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October 6, 2008  The archive for this newsletter is here.
 

What we seem to be forgetting &
why we're in trouble
A comment by T.S. Newhart

A finance journalist, and reader of this occasional newsletter, called last week to ask what I thought about the $700 billion bail out plan. The conversation quickly expanded into a discussion of "What happened?". He was referring to the larger picture, as in 'What happened to us [the United States]?' Basically, he was asking what happened to Chrysler, Wall Street, Main Street, you and me, etc. In fact, as I write this on Monday the Dow is down 400 (four h-u-n-d-r-e-d) points.

Well obviously, it's complex. But I think a lot of it stems from 9/11 which was so classic it now seems grimly inevitable. I wrote about the tactic in a corporate setting in a CorpWar way back in March 2003 (to review go here: Concentration of Force). Al-Zawahiri, one of Osama bin Laden's key strategists, knew the only way to bring us down, arguably the most 'powerful' civilization in history, was to help us bring ourselves down. Aside from our spirit America is also a business and as such we 'behave' like a business. And all businesses have their weaknesses which are too often discernable to our competition (e.g. al-Zawahiri, or picture your own competition-there really is no difference). So al-Zawahiri helped come up with this cheap little plan, pretty crude really, and sent a huge arrow dead center into our economic heart. And, let's face it, it's been pretty rough sailing ever since. And if you don't think so you and I don't live in the same galaxy.

If you think your business is any different you are part of the problem. You need to think better. You need to think stronger. We all work for our stakeholders. We OWE them our best, now more than ever, because things are starting to fall apart. And if we don't give it to them we should be replaced. Period. This is no time for dull, slacker, thinking folks.

I've taken on the role of new business development for ScreeningInterviews.com (technically a spin-off) and have noticed a couple of alarming things. To put this in context the service does screening interviews of a client's "short list" of an open job's candidates and makes those recordings available to management so they can efficiently comment on whether or not they think a candidate would be a good fit to the company. Pretty simple.

Now, managers that use the tool typically love it but, conversely, some really hate it (actually loathe everything about it). When I drill in to understand why, it's typically because "things work well enough as they are". All I can say is stop, RIGHT THERE. This is the kind of thinking that some clever guy in a corporate cave somewhere (a.k.a. your competition, some of whom you probably aren't even aware of) is waiting to exploit. This mindset insists "things are cool enough now, we'll survive". Really? Think again. If you're sitting around thinking your business is some sort of invincible fort I GUARANTEE you somebody, somewhere, is x-raying your walls to find weak spots. They are focusing on YOU, trying to find YOUR Twin Towers. And we all know the potential result.

Another thing I've noticed because of ScreeningInterviews.com is the quality of many of the candidates (the resumes are supplied by the client's HR department or retained recruiting companies-we have no control over what we get). I do some of the interviews myself, and listen to many of the others and I'm often shocked at what I hear. We typically interview 4-5 candidates per position and often 1 or 2, sometimes even 3 of these candidates are pretty poorly qualified for the position (even internal candidates up for internal transfer). Sometimes egregiously so. It's just so vivid in the recording that they can't do the job you have to ask yourself, how did these people get on a short list? Sometimes, of course, the process lets somebody really shine that looks weak on paper (that's great when it happens, by  the way), but more often we uncover expensive hiring mistakes waiting to happen. Often their only real skill is knowing how to game the hiring system. Thank god we help weed them out.

Look, you need to impress everybody around you, everybody in your company, that there are barbarians at the corporate gate, because functionally there really are. This is no time for lazy, yesterday thinking because competitors that need to eat are hunkered down trying to figure out how to steal your food.

This is capitalism folks. Your competition doesn't care if you starve.

Think about it.