While in attendance at the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) conference in DC last week, I attended a keynote in which Jack Welch (former CEO of GE and best-selling author) shared his insights as to what business leaders need to be focused on given the current business climate. The following is a bullet point list of Jack Welch’s thoughts that made it into my notebook while listening.

On positive indicators that we are nearing reaching a bottom to the recession…
Consumer confidence index is up.
Affordability index is up.
There are low mortgage rates and lower housing prices.
We still do not know the health of the financial markets.
If there is a recovery, it will be consumer lead.
With regards to the economy, “Uncertainty is the word I think you have to live with.”

The recession offers as many opportunities as it does troubles…
The ensuing playing field will be less crowded.
People – “Take care of your best.”
Competition – “Buy them or bury them.”
Go after your competitor’s best people.
Go on the offense.
Make sure you are doing the things to be prepared for tomorrow.
Multi-tasking is not for leaders, your job is to get your people focused on what is important.

You have to manage for the long and the short. You must eat while you dream. Managing is doing both. - Jack Welch

On managing the people process…
Fire the bottom 10% of your poorest performers every year to raise the bar of excellence in your company.
“Good people can always get a job.”
“Reward people in the soul and in the wallet.”
Match up your value system and your reward system.
Compensate on your values and you will get what you want.
As a leader you want people in your organization that do not need you.

On decision making…
On most decisions, leaders take way too much time.
Leaders usually do not act fast enough.
“I wish I would have waited six months before I did that,” is a comment you never hear leaders make.

In today’s climate leaders need to…
Have generosity of spirit.
Invest in the growth of your people.
Make ordinary people think they can do anything.
Make HR your partner in building a great organization.
Get out and engage your people. You are worthless when you are in your office.

On hiring decisions…
Look for hunger and a burning desire to be successful.
You need people that will excite others.
Hire for the “runway” or long-term future/potential.
Jack mentions that he looks specifically for the “4 E’s and a P.” Get this right and you “bat” pretty well.

>Energy (candidates)
>Energize (ability to energize others)
>Edge (ability to say yes or no)
>Execute (someone that gets things done)
>Passion

On how to position a company to emerge successfully from the recession…
Take care of your best people.
Over communicate.
Tell everyone what you are doing and why to overcome fear.
Energize your workforce.
Do not get caught up in defense.
Make the bold moves; there will be a tomorrow.
For the second time, take care of your best people.

What a great keynote/general session! Many thanks to the folks at AAHOA for bringing Jack Welch in to share his insights and thoughts on what leaders should be focused on to effectively navigate the recession.

In my opinion there is a reoccurring theme in the notes I took. Do you see it?

Investment of Time

When you are in a leadership position you are subject to getting things done through others. It can be easier, less aggravating and ultimately quicker to follow the old saying, "If you want something done right you do it yourself." While a do-it-yourself mentality certainly works well for some, in my opinion it is not a practice to which effective leaders can subscribe. Leaders have to have patience to allow for those that they are leading to learn to execute. This also means that at the beginning stages of leading or teaching new projects or skills there will be a greater investment of time in getting the job done correctly and up to the leader's standards. Leaders have to allow for failing-forward and the potential for errors or less than perfection based on their own standards. A mistake creates a learning opportunity. Effective leaders use these instances to teach, coach and counsel. Of course, the leader's ultimate goal is that, in making this investment, he or she will be able to completely hand-off the responsibility for accomplishing said tasks and be confident that they will be executed properly.

The next time you catch yourself wanting to take the reigns, be prepared to permanently hold on or start looking for the person who is willing to learn and who will show continuous improvement and profit from his or her mistakes.

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it." -Andrew Carnegie

"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it." -Theodore Roosevelt

Core Ideology

I recently had the book Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras recommended to me by a business colleague as a must-read. One of the guiding principals throughout the book, which uses what the authors label as "visionary companies" as examples throughout the book, is that in order to set your organization apart from the competition, you must clearly identify your organization's "core ideology." While this is detailed out at great length in the book, I walked away asking myself the following questions in order to get to the answer for our business. What are the fundamental items that make up your organizational DNA? What are the underlying guiding principals of your company that will not waver in the face of economic or financial issues? Here are the results of our discussions:

• Do what is best for our customers.
• Be honest and ethical at all times.
• Develop our future leaders and promote from within.
• Have high expectations and a low tolerance for poor performance.
• Run lean while maintaining a high level of fiscal responsibility.

Our original list of items was about 30 deep. We had to go through a series of eliminations as well as discussions among some of our key folks in order to chunk this list down to the five aforementioned items. While we are still in the refinement process of ensuring this is truly "the" list for our organization, I feel compelled to share what we find through this process and share my own thoughts with you along the way.

You could even do this from a personal standpoint. Ask yourself the same questions about your own person and you can identify your self-core ideology. Pretty interesting. If you are an entrepreneur, you could even incorporate your self-core into your business core. What a great way to keep your passion for your business alive and well.

