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international perspectives By Michael Diliberto

Building a Winning Team

t has often been said that there is nothing more important than finding and retaining the best talent. A group of motivated people set upon the same goal can accomplish absolutely amazing things. This is exactly how many firms get their starta core group of individuals sharing a common passion get together and share in early successes that drive the companys growth. The first few hiring decisions are criticaland they take a great deal of time and energy. If all goes well, you will have brought into the company that special person who is a perfect fit for you and for the rest of the team. DO PERFECT EMPLOYEES EXIST? As the company grows, finding these perfect team members grows harder and harder. Not only is it hard to find exceptional candidates, but also with each new team member added, it becomes harder to find someone who fits in perfectly with the existing team. At a certain point, things begin to feel less like a family and more like a company. Its an inevitable phase in the growth of an organization, yet it is one that many of us struggle to work through. It is tempting, when the time comes to expand our teams, to target candidates that we believe can hit the ground running. The inevitable outcome is the creation of job postings that list an almost unattainable amount of qualifications. Combine a good education, industry experience, a great personality, and the ability to adapt to new situations, and you have found the perfect candidate. The trouble is, where is that perfect candidate? Does he or she exist? Our experience has been that these perfect candidates in fact do notat least not in the way that we wish they would. While it is possible to recruit a superstar employee away from a vendor or a competitor, this does not guarantee that the new employee will, upon joining your team, continue to be a superstar. What we have found instead is that our successful team members are a product of both their own abilities and knowledge, coupled with our training, process, and expectations. Our challenge lies in instilling process, expectations, and skills into these new employees. If we cannot bring new team members on board, explain to them how we do things and what we expect of them, how can we expect them to be successful? Over time, and as we have grown, we have changed our outlook from seeking to hire superstars to understanding that it is our job to make superstars. MAKING SUPERSTARS Our experiences attempting to recruit our employees started us firmly down this path. As a foreign organization operating in an industry uncommon in our host country, we quickly found that the super-

stars we initially sought were nowhere to be found. It was nearly impossible to find anyone with industry experience when ours is such a new industry in many of our overseas operating environments. This is not to say there are not talented people or that they do not have the necessary potential, but here in China it is, more often than not, necessary to perform far more employee development than we would typically have done in the West. What we once looked on as our biggest challenge has actually become an advantage in operating in an overseas environment. Realizing that we had to provide a significant amount of training pushed us to evaluate how we would teach a new employee to be successful at our company. Like many of the evaluation tech niques that we have benefited from over the years, we learned again that knowing the answers proved less important than asking the questions. Before, we might have looked for great designers or amazing project managers. Now, we can quantify the set of characteristics that make a great designer or project manager, which means we can evaluate potential candidates and develop a plan to improve their performance within our defined metrics. On top of that, this forced us to define who we are as a company. Earlier I mentioned that stage of growth when things start to feel more like a company and less like a family. It is during these transitions that it is critical to define the culture and priorities of your company, because you must instill those same values in each and every one of your employees. Our challenge is not to find the perfect employee, but rather to find a person with great potential and groom him or her for success within our company. Our ideal
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A s we have grown, we have

Employee retention is another area where Asia is proving itself to be vastly different from more developed areas. It is not uncommon in China for a firm to experience turnover of 30 percent or more on an annual basis. Given this, it is extremely important that we put our efforts into building a work environment that our employees are proud to be a part of, something that is more than just a paycheck. I am proud to say that in every year since we have entered employee does not exist. Instead, we have to work hard to create Asia, our turnover rates have been far below the national average. the ideal employee by hiring those with the greatest potential for Other enterprises here are not always so lucky. success, and then developing their skills and knowledge through Prior to opening the companys first hotel in Shanghai, Hyatt continuous training. invested heavily in its future work force. Rigorous training sesYou dont have to look hard to find many firms making significant sions created a team of well-prepared associates, 120 of whom were investments in training and retaining their talent. The International present for the grand opening celebration in 2006. The trouble Hotel Group, for example, opened its first IHG academy in 2006 was, they were so well trained that Hyatts rivals started snatchin Shanghaitoday there are 150 such academies in China alone, ing them up, with one firm poaching 35 Hyatt employees less than which is a testament to the effectiveness of the program. 24 hours after the grand opening. Its not enough just to train someone how to do his or her job. MINDING YOUR INVESTMENTS Whether production line worker or senior manager, we must A program of heavy investment in your employees carries with it instill in all of our employees the desire to be a part of something some risks. Most notable is the risk that your employees will take bigger, a desire to do great things with a great team. Without the training and knowledge that you have provided and then leave that, it is likely that some employees will just jump ship to the you for another employer. next employer that offers them a little more pay or a slightly better title. D-O-D 1-4 PG AD AUG 2011_D-O-D 1-4 PG AD JULY 2011 8/4/11 2:24 PM Of course compensation and work environment play a large part in retaining employeeswhether it is performance-based bonuses, regular salary reviews, or just creating a team where employees feel that their contributions are valued. Engaged employees who feel their individual contributions are recognized as a key component of the team success have been, for us at least, much less likely to leave than workers who are just in it for a paycheck.

changed our outlook from seeking to hire superstars to understanding that it is our job to make superstars.

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SIMPLIFY AND FOCUS Having defined the areas where we feel we can develop our employees, our recruitment efforts have become simpler and more focused. Much of our time now is spent on evaluating just a few key employee dimensions, specifically those that are more challenging to develop. Most critical for us is understanding whether a specific candidate has potential, has the minimum required skills, and will be a good cultural fit within our organization. For everything else, we can test, coach, and ideally build our winning team from a group of high-potential individuals. In a small company, talent management can often seem like the furthest thing from your mind. But mark my words, understanding what your company is, who your people are, and what you need from each other is fundamental to your success as you grow from family to company.

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Mike Diliberto is g eneral manager, China, for Bloomington, Minn.-based Lynx Innovation Inc. Contact him at miked@lynxinnovation.com.

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