As a HR consultancy, what Footprint Recuitment is most passionate about is working with businesses to help improve their business performance by improving their people structures, people based processes and putting better compliance checks and balances in place. However, like many businesses, we often find ourselves spending the bulk of our time on the small handful of our clients who aren’t our ‘best clients’. What I mean by that is these are the clients who exhaust your time, overload your resources, consume your energy and attention and pose the biggest challenges, and who ultimately heed very little of your advice and guidance leaving you feeling like you have wasted precious time and energy with no result achieved. I have taken the chance over the recent Christmas break to reassess these clients, and identify how we as a business can better focus our attention on that ‘majority’ of our client base who may not be our largest clients, but the ones we enjoy working with, can see we add value to and who appreciate and respect our expertise and knowledge.
Reflecting on this, one thing became abundantly clear – the businesses that zap all of our energy, time and resources without any result for themselves all have one critical and common factor – a distinct lack of strong leadership at the top.
No matter how good the product, service, staff, workplace, remuneration or anything else these companies offer, they ultimately fail in their ‘attempts’ at having a strong and stable workforce because the people at the top cannot communicate, lead or motivate effectively. That’s not to say that these senior managers don’t add value to the organisation, because often they do in many other ways, which is why they were given these ‘leadership opportunities’ to begin with – but when Boards and Owners fail to differentiate between an exceptional leader and a strong operational worker – we see senior managers who no matter how hard they try cannot and will not lead, and ultimately the organisation suffers. What we see is this: Organisations with strong leaders have a workforce which:
- Wants to work there, come to work every day and brag to their wider professional and social network
- Respects the people at the top and ultimately will follow their guidance and direction
- Is more engaged, motivated, committed to the business, enthusiastic and energetic
- Wants to come up with ideas, innovations, suggestions and feedback for the good of the business and to help achieve it’s goals
- Wants to grow, learn, develop and achieve more
Conversely – organisations who fail to appoint strong leaders at the top end up with a workforce which:
- Is resistant to change and development
- Is disengaged, unmotivated and less productive
- Has groups or individuals who will not co-operate and work as part of a team because they see no value in doing this
- May be using this job as a stepping stone to something more inspirational, inspiring and fulfilling
- Is transient in nature, no matter the industry. Turnover is typically high and job satisfaction is typically low
- Has managers who may be fantastic, but end up fighting every step of the way to keep their own team happy and ‘protected’ from the upper level lack of leadership. This ultimately results in a lack of interdepartmental cooperation and dependence, which will ultimately impact on the customer or end user
- Is fundamentally more difficult to manage – there are more questions, more arguments, a greater level of conflict, more demands, less cooperation, higher resistance to change, greater pressure on mid management and supervisors and less accountability at every level for actions and results
What I encourage you as a business owner, Board member or advisor to do is stand back, assess your leaders and managers and where necessary make the tough decisions.
With many businesses coming out of a difficult few years with the determination to move forward, create more success, grow and develop, this is the opportune time to reassess every level of the organisation, including the leadership team. It is the most critical role in the business, but in many cases it is the ‘protected’ area where internal politics, ownership structures, alliances and opinions get in the way of frank honesty and decisions which are based on the best for the business. If it’s your business that you’re looking at, and it’s you that may be falling behind in the leadership area, take the time now to develop yourself, outsource the responsibility or change the structure. It can be the most difficult thing to do but you and your business deserve the best chance for success, so don’t let pride or control hold you back now.