What I like the most about this exercise is that makes it pretty easy to streamline the decision making process. If something goes against your core, you do not pursue it. While we all live in a business climate of healthy change, it is important for businesses to know why it is that they exist beyond the underlying concept of making money. If you want to build a "visionary company" as Collins and Porras mention in their book you have to exist for a "purpose beyond profit." This will provide for a much more "clear vision and sense of direction" while maintaining a "pragmatic pursuit of profit."

The next step in this process is for us to identify our core purpose as an organization. On the surface this seems pretty easy. We shall see, as I plan to open the issue up for discussion among some of our leadership folks here at The Employment Guide.

While I find these exercises especially intriguing as I just finished reading the book, I also see a great benefit in taking our leadership team through the BTL process. So far, we have benefited from the depth of the discussions and have a clearer sense of direction or vision for our organization.

Did you come up with a list of three to five items that make up your own personal core ideology? If so did you encounter any surprises?

Thanks for your time.

Jeff Littlejohn

The Changing Face of Distribution

As the publishing industry continues to evolve and become predominantly one that is electronic media oriented, so will distribution. The move towards changing the way in which publishing companies look and measure their distribution is being driven by the consumer. As more consumers switch to predominantly online sources for the news and information, publishers will have to follow. Newspapers are no exception to this change, especially given the collapse of the paid subscriber. The questions are: Are they willing to change and can their culture allow for this change quickly enough as to not lose the franchise?

Our organization, The Employment Guide, is a publisher. We publish 80 free weekly employment publications across the United States. Just like all other publishers, we are not exempt from the changing media landscape. Our website EmploymentGuide.com is one of the top ten job boards in the United States (according to the comScore Media Metrix for Career Resources & Development sites, September 2007). We are making a concerted effort and significant investments in leading our organization successfully into the future. One component of our future will include an electronic distribution network that is being constructed to support our print titles in how we are meeting the needs of our customers. We are in the process of constructing this network which will allow for our client's message to be delivered through an electronic means to job seekers in a way that will specifically match the job seekers needs. In addition to distribution directly to job seekers, we are continually building additional distribution channels for our customers' job postings. We currently distribute our content to a multitude of websites, as well as powering a job board for a variety of websites across the internet landscape.

Of note is the recent trend towards publishers communicating their total distribution to include their online distribution. It is about time! Most of these publishers, including us, have made significant investments into developing this side of their business. All of this hard work, investments and the results of the effort should be allowed to be an extension of their distribution. In fact, if you were to take the more than two million copies of our print publication that we are distributing across the country on a weekly basis and add the readership (averaging 2.5 readers per free publication picked up) of the job seekers picking up our titles to our comScore, we would rank as the number four job resource in the Untied States, only outpaced by the three largest general job boards/resources. As far as niche resources for the hourly non-exempt job seeker, we would rank number one.

That is exciting as we strive to deliver quality results for our customers. We will continue to work on the development of an online distribution channel that will be hourly, non-exempt job seeker centric. The results of this initiative will manifest in the upward trend in our traffic over the course of the effort. We love to compete. We are excited about the future. No doubt we are a publisher that is evolving, but we are on the right track to continue our progression as a dominant player online. The Employment Guide is an exciting place to be right now. We are having a lot of fun while working on our own professional development as we continue on our journey of organizational evolution.

How is your organization evolving?

Core Values

What are the core values that define your organization? As a leader your actions and decisions should support your organizational core values. Our core values, which are all in support of our ability to meet our customers' needs and to provide award winning customer service, are to always be devoted to the professional development of our people, to maintain a high level of fiscal responsibility and to grow revenue. All three of these items add up to providing excellent products and services that are of great value to our customers. It is important that those in leadership positions within our organization focus on these attributes as they lead their teams towards accomplishing our goals in a local market in any of our 55 offices across the United States. While the path to accomplishing our goals might be different in each market, the road on which each leader in our organization travels is paved with the same asphalt.

I strongly believe that the core values of an organization define the leaders of that organization. Our core values can also be attributed to the individuals who were involved in the professional development of our current leaders. I for one am reminded of the lessons I have learned from those who have been in a mentoring role over the course of my career on almost a daily basis. It is easy for an organization or leadership within an organization to proclaim that it is devoted to the ongoing professional development of its people. It is much harder to actually execute this philosophy and to keep it ingrained into an organization's culture. I have a high degree of respect for those who are successful in making this a reality. A good barometer is in the number of folks who have been promoted from within an organization. A good leader always promotes the need for ongoing professional development to his or her folks so these individuals can get promoted. One way a leader can make this happen is to never stop working on his or her own professional development. An organization will take on the personality of its leaders. If you, as a leader, continue to work on your development, those that you lead will be more receptive to emulating this practice. Likewise, if you routinely show up late for work, it will become less important to those who work for you to be on time. People emulate their leaders. This is extremely important for those in leadership roles to remember whether at the office, after work, on the weekend, etc.

Every action that you do is, in some sense, like a ritual that celebrates the values that you hold.- Dr. Matthew Basston, Ethics Instructor

What are the core values of your organization? If you cannot answer this question quickly, make time to answer this question. Use your answers as a guide to make better decisions that will always be in support of what your organization is trying to accomplish.

