Taking Responsibility

In writing about performance management, it’s easy to lead readers into a place where it seems that good performance management is just about what the manager does. It seems easy to say that we need to tell people what we expect of them, tell them how they are doing and how they can do better. After all, isn’t that all that good performance management is – simple and clear?

There is no doubt there is a level of technique, process and discipline that a manager needs to apply to get the most out of her team. However, the true high performers have it within, and what characterises them most commonly is their innate accountability to themselves and then to all of their stakeholders.

Does anyone think Shane Warne did not spend hundreds of hours perfecting a legspinner when his team mates had finished for the day, or that Katherine Jenkins hasn’t sung thousands of scales that would sound perfect to us every time, or that Jonny Wilkinson didn’t take place kicks and drop goals with both feet till the lights were turned off? The accountability that mattered wasn’t to their team mates, or the orchestra, coach or fans but to themselves.  True accountability is internal.

Perfection from Accountability

We all know that the best employees are those that when you start a conversation on responsibilties, they take that conversation and turn it into a mantra.  They are the people who not only tell you what they have done, but also what they won’t achieve, and ultimately what they don’t believe they can achieve. They are objective and owners of their own role in the enterprise. There aren’t enough of them.

Sadly, their role models are weak.  The Australian Government is now shrouded in a fog of poor accountability and obfuscation. While legal principles are touted, ownership is sparse. I also heard another corporate tale this morning where a fear of making decisions and being responsible for them through several layers of management (if that’s what you can call it) left others presenting a program roll out with incomplete content.

I have a simple method of dealing with a lack of accountability and a failure to bring solutions from people who are part of my team.  It is just four words, four words that can only be answered internally, and four words that imply a response be well thought through and rich in content, the four words?

“What do you think?”

Is it...In Recruitment?

After the GFC, it seemed that this behaviour was finished, until today.  Don’t get me wrong, I like big fees, I just think that they should represent value and that  value, when correctly understood, can be easily sold.

Today, I saw an example of behaviour from the recuitment industry that I thought was well and truly  dead and buried. A friend who is a business owner, received an out of the blue call from a recruiter about two years ago offering to meet with a middle management candidate.  Despite making it clear he had no roles at that time,  he agreed to meet with the candidate for a chat.  The recruiter sent the CV, along with one page of “terms and conditions“ .  My friend and this “candidate” left their meeting with the same understanding that there was to be no job offer, there was no job. With this in mind, my friend did not read the terms. In his mind, he didn’t need to, and he’s a busy man.

Nine months later, things changed and my friend needed someone.  So he called her. She did a two month contract and then converted to employment and was employed for a further 12 months. At the end of her employment she went back to the original recruiter who saw her CV now mentioned the period of employment with my friend. Now, it’s easy to argue that the employer should have called the agency as a courtesy.  However, he also could not contemplate that a recruiter would want to exercise “ownership” over a candidate 9 months after a first meeting. The recruiter issued a bill for $20,000 plus GST and expects payment.  the “terms and conditions” had a 12 month exclusion period.

I hold some sympathy with the recruiters principle but I also know my friend to be of impeccable integrity.

So the question of value becomes a question of ethics even if the legal issue is slightly balanced in favour of the recruiter. She introduced a candidate who was hired. The problem I have with this is that there was no service.  There was no competency based interview and evaluation as described on the recruiters website, (as there was no brief, and no job at the time of introduction, that was clearly impossible) there were no assessments, no reference checks …..and a resume float is just not worth $20,000. There is no integrity and no value in the invoice.  The recruiter did not even have the courage to raise and explain the terms and the possible repercussions of meeting with the candidate, she just slipped the document into the email.  In other industries, this would be a scam.

The event prompted me to review our own terms and conditions.  Ours are written by top lawyers and sometimes appear painfully legalistic to me.  However, they set out our obligations and describe the services we will provide as obligations! There is a very clear description of the value proposition in legal terms, that our marketing also promises.

Most importantly, at 1st Executive we assert no rights over an introduction, so there is no time frame of candidate “ownership” – if we are not in touch with our clients’ needs we do not deserve to be paid. If we are not retained to do the work, we do not deserve to be paid. It’s our service, our process and the application of our skills and knowledge that we charge for, and if we ever charge for a referral, it will be at a fraction of the price of a full service recruitment fee.  That’s value. I can sell that, with integrity.

