There’s a common theme I’m seeing with my staffing industry clients: a sense of uncertainty. While unpredictability is nothing new, some unique forces are threatening to transform our industry in a short time, including overall market unpredictability, labor shortages and technological disruption.
It’s impossible to remove all uncertainty, but there are ways to build resilient companies. Whether your goal is to grow to $100 million or merely to sustain a profitable lifestyle business, I encourage you to evaluate that state of each of these following disciplines and challenge yourself as a leader on identifying where you may need to adapt to prepare your company for the future.
Commitment to growth. The first discipline, commitment to growth, is more than a focus on revenue or gross profit. Instead, it represents a clear understanding that the status quo is not enough to ensure future success. Those at every level, from the CEO to managers to all other employees, must reject complacency and embrace continuous improvement and investment. The alternative is a calcified and rigid organization that is simply betting it is good enough to survive.
One way to assure your organization is committed to growth is to educate your team that, with more than 20,000 staffing firms in the US, there are always competitors that want your clients. Staying on guard and fending off rivals is the only way to maintain — and grow — your market.
Direction. The second discipline, direction, represents a clear market strategy that is supported by well-aligned operations. The hardest challenge is saying no to business that, while feasible in the short term, represents a significant distraction to the company’s long-term scalability. Who are your clients? What do you offer? How do you win? The simpler and clearer the answers to these three questions, the more likely your direction is sound. If each takes a paragraph to answer, then you are running an opportunistic business which may work for the short term but is vulnerable to be outmaneuvered by more focused competitors over time.
Culture. A performance-driven culture reinforces everyone’s role in achieving success. This approach embraces productive conflict that improves visibility into potential issues and creates opportunities for improvements. Performance-driven cultures are built on values that clearly define what behavior drives effective collaboration and peer-to-peer accountability. If your company values do not clearly define this behavior, then a revamp is in order.
The benefits of this approach are myriad: These companies are often among the staffing industry’s fastest-growing firms and also rated highly as great places to work by their employees.
Talent development. A company’s ability to hire, develop and promote internal talent helps ensure that its business will become stronger. New talent enables this growth by introducing fresh ideas while also reducing dependency on current staff. To make sure your organization is taking the steps it needs to develop talent, I recommend continuously interviewing talent whether you have an open position or not. Create a training and/or mentoring program focusing on the first 90 days for new employees and create a career path for your people whether they stay in production or move into management.
Execution. Strong execution means your organization has enabled the best practices, technology and key policies required for a successful market strategy. How do you know you’ve achieved execution? Most business underperformance is rooted in in poor training or employees’ — and leaders’ — unwillingness to follow best practices. Before spending time reinventing your best practices or purchasing new tools, evaluate their current adoption. Many leaders find more return on great compliance than on implementing every latest and greatest tool or practice.
To build high-performing teams of any size, these five leadership disciplines are key. Yet I’m always surprised to see that, as impactful as they are, they are largely ignored by most leaders who are instead focusing on more visible problems. This “whack-a-mole” approach is not the way to grow your staffing firm. Leaders must learn to identify patterns and root causes, and these five leadership disciplines are the place to start.