Our Strengths

I was recently forwarded a couple of links to comments on a competitor's blog that referred to our organization in a negative fashion. When you are the leader in your industry, you are going to be criticized, especially by your competition. If you were not the leader, you probably would not have anyone making any comments about your business because no one would really care that much. Being out in front of your competition means that you are the one with the target on your back. It is obvious, however, that if your business does not have a lot of strengths or positives things going on, your only way to attempt to build value in the eyes of prospects or to garner attention is to speak poorly of your competition. When secondary businesses within industries try to use this approach, clients either quickly lose interest in their message or are quick to identify a fleeting effort by a struggling business to nip at the heals of an industry leader.



I have always advocated and will continue to advocate taking the high road when it comes to addressing questions or speaking directly about our competition. As a business, we teach our folks to focus on talking about our strengths. Conducting a thorough needs analysis with a client or prospect will uncover specific requirements to which we can match the features we offer as a business (our strengths). This will result in our being able to quickly ascertain and then satisfy those needs to the benefit of that prospect or client. This approach followed by quality customer service has proven to be a recipe for success over the last ten years. We entered this industry with the approach of being a long-term recruitment solution partner for employers within each of the local 77 markets that we serve with print, online and job fair solutions. Ten years from now our products will have changed because the need of the job seeker and employer will change, but our purpose and focus to meet the ongoing needs of our clients (both job seekers and employers) will remain constant and our passion. As products continue to quickly change via emerging electronic media recruitment solutions, our approach of being focused on meeting our customers needs of today and tomorrow will remain the foundation for our success. We will make this a reality through the combination of quality products in the form of online, print and job fair recruitment solutions. (Did you know that The Employment Guide conducted its 1,000th job fair earlier this year?)



"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." -T. Jefferson



My advice is to always position your business based on your strengths. Know your competition and address questions as they come up while having conversations with your customers or prospects in a way that once again allows you to focus on the value proposition your organization brings to the table in meeting their needs. This is always a combination for success. Who wants to spend time talking about their competition? Especially by name! Leave their branding efforts up to their marketing department. Quite frankly, if you find yourself talking negatively about your competition, it might just mean that you don't have a whole lot of positive things to say about your own business or organization.



"A leader is one who sees more than others see, and who sees before others do." -Leroy Eims


How does your staff handle conversations with your customers about your competition?

Change and No Change

Let's face it, most publishing companies that operate in the classifieds business or within one of the classified verticals are undergoing a transformation from being traditionally print to electronic media oriented (at least the ones that hope to still be around in the future). We at The Employment Guide are no exception to this transition. As we become more knowledgeable about what the future of our business will look like and what that means to us as an organization, we have a better idea of how to navigate the directional waters to realize increased levels of success. It is through the acquisition of this knowledge that we will continue to differentiate our products and services from the competition and excel at meeting the needs for our customers (both job seekers and hiring managers/companies).


While the change that we are experiencing as an organization is fascinating and is a very exciting journey that everyone is embracing, there are still certain aspects of our business that need to remain the same, primarily our ability to execute. Proper execution is one of the best competitive advantages for us as an organization (coming in a close second behind the talented folks that make up our employee complement). The process of unifying our direction from the field level up to the senior management team has given us a profound competitive advantage in the past and will continue to do so in to the future. Our best ideas inevitably come from the field, our local employees on the front lines or even from our customers. A quick look back over our history reveals this to be true. We got into the job fair business via a customer's request. Here we are more than 1,000 job fairs later still reaping the benefits of following that suggestion. Another thing I like a lot about our organization is in the ability we have to adjust to the current business climate. This is an exceptional trait for any business but is critical when you operate a business that is cyclical in nature. Let's see: labor industry - employment advertising - cyclical in nature? DUH! This is also a great place to insert that we do not utilize this as an excuse for lack of execution but as another factor in determining our next best course of action.


It is my opinion that you can take quality leadership skills, sound decision making and quality operational skills and apply that across just about any industry and you will have a recipe for success. The secret ingredient on achieving a high success factor is in the passion and individual desire to be successful (not only for an individual, but for an organization as a whole). This is something that definitely starts at the top, and I am not exempt. I for one am very excited about the direction we are heading as an organization. I enjoy greatly talking about this with new recruits and current employees. As a former field general I can tell you that the thing I enjoy the most is getting back out in the field and speaking with our talented group of folks all over the country. It was, is and will continue to be the strength of what makes The Employment Guide successful, as well as truly differentiated from the competition, in fact all competitors! The journey that we are on is exciting. The transition we are experincing as an organization is one of the coolest things I have professionally been in a position to oversee.


So, as we experience organizational change and explore new directions, some things will not change. Mainly, our ability to properly execute will continue, which includes maintaining a strong bias towards the ongoing development of our people (who remain our greatest strength).


Do you embrace change, new concepts and ideas, or are you more of a traditionalist?