Get It Out There First | No BS Management Advice
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Waiting for problems to be uncovered allows whispering campaigns to be created and more problems, including distrust.
TRANSCRIPT
I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I’m a career and leadership coach,The head coach for JobSearchCoachingHQ, com, and NoBSCoachingAdvice.com. I’m back with some more No BS Management Advice. I’ll give you the scenario from my own career when I worked as a headhunter and then bring it into a more modern context.
When I worked in search, at times I owned my own firms, at times I contracted to a firm. When I contracted to a firm, often there were these little quirks that would show up that would just kind of pick at the staff, and it became annoying. It’s like waiting for the last minute and beyond, to be clear about what they wanted from us, waiting until we discovered that a service had been taken away from us to tell us that we weren’t going to have the service. I’ll give you an example.
When job we’re particularly important in recruiting in order to be a data resource and, suddenly, you try and log in to an account. It’s not available. And they’d go, “Oh, yeah. We didn’t renew the contract on that.” Okay. When
were you planning on telling us this? This kind of stuff becomes a problem.
I’ll contrast that with something that’s going on in professional sports right now. The Indianapolis Colts have a very good quarterback, Andrew Luck. Luck has had an injury of some sort and it’s been kind of unclear about what the issue is. Initially, it was spoken about as “a leg injury” that became “a calf injury.” Then it became “an ankle” and all sorts of stuff. The player has to keep answering questions about what’s what’s going on.
“Do you think you’re gonna make it for opening day?”
Day after day, week after week, getting picked up for this kind of stuff becomes a problem. I’ll contrast that with my experience, and say that the general manager of the team got on the phone with all the reporters last night and announced last night (August 2019, as I record this), gets on the phone with all the media sources and said, “Look, you know, he’s got an injury. We’re kind of working it through. We’re still figuring out when he’s going to be able to get back onto the practice field and start playing. As of now, it seems like it’s an ankle injury. And we’ll keep you posted as things go along.”
Isn’t a lot smoother than always vacillating?
This kind of transparency so many organizations struggle with for fear that “I can’t figure it out. People are going to discover that there’s a problem (as if they don’t already know that there’s a problem). Like this guy is not playing. And he’s their best quarterback and they think no one’s going to notice this. Like it’s a deep secret. Like other teams know this; they read the press.
So, I’ll, just simply say, get the information out to your people early. Don’t hide it. They already know. It’s not like there’s any secrets. If your firm is going to close up, let folks know in advance so they have time to prepare so you’re not hurting the very people who’ve been loyal to you. Then, in this day of instant communications globally, trust me, they’re going to tell a lot of folks and you guys are going to look like crap.
Always be out there first with the information. Don’t wait for it to suddenly explode.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes
for job search with more than 2300 episodes. He also hosts Job Search TV on YouTube, Amazon and Roku, as well as on BingeNetworks.tv for Apple TV and 90+ smart sets.
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