Lawrence Fine

An employee leaves and our first thought is “we need to fill that position by hiring someone or promoting someone”.

Before doing this, we really should be asking ourselves “is there a need for that position?” Also, we should ask “should that position be reconfigured to better suit the needs of the organization?”

Too often, we fill position based on openings and not on the true needs of the organization. Any organization with more than 2-3 people should have an organizational chart and the configuration of the chart (and thus the organization) on a regular basis.

Many organizations would benefit by taking a serious look at their organizational chart and seeing if there are ways to make changes that would be beneficial to the organization. The difficulty in doing this is frequently the people making the evaluation are too close to the situation. When you have seen the same thing for the past X years, it’s sometimes difficult to see how Y might be more effective. Consider bringing in some outside people to take a look at your organizational chart and they might see things very differently/

Is your organizational chart correct? If not, what are you going to do about it?

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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We tend to put a great deal of emphasis on resumes when looking to hire for a position. Did they go to the “right” schools? Do they have the required number of years experience? Do they have the correct certifications and licenses?

While some of this information might be important (when looking to hire a medical doctor, it is important to hire a licensed doctor who graduated from an accredited medical school) much of it is simply telling what the person did in the past and not what they are going to do in the future. Other things on a resume might look good on paper but not transfer well to the workplace.

As an example, a small business might be looking for a new CEO and in looking through the resumes of the applicants, they come across one of a former executive at a Fortune 500 company. This might automatically seem like a “no brainer” of a hire with the thought being if they could do it at a big company, doing it at a smaller company would be simple. The problems start when the person is hired and starts realizing he might not have the numerous assistants, secretaries, runners etc who did the small things, that are so important, at the larger organization. The larger organization might have a fully staffed travel department who takes care of all travel arrangements but with the new organization, it’s probably more of a “do it yourself” situation. When arranging his own travel, he might just automatically make a reservation at a Ritz Carlton because that is where he stayed when traveling for his previous employer but that might shoot much of the travel budget for the smaller organization.

A soccer club might look to hire an “A licensed coach” (the highest license in US soccer) without regard for how the coach actually deals with the players. The licensing procedures are based on passing tests, running practices in a controlled environment etc. The first time the coach has to deal with an irate parent over playing time, the “A license” doesn’t help much.

If I’m hiring a graphic designer, I could look at the resumes and see who went to the “right” art schools or who worked for the “right” ad agency. The alternative is to actually look at the designers work. Have them design something specifically for the interview and then look at some of their other work. That will give you a good idea of their quality of work, much more so than something on their resume. This doesn’t mean to ignore the resume completely, you still will want to check previous employers etc but use the resume as a resource and not as the deciding piece.

If you are in a position to do so, try to create a situation where the applicant can demonstrate their abilities. If hiring a computer programmer dealing with a specific language or program, give them a short assignment using that language or program. This will tell you a great deal more than the “3.9 GPA” on their transcript.

I’ve never seen a resume do a good job. People, on the other hand, can be great. Hire the person, not the resume.

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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Those of you who know me know I’m a big Seth Godin fan. If you are an employee, have employee’s or know employee’s I strongly recommend you read his newest book titled “Linchpin”. In his book he writes about how to be, and the importance of making yourself indispensable.

Since I can’t do justice in trying to explain the concepts, I’m simply going to recommend that everyone purchase/borrow the book “Linchpin” by Seth Godin. This book should be available at any new book store or it can be purchased online at Amazon (if you look at the comments, you will find mine was the very first one on Amazon concerning this book).

Take the time to read this, it truly is worth it

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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If you have people working for you (or with you) and you want them to succeed, it’s important to let them fail.

It’s so easy for us to step in any time we see something going wrong (or just going in a direction we don’t want/expect) but if we don’t let the people who are assigned to the task to keep trying (and occasionally fail) how will they ever truly learn?

Too often, we think we are doing a favor by stepping in when we see someone struggling but struggling is how we learn. If you want people to succeed, give them the opportunity to succeed (and to fail)

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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When setting a goal, it sometime helps to “take a picture” either literally or figuratively.

If you set a goal of buying a new house consider taking a picture of your dream house and put it in a spot so you can see it each day.

If you set a goal of losing 40 pounds, take a picture of someone who is a similar body type as you but who is at your ideal weight and make sure you can see it each day.

While it’s good to set goals and to put it in writing, if you can see a picture of your goal each day, it will help keep you motivated.

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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Most businesses and organizations strive for success. The thing that many don’t understand is too much success can cause major problems if you aren’t prepared.

If you are a manufacturer and suddenly receive massive orders will you have the capacity to fulfill these orders? If you can rely upon these orders for the long term, you can build new facilities etc but if there is no guarantee of future orders, that expansion could potentially prove catastrophic.

