Why the Status Quo Isