Jack Smith

How we achieve the goal is as important as the goal

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Sometimes it’s worth taking the extra step to understand what’s really going on, rather than just trying to power through. Say you’re a new chief marketing officer or operational executive in a company with lofty goals to achieve. Building a new team, or reconfiguring an existing one requires really understanding all of the individual personalities/skills/experiences within the group and strengths/weaknesses with which to draw from and minimize to ensure success.

The short version of the story
A newly acquired company in the financial services industry brought in a new CEO and CMO and needed to build out a senior management team in short order. I had worked with the CMO in a previous capacity and we stayed in touch. We put our heads together on the business goals and people capabilities needed to ramp up quickly and achieve results for the Private Equity owner. The answer was a diverse team of marketing and product experts capable of developing the strategic pathway and closely managing the operational execution.  

Growing from one to many
Recruiting is a journey that should lead to strong relationships that stand the test of time.

A few years ago, a senior executive whom I had known for many years asked us to become a partner to build a new team. He needed to define the next level beneath the C-Suite, decide upon areas of responsibility, develop KPI’s, and marry all to the company goals and objectives. 

This group would become the foundation for the next several years. And there was no clarity around the exact mix of people needed to accomplish the results. 

You can probably appreciate how this is a critical moment in my client’s career: he needed to be on target with these hires. 

Team diversity
This leader was putting together a senior management team. He was also creating the foundation of a culture based on ethos and purpose, and he understood the value of diversity and inclusivity (before it was fashionable).

We collaborated on a team development approach. First, we worked backward from company goals to understand the competencies needed. Then, we mapped those roles/goals to possible titles and career stage experience. We set out to understand all the potential combinations of roles/titles/experiences before connecting with any candidates.

We weren’t looking just to individual contributors in isolation. The idea was to build a cohesive team: complementary skills, personalities, and viewpoints would be critical. And diversity of thought, background, and experience was paramount.

And one more thing
Given the nature of the organization, we needed people that truly embraced an ‘entrepreneurial mindset.’ So, all candidates needed to exude confidence, crave ownership, love risk-taking, and exhibit a comfort working closely with the executive team daily.

These are decisions you cannot afford to rush, even when you’re in a hurry. Each new hire had to count and hit the ground running. The approach we used to identify the right combination of skills, experience, and mindset was more critical than the simple goal of filling positions.

The journey was as important as the destination. We collaborated in a way that allowed a free exchange of information. We wanted deeper personal connections to emerge from the process. Observing the chemistry among candidates was part of it.

It was a unique experience for all involved.

Trust, the X factor
This was one of those projects that took a tremendous amount of trust. As the person who brought an outside perspective, I’m grateful for the trust the executive team placed in me. I had the opportunity to assist in building a team that would become the foundation of a truly successful company.

In turn, I trusted that senior management would listen and see me as a true partner. The candidates trusted that the hiring process was fair and true to the company’s vision and mission. Our goal was to identify the best team for company success.

Everyone’s onboarding was filled with excitement, conviction, and an understanding of the challenges ahead, the company’s goals, and their specific role and responsibility to make them happen. How we achieved the hiring goal was even more important than the actual goal.

Courage Over Status Quo

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You’ve probably experienced what it feels like to make a decision that strays from the way you’ve done things before. A knot in your stomach accompanied by a sense of excitement for what could come.

This is exactly what happens when companies are open to new ideas about roles in the organization. Every open position provides a great opportunity: to recalibrate responsibilities, upgrade talent, or make a dramatic pivot. It takes courage to do things differently than conventional wisdom dictates.

The short version of the story
The hardest decisions to make are those that change things. It takes courage to admit when you don’t’ know something and to ask for assistance. When you’re after results quickly, it’s tempting to reach for what’s familiar. But as my client learned, that would have been a big mistake.

Timing is everything: there’s such a thing as the right time
Relationships with recruiters rarely evolve into trusted partnerships. But that’s exactly what you need when you have a critical role to fill….yesterday.

Would your recruiter tell you the role you’re thinking about is dated, ill-defined, or completely misses the mark? What happens when you need someone right away and can’t afford to screen too many candidates? Does the last job description apply to the current situation? These scenarios come up more often than you think. It takes courage to pause, evaluate the situation, and accept assistance. 

Due to an abrupt departure, my client was looking to backfill a critical, C-level role. The backstory was intriguing. The former executive was no leader. He had left people, process, and technology destruction in his wake for systems critical to the success of the company. This client needed someone to come in and repair the damage quickly. 

Typically, there’s a rush to identify, interview, and select from a broad range of candidates. But, this client knew the role was ill-defined, which would make selecting the right person challenging.

Open minds open opportunities
The COO did a remarkable thing: she was completely transparent with me. She acknowledged the executive team didn’t quite understand the type of person the company needed. They had talked about several options but had not settled on any.

But she went further by asking for my advice. How would I assess the role and approach the situation? This was a company in dire straits that needed someone quickly, yet agreed to wait a few days while I thought about their situation. And that took courage on both parts.

I suggested the best approach was to bring in a senior consultant I knew from a previous successful collaboration to do a current state analysis. The COO agreed to take this step for guidance on the framework for the position.

After a quick analysis, the consultant explained the situation and what the role required to fix it to the C-Suite. That made framing the new role possible and afforded the COO a deeper understanding of the key attributes needed for success. Finding the right person at that point became much easier. The new employee found a less frantic environment: onboarding became a much more productive process and positioned the new leader for long term success. 

This all worked because the COO had the courage to acknowledge the challenges, ask for assistance… and listened to the advice. If she had insisted on maintaining the status quo, filling the position with a copy of the former employee, the company would be in a challenging position today.

The courage to rise above the status quo made an exceptional hire possible.

Relationships Over Commodification

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You’ve probably noticed how when relationships are truly personal conducting business is much simpler and productive. There comes a time when you need to make that phone call or get the meeting, and it happens because of the goodwill you’ve built over time.

In recruitment this is invaluable. I meet everyone we support and represent. And I stay in touch with those I’ve met, especially when there is no immediate opportunity. This allows for the relationship to meaningfully evolve.

The short version of the story
A strong relationship with executives helps me appreciate their higher-order goals and ambition for the company they lead. I understand their business and want their success as much they do.

That’s how we connect great candidates with the right companies at the right time.

This is how it went in a mid-sized business that needed a push to overcome a challenge
A client needed to upgrade leadership in one of his company’s business units. This group had been neglected and it was impacting their client relationships. I was working closely with the CEO, and I knew he had a vision of the ‘type’ of person he wanted to hire…. the career progression, hard skills, industry experience, leadership capabilities, and compensation range. But this client puts a high premium on having an ‘entrepreneurial mindset.’ He gravitates towards people who have a knack for getting things done, with minimal direction, and by building consensus within senior management. 

After speaking with a few dozen candidates who fit the ‘profile’ and meeting 7 of the most promising, I felt only one candidate would connect with the CEO and the rest of the senior team. There was a shared vision towards the value of people and a transparent leadership style they all embraced. And the candidate had the “it” factor. But he had much more experience than the job description called for: he’d held executive leadership positions within teams, managed significantly larger budgets and his compensation was well above the intended target range. 

It’s what you’re listening for that helps you find a better solution
After several meetings with this candidate, I knew he was the only solution to my client’s challenges. Would my client see it that way? Could the CEO and his team accept a candidate that was more experienced? Or would they hold tight to the job description and ask me to help them hire a less experienced, less expensive candidate?

I’m pleased to say they agreed to go with the candidate and it’s paid off big time. Their new employee has exceeded expectations. He over delivered on rebalancing the department, bolstering client confidence, and becoming a valued member of the senior management team.

Trust from overdelivering on expectations
The CEO relied on our relationship as a guide to listen to the opinion of a person he values. Because I’d provided value to his company before, he was open to thinking differently and accepting another opinion.  This is one of the hallmarks of a growth mindset.

If the CEO had simply viewed the hire as a series of skill sets and experiences, without seeing the potential of the candidate and valuing my relationship, it would have been a missed opportunity to make a significant leap forward. 

Being in it for the long haul
The interview process for this position was incredibly long. But strong relationship built over time allowed us to manage it successfully. Deep connection with all parties involved was critical through successful hiring and onboarding processes.

Relationships made it all possible. 

Working From Home: Was I looking at it all wrong?

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Over the last several years, work from home (WFH) has been a significant discussion topic in my line of work. Today, it’s front and center. The current state of affairs has allowed me to reframe how I view it: I realized that I was looking at the issue from a narrow perspective, how it benefits the employee.

Most of my conversations with candidates included a portion devoted to WFH. Without prompt, many people volunteer that they are willing to take a lateral move, and in many cases consider a step down financially for the opportunity to work from home on a regular basis. It’s come up so often in conversation that I started posing the question to everyone: candidates, hiring managers, talent acquisition and HR professionals: “How do you value WFH”? I wanted to know what people thought based on the value they assigned to it.

