How to Make People Decisions

Carefully Aligning High-Impact People Decisions with Business Goals

As a CEO or CHRO, navigating the complexities of industry leading growth, the importance of filling crucial leadership roles cannot be overstated.

These decisions not only shape your company's future but also characterize its ability to adapt and thrive through adversity. ?

In part 3 of this series on How to Make People Decisions, we explore the critical need to integrate these decisions into your routine strategic planning.

Most planning tendencies focus on market strategy, financials, customer segments, and perhaps unique board demands. ?But growing leadership capacity to execute is vital to making it happen.

Incorporating strategic talent planning into your routine is critical to securing your ability to execute according to vision. ?

This issue offers insights on the following topics:

• Understanding High-Impact People Decisions
• Utilizing Frameworks for Strategic Integration

Here we go.

Understanding High-Impact People Decisions

High-impact people decisions are pivotal to your company’s strategic direction and creating the capacity to execute.

These decisions involve hiring and/or promoting leaders whose roles are critical to accomplishing the company's strategic direction, growing operational capacity, and maintaining cultural fabric.

They can significantly influence:

• Productivity: The right leader aligns the team with the company’s strategic vision, whereas a poor choice disrupts operations and causes costly setbacks.
• Company Culture: The right hire fosters a positive, high-performance environment that unlocks creativity and innovation.
• Morale: A perfect hire boosts team morale, while a poor selection can quickly decimate it.

The ripple effects of these choices extend throughout the organization, influencing everything from day-to-day operations to long-term strategic goals.

Utilizing Frameworks for Strategic Integration

Strategic frameworks like Scenario Planning and SWOT analysis draw out insights that will ensure alignment of high-impact people decisions with business goals.

Consider a scenario where a CEO realizes that their current leadership team is not equipped to handle the company’s next big expansion. The uncertainty and urgency can be overwhelming.

In the examples ahead, you will see how you can proactively gain clarity in:

• Prioritized list of performance capabilities you need in a candidate. ??
• Timing that nests into other initiatives that maintains forward momentum.
• Total value the right leader would bring to justify the investment.

Too many companies unintentionally end up with a reactionary approach. They are slow to get really clear on the specific attributes needed to gain a strategic advantage from these decisions. ??

The result is a time-constrained process that is detrimental to attracting the best candidates.

Instead, think ahead and plan for your leadership needs proactively. This additional layer of planning enriches and informs your decision-making, aligns the team, and ultimately increases your ability to attract an ACE candidate.

Scenario Planning: Preparing for Future Uncertainties

Forecast modeling—like financial modeling—can be applied to the people side as well, particularly for strategic roles.

Scenario planning involves developing different scenarios based on potential future events. This approach helps organizations prepare for various outcomes and make informed high-impact decisions that are resilient to unexpected changes.

Applying insights from scenario planning might uncover that that you need a key player onboarded within six months. Another scenario may push the need out to beyond a year from now.

Either way, you can start to sketch out a search and recruitment timeline that protects the most likely course of action. ?

Be proactive and settle on the most likely scenario. The talent acquisition team can then begin a reconnaissance search of the market that builds a starting pipeline with benchmark candidate profiles for you to consider and approve.

Example: Imagine you’re running a venture capital-backed packaging manufacturing company that’s just acquired several firms to expand to a national market presence with a network of capabilities.

You know you’re going to need to bring on a top-performing COO to ensure these acquisitions are integrated to grow successfully.

Your scenario planning exercise identifies the top three must have attributes your future COO:

• Integration of Acquired Companies: You’re COO must seamlessly integrate acquired operations and cultures, streamline processes, and foster cross-learning.
• Rapid Market Expansion: This leader will be able to scale operations quickly, manage increased production demands, and optimize supply chain efficiency.
• Technological Advancements: They will also have a strong background in implementing advanced manufacturing technologies and automation to stay ahead of competitors.

Additionally, you uncover good to have candidate attributes only slightly lower in priority:

• Economic Downturn: A leader who can maintain operational efficiency, control costs, and drive profitability even during economic challenges.
• Regulatory Changes: A COO experienced in navigating complex regulatory environments and ensuring compliance with new industry standards.

Now, don’t you see how going through this exercise starts to paint a picture of the ideal performance profile for your next COO?

Everyone will now have a clear vision of what this leader looks like.

Why not then have your talent acquisition team proactively begin an exploratory search to build a list with benchmark candidate profiles for your review?

In future planning sessions, your TA partners will now be geared to offer deeper insight into availability of talent, timelines to attract, and acquisition costs for various experience levels.

It is now much more likely that your future search gets off to a great start. You will be much for confident that when the time comes to really throttle up the search, it will be efficient and more importantly accurate to your specific needs.

SWOT Analysis: Identifying Internal Strengths and External Opportunities

SWOT analysis—commonly used for strategic business planning—can also be effectively applied to building leadership capacity.

By assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, organizations can gain valuable insights into their internal capabilities and external environment. This helps in making informed decisions about key leadership roles.

Example: A multinational manufacturing company seeking to grow its sales in the US market could use a SWOT analysis to hire a new VP of Strategic Sales. They may identify things like:

Strengths:

• Established reputation for high-quality products.
• Strong relationships with existing clients.
• Experienced and knowledgeable sales team.
• Robust manufacturing capabilities supporting sales promises.

Weaknesses:

• Limited presence in the US market.
• Outdated sales technology and CRM systems.
• Lack of localized sales strategies and market knowledge.
• Insufficient brand recognition in the US.

Opportunities:

• Expanding demand for the company’s products in the US.
• Potential partnerships with local distributors and suppliers.
• Emerging markets and sectors requiring the company’s products.
• Opportunities to innovate with new product lines and services.

Threats:

• Intense competition from well-established US manufacturers.
• Regulatory and compliance challenges in the US market.
• Economic downturns affecting customer spending.
• Changes in trade policies impacting cost and logistics.

It starts to become very clear the type of leader you need. One that can quickly understand and be attracted to this type of company SWOT situation.

Not everyone applies this type of framework to organizational development.

However, by understanding these factors, we can narrow our focus to a candidate who has proven capable of leveraging your specific strengths.

Conclusion: Driving Long-Term Success through Strategic People Decisions

Aligning high-impact people decisions with your company's strategic goals is crucial for building a leadership team that can handle challenges and seize opportunities.

Integrating these decisions into your strategic planning process ensures they get the attention and resources needed to be proactive, cohesive, and effective.

Imagine the sense of relief that comes from clarity and alignment on specifically how to bring your strategic vision to life with capable leadership in place at the right time to execute confidently.

All the best in your future planning!

Authentically,

Brandon

Series recap

• In part one, we discussed The Ground Rules.
• In part two, we covered The Seven Decision Steps in High-Impact Executive Hiring.
• Here in part three, here we covered Carefully Aligning High-Impact People Decisions with Business Goals.
• Upcoming in part four, we will share A Real-World Company Success Story.