Are you a Manager or a Leader?

Leaders exist at every level of an organisation, whereas Managers are hierarchical pinnacles. By its nature, the role of a Manager is that of control, unless that manager is a Leader. There is nothing wrong with being a Manager as long as it is where you wish to be.

So which one am I (one might ask)? In order to better portray this, I'll use a real example, that I observed yesterday while shopping for clothes. I asked one of the 2 charming shop assistants why he seemed rather low-key. He told me this short story. 

He said that the other shop assistant who is his manager (Store Manager) hired him, some weeks ago, as he was recommended by her husband. He was doing very well from the outset, so the creative Store Manager moved against convention and decided to pool the Store Sales and effectively share her commission with him, while he ramped-up his sales. It created an amazing harmonious, effective, positive, pleasant and rewarding environment for both; a great place to work he added. That lasted about 3 weeks.

Then, the morning of my visit, the pair received a call from the Store Manager's supervisor who asked them to promptly stop that practise. "You are meant to be competing"........... 

The shop assistant is totally disincentivised and is now wondering if this organisation is aligned with his value systems or whether he will just be there and just collect the salary.

Hierarchically, the Supervisor was "enforcing" the organisational edict of how people participate in their internal commission scheme. The Store Manager was incentivising her staff.

The point is that as managers we often forget the purpose of the process, in this case the commission process. Obviously it is, to incentivise the team and individuals specifically, to achieve better organisational results. We seem to fail to realise that the best results are achieved through effective and happy teams rather than through dogma. As a manager this individual was using his position to enforce company policy. As a Leader, he failed, as this achieved the opposite outcome to the intent of the policy/process.

So the answer to the question "Am I a Leader or a Manager?", seems straight forward to me. Am I an enforcer that utilises my position to control outcomes, or am I unleashing that Leader quality within each individual in my team to achieve results that eclipse my industry competitors?

In our definition, Leaders are those that create Leaders and Leadership starts with one owning the responsibility of taking a Lead in their own life! Whether you know it or not, you are a Leader! Leaders exist in all walks of life. They are mothers, CEOs, volunteers, spiritualists, care-givers, receptionists, and the list goes on. However not all these role players are Leaders.

http://www.aldogrech.com

Who's Your Boss?

not relevant but interesting

As a leader, this is a key question to keep in mind.

It is my observation and opinion over the many years that I led businesses, that there are 2 types of businesses, those that focus on the customer and those that focus on the shareholder. Now many will argue that these are not mutually exclusive, and maybe so. However. I believe that in most cases that I have observed, this is a valid statement.i believe that there is only one Organisation that is effective and meets the test of time and that is the Organisation that focuses on the customer. I also happen to believe that the Organisation that focuses primarily on its customer is better serving its shareholders.

The focus on shareholders is usually a short-term view of an Organisation. It is usually a 3 monthly cycle of achieving certain results. Where, if results are not met, the Organisation is severely punished. In order to meet these short term results, so called leaders resort to anything including getting rid of core staff (often not the ones that are obviously bringing the results, but are the hidden jewels, alas), selling core assets and diverting the Organisation away from its true vision, merely to keep investors happy. I use the word merely quite purposefully. As I believe the shareholders are best served if these decisions are not made, if they want long-term "success".

I am not saying that recalcitrant employees should not be addressed appropriately. However, getting rid of employees, merely for short-term results achievement, is tantamount to throwing away the baby with the bath water! This is a different issue and the subject of a separate article.

Shareholders are best served if the Organisation stays focused on its customers; it's vision, even as times get tough and as shareholders want blood. Of course, one needs to stay relevant and the business of a leader is in fact to continually measure the Organisational one page business plan against market ensuring its validity. However, once validated and/or trimmed, a true leader stays focused on the customer and not the short-term blood thirst of the shareholders. Shareholders operate out of fear and a true leader knows this, and is able to stay on course while managing shareholders expectations.

However, back to the original hypothesis. As a leader there is a key choice to make; the customer, or the shareholder. And this is not about politics and rhetoric. It is about conviction.

Practically, what does this mean?

The customer-centric leader understands that the Organisational best asset is the employee. They do everything to ensure that everybody is on board and on purpose. They ensure that training is provided for all to stay on purpose and eliminates those that refuse to adopt the vision and are not on purpose. These are not necessarily recalcitrant employees. However, sometimes, there are valid differences of opinion and there is no place for an employee with opposing views of objectives. This is like letting a cancer grow. An on-purpose Organisation is unstoppable, profitable and has longevity built-in; it can whitstand down-times and maximize profits in good times, better serving its loyal shareholders.

