Driving profitable growth is at the top of every leader’s priority list. Yet, according to Bain and Company, only 10% succeed in achieving sustainable profitable growth.

While growth is the life-blood of every business, at some point, your company will experience the double edge sword of growth.

Either your company will grow faster than your internal capacity to handle it. Chaos, breakdowns and burnout are the result.

OR

Your company hits a wall and growth flattens. As a result, panic often sets in and leaders make rash decisions – either prolonging the stall or causing the company to spiral downward.

Unfortunately, there are no alarms to warn you of either impending challenge. Growth does not follow a linear path. It can be unpredictable and erratic. Growth walls often catch leaders by surprise.

Some companies don’t survive growth walls. They either go out of business or stay in “no man’s land.”

The focus of this article is to address the latter issue – ie., growth walls. While many leaders see growth walls as a revenues issue. The truth is that flat numbers are the byproduct — not the cause — of stalled growth.

The good news is that there are predictable pitfalls and signals that leaders need to heed to scale their companies. This article focuses on 7 of those growth pitfalls.

 7 Pitfalls That Stall Your Company Growth

1. Running After Growth in all the Wrong Places

Initially, growth is critical for survival. However, as your company scales, not all growth is healthy or good.

How, as a leader, do you distinguish between good and bad growth? Healthy vs. unhealthy growth? 

What % of your new business is coming from your core competencies? What % requires capabilities beyond your core?

Do all your new revenues provide healthy margins? If not, is it a market issue, a competitive issue, a behavioral issue or something else preventing you?

According to Bain, companies leave significant money on table because they are not fully leveraging their core.

Tim Cook (Apple’s CEO) says it best …”At Apple we say ‘no’ to great ideas every day in order to do one or two things very well.”

How much of your new growth focuses on what you do best?

2. Success Blind Spots 

Companies that hit a wall have experienced past successful growth.  They are meeting or exceeding revenue goals. Their leaders and employees are proud and rightfully so.

However, success often creates cognitive or psychological leadership blind spots.  Below are 2 examples how.

• Blind Optimism

You make unconscious assumptions that company growth will continue on the same trajectory if you keep on the path you have been. However, markets change and so must your path to future growth.

• Over-Confidence

Past success can exaggerate your ability to control events. And you over-estimate your company’s capabilities.

When over-confident, leaders tend to take on risky opportunities, not ask for help and believe they can handle it all.

Whose unbiased perspective can you access to right-size your decisions and perceptions?

3. Crashing into the Leadership Glass Ceiling

In my extensive experience with growth companies, the number one reason why companies hit the wall is because their leadership team has hit a wall.

Organically grown leaders don’t know what they need to know to get to the next level. As a result, they keep on doing what they have always done – only working harder — expecting a different result. Yes … that’s called insanity :))!

As a company scales, leadership roles also scale and change dramatically at each growth level. To avoid the leadership ceiling, CEOs must ask themselves —

Are you willing to make a major investment in growing your leadership team to the next level?

Does it serve the greater good of your company to be loyal to long time leaders whose roles have outgrown their capabilities and capacities? 

Is it time to hire outside seasoned passionate leaders who have been there and can help you grow?

Both options – ie., cultivating your leaders from within or hiring from the outside – have their upsides and downsides.

If your leadership team has hit a ceiling, get outside help in evaluating the options. Doing nothing will keep your company stuck at the wall.

4. External Oblivion

As a company scales, significant focus is spent on building internal infrastructure. As a result, leaders lose sight of changes in their external environment.

A once fringe competitor may now emerge as a looming threat to your company. Your customers’ needs may have changed without you realizing it.   New disruptive technologies may displace your products/services as alternative solutions to your markets.

Successful growth leaders who break through the wall anticipate the unexpected and turn the unexpected into the profitable.

Are you overly focused on internal superiority that you are missing the cues of external changes?

How are you proactively anticipating and responding to external changes?

5. Hiring for current skills, not long term capabilities

As a company grows, the tendency is to hire employees with current needed skills by your organization.   When small, hiring for the short term is necessary as your resource needs are not always clear.

Once a company hits the $10 – $20 million milestone, hiring people with capabilities to grow your company in next 2 – 3 years is crucial.

What capabilities do you need to hire today to achieve your desired growth for next 3 years?

6. Culture Meltdown

When a company has less than 20 employees, rarely is culture a dominant issue. As the company scales in size, structure and complexity, culture becomes the heart and soul of its growth success.

