Managing momentum

The hardest thing to do in business right now (a time frame that has held for years and is likely to hold for years more) is to recruit and retain the right kind of people. For every company, institution and club, the "right kind of people" is differently defined. But they are a definite class; and if you can't find them, convince them to join you and keep them, the odds of your overall or long-term success are lower than deserve a bet.

It is clear that finding the right kind of people is more than having a good recruiter; someone who knows the business you serve, the products you offer and the proper balance between cost-based risk and potential-revenue reward. Equally helpful is having (or seeming to have) the right market position, the right business model, the right customer set and the right mix of people already that, together, suggest financial growth, career making opportunities and a brand that will add weight to the professional stature people passing out your business cards.

This is no small feat. It takes hard work to gain such a balance even for a moment, let alone see it gather momentum. Managing the variables in an increasingly competitive market, over time, is akin is akin to how a bird flies; held alot only by the microsecond manipulation of each of a million feathers. Birds do it, of course.

For people, it comes down to being able to simultaneously offer guarantees of qualities that can appear to be in conflict. Flexibility is one; consistency is the other.

Flexibility is possible only when a company is so confident of its destination, it is willing to change its course in the face of events and opportunities. Think of the companies you know from the inside. How many are as flexible as this?

Consistency is possible only when a company can find a persistant link between its repeated actions and success. This may be even more difficult than being flexible because, unchanged, a company will one day find the world changed around it.

So how on Earth can anyone hope to meet these factors that, together, represent a threshold of opportunity sought by each of us individually and our colleagues in general. The answer may be to look at flexibility and consistency as analogs for what most of us really want. Opportunity rooted in growth.

A respected colleague once said the key to successfully managing people was successfully mangaging the company. "People don't want to work for a company that is not growing." He might have meant growth as measured by revenue, employees or locations (in fact, I think he did), but it can also be found in the quality of the customers, public recognition, staff development and fresh opportunity. It is this last which trumps them all.

Despite the talk of generational differences that make it unlikely for someone entering the workforce today to spend 30 years at the the same company, it is really a function of fresh opportunity. If an "A-player" is given a new set of responsibilities along a respected career path (alas, there are still some careers few people want) every two or three years, he or she may stay with the same company.

Conversely, without fresh opportunity, people will move to find it. As Casey Stengel once said, "You can look it up."

It places a terrible burden on managers, but the payoff is long-term success based on a stable team which can deliver strong results for the business on the basis of its shared and near-intuitive understanding of the market, powered by the beleif that the winds won't blow things off course, but will, instead, keep them aloft.

Network maintenance

A call to a mobile phone in a sketchy zone of coverage, an e.mail from a former customer contact’s executive assistant and two new clients, all in one day, painted a vivid picture of the business power of personal networks.

The qualities of “network derived” opportunities have long made the care-and-feeding of them a requirement of employment in any professional services setting. It makes good sense to persistently invest in, engage and expand the crazy-quilt of friends, contacts, former colleagues, clients and classmates each of us keeps.

After all, cultivating a network is more than a good way to guard against staring at your own navel (it is) or a better way to stay smart about the things affecting your business (true, too); it is the best way to build new business.

All it takes is one day to prove the point.

The mobile call came first. A former client CEO, getting ready to sell a company he had bootstrapped for three years and aimed at the homeland security market, was on his way into the office. Amidst the highway dodging and weaving, he took me on a tour of public policy and its personalities; investment strategies and the differences among investment banks and, finally, a thumbnail sketch of the companies he thought had a future and how they could be approached as clients.

The personalities he described jibed with my own recent Capitol Hill visits. The investment discussion helped both frame an upcoming presentation and trigger a pledge to make (since done) an introduction to a potential buyer. The sketch of companies led to a plan to get together for dinner to plot a more fully formed course in pursuit of three.

Total time of the call: 26 minutes.

The e.mail came next, asking for some time next to review the business plan for a new company to be launched by a (twice) former client company CEO. Since his last company was acquired, he has joined a number of boards, too. The last time we met, not only did I get his perspective on the economy as measured by the opportunities coming his way, but also the relative merits of the Land Rover. Useful, both.

Total time of the e.mail exchange: 4 minutes.

Finally, two new clients arrived within minutes of each other. The events were marked by appropriate congratulations to the sales teams and to one of their members in particular. Those were the ones who had the relationships with executives at the prospects and found separate ways to turn them into the clients they have become.

They were exhibits A and B in the case for building business success. The names in a personal network are not the only source of new business, but they are among the most cost-efficient ways to win trauma-proof clients.

“Cost-efficient” because there is a level of trust and degree of confidence at the start that often takes weeks or months to otherwise establish. “Trauma-proof” (a bit of an overstatement, but close enough) because whatever ups-and-downs the business relationship might encounter, there is a shared sense that everything that can be done, is being done.

