Teamwork Archives - Roman 3 Operations

Productivity Insulation: How your business could save $27,000

Overlooking your biggest investment

One of the most overlooked parts of owning or managing a business is the need to safeguard your labour. In the vast majority of businesses, labour is the biggest portion of an organization’s operating expenses. Depending on the size and type of your business, it can be between 50-75% of your total overhead. Yet, most businesses and organizations do not put much focus on protecting and maintaining the productivity of their staff. If you look at it from a completely financial perspective, it is mind boggling! If a business has a piece of equipment that is a major expense, let’s say, 15% of your entire operating costs, it would be taken care of extremely well. Business owners and managers know that protecting and maintaining your important assets is how you ensure the best productivity and profitability from your business.

The Problem

This begs the question, why is it that people are quick to protect and maintain their equipment, but will not put the same focus on protecting and maintaining their labour?

Maybe, it is because equipment is seen as an investment, and labour is seen as an expense? Or maybe it is because equipment is a tangible, noticeable asset. Where labour is your staff, a bunch of people doing different things and different times. It’s less noticeable and more subtle.

Regardless, the why is puzzling, but not the most important thing to understand. What is important to understand is that, as with your equipment, if you do not invest time and effort into your staff, you are losing A LOT of money. This could damage the financial future of your business.

Labour Value Loss

The impact of not investing time and effort into your staff is called Labour Value Loss. It is the very scary consequence of neglecting to protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. It is the financial toll that common labour problems have on a business.

For example: According to the Center for American Progress it costs the equivalent of 20% of a person’s salary to replace them. The costs associated with replacing staff include, but are not limited to:

Paying overtime
Recruitment costs
Drop in productivity
Any associated customer loss

Labour Value Loss is a startling reality for most businesses. What makes it so concerning is that the money lost is slow and subtle, like a leaky faucet or a poorly insulated roof. This is happening everywhere, every day.

So, the real question is how do we fix it? Well, just like a drafty home, we fix it with insulation.

The Solution

To address Labour Value Loss, you need Productivity Insulation. This is the way you protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. The easiest way to think of Productivity Insulation is to look at it as robust HR policies and Employee Engagement. HR policies are important to make sure rules and procedures are clear and transparent, keeping businesses compliant and employees informed. However, the lion’s share of effective Productivity Insulation comes from Employee Engagement.

Employee Engagement is the efforts that organizations make to create a high level of motivation and enthusiasm in employees. For Employee Engagement to be effective, it doesn’t need to be complicated or costly, it just needs to be understood and consistent.

The return on your investment from Employee Engagement can be astonishing. The Labour Value Loss from Disengagement, when employees have a low level of motivation and enthusiasm, is 34% of their annual salary. This number alone makes Labour Value Loss expensive. Add other elements, like Turnover or Absenteeism, and you have a costly problem that you cannot ignore. The future of your business depends on it.

If you would like to learn more about Labour Value Loss, here is a short video. This video is part of a FREE, on-demand, 30-minute course we provide to businesses called: Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity. Click here to check it out.

Oh, I almost forgot!

You are probably wondering where the $27,000 in the title of this article comes from. Well, that is the average Labour Value Loss that a business will experience from Disengagement each year. If you would like to know how it was calculated:

Here is where we got the numbers for our formula:

The Average Business, with staff, has 4 employees who make an average of $41,000
The percentage of employees who are disengaged is between 67%-75% But we will be conservative and just say 50%
As stated earlier, a disengaged employee cost 34% of their annual salary.

Here is our formula:

(# of Staff) x (Annual Salary)	x (Percentage of Employees Disengaged)	x (Cost of Disengagement)	= Total Labour Value Loss due to Disengagement
4 Employees x $41,000 = $164,000	50% of employees are disengaged x 0.50	disengaged employees cost 34% x 0.34	= $27,880

This is a conservative, yet well supported, number. However, it is only one aspect of Labour Value Loss.

To learn more about Labour Value Loss, and to calculate how much your business may be losing due to Disengagement, Turnover, Absenteeism, etc., take our FREE course.

Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support reach out to us at info@roman3.ca

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Putting a Giraffe in the Fridge – The Power of Ridiculous Interview Questions

The problem with interviews

Okay, we’ve all been there: sitting in a job interview (on either side of the table—it doesn’t really matter) and we’re thinking, “Do these questions really highlight the skills and qualities needed to be successful in this job?”

If you’re the one doing the hiring you’re also thinking, “How can I find the best employee and not just the best interviewer?” If you’re the candidate, you’re thinking, “How can I show them I’m exactly what they’re looking for without sounding like I’m telling them what they want to hear?”

Here is the crux of the problem: the skills needed to make a good impression in an interview are rarely the skills needed to do the job. For example, if you’re interviewing for a management job, it’s difficult to demonstrate that you have the necessary skills to lead, organize and make hard decisions when you’re just sitting answering questions that you had time to prepare for. If you’re doing the hiring, it’s hard to see the qualities and skills that fit your needs when the person you’re interviewing could be misrepresenting their skills and experience.

What you’re really looking for

As everyone who does hiring knows, what you’re looking for in a good employee is fit. You want someone who not only has the experience, but also the transferable skills to thrive in the position for which you are hiring. (If you want more on the importance of transferable skills check out previous article: Skills vs Experience) The real question is whether you trust people when they say they have the skills you are seeking. When applicants say they work well in stressful situations, you just have to take them at their word. There is really no opportunity to prove it, which is a huge disservice to both you and the candidate. Sure, there are options for you to give them an opportunity to prove themselves—like telling them they have thirty seconds to create a new jingle for your company’s flagship product while you dangle them out the window. But your lawyers will likely advise you against that. So what can you do?

Your main focus should be an applicant’s soft skills—over the education, over the experience, over the technical training. So the real question you should be starting with before you begin writing the interview questions should be, “What are the essential skills needed to be successful in this job?”

The right fit on soft skills is essential. A study by Watts and Watts (2008) indicated that hard skills contribute only 15% to one’s success, whereas 85% of success is due to soft skills. Another study by Klaus (2010) found that 75% of long-term job success depends on personal skills, while only 25% is dependent on technical knowledge.

So, again: How can the candidates prove it to you?

What a ridiculous question can do for you

Enter the ridiculous questions. Now, I may be getting off to a bad start by calling them ridiculous. I prefer the term “abstract”, however for the formal and rather stuffy setting of a job interview they are certainly unconventional— but that’s part of their brilliance. These kinds of questions fracture a candidate’s overly-polished and prepared responses and give you direct insight into the person behind the carefully crafted first impression.

The skills you need to ask ridiculous questions

Being able to get the information you need from one of these abstract questions takes some skill. Skilled interviews can infer parallels and patterns in people’s answers. They can help you read the person and frame the kind of answer you are looking to get out of the question. It’s about analysis and synthesis: analyzing how people respond to your questions for deeper insight into their thinking process, and then synthesizing the meaning to establish proof of the skill you are seeking. Knowing the right questions to ask takes practice and you may have to dig deep into your memory, back to high school when you were analyzing poems about gardens and cloudy days, looking for the meaning and symbolism. I just hope you didn’t miss that day.

Questions and their intended results

Here are some sample questions and their potential benefits to give you an idea of how this works:

How many ways can you get a needle out of a haystack?

This question is great if you’re seeking people who can look at complex situations and assess possible solutions. Notice that the question asks how many ways? This is important when you’re looking for someone to not get stuck on a single solution and who will look for new ways to get the job done. The answers you want to hear from positional “problem fixers” will demonstrate openness to looking at multiple angles, a logical and impactful problem-solving method, and creative approaches to challenges. I like to suggest this question to organizations looking for “problem fixers” such as Economic Developers, Career Counsellors, Auditors, etc.

How would you explain Facebook to your Grandma?

This question focuses on attention to detail, patience and understanding the perspective of the customer. It’s a good one to ask in environments with highly technical or industry-specific language where it’s easy to forget that clients may not be familiar with industry vocabulary or concepts. Your best front line people will be employees who can put themselves in the shoes of those you serve. The answers you want to hear will be compassionate and easy to understand, using accessible language and thorough details.

Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?

This was an internet favorite from a few years ago, but is still a great abstract question. If you’re hiring for a job that needs to take theoretical, hard-to-visualize information and make it accessible, then this is an excellent question. Being able to quickly respond to a weird question like this can really show the processing speed of your applicant. Skills like being able to visualize complex verbal descriptions are a large part of many jobs like marketing, programming and customer service. The answers you want to this question are quick, logical and practical. This can also be a great way to access the sense of humor in a candidate if that’s needed for the job or team they would be joining.

Could be a game changer

This simple shift in the way you think about interviews can have profound effects on talent acquisition. I urge all my readers to put more weight on transferable and soft skills than on experience, because experience is not the same as quality of experience. Soft skills can be taught (it’s my bread and butter) — meaning you can help shape the quality of a person’s experience to suit the needs of your company. It’s a much larger investment, but it’s worth it.

Before you interview applicants, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of the skills you’re looking for in prospective employees. You’ll also need a strategy for discerning the presence of these skills during the course of the interview. Asking ridiculous questions is one way to have job candidates demonstrate, rather than just talk about, having the skills you’re seeking.

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Is Your Understanding of Diversity All Wrong?

Do you know the true value of diversity?

Lately I have been consumed with recruiting. I recently hired staff positions at one of my organizations, where I’m also currently looking for new Board Members. I also just finished the process of recruiting committee members and advisors for my other organization. Lastly, I am consulting with a government group looking to recruit members for a very exciting youth council. So lately I have been living and breathing recruitment, which is par for the course when you specialize in talent development. To be honest, I actually kind of like recruiting, especially when it’s for the assortment of levels, positions, skill sets, and experience that I normally work with on a regular basis. But more than the recruiting, I really like maximizing the skills and potential that new people bring to their new roles. The unique viewpoints, backgrounds, strengths, and ideas really excite me. I am a true believer in a strengths based approach to teamwork, which means working with people with wide reaching skills and knowledge that have little overlap and letting the people work primarily within their strengths, while keeping them away from their areas of weakness. As an example, is I have an Economic Development Officer (EDO) who is an amazing relationship builder and an innovative problem solver, but lacks administrative organizational skills. So I let my EDO focus on his strengths and we share the more administrative tasks within his team to someone who has great skills and leadership with organizational tasks. Why hold them back from the things they do well? The other piece of maximizing skills and potential that I am a true believer in is discourse. Maybe it is the academic in me, but I adamantly believe that divergent views and lively debate are essential to true progress and innovation. Impactful discourse can only come from diversity… but this may not be the diversity most people think of.

Diversity of Perspective

Now, I don’t want to lose anyone by talking about diversity. I know there are strong opinions when the term is uttered. While some people get on their soapbox to shout their thoughts about political correctness, others feel that only people who are a part of underrepresented groups have the right to speak about diversity. These are just a few examples. But, I want to be very clear right at the start, the value of recruiting for diversity has nothing to do with political correctness. I’m not talking about, or even remotely supporting tokenism (the practice of doing something, such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group, only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.) In fact, I’m kind of disgusted by the lack of respect and the lack general decency that tokenism invokes. What I’m saying is that the true value in hiring for diversity is gaining the diversity of perspective.

As I mentioned earlier, two important elements of maximizing the skills and the potential of groups, organizations, or individuals are a strengths based approach and discourse. These elements can only exist in a team when there is a dynamic of diversity of perspective; new viewpoints to share, unique experiences to pull from, different struggles that have been conquered, and distinctive approaches to common issues, just to name a few. If this diversity of perspective does not exist then all efforts for development and innovation are doomed to fail or at best, be mildly impactful.

We don’t need Ambassadors

When most people think of diversity, they think of a group of people whose members represent different cultures, races, languages, sexual orientation, gender, class, and abilities. These are some of the different backgrounds that create the common understanding of diversity. The problem with thinking of diversity as a form of representation is that even the most well meaning efforts become tokenistic in their desire to have all backgrounds visibility represented.