What causes a culture meltdown as a company scales?

It’s not one thing. It’s multitude of factors that amplify with scale, such as …

• Not Scaling Culture

Some leaders will argue that company culture cannot scale. I both agree and disagree :)).

Your company culture cannot scale if you perceive culture as fixed, unchangeable and static. However, the culture your company needs at $20 million will be different than the culture you need at $50 – $100 million

As you add new people to your organization, as well as your markets evolve, so must your culture evolve.

How are you adapting your culture to the changing needs of your organization and those of your customers?

• Core Values Without Success Measures

While your company’s culture may seem intangible and elusive at times, you can make the intangible tangible and measurable.

The key is to define an abstract value into an operational, measurable success outcome.

I have one client with a core value of excellent customer service. Their measure of success is a customer excellence rating of 25:1. For every 25 customers that rate their service as excellent, only 1 or less customers will rate it as non-excellent.

How do you measure success for each value?

• Healthy Values Gone Bad

Every positive value also has a dark, unhealthy side. However, most leaders are not aware when their values have crossed that line.

A value of excellence, in the extreme, can become perfectionism. Acceptance, at its extreme, can become (unhealthy) tolerance. Customer service, to the extreme, can cost you significant profits.

It’s good to set the bar high. At the other end, know when your values become your Achilles heel, especially as you scale.

7. Mediocrity Sets In

The final danger as companies scale is backsliding into complacency or mediocrity.

Success is a lousy teacher. Complacency often sets in as your company loses its drive and hunger. Nothing will kill growth faster than losing your sense of urgency.

High growth companies should celebrate success. If your company has hit a wall, however, it’s time to take stock.

Has your success morphed into over-comfort and contentment? 

If it has, it’s time to raise your bar, set new sights and refuel your organization’s fire.   Commit to scaling not only in size. Commit also to scaling big WHY and purpose.

Getting Back on the Growth Track: Initial Steps

• Educate yourself about your company’s growth life cycle and the common pitfalls at different growth stages.

• Get your leaders out of day to day operations.

By the time you hit $15 – $20 million in revenues, your leaders should spend about 80% time leading – building teams, delegating, creating strong culture, focusing on long term goals/projects, etc. – and only 20% on daily operations.

To prepare for the transition, ask yourself:

Do your leaders know how to think strategically?

Are their brains wired for big picture, future-orientation, goals/results thinking?

Do they have strong delegation skills to get out of the weeds?

Remember … not all leaders will be able to make the leap to the next level.

• Invest in infrastructure and systems that provide built-in capacity for growth.

• Get outside perspectives

An advisory board or board of directors … visits to “friendly” competitors to see how they do things … hiring a consultant with experience in growth companies. These are all ways to get beyond your blind spots and tap into expertise that may be missing in your organization.

• Invest in scaling your company culture

Continuously communicate your company’s vision and purpose. Entrench your values and behavior norms at all levels of organization. Change your culture as needed.

• Download our complimentary handout — Developing Leaders of Growth: 5 Critical Factors for Driving Double/Triple Digit Growth

The post 7 Leadership Pitfalls That Sabotage Company Growth appeared first on The Empowered Business.

If you are a sucker for great leadership movies like I am — Invictus, Coach Carter and Moneyball just to name a few, it’s easy to assume that all leaders embody the same qualities as those in the movies.

Afterall, who hasn’t idealized business leaders to be strong, confident, make tough decisions and stand their ground no matter what?

While those leaders do exist, they are a minority.  In working with leaders for 30 years, I have found that the reality is shockingly different.

Most leaders take on their roles with the greatest of positive intentions.  Yet, along the way, they get lost.  Not by conscious choice.  Rather they are derailed by an underlying dysfunctional pattern called Codependency.

Codependency is a set of beliefs and behaviors that prevent individuals from having healthy, mutually beneficial relationships.  At first glance, the term “co-dependent leader” seems like an oxymoron, yet this dysfunctional behavioral pattern is rampant within the business world.

The question is …

Why does leadership codependency go undetected?

Let’s look at the top 3 reasons why.

1.     Codependent behaviors get masked by a company’s values and practices. 

The post Are You Addicted to Codependent Leadership? appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Has the obsession to create a happy, engaged workforce gone toxic in your company?

Is over-emphasizing positive thinking in your company’s culture, actually creating negativity without you even knowing it?

Is having 0% employee turnover actually a good thing to sing high praises about, or is it overshadowing another truth?

