Executive Wisdom for Business

My Opinion on the Recruitment Profession

My latest paper on the recruitment profession addresses issues that are top of mind for many and most. 



• Attracting job orders
• Ignore consensus
• Selective acquisition
• Creating opportunity
• Go to where the money is
• Metrics that matter
• 
Leadership
• Pricing 



You are able to download the PDF of the paper, at no cost from my website. You do not need to give your name or email address, or sign up for a newsletter or anything else.

Surthriving in Recruitment - 2009 & Beyond

By the way, if you do wish to sign up for my monthly newsletter, you can do so by following this link: The Executive Wisdom Times Monthly.

Ric Willmot - Delivering Breakthrough Executive Performance

Business & Strategic Diagnostics

One of the techniques I continually use with clients is having them develop business and strategic diagnostics for their business.

Strategic planning is an oxymoron and for the most part a waste.

Developing a smart strategy and regularly refining that strategy is what will make you successful.

Why?

1. It encourages you to think about the future of your business, regularly.
2. You will get to know your business through the diagnostics and the strategic-thinking.
3. It will more appropriately measure whether you have been successful.
4. The diagnostics show by verifiable evidence what the business has actually achieved.
5. It allows for all stakeholders in your business to understand the intent of your organisation and what the future holds.
6. The diagnostics are efficacious in nature; allowing you to get on with it!

Leave your comments and let us know what are you doing to grow your business?

Ric Willmot

A Staff Review that's actually worthwhile

I have written previously about performance appraisals and 360 degree feedback.

• Performance Appraisals Fail
• Seven Steps to 360 Degree Success

Members of my Mentor Program are asking me then what makes a valuable and worthwhile employee review.

Here is my best advice to you. Ask intelligent, provocative questions that will elicit the information you are seeking. An off-the-shelf review will NOT do it for you ... or anybody else. If the employee review is important, take the time and invest the mental energy in creating the review specifically to your business, your culture and your needs.

Here is an example I created for a company, where I sit on the Board:

1. Why did you choose to work at Acme Inc.? (Headed up by Wile E. Coyote)
2. Now that you are here, what do you like best about Acme Inc.?
3. If you could wave a magic wand, what would be the single most important thing you would want to improve about yourself?
4. If you were the CEO of Acme Inc., what three things would you want to change and or improve?
5. What new problems might arise over the next three years?
6. What would you really like to do at Acme Inc. next year?

And, just because nobody is talking about you, doesn't necessarily mean they aren't complaining!

Ric Willmot

Saying: "No"

If you need to say, "No" to a group, an employee, or a client, it's vital to be cognisant of these strategies:

• Be polite. This way you maintain dignity and can prevent a discussion deteriorating into a slanging match. By remaining polite, nearly always the other people will remain polite, also.
• Desist from arguing. Convince people hat your decision is the best one by citing facts. In an argument, we tend to raise the volume of our speech, this will only antagonise the other person and they may become more intent on forcing their opinion rather than truly listening to you.
• Make certain you listen. People, expect, need and want their opinions to be heard and considered. You might believe that know what their argument is; but you are headed for grief if you refuse to listen to them. Ignoring what people are saying, and declaring your decision is final, will certainly provoke controversy.
• Maintain control. Let people discuss your decision with you, but limit the time. Be fair, but be firm because ultimately your is THE decision.
• Explain. It is entirely appropriate that your decision is "No". However, make certain you explain your rationale. Emphasise that you considered all opinions and viewpoints, and explain why you decided the way you did.
• Stand firm. Nothing weakens a decision like a divided committee or board of directors. Make certain a united front is maintained throughout the organisation.
• Never apologise. Be aware of the contrary feelings an opinions but emphasise that your decision was for the good of the business. You have done nothing that warrants an apology so, having considered all the facts and aspects, you can proceed confidently with your decision.
• Follow up. When "No" is accepted, don't assume the process is complete. You must rebuild the bridges between you and your team or the public. This will assist in relieving any tensions resulting from your decision and strengthen your hand on the next occasion.

Ric Willmot
 

How to make delegation work

Some managers believe that the most appropriate way to operate is to do everything for themselves. All it achieves is an increase in stress. And, it ignores the talent and potential in their organisation. If you want to make delegation work for you, these tips may help:

1. Avoid postponing important projects. These projects will not just disappear. It is only delaying the inevitable and escalates your stress levels. If this is happening to you, delegate more than you are at the moment.
2. Resist comparing the performance of others with your own. Those who resist delegation claim that others are unable to perform the duties as effectively as themselves. While this may be true for individual circumstances, it is often an excuse not to delegate. 
3. Encourage the development of your staff. Employees may be hesitant to offer their assistance to you, if they feel they lack the required skills. Staff members that are not taking personal responsibility for developing these skills, may need your encouragement; take them, lead them and organise a program for them. 
4. Co-operate with your people. Co-operation is the key to an effective organisation and where this culture exists, team members will be eagerly awaiting opportunities to participate even further.
5. Accept other ways of doing things. There is usually no ONE right way to handle a task. And, when you delegate, emphasise the result more than the process. You might be amazed at the new processes that can be innovated into your business. 
6. Share your ideas. Your skills took years to acquire and develop and they are your most valuable resource. Don't allow your knowledge and wisdom to remain a secret. Demonstrate to your people that you are willing to share your skills when needed. 

