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Your Greatest Asset, Your Greatest Challenge
Today, more than ever before, the only true and
lasting competitive advantage is the quality of your people. Finding
and keeping the best people is both your greatest challenge and
your greatest opportunity.
In his recent book Good to Great, Jim Collins articulates
the common traits of companies that have gone from good to great,
significantly outperforming all competitors and the market as a
whole. It turns out that most of the similarities have to do with
people. We think his observations have never been more relevant.
“The ultimate throttle on growth
for any great company is not markets or technology or competition
or products. It is the one thing above others; the ability to get
and keep enough of the right people.”
“The key point is to get the right people on the bus before
you decide where to drive it. The 2nd key point is the degree
of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take a company
from good to great.”
“The ‘who’ question comes before the ‘what’
decisions, before vision, before strategy, before organizational
structure, before tactics. First ‘who’, then ‘what’—as
a rigorous discipline, consistently applied.”
Now, consider the following:
- “A top quartile performing salesperson
is 14 times more productive than an average performer.” McKinsey
Quarterly, Volume 3, 2000
- 80% of all terminated employees do not fail
because they lack the skill or know-how; they fail because they
lack the temperamental suitability or cannot get along with people.
- The full cost of hiring or promoting the wrong
person is estimated to cost between 2 and 5 times their annual
salary.
How much does it cost you to hire and train
someone who doesn’t work out? Beyond the direct costs, how about
the indirect costs (such as lower morale, damaged relationships with
clients, sales opportunities missed, excess time spent both on the
person who didn’t work out and recruiting and training someone
new)? The costs are exorbitant if you are seriously willing to add
them up. Studies have estimated the full cost of turnover to be as
much as 5 times the individual’s salary.
On the positive side, how much opportunity and benefit lies in bringing
on someone who turns out to be not just average or fairly good, but
very good or great? We have found, for example, that in the
average company, 20% of salespeople—2 out of 10—perform
very well. Just imagine the opportunity of having 3 or 4 or
5 out of 10 performing at this high level instead of 2.
Finding the “Natural”
What essentially makes someone “very”
or “extemely” good at selling, managing, or almost any
endeavour is something underlying personality, surface skills,
education and experience. This most difficult-to-appraise something
is a set of dispositions that enables him or her to be a “natural”
in a particular role.
If you can find the “natural”, you dramatically increase
your likelihood of success and at the same time decrease your exposure
to the staggering costs of less-than-good performance and resultant
turnover.
We take you beyond the current state-of-the-art methods of appraising
people to identify to what degree someone will be a natural in your
particular role. With the sophistication of the ADVANCED ANALYSIS (C),
you’re able to pinpoint and select someone not just fairly
well-suited or well-suited, but very well-suited; someone
who will not just likely be fairly good or good—but great.
So, if you are serious about your success and the importance of
putting the right people in the right positions, can you
afford not to use the most advanced and effective tools available?
Click here for more information
the ADVANCED ANALYSIS.
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