The true value of diversity is the range of perspectives that it allows. The differences of culture, race, language, sexual orientation, gender, class, and ability inherently give people individual experiences that build the uniqueness of their perspectives. At the same time, each person is allowed be an individual and not an “ambassador” for their particular minority group. We want the whole person to be involved and engaged. Their background will form their perspective, not define it.

The Dull Grey of the Homogenous Perspective

Without the commitment to recruiting diversity of perspective we run the risk of putting a lot of work into something that is only valued by a particular segment of the population we are trying to inspire, sell to, develop, or whatever. We all like to surround ourselves with like minded people, but we need to be careful and consider why they are likeminded. Are they likeminded in goals and vision? Appreciation of progress and challenge? Or because we have the same background and perspectives?

Recruiting for diversity of perspective is simply the best way to be the best. I personally look for the strengths based approach and truly value discourse. Reaching the largest audience, finding innovative marketing segments, creating competitive advantage, and accelerating problem solving efforts, are just a few of the possible benefits.

The Takeaway

Value diversity because you truly want to be the best. Don’t value diversity because you want to have nice pictures of unique faces. Recruit people who will have many different viewpoints and insights. Don’t recruit people who look different and define their value by their differences. Perspectives are essential to business, problem solving, teamwork, ethics, training, personal growth, and maximizing potential. Put great efforts into gathering as many as you can.

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Most Managers are Not Successful at Leading

Managing To Meet The Needs Of The Future

So, for years I have worked in workforce and talent development. I pride myself on innovative and progressive approaches to supporting the workforce, because I understand the true potential of having the right skills in the right place. Our world is shifting, and like or not it is because of the millennials that having conversations about not only what employers should expect from their employees, but also what employees should expect from their employers. It is incredibly important that employees be dedicated, hardworking, and ethical. This allows them to do the best job they can, whether or not someone is watching them. However, it is really up to the employers to create an environment that fosters that level of professionalism, and it allows for employees to feel valued when they do. Often when I speak to employers who have issues with turnover and who can’t retain top talent, they often state that they are frustrated by people leaving. My two most common questions are: “What are you doing to make them stay?” and “Are you aware that most people don’t leave their job, they leave their boss?”

On that note, let’s look at how we can create an environment that will promote professionalism and give our employees a reason to say.

Maximize The Talent You Have

According to a 2018 Harvard Business Review article, titled Why People Really Quit Their Jobs, people would leave when their job wasn’t enjoyable, their strengths weren’t being used, and they weren’t growing in their careers. Even when they enjoyed their boss, they still didn’t enjoy their job, but it is their boss who ultimately is responsible for what that job is like. The elements of enjoying what you do and growing in your career, are really about utilizing your skills. No matter what we do, we want to be able to spend most of our time doing what we are good at and ideally be appreciated for our skills. This needs to be a focal point when managing a team. Look to capitalize on the skills and talents of those in your charge, to get the most out of the investment that you have made into your hiring.

This can look different for different organizations, when you have a large employee base it needs to be done in broader strokes but is best done by being open to strategies like Job Carving. Job Carving is commonly defined as; the act of analyzing work duties performed in a given job and identifying specific tasks that might be assigned to an employee. This is most commonly used to intergrade people with disabilities but can be used for everyone. It is about adjusting scheduling, recombining duties, and generally taking a more fluid approach to creating job descriptions. In smaller organizations, you can inventory the skills and abilities of your existing staff team and look to adjust tasks and roles to take a more strengths-based approach to team dynamics. Both of these strategies, job carving and strength base teams, require a very strong and progressive HR approach and leaders skilled in change management, but can be a turning point for companies with workforce issues.

Lead Vs Manage

If you are going to create a culture to maximize your workforce, run an organization that people will bring their best to, and retain talent; then you need to understand how to lead, instead of just how to manage

Here are some places to start:

Employees are your ASSET

Old thinking has always been that employees are your biggest cost, your biggest risk, and sometimes, your biggest liability. This creates an adversarial perspective to managing staff. What owners, bosses, and managers need to understand is that the Human Capital of a business is the biggest investment and therefore the greatest priority to optimize.

