Slice of Americana
John is taking a couple of blog days off for the Thanksgiving holidays. His thrice weekly posts will resume on Monday, Nov. 30. Today’s post, Slice of Americana, originally appeared on Feb 8, 2013. Happy Thanksgiving!
The news business will always be a part of who I am.
As a former reporter, I confess that while I do not miss the grind of working for a daily newspaper, slogging through flooded rice fields in the dead of night covering a fatal airplane crash, or moving through a bar on Thanksgiving day stepping over the dead bodies slain during their holiday dinner following a drug deal gone bad, I will deeply miss newspapers once they are gone in the current form.
I will especially miss the weekly newspapers, home to reports on local communities, the unintended hilarious stories of weddings, Bible study groups and the celebrations of birthdays, engagements, the births and the occasional wakes at places like Dairy Queen, Dot’s Diner or Babe’s Do Drop In.
Weekly papers are, if nothing else, a wonderful, rich slice of Americana. There are times you feel you are reading something written by a sly comedian who is conning you, but the stories are too good to be imagined.
Weekly papers frequently appoint correspondents to report the goings on from the surrounding even smaller communities, population 50 to 200 or 300. There may be multiple churches in the community but the only church news that makes the paper is from the correspondent’s church. This usually is a brief summary of the pastor’s sermon and a few odds and ends about Bible study groups and women’s service guild.
In one East Texas County, according to the reporter, the Bethel Women’s Bible Society was studying some seeming conflicts between Old Testament prophecies and New Testament scripture. They even invited the church pastor, Brother Billy Wayne Duel, to be a guest and help them navigate this confusion and avoid the heated exchanges that marked the first time the ladies had debated this subject. The news article did not specify the Pastor’s sage interpretation but it did report that after a short business meeting, the Society women had lunch. The menu included taco salad, Dr. Pepper and chocolate cream pie.
Wedding stories, also written by the local correspondent, with liberal help from the bride’s mother, provide detailed information about the wedding party and anyone else who participated, including the person who carved the brisket, made and then served the punch or iced tea, sometimes the brand of beer served, and of course, the name of the pianist or organist.
In one dispatch from a small North Carolina town the correspondent reported that the bride, Cordie Mae Philpot, daughter of Harold “Hog” Philpot, local dog breeder and dry wall installer, selected her cousin from the adjoining county to play the organ. The cousin, according to the report, played numerous contemporary Top 40 selections, the traditional wedding march, and her personal favorite, “On Wisconsin!”
The article also reported that the groom was the night manager at Elway’s, a local gas station convenience store and pool emporium while the bride was a popular night waitress at the Mount Gilead Social Hall and Private Club. Regrettably, the bride’s high school accomplishments were mentioned as well. Apparently she was the state women’s wrestling champion (heavyweight division).
Thank goodness details of the honeymoon were sketchy.
© 2012 John Gregory Self
Can You Build And Lead Teams?
Can you build and lead teams?
That is a common question in most interviews, especially those that use the behavior and values approach to sorting out candidates. Since employees are an organization’s most important and valuable asset, I think that question is spot on.
When it is framed in that manner, interviewers are focusing on only half, and the least expensive part, of the equation.
I believe the key word in that question is not team, but lead. Too often, lead the team really means to manage the team, producing a good work product on schedule and under budget. But leadership is so much more and when you have turnover in your expensive asset base there is probably more management (control) and less leadership (inspiration).
Employee turnover is one of an organization’s biggest unreported/unrecognized expenses. Every day, in businesses across America, people are hired and people resign. Some that probably should not have been hired in the first place, get the sack. This cycle keeps human resources busy and it is very expensive. It all adds up.
I have written in this space on more than occasion that building a team is like getting married. On the front end there is excitement and great expectation leading up to the “I do” on both sides — the employer and the prospective employee. But in marriage, like building a team at work, it is easier to get married than to stay married. On the expense side, very few people contemplate the cost of a divorce when approaching the altar.
Organizations attract talented people with a vision for the work — with expectations of innovation, success and a rewarding experience. The wooing is the easy part. But it is really tough to sustain the passion and the commitment to work when that work turns mundane but necessary.
For the Baby Boomer and Gen X, those age cohorts that still control the majority of management slots in businesses across America, the tricks to leadership, which by definition includes effective communication, face some startling challenges as the Millennials begin to assume their rightful place at the table. Millennials have a different set of motivators and satisfiers and the secret to leading teams going forward will, not doubt, be significantly different. Understanding those factors will be critical to successful management of human capital going forward.
It is fashionable today for essayists to conjure convenient, easy lists of the best of this or that, or the hundreds of variations of five easy ways to hire the best, eight keys to reducing turnover, the four best traits for leading a team… You get the point.
Instead of falling into that trap, I want to hear from you. I would like to know your secrets to leading and sustaining the team that was so costly to build. Comment on this post or email us at AsktheRecruiter@JohnGSelf.com.
The Good and Bad of ‘Just Good Enough’
In the American jumble of providers and services that we like to call a “healthcare system”, there is a phrase that is the enemy of all that we are supposed to stand for — Just good enough.
This simple little phrase is infected with implications most of which are not very good when it comes to quality of care, safety and patient/family satisfaction. In my career, I have, unfortunately, seen hundreds of situations where “good enough” is seamlessly substituted with the lame excuse of mediocre performance, “Well, at least the patient didn’t die.”