Based on many of those conversations, I realized ‘work from home’ had developed a deeply negative connotation for many employees. It seems to have mostly fallen short of expectations. At best, it is a privilege that allows limited flexibility.  At worst, it’s a litmus test to prove employee loyalty by eschewing the time. Conceptually, it makes sense. However, in practice, WFH is misunderstood and applied poorly. It becomes more risk than benefit to most.

My perspective needed to shift.
Jack Dorsey, CEO, announced that Twitter and Square employees (with the exception of those whose roles necessitated a physical presence in order to do the job) could work from home in perpetuity. It will be the employee’s choice. One end of the spectrum.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, warns that permanent WFH could lead to long term mental health issues due to lack of personal connectedness. And may also lead to loss of serendipity leading to ideation around the water cooler. The other end of the spectrum?

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, believes that 50% of his employees could be working from home permanently. And, he thinks WFH compensation may be based on geographic location (and the associated cost of living in a specific area). Somewhere in between.

Every company will need to do their own assessments. This is what prompted me to think about the issue differently.

Let’s ask a slightly different question: Does WFH provide real value?Looking at it through an outcome-based lens, there is indeed room for making an argument for reassessing WFH. Imagine the change in value using just three variables:

Time
But not just more time. In my conversations and online discussions, many pointed to the absence of a commute, for example. But it is not just skipping the need to prepare for getting into a car or train. It’s the ability to slow down a bit, to pause, that is helping. It’s the quality of time people get back.

Because this way, time becomes an ally and not an adversary to get in front of and fight against all day. The mental lift of not having to rush through the day is a liberating. I believe it leads to greater focus on the work tasks. And, it generally allows employees to make more time to work, more than they have ‘at the office’.

Quality of Life
This is another overused and somewhat misunderstood concept. But everyone mentions it when they talk about their job—positively or negatively. Having the flexibility to do certain tasks at a time that suits you a bit better during the course of a day is meaningful.

Playing with a child or walking your dog and being able to interact and be ‘in the moment’, these are all forms of momentary pause that create a powerful feeling of connection. This feeling leads to a greater sense of loyalty. Do you know anything that could be better for employee retention?

Personal Rhythms
Everyone is different. We all work at a different pace, have our own cycles of productivity and are affected differently by stimuli (or lack of) each and every day. The ability to work nonstop when in the zone or having a sense of ease at taking a power nap mid-afternoon are meaningful to improve energy levels and satisfaction. Employers call them– luxuries. Indeed, they are. But not in the direction of slack, quite the opposite. Don’t employers want the best effort, and greatest output from employees?

Other Potential Tradeoffs
Does working from home mean we lose the chance spark of an impromptu meeting yielding a corporate breakthrough? I guess… Do people lose serendipity? Somewhat… Is there a chance mental health issues can arise for some individuals? Most Probably… Developing a sense of intuition is a challenge in digital. Reading people and inspiring ideas seems more related to proximity and connectedness. On the whole, however, it seems the positives outweigh the negatives.

Should we then be paying more for employees working from home rather than less?
Given the angle of focus right now, it seems ( at least for the moment) that people can be more productive when working from home. And, if the productivity levels rise, should the compensation go up as well? It makes sense that we should discuss and evaluate WFH from this angle.

What’s the value of WFH and to whom?
That’s the question behind the question, isn’t it? I cannot answer that alone, at least, not now. But one of the positive outcomes of this pandemic is that it is providing us with areal time laboratory to test ideas. People and (hopefully) companies are engaged in ongoing experiments.

The WFH questions will find answers at both macro and micro levels. Every company already has the opportunity to collect its own data, explore options and develop insights. There’ll be no excuses post lockdown. Each company has the opportunity to be different. It’ll be interesting to see how WFH evolves: in policy, guidelines and results.

Afterall, we are in a Liminal Space. This is where all transformation takes place, if we learn to wait and let it inform us. 

Suddenly, All is Liminal.

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There has always been a special group of people in my professional life–those in near orbit that provide counsel and afford access to their experiences. These professionals come from a myriad of backgrounds and industries; all are senior-level leaders. They are generous with time because they care, not just about me (which they absolutely do) but they care about people, about the way business should be done, about how decisions are made and all without ego or pride of authorship. This is a special group of human beings.