These are just a few examples of how companies, even with great cultures, can go to the dark side.

The REAL Truth About Your Company Culture & Its Hidden Shadow Side

Most great cultures are driven by handful of sacred values.  They have the clarity, discipline and consistency to make those values deeply embedded into their organizations, often outperforming in growth and profitability by  as much as 150%.

Yet many great cultures have also gone toxic AND the leaders don’t even realize it.  The factors that drive a company’s greatness – when taken to an extreme or at the expense of other factors – can actually become the organization’s hidden “shadow” side.  When that shadow is not brought to light, it can actually lead to the downward spiral or a company’s demise.

A past client company with a strong people-oriented culture – one that I deeply admired when I first started working with them – is one such example.  That strong people culture ignited rapid growth and became their competitive advantage in a high commodity industry.  However, when the recession hit, financial fear took over, its once strong culture went toxic and revenues and profits plummeted.

How is it possible for a great culture, like that, to go to the dark side and not realize it?

7 Blindspots That Can and Will Drive Your Company’s Culture to the Dark Side

Below are 7 blind spots and clues that your organization’s culture – no matter how successful in the past – is possibly headed in the wrong direction.  Be rigorously honest how these blind spots are relevant to your organization.  Otherwise, your company’s future could be in jeopardy.

Blindspot 1:  You fight for your espoused values at all costs, without realizing the unintended consequences on your organization and business results.

Any value taken to an extreme actually becomes a company liability.  A good example is the obsession with positive thinking within organizations.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am in favor of developing a mindset and culture that focuses on positivity, as long as it is authentic.

Yet being in blissful denial of the “real” emotional climate, politics or stress levels within your organization only creates a culture that hides its deepest worries and avoids the cold hard truth that can cost your company dearly.  Excessive positive thinking also results in artificial company behaviors and attitudes, triggering employee resentment, resistance and frustration.

Remember … any value – even the seemingly positive – taken to an extreme in your organization becomes your liability and “shadow” side.

Blindspot 2:  You focus mostly on the overt, tangible aspects of culture, while ignoring the covert drivers of your culture.

A company’s culture consists of overt and covert factors.   Overt factors involve what is tangible and observable – such as, strategic processes and behaviors within an organization.  Overt aspects of culture often utilize the reasoning, intellectual parts of our brain — the dominant focus of today’s leadership teams.

Covert aspects relate to the intangible, unconscious (ie., below your ordinary awareness) assumptions, social, emotional and political patterns, organizational taboos, etc.  Every organization has covert aspects driving its culture – such as, fears, insecurities, friendships, trust, jealousy, ambition and many more.

These hidden aspects of your company’s culture are driven by the emotional parts of our brain – that is, the underlying motivations, beliefs and “actual” values — determining your actual culture.

For example, one of my company clients has a strong “respect” value — an asset in many work relationships.  Taken it to an extreme, however, prevented them from speaking their truth and having honest conversations about critical organizational problems.

Their covert “agreed upon” behaviors for respect were translated into a belief that conflict or disagreement were to be avoided at all costs.  This covert aspect of their culture drove unintended behavioral consequences for which they paid a high price, till we eliminated the unhealthy aspects of this value.

Blindspot 3:  As a leader, you have a strong internal bias how well your culture is doing that does not match reality.

It has been found in behavior-related studies, that human beings think they are better than they really are.  This phenomenon is called in psychology a “self-serving bias.”

The same is true in the world of leadership and culture.  My term for this is “cultural inflation.”  There are many ways this self serving bias can blind you into thinking your culture is doing better than it is.

For example, when a company grows and changes, it is not unusual for its culture to erode at the bottom levels of the organization.   The leadership team is no longer involved lower levels and often becomes oblivious to the atrophy now monopolizing its culture.

Even when a leadership team recognizes issues within their culture, such leaders often don’t see themselves as “part of the problem.”  They don’t recognize that their actual behaviors, decision-making, communications, etc. are a major contributing factor to the dysfunctionality in their culture.

Blindspot 4:  Your strategy and culture are working at cross purposes with each other.

A common issue at a leadership level is not understanding the interplay between strategy and organizational culture.   As a company, you cannot sustain growth, profitability and your competitive edge without harmony and alignment between business strategy and culture.

So many companies fall short in their goals because they overemphasize strategy with little/no attention to the cultural aspects that drive it.  The most ingenious strategy in the world will never come to fruition without creating the right culture to drive it.

Strategy can be imitated by your competitors.  Your unique, well-entrenched culture cannot.

Blindspot 5:  You put too much weight on the strength of your company’s culture, not its fit.

There is the mistaken notion that great company cultures are the byproduct of its strength.  That is, the more entrenched an organization’s core values, the greater the culture.

While there are advantages to strong cultures over weak ones, the danger is assuming that it is the “right” culture, given your organization’s environment. 

The best cultures are those that continuously adapt to succeed in their market and competitive environments.

A manufacturing company in a price competitive environment may do best with an efficiency-based culture.  While a service business may do best with a people-oriented or customer service driven culture.

On the other hand, as your company’s environment experiences disruptive change, your culture must change accordingly to succeed.  When a company’s culture does not fit and/or adapt itself to its own environment, employees will have a hard time knowing how to respond to and serve the needs of its marketplace.

Ignoring the importance of culture fit and adaptability is one of the biggest reasons why great cultures go bad.

Blindspot 6:  Your organization is plagued with double binds, conflicting values and competing demands.

A hidden threat to great cultures are unresolved double binds and conflicting values.  A double bind, by definition, is an unresolved dilemma where the victim feels trapped, no matter the course of action.  That is, the victim deems the situation as lose-lose.

For example, a leader may be put into a double bind situation about the future status of a loyal, although under-performing, employee.  If he/she fires the employee, the leader is giving an unspoken message that loyalty is not valued.  If he/she keeps the employee, the unspoken message is that underperformance is tolerated, which impacts morale and demotivates your best performing employees.

Conflicting values are 2 or more values in conflict – perceived or real — with each other.  That is, either-or thinking. For example, growth driven companies often over-emphasize growth at the expense of other critical  factors, such as profitability.  A company will never be able to sustain growth until the underlying values and assumption conflicts are identified and resolved.

When either double binds or conflicting values go unresolved, the end result is paralysis, a polarized culture, victim thinking and compromised performance.

Blindspot 7:  You fail to assess the health and fit of your current culture and any possible signs of erosion or dysfunctionality … from the outside.

Because so many aspects of a company’s culture exist “below the radar screen,” it’s easy for business leaders to have a skewed perception about the health of their actual company culture.

Or they rely on their own internal assessment of culture which can be just as misleading.  In my experience of assessing company culture, employees rarely tell all for fear of consequences, so the real truth never fully comes out.

What are the alternatives?

• Use an outside culture assessment tested for high validity and significance … AND only use it as a starting point, not the end all.

• Find an outside consultant that can facilitate open-ended interviews and discovery processes to uncover a leadership team’s understanding of culture, its relationship to strategy and how well the two are aligned.  It is also important for the outside expert to observe your “culture in action” in meetings, everyday activities and through casual interaction with employees to uncover your actual culture.

Why such an indepth assessment?  Because company cultures, even the best, can become lulled by their past success and ignore the warning signs of a culture gone bad.  Some of the most once admired companies in history – Enron, Worldcomm and Arthur Andersen just to name a few – have been unfortunate proof that even purported great cultures can go to the dark side.

For low cost tools to assess your actual culture landscape, click here.

The key is not to fear or avoid the shadow or dark side of your company’s culture.  Rather to learn from it. Your culture’s shadow side actually holds the gift of transformation for your organization’s future growth, success and distinctive advantage in the marketplace.

What warning signs or blindspots do you need to heed from your culture’s shadow side?  What will it cost your organization if you don’t?

___________________________________

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com or www.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post When Great Company Cultures Go to the Dark Side appeared first on The Empowered Business.

It’s that time of the year!  Most business leaders are preparing for an executive off-site to define their company’s future direction for the new year.

Yet, in my 30 years experience of working with leadership teams and companies, the terms “vision,” “mission” and “values” are THE most overused, misunderstood and abused words in the business community today.

Vision statements, mission statements and strategic plans in many companies reduce to mere academic exercises with no real value in driving an organization forward.  Why?  Let’s take a look.