I would not call CEOs and Managers of shareholder-centric organizations leaders. They might be brilliant in delivering great short-term dividends. However, the organizations they build are not sustainable long-term, have tragic customer satisfaction levels and have limited longevity. They are the heroes of investors but create organizations with low morale high staff turn-over and as a result unsustainable. In the long-term, this is bad news for loyal investors and create cronic down-turns as they do almost anything (as shown in the GFC) to ensure short-term results. They might be Managers, CEOs, great analysers, politicians; often charismatic, but not Leaders.

Unfortunately, these individuals are the yardstick for our youth and this is a sad indictment for our civilization that has placed money as a god above all gods.

Obviously, investors are by nature transient and they pick and choose, dropping perceived hot potatoes for the new short term money making opportunity. This is sometimes good for the investors hip-pocket, but always bad for business.

Apple is a great example of my views. Its share-value has been savaged even as it enjoys, unparalleled customer satisfaction, unparalleled profits, unparalleled growth of liquid assets unparalleled equity for a company of its size and has effectively created 5 new global product categories; simply because it has not met shareholder expectations! Absurd...

As a Leader, it is your choice. Choose wisely as true deep-in-the-heart conviction, alignment and happiness is worth much more than the short-term financial reward. And be clear that choosing the customer over the shareholder is a sure guarantee of investor return, almost and oxymoron!

CxO has proven alternative methodologies to turn your Organisation into a sustainable, long term, great entity. http://www.CxOconsulting.com.au. Aldo Grech is the managing Partner and Leader of CxO.

Celebrate Mistakes

Leader definition according to Dictionary.com - a person or thing that leads; a guiding or directing head, as of an army, movement, or political group.

Leader definition according to Oxford Dictionary - the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country; the person or team that is winning a sporting competition at a particular time; an organization or company that is the most advanced or successful in a particular area.

Today we redefine Leadership. Leadership is not exclusively related to the work environment. Leadership is about being in our element, operating from our essence. I have real life examples to make the point in a work environment that equally applies to all walks of life. The example is a real organisation in decline and in real trouble. In administration and having lost six hundred thousand dollars. I will later show you how Leadership utilising this new definition, has impacted this organisation.

We are all born natural leaders. But leadership is often educated out of us in our early days to conform to normality, through fear of mistakes.

We celebrate mistakes!

In this organisation the Staff to choose their CEO. I am that CEO. I, in turn nominated the customer as our CEO and delegated myself as his assistant. We instituted weekly meetings where the team was encouraged to bring their mistake to the table. If people did not, we assumed that they were not trying hard enough. Management is about control and as a result driven by fear of failure. Without risk, there is no growth and risk brings fear of mistakes. It is our responsibility as leaders to remove fear of mistakes as that's where the gold lies. Be-it at home or at the workplace, where there is fear of making mistakes, growth and creativity are greatly hampered. As a child, every fall was a step closer to our first step. The light bulb might never have been invented if it wasn't for thousands of mistakes.

"You mean I can do what I want, when I work for your company." Yes, this is your company. You turn-up when you want to and approach your role in the way that feels best for you. If the customer is satisfied, then so are we! "Really??? But when I expressed myself freely as a young child, I was told to grow-up and stop being silly!!!"

Such is the rigorous and pervasive normalisation training from our early days in in our culture generally, that fear, whilst undesirable, feels comfortable (the comfort of the known) where-as true freedom of expression is difficult and challenging. Happiness at home and at work relates more to the freedom of self-expression than it relates to how much we earn. Fear marginalises us. It makes us feel like frauds among peers. Operating from our essence, without fear of failure makes us Leaders. Leaders are creative and motivate others to operate from their core and their essence. They remove barriers of fear and shame. They motivate by respecting the individual for their individuality rather than rail-roading them into conformity of standards, hierarchy, roles and KPIs.

Mums can be Leaders. Artists can be leaders. Receptionists can be Leaders. Leaders are not hierarchically or financially motivated. Managers are! Yet, in my experience, the hardest thing is for people to trust that they are allowed to make mistakes and that they are allowed to "be themselves"! That's the real test. I was fortunate to work closely with Stan Shih (founder of Acer Computer). He believed that mistakes are the cost of education and losses applied to our training budget. Stan's company became the 3rd largest global PC manufacturer. When we set-out to be the best of who we are, doing what we believe not for financial or hierarchical advancement, as Steve Jobs showed, we end-up changing the world and receiving great financial reward.