I realized that this group of people should be brought together—given form and purpose. I wasn’t quite sure how, nor exactly why, I just knew they possessed the wisdom and experience to provide guidance to others who found themselves in critical situations that call for objective viewpoints and honest assessments.

There are commonalities rampant throughout this group:

·     an affinity for things that matter,

·     empathy for people and important causes,

·     a commitment towards doing things the right way—the first time,

·     an innate drive to work towards meaningful change,

·     an understanding that wisdom comes from experience and is evidenced by scar-tissue and wanting to make business better.

This group’s strength comes from diversity of experience and mindset, coupled with deep operational experience and high emotional intelligence.

So, we became a thing.

Truth is, we were just getting started at that point—discussing the big things we could help others accomplish, where we thought fundamental business problems lived, industries, leadership challenges, true innovation and ultimately real disruption….we needed to understand where we could be truly impactful. It was clear from the get-go that the group had a thirst to do meaningful things.

The focus became identifying monumental challenges: Companies at pivotal moments in their history, facing massive change and not quite sure how to respond.  Companies held in place by fear because of circumstances beyond their control. Industries on the cusp of sea change because of outside forces.

We started organizing our thinking and taking stock of the accumulated experiences and skillsets in our midst. What if we could help companies find the opportunity in those times of profound change and take control of their own destiny?

We realized we had to focus our attention on that place that was filled with insights and possibilities that (almost) never gets discussed in the course of normal business. A space between what “had been” and what would “be next”.  A place of transition, waiting and not knowing. This is where true transformation takes place if we learn to wait and let it inform us. We know Liminal Space, we’ve lived it, personally and professionally. It is where we are called to be.

Then, this pandemic happened.

“Suddenly, all is Liminal”. It’s a profound statement, and here we are. As a planet, a country, a state, a business, an individual and as a community. We find ourselves overwhelmed by it all. We find ourselves seeking guidance, as we wade into uncharted territory.

The decision made itself—and became a massive aspiration! We want to help the world change…for the better. What if at moments when whole industries are forced to stop, your company could use those gaps to go from “what is” to the opportunities that might be “next”? To evolve your business, grow your mission, rebrand your message, intimately engage your customers….identify those things you want to make better about your company and change course to a more successful path. Take initiative and truly lead.  

Our mission is not to foster incremental change, nor increase the bottom line a few basis points, nor bring new short term efficiencies.

Our mission is to guide to profound, profitable business change.

We are Liminal Consulting.

Can You Successfully Balance Productivity and Empathy?

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On Wednesday night, the National Basketball Assoc (NBA) suspended all games, indefinitely, when one player tested positive for COVID-19. The abrupt cancellation of a game about to start, with fans in attendance, and further cancellation of all games put the league on hiatus. It was a big, bold and costly decision. This took guts, and real leadership….and the ability to look at the long-term health of the league. It is the right step for players, administrative staff and fans of the league.

As a high growth company, how do you maintain top productivity of your employees during a truly disruptive time? When a global pandemic unevenly strikes across the country (and globe), how does leadership show employees that it has their welfare as its top priority without sacrificing the long-term health of the company? How can you achieve a strong level of productivity and be empathetic to all employees while battling a global pandemic?

As an entrepreneur and business owner, I’ve been called to make tough decisions. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Take a long-term approach. It may be painful in the short term, but how does that compare to the long-term effects of inaction? Can you find ways to provide employees a level of safety AND devise ways to make the business productive (or at least break even) now?

Have Courage.  It is always hard and unsettling. Be strong and decisive in decision making. Do what is right, and treat people the way you want to be treated. Chance favors the strong and bold.

Communicate with Integrity. Get out in front of things. Be honest and transparent with employees and clients alike. It is appreciated and goes a long way towards good will. Be specific and get granular with policies and procedures.

Build new capabilities and capacity. Take advantage of this opportunity. Re-evaluate your business model…review the policies and procedures you have relied on blindly for years. Look at new employees or consultants that can provide different approaches in a period of upheaval.

Means & ends. Do things the right way, the ethical way. There will be opportunity to cut corners or do some things that are not part of your company’s DNA. Don’t allow yourself to do what you know will harm your brand in the long term. It is just not worth it.

Fulfill the future. Could this be that Liminal Space for your organization? A Liminal Space is that period of time where true transformation takes place? Is this the ‘thing’ that will allow you to try all the  ideas you’ve put aside?

If you think about it differently, what if It was a disruptive competitor rather than an act of nature that was forcing your hand? How would you react?