June 2005

Roadmap for a High-Performing Organization
By Julie Merrill, Change Catalysts

• Does your organization consistently outperform your competitors by delighting customers, bringing outstanding quality innovations to the market, and employing terrific associates to interact with your customers?
• Do you consistently inspire your employees to "do whatever it takes" for your customers and internal partners?
• Do you retain the best and the brightest because you challenge them with great, interesting work and reward them for their achievements?

Congratulations if you answered "yes" to all three questions. However, if your organization has room for improvement, here are some simple, straightforward ways high-performing organizations achieve great results through hiring and assimilating great people. A subsequent article will cover ways to retain and develop the best and the brightest.

Aligning Your Organization: Setting the Course

Thomas Carlyle's often-quoted statement, "A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder," applies to organizations as well as to individuals. Employees who know where their organization is headed, and what is expected of them along the journey, are best able to drive their performance to achieve the required results.

So create a concise mission statement, along with a statement of the organization's values. Publish them. Utilize them as the foundation for everything—performance expectations, rewards and recognition. Incorporate key elements into your marketing. Increase employee commitment and ownership by engaging an influential group of employees in the creation and institutionalization of the mission and values.

Align everything in your organization with its mission and values, and you will achieve desired business results that much faster.

Hiring to Fit the Organization and Job 

We all tend to hire in our own likeness. However, organizations are much more productive, innovative, and profitable when diverse perspectives and opinions come together. Assessment tools, many of which are reasonably priced and have been scientifically validated, can help you bring objectivity to the historically subjective hiring process. The tools help you evaluate the job criteria and fit of a candidate to a specific job. Some even recommend interview questions.

If you feel your organization is not ready for an assessment tool, write down what skills and behaviors your new employee will need to perform the job. Look for alignment with the organization's values. Develop your hiring process—including the job posting, interview questions, and candidate evaluation—around these skills, behaviors, and values.

Engaging a pool of interviewers brings additional objectivity and diversity to the process. After interviewing candidates, the pool will discuss the various candidates, their qualifications, and fit. A pool brings a valuable richness to the hiring decision and is a terrific development opportunity for the individuals involved.

Competitive, Consistent Compensation 

Appropriate compensation is critical to successfully hiring new employees and retaining valuable associates. Total compensation includes salary, incentive pay, benefits, and perhaps equity (stock or stock options). The total compensation must be competitive and tailored to specific positions. Every 12 to 18 months, check the value and mix of compensation components by benchmarking them in your local market and specific industry. This benchmarking should also include your merit and promotional-increase practices (i.e., the frequency and percentage of increases).

Establish, communicate, and follow your compensation practices. Inconsistency and speculation can breed dissatisfaction and difficulties.

Accelerating Assimilation

You want people to contribute immediately, but it typically takes someone three to six months to be fully productive on a new job. This is true of new employees as well as those transferring to new jobs. Here are some ways to accelerate the process.

Conduct an orientation, whether in a group setting, individually or a combination thereof. Cover critical information such as:

• The organization's mission and operation (values)
• The current business goals both for the organization and for the new employee's department
• The employee's specific job responsibilities. What is expected of him or her? Clarify these expectations in the first few days, and discuss the employees' performance against these responsibilities monthly for the first 90 days, quarterly thereafter.
• The goals and objectives for the next 12 months. Sixty days after hiring, work with the new employee to create goals that reflect their responsibilities and the organization's goals.

Mentors are especially useful in the new-hire assimilation process. Task these low-risk, high-impact resources with informally guiding new hires by answering questions, explaining practices, history, and the like. A mentor program requires some organization, but it can pay off immensely for both the new hires and the mentors.

This article only scratches the surface of ways to attract and hire the best people. In the next issue we’ll look at how to keep, develop and motivate these people to create a high-performance organization.

Julie Merrill, president of Change Catalysts, orchestrates change while mitigating risk and resistance for mid-size businesses during growth, consolidations and major transformations. Clients realize business results while accelerating the attainment of innovative, motivating environments and collaborative teams. For more information, contact Julie at 510-597-0474 or Julie@change-catalysts.com.