So, operating from our Essence, is the best way to look after the board and the shareholders. We, met our customers and asked them many questions about us. We turned rhetoric and clichés into actions, marketed less, established customer-centric internal vision, eliminate non-profitable products, allowed the organisation to self realign behind the new vision, did not replace sales staff that left, removed the Sales Department, re-distributed the amount traditionally allocated to sales commissions into incentives for all. Most suppliers abandoned us. This had a significant impact on our Vision and had to choose a new, more profitable and sustainable direction. Gave 40% of company to staff and shared it equally between us.

We got the team to have more fun, flexible working hours, Foosball at office, Go carting & Karaoke nights, hours/days off without impacting leave entitlements, worked smarter not harder, Eliminate manual processes, open space environment and more. 14 staff spend less time at work, produced more than 29 did, revenues continued to slide! Profitability went up SIGNIFICANTLY, finishing 2011/12 with six hundred thousand dollar profit (a one point two million dollar turn-around) and on track to a record two point six million in 2012/13.

To iPad or not to iPad

The following are my comments on an article recently published about the new Apple iPad.

I remember the die-hard apple lovers, knocking the PC decades ago (using similar arguments to the ones above) and we all know how things evolved from there.

Now the non-apple die-hards are at it and they are equally as out of touch. Your technology arguments might be correct. However, as Microsoft proved with it's PC OS and applications, Apple is showing that it learnt it's lesson and now engages the industry developers to produce apps that will make its hardware successful. Except that Apple has a new weapon in it's arsenal, great design.

iPad is a paradigm shifter that contemporaries are not able to comprehend and I am sure history will show that negative views are just "limited vision"!

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

iPhone; today's PC?

Of course there is WindowsMobile, Blackberry, Android (or Google phone) and Nokia, and having strategies for these platforms should also be on your consideration list. However, the exponential growth in sales of iPhone is not to be ignored. It is quite interesting to see Apple beating Microsoft at its own game......

You see, while the iPhone is indeed sexy, easy to use and has now achieved cult status (all important aspects for product success). There are, have been and will be equally good or better designed products that might or might not dethrone the iPhone. So why is it that we believe that the iPhone is such a key strategy for any business and why do we say that the iPhone is the new PC.

We do not believe the answer is a technical one. This is not a technical newsletter and in fact it is a newsletter for leaders and great leaders know that a key aspect to successful strategies, is picking the right horses to bet on.

In our opinion, much of the success of Microsoft is unrelated to the quality or indeed effectiveness of their software; and let's not even entertain sex appeal. Many technocrats have for the last 25 years discounted Microsoft technical prowess and in their earlier years, their future fortunes (obviously proven wrong in retrospect). What Microsoft brilliantly did (knowingly or not) are in our opinion, 2 key tactics:

1. They made many people rich
2. They created an industry around them (now known as resellers), many of which became wealthy fulfilling Microsoft's Client's needs; arguably sorting-out difficult to use software.

So, why do we believe that the iPhone is today's PC? Simple:

1. Apple's Appstore is a new channel a virtual chain of resellers, adapted to today's delivery systems and customer needs.
2. A great direct to customer channel of software sales; allowing developers to reap significant rewards.

As a leader:

1. Are you ensuring that your products are being aired to iPhone customers?
2. Are you ensuring that your employees and partners know that they stand to benefit significantly financially from their involvement with your organisation?

A few examples of iPhone successes/strategies:

1. Robert Murray, chief executive of mobile games development studio Firemint, says the iPhone and App Store also helped save the company after the downturn showed them their model wasn't working - http://www.smartcompany.com.au/leisure-and-gaming/20090703-firing-up-the-gaming-industry.html
2. With more than 60 percent of Toyota Motor’s WAP traffic coming from the iPhone, the automaker decided to take a different approach to mobile with the promotion of the newest Prius car model - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/database-crm/3636.html
3. Rental resource provider Apartments.com has launched a new iPhone and iPod touch application to complement its online services and claim some territory in the coveted iPhone demographic - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/search/3625.html
4. Pernod Ricard’s Absolut Vodka is leveraging the mobile channel for branding, customer engagement, entertainment and affinity. The liquor giant has launched an iPhone application for meant to help it connect with legal-aged drinkers and provide relevant information to this audience - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/3600.html
5. Sam Plowman, head of online banking said: "It was very apparent to us that Apple had developed an interface that would bring forward the use of browser and internet apps on mobiles. We decided we had to be ready with app when the iPhone launched here.'' - http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/gadgets/business-goes-for-iphone-apps-20090709-de79.html

And finally - According to Clevenger, 44% of businesses that have not yet embraced iPhones plan to do so this year. As one attendee observed, where the one-laptop-per-child initiative failed, one-iPhone-per-child appears destined to succeed - http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid40_gci1359509_mem1,00.html?track=NL-315&ad=710878&asrc=EM_NLN_8099263

So if you have been thinking that the iPhone is not the right channel for your products/clients, maybe, as a great leader, you should rethink your strategies! Early adopters will reap the benefits.