Continue having fun!

Ric Willmot

Research Paper on the Recruitment Profession

You are welcome to download our recent Research Paper on the Recruitment Profession.

And, even though it is written about recruitment and recruiters, anyone in professional services or personal services would benefit from reading it.

2009 Research Paper on Recruitment

Ric Willmot

Customer Service is Essentially Selfish

I was talking with a friend who runs a small online boutique business. She works with personalized textile products, and provides free shipping. The free shipping is built into each product with an expectation that delivery will be made via UPS (United Parcel Service).

She had an order and was completing the packaging. Checking the address, she saw that the destination was to a PO box, and UPS doesn't deliver to a US Postal Service box. Naturally enough.

One option would have been to mail the package USPS First Class with delivery confirmation and insurance. Cost would be around $4USD, rather than the budgeted $12.50 for UPS. She chose not to do so.

Instead, she telephoned the customer, leaving a message regarding the problem and asking if perhaps they had a street address they could provide. She then emailed the customer with the same request. The jist of the message was that if she didn't hear back in two days, she'd ship to the original PO Box. But that US mail isn't nearly as reliable as is UPS.

How easy it would've been to pocket a fast profit in the mailing costs, with the customer never knowing the difference. Why spend the time, aggravation, and so forth to get ahold of the customer for something like this? Was it just a wonderful, fuzzy-feeling wish for a better world?

No, of course not! This is a business, after all. There were clear profit motives at work, none of which had to do with customer satisfaction, all of which were entirely business oriented. Oh, well...fine, the customer DID benefit, and the perception of exceptional customer service was a byproduct, but that wasn't the underlying foundation.

These products are difficult to make. Aside from the personalization and the specifics of the items, they require high-precision hand sewing. It takes time, and strong focus of concentration. It also happened that this particular customer's order turned out particularly well done.

What if the item had been shipped via USPS and lost in the mail? It's true that with it being insured, my friend would recoup the cost...in at least a month. In the meantime, actual customer service would propose re-making the product, shipping it again, and going through all the work twice.

UPS, on the other hand, offers point-by-point tracking, delivery guarantees, notification all along the way, and an email that the item has been delivered to a particular location and person. The incidents of lost items are far less than the United States mail, despite the USPS only losing a single-digit percentage of packages.

Rather than having the worry and wonder, mystery and grand adventure of sending off a package into the Great Beyond, my friend wanted the assurances the item would arrive. She had no intention of or desire to make the item again. Nor did she want to waste the particularly high quality work in the completed item.

For totally selfish reasons, she wanted to send the package via UPS. To do that, it was worth her while to track down the customer and see if they had that street address.

So now consider your own customer service policies and procedures. Are they in place because you want to look good, feel good, and market a publicity image? Is that all you want? What about the costs of complaints-management, problem-solving, and tracking down missing items? How about the time involved, back and forth between your business and a disgruntled customer?

Which is cheaper, and which is better? Taking the time to get it right the first time, or rushing through an order fulfillment process, only to have to do it again when it doesn't work?

Professional Services College 2008

The Executive Wisdom Professional Services College was held on the Gold Coast last Friday and Saturday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Surfers Paradise.

This is a limited attendance program to provide intensive development for practitioners in professional services to grow and develop their skills.

Delegates attending came from areas such as:

• Recruitment
• Banking
• Financial Advising
• Financial Planning
• Insurance
• Compliance
• Transportation

And from regions such as:

• Darwin
• Adelaide
• Townsville
• Ayr
• Toowoomba
• Brisbane
• Gold Coast

Quality people understand that when everyone else is cutting back, now is the best opportunity for those of us with value to deliver, to stand out from the crowd. And this crowd, were stand outs.

Two of the graduates from the 2008 Executive Wisdom Professional Services College: Joe Therkelsen (left) Manager for WorkCover Queensland and Mark Tepoorten (right) Senior Financial Consultant for Tynan Mackenzie.

Ric Willmot

You're a Manager ... Now What?

You've just been selected for a new role in management with responsibility for a dozen employees. You've never been in management prior; in fact you've never been in any sort of a leadership role at anytime during your life. So what now?

