Recruiting: Five Questions for CEOs

Posted on May 6, 2013 by John G. Self

“At most companies, people spend 2 percent of their time recruiting and 75 percent managing their recruiting mistakes.” – Richard Fairbank, CEO at Capital One, Forbes Magazine, April 2013.

Over the next five to seven years, as the healthcare industry faces a tsunami of change/transformation, an organization’s success or failure will turn on the quality of their employees and flawless execution.

CEOs who get caught up with big picture strategy options – Accountable Care Organizations, patient-centered medical homes, mergers, and acquisitions – at the expense of talent acquisition, development and retention do so at their own peril. In fact, you could make the case that an organization that fails to find, train and retain the best available talent – the “A” candidates – runs the risk of significant losses and, ultimately, business failure.

Here are five critical questions CEOs should consider to avoid career destroying mistakes:

Own the recruiting process – The great CEOs in modern business history will say that a big part of their success is driven by their focus on people – finding, recruiting, developing and retaining the best employees. How much time do you spend on recruiting/talent acquisition and training – 50 to 70 percent of your time?
Know your recruiting brand – Healthcare providers cannot attract and retain the best talent if their reputational brand stinks. How do potential employees see you in the market? Are the top candidates lining up to work for your business? What is your turnover rate? How many EEOC complaints are pending? Do your recruiters treat candidates with respect? Do they communicate effectively? Do you tolerate bad behavior from key executives and clinical leaders because of their perceived importance? What are you doing to ensure your brand says and means “employer of choice”?
How does your internal recruiting team perform? – Did you terminate your relationship with external recruiters because you wanted to improve the quality of the candidates, or to cut costs? Most CEOs will say “yes” to both questions. The fact is that many get stuck focusing on costs, as evidenced by onerous performance metrics that penalize recruiters who take too long to find the best talent. Metrics are important, but the real measure of successful recruiting is in the number of “A” candidates you interview and hire. Are your recruiters “A” quality or are they nice people content with filling job orders?
Do you have a best-of-breed management succession plan at the manager/director level as well as the C-suite? – While there is enormous reluctance among many healthcare executives to engage in succession planning in the executive office, one of the other threats is management turnover at the Department Director or Manager level. This is where success or failure is achieved – managing the day-to-day operations. Executives who fail to acknowledge this immutable truth will be career limited sooner than later. Are you really prepared for management and executive turnover with an up to date plan?
Do you have a sense of urgency? – Change is coming. When the full effects of reform hit, will you have the best people in place? If you wait, it will be too late. Finding the top talent requires a sense of urgency and a highly competitive spirit. If your competitors are smart, they are already sizing up your top performers. When you are recruiting an “A” candidate, you must instill a sense of urgency with the recruiting team. Do you allow endless meetings and scheduling conflicts to delay your recruiting process? What is more important, finding top talent or attending another unrelated meeting at which nothing is decided?

When People Think Of You, What Is Their First Thought?

Posted on March 15, 2013 by John G. Self

When people think of you, is it good or bad?

Do they think successful? Smart? Accomplished? Insightful? Abusive jerk?

These first thoughts, like first impressions, are part and parcel of a career brand.

It is amazing how many leaders are what they are without thinking about their personal brand. They can come up with a hundred reasons for their good or bad habits, how they treat people, or for their failures. They become incredibly dismissive when you try to connect these behaviors and their brand.

Bad mistake.

There are three important elements of effective career management:

Awareness
Outreach
Performance

At the outset, you must be aware, or become aware, of how your colleagues, your customers, your friends and even your family perceive who you are and why you are they way you are. Without self-awareness you have no ability to change and grow.

Outreach involves everything from your personal interactions to your social media presence. Unless you are at the apex of your career, and your retirement is funded beyond your wildest expectations, you must focus on advancing your brand — as a cutting edge thought leader, superb operations leader or values-oriented staff support person. When you start assuming everyone sees you through the same lens as you see yourself, you are in trouble. You must take the initiative in defining who you are, how people see you and how they evaluate your value.

In the end, it is all about performance. Whether you work in a staff support function, or on the hard edge of nailing aggressive budget targets, you have to achieve results, deliver value.

That will define your brand as much as how you treat people.

The Excitement of Being Different

Posted on January 21, 2013 by John G. Self

It is time to think about being different, being different in a way that allows a company (or hospital) to make a meaningful difference.

Our healthcare economy, where many of the rules we have come to rely on for the last 40 plus years, will change markedly over the next five to seven years. And with it, the value equation—the brand identity of companies, big and small — will also shift. Some companies that today look invincible will stumble and perhaps even fade from relevance. Smaller, more nimble organizations that can produce significant new value—true value, not just a marketing slogan—will emerge.

In many of my speeches, I use Youngme Moon’s wonderful promotional ‘trailer” for her interesting book “Different.” This video stresses that with more and more businesses scrambling to be heard, far too many companies end up all sounding the same. Dr. Moon, a Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA program at Harvard Business School, posits that companies should consider the less traveled trail, a contrarian marketing orientation. When everyone else is saying yes, maybe you should say no. When other companies are going big, maybe going small is the right answer. By being different, Dr. Moon believes, perhaps a company can make a meaningful difference for its customers.

The economics and the politics of lowering costs and reducing the deficit are combining in a way that will reward hospitals and other healthcare providers who can find new ways to deliver exceptional and measurable value. Marketing gurus (and politicians), who for years have rightly believed that if you say something over and over again, regardless of its truthfulness, people will accept it as a fact, will find that particular gambit coming to a dead end, at least in healthcare.

This new environment will produce more than a few risks for organizations and the healthcare executives who run them, but if you are not more than a little excited about the opportunities for innovation that will lead to improved quality of care, enhanced patient safety and lower costs for consumers, then I think you are guilty, to paraphrase St. Jerome, of looking at a gift horse in the mouth.

When I began my healthcare career, AT&T and IBM sold more telephone and computer systems to hospitals because no one got fired for selecting one of those two imminently safe (career) choices.

Today we face new challenges. We have all known that this day was coming. Just look at the healthcare numbers and you will know—or will soon know—that what we are doing with Medicare, Social Security and defense spending is not going to work in terms of controlling federal deficits.

What is your organization doing to be different in a way that leads to making a meaningful difference?