Lazy Leaders

By: Eric Harper – President and CEO MavenStar Consulting™

If you're not fielding your best team ever – then you're nothing less than a lazy leader. As an owner, executive, human resources director or department manager, basically if you are expected to lead people, then you had better be ready to defend your lack of action if the talent on your team isn't stronger than it has ever been in the coming year.

What do the Yankees and Red Sox do every winter? They sign free agents, right? Champions proactively evaluate their weakest links and fill in the gaps with talented people who can help them win. In the history of the American business, there have never been more talented free agents available in the market. The official unemployment rate is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8.3%, but most economists would put the ‘real unemployment' number somewhere between 15-18% if we include the underemployed and those who have entirely dropped out of the system. The government has adjusted the baseline (jobs available) so many times the Department of Labor has even lost track of how many jobless there are actually roaming the streets.

When unemployment hovered around 5%, workers who were legitimately in transition usually found work within six months, but that was four years ago; in 2012, the term unemployed means something entirely different. For the most part, the ‘lazy' have been sifted totally out of the workforce and are no longer even technically counted. Those who really don't want to work have stopped looking and the scrubs have been pushed entirely to the side by stiff competition for those few jobs that are available. The people who don't want to work are now proud EBT platinum card holders and sadly will probably never again be positive contributors to our society.

Today's unemployed talent pool is deep and wide. In the past, you would have been suspicious of someone who'd been out of work 8-12-16 months, you would have been skeptical of someone applying for a position totally out of their relative field of experience, and you would have been reluctant to hire someone clearly overqualified for the role, but those rules no longer apply. The market has changed and those types of blanket disqualifications are hurting your company. 

You should be mining for gold in this available talent stream by asking questions, interviewing and investigating with a new set of criteria. Many of these applicants are simply ready for a career change. The recession has turned countless industries entirely upside down and quality people have been left with little opportunity in their former field of expertise. Stop being so short sighted and invest the time and resources necessary to truly evaluate the candidates applying for your positions. Don't over promise, be upfront about the opportunity, but don't automatically toss the applicant based on their salary history. There are some amazing people out there who need a job and are willing to work for less money in a new field while they learn.

Having specific industry experience is entirely overplayed in the hiring process. If you're hiring a cardiologist then by all means look for candidates with training and experience in that specific field, but if you're hiring a branch manager for a retail tire store, does it really matter how much he or she knows about tire tread? Can't that knowledge be learned rather quickly by an intelligent person? Hiring managers often give way too much credence to specific industry experience because that is how they define their own worth within the organization. Proven goal achievement, the ability to lead others, and communication skills usually translate regardless of the industry – hire the best person for the role regardless of their specific industry experience.

Diversity is constantly bantered around as a highly sought after piece of the success pyramid. Diversity is most often thought of in terms of minority hiring, but what if we broadened the definition to simply mean – different? What value could someone with ten years of experience in an unrelated industry bring to your boardroom? What could you and your team learn from that new hire in the training process? 

What could a veteran salesman from the telecommunications industry offer your sales team in terms of a fresh prospective? What could a former supply chain specialist from the automotive manufacturing sector offer your building materials distribution business in way of lean thinking? How could a seasoned food services buyer offer new insight to your wholesale business regarding just in time delivery?

 As a leader, HR professional, or hiring manager you first must develop a proactive plan. Your business has likely been hiring reactively when you should be recruiting more proactively. Because your system is designed to hire reactively, you may need to rethink your processes and possibly even add additional bodies to the hiring team. Don't worry – smart investment in human capital always pays off. Top to bottom, if an employee isn't cutting the mustard replace them with someone who will. It's not prudent or moral to slash jobs without fairly developing your current team, but if coaching your troublesome C player up to a B player isn't working – replace them with a talented free agent who has been searching this vast wasteland of joblessness.

Again, if the team you lead next year isn't the best you've ever fielded – you're probably just a lazy leader who will soon fully understand the meaning of competition. The talent is out there if you're willing to go and get it.