Open communication flow

Old thinking about communications has been to focus on the top-down chain. You need to be fed information from your superiors who possess all of the access, insight, and required intel. But this shows a lack of respect or the professional judgment of your employees, creates a bottleneck for information, and slows down productivity. By allowing information to be accessible and shared throughout, you are fostering independence in your team and empower those with the initiative to act.

Behaviour over Experience

Old thinking valued experience as the be all end all, you had to be proven to be effective. However, when you hire for experience you’re hiring someone’s past, which might be all they can give you. If you focus on the behaviour, or as we call it in workforce development their employability skills, you can expect more, develop more, and invest more in your staff.

Empower results

Old thinking puts a lot of emphasis on punching the clock. The thinking put a lot of focus on how much time you put in between 9 to 5. But the question you need to ask yourself is what are you paying them for? Is it to be busy within their working hours or to produce results and meet outcomes? You can either give your staff the flexibility they need to deliver or give them a schedule to work, you likely cannot do both.

Work where the best work gets done

In line with the last section, Old thinking emphasizes sitting at your desk from 9-5, anything else isn’t really working. But, the essential point to consider is, what are you paying your staff for? It is to occupy a desk or to produce results and meet outcomes? If the conditions of the job will allow for the flexibility of working remotely or part-time from home offices, and people can produce better results outside the office, then why not? You can either give your staff the flexibility they need to deliver the best results or give them a mandatory location to work, you likely cannot do both.

Genuine honesty

Old thinking puts a lot of value on corporate jargon and buzzwords, often to pacify people’s needs for information without actually giving it to them. We often hide behind these efforts to pacify our employees out of some antiquated thoughts that employees are like mushrooms, they develop better when kept in the dark (often surrounded by bul….oney…..baloney). When in reality the best way to develop your team is to be genuine, transparent, and trust them with what they need to do their jobs the best they can.

Fail often

Old thinking really hates the idea of failing and wants to go to any length to avoid it. But failing is essential to growth. If you never try anything new, you are unlikely to fail…..and succeed, and grow, and innovate. But if you look for calculated ways to take risks then you are open to fail….and succeed, and grow, and innovate.

Be vulnerable

Old thinking embodies the omnificent leader who is to be feared and respected by all, and that might have worked for Julius Caesar, that is not how true leadership is. Real leadership and successful management are about having the confidence to laugh at yourself, make own your mistakes, say “I don’t know”, and ask others for help. A leader who can inspire people by being human and an equal to their staff will create a loyalty and work ethic that will surpass any threat, fear, or power that old thinking can muster up.

The Takeaway

No one wants to be managed, but we all want to be lead. A manager who follows the old thinking of management will always have workforce issues, limited innovation, and get satisfactory results. A leader who looks to inspire, empower, and develop their team will outpace, outshine, and outdo any manager every day of the week. Do you want to give your team a reason to stay? Give them the boss they never want to leave.

– Written by W. Coby Milne

Director of Roman 3 Operations

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Why am I Intimidated by Networking?

Do I Really Have to Network?

Ok, so let me guess, you have been seeking a new job or trying for a promotion, however, you can’t catch a break. You have a great resume and cover letter, a good reputation from people who know you and you are skilled and ready for the next step…still, you can’t seem to capitalize on any opportunities. What are you doing wrong? Well, for starters, the main opportunity you are not truly capitalizing on is the fact that you have all of those essential things in place and you know you are ready, but do enough people realize that you are ready?

This is the whole idea behind networking, it is really about just making your skills and ambition known to others, which is where the intimidating part comes in; many of you feel like you are a shameless vacuum cleaner salesman who needs to go around and steer every conversation about how great and needed their product is (in case I lost you, the product is not a vacuum, it’s you), which turns people off and often makes a bad impression. This is true, no one likes to be around a pushy salesperson or talk to folks who are only there to sell you on something. People hate talking to others who are not being genuine and are only there to push forward their ulterior motive or personal agenda.