Why Most Company Visions Get an “F”:  The Big 3

1. Your company’s vision lacks the necessary specificity and inspiration to pull your company forward.That is, your vision lacks intentionality, concreteness and emotional teeth on a gut level in what you really want to achieve and who you need to become in the process.Powerful visions grab and motivate people toward your desired future. Weak visions are meaningless superlatives or vague language that have no energy and fall flat on your organization.  How would you rate your vision?
2. Your vision lacks commitment and “ownership.”There is a big difference between wanting vs. deciding a desired future.One is built on hope and maybe’s. The other is backed by 100% commitment to the outcome.The word decide in its Latin root form means to cut off all other possibilities.  While none of us can guarantee our future, owning your future will make it a reality.  Have you chosen to go the distance, no matter the obstacles?
3. Your vision lacks the necessary leadership capacity and infrastructure to drive that vision into everyday activities.While passion, specificity and commitment are all prerequisites for a successful vision, your leadership and organizational capabilities must be at the necessary level to drive it.In the words of Thoreau, “For things to change, we must change.”   The leader and organization you are today cannot take you to where you want to be tomorrow. This often missed piece is why most companies’ visions fail.

Examples of Poorly Designed Company Visions  —  Can you guess the company?

 Before we address the essential ingredients to a well-designed vision, let’s first look at examples of what not to do.

 Example 1:  “To be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve.”

This vision is generic, lacks specificity, is loaded with meaningless puff words, that it could be any company in the computer industry.

Who is this mystery company?    Dell Computers.

Example 2:  “Undisputed Marketplace Leadership.”

Yes, a well known company has adopted this vision statement to drive its future direction.   While it may sound nice as a tagline, it gets the award for pointless generic buzzwords that really say nothing.  The company?  Hershey.

Both of these visions are sadly bland and generic that they could have been thought of by high school students as a homework exercise for their economics project.  It is not what you would expect from experienced senior leaders of well known companies. 

The “Secret Sauce” to Highly Successful Visions:  7 Essential Ingredients How

A company’s vision is like a beautiful work of art.  It’s personal and it connects with you and everyone in your organization deeply. 

The capability to create such a vision is THE single most important responsibility of a leader and a leadership team. 

For your company’s vision to succeed, however, it requires more than a good feeling.  What you need in addition is:

Secret 1:  A compelling vision that wins the hearts and minds of employees, resulting in buy-in and commitment.

According to the dictionary, the word compelling means urgently requiring attention; arousing interest in an irresistible manner.

Compelling visions move employees to action with a sense of urgency, change their behaviors, give meaning to their work and inspire them to reach new levels in their own potential.

Secret 2:  A clear vision that ignites your senses – ie., a vision you can see, hear and feel – to internalize and make it real.


A clear vision should ignite the imagination.  Generating passion about your company’s vision is a right brain activity, igniting the emotional center of your brain.

Most companies’ visions are defined in intellectual, abstract and/or quantifiable terms   While quantifiable outcomes are important later, they don’t motivate people to action.

In order for your vision to excite employees and pull your company forward, it must be described in clear sensory language.  The question to ask yourself is …

As you imagine your company’s new future, what do you see, hear and feel in your mind’s eye that tells you that new future has been realized?

Secret 3:  A big vision that challenges you to bold heights.

Big, bold goals are actually easier, more fulfilling and a heck more exciting to achieve than small goals.

Yet most business leaders get stuck in small thinking because:

• They lack confidence.
• They focus on today and what’s not working, rather than on the future and what can be.
• They have no experience with big and can’t even imagine how to conceive a big bold vision.
• They are overwhelmed with short term demands at the expense of long term possibilities.

The reasons why big visions are easier?  Because they challenge status quo thinking.  They force you to go beyond your comfort zone.  They stir passions and motivations.  Bold visions also catalyze new creative thinking.  And, most importantly, thinking big actually eliminates impossibilities.

Secret 4:  A shared vision that creates synergies, buy-in and cohesion.


Failed visions are usually created by a few leaders at the top.  A successful vision represents the entire voice of your company.  Your employees want to participate in a bigger cause and be involved in the creation and execution process.

The big challenge for business leaders is to create a vision that incorporates the wants, needs and aspirations of those who will be tasked with achieving it — your employees.  Your company’s vision must articulate … what’s in it for them?

Despite what many leaders think, the collaborative process of envisioning with your employees is more important than the actual vision product.  If you hear your employees saying “That’s my vision too” or at least feel like they influenced it, only then do you have a shared vision. 

Secret 5: A concrete vision aligned with your values and purpose.


Your vision is only one stepping stone to a new future.  Your values are your compass of how to get there.  Your purpose articulates the bigger cause or why your business exist.

While having a vision, purpose and clearly articulated values are the first step, the alignment of these 3 foundational elements is what determines success or failure of your vision.