If you are running a seminar and the room fills up, you could get a bigger room but 100% of a smaller room is sometimes better than 75% of a bigger room (75% of the bigger room might generate more revenue but the cost for the bigger room and the loss of atmosphere of a packed room might not be worth it).

Making the decision, in advance, of when it’s truly in your best interests to expand and when it’s best to stay as is will help you avoid the emotional decisions which frequently end up being very costly.

Success is good. Too much unprepared for success can be quite costly. Be careful what you wish for, if you haven’t planned for it, you might regret what you get

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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At different levels, processes and people have different flexibility.

For example in cooking, the person making a Big Mac at McDonalds is expected to make the Big Mac the exact same way every time. Every McDonalds should serve the same Big Mac with the same ingredients and the same portions. In that level of cooking, the process is what matters and the people involved are simply expected to follow the process exactly. At a different level, if you go to a gourmet restaurant and order Blackened Mahi Mahi, the executive chef might have a unique way of seasoning the fish which might result in a different and wonderful taste each time. In this situation, the person becomes more important than the process. The thing to remember is that even at this level, the process DOES matter. If I order Blackened Mahi Mahi and the chef decides to deviate a bit and cooks a Sweet and Sour Chicken dish, even if it tastes wonderful he would have deviated too much from the process and this would result in an unhappy customer.

Using a bank as another example, the tellers have very specific processes to follow when dealing with each customer. On the other hand, many people in the loan department have had a lot more flexibility in determining whether a loan should be made or not. The feeling has been these people in the loan departments have more experience and are dealing with more unique situations so they must be given more freedom from the processes but when the processes are completely ignored…well just take a look at our banking industry.

You might think an inventor would have complete freedom from processes as they are forced to be creative in their thinking. However, the exact opposite is true. The successful inventor is going to follow a process to track success. Thomas Edison’s famous quote (“I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that wont work”) isn’t true if he wasn’t tracking his attempts. If he wasn’t following a process to track results, he would be trying the same things over and over because he wouldn’t know what worked and what didn’t.

At all levels, we must have processes. The successful leader is the one who can figure out for each person and for each level, which processes must be followed and which are guidelines based on various levels of expertise, experience and other factors.

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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If I’m running a soccer coaches clinic and am demonstrating how to conduct a training session for the coaches, I would want to have a high level group of demonstrators to make it easy for the coaches to see how the session should look. If they are able to demonstrate everything properly, it makes the coaching look good.

If the players aren’t at a level where they can do everything perfectly, the coach will have to adapt (some might even call this COACHING). They might have to teach something they assumed the players knew, or make minor changes to the progression. The thing these coaches have to understand is this is what the coaches in the audience have to deal with EVERY DAY.

We all want a perfect situation but the reality is, this doesn’t occur very often. Isn’t it more realistic to demonstrate in a manner similar to what they people in the audience will be dealing with?

If you are in charge of a housekeeping department for a hotel, you might want to demonstrate how to make a bed using a bed that has plenty of room on all sides for you to move around. However, if the beds the actual housekeepers are working on are in a crowded room, shouldn’t the demonstration be in a crowded room?

If you are in charge of an accounting department and demonstrate how to do the paper work when all the numbers match up, it will seem easy. However, if the accounting department is going to be dealing with a situation where they have to figure out why something doesn’t match up, should that be shown in the demonstration.

Many people are so concerned about looking good that they want to make sure everything is perfect before they start. The people who are actually good at what they do are able to adapt when necessary and aren’t afraid to do so, even in front of others.

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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People complain and we listen to their complaints. People rave and we listen to their compliments.

When people say nothing, too often, we assume everything is great.

At best, silence means things are good and one thing to remember is when things are good, they rarely become great. When things are good people get complacent and their willingness to take the type of chances needed to be great are avoided.

When you have features you might be offering and no one is talking about the features, listen to the silence and figure out what needs to be done better.

It’s easy to listen people are talking. It’s just as important to listen to what people aren’t talking about.

Listen to the silence

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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It’s common for organizations to conduct surveys after an event to see if people found the event to be to their satisfaction

The other day, I received a call from a client who has a seminar coming up in a few months and he asked if we could do a survey asking people what they want covered during this seminar. The seminar is on a particular topic but he figured rather than trying to anticipate what attendees would want to see covered, he would simply ask them.

It’s such a simple concept but if you think about it, very few people do it.

A camp owner could send a survey to attendees (and potential attendees) asking for specific things they want to do during the camp. A group running a conference could ask people for recommendations on topics to be discussed at the conference. A restaurant owner could ask customers for suggestions to add to their menus.

We like to think we know what our customers/clients want but the reality is, we frequently don’t. Doesn’t it make more sense to ask them before hand rather than try to guess and then ask later how we did?

It’s important when doing a pre survey to make sure the participants understand that all opinions would be taken seriously but it might not be possible to fulfill everyones wishes (unless you own Fantasy Island).

Just a thought

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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