Another part that really intimidates people with networking is a lot simpler. Most of us don’t like talking to strangers. Maybe it’s because, like me, you grew up in the 80’s with ‘Stranger Danger’, or maybe you simply have an introverted side and it just takes a lot out of you to meet and chat with those you really don’t know.

Networking Doesn’t Have to be Complicated

So, do you need to be an extraverted, natural salesman to network? No, not at all, networking is traditionally thought of as going to formal events and mingling and chatting with strangers, exchanging business cards, making small talk and looking for ways to humbly brag. Now, I will admit as someone who does this a fair amount, this is both intimidating and exhausting. In the work I do, I spend a lot time “schmoozing”, which is the part I like the least even though there are those rare times I meet someone who I really click with and who gives me new ideas and viewpoints. Is it my most meaningful form of networking? No, not even a little.

The most meaningful networking approach for me revolves around two simple, yet impactful, strategies; looking for information or looking to help.

There is a professional speaker and author named Michael Goldberg, (here is link to his TEDX talk), who is an expert on networking and he has a great definition for it: “A proactive approach to meet people to learn with the prospect of helping them” – Michael Goldberg

Personally, I like this definition of networking because it is not suppose to be about convincing people to hire you, buy from you, refer you, or listen to your ideas. Nor is it meant to be an intimidating and overwhelming process; it should be about learning and helping.

How to Comfortably and Effectively Network

The trick to the formal networking events is to have a reason to network, a purpose for the conversations. When I do the “schmoozing” the only real benefit I get out of it is that people see my face, maybe learn my name, and hopeful share contact info. The main payoff is that if I follow up with the new person I met, I have a starting point to the conversation where I can reference where we met. However that follow-up contact (phone or email) is where the real networking begins. Normally when I reach out to people to follow up it is because I am trying to get information, learn something or look for a way to help. Oddly enough, my follow up from the schmoozing is only marginally more effective than when I cold call someone to get information or look to help. That could mean one of three things; either I am a bad conversationalist, a relentless cold caller, or the real impact of networking is looking to do something with or for the person I met. For my own self-esteem, let’s hope the later is true.

The key is to network with intention, not just at schmoozing events but with everyone you come in contact with while going about your everyday. Always look for any reason to reach out to someone new with a purpose whether it is at work to contact a new vendor, service provider, government employee or community member, or even if it is chatting with another parent at your kid’s basketball game. It is important to have a reason to look for information or to help; this will give you the purpose to contact them.

Keep in mind; it is really only by a continued relationship that you start to build a network. Only by working with people, following through on your commitments, showing your passions and dedication and providing the give and take that is essential to all successful relationships will a new person actually become part of your network. Then you begin to capitalize on your skills and ambition plus build the reputation you need to get to where you want to go. The old adage, “It’s not what you do, it’s who you know” is not accurate. A more fitting adage is, “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.” This is how you start to make a difference and build up your reputation. There is no sense being ambitious and passionate at something if you are only working with and preaching to the converted. Remember, an effective way that networking can make a huge difference in looking for information or looking to help is with volunteering. I wrote an earlier article about on LinkedIn this titled: Volunteering is Your Career Marketing Plan. Check it out for more depth on this.

The Takeaway

Networking isn’t just about the intimidating schmoozing events, it is about the conversations you have with people and the connections that you make as you are trying to look for information or to help. This is how you show individuals, ideally lots of people, your skills and ambition. This is how you build a network that will capitalize on those skills and ambition. Events are an okay place to start, but it is about the follow-up and the actual work you will do with people that makes for effective networking. So if you are looking to be less intimidated by networking, you just need to have a reason to reach out to people who are outside your existing network and find ways to learn from them or to help them. After that, your skills and ambition will take over and you will create the reputation you deserve and develop the network to match.

