In Part 1 of this article we identified the causes of The Perfect Storm and its impact on businesses. To excel, businesses must understand the conditions and begin enacting solutions to stay the course.

Begin with strategy

Get your thinking out of survival mode. Just trying to keep the doors open has been a challenge for many businesses, but now is a critical time to formulate "where we're going." As the economy bounces back, so too will your competitors, and their thirst for your best and brightest. Are you prepared to make the leap from a survival strategy to a competitive strategy? Your strategy must:

• Define business objectives that realize a vision of the company in the recovered economy, something that people can believe in. These business objectives must be driven by customer needs. By bringing your employees closer to the customers you have and to the customers you seek, you continue to build your vital intangibles.



• Drive organizational changes to meet the objectives - the requirements that support cross-functional core business processes - by creating opportunities for your best and brightest, providing quality impact roles that result in reasons to stay on board.



• Establish priorities specific enough to guide the priorities in each employee's job so everyone knows what is expected of them and why - the most critical element of employee satisfaction.



• Involve employees in the creation and implementation of your strategy. When they are part of making it happen, those greener pastures start looking yellow and brown.

Define and align your core business processes

Reengineer your core business processes to meet the goals of the strategy. Focus on the value chain and the key supporting processes. Ask your employees what makes their jobs inefficient, and what the company could do to make things better. The answers may surprise you! Be sure to demonstrate you are listening to them by taking decisive action and giving priority to suggestions that are aligned with the company's strategic direction and goals. When people feel validated, they feel valued. When they feel valued, they become re-invested.

Realize that regardless of what measures you take, you will likely lose some talent. Minimize skill and information loss by cross-training and codifying best practices - but as you begin documenting your processes, determine if you are really serious about committing to process management.

Build your leadership bench

To stem potential leaks that could sink the ship and to enable long-term sustainable growth, the proper talent must be on board to quickly step into each position essential to the execution of the strategy. These are the anchor (linchpin) positions. The skills required for these positions usually are broadly defined and often take years to acquire.

• Identify the anchor positions based on the requirements of the strategy.



• Perform a competency analysis of your people to assess your bench strength, identifying critical weaknesses and opportunities for individual career growth.



• Fill the bench by openly developing multiple candidates
for each anchor position. These are your key players, the company's future leaders and decision makers. They should be cross-trained aggressively through mentoring and sequenced through lateral and vertical moves to develop hands-on, cross-functional knowledge and relationships. Enroll these individuals in targeted professional development programs tied to your business strategy. This open Leadership Bench model enables you to:


• Rapidly fill open anchor positions by moving key players from the bench without leaving a void of vulnerability. It takes a significant leap beyond traditional approaches to succession planning. A radical departure is that the planning is not shrouded in secrecy. The anchor positions have been defined and the "bench" knows who they are, and so does the rest of the organization.



• Provide strong incentive for key players to stay in the company and become re-invested. It also clearly indicates to those not so identified what is expected of them to get there. Those not identified will either take the necessary steps to gain the qualifications for the bench or may discover that they would be better working somewhere else, which may be better for the company and those individuals.



• Target and acquire competitors' top talent. Having defined your anchor positions and bench weakness lets you focus your recruiting efforts to catch the top talent jumping from other ships.

Train managers to keep your "keepers"

Beyond just the key players who have been identified to fill anchor positions (usually from management or leadership/decision making positions), "keepers" are those who possess the company's vital intangibles. They are the people who have critical skills, information or relationships necessary to meet the company's objectives: the influencers, gurus, networkers, trusty workhorses, mentors, and desired culture shapers.

Some keepers are tremendous influencers who lead by example, and thus shape popular opinion. If the example they set is "now is the time to be dedicated to the cause" (i.e., your company), then the cause quickly becomes worth fighting for. The results can be far different if the leading influencers create an atmosphere of dissatisfaction and dissent, whether overtly or covertly. Their influence may extend beyond the boundaries of the organization to having the ear of your customers, and as such can be your greatest allies or potentially your worst enemies.

• The first step: determine which managers are keepers - A crucial role of your managers in riding out the Perfect Storm is to keep your keepers. Remember, people leave companies because they don't like or trust their managers; people rarely leave a company due to job dissatisfaction alone. It is the quality of the relationships built between managers and employees that will have the greatest impact on who stays or goes. Building quality relationships is the fundamental skill and also the most common potential weakness of all managers.

  Determine if your management team may be intensifying storm conditions. Assess their management and leadership capabilities with aggressive feedback goals. Once skill gaps have been identified, address the issues through management coaching, mentoring, professional development, etc.

  The Peter Principle still holds true and it is the responsibility of executive management to put in place the mechanisms to overcome these skill deficits within the management team. The available options are: develop their leadership capabilities, move them out of management, or "encourage" them to take advantage of external opportunities.

• Next: know who your keepers are - Recognize those who really make the business run. Look at or near key points within core business processes where the most critical decisions are being made. The people found there may not be the official or political decision maker, but may be in the decision maker's cabinet. Many are, in fact, the company's true leaders, with or without title, and wield a great deal of power and influence over the tenor of the organization. You must know who the real keepers are.



• Involve your keepers in implementing your strategy within their business units. Bring them into the decision making process and empower them with responsibility for the change, individually or through improvement teams. Many keepers leave because they don't believe in the company vision, are not inspired, and don't see a real future for the company, nor themselves in it.



• Court your keepers - Prevent your best people from leaving by re-recruiting them now. Let their new job opportunity be within the company. Encourage internal transfers and lateral moves. Give keepers internal job opportunities and let them change bosses if they desire, rather than jumping ship. Keeping your keepers goes beyond retaining the physical body of your keepers - it is keeping them positively motivated as a part of your team.

Conclusion

The economic surf is rising. To survive the storm and find opportunity in its wake, be prepared to identify your anchor positions, chart your course, and maintain your bearings.

Remember, top performers jump ship for many reasons, but lack of respect for their "captain" is number one. When you have identified and invested in your keepers and have developed a strong and capable leadership bench, you can be confident of weathering The Perfect Storm.

(Ed. Note: this article originally appeared in slightly different form on 7thwavesolutions.com.)

Scott Schulz is the Director of Business Development with 7th Wave Solutions, a management consulting, organizational development, and training firm. Scott is a NEHRA member and can be reached at scott.schulz@7thwavesolutions.com.