Total time of the pursuit: months in one case; weeks in the other.

Not everyone sees the ties that bind the people they know. Smart people do. They know their networks are the keys to professional success. Not all companies see the hard-edged value of what might seem a soft skill. Smart companies do. In fact, they help to underwrite that network development.

The point gets made in one day, every day.

Yes, it's business, but it is always personal

It recent days has come a reminder that friendship and fuduciary responsibility are separate bonds. In the normal course of the day and the day's end, friends are a separate, safe haven for the dissection of office politics, comment on the likely effect of the smallest actions and support. We trust them and they us.

The best kinds of friends are the oldest. Those who knew us -- before we took on the personality traits and attitudes that make us a type and so easier to understand at a first meeting -- are able to help us persistently refine our pitch. They are a resource of untold value.

Sometimes, the work our friends do, the skills they have, the talents they display make them -- potentially -- even more valuable as colleagues. Imagine, not only having the chance to work with a talented colleague, but one who is also a friend.

The decision to work together guarantees a communication short-hand that can more quickly and more effectively take advantage of opportunity. Working with friends means far less concern about personal sensibilities and political correctness. It allows a directness which undermines a grudge. And it fosters collaboration in a way unusual if not impossible in a normal work place where there really are bad ideas, foolish recommendations and long memories.

But as slowly and deliberately as the friendships grew to allow such benefits to accrue, the downside can emerge quickly and it is almost always terminal.

The feeling that a business relationship between and among friends need not have its "i's" dotted and its "t's" crossed is rooted in the belief that they share a world view. Ultimately, though, the lack of specificity plants the seeds of future difficulty. Sometimes it is the anger (or disappointment, at least) arising when a friend tenders a resignation to take a job elsewhere. And sometimes it is the embarrassment of having to ask a friend to leave. This was the recent reminder.

The business goals and the individual contribution can get out of whack. The hard part is admitting that responsibility to the business is different than loyalty to a friend. The harder part is keeping true to both. That's when you hear the phrase, "It's not personal, it's business." But, of course, it is personal. Business relationships that go south change the relationship in ways that, with rare exception, turn those friends and now former colleagues in acquaintances. Friendly, but not friends.

There should be no bar to working with friends, but the bar needs to be higher than for strangers who we meet as the people we have made of ourselves and they, too.

A power greater than the Sun's

A number of years ago, news rippled around the world that researchers had achieved fusion. Think of it, the commentary went as it outran proof; the ability to create clean, safe, unlimited energy was a dream made real. Too bad it wasn’t true.

The immediate and hopeful reaction to the ruse (rhymes with “news”) was the product of concerns about the price of oil that have only grown in the years since. As the world becomes more developed – and more dependent on fuel of every stripe – there is more anxiety about the source and price of the next barrel, gallon or kilowatt.

More than miles-per-gallon, the value of available energy plays out in a lot of arenas. Think of the sixth man on a basketball team who gets credit for coming off the bench to give his team a boost or the cup of coffee in the morning that helps jump-start the day.

Nowhere is energy more an essential element of success than in the normal course of business. Any business.

In increasingly competitive market places, where more and more companies with more and newer products and services are seeking to gain notice, energy can be the difference between success and the same-old or worse.

Not the kind of energy, of course, that powers the lights and the heat or the energy that drives anxiety over whether a deal will close or a deadline be met or even the energy drawn from the right combination of policies, practices and procedures that give any business form. It is, instead, the kind of energy that can only be tapped at the intersection of business goals and personal ambition.

Too little is admitted and less said about the role of personal ambition in the success of even the most egalitarian or collaborative company. For any enterprise to achieve – even surpass – its goals, it needs to hang its shingle at those four corners.

It is easier said (written, too) than done. The legacy of the industrial company over weights the business model and undervalues employees. Even the rise of the entrepreneur has done little to change the angle of perspective. Only a persistent shortage of right-skilled workers is likely to gain support for the notion that without the commitment of those people, the only business model that can succeed is one without employees. That is as likely as one without customers.

But saying “employees are our most important asset” is merely to repeat what “Fast Company” magazine once labeled one of the great corporate lies; a harsh assessment, helpful, though, as a caution against the routine.

The real work begins when people are hired. Ask them less about the job to be filled than their take on the job to be done. Give them the tools to do the job – both the hardware and the soft skills training. Integrate what they say into the business of the day. Reward those who contribute to the success of the firm. And replace those who do not. The last is a unit of measure by which employees today judge a manager's ken and a company's commitment.

That may be why too many people leave their jobs, too many jobs lead nowhere and too many companies fall short of delivering on their promises to customers. They lack the energy that can be found by the barrel at the intersection of business mission and personal ambition.