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Crucial Elements to Consider When Recruiting for High Talent Teams

Adding to the team

Recruiting is always challenging, the hiring process is always filled with so many unknowns and risks. The challenge is even greater when you’re looking to add to a team that’s already functioning well. The potential to throw off the existing team, ruin a good thing, and not successfully find the right fit really puts the pressure on when the time comes to expand your team. Another point to consider is the subtle differences between expanding a team, versus, replacing a member of a strong team. Expanding an already great team seems less risky because you are adding on to it, but you may run the risk of adding an unnecessary appendage to the team, a team appendix if you will. If the addition is not seen as a critical addition that is truly of value and strengthens the work of everyone else, then you run the risk of planting the seeds of resentment and can start to corrode the foundation of the team. In similar fashion, if you are replacing a member of a highly functioning team, then you need to be really careful in your approach. It is advised to not look for a clone to swap in with hopes of not missing a step, this just sets the stage for unfair comparisons and unrealistic expectations. A better approach might be to look at the exit of your team member as an opportunity to restructure the team’s tasks and move tasks around within the team that will create efficiency. This way you can find the fit for the new structure, and find someone who was hired to fit in, not just hired to be the same as the person who left.

But what elements are needed to find people who can fit into the existing team, and make the most of your recruiting efforts?

Here are some elements to consider:

Intrapreneurs

Intrapreneurship is a relatively recent concept that focuses on employees of a company who have many of the attributes of entrepreneurs. They think and behave like owners; showing the long range vision of not just their personal career, but the organization as a whole. They are not “clock punchers” who only work within the time and duties of their employment contact. They take complete ownership of their role and are driven to make their position succeed with the same effort, determination, and ownership that an entrepreneur would with their own business. The qualities of an intrapreneur are exceptional work ethic and integrity, adaptability and willingness to change focus and direction to do what it takes to make their role successful, highly internally motivated, and solution focused with a commitment to find a way to make an innovative idea with potential work.

For more info on intrapreneurs check out these articles by Forbes and INC.

PSYCAP

PSYCAP is a collection of core skills that create the foundation to strengthen employee success. Higher PSYCAP is associated with higher performance, lower stress levels and better well-being. The qualities of high PSYCAP increase the flexibility and level of demands that can be placed on an employee, it is a mark of a high capacity employee.

I wrote an article about building and developing Psychological Capital (PSYCAP), titled: Investing in Psychological Capital- Maximizing yourself and your talent pool, Check it out for a more detailed description of PSYCAP.

Strengths based vs All-Stars

This is a really important element to consider when hiring to a team. Are you looking to create a well rounded team or team of well rounded individuals? I can personally say that I have been on both and there is quite a different dynamic with each kind of team. The way I like to explain this concept is to compare this with the Brad Pitt movie Moneyball, where a baseball manager who couldn’t afford to hire a team of well rounded All-stars, so he hired a diverse team of players that were not well rounded but had strong skills for a single position and the passion, and personal grit needed to make the most of the opportunity. If you are interested, here is a good article on how to build a team “Moneyball style” in software development.

This may seem a little counter intuitive at first, to think of not necessarily looking for a team of well rounded all-stars, but to look for a team that collectively have high strengths is all areas, while as individuals have personal areas of weaknesses. However, if you hire the team to play to their strengthens, and strategically choose the people whose strengths compensate for the weaknesses of the others, then you create an environment where everyone is focused on doing what they are really good at and completely supporting each other to move the team forward in a unified direction. This fosters collaboration, pride in one’s work, and naturally boosts employee morale.

The risk of hiring that team of all-stars is that with many people who possess the same skills, all looking for the chance to show their talents off. You could accidentally create, at worst, highly competitive environment where people are more focused on their egos than the team, and at best, a team of individuals who feel they don’t need to work together and collaborate. Plus, like in sports, the All-stars tend to be the ones who are being headhunted and less likely to stay with the team for the long haul.

The Takeaway

If you see the value in these elements and are wondering how to recruit an intrapreneur, with high PSYCAP, to be part of your Strengths Based team, then the best advice I can give you is – give your team complete access to the recruitment process. Include them at every stage; the gap analysis of the team’s current strengths, the adjustment to everyone’s positions to fit the new person in as a critical member, the drafting of the job description and posting, short listing the resumes, and being part of the hiring panel. Give them the sense of ownership and lean on the professional judgement and intuition that they possess that made them a high talent team to begin with.