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

Problems or Opportunities?

We invented the automobile as we gradually found horses too inconvenient; then we decided we could get there quicker if we fly......

We could have seen the horse as a problem and chosen to get angry and beat it into submission, and we knew the possible outcome of such action.

I still remember, at the turn of the millenium, the feeling of accomplishment visible in most people's demeanour, in the developed world. We had achieved amazing things and could see that with the exponential growth of wealth, technology and knowledge, we were on the verge of something grandiose. We were all speculating and talking about how we have moved from the industrial age to an intellectual age.....

Sometimes, usually at the right time, the universe throws us these opportunities disguised as problems to propel us into our next stage of human growth. How the West reacted to September 11th had signs of everything but certainly not an intellectually evolved society. We saw actions propelled by anger, greed, ego and power. Close to a thrillion dollars spent since on the "War on Terror" (a rediculous concept for a wise and intellectually evolved society), addressing anger, greed, ego and power directly, that did nothing (or possibly the opposite) to making the world a safer place.

Wisdom and intellectual soundness might have taken a totally different approach.

It is however a refreshing change to see those like President Barak Obama operating from their passion and purpose approaching the ensuing global wows in a totally different and empathetic way. Let's hope the greedy wont stop them, as this approach is exactly the opportunity the universe is giving us right now.

As a Leader, are you adopting the President's approach or are you still in the "If you are not with us you are against us" mode? The latter (propelled by greed and ego) will keep you, your family, company, community and the world in this turmoil, the former will springboard us collectively into a future far brighter than we can even imagine.

We are currently observing the universe's natural selection process at work and those choosing greed over empathy are the dinasours of our age.

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

Be Different or suffer Depression

Many of us believe that if our truth does not match that of others (especially our parents, religion or culture), then we are wrong.

When we try to comply with the truth of others and usually are unsuccessful, then we hide it as we believe something is wrong with us!

When we let this accumulate over time, we start believing we are crazy and eventually move to depression or suffer a breakdown!

But remember, that every thing created by human-kind was DIFFERENT at that stage!

So be different or choose the path to depression and breakdown.

Finally, as a mentor once told me, "NEVER compare others' exterior with your interior" (you never know how close they are to depression/breakdown!)

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

Our Inevitable Doom

You are driving down the road searching for the park where you know you can sit and read surrounded by nature, away from the city noise for a few selfish moments with yourself and nobody else.

You take the right turn that you know will soon open up into this vision of the park that you had been dreaming of all week, looking forward to this moment on your weekend. But alas, rather than the beautiful park, you find a marsh-land with nowhere to sit and relax. What a disappointment. But you know it is somewhere around here. You remember from years ago when as a young man you stumbled across this oasis, that now you are so yearning for.

Easy you say, so you reverse back out of the path and track that took you there and right before you took the right turn. You stop for a moment, re-visit the beautiful park in your mind's eye and after a short while you once again, take the right turn to find what?..... Obviously the marsh-land. But you are sure that those many years ago, this same path took you there. Surely that passage of time has not transformed that oasis into this stinking sludge.

And after repeating the same process a few times.... you give up!

Well, those of you still reading.... know that you would never go through this process as after you first attempt you would certainly do something different like, try a different route, call a friend, etc.... but it seems futile and downright stupid to repeat the same action expecting a different outcome...

Well not so stupid it appears...... we seem to keep investing our hard-earned cash in organizations that continue to make the same mistakes, vote in Governments that apply new rhetoric to same old practices and as Leaders....... are we more or less driving down the same path expecting a different outcome? Somebody defined this as a sure sign of stupidity!

You see, as Leaders most of us do. Yes, we might put different make-up on it, but the essence of what we do is the same. Why? Well, because this is what is expected by the investors that continue to invest, the Board Members that continue to hire CEOs of the same ilk and our staff that continues to support our misguided actions even though intrinsically they know they are off-the-mark.... and so do we Leaders by the way, know this.

