Author Archives: Larry Janis

The 10 Best Business Lessons Of 2016

Here’s a list of the best advice we’ve given for building and growing a successful organization.

Over the last year, there have been a lot of changes on the business landscape from Yahoo being sold to Verizon to Gawker going bankrupt. Along the way we’ve talked to CEOs of big companies, first-time entrepreneurs, and those working hard every day to make something new. Many have gone against the grain and looked at practices that may seem unintuitive but ultimately helped them find success.

To help you prepare for making change at your own company in 2017, we’ve complied some of the best business lessons we learned this year.

Lesson 1: Look Outside The Box When Sourcing Talent

Though unemployment has been on a steady decline over the last few years, tech jobs are still in high demand. More often than not they are hard to fill. Take the example of security: Cybersecurity jobs are very hot right now, and most companies are having trouble finding and cultivating the right talent. The answer to this problem may be to think bigger. Telecommunications services firm Level 3 has actually found success in sourcing security talent not from their hard labor skills but from their passions, namely from musicians.

Though many people do not know the technical skills that security professionals need, the company found that those adept at music were able to learn how to do the job and excel at it. By casting a wider net and seeking talent from out-of-the-box sources, a few companies have been able to fill gaps where others are still searching long and hard.

You can read about this strategy here: Musicians May Be The Key To The Cybersecurity Talent Shortage (more…)

A Framework for Driving Digital Transformation

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by David Dubois


Leading an organisation’s digital transformation requires simultaneously tackling three questions.

With digital disruption no longer a question of “if” but “when”, CEOs are increasingly focused on transforming their organisations to reap the benefits, and meet the challenges brought by the successive waves of technological innovations.

Over the last two decades, disruptions have taken various forms: from social media platforms empowering customers, to the internet of things equipping objects with the ability to create, send and receive data. New ecosystems and business models have evolved, redesigning the competitive landscapes across industries.

At its core, the disruptive nature of digital technologies stems from their ability to significantly reduce information asymmetry between different actors within an ecosystem (such as a driver and a potential passenger, or a lender and a borrower) by making information instantaneously and easily accessible.

Digitally transforming an organisation and capturing these opportunities is often challenging as it requires C-suite executives and entrepreneurs to identify possibilities and drive change concurrently in three areas where digital technologies are can make significant differences and change the face of organisations.

·         Intelligence – Seeing digital data as a source of insight and using this data in knowledge-creation processes to create competitive advantages.

·         Integration – Leveraging digital channels to transform organisational processes and create agility.

·         Impact – Rethinking how digital dynamics can improve a company’s value proposition.

To successfully lead the digital transformation across these three building blocks, leaders need to measure their progress and the extent through which their organisation has embraced change, from an initiation phase (focusing on the discovery of new opportunities) to a ritualisation phase (looking at ways to interact with the digital ecosystem) and to a final internalisation phase (prioritising digital solutions; see table below). Only then can they assess where they lag behind and where they are on par or ahead, and establish a roadmap for moving the digital transformation forward.

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Why leadership development doesn’t change some people

By Jack Zengerjz

Statistics show that 40% of people are unaffected by leadership development. Here are the steps you should follow to turn the non-responders around.

My firm Zenger Folkman measures leadership effectiveness using a 360-degree feedback process in which 15 or so subordinates, peers, and the boss pool their perceptions of a leader. They complete an on-line assessment and the results are then passed onto the leader who was assessed. By repeating that measurement every 12-18 months, the organization can monitor the collective amount of change that comes from any development program. The difference scores tell you whether or not the leader in question has made significant change. (more…)

Exactly What To Say When An Interviewer Asks How You Would Change Their Company

by Molly Petrilla

Hiring managers know their companies aren’t perfect, so saying that you can’t think of a single thing to change is never a good response.

What would you change if you worked here?”

Uh oh. You may have just teetered across the “tell me about your biggest weakness” tightrope, and now there’s another challenging question on the table. It’s important to sound inventive but realistic, yet avoid trashing a potential employer or coming off as a know-it-all.

But be ready for it, because the change question has become increasingly popular. “I love this question and ask it in every interview,” says Alina Tubman, a career consultant and campus strategist who has conducted hundreds of on-campus recruiting interviews. (more…)

What is top talent and how is that identified?

As a part of our talent acquisition engagements, we ask our clients how they define “top talent” and how they would assess those traits in the interview process.  Reflecting on the insightful comments we hear every day, we thought there would be great value in a new blog in which senior executives/thought leaders share their “Take on Talent.”

This is the eleventh in a series of blogs/interviews with senior executives who are thought leaders in the areas of Talent Acquisition, Career Development and Leadership who will share their perspectives on this ever present question.

 

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Monty Hamilton is Chief Executive Officer of Rural Sourcing Inc. (RSI) and is responsible for the company’s strategic direction and growth, including the launch of 10 new development centers with 2,000 colleagues across low cost of living, high quality of life locations in the United States. This is his second entrepreneurial startup venture after leaving Accenture in 1995. Monty joined together with four other colleagues to build Clarkston Consulting where he was instrumental in growing Clarkston into a global strategic and systems integration firm with offices across the US and Europe.

He is a sought after speaker on outsourcing, domestic sourcing and workforce development topics and has recently been featured on CNBC, BBC, NPR radio and at various industry events. His achievements were recognized recently by being named as a regional finalist for the 2015 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Monty holds an M.B.A. from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University and a B.B.A. in business from Millsaps College. (more…)