LPs IN AN iPOD WORLD

As businesses share their current challenges and observations, it may be helpful for us to share a few timely comments on leadership staffing, turnover, retention and recruiting.

Staffing

LPs in an iPod World

My LPs weren't adaptable to my 8-track tape player then I couldn't jam my 8-tracks into my new cassette player. My cassette tapes weren't usable in my CD player, and now there's no slot to fit any of them in my iPod.

I've tried to adapt them all but I can't. Each was the media of its time, and they all could still be good. But I've reluctantly dealt with the changes in technology, expectations, compatibility and competition that have left behind my LPs, 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs.

Changes over time may also have made obsolete some of the leaders who were right for their original mission and for your earlier business. Despite your best efforts, and theirs, have they become LP performers in an iPod world?

Turnover

Hooray for Employee Turnover
Yes, we're serious.

As a recovering economy presents your employees with attractive options, their departure will impact employee turnover statistics that many businesses work so hard to minimize. But this is one metric where the numbers are the wrong measure. It's not how many employees you lose, but who you lose.

If you're attentive to your standout performers and provide them better opportunities, challenges and rewards, they'll fight to stay and won't search for options. They'll be less receptive to calls from companies that are in tenacious pursuit of new talent. If differentiating your internal rewards and opportunities means that there's little left for lesser performers, they may voluntarily leave to find a better fit for themselves, thus providing you with a chance to upgrade your organization. Depending on how aggressively you assess and address employee performance, you may thus be driving voluntary turnover. [Topgrading or forced ranking would programmatically identify top players. It would also identify lesser performers for development, or dismissal, thereby driving involuntary turnover and opening targeted opportunities to replace mediocre or non performers.]

So, for the organizations that are seriously upgrading their talent to improve business results or reposition their enterprise, hooray for employee turnover!

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"What we were doing didn't work. The time for providing for everybody, no matter what
their performance, is gone." -- General Motors North America President Mark L. Reuss
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Retention Katy Bar the Door And what about those tempting outside options that may find your standout performers? Optimistic companies now on the rebound are looking for great managers and executives to shepherd them from recessionary caution back to the promise of growth. In the search for talent, these companies are not looking for mediocrity. They're on the hunt for all-stars. They and their agents will dig to find the skilled, knowledgeable, accomplished leaders who are motivated by more than money; have value to sell and the initiative to share it - and who have been given a reason to consider options.

Other companies on the hunt are happy to attract the best leaders that you have. Whether they can is largely up to you.

Recruiting Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places * You may be one of those optimistic companies now in pursuit of great new talent. If you're building your candidate pool solely with active job seekers - those who read and respond to postings - they, not you, are defining your options. If you happen to be a bit more enticing with your postings you could also attract some casual job seekers, those who occasionally peek at available positions. But what you're still missing are the 70% or so of talented potential candidates who aren't looking at all - the untapped mother lode.

You may be diligently fishing for your dinner in the familiar shallows of a nearby pond. Is there an untapped ocean right behind you?

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“In the competitive deployment of strategy, capital and people,
great leadership is the ultimate tiebreaker.”
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* Song by Bob Morrison, Wanda Mallette & Patti Ryan