Use your longer term employees to fuel and drive strategy success

With low confidence in the economic recovery, a lot of companies are filling their work needs using project based employment and short term hires. For your short term operational needs, these are great sources of relatively cheap labor (I will discuss this in another post). But for strategic initiatives, you need people thinking about the long term success, not just next quarter or the end of the project. The incentives for short term work by their definition are not aligned with long term objectives. Why would temporary employees care about the welfare of the company three years down the road if their involvement ends in one month?

For strategic initiatives you need longer term employees - people who will face the consequences of their actions and decisions. They also provide cohesiveness from one project to the next, and make decisions based on the long range business goals and not only on the short term project objectives. They represent and transmit the culture of your company. They provide the history and traditions that have made you a success in the past.

Don't fail at your career strategy by choosing the now job

I have been having a lot of discussions about career strategy with people looking for jobs, and I am seeing the desperation setting in, the prevaling strategy right now is: "get anything, NOW!" If you have reached the end of the rope (no more savings, no extra income from spouse/partner/family), then by all means it has become an issue of survival and the right strategy is: "whatever it takes". But for everybody else, it is a very bad move to take that attitude. If you read beyond what this Forbes article is saying it looks like at the end of the day this recession is a career killer.

The downside to the quitters line of thinking is that you are adjusting your expectations and your search accordingly: are you looking for jobs at your level or lower? have you in your mind already taken a pay cut? are you thinking value or price for your services?

The decision of what jobs to pursue and what to take is not only relevant to this job now but to your career. If you take a 50% pay cut, do you honestly believe you will get it back next year? I can assure you that you wont. If you go two levels down, do you think your next position will resume where you were pre-recession? No, you will have to fight your way back up again - think about it as lost years.

Regardless of the recession, your value and your level of preparedness are what determines your strategy. If you have a strong war chest (or emergency fund or other income sources), you have to ride the storm. The income you aren't receiving is your opportunity cost. It will hurt in the short term but it will pay in the long term.

Pushing boundaries to grow

You don't notice, but your comfort zone is always shrinking. It behaves like an slippery slope... First, you are uncomfortable giving speeches to large groups, so you refuse. Then you are uncomfortable to talk to medium sized groups so you make up excuses to not talk or rush to finish. After a few years of this, you can't give speeches to groups bigger than eight to ten people without having nightmares the day before. This slippery slope can be public speaking, new ventures, new ways of doing business, or adopting new technologies (are you using social media?).

In the business world, we should be always push to expand our comfort zone - as in commercials every year we should be bigger and better or a new and improved formula. To make this happen just follow these simple steps:

1. Make a list of your strengths and your weaknesses
2. Have your mentor, significant other or trusted adviser review and help with the list.
3. Together, define what strengts and weaknesses you should work on
4. Set goals and exercises that you should do
5. After an appropriate time, review the results
6. Rinse and repeat

It is very important to work on your strengths as well as your weaknesses. For example, if you are a good public speaker become a great speaker. We setup aggressive goals for our portfolios, why should we be any  different with ourselves.

BTW, I am following my own advice, I will be filming three business segments for a business program tomorrow - this is something new and exciting.