The Staffing Advisor

February 2014

In this issue ...

The 'Curse of Competence'

The hidden danger in employee turnover

How poor planning and being impulsive can lead to big wins in life

The 'Moneyball' approach to hiring CEOs

Why leadership-development programs fail

Why you almost always overlook the best candidate for a job

What if the annoyances of conference calls happened in real life meetings?

Chronic employee turnover is almost never about the employees

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Here's our monthly digest of articles to help you hire and retain great people, and to build a successful organization.

I hope you can join me at the March 12th HRA-NCA (DC SHRM) meeting. I'll be speaking about how technology is changing recruiting and job search.

All the best,

Bob

The 'Curse of Competence' and rewarding individual achievement

Surrounding every top performer is a "zone of competence" bigger than themselves. Inside that wonderful zone, other team members can relax a bit, focus on other work, and even make small mistakes. The top performer will pick up the slack, do more than her share, and correct small mistakes without any fuss. Everyone on the team ends up looking competent, but, of course not everyone actually is competent.

If you're looking to lead effectively by rewarding individual achievement, here's what you need to know. More...

The hidden danger in employee turnover (and how to protect yourself)

When people quit your organization, how do you ensure that the knowledge they have won't leave with them? People are a deeply flawed knowledge backup plan. If you don't take steps to protect yourself, a knowledge base that you thought was secure can rapidly fall apart, leaving you without the vital knowledge for the success of an initiative. More...

How poor planning and being impulsive can lead to big wins in life

Relaxing Lazy Procrastination Conscientiousness is an important characteristic, and is often touted as the most important key to success - it's tied to successful careers, health, and happy marriages. After all, who wouldn't believe that people with their act together, who are consistently organized and on time are more likely to succeed than the disorganized and chronically late?

But if conscientiousness is not one of your strong suits, don't fret. It's not the key to success at everything. Sometimes your lack of planning actually makes you far better at tasks than someone who heavily plans out a problem before diving in. More...

The 'Moneyball' approach to hiring CEOs

In a recent paper, Wharton professor J. Scott Armstrong and Philippe Jacquart of EMLYON Business School in �cully, France challenge the popular belief that the higher a CEO's pay, the better they will perform. The professors found instead that "the opposite is true - higher pay does not attract better talent, and can be expected to undermine performance."

Here are some better methods for choosing the right leader.

Why leadership-development programs fail

A recent McKinsey study investigated the effectiveness of leadership-development programs. They spoke with hundreds of chief executives, observing both the successful leadership-development initiatives as well as the less successful ones. In the end, they identified four common mistakes companies make that, if sidestepped, could result in stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale.

Here are the tips to overcome the four common mistakes.

Why you almost always overlook the best candidate for your open job

Interview How often do you only select the resumes that appear to be the closest fit to an open job? Do you only look for people who already look like your job description?

Managers often place far too much emphasis on finding "perfect" resumes when selecting who to interview. But if you want to find the best possible person for your open job, stop thinking about what you want, and start thinking about what that ideal candidate wants.

Here's why this mental jujitsu results in you actually getting what you want.

What if the annoyances of conference calls happened in real-life meetings?

They're an unfortunate fact-of-life in the business world - the dreaded conference call. Here's a painfully accurate (and hilarious) take on all those little annoyances that drive you up the wall whenever you're on a call - including dropped-call guy, 5-minutes-late guy, and more.

Chronic employee turnover is almost never about the employees

An occasional bad hire is nearly unavoidable. But if you churn through executives every few years, your chronic turnover almost certainly runs deeper than just one bad egg. When your department or executive team has a pattern of failure, it's likely that your work environment sets people up for failure (however unintentionally).

Before you move forward with another round of hiring, step back and look at your own role in these seven common causes of employee failure.