Guess What? People Drive Your Business!

Earlier this year, I attended a talk sponsored by the Houston Planning Forum at the Grand Salon of the Contessa at the Columbe d'Or Restaurant. The three-hundred year old carved panels provided an appropriate backdrop as Shell Oil Company President John Hofmeister (a Brookwoods Group client) spoke about the business importance of great people (and the related business processes). As I listened, I thought that what is true today about people in business was just as true in the 18th century and will be equally true if some businessperson stands next to these panels in 300 years and delivers the same message. The jargon may change, but the process will be the same!

I learned a lot from that talk that could apply to today's businesses large and small. There are questions that every business should be asking about their processes. Here, in summary, are the great questions I heard that day:

YOUR BUSINESS IS DRIVEN BY PEOPLE

What is the essence of what your business is all about? Maybe the answer can be distilled into three themes:

• Portfolio... What do you offer to the marketplace in goods and services?
• Profits... What do you sell and for how much, and how do you keep your costs aligned?
• People... Who has the ability to help create the portfolio and deliver the profits?

In fact, it can be argued that the quality of the portfolio is dependent upon your people and the talents they bring to the table, and the level of profits is also dependent upon your people and the decisions they make every moment... so the people ARE the business. The business IS the people.

SIX KEY PROCESSES

If that's true, then there are six key processes that facilitate your company attracting and retaining the right people.

These are COMPANY processes, not HR processes. They are progressively more difficult. And they are ongoing:

1. Employment Brand... This is separate from your customer brand. It is who you are as a company -- your values, behaviors, history, culture. Some companies can have a great consumer brand, and challenging employment brand. How do you build and articulate your employment brand?
2. Recruitment and Selection... How do you get potential employees interested in your company, engaged in a conversation, and hold their interest during the recruitment process? What are the criteria you have for values, intellect, relationships? For example, John told of an executive interviewing for a job reporting to him. Other people in the company had interviewed this person, too, and the candidate argued that the other interviews were unnecessary because the job reported to John and John was making the final decision. That this candidate could not see the value in considering the input of an entire team made him a poor fit for this company's culture, no matter how good his resume. In some other company, he may have fit right in.
3. Onboarding... What happens to a new employee in the first day, the first week, the first 3 months? What is the process to embed the values and behaviors of the organization into this new person? Who is going to teach them the informal systems of how work gets done? Who takes them to lunch on day one? How are they introduced to the company as a person of accomplishment? For example, John told of an onboarding experience at a company where he showed up and his new office still had the nameplate, mementos and files of his predecessor -- who had been gone THREE MONTHS. That really made him feel welcome in his new company!
4. Development and Education... No one comes to the job knowing all they need to know, so how do you develop each employee and educate them? The process involves content, technology, and learning methodologies.
5. Diversity and Inclusiveness... This really has little to do with the EEOC tracking required in some countries. It goes to the core of how to capture the differences between people and value those differences. It is about treating people with respect, regardless of their rank, origins, or background.
6. Succession Planning... This usually applies to the top levels of an organization, but it could apply just as well to all levels. How do you identify a qualified person from within the company who could take over an important role... From John's point of view, it is an embarrassment to recruit a CEO from outside the company, and it usually fails. Ideally, a large company should plan for succession three levels deep and, for each role, identify three different replacements: one who can manage growth well, one who can manage a plateau well, and one who can manage a downturn well.

OUTCOMES

These processes are never perfect and never complete -- they should constantly evolve and improve with experience. However, the outcomes of all these processes are fairly consistent:

• your company is differentiated from the competitors
• you become a preferred employer; great people self-select to you
• your top line grows and your bottom line gets fatter
• you built commitment and affiliation to your company

Is this a "how-to" guide? No. But it does give a great framework for asking some important questions. For most businesses, the BIG question is, "Are we even thinking about these processes, and how do we work on improving them?"

Food for thought!