Is It Your Business Model Or Your People That Carry The Best Talent?

Your Talent Pool Must Be Developed From Within

I have known some very talented people.  They have good brains that work well and seem to be able to surround those brains with great personal skills.  I have seen some of that excellent talent work well in many organizations.  One thing I have noticed in the past forty years of business experience, however, those very talented individuals tend to jump around from organization to organization.  I am not certain why, but it seems that the most talented ones move from company to company a lot.  Those with talent seem to like to get involved with leap frogging in their careers.  They seem to know how great their talent is and work it to find a better personal outcome.  They get caught up in the game of looking for a better deal.  They jump up over the current deal to land a better one somewhere else.

I have not actually employed one of these people.  My history of hiring has notincluded very few strong talented people.  I have employed some greatly skilled young people who in time have grown to become very good leaders in other organizations at a later time in their career, but not ones who had those skills from the outset.  Three good reasons come to mind.  Number one, people with great skills will not coming circling jobs in smaller business models like our smaller organizations.  That kind of talent will circle business models with a larger economy of scale.  Two, most small business owners do not desire to hire someone with too much talent because they know the model cannot hold them.  Finally, they also will not hire someone above their own talent level because they fear they cannot handle the pressure a talented individual would bring to their own personal ego of skills.  Very few of us will admit that truth, but it is true.

In the end, great talent will not be coming our way soon.  Therefore, we must build the talent pool from within.  If we truly believe we can go out into the world of unemployed people and begin the search for someone really talented to help us build a monster success, we may be living in a tall world of unrealistic dreams.  I suggest we take another path.  I do not like the odds of this prospect.  I know all things are possible, but the energy and cost it would incur to go searching for that one very talented leader who would desire to head up our small business organizations is not something our time and budget can absorb.  Play the better odds.  Build a system that helps nurture this kind of leader.  Then when that grown up talent decides to leap frog over your organization you are primed to build another great replacement.  All you need to do is find who is developing from within your great system that will fit that bill and promote them along.  It should be from within that you will discover the best talent you can enjoy.  It is your business model that carries the best talent...not the individuals.

When you sit down to privately evaluate the talent pool you employ, do you also sit down to examine how well your business model design is talented?  I am not talking about your business policies, pay, bonus structure and benefits.  I am talking about the respect your model design actually supports your internal business employment human development skills and opportunities.  Is your business model designed and structured to add great value to the lives of those who have a desire to grow and learn more?  How does your business model help to nurture these kinds of things and how does it help to retain and feed the internal desires of these kinds of people?  What great designs in this area of attention does your business model offer?  Does your model have a plan to build this kind of employee?  If not, why not?

Your Business Model Needs To Become Wiser!

I was recently asked to develop an inventory reduction plan the would reduce nearly 40% of our operating inventory.  I was given a window of time to complete this project in the next three months.  Keep in mind, this project was delivered to a business model that does not officially keep track of its history of category sales in a structured and orderly fashion.  Knowing what to remove and where to trim will be part of the project design.  Some obvious products will come to the table first.  My point, this business model does not currently host any kind of effective and routine inventory control systems.  That is why it is performing this 'put-the-fire-out' project.  It has quietly developed a long term problem of bloated inventory in slow selling categories.  Recently, it has stopped its bad habits for a second of time to take a closer look at what is going wrong with inventory assets.  In that examination it has decided to compare how other "like" business models report the levels of their inventory versus sales volume history.  They noticed how much this business model performs out of line with the others they compared.  Hence, get the inventory reduced immediately.

We tend to believe this is how a good business functions.  I am often asked to come aboard and help other business models do these kinds of repair tasks.  This kind of work usually comes from the organizations who have no real structure and routine of doing the right things on a planned daily basis.  They tend to build up a series of wrong designs by natural default and start to grow those wrong patterns of operational doings into becoming part of the way they routinely operate.  Those 'broken' models do not officially believe they are operating in a 'broken' mode.  However, when they notice some 'broken' areas that get too far out of line they step in and begin to band-aid the ones that show scars and bleeding.  They assign someone like me to come in and fix the area they find out of line.  This is how most small business models operate.  They move along their paths with the same winds they used when they began their original trek.  They fight internal fires and make 'spot-check' changes when the flames get large enough to notice.  They do not truly design their business model to function better on the overall plane of professional approach.  They try fixing the leaks with some buckets and energy applied to divert how the bucket can re-use the water it looses.  They do not often redesign the leaky bucket.  They get caught up in the repair of the problem instead of the re-design for the sources that grow into the problem from the beginning.  It is a fundamental miss.

Back to the talent pool.  The inventory management process described above for this kind of business habit design is exactly why the talent pools cannot come from within.  A business model cannot expect its talent load to improve when the design of the model does not represent a professional and good working plan.  People with talent will not stretch their skills in a model that is broken.  They need more proof before they move up the stretching ladder.  That is why they are not talented in the first place.  They do not carry those extraordinary skills.  The business model becomes their excuse, their force for being able to trust themselves into developing that higher level of talented skills.  If you are a business owner and you do not easily see this truth, go study how it works.  Your level of understanding is likely carrying a void on this subject too large for your business model to understand.  It will never grow up to become a great model for developing wonderful talent from within.  Quit trying that move if your model is not designed correctly.  It ain't gonna' happen.

If you do not decide to improve the design of your business model you need to accept that your talent pool will never improve how it grows up and becomes such a wonderful place for good people to perform.  Your model will never allow that kind of thing to occur until it becomes worthwhile for supporting what needs to be understood.  Now we are talking on a higher level of conceptual theory.  Trust me.  Your working world will change well if you learn how to rearrange how your business model is properly and professionally designed.  You should never be faced with trying to reduce 40% of your inventory because it is actually that far out of line with what needs to be in stock for your model to produce the level of revenues it produces.  Standing in front of that truth only reveals how poorly that business model is designed.  What's more, it is an admission that the right kinds of people are not currently employed to do the right kinds of things.  If they are, they are not willing to risk rubbing up against the ones who designed this kind of business plan.  These truths can only be ignored.  When they are ignored, they still remain the truth.

Is it your business model or your people that carry the best talent?  I am suggesting that you should be able to respond to that question with this single answer...my business model design carries the best talent.

Until next time...