No Policy for Jobs

While we are paid by our clients to find and then help them engage with the best people they can afford, it’s worth repeating exactly what we say to our consultants in their induction, verbatim, which is:

“Interviewing job seekers is a privilege. Every time you sit in front of a candidate to assess if they should go to work for one of your clients, you are starting a process that is messing with their life, their money, their social standing, their well being and the security of their family. If you feel that you can’t take the responsibility seriously and give it the respect that it deserves, you should go and work somewhere else”

On the flip side, we understand that people don’t always work out; we believe that employers must be able to choose who they employ and who they retain because they are usually the ones taking the risks, but that discipline and terminations still need to be fair.

Right now, we see a government whose underlying belief system seems to be that employers are evil. Why else would we have legislation that creates the case law reported in The Australian newspaper on March 20th? Click here for the full story; it’s an affront to every decent minded employer in the country.

Then this morning, I heard Treasurer Wayne Swann say “I won’t take a backward step in standing up for small business and workers…” He was defending a 1% cut in company tax, funded by the so called Carbon Tax (which assumes countries that don’t produce carbon can produce more clean air – otherwise what’s the environmental point?) while gradually increasing compulsory superannuation to 12% from 9%. Who does the maths?

I did!

Let’s say a small professional services firm with $2m in revenue and 30% return to owners before tax (which will invariably be in lieu of salaries) and paying 12% superannuation to employees at normal professional services employment costs:revenue ratios will be miles behind. In fact, they will have to sack the junior to stand still. Not only that – the government will actually collect less company tax, regardless of whether or not they retain the junior. You could not design a more perfect “lose lose” scenario if you tried. I imagine the government would say that they may not legislate that employers have to increase the employer’s contribution to 12%.

Imagine the scenario, during the phasing in years of trying to sell to employees a story that “we need to redirect more of your package to super which means you will take home less”. Some will bemoan the meanness of employers who are now paying less company tax. Worse, how much less productivity (and therefore lower tax take) will all this hand wringing cost.

Finally, Employment Minister Bill Shorten is reported in the Wall Street Journal (read it yourself) as saying that interest rate cuts will help Australia’s employment figures. This is incredible. Let’s say that same professional services business has, over time, invested $500,000 of debt finance (secured against the family home) in their own business, and that full rate reductions are passed on by the lending banks and that they come down by 25 basis points at a time then they’d save $1,250 in interest a year for each reduction. Yes Bill, I could get an offshore resource for a few days a month, and no, 25 basis points will not see a run on the Australian dollar.

So the question the media should be asking is “Who did the maths?”

I did.

Footnote:

For just a tiny selection of some of the initiatives that employers invest in to be good employers see www.1stexecutive.com.au and, Julia, Wayne and Bill, small business is run by entrepreneurs – incentives help us create jobs, imposts suffocate us.  That’s also the basis of sound performance management.

A few days later Eric Jackon published an article in Forbes magazine – “Just Lin, Baby! 10 Lessons Jeremy Lin Can Teach Us Before We Go To Work Monday Morning” for a full copy of that article click here.

I’d like to play with Jacksons “ten things” a little in the context of performance management while you can read the full human side of Lin’s story by following the link above.

1. Believe in yourself when no one else does. All businesses need passionate people, one of the issues people deal with is getting knocked back by “managers” too easily. If team members and their managers negotiate boundaries, employees can follow their own self beliefs within these when face with challenges.  If a challenge falls outside a boundary, it is then all about building a business case that is supported by heart and head. If the business case is not compelling, the manager doubts their team member’s self belief.

2. Seize the opportunity when it comes up.  In sport an injury or suspension might create an opportunity.  At work it is more likely to be created by a new project, an interim or temporary role, or even an internship.  Employees need to seize the initiative in every situation – it’s actually what managers want and need.

3. Your family will always be there for you, so be there for them.  Work life balance is often talked about and less often delivered.  Give it to staff, keep them fresh, worry free and energised and watch results improve while both absenteeism and OH&S issues decline. To the team, just take it. Deliver on your employment contract, meet your objectives but never neglect the ones you love – they are your fuel and inspiration.