 As best selling author, Jim Collins, notes: There is a big difference between being an organization with a vision statement and being a truly visionary company.

The difference lies in alignment.  The best use of an executive retreat at this time of the year is to look at alignment issues and your plan for eliminating them.

Secret 6: A concrete vision with “feet.”


Strong visions must also be strategically sound.  They must be concrete, tangible and have a clear proof of success.

When I work with executive teams in formulating their vision, I ask them to address critical strategic questions as part of their vision to give it “feet.”  Such as …

• What obstacles and challenges did your company have to overcome to achieve your vision?  What did you have to do extraordinarily well?
• What “enemies” (external or internal) did you have to defeat along the way?
• What do your competitors now envy the most about you?
• What new boundaries … ie, what you said ‘yes’ and what you said ‘no’ … did you need to have in place?

Secret 7:  A memorable vision that tells a story.

To create a powerful vision, you must articulate it as an unfolding story – both about the destination and the journey.

Why a story, not a statement?  Most visioning and vision statements miss the pathos element, or emotional connection. If I got $5 each time a company’s vision declared becoming the employer of choice or a talent magnet, I would have retired a long time ago :).

Vision stories, however, unite, create trust, are easy to remember and are transformative.  Great vision stories reveal the hero within us all. 

What is the future vision story that your leadership team will write that ignites the energy and the emotion to sustain action  on days even when nothing seems worth it?

Contact me for specific resources to get started on your memorable vision story.

As your leadership team gets ready for 2014, may you get started writing your magnum opus company’s future story.  May your visions allow you and your company to become larger than what you ever thought was possible.  Happy 2014!

___________________________________

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com or www.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post Creating a Vision That Pulls Your Company Forward appeared first on The Empowered Business.

One costly hiring mistake that I have observed with leaders is the unconscious avoidance, denial and/or toleration of under-performing employees.

Shocking costs of hiring mistakes

More commonly known as the cost of a mis-hire.

According to Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos, hiring mistakes have cost his company as much as $100 million!  That’s alot of dollars immediately subtracted from the bottomline.

For many companies, that one mistake can make the difference between surviving and thriving, between mediocrity and high performance.  Mis-hires and under-performing employees are the #1 profit leak in companies today.

Why Does This Issue Perpetuate Unknowingly in Many Companies?

For one, few companies actually take the time to calculate the hard and soft costs of even a single mis-hire.  Ignorance is not bliss in this case.  The higher the level of the position, the quicker the cost of a mis-hire increases exponentially.

To understand why such a large number, let’s look closely at the long list of direct, indirect and long-term opportunity costs of a mis-hire:

• costs associated with your time, your team’s time and any outside recruiting help in finding, screening and interviewing the pool of possible candidates
• costs associated with reference checking
• hard and soft costs associated with training a new employee
• costs associated with manager’s time to get a new employee up to speed
• costs associated with the lost productivity of a new employee for at least first 3-6 months
• long-term opportunity costs – seldom considered – with a mis-hire

-   substandard service

-   lowered employee morale and the resulting substandard performance in other employees

-   missed deadlines

-   customer dissatisfaction with product quality, customer service and/or lost trust/faith in the company

-   missed sales opportunities

-   and so much more

According to Guy Kawasaki, best selling author and former Chief Evangelist at Apple, there is another hidden high cost of mis-hires. “’A’ players tend to hire ‘A’ players; ‘B’ players tend to hire ‘C’ players and so forth.”   How does that translate to you and your organization?

If you are hiring anything less than “A” performing leaders, your leaders will hire mediocre employees that are not as good as they are, due to their own insecurities.  Perpetuating that under-performing cycle throughout the organization, your “B” and “C” leaders will cost you many times more than the $6 million we quoted above.

Can your bottomline afford that?

Why Is the High Cost of Mis-Hires Rampant?

Below are the 4 most common reason for hiring mistakes I have found in working with companies for over 30 years:

• Hiring decisions are at least 80% made as “gut feeling” or “based on appearances”  — such as, “I liked the person,” “they seemed honest and hard working,” etc.

