growth will be more inspiring than any speech you deliver. It takes courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure world you work in, evaluate new ideas, maximize your rising stars, and deliver the future.