How Managers Should Say Goodbye to Your Employees

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Kevin Chou over on LinkedIn Pulse has a wonderful post about how to say goodbye to an employee who is leaving for a position at another company.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Reynermedia http://ow.ly/LPaKq
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Reynermedia http://ow.ly/LPaKq

Kevin writes:

“As founding CEO of Kabam, I take a certain pride in saying goodbye to my employees. But not in a Donald Trump-like “You’re Fired!” way.

When I do my job right, Kabam employees rapidly grow their skills and advance their careers. An unfortunate bi-product is Kabam employees also rise to A-list status with industry recruiters. Retaining high performers is almost as difficult as hiring them in the first place, and sometimes we lose people to other companies. When that happens, saying goodbye is bittersweet. I don’t like to lose valued employees, but I am proud to have given them the opportunity to grow in their careers and become even more marketable.”

Kevin’s words echo the sentiment of a good client and good friend of mine.  About 15 years ago, he said to me:

“Being a good manager is a lot like being a good parent.  A good parent spends time with their child preparing them for the future.  They teach them, challenge them and help that child to grow.  And at some point, the child will “leave the nest” and venture forth into the world.  While the parent will obviously has some degree of sadness when their child leaves – no good parent would ever attempt to stop the child from leaving.  Instead the parent will possess a sense of pride in the future success of that child and rightfully feel that they have helped play a role in their future success.

Good managers should act the same way.”

Sage advice indeed….

 

 

Margaret Wheatley Quote

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One of my favorite quotes is from Margaret Wheatley.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Torrey Wiley http://ow.ly/IMnmN
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Torrey Wiley http://ow.ly/IMnmN
Margaret wrote:
Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.
Whenever we are faced with problems – whether those problems are business-related or personal – we would all be wise to remember her words.

Pay More For Top Talent – A Winning Bet

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Josh Linkner is a very successful entrepreneur, VC, and bestselling author.

He wrote a fantastic  article about the importance of companies paying top dollar to ensure they acquire top talent.

And here’s the thing to remember – Josh is not some academic theorizing about the value of top talent.  This is a man with a proven track record of building successful companies. He speaks from experience.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © www.flazingo.com/creativecommons http://ow.ly/Isd6c
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © www.flazingo.com/creativecommons http://ow.ly/Isd6c

Josh writes:

As the companies in our portfolio continue to grow, the biggest conundrum for our leaders is hiring top talent. Many find high salaries hard to swallow, especially on a startup budget and when they’re not making as much money as the potential recruits they’re considering. Tough cookies. Paying more for A+ talent at your company is worth the investment many times over, 99.9% of the time.

He continues by writing:

While it’s easy to tally up your “savings” by settling for a B or C-level person, the upside that an A+ team member can bring will far exceed the near term cost difference. When you get down to it, the “risk” of paying up for the best and brightest is simply not a risk at all. Rather, it’s the way you’ll accelerate growth and ultimately win big.

Bottom line – when a person with a successful record of building companies preaches about the importance of paying top dollar to secure the best talent – we would all do well to listen….

None Of Us Is As Smart As All Of Us

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I just came across a great and motivating quote by Seth Godin today:
“None of us is as smart as all of us.”
I think his quote is spot-on.
While it is hard not be somewhat overwhelmed by the problems we all face on a daily basis…the reality is that as severe as our problems currently are…whether those problems are personal or professional…..if we all work together, collectively we can…and we will….find solutions.
That is why networking and working together with our colleagues is so important.
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Toffhoff http://ow.ly/IiWmn
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Toffhoff http://ow.ly/IiWmn
Remember this – No one single person is smart enough to solve all of our problems.
But all of us together are smart enough to solve them….

To Hire Top Talent – Bring out the Big Guns

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In their book, The War for Talent, the authors (Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones & Beth Axelrod) wrote:

“What distinguishes the high-performing companies from the average performing was not better HR processes, but the fundamental belief in the importance of talent.”

While many companies subscribe to their belief in the importance of talent – their interview practices suggest otherwise.

One thing that companies need to do when trying to fill a key position with top level talent is to ensure that the “Big Guns” are involved in the interview.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by Laszlo Ilyes http://ow.ly/HFsn2
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by Laszlo Ilyes http://ow.ly/HFsn2

If the position is important and the candidate is an “A” level performer, then senior management must be involved.

In an article from a few years ago entitled “Waging a War for Talent”, Ann Dowsett Johnston writes:

“Last month, Bill Gates went shopping for talent at the University of Waterloo, one of six universities he visited in three days…Call it a one-person career fair.”

The moral of this story?

If Bill Gates (who at the time of the article was still actively running Microsoft) was still leaving the friendly confines of his office in Redmond to help conduct interviews, there is absolutely no reason that anyone in your organization can claim that they are too busy to interview.

I have had a number of instances during my career where a mid level candidate was floored that a VP or President actually took the time to interview them.  And they later admitted that meeting senior management during the interview process was one of the key factors in their accepting the offer.

Obviously – this practice needs to be used judiciously.  A company can’t trot out senior management for every interview.

But when trying to fill a key position, bringing out the “Big Guns” can mean the difference between hiring the best person for the job as opposed to simply hiring the best person applying.

 

 

The Importance of Hiring Top Talent

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One of the great truths in life is that superior talent, whether on the playing field, in the Executive Suite, or in the laboratory, usually wins in the end.

Good Coaches – and good Managers – have always intuitively grasped this concept.

Alfred Sloan, the former head of General Motors once famously said:

“Take my assets, leave my people, and in 5 years I will have it all back.”

 

CC Image courtesy of Creative Commons -U.S. Army Photos by Tim Hipps - FMWRC Public Affairs http://ow.ly/Hzq1s
CC Image courtesy of Creative Commons -U.S. Army Photos by Tim Hipps http://ow.ly/Hzq1s

 

Yet, the question remains, exactly how much difference does talent make?

In the mid-1990s, consulting firm McKinsey & Company set out to answer that question. After interviewing hundreds of executives and extensively studying numerous companies, the consulting firm reported having strong talent in key positions creates huge improvements in performance.

For instance, top Plant Managers grew profits 130% while the lowest performing managers achieved no improvement; the best Center Managers in Industrial Service Firms grew profits 80%; and Portfolio Managers in Financial Services institutions grew revenues by nearly 50% while average performers’ portfolios remained flat.

But the positive effects of superior talent extend beyond improvements at the individual and/or departmental level. The most striking effect of talent is seen on the company’s bottom line. The consultants at McKinsey stated that the companies that excel in talent management achieved total returns to shareholders that were 22 percentage points better than the average in their industry.

The difference talent makes is striking.

The concept that superior talent enables superior results is not something that we need to only grasp intuitively.

The data shows that companies with better talent are not merely better than their peers – They are vastly superior to them.