In defense of this phrase, there are situations when its use is more than appropriate, as in “Our 10 to 12 percent profit margin for hospital care is good enough,” versus bullying our employees into submission, and endangering patients, to squeeze out 17 or 20 percent.
Asking the Tough Questions in the Recruiting Process
Recruiting is not a one-way street. No give and take, no tough challenging questions, and no candor and transparency, is a formula for a costly disaster in the waiting.
Employers, their recruiters, and the candidates, all have a responsibility and duty to be completely transparent. As I have written so often in the past, this degree of candor and honesty before the formal “I Accept” is the least embarrassing time to get all these potentially complicated issues — the good, the bad and the ugly — on the table.
Every organization I know or have worked for has some wonderful attributes, but they also have their warts, their miscalculations, and other issues they wish were not so. Every candidate has their weaknesses, their mistakes and their personal style quirks that may rub new employers the wrong way. For either side to pretend otherwise is really a recipe for messy calamity.
The secret to minimizing the risks is for both sides to ask the right tough questions. Here are some of my thoughts:
Questions for the candidate:
- Describe the culture or work environment in which you feel you will do your best work. Share some examples from prior employers.
- Connect your strengths and prior achievements with the needs of our organization in a way that would give us a strong sense that you are the right candidate.
- What has been your biggest mistake or miscalculation in your professional career? (Everyone makes mistakes, this is a great question to test the authenticity of the candidate)
- Everyone has areas they work on to improve performance. What areas do you focus on and what do you do to mitigate any adverse consequences?
- Are you someone who takes the initiative and is comfortable asking for forgiveness if you overstep or are you more comfortable asking for permission?
- When was the last time you encountered questionable conduct and chose not to say anything to avoid rocking the boat?
- We all procrastinate. What do you procrastinate on?
- How do you react when a direct report makes a big mistake, one that could be embarrassing for you and adversely affects your division?
- How do you hold people accountable and what steps do you take to improve their performance? Share some examples of your prior experience in this area.
- What do you see as the biggest risks for you in accepting this position and how would your propose to mitigate them?
- How would you like to define success at the end of your first 12 months with our organization?
- What have you done, personally as a leader, to foster and improve quality of care and enhanced patient safety?
Questions for the employer:
- Describe the organization’s culture and how you think your perception may differ from what employees in nursing, housekeeping and dietary think.
- What are the biggest challenges this organization will face over the next five years and how would you assess the enterprise’s progress in addressing these issues?
- What are the sensitive issues I will face in this role? Briefly outline the history.
- How will you define success for this position at the end of the first 12 months?
- Every organization has its unwritten cultural/values guidelines for how things get done. If you were my onboarding coach, what would you tell me?
- Where does quality of care and enhanced patient safety rank in this organization’s daily priorities and what should I look for to see these priorities playing out?
- Who are the key stakeholders that will be critical to my success and what is the best way to connect with those individuals?
- When people fail to fit in here, what are the most common reasons?
- (For a new position) Has the senior team supported the creation of this position? Has any member of the senior team seen their scope of responsibility or span or executive leadership shrink as a result? How do they feel about this development?
- (For an existing position) Where is the last person who held this position now? (If they left the organization) What important lessons can I learn from their performance that will enhance value for the organization?
- What is your biggest hot button for your direct reports?
- As someone who will have visibility, what are some of the guidelines you can offer to ensure we integrate well?
Recruiting Isn’t a One-Way Street
There is a cost — sometimes high, sometimes painful — for making bad career decisions.
Consider these consequences:
- Inability to secure a new job because of a checkered resume
- Relegated to higher risk, lower tier organizations where you will earn less money and be more vulnerable to organizational dysfunction
So lets go back to the beginning of this great seduction. A recruiter calls, you are a target, the kind of candidate they are interested in. That is heady stuff. It is a fundamental human need — to be wanted, to be valued.
However, this is precisely NOT the time to permit your ego to overwhelm common sense.
In a time when profound geopolitical and global economic unpredictability continue to impact the US economy, executives have to be more aware of the risks in changing jobs; to be more mindful of their own due diligence vetting process.
Recruiting, like romance, should never be a one-way street. Whether you are the one being wooed, or the one making the job offer, not asking the tough questions is a powerful recipe for career brand disaster.
You would be surprised — no, stunned — at how many accomplished CEOs and other senior executives get waylaid by the recruiting process.
It all begins with a big announcement: a star CEO or other executive is lured away to join an up-and-comer health system or a sexy new entrepreneurial opportunity. Then 13 to 17 months later, there is another announcement, the star has left to pursue other opportunities, a polite way for the organization to say, we made a mistake, our star recruit got the sack.
Of course, if you really dig down, seven to eight times out of 10, the company will admit that their outstanding executive hire was a really great leader, so capable, so talented, “but it wasn’t a good fit.”
Someone did not do their homework. Some of the hard, important questions, on both sides, were overlooked.
Here is a note for candidates who find themselves in this situation: you can survive one, maybe two, bad career choices — short job tenures — but typically not more.
To avoid this sort of career train wreck, executives must become more adept at conducting their own career management due diligence. Being recruited and doing the recruiting are not passive exercises. Both parties have to be fully engaged, and both sides have to do their homework.
Unfortunately, you cannot rely solely on the executive recruiter who is furiously trying to arrange the marriage. Nor can you depend on the employer who, once they target you as someone they want, often gets caught up in the wooing and spends less time considering who they really are and what they really need.
Next, I will focus on some questions candidates should ask recruiters/employers.