Sounds like a viscious cycle; our inevitable doom! And if we do not break it, another GFC or the one after will.

The truth is that in every crises there is always a handful of Leaders that understand this and operate outside the norm (effectively listening to and trusting their essence, their purpose, the intuitive voice inside) and create something new, sustainable and initially apparently unorthodox.

The crises (so the opportunity) is here NOW! Which choice are you making TODAY?

• take the right turn, yet again!
  
• listen to the voice within!
  

The choice is yours. History shows that there are very few that take the second choice, (they are called Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson), so the choice is simple but certainly not easy!

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

The Tribal Organisation

In the early noughties, silos and the destruction of these was all the talk in management consulting circles; get rid of the silos; flat structures are more efficient; silos are insular and should be dismantled........ I know, I was there actively participating in the destruction!

I await with anticipation each and every article illustrating Seth Godin's business insight which is a great source of education for me, and I recommend that as a Leader you could do a lot worse than doing the same. His concept of tribal communities is as accurate as it is timely in a web-centric world where sites like Facebook, Twitter and others have shown the power of tribes bound by similar interest themes. So I guess this is a case of back-to-the-future, except this time it is not merely a Hollywood fantasy!

So, did you ever consider that your organisation is already prepared for this world. And what if I was to suggest that the most cost-effective and fast method to unleash the power of your organisation is in fact to give power to these silos, bound by the same interest themes, simply by renaming Silos, Tribes. And I do not say this light-heartedly.

The themes of these tribes are for you to choose to build teams around. More likely than not, your organisation, independent of the many thousands of dollars of management consulting fees, still operate in Silos, except now they have gone underground protecting themselves from the wrath of management and management consultants, in an effort to protect productivity. And let me suggest that instead of, yet again disrupting natural organisational evolution, by spending management time rebuilding tribes, you reward Leaders within your organisation that identfy their silos/tribes; but there are a few rules.

Rules for effective tribes:

• Leaders of tribes are not necessarily Managers
  
• Tribe Leaders need to be protected from traditional managers
  
• Importantly, how are they creating and supporting the collective. Meaning how are they ensuring that they are a community of Tribes rather than Silos!
  
• Tribes could be cost centres as well as profit centres
  
• However, they need to clearly identify themselves as such
  
• Whether they are the former or latter, they need to clearly identify and articulate their purpose and how it delivers to the organisational vision
• Tribes that operate outside of the organisational vision are not to be repremanded
  
• Instead they should be asked to come-up with research to show validity for operating outside the vision (this could in fact be the Tribe that is creating your future).
  
• This divergent Tribe could be managed in a number of effective ways:
  
• integrated back into the Vision due to validity
  
• operate within an R&D environment if deemed opportunistic
  
• funded as a separate business
  
• sold-off as an idea (maybe to a keen venture-capitalist)
  
• Remember that they have had to first define their purpose and so have clear objectives

However, whatever you do, do not let a traditional manager convince you that they are just a run-away team intent on destroying the business; this would tell you more about your manager than the Tribe.

So, make it your business to ensure that your managers are Leaders, primarily facilitating the networking of these Tribes to create a collective that is bigger than the sum of individuals, rather than intent on disrupting the, often, great work within these Tribes.

There obviously are other (maybe not so obvious) aspects to Tribal Organisations that can be specifically developed for your organisation. However, before you go about potentially disrupting your Tribe, ask yourself if in fact they are an effective Tribe and should you need further support on Tribal Organisations, contact TribalOrganisation@CxOconsulting.com.au.

And if you are not yet convinced, ask yourself this question; "Why did we believe that flat organisations worked better". Surely the answer to this is that we watched small flat-structured entreprunerial organisations eat our lunch through their dynamism and effectiveness. What we did not realise is that in fact it was the outdated hierarchy based on greed that was destroying value and holding back earnings potential, and not necessarily the silos.

Aren't a group of small businesses merely Tribes with a different name. So shouldn't you be cultivating your Tribes and allowing them to be dynamic and responsive by loosening the schackles of hierarchy?

Another author that best describes the difference between Directive and Transformative organisations is Tom Voccola. Feel free to click here to download a free copy of his brilliant "The Accidental CEO" eBook (PDF).

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

Do not engage recruitment firms that drop their prices to get your work!

Instead, engage those that charge the higher fees.... and only once you have seen (not just been presented) their recruitment process.

Now that sounds counter-intuitive especially in these times of belt-tightening.

As part of our services, at CxO we mentor many Great Executives that as a result of the Global Meltdown, have found themselves unemployed, fine-tune their CVs and hone-in their recruitment process skills (from a candidate's perspective). We call this service, LeaderRecruit®. Many of them have not been on this side of the recruitment process for years or ever!

We are comitted to these individuals, as many of them are the architects of our future once an organisation recognises their worth, and because this is a basic humane thing to do.

The unfortunate reality is that many would not get their CV's read by a human being, let alone responded-to or called-upon. Why? Well because until we ensure that the right keywords are included, dispersed throughout the text, their CV's would not make it through the electronic filters utilised by these so called recruitment specialists.

Some time ago, I saw that these great CV's were not getting any responses (beyond the automated emails) and so I approached collegues within the recruitment industry to understand what was happening. I was shocked and disgusted that some of these firms have the audacity to charge 20% plus and supply the sort of service they do. Let me explain.

I was told that, in most cases, when CVs are received by the firms, they are first-up automatically scanned and searched for key-words and only the top 10 or so that qualify get reviewed by a human being. The rest (based on candidate's approval) end-up stored for future reference, which seems a waste of time when it is the same software that re-scans them. So forward the clock to today and the higher unemployment; recruiters are inundated by great CVs and the number of "inappropriate" rejects is even higher.

This is not good enough, not for the candidates and especially not for the clients.

The appropriate recruitment process is an expensive one and requires the appropriate funding and it is your responsibility as a client to ensure that your money is spent wisely by these firms. Let's say that you are recruiting a $150k role. At 20% this is a cost of $30k, before expenses such as advertising in the papers, etc. I imagine that you would like the best candidate for your money and that you do not want the best candidates screened out of the process before they get viewed by a specialist recruiter.

Ensure that your next recruit is the best recruitment decision you ever made, ask for an unsupervised walk-through to understand the recruitment process at your chosen firm. Make it your business to find-out first hand from the candidate interviewers within the firm as to how they get the CVs they recruit from; and if they electronically screen most of the CVs out, sack them. I would expect that if I was paying $30k, that the Job Ad would be professionally written to only attract the appropriate candidates and that in any case all the ones that meet the basic criteria, (namely CV and Intro letter), are studied by the recruitment specialist. If there were 200 of these, then this would cost an estimated reading and rating time of $4,000.00. I would certainly expect that.

So, be a Leader, you have 3 choices as we see it; go to a cheaper recruiter as in any case you are bound to get a more tailored service; go to a greedy recruitment firm that charges too much for a piece of software that filters your best candidates out; or select the firm that gives you back the value for your money and follows-up on all candidates. In fact at best you have 2 choices, the former and the latter. I would go with the latter as long as I have seen with my own eyes how the process works, rather than finding out about the process from some gong-ho power point presentation that rarely lives-up to the promises.

Now here is an idea! A recruitment firm that does not utilise screening technologies but employs staff instead, to give better service at the right cost to the Client. It's a win-win all the way; Clients get better candidates, candidates feel heard and receive the appropriate respect/advice and we employ more people at the recruitment firms that are now able to maintain their higher fees.

If you or one of the recruitment firms you have utilised, employ this or a similar non-electronic process, then please let us know so we publish them in our next newsletters.

Oh, and by the way, these are indeed tough times; so make sure you do get your discount, afterall.

Happy recruiting.

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting

Tasks are for computers!

We have created technology that takes-over menial tasks, speeds them up and adds levels of accuracy unheard-of until the advent of computers.

So why is it that we are still task-focused when it comes to our staff? Not that task definition and measurement is not important; it is critical. However, you employ human beings, not computers; human beings that are able (and to let you into a secret, are rearing to add their purpose and passion to the task at hand) to do those tasks and add so much value, if given latitude and when empowered.

How do you best leave your competition in the dust, when you are in the same industry, more-or-less offering the same products and services with a similar cost base? The no-brainer answer is by improving productivity.

Aldo Grech CxO Consulting

Transparency = Improved Bottom Line

Unless you believe that people actually turn-up to work to contribute positively, and are able to manage those few that do not, you end-up being a policeman with a very depressed and unproductive non-transparent organisation.

Where-as, the truth is that if your people are spending too much time on personal things like personal email and extensive coffee-breaks, then this tells us more about the organisation than about the people. And seeing we are at the helm of our organisation and Leading it, we need to take full responsibility.

Aldo Grech - CxO Consulting