by Bill Wallace on September 2, 2010
There’s a skills shortage, in case you haven’t heard. That means people will be on the look out for satisfying roles should the current one become a bit blase, routine or lose its value to the individual.
Some managers. owners, bosses tend to shrug their shoulders when someone hands in their resignation. They think “they’ve made up their mind, what can I do?”
Here are 3 things you can do NOW if you are serious about keeping your talent:
- List every staff member you have that report to you and ask your direct reports to do the same with the people who report to them.
- Create two columns – 1 headed up “flight risk”, the other headed up “value/potential value”.
- Evaluate each staff member according to each heading on a scale of 1 – 5 for each heading.
This is a very rudimentary way of identifying who is who in the zoo and what you might ant to about it.
Some cautions
- If you don’t fully know someone’s value, take steps to find out. But go with gut feel at first.
- Keep personalities out of it. Not liking a person doesn’t mean they aren’t good/great at their job. Perhaps their style is why they are good at their job.
The key point about retention of staff is that if you don’t, someone will snap them up. in Australia 95/100 people are working, that means you could argue that maybe 5 of your 100 staff might not be worth hanging on to, but it means 95 are!
Now what to do
- Help each person, based on flight risk and potential, find their niche. Take away as many roadblocks as you can. A boss of mine had a role he called D.O.T.S. (Deflector Of The Sh!t) which meant we could focus on what we had to focus on.
- Talk to your team personally about their job and how they see it progressing. What they need to do and what you can help them with.
- Do points 1 and 2 regularly, even over a coffee.
Some key Don’ts will help as well
- Don’t wait till they hand in their resignation to do something
- Don’t assume everything is okay.
- Don’t think there is nothing you can do once they hand in their resignation.
Enjoy!
by Bill Wallace on August 12, 2010
I have just been at a leadership breakfast conducted by LMA in Perth. As a result I will be writing a series of leadership posts that I hope will be helpful. I’ve been in leadership and management for around 20 years and I really don’t know it all but the are some fundamentals that any leader needs to know. A lot of these fundamentals are easy to initiate and many are easy to continue. So why don’t people do it?
I’ve called this post “Leadership and the New Economy” simply because we are in a new economy post the GFC. People, simply because of the GFC, are thinking differently, perhaps a little more cautious waiting for something to happen that will give them comfort to take their next step.
Notice I said “their” next step. Not “the” next step. Key point. People will move at their pace not someone else’s.
But the point I want to make here is how to make progress in this new economy within the context of the breakfast I attended.
And the point is this: the breakfast was attended by business leaders. People in charge if the whole business. A great start. But fundamentally wrong.
The right people should be every team leader you have. Operationally impossible, strategically vital.
Why?
Meredith Belbin, in developing his work around teams determined, quite logically, that the key critical factor around leading teams was team size. Not the leader, team make up, skill sets even those these other factors are all important. But the key being: if the team is too large to manage, you won’t get traction. Lead a team of 4-6, sure. Lead a team of 100, hmmm, not so easy.
So meanwhile, back at the breakfast, organizational leaders are getting the “good oil” on teams while those charged with leading those teams are still in the dark, trying their darnedest, working with what they have. And many times it isn’t enough!!!!
To build/change a culture, everyone needs to be on board.
A talk from the CEO to the masses is good.
A regular newsletter is great.
A well organized and content rich intranet is outstanding.
But constant small team meetings around culture, the future, the big goals … is priceless.
Small teams are the answer. As Seth Godin might say – “tribes”.
Businesses, if they are to succeed need to bring the small teams “in”, confide in them, build their skills, trust, confidence. And you can only do that by constant, valuable communication in small groups.