• Scarcity and/or urgency mindset — a belief that few candidates have the skills you need or you are driven by outside pressures to fill the spot immediately and settle for mediocre candidates.
• As a hiring manager, you are dazzled by first impressions, how good the person looks on paper, credentials, advanced degrees, well-prepared interview responses, etc. In addition, the highly competitive job market has triggered an increase in exaggerated claims, embellished resumes and “half truths” often missed in the hiring process.
• Not understanding the difference between and/or having the needed tools to discern top talent vs. best fit talent.  With all the buzz about hiring top talent, many companies seek the most impressive backgrounds, past successes and prestigious credentials in their pursuit of top talent without any regard to best fit talent.

Past success and experience are often an unreliable predictor of future performance.  Why?  Because different people are motivated by and excel in different work environments, organizational cultures, job opportunities, etc.  Competencies and skills only account for 20% of future performance.  The right attitudes, motivations, values and goals for a given role and company predict 80% of performance.

What are the 5 Best Secrets to Avoiding Costly Hiring Mistakes and Finding Best Fit Employees?

Secret #1:  Shift your mindset from hiring employees to hiring partners.

Your employees are your most important partners and stakeholders.  Hiring employees is like finding the best marriage partner or close circle of friends.

You seek those who have similar values, will make you a better person and provide synergies for both of you to create something bigger than you can individually.  While you may value their past accomplishments and expertise, it’s what’s on the inside and the synergies between you that will make that partnership fly.

Secret #2:  Hire those with the capacity to excel and exceed you.

I emphasize finding those with the best capacity to excel and outperform others, including yourself.  Capacity not only includes current capabilities.

Capacity also includes the right mindset, motivational drivers and thinking necessary to ignite future potential.  It takes extraordinary self-confidence, soul searching and inner security for leaders to recognize when they hire those that exceed them, everyone wins.

Secret #3:  Hire “A+” players based on attitude, motivation and culture fit.

How you assess best talent fit for your company and for each role is the single most important ingredient to successful hiring and maximizing employee performance.

The best tool I have found to help clients assess attitude and motivation fit is an online assessment tool (IWAM), uncovering 48 unique attitude and motivation drivers that best predict future performance.  Although all patterns are important in varying degrees, there are usually 6-8 drivers most critical for company/culture fit and a handful of other drivers important to A performance in a given role/function.  For more info about how IWAM can help you hire best fit talent, go HERE!

In addition, to further assess culture fit, it is important that leaders learn scenario building interviewing skills, or hypothetical “what if” questions for assessing values and traits, without the candidate’s awareness or ability to prepare for such questions.

Secret #4:  Develop a mission statement, results-oriented job description and list of non-negotiable traits before you start the hiring process.

You can’t know how to assess a best fit candidate unless you know why you are hiring someone, how will their contributions impact company goals and be measured and what traits are needed to excel in that specific role. 

Most job descriptions are long laundry list of tasks and responsibilities without justification why the position exists or a scorecard how to evaluate success and performance.  Without this information, the probability of finding those with greatest chance to succeed and raise the game is very low.

Secret #5:  Stop relying on intuition; start relying on unbiased, objective due diligence.

I’ve have heard too many leaders’ hiring regret stories.  Examples of when they were convinced a candidate would work based on feelings and impressions, only to find after a year of frustration, procrastination and endless coaching, that they made a mistake.  A million dollar (or more) mistake, at that.

To avoid this pitfall, develop a rigorous hiring process.  Develop screening criteria and use objective data to eliminate candidates right away.

Examples could include driving history check, credit check, drug tests if necessary, etc.  What you are seeking are personal records that reflect a candidate’s character.  Also check character references, asking truth-telling questions, like … on a scale 1-10, how well did the candidate get along with co-workers?  And, why that #? 

After 1-2 stages of screening, have a team of individuals from a variety of positions interview candidates with list of prepared questions and hands-on problem solving scenarios of common role/company issues.  To ensure a candidate is aligned with company purpose, you should also ask “purpose based” questions such as, “what do you want to be remembered for?  Or “when in your life have you been so passionately focused on an activity that you lost track of time and what were you doing?”

Hiring, by no means, is a science.  Even with the best hiring systems, mistakes will be made.  The key is to hire slowly, fire quickly.  Your credibility and reputation as a leader, inside and outside, depend on it.  Be rigorously honest about your past hiring mistakes, your own hiring blindspots and the changes you will make to start hiring your best employees.

Let’s keep the conversation going.   Visit our blog to share your comments, biggest hiring mistakes, stories of regret, burning questions and valuable resources for finding and hiring best fit employees.  We want to hear from you!

