PAPERmaking! g FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY Volume 1, Number 1, 2015
1. Ability to attract and retain high quality people : A company may start with a strong core team when they launch their business, but to grow they need to be able to attract and retain a steady stream of talented professionals. To attract top talent they need a compelling vision of where the company is going and how the company’s growth will generate opportunities for people to grow. Unfortunately the vision of and by itself will not retain top talent if the founders do not have the leadership skills to keep their people engaged and motivated. Those companies who find it difficult to retain top talent will frequently attribute this to an inability to meet the compensation demands of the market. This is rarely the problem. People who are engaged, learning new skills, empowered to make decisions, and are recognised for their contribution will rarely seek greener pastures. It is incumbent upon the company’s leadership team to ensure that the people they recruit see the company as a place where they can build a career and have some fun doing it. 2. Communication Skills : The best vision and the best business plan are worthless if they cannot be communicated in a compelling way. Customers will not agree to buy, and talented people will not agree to work for you if you are unable to communicate your vision and the value you offer. I recently received a phone call from the CEO of a start-up technology company in Vancouver. He was in need of an immediate cash infusion to keep his company alive and was asking my help in finding investors. As I listened to his plea for help, I did not hear one compelling reason I could provide potential investors as to why they should part with their money to bail this company out. He kept repeating that his technology would revolutionise the industry, but he could not articulate how his technology was any different from what was already in the market or what would cause his technology to develop a market share which would generate the kind of cash flow that would provide investors with a satisfactory return on their investment. He was not exciting or even confident. He sounded desperate and I could not help but wonder if his communication skills were the reason he was finding himself in the position he was in. 3. People Not Prepared for Rapid Acceleration : All too often I have been caught in rapidly growing businesses where the business was growing faster than the people who were running it. New staff were being hired and supervised by people with very little experience in managing people. Young bright but inexperienced people were being thrown into situations where their interpersonal skills were not adequate to deal with demanding customers or hard charging staff. I saw a major consulting firm lose millions of dollars in fees during a period of rapid growth as a result of promoting people into positions they were not prepared to handle. Companies are quick to provide technical training but are slow to provide training in critical interpersonal skills like communications, conflict management, negotiations etc. The result is that their staff are not prepared to deal with people. They were unable to establish relationships with the people who report to them or the customers who are looking to them to solve their problems. In my experience, spanning more than thirty years, the biggest problems, and in some cases biggest setbacks, came as a result of promoting people into positions of responsibility without providing them with the skills needed to deal effectively with other people.
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Article 4 – Leadership (obstacles)
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