Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Is your team scrambled eggs or an omelet?
When making an omelet, you definitely need eggs (it’s the key ingredient, right?). You also need a stovetop, a pan, oil, and any preferred ingredients like pepper, salt, cheese, peppers, etc.
It’s not a technically an omelet without all those other ingredients…
It can't be cooked without heat…
And a pan puts it all together…
You need all these things, or you just end up with scrambled eggs.
While eggs are the main ingredient, the other ingredients are pretty indispensable in the process (if you truly have your heart set on an omelet).
I’m going to use this same analogy when it comes to a company structure. Let’s think of different talents on your team like different “ingredients”.
Different talents are needed in a company to make the business “work”. Just like different ingredients are needed to make a proper omelet. Each ingredient has a “job” just like each person on your team has a “job”.
For example, the marketing director on a team has a completely different set of job responsibilities and skill sets than say an implementation or project manager does.
All these different team members (each with their unique set of abilities), are the ingredients, and therefore become crucial to the company’s sustainability and growth.
Oftentimes, Entrepreneurs don’t hire the right talent for their teams (which can be just as dangerous as missing the right talent for their teams).
Not hiring the right talent can be the result of many actions (or inactions).
Let’s concentrate on one of the biggest right now, which is the lack of clarity on exactly who and what is needed.
Entrepreneurs are usually 100% clear on the problem they need to solve (example: convert more sales, higher ROI on marketing, implementation, etc.). But what’s not clear are the qualifications, skill set, and experience to look for in the candidates they need to attract.
Are they qualified?
Do they have the skillset?
Do they have the experience (have they done it before?)
All of these questions must be addressed when qualifying candidates for any position in your company.
Since most aren’t clear on the “who” or “what”, they don’t know how to properly qualify that person for the particular role.
By overlooking this vital step, they end up hiring a “generalist” not a “specialist”.
When they aren’t clear on what exactly they need, they also gravitate to individuals that have similar characteristics to themselves.
Let me give you an example…
Entrepreneurs are drawn to people like themselves (people who possess a burning passion and people who love to generate ideas just like they do).
Now, don't get me wrong, it’s incredibly invaluable for your team members' ideas and passion to align with yours. In fact, that means you’re all on the same page and you don’t need to do a lot of work aligning them into your mission and long term goals.
Here is the challenge though with hiring people with ONLY your similar strengths, and tell me if this sounds familiar…
During company meetings, everyone of these team members bring ideas to the table.
Amazing ideas!
Brilliant suggestions that could transform your business into a billion dollar venture.
You all keep the excitement going and continue ideating and brainstorming about all the great things you can and will do.
But you know what happens next…
No execution.
Those amazing ideas live there on paper (or on a recording) just waiting to be implemented… 9 times out of 10, those ideas will never see the light of day.
That’s because when you have an entire team of idea generators and visionaries, and no one to implement and project manage all those ideas, that’s all they are… Ideas.
Unfortunately, the vicious cycle continues, and the business doesn’t move an inch forward.
You then start to question the ability of your team…You might wonder what’s wrong with them… Why can’t they get these great ideas implemented?!
You may have hired passionate individuals, but you didn’t hire them correctly for the roles you REALLY need to fill in order to make things happen and get things done.
That perfect “omelet” results from adding all the proper ingredients. Every hire you make for your team needs to be a specialist in a particular area you NEED in your business in order to scale it and propel it forward.
Part of our rigorous qualification process here at Nitrogen Hiring Network includes using a tool called Predictive Index.
This superior tool is incredible for evaluating the cognitive abilities, and behavioral tendencies of each and every candidate, to determine if they could be the right fit for each specific role.
If one understands the “what” and the “who” of a specific role, the predictive index will help them measure applicants’ behavioral drives (dominance, formality, extraversion and patience) with incredible accuracy.
Again, it’s just one parameter we use in our qualification process for candidates, as it scores candidates against the range of behaviors and cognitive abilities needed for the role we create in the system.
For example, a media buyer you hire needs to be well versed in all aspects of executing high profile and complex paid social media campaigns on multiple networks. They need to understand analytics, and be able to make data driven decisions based on that data they are given. They also need to understand how to address the particular needs and desires of customer groups and cater to them by developing effective strategies.
Other parts of our qualification process include multiple interviews (skill set and culture fit), exercises to evaluate experience and skill set, and a slew of additional “Hoops” each candidate must jump through in order to avoid being disqualified.
Yes, it’s a lot of work! But every single step is necessary if your goal is to build and grow a high-performing team that will get you to the next level in your business. It all begins with becoming crystal clear on the “who” and the “what”.
It also means understanding and accepting you MUST hire people that have strengths in areas you don’t.
That’s what makes an “omelet” team vs. a “scrambled” egg team.
More next article…
To your success,
David
P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague…
Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business.
But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for?
Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution.
P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.
Monday, January 29, 2024
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Tuesday, January 9, 2024
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Friday, January 5, 2024
#1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot
One of the fastest ways to successfully SCALE your business is recruiting and hiring the right talent to get you where you want to grow…
Yet 9 out of 10 Entrepreneurs avoid it like the plague.