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The post Shocking Costs of Hiring Mistakes appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Accountable Leader

Today’s most successful companies all have one trait in common.  Their high performance organizations are driven by a strong accountability culture.  Yet despite many companies’ well-intentioned efforts to create strong accountability, leaders still struggle to make it a reality.  Mediocrity, lack of execution and operational breakdowns are hallmarks of poor accountability and an out of control, under-performing organization.

The REAL Truth Why Your Leaders are Struggling with Accountability and Under-performing Teams:

• As a leader, you can’t develop strong results-driven accountability with your team unless you have strong personal accountability with YOURSELF.  This capability is part of self leadership.  You can’t hold others accountable if you don’t take responsibility for your own actions, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, choices and results.  Because employees model what leaders do, a leader’s weak personal accountability perpetuates a cycle of poor  organizational performance.
• As a leader, you lack critical “soft,” people skills — such as addressing interpersonal conflict, and engaging and motivating employees — that drive organizational accountability and performance.
 Employees follow you and are motivated to perform for their reasons, not yours.  For this reason, weak leadership “soft” skills cripple employee engagement and performance and is a costly epidemic in today’s business world.
• Most leaders lack the necessary mindset, capabilities and practices to drive strong accountability – a “must” for high achieving organizations.  Strong accountability starts first with the right mindset.  No performance system, set of metrics or people practices by themselves can make up for a lack of understanding what healthy accountability is and is not.  Lacking the right mindset perpetuates accountability breakdowns and a low performing organization.

The Accountability Mindset Your Leaders and Employees Need Instead to Drive Growth and Profitability

Your mindset is your mental map, cognitive filters and internal glasses that color your view of yourself and the world.   These mental filters drive your thoughts, feelings, motivations, behaviors, communications and, ultimately, results …  without your conscious awareness.

From a leadership standpoint, I call these mental filters your inner leadership game.   As a leader, the most important game you will ever play is the game within your mind. 

Let’s look at the components of your inner leadership game for building strong accountability and a high performance organization.

Grand Purpose/Vision

Often organizations treat accountability as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. Such organizations narrowly focus on the how of accountability and forget the why. 

Grand Mission

Accountability means more than achieving performance goals.  To motivate your employees to deliver results, accountability requires a profoundly deep understanding why and for whom your employees perform.

Zappos credits its multi-billion dollar success and organizational passion because every employee knows his/her significant role in keeping the Zappos vision alive.

• As a leader, for what grand purpose does your organization exist?  
• To what extent do your employees know that purpose?  
• To what extent are you reinforcing  each employee’s vital role to that purpose?

Values

Values are the qualities and principles you most value.  Your top 3 values drive 90% of our focus, decision-making, time usage, behaviors and outcomes.  If accountability is not amongst those, your attempts will be undermined and lack sustainability.

Important values considerations as a leader for cultivating a strong accountability culture  include:

•  Is accountability an explicit core or operational value for your organization?  is it a top personal value for you?
•  Do you have an agreed upon definition as to what healthy accountability is and what critical behaviors will drive it?
• Are there other values that are perceived by you or your employees as conflicting or competing with accountability in your organization?  If so, how will you resolve that conflict?

If any of the above are not addressed, accountability efforts will suffer.

Beliefs

Beliefs are thought patterns, convictions or judgments about yourself, others and the world around you.  They make up the boundary conditions of your thinking and the parameters of your inner game rule book. 

Most organizations struggle with accountability because of the unconscious negative beliefs their leaders and employees hold about accountability. Those beliefs are often the byproduct  of past negative experiences with accountability during upbringing, with a former employer, etc.  To assess the impact of these beliefs on accountability, ask yourself:

• When you think of  accountability, what associations, emotional reactions or thoughs come up?  Are these associations positive, negative or neutral? 
•  If any negative associations about accountability, how can you redefine it so there is emotional buy-in, organizational alignment and it motivates employees to drive their own results?

This article covered 3 out of the 6 factors of your inner game and its relationship to accountability.  Part 2 will cover the remaining 3 factors: your leadership identity, motivational patterns and emotional state.  Part 3 will cover leadership practices and culture changes critical for a strong accountability organization.

The single most important takeaway is to understand that your inner leadership games drives 90% of your performance and results, including accountability.

If you would like more details about your inner leadership game, I invite you to download a complimentary report:  Wired to Win Big;  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies for Rising to the Top and Staying There.

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com orwww.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post The Accountable Leader: Developing the Right Mindset That Ignite Performance (Part 1) appeared first on The Empowered Business.