The first mistake many make is to start making promises, with the best of intentions, but ultimately they will be your undoing. Because most of the initial promises made are spur of the moment and rarely based on solid, quantifiable data that is relevant or useful. You may mean well, just don't do it!

Be aware of first impressions; delay decisions and desist from making alliances early on. Recognize and accept that first impressions of people may be replaced by more realistic ones in time. Don't accept the status quo, and give yourself the freedom to take your time in making any judgments. Leave yourself with room to manoeuvre by not taking rigid positions prematurely.

Make your highest priority the development of the people in your charge and use all the time at your disposal to prepare for the new role. There are ten steps to make this transition effectively and successfully. Here are the first five:

1. Anticipate change: once the euphoria of the appointment has calmed, you will realize that the demands of management will be greater than anything you have ever had to deal with before. Build a structure of support around you both at work and at home, and eradicate as many distractions as possible. Communicate rather than bottling things up. Do not believe you have to know it all - be willing to ask for help, guidance and assistance.
2. Research your new role: the history of the position, your new team, your new boss, and any requirements you may not have been exposed to previously. Don't assume you know what the role is going to be like and resist being bound from the filters in your mind about what you think you already know. Consider what it is you want to achieve in this role; what do you want your legacy to be? Determine how you may deploy your strengths and talents to create positive advantages to the organization. Be cognizant of your limitations, also.
3. Drop the assumptions: do not assume the new team is going to be excited about your arrival or that they will be enamored with your style. Just because your predecessor was unpopular doesn't automatically guarantee that you will be popular.
4. Induction process: there are induction procedures for new employees - it's common sense. So, make certain that you take every opportunity to have a thorough induction procedure for yourself in this new role. Walk around, introduce yourself to all the members of your new team as quickly as possible, with them as your highest priority before anybody else. Be proactive and gather all the information you need.
5. Know thy team: learn how your new department and team support the overall business strategy - what is their/your purpose? Schedule a generous amount of time to meet and have initial discussions with all of your team members. Plan a discussion framework to keep you on track; you want to be spontaneous but structured and not allow the conversations to become frivolous and valueless. Be courteous, listen carefully and elicit the information that is important for you.

Be sure to ask yourself: "Have I defined my objectives for this role?"

© Ric Willmot 2008 All rights reserved.

Does Speling Count?

U probly seen it lots of stuff when u get flier and things in the male. Grammer and spellling doesn count 4 much any more more cause no body cares. Righte?

EVERYthing that goes out the door from your business stands the potential of ending up on a $15,000 granite and marble conference table in an executive boardroom, with all sorts of department heads, vice presidents, and other C-level executives looking at what you've sent. You may think that what matters is your sample, but what about the cover letter, packing slip, invoice, envelope, label, and printing?

For some reason, language and grammar have begun a logarithmic curve downward. As a society, we've been watching the gradual decline in communications skills and social interaction, but we're now approaching the zero point. At all levels of the culture, business and social, nobody much cares if their spelling and grammar make any sense.

And yet, we all went through school. We've mostly learned how things ought to be spelled, and how a sentence ought to be structured. We may not know why, nor be able to explain it all in terms of subjects and verbs, nouns and pronouns, but we surely can recognize when something isn't right.

In some cases, a simple error in spelling or punctuation can lead to legal problems going as far as lawsuits or serious financial losses. For example, the unintentional inclusion of "un" in a contract or disclaimer might result in: "The purchaser accepts the unlimited warranty for this product..." and so forth. Would you want to be liable for unlimited warranty repairs?

How important is it, these days in business, to have a full-time proofreader? What if your contact information is a phone number that's off by a digit? Or suppose your email address is misspelled? Do you care? Apparently, not many people really do care anymore. They'd rather be told by someone in an indeterminate future, then spend money to simply reprint the document.

And let's consider the format for business communications and letters. What's wrong with starting a letter to an important client with "Hi?" Do we really need "Dear Sir or Madam?" How about putting in some smiley-faces or other emoticons; wouldn't that make the letter more personal?

Like so many things, nowadays, the really important details of life seem to have been reduced to irrelevancy, where the ridiculous has been elevated to the critical. People with complex skills are told to clean carpets, while high-school students barely of legal age are responsible for setting up complex budgets in spreadsheets. Doesn't that seem a bit strange?

Words do actually mean things. Not only do our words and sentences communicate information, but the subtext of our statements often include implications. These are the unstated thoughts and ideas transmitted by vocal tone, expression, and hidden assumptions. We all of us infer many things from what someone says, but do many of us pay any attention to what we're implying? Does anyone really know the difference anymore between "infer" and "imply?"

I wonder what would happen if businesses were to suddenly spring a quick test on their employees, asking basic questions about language, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and meaning. Is that something that should never again take place after people have left school?