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O P I N I O N
Waiting on the bus
Being cautious and reasonable about your growth plans is a smarter move than filling seats just for the sake of beefing up the org chart.
I was talking to a colleague of mine who was complaining about not having the right people in place to take the company where it wants to go. Sounds like he’s been reading Jim Collins, in Good to Great : Start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. Hmm, great strategy. Makes a lot of sense. The problem is finding anyone half way decent these days to be on the bus.
Leo MacLeod
Good mid-level people seem to have gone into witness protection. They tend to stay where they are and get paid well. The job market is so tight few of them will be banging your door down. Even the best young people lack the knowledge and experience to tackle the big projects. Consequently, much of the work falls on the senior people to work more – a recipe for burnout and even more attrition. Firms seem paralyzed with fear that the next bust is right around the corner. They are in a mad rush to store up their nuts before the freeze. Who has time to worry about putting people in the right seats or getting rid of the dead wood? What can firms do to keep the bus moving down the road
to greatness if they’re more concerned with the wheels coming off? ❚ ❚ Keep looking. Don’t make recruiting the sole job of the HR manager and your recruiters. You have a bet- ter Rolodex. You have the relationships. You know who you want to work with. The best 15 minutes of your day can be reaching out to your network, comb- ing through LinkedIn and picking up the phone to let people know you’re looking for key people. If ev- ery person in your organization owned the urgency of recruiting, you’d make real headway. And don’t limit yourself to calling your contacts just once and then giving up. Schedule to check in every three months. You don’t need to badger them but sales is very much about timing. Everyone is looking for
See LEO MACLEOD, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER May 20, 2019, ISSUE 1297
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