Business Focus for 2009; A LinkedIn.com Poll

With all the troubles of 2009 that have surfaced, businesses are being impacted from many sources. To combat this or to have the ability to compete, businesses will have to create, develop and maintain key focus areas for their organizations to be successful. In a LinkeIn.com poll I asked professionals where their organization is placing focus to best impact 2009. Overall, 51% of responders indicated that their organizations were placing focus on Enhancing Operations; 24% are Improving Employee Development; 12% indicate Recruiting Top Talent; 9% are Retaining Top Talent; 3% are focusing on Developing Future Leaders.

When we filter respondents in Management level positions, 56% indicate their organizations are focusing on Enhancing Operations, while 18% indicate there is a focus on Improving Employee Development and Recruitment of Top Talent respectively.

However, there are subtle changes when an examination is done by organizational size. Enterprise organizations are indicated as focusing on Improving Employee Development (40%), Recruitment of Top Talent (20%), and Retaining Top Talent (20%). Comparatively, large organizations have been indicated as focusing on Enhancing Operations (50%), Recruiting Top Talent (20%) and Improving Employee Development (16%).
Smaller organizations are indicated as focusing on Enhancing Operations (62%), Improving Employee Development (25%) and Retaining Top Talent (12%).

According to these observations, smaller organizations are 3 times more likely to focus on operational enhancement than that of enterprise organizations however, enterprise organization are 2.5 times more likely to improve employee development than that of large organizations.
Should your organization chose to focus on the enhancement of tasks and operational functions you need to ask yourself the following questions so you are prepared when the challenges are “over”.

· Will your organization place its current talent at risk?
· If so, at what cost? Will you have the talent to operate the enhancements if your organization did not focus on developing them?
· Will the enhancements be viable once complete and even yet, if the challenges continue who will be making these enhancements to operations if the organization has not concentrated on developing the internal talent and future leaders?
· This is contingent on the assumption the organization can retain the top talent.
· Is it the functions of the business that drives business or the talent within to perform the tasks that drives the business?

Why do organizations routinely go to the operational functions and not the talent in times of “crisis” to seek a solution?

In these difficult and challenging times is it your organizations’ best interest to survive or to succeed? Before you answer that question imaging if you will, you are lost at sea. No boat, no life vest, just you and the open sea.

Do you choose to tread water and wait for someone or something to save you? Or do you make an observation about where the clouds are, which way the wind is blowing, and look to see if there are their birds around? Do you pick a reference point and start swimming?

You achieve success stroke by stroke minute by minute. And if you get tired by one type of stroke, you change to another stroke using different muscles, always looking at that reference point, making observations, and changing how you get to that point. This takes TALENT and you are saved by finding land or finding someone to complete your journey home. This is succeeding.

Treading water gets you nowhere and you are only as far as when you first got into trouble. It may buy you one minute, one hour, or one more day. You may have enhanced how you tread water to stay afloat a little longer but you did not go far and you are left hoping you get saved. This is surviving.

Now what is your answer?
Survive or Succeed?

You chose succeed; GREAT! Let’s look at your talent and build from there!
· Identify your top talent
· Assess their strengths (what is your organization capable of right now?)
· Make observations of your surroundings; what is the business climate for your industry? Are there gaps within your organization? What natural strengths does your organization possess?
What tools and resources do you currently have, use and don’t use? Are there gaps in your industry that you can fill with your organizations’ top talent to take advantage of the marketplace?
· Develop and communicate a reference point for the organization. Include the organizational assessment (current situation) of where your organization sits. Describe how and why the organization is going to “swim”.
· Develop and maintain a consistent accountability to the reference point. Everything and anything the organization does must be measured to the reference point.
· Consistently review the progress of your organization’s strokes and regularly assess the need to change the type of stroke with another talent group. Enhancements become a result of change; not the means to change the results.

When organizations take this approach to addressing our business challenges we inherently develop our talent and our future leaders strategically as well as prvide a directed focal point; whatever that may be.