Job seekers have more clout today than perhaps at any time in history. Now is the time to engage prospects early, efficiently, and in a very personalised way; to sell people on everything your company has to offer.
John Ryan provides 4 helpful and useful tips on finding, engaging, and converting great talent into top-notch candidates who choose your company over the competition.
Read "4 Tips to Proactively Turn Passive Prospects Into Engaged Candidates" leadership insights 
The remote work trend that caught fire with Covid will get even hotter in 2022, especially for more lucrative positions. To put the magnitude of this growing shift in perspective, prior to the pandemic, only about 4% of high paying jobs were available remotely. Today, it's 18%.
Chris Swan and John Ryan share practical strategies to help you successfully recruit and hire the best remote talent from around the world.
Read "3 Smart Tips to Recruit Top Remote Talent Around the World" leadership insights
Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, says, "It doesn't matter how good your original product is, if you can't build a great company around it, the product won't endure." When Satya Nadella took over as CEO at Microsoft, in 2014, he told employees that his highest priority was the company's culture. He refers to culture as "the soul" of the organisation.
For a great organisation, culture isn't an abstract or vague concept … it's real … it speaks to people. It's not a competitive advantage … it's a competitive imperative.
Culture is a complex word. Its first official mention, in English, was in 1430 when the Oxford English dictionary stated that it meant "cultivation." Somewhere along the line culture stopped being about tilling the soil. Instead, it became synonymous with "the arts:" music, poetry, dance, opera, literature, painting and the like. Tilling the intellect!
In a different guise, culture distinguishes one tribe from another. Think about the elite education, polished accent, prescribed dress and required etiquette of the English upper class; the tattoos and street argot of a LA street gang; the shirts, scarfs and chants of Liverpool soccer supporters; and/or the conflict resolution rituals of the Yanomami, one of the most primitive and remote indigenous tribes of Amazonia. Fertilising the closed mind!
In yet one more form of expression, culture describes the habits, values, norms, ethos, organisation and identity of a community who work together in pursuit of a common purpose. The tribe is about exclusion; everyone has to look and act in the same way. Taken to its extreme the tribe emerges as a cult. The psychological polar opposite is a community built on inclusion, shared values and a respect for individual difference. If you want things to stay the same … act as if you are part of the tribe (cooperation, consensus, build walls).
If you recognise and embrace the need for change, think and behave as if you were part of a community (collaboration, trust, sharing). Internal tribes at war with each other are the best thing the competition has going for it. Ploughing a new furrow!
Culture isn't a plaque in reception, a consulting exercise or a memo to all employees. It isn't limited to the organisation's values, exclusively the province of HR, a repackaged engagement survey or something you "do" and then forget about until this time next year. If the term never passed the CEO's lips your culture would still define what's possible. And it will change … whether you want it to or not. As a business, you are your culture. It's the essence of who you are. The good news is it's the one thing the competition can't usurp.
Culture within a business setting is a container for diversity. Here, one is faced with the law of requisite variety. For a system to sustain itself, it needs at least as much internal variety as exists in the environment in which it sits (context). If you look around your organisation or team and, for the most part, those involved all look and sound the same, know that you are ill-equipped for a world where ideas are the lifeblood of tomorrow's success.
The challenge culture presents is that it is the behavioural equivalent of the water in a goldfish bowl. We mostly don't know that it's there but it, nevertheless, sustains life. Have you ever thought how remarkable it is that at the end of the day hundreds, even tens of thousands, of employees go home and, without thinking about it, are able to pick up exactly where they left off the next morning? That's culture!
Insights from "The 7 Questions Every CEO Should Ask About Culture" by John O. Burdett, Orxestra Inc., © 2018
As passionate experts in the executive search and leadership consulting industry we build leadership teams for our clients every day. Learn more about TRANSEARCH International and our wide-ranging approach to leadership acquisition and management assessment.
For the last 21 months many companies and their staff have been through multiple periods of uncertainty, change, and general anxiety regarding the state of their companies and/or jobs. Covid forced a good portion of the American workforce home, many of them for the first time in their careers.
Senior leaders, managers, and supervisors were asking themselves: How will my staff and I focus and communicate effectively remotely? How much managerial oversight is too much? Too little? Can the company survive this? Can I survive this? A large swath of companies not only survived but saw their companies thrive!
Bedford Group/TRANSEARCH's expertise in executive search and talent strategy solutions has provided first-hand experience with the trials, tribulations, challenges and opportunities that HR leaders faced over the past year.
This snapshot report provides valuable insight to help you approach and position your organisation for success in 2022 and beyond.
Read "The Bedford Group TRANSEARCH 2021 HR Leaders Survey Report" leadership insights
This latest article from the Executive Talent magazine by the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants asks, "Going forward, how can C-level executives best ensure cultures of inclusion in the post-COVID workplace, and in turn, best attract and retain top talent?"
"Thought leaders, executives, government entities and researchers have published, persuaded and pleaded the clear case for inclusion. Change has been slow despite the data-driven case for inclusion, but the numbers speak for themselves."
TRANSEARCH is a proud vetted member of the worldwide Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC) and adheres to the AESC Code of Professional Practice. Discover how you can be assured that we are able to serve as trusted advisors for your most important engagements at transearch.com/about-us/aesc-membership.
Read "Inclusion In The Post-COVID Workplace" leadership insights
We are, as some would describe, at a 'hinge' in history. Our lives have changed forever. Bill Sakellaris outline 4 key ways COVID-19 has upended, and will continue to permanently change, our world of work:
If companies don't make a concerted effort to better understand why employees are leaving, and take meaningful action to retain them (and no, it's not just about money), then I'm afraid they will be the big losers.
