Rebuilding Culture? Attrition is your Friend.

#memoirs #4 #rebuilding #embracing_attrition

Do you know why I love the manager's job? - there is never a dull moment! If you are someone who loves to observe (and possibly influence) human behavior, chances are that this job is for you. Of all the things that Leadership is about, the one thing that is at its heart is Team Culture. It is formed by the heady concoction of values, beliefs, behaviors and personalities; all woven into an often dysfunctional tapestry that surrounds our daily work-lives. Creating this tapestry, weaving in new designs into the old and maintaining the careful balance of color, energies and emotions is what I feel is at the heart of a people leader role. It's messy, chaotic, unpredictable - because it is all about the people. And if no one told you this before, people are strange creatures! (myself included ??)

Attrition is Reinvention dressed up in goth!

As new managers, sometimes we are given a blank canvas or a team that is in flux where the first goal is to stabilize. Attrition is seen as the enemy of stable teams, but no matter how much we would like to avoid it; it's part of the natural life cycle of any team. Irrespective of how great your offer is, people may still choose a different option. When that happens, I know that it hurts (like hell (!!) especially if you were personally invested in the individual's growth! ?? ), but you got to learn to let go and ultimately move on. This pain of separation is like the one that children and young teams feel as they grow out their bones or new teeth. I am not saying that all attrition is good, but some of it is unavoidable (and often necessary) for the team's evolution. Every time I have found myself staring into the abyss of "team hiring", I have always told myself this - "this is a great chance to build a team in my image"! Attrition is Reinvention dressed up in goth!

Once we have come to terms with it, it is a lot easier to build and execute an efficient path to Repair (or Rebirth). Here's what has worked for me, every time I have had to hire or rebuild a team:

• Defining a Dating Pool is critical for early success : Talent Hiring is part Science and part Art, but often times I have sat in interviews where the evaluation criteria had to do more with an interviewer's gut-reaction, than anything else. Inefficient decision criterion often sends your talent acquisition (TA) or HR teams on a wild goose-chase and prolongs the time-to-fill rates for your open requisitions. This can be fixed by starting with a clear understanding of what it is that you would like to rebuild. If you could imagine your team as a person, what personality traits or skill-sets do you think this person is missing. Is it industry know-how? Years of experience? Specialization? Techo-functional skills that were never part of the original job description? Honesty? Team player qualities? Having a clear idea about your "new-hire" profile allows you to articulate it better while re-writing job descriptions, coaching your TA/HR teams and ultimately in identifying the right people.
• Laying out the steps to the Dating Ritual: Once you have honed in on "who" you want to hire, the next step is to define "how" you are going to hire. If you are running against the clock, it is imperative that your hiring workflows are well-defined, time-bound and realistically achievable. Every single one of us have gone through interviews that have taken months of waiting; and as frustrating as it can be for the candidates who are going through the process; it doesn't help your organization's brand either. Playing "hard to get" or making the candidates "jump a million hoops" before they get the offer is inefficient and reflective of poor HR practices. Here's an example of a 2-week of hiring process workflow that helped me reduce my time-to-fill rate by 50% (90+ days -> 47 days).

• Defining the rules of Engagement: With the interview work-flow out of the way, the next step is to define what each stage of the interview engagement will focus on. Building a script that can be easily followed during each round ensures consistency in evaluation quality, especially if you have multiple interviewers touching the workflow. This is particularly important if you have new leads or managers doing hiring for the first time. The rules of engagement should also focus on parameters of success, skill-matrix being considered and possible gradation of testing based on the level of experience of a potential candidate. If you have panel discussions or mock-call based rounds, it may often be helpful to assign pre-defined roles to individual panelists to avoid confusion. In my experience, sending across pre-interview prep material or collateral helps reduce the number of "disappointments" we face on virtual or face-to-face interviews. Here's an example of an interviewer script that checks for Emotional Intelligence:

• Always have a plan-B: If your team operates in a highly competitive hiring market or geography, which makes it hard for individuals to stick around for too long, it is important that contingency plans are created to allow for faster hiring and on-boarding. If holding a bench of candidates on company pay-roll is not possible, try having pipeline requisitions that allow for passive recruiting/interviewing in anticipation of future openings. If your company has a good college (summer) internship program, tapping into it might help you nurture junior sales reps that could eventually be absorbed into the system should the need ever arise. For me personally, a good employee referral system is what has worked best since your hit-ratios are considerably higher when the resumes you are sourcing is from a trusted source.

Hopefully some of these strategies resonate with you too? What are your thoughts around efficient hiring? How are you dealing with Attrition in your teams? Let me know your thoughts, comments and suggestions in the comment section. Thank you for reading! ??