Part 1 – Something to chew on.
Whether we’re talking about the top-line, bottom-line, parts inventory, customer service, sales and marketing…we are definitely doing something wrong! So what are we “doing wrong”… our business’s human capital.
Over the next series of blogs, I want to share with you where this “wrong” starts and offer suggestions on what we could do differently. Before I go there, I want to remind you of our shared business mental quagmire we all seem to have these days. Either way, I say it’s time to let it go and start doing something about it!
- “I pray that I am going to find the right person. When I do, I pray that this person is engaged as he was during the interview. I pray that he will contribute to my company the way he sold himself…I pray that I don’t spend all this energy getting excited over something I may regret having to say goodbye to when things don’t work out”. Why have you started praying (not that I have anything against praying)…it doesn’t have to be this bad…just do it correctly the first time around.
- “You just can’t find good talent these days”. Oh yes, you can. You just have to know how.
- “Typical Millennials…self-entitled and completely unrealistic as to what they think they are qualified to do and what they are actually qualified to do”. Rubbish! It’s easy to institutionalize a group of people and use this “institution” as a reason why you can’t keep good talent. Yes…I agree that various generational groups have certain tendencies…but there are more similarities than differences. Stop using this as a cop-out…just do it correctly the first time around!
- “There’s no way I going to invest in training and developing my talent for other businesses just to take them and I end up investing in their training just for them to leave my company”. Really…do you really think that you hire and train people just to lose them to some other business? Again, another copout… Canada, as one of 20 advanced economies, is at the bottom of the list when it comes to investing in their Human capital assets…just because we have this thing in our minds that we train just to lose them? We can almost make this disappear if we did it right the first time!
These comments depress me because it really doesn’t have to be this way if we just stopped for a moment and really tried to correct this problem.
I want to warn you that the topics I’m going to discuss with you over the next several weeks will not be new to you. In fact, it’s old news and I for one feel we need to add some new and refreshing news for a change. How? We use what we already know, but this time, we actually “use” it correctly the first time around and stop being the proverbial hamster on the wheel…we have a lot more potential than this!
Join me next time and I’ll remind you what works…but also show you that it works…”trust me” as they say.