Leadership, as it must be, is strategic. It's to step back, see the big picture and, to the extent possible, create tomorrow in the room, today. Covid is but one piece of a chaotic and ever changing political, economic, societal, business and interconnected leadership puzzle. At the centre of all of this is 'the team' … a basic and fundamental blueprint for organisational and personal success.
What follows is intended as a practical guide for:
Read "Great Organisations Are Built Around Great Teams" leadership insights
"As organizations tentatively plan how to get work done amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus, both leaders and employees are touting the benefits of flexibility. But what does flexibility at work look like in practice? And how can you know whether your team or organization is using it successfully?"
Read "The Future of Flexibility at Work" leadership insights
"As businesses rebuild in the aftermath of the global pandemic, those that take the opportunity to remake and future-proof their workforce will pull far ahead of rivals… So how should companies rebuild?"
Read "Future-Proofing Your Organisation" leadership insights
The ultimate accountability for succession lies with the HR Committee of the Board, but it is no less a fiduciary responsibility for the CEO and the top team. Indeed, anyone privileged enough to hold down a leadership role has an ongoing responsibility to develop a successor.
The need? A far more rigorous approach to Board selection. A periodic assessment of Board "fitness for purpose". A regular review of governance provisions. Appointing adjunct Board members with specialised experience and know-how – for example, organisation culture, technology, the succession process.
A flawed process has one defining characteristic – it's not going to take you where you need to be. Conversely, a meaningful process displays all the attributes of a good map. It allows you to identify where the beginning of the journey is, where you need to get to and the key steps along the way.
The need? A rigorous and transparent succession process that allows the Board to understand the thinking and methodology behind "the names on the charts". A succession process that delivers a distinct and sustainable competitive advantage.
'Succession' and 'replacement' planning build on very different assumptions. Replacement is essentially tactical - a contingency plan to put into effect should a mission-critical role unexpectedly become open. Succession is strategic - it's about tomorrow's leadership.
The need? Recognise the inherent value of both replacement and succession but don't confuse the two. Leaving a mission-critical role unfilled for an extended period of time can be horrendously expensive. It may even put the very future of the business at risk.
The shorthand for focus is "less is more". This is especially the case when it comes to succession. The challenge? To identify mission-critical roles.
The need? Restrict the work on succession at the top of the organisation to mission-critical roles – the roles that really matter; the roles that, if filled poorly, can sink the ship.
Like riding a rocking horse, not everyone who 'rocks' is going places. It's a mistake to assume that outstanding performance translates into high potential.
The need? Define the specific competencies that describe future success in both the mission-critical role and the generic competencies that capture what it means to be 'high potential'. Selection isn't an exercise in abstract thinking. Make both succession decisions and identifying high potential candidates evidence based.
A leadership competency describes future success in the role. It also captures the behaviours that separate an outstanding performer from one who is merely middle of the road. Three common pitfalls: falling back on generic terms; a myopic focus; relying too heavily on the manager in the role to capture the characteristic of future success.
The need? A comprehensive, up-to-date library of future-looking, thought-leadership-based, context-oriented, role-specific leadership competencies that embrace leadership balance.
Your culture is your brand. Succession based on wishful thinking is to place a blind bet on the future without any understanding of what you are actually betting on and without appreciating the damage you are doing to the brand.
The need? Responsibility for culture lies directly with the top team. What you don't measure, you can't manage. It is essential to (really) know: 1) where your organisation culture is today, and 2) where your culture needs to be to compete successfully in the future.
You can't grow the organisation unless you grow the people in the organisation. At the heart of 'growing' people lies coaching. Coaching isn't a 'sometime skill'. It's a systemic way to think about what it means to be a leader.
The need? As the business environment evolves, new knowledge, skills and capability are demanded. Without coaching, succession is an engine of future performance that is not firing on all cylinders. Those at the top must strive to become masterful in the art of coaching.
It is little short of managerial incompetence to enter into the succession conversation without the key decision-makers stepping back to assess the future nature, needs and norms that shape the behaviour of the team(s) involved. And it matters … because tomorrow's organisation will be a team of teams.
The need? Factoring in the makeup and working approach of tomorrow's team(s) is a business imperative. As is uncovering meaningful ways to assess the team.
Derailment, no matter what form it takes, destroys value. If they don't land, they won't stay. It's not just a matter of fulfilling all of the requirements of the new role. The challenge is to do so as quickly as possible.
The need? A comprehensive executive induction process supported by both an internal mentor and an external coach. Assessment tools, access to supportive materials and the full support of both the hiring manager and HR are clearly essential. We have also found that a well designed and easy to access workbook is invaluable.
There are a good many issues that can derail a successful business. None, however, contain the potency for failure as having the wrong leader in the wrong role at the wrong time. Succession is a critical investment that you cannot afford to get wrong.
Why is succession so often adjudged a failure? Limited strategic awareness is the start of it. Being overwhelmed by the problems of the day is clearly part of it. But, more often than not, lack of practical intelligence is at the heart of it. To speak to a TRANSEARCH consultant about shaping tomorrow's leadership success today, please get in touch.
As passionate experts in the executive search and leadership consulting industry we build leadership teams for our clients every day. Learn more about TRANSEARCH International and our wide-ranging approach to leadership acquisition and management assessment.