4. Find the system that works for your style. Lin needed to find a team that suited him.  Choose your culture carefully when choosing an employer.  Employers, if you don’t have behavioural interview questions around values and core competencies you won’t know you have selected the wrong team member for months – think of what that costs! Of course, you need to have created behavioural frameworks for values and competencies in the first place.  Don’t worry if you haven’t – 90% of 1st Executive’s clients didn’t have them till they met us.

5. Don’t overlook talent that might exist around you today on your team. The sceptics out there will find it hard to believe that we have talked hiring managers out of external hires and into internal promotions with a lower level recruit following.  We might get a lower fee, but we get a loyal client because we have just saved tens of thousands in salary costs. Talent management and development is key.

6. People will love you for being an original, not trying to be someone else. You’ve got to be you.  While we can check this on behavioural and personality based psychometric assessments, some people screen who they really are and just end up creating stress for the organisation and most importantly themselves. Employer and employee have to be honest about the work environment and what climate they want to work in respectively.

7. Stay humble.  Humble people can still self promote and self promotion is good – but humility is more aware of pitfalls and looming issues than hubris is. This applies to employees and employers alike.

8. When you make others around you look good, they will love you forever. This is, without question, a leadership trait. The unrelenting focus on the team by the champion player  is what makes a champion team.

9. Never forget about the importance of luck or fate in life. This also relates to seizing opportunities – whether an employer or an employee, if you get on a roll, bank your achievements and some of your profits – the reality and teh experience of doing so prepares you well for the next launch.

10. Work your butt off. “Lin couldn’t have seized his opportunity if he hadn’t worked like crazy for years perfecting his skills.”  says Eric Jackson. He’s right, in elite sport you have a few years to optimise your talent and synchronise with physical potential.  The great thing about professional work is that you need never stop learning and the mind usually outlasts the body. Working hard is the best way to develop skills and experience. One of my college basketball playing sons, hits the court, on his own, night after night to hone shooting and handling skills – he already knows his clock is ticking at 20. At 51, my professional clock ticks at a lower rate and I learn something new every day, because I am open to it.

We have also often seen quite capable candidates rejected because of “cultural fit” or “communication skills” (make of that what you will) and you can see why we have some acute shortages across Australia and even in higher unemployment markets.  I’m not sure what it is, but I have always found ethnic origin and accents fascinating filters on insights – think of it, with only English, we wouldn’t have schadenfreude or je ne sais quoi  – after all the idea of “I don’t know what” having clarity of meaning in English seems absurd!

We have employed Indians, Pakistanis, Irish, English, Australian, New Zealanders, Greeks, Maltese, Bosnians, Colombians and Brazilians so far in our short history and our business is richer for it.  Most were young, qualified and inexperienced – but they made up for that with a willingness to learn and a strong work ethic.  We search for the qualities we want and don’t compromise.

Graduates as Interns

Imagine my disappointment to meet countless qualified engineers, computer scientists, software developers and business graduates driving cabs and cleaning offices and then listening to tales of woe from employers about talent shortages.

Our solution, our little contribution to the situation is to design an internship program – which could only be launched after successfully picking our way through the minefield of the Fair Work Act.  We also discovered a handful of internships that bring students into Australia from overseas, facilitate Australian Host Companies to train them and then see them go home with their new found knowledge – to a competitive economy! Our program is an opportunity for employers and workplace entrants alike. See here for more details …and here’s our launch video.

However, it’s the inability of sales teams to consistently deliver what they have promised or what they believe to be possible at the start of the year that interests me. The video below introduces the idea of the “fluffy pipeline”.  Our view is that two things happen.  One is that opportunities that are not real and that have not been properly qualified stay in pipeline reports far too long without any advance towards a close. The other is that “sales people” mask this by call reluctance.  If they were doing enough prospecting, all the time, they would actually want to get the deadwood out of the pipeline and focus on these new opportunities. Let me know if your pipeline needs “de-fluffing”.

