Now is the Time to Upgrade Your Talent

The COVID-19 crisis has created a powerful opportunity in the talent pool filled with displaced employees – and in particular top talent and high-performers who are choosing to seek out new and better opportunities. In many regions the market for talent has been entirely disrupted and smart business leaders will be able to take advantage of opportunities to secure and upgrade staffing and elevate the competence of leadership within those organizations.

Any good leader knows that you are only as good as the team you assemble – and how well that team actually performs. It is the organization that makes the leader successful. For companies that have fared well through or even benefited from the economic fallout – there is a need to make certain that your company is structurally and organizationally prepared to effectively scale.

While growth often looks desirable, if your company is not capable of ensuring that the company remains profitably and operationally sustainable, the growth is not just problematic – it can bring a company quickly into insolvency.

Systems become strained, managers become overwhelmed and cash flow dries up – as companies essentially “grow broke.” Companies must retool their capacity in order to ensure that growth is healthy and sustainable, and typically this requires hiring new and better talent to take the company forward.

Companies that are struggling to get back on their feet face even steeper challenges. When depressed revenues make it difficult to maintain salaries, it becomes critical that everyone on payroll is a top performer. There is no margin or effort for maintaining incompetent employees and tolerating dysfunction.

Companies don’t need to just recover – they need to rebuild and in many instances innovate ways to realign with new realities.

Good is not good enough. The new standard must be measured in exceptionalism; meaning exceptional leadership guiding talent that is inspired to hold themselves accountable to exceptional performance.

Finally, companies that are holding their own will find enormous entrepreneurial opportunities arising from the chaos on the marketplace – and those who are build to innovate and execute will be handsomely rewarded. It takes more than capital and discipline to be successful in entrepreneurial pursuits. You must lead an exceptional team that can simultaneously function with high-intensity while operating in the learning mode. High-performance teams are those that learn fast, adapt freely and are focused on that which will provide a sustainable competitive advantage. Anything less will slow a company down – and raise the risk of being overcome – or even run over by your competition.

Competition for top performers is always high, and now is no exception. However, with things remaining in flux, now is the time to embrace the uncertainty that both fuels the level of opportunity and continues to grip organizations that are incapable of leaning into the risks to find the rewards.

This requires solid top-down thinking. In times like these, leadership matters if you are to find a way to accomplish what matters most. You must ensure that your own leadership is on solid footing – and then make certain that you have capable leadership running down deep into your organization.

Strong leadership is necessary for attracting, growing and retaining the level of talent and performance your organization needs to fully take advantage of the opportunities emerging right now.

Not only are we coming into a time where the conditions are ripe for extraordinary growth, it is possible we may not see conditions like these again for quite some time to come. It is high-time right now to cultivate the determination needed to position your company to emerge from this crisis as a force to be reckoned with.