As we continue to grow at a rapid pace across many brands, we are always looking for new ways to be innovative even though we get lumped into a sector where innovation is stagnant: Professional Services and Management Consulting.  However,  we have found, even for our executive search firm, that we are able to push the limits, adapt to the new employment markets and really learn the causality of business prosperity or failure from a workforce perspective.

Over the years we have pushed an Organizational Ambidexterity Model and strategy across all of our companies as we knew one thing for sure, we didn’t want to be the company that failed to adapt to the rapidly changing world.  Our culture instills an intrinsic motivation and passion to learn and innovate and every day we have new extrinsic motivators reminding us not to become a dinosaur. You cannot turn on Bloomberg or CNBC and not hear about Best Buy struggles to re-strategize their business plan and somehow it seemed like Facebook went from being the cutting edge Pre-IPO to becoming a turnaround situation within 24 hours of the shares hitting the market. Everywhere around us it seems that “nothing can be done the old way anymore.”

The one consistent fatal mistake we see over and over again from a business and workforce viewpoint, is waiting too long to take action and even if they try, they didn’t come strong enough. With time you can fix many things, but we all know most difficult problems within any reasonably sized organization often takes a lot of time and money. Best Buy as an example simply waited too long and did not make the strong moves they needed to. An Organizational Ambidextrous company would have never let their online presence stay the way Best Buy did and this is coming from a customer who was thinking, “hey I want to spend money here, get it together already!”

Developing Organizational Ambidexterity is about as easy as instituting change, which as we know in the corporate world isn’t the easiest thing to do. How do you get your people to stay planted and continue doing your core business the way it needs to be done and what your customers expect, while driving innovation to do business the new way?  Not everyone is clairvoyant , we all wish we could simply make  our workforce read Steve Jobs’ biography so they can become visionaries too but it just isn’t that easy.

Here are some of the actions we took across all of the JMJ Phillip Companies:

One positive thing came out of Enron and that was the slogan, “Ask Why”.  Having your workforce challenge the way you do things can have a lot of positive outcomes. If they cannot provide a better way to do business then you keep it the same until someone does.

• Failure is a strategy.  If you are not trying new ideas and failing, then you simply are not pushing the limits. We cannot recall many companies that played it safe for 50 years who are still market leaders today.
• Create a pitch day that you do two to four times a year. Lay down the gauntlet to your workers and challenge them to come up with a new business plan, new division, new product, new service or whatever it may be that correlates to your business. Set it up like a venture capital pitch day and have each employee with a well thought out and vetted idea pitch the rest of the company. This will encourage others to step up and will also spark ideas within the group since great ideas often stem from another idea.

With all of our companies being boutique and often bidding against large multiple, hundred million dollar firms we are always asked from the executives and board hiring committee: Why JMJ Phillip over your much larger competitors?

The shortest answer is our Organizational Ambidextrous culture, but that does not sound so amazing when trying to sell your company in a boardroom full of people.

The long answer is that we are a group of small companies and push every single day to understand the workforce changes we are experiencing culturally and through technology. We work hard to understand the ever evolving business models of tomorrow and strive to push things to the limit when partnering with our customers to develop a workforce to make them become the market leader.

We never will be, nor do we want to be the large, 50 year old company that has been “doing things this way for years”. Every day we move forward, continue to be quick on our feet and not only keep up with the changes, but set some trends ourselves.

We believe every company is going to have to follow this model to be competitive in the future. We are proud to say we have been doing it for years.

Every executive search firm battles the same issue with their clients “the candidate is a job hopper”. We are on board with that, we don’t like to hire job hoppers at JMJ Phillip either. If you’re looking for a slightly better pay day every 2 years or you simply couldn’t cut it and keep getting bounced out of your job then you’re not for us.

But over the years we have come to realize that it’s not always the candidates fault and the general idea that employers are immaculate is simply ridiculous. Often candidates get hired and are never told the full story, because if they had the full story they would never take the job! Companies holding their cards close is nothing new, but imagine if you took a job and found this out in the first 6 months that: (this is a sampling of true stories).. 

• We have 45 days of cash flow and our biggest customer is suing us

• We have been in a turnaround situation for over 18 months

• We went live on SAP and it was a failed implementation

• We lost a government contract so we will being having layoffs

• Job sold in the interview did not end up being the job you signed up for

• Company is an acquisition target and will be bought

• Pay, bonuses and incentives were not as promised

• Manufacturing is moving to Mexico

• Manufacturing is moving to Asia

• Plant is closing, everything is moving to another plant

For every job hopper, you have someone that has had legitimate reasons for moving around. If someone worked for 2 bankrupt companies in the last 5 years, how do you blame them for being a hopper? Meanwhile your seeking that guy that spent 12 years at one company thinking they are the rock solid person you need to hire and here are some lessons learned from that.

• Long tenure can be a sign of complacency

• Long tenure could mean the work environment was relaxed where poor employees have the opportunity to have long careers

• Lack of diversity leads to “this is how I did it at my old company”

One last note that may surprise you: Those that had long tenures often end up having more than 3 jobs in a short period time.

Now it’s not always the case, but you will see someone that had a 8 year run, and a 6 year run, then have 3 or 4 jobs over the next 6 years. So while you’re seeking the ideal candidate based on tenure you’re letting some top candidates pass through your fingertips because you didn’t want to invest 20 minutes talking to them to learn about why they had the career changes they did.

Now at JMJ Phillip we already have that discussion before we send you the candidate, but before you are quick to say “pass”, step back for a moment and think about how many bad employers you have worked for, it may make you give someone with amazing talent a chance that you wouldn’t have otherwise.