Oct 2010 Issue

• Global Hiring Trends
• John Kotter on Selling Your Vision
• A Nine-Step Recipe for Making Change
• Feedback: The Whole Truth (Almost)

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MRINetwork Insight into Global Hiring Trends - Oct 2010

[Each month, MRINetwork uses the combined expertise of over 1,100 offices in more than 35 countries to publish an update on hiring prior to the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers released on the first Friday of the month.]

“If you’ve spent the last two years saying you were going to start hiring as soon as things turned around, this is that time. The recovery has been more anticlimactic than we were all hoping,” says Tony McKinnon, President of MRINetwork. “but the recession is over. It’s time to staff up, and go fight for your slice of the pie."

Growing Again From a New Starting Point

Economies around the world have strengthened to a point where a double-dip recession is increasingly unlikely, but a slow rate of growth seems unavoidable. Many of the key reasons for recent growth, both real (introduction of computers, the Internet) and artificial (credit bubbles), have either run their course or been removed from the market entirely...
    "Looking at the economy on a global level, we are out of the woods, but we still have a long way to go," says McKinnon. "The natural rate of growth for companies over the next five years isn’t going to be what we experienced before the recession. Success is going to be hard earned, and even more of that success will be driven by the performance of impact players than ever before."…
    For evidence of the slow, but steady state of the recovery, one needs to look no further than private employment levels… (which) has settled into a slow, steady rate of growth. “We are likely past where we might have seen a large post-recession bump. We are already at a place where growth is happening again,” says McKinnon. “Rather than looking back and seeing where we were, it is time to look forward and see the business opportunities that lay ahead.”… Read more »

John Kotter on Selling Your Vision - by Bobbie Gossage

Change management guru John Kotter discusses how to lead employees in his new book, Buy-In.

You may have a brilliant new business strategy, but unless employees are stoked about the idea, it won't succeed, says leadership guru John P. Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and author of several books on organizational change. Kotter's new book, Buy-In (Harvard Business Press), promotes a counterintuitive way to build support for a new idea: by encouraging employees to criticize it. If you are good at playing defense, Kotter reasons, you will win employees over. In the book, Kotter and co-author Lorne A. Whitehead teach CEOs how to deflect common criticisms, including comments like, "If this is such a great idea, why hasn't anyone done it already?" Senior editor Bobbie Gossage spoke with Kotter about this strategy.

Why is buy-in important?
Seventy percent of major change efforts either don't get started or fail. If you look at the most successful cases -- the top 5 percent of leaders who actually made something terrific happen -- they were very good at communicating in a way that won people over.

In your book, you say it's important to invite criticism of your idea. Why is that helpful?
Modern life is an information overload. The single biggest problem in trying to make big changes is simply getting people's attention. One of the most effective ways of doing that is to invite people to throw rocks at you. It causes sparks. Sparks grab our attention.

Isn’t there a danger in that?
Sure, if you don't know how to deal with it. We all go into fear mode if we're afraid we're going to be embarrassed or hurt. Or we'll get mad, because people are attacking something we care about and think is right. That's why it's important to know how to respond to these generic attacks.

What is the most common attack?... Read more »

A Nine-Step Recipe For Making Change - by Mark Healy

How do successful managers implement and execute an idea?

When it comes to instituting your great change, I wrote in a column last week, the way to go may involve a programmatic approach, which means converting an idea into something actionable.
    Here is a good recipe for setting up an internal program geared toward enacting some type of change. To illustrate, let’s use as an example a firm that sources and sells products, and also offers post-sales consulting services.
    Part of the company’s overall strategy, since it has been around for a number of years, is to take advantage of the collective experience of the company. But information is still not shared well internally. The goal is to increase communication and knowledge sharing internally, to boost sales of higher dollar value contracts.

Step One: Pick a simple idea
A powerful idea is a simple idea. And programs are always more complex than the ideas they are based on. If the idea is complicated, the program will be ridiculous. Start over by thinking about making a smaller change. If the change that is sought is about ensuring better communication between individuals (such as salespeople) or departments (such as sales and sourcing), a simple idea here could be “share best practices.”

Step Two: Ensure an obvious link to strategy
The idea should align with the overall business strategy. But that’s not enough. The program name or theme must also blatantly advance or support the strategy, or the team will not buy it. Following the same example: sharing best practices makes sense in light of the “collective experience” strategy. And the name Best Practices Program would be an obvious, and not cheesy, nod to the strategy.

Step Three: Develop the guts of the program with the team... Read more »

Feedback: The Whole Truth (Almost) - by Mary Jo Asmus

Four things you can do to have the best chance of getting quality feedback when you ask for it.

Most good leaders appreciate feedback. They want to know how they are doing in the eyes of their stakeholders, and appreciate honest suggestions on what and how they can improve. Many believe that when they request feedback from their staff, peers, and manager that they will hear the unvarnished truth about their performance; seldom does that happen.
     I encourage my clients to ask for feedback from others. Sometimes, I’m the one who has to break the bad news that unless certain conditions are right, they will NOT hear the whole truth. Even if the conditions are right, they still may not. This doesn’t mean that they should stop asking for feedback, it means that they just need to be aware that they may not get the full story from others.
     This may have nothing to do with the leader who is asking; but it may have a lot to do with the fact that the leader is in a position of power. Or, it may be because the climate of the organization makes it hard for employees to feel comfortable giving their honest opinion. However, there are some things that you can do to provide the best chance of getting quality feedback when you ask for it.

Become calm and consistent in your behavior: Leaders who are volatile and “go off” without warning create fear. If you are this type of person, be aware that the messengers around you are afraid of being shot. Your chances of getting honest feedback are nil unless you change your behavior and become more calm and consistent in your responses.

Set the stage ahead of time with the person(s) you’d like feedback from. Ask them if they will observe you and provide feedback; let them know that this is important to you and you will treat their feedback seriously. If you wish, ask them to pay particular attention to a specific behavior you’d like them to observe.

Be specific about how you phrase the question when you ask for someone’s comments . With the right question, you will get a specific response. Instead of “How am I doing?” try, “What did you observe me doing when I requested the input the team gave on our new budgeting process?” and “Is there anything that I could have done better when I asked for the input?”

Accept responsibility ... Read more »