Sure, most of us already know we need TOP talent to grow and scale our businesses, BUT the majority of Entrepreneurs really struggle “cracking the code” when it comes to successfully attracting, qualifying, hiring and ultimately RETAINING the right people for their team.
In all fairness, it’s not like they teach us this in school. And I’ve yet to come across a training program or course that outlines a proven formula and step-by-step process to successfully hiring right-talent for each unique business out there (especially for Entrepreneurial-based businesses).
It’s our Greatest Entrepreneurial Blind Spot.
As Entrepreneurs, we eventually come to a pivotal point in our business when our sales and marketing will hit a plateau (or in some cases, take a dive), OR our sales and marketing efforts will far exceed the infrastructure we’ve put in place to support it.
The quickest, sure-fire way to break through that invisible glass ceiling and SCALE is to add the right talent to your team that possesses the right specialized knowledge and skill set to get you where you want to grow.
Make no mistake about it. This is truly a defining moment in your business.
You can either help your business:
- Shift in the RIGHT direction and move in an upwards trajectory (so you can successfully SCALE)
OR
- Shift in the WRONG direction, and spiral downwards at an accelerated pace.
Having worked directly with Entrepreneurs over the past 20 plus years (helping them successfully grow and scale their businesses), I know a thing or two about what their mindset is, and what usually happens next.
Entrepreneurs either avoid hiring, or overlook important steps in the hiring process; resulting in hiring the wrong talent for the right position.
Does any of this sound familiar?
- You honestly don’t know what or who you really need, therefore you don’t have any idea where to start.
- You’ve hired in the past and it turned out to be a complete disaster so you’ve resigned to the fact that you’re just a “bad picker” and now you don’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
- You experience pretty high turnover (more than 10% a year), so you are constantly trying to “plug the leaks” in an effort to keep the boat afloat–making it nearly impossible to focus on the future needs and hires of the business.
- You procrastinate because you know how terribly time consuming hiring is, and you simply don’t have the time to invest in it.
- You push it off to another team member to “handle” and magically expect this person to know (or learn) the secret formula to hiring the right-fit talent for your unique team and business.
- You’ve never abided by the rule of “Hire slow, fire fast”, so you admit to cutting corners when qualifying, screening and hiring so you could check it off your to-do list and move on to the next thing.
- You decide that you don’t really need a new team member, so you task your current team with new, additional responsibilities and tasks necessary in an effort to push forward. As a result your current team is pulled away from their current responsibilities and they become completely overwhelmed. Now things are falling through the cracks, and you feel like you’re in a worse situation than you were before…so do they.
Any or all of these can lead to some pretty big mistakes when it comes to building a team.
I know because a majority of our clients ask us for our guidance in this area, so I’m really going to spend some quality time around hiring, and dedicate the next few newsletters to helping you avoid making these same mistakes.
Mistake #1: Not hiring the right talent to get you where you really want to be.
It’s vital to have the right key players in place to help you break through that invisible glass ceiling so you can successfully SCALE.
“Oftentimes the people who got you to where you are, aren’t necessarily the ones that will take you to where you want to grow.” David Asarnow
This is not to say you have the wrong people on your team in place… It simply means you need unique talent that possesses the specialized knowledge in said area to get you to the next level in your business.
Many Entrepreneurs will take the talent they already have and simply give them more responsibilities in an effort to avoid hiring new people.
Here’s where this backfires…
When you overwhelm your team with other jobs and responsibilities that may not even be in their wheelhouse, you distract them and pull them away from what they are supposed to be doing (and then those tasks and responsibilities are overlooked or not done to the superior level they should be).
Not only that, but overwhelm, stress and burn out can result within your existing team structure and that’s when businesses start seeing high-turnover within the organization. Which then leads to another set of challenges and problems (I’ll get more into this in the preceding newsletters).
Keeping your existing team “in their own lane” focused completely on what they do best is where you’ll really gain traction to scale your business.
Each team member working within their unique talents and coming together to collaborate is the difference between a high-performing team and a mediocre team.
High-performing teams take you to the next level.
Here’s how I suggest you start questioning the hiring of key players for your team going forward.
By asking yourself this:
Will there be a significant negative impact on the business, your team or on you if you don’t hire for this position? In other words…
What is the COST to you to NOT hire someone for this specialized position within your organization?
Sometimes the INACTION of not filling a key role can be just as detrimental as hiring the wrong person for the role.
Hiring the wrong team members comes with a plethora of challenges which we will dive more into next week. Stay tuned!
To your success,
David
P.S. Recruitment and Hiring is the #1 Entrepreneurial Blind Spot which is why most avoid it like the plague…
Let’s face it, the entire process can be utterly frustrating & time consuming, AND often results in attracting and hiring the WRONG talent for your team and/or business.
But what if ALL the heavy-lifting was done for you, and you were only handed the highest qualified candidates that checked every box you were looking for?
Head to this link to see if Nitrogen Hiring Network™ could be your talent recruitment solution.
P.P.S. Not sure how to find and attract more of your ideal clients? If you have a proven high ticket offer, we know EXACTLY how to fill your pipeline with a constant stream of qualified and highly-motivated leads through our exclusive Leads on Demand™ program.