These were words I heard on drive time radio this morning from a personal trainer.  It would be easy to think that he was promoting his services, but what he was talking about was how his permit fees to use public open spaces for groups next year will go from around $5,000 a year now to almost $12,000 and his use of public open space will be curtailed in terms of choice and group size (limited to 12). He is often given reasons for permission to use open space being denied as “saturated use”.  Saturated? at 5.30 am in the morning, a time that most local bureacrats have never seen in their waking hours. $12,000? Let’s say that people pay $20 per session. This guy will need to run 84 sessions before he is $1 in front – that is an obscene “tax” payable before income is assured.

A Disappearing Sight?

This is an extraordinary analogy for our People, Perfeormance, Profit crusade. Here we have a local government bureacracy putting up barriers to personal health in a society that is becoming increasingly obese.  The mental health side of things is significant too.  The trainer identified that he often works with people who would not otherwise exercise.  This kind of group is social network, support network and exercise group all rolled into one.  For group members that can not afford gyms, do not wish to train alone or feel self conscious, these councils are removing their one opportunity to improve their physical health, as well as their mind. How can people perform when they are not healthy and vital? What right does a local government body have to deny people access to open space that their taxes have already paid for and continue to maintain?

It is also a classic case study of a failure to align organisational objectives.  At a national policy level, the economy, productivity and health services management and costs are all aligned priorities in an ageing society. Yet, here we have councils actively pursuing petty local policies that undermine every one of those national priorities.

I have never seen a sadder story for our overweight and depressed society, it is madness.

The smart companies have realised that this is really a great time to attract new talent.  Employees are in the zone. Often at the end of a calendar year they decide it may be time to move on.  Those who are rewarded on a calendar year basis will hang around till they pick up any bonuses that they have earned on December 31st and then leave.

Look for Talent when no one else is

For companies needing great talent, especially where the talent is competitively sought, this is a great time to recruit – why?

Here’s ten reasons:

1. Line managers have their eye off the ball, they are not focused on retaining talent or engaging new talent, believing that all is safe on the run in to Chritsmas.
2. HR have their eye off the ball too – they are focused on a raft of year end work…. making sure the right bonuses are paid, that performance reviews are completed and even that the Christmas Party is free of OH&S risks.
3. Talent is open to talking, they can’t achieve much more this year, so investigation has appeal.
4. Talent that accepts a new role as late as December 24th is off the market. They will generally not look for other opportunities over the break.
5. Competition is sleeping – why would they recruit when everyone is on holiday?
6. This also means that any advertising or search activity is more likely to be noticed by the people required – there is less noise
7. New talent hired before Christmas will make a contribution before the end of financial year.
8. Talent hired post Christmas will, more than likely, not start before Mid March, Easter is not far behind and they will have barely completed on-boarding by the time June 30 arrives.
9. The Talent takes a break and arrives fresh and rested to start their new challenges
10. There is almost now opportunity for counter offer from the existing employer.

So, don’t run with the crowd, find the best talent while your competitors are napping.

So, what of current activity? Just focusing on FMCG in Australia and in beverages (a category in which my 1st Executive business is active) we are aware of a couple of acquisitions or mergers in different, but advanced stages.  Fosters Brewing is selling to SAB Miller, while Asahi has acquired United Distillers.  We think sales people will come under real scrutiny – acquirers will clear our non-performers and hunt for high performers.  The threat is to those FMCG companies that don’t know who their best performers are, or who have HR policies that encourage the mediocre to stay and the high performers to try their hand elsewhere.  This video gives some more perspective.

Talk to the people that apply for these jobs about building a pipeline, progressing a deal, spotting a “continuance” ahead of an “advance” and 8 out 10 flounder.  Ask about SPIN, Strategic Selling, territory management or (gulp) cold calling and they break out in a cold sweat.

Then we get into selling to people with power and influence, picking up the phone, asking for referrals, killer questions, presenting to large groups and protecting margin and we just hope we are not between them and the door!  Of course it’s not all like that, and we can assess these fears and behaviours – but what did happen to sales people? I own a business, so, I am in sales, it’s a sell or starve choice.  My biggest frustration is all the other stuff that stops me selling more because I know that once on a roll, it just flows.  It’s a noble, essential but often denigrated profession. It’s part art, part science but it is absolutely vital.  What happened to sales people? I’d love to hear what you think.