Crisis or Opportunity

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Welcome to the October 15, 2008 issue of The Total View

Published by Success Performance Solutions

Major Sponsor of
2008 Best Places to Work In Pennsylvania

Edited and Written by Ira S. Wolfe

Visit our Human Resources Blog and Perfect Labor Storm Blog where we can post daily (and more often) human resource updates, news, and Perfect Labor Storm facts.

What's Inside this issue of The TotalView:

1. Crisis or Opportunity? It's your choice and destiny

2. Perfect Labor Storm Warnings

3. Innovation: The role of the sustainer

4. Quotes from the Hire Authorities

1. Crisis or Opportunity? It's your choice and destiny

The Perfect Labor Storm and the concurrent financial crisis have collided, creating an environment of unprecedented change and golden opportunity. Your business will be challenged to change in a way for which it has no precedent. Decades of orthodox management decision-making practices, organizational designs and approaches to employee relations provide no real hope that companies will be able to avoid faltering or suffering painful restructuring.

The ability to make sense out of things is a much sought-after talent these days. Some people are quite resourceful, making great decisions and troubleshooting problems with the information they have on hand. But what happens as complexity increases and change happens more often?

Many managers believe the best solution to fixing their current problem is sharpening their saw. But sometimes the sharpest saw in the tool box is the wrong tool. Before cutting and contouring just for the sake of doing something, it might be best to identify what is it you exactly want to have in the end.

Because of the rapid pace of change, more and more people need to make good decisions without any current information at all. The sheer scale, connectivity and speed of the change are unprecedented, stretching our old ways of thinking to the breaking point. The available information is sometimes ambiguous. At other times it is contradictory. The world is reorganizing on the fly.The best tool may not be a saw at all but an instrument that hasn't even been invented yet. Only new approaches to setting strategy, managing employees and recruiting talent to maximize returns will provide companies with a durable competitive advantage.

The real opportunity that companies have today is to take control of their own destinies and begin to consciously innovate. While executives and business owners of competing companies will typically opt for ad hoc changes, the astute leader will seize this opportunity to trump the competition by creating an advantage that beat rivals to the punch and that they can't duplicate. Leadership is not just about adapting to changed realities in the environment but creating new ones. How prepared is your management team to make sense of the current state of business and come up with game-changing strategies? ( This question isn't just directed at business. Nearly every organization - non-profits, schools, government - will be affected by a rapidly changing environment.)

Read more about evaluating your team's innovative capacity and your ability to respond effectively to this tumultuous but opportunity filled time using Creatrix below.

Learn more about The Innovation Equation and Innovate like Edison.

2. Perfect Labor Storm Warnings

Subscribe to the Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 blog and receive skilled worker shortage updates like this:

With rising economic uncertainty and shrinking profit margins, organizations can ill afford the cost of placing "poor fit" candidates into critical roles. According to a just released study by The Recruiting Roundtable:

Only 50% of all new hires are the right fit for their jobs.
Only 29% of organizations consistently acquire talent that is a good fit for the organization.
Nearly 10% of new hires turn over within six months, at an average cost of more than $26,000 per employee.

Learn more about workforce trends. Purchase the NEW Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 books (soft and hard cover versions) at PerfectLaborStorm.com.

New Perfect Labor Storm videos added. Watch now!

3. Innovation: The Role of the Sustainer

In the past 3 issues of The Total View, I've highlighted 3 of the 8 orientations toward innovation. These orientations characterize an organizations capability of producing innovative ideas, products, or services. Each week I'll highlight one of these orientations. This week's focus will be The Sustainer:

Sustainers offer stability. They provide much-needed practical reality in times of change. They provide the control and predictive functions of the organizations. They are the guardians of the tried-and-true. Sustainers hold an organization accountable and true to its mission. Sustainers sometimes become stuck in ruts. When change is needed, they may continue to perform tasks that no longer need to be done. They often resist systems and techniques. Can you identity the Sustainers in your organization?

Creatrix Inventory is an extraordinary instrument that measures an individual's and a group's innovative capacity. We believe Creatrix may be the single most important tool in assessing an organization's ability to seize new opportunities and execute strategic plans flawlessly through innovation.

As today's business challenges become increasingly difficult to manage, organizations need innovative solutions to stay competitive. But it is not enough to want to be more innovative. Organizations need the right people on board; people who have the ability to be creative and the willingness to take risk, key elements of innovation.

Learn more about Creatrix or call/email today to schedule a consultation today.

4. Quotes from Hire Authorities

"Strategic-minded executives may not be able to control the "weather," but they can design a ship and equip it with a crew that can navigate the ocean under all weather conditions."

The McKinsey Quartely, 2007 Number 2

Permission is granted to consultants, managers, business owners and HR professionals to reproduce content from this newsletter for your internal publications, or to distribute copies to your workforce, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions. Copyright 2008 Ira S Wolfe." We also hope you will forward the newsletter in its entirety and recommend to others that they subscribe.