Greatness is a team act

“We are, each of us, angels with only one wing, and we can only fly embracing each other.”  – Luciano Decrescenzo

Like me Luciano must have believed it is too hard to achieve greatness alone. The focus on the individual  genius in business, the push for a ‘personal brand’ takes us further from the reason humans have become the dominant species on the plant: our strength is in our ability to co-operate.

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Co-operation is our greatest strength. Whether that be physical co-operation (circling the wagons) for our safety or intellectual co-operation, sharing medical research, we get better outcomes when we work together. When we are isolated we do less work which means we achieve little, as we preserve our energy to survive till help arrives.

Humans have very complex social structures underlying our survival and quest for greatness. Co-operation not competition brings out our best. The smallest workable unit is the couple, then a family of three, to villages and then tribes. Where do you belong?

About Lucian o Decrescenzo

Luciano Decrescenzo, the Italian writer, filmmaker, and intellectual, has published 28 books on subjects ranging from Greek philosophy to his own childhood in Naples. He was born in 1928 and worked as an engineer for IBM for several years before turning to philosophy and writing. He has also directed, written, and starred in a number of Italian language films and received honorary Athenian citizenship in 1994.

 

 

What about us? Growing your talent from within

staff trainingAn interesting statistic that shows recruiting good staff is getting harder “Spending per employee on recruiting went up 6% this year…which is more than 3X the money spent on the training of internal candidates.”

So why don’t companies spend more money training existing loyal and product savvy staff to take on these new roles?

Not because they don’t have enough talent already, but because there is no established or efficient way of managing internal mobility options. Managers do not have effective ways of identifying existing skills and desire to move outside of the staff in their own departments.

We certainly don’t want all our staff ready with updated resumes anticipating or actively searching for new positions within or our business and certainly not outside. We don’t want to give our staff an urge to move. Yet many larger companies are losing their existing talent through boredom being in the same role too long or not seeing a clear career path to give them a long term perspective inside the business. But imagine if as part of staff’s initial employment process or later during a career planning program we are able to create a register of our existing talent.

For sales based organizations SIP can provide a company wide ‘Sales and Service Capacity Audit’ of existing staff providing a register of staff interested in considering other roles with clear indications of their sales capacity as well as their current product and industry knowledge. Combined with using SIP in its recruitment format this would allow managers literately at the press of a button to list amongst the current staff those with potential sales ability and existing product knowledge.

To find out how to maximize your company’s existing talent pool contact Maya Saric

Want more reading on why finding the right staff is crucial?

 

It’s fun to play games together

We played a fabulous family game on one Saturday afternoon  recently. We’re a game playing family. Amongst our recent favourites is Uno (a classic) Tri-Domino’s (travels well) and Dragonology (world’s most complex game
for the under 100’s).

Saturday was a mum favourite; ‘Clean the Fridge’. Luckily Luke, Mr almost 11 who is good at cleaning, is capable of turning everything
into a competition!

Game on!

The rules:

Clear kitchen bench top and dining room table

Remove everything from refrigerator door to bench top

Remove contents of each shelf to different corner of the dining room  table

Remove shelves to sink for mum to wash

Dry shelves

Luke to return shelves to original position (Luke’s also good at fine details and loves the puzzle of making things fit). See photo….mum asks; can I help? Luke answers; NO I’m not giving up.

Total game time: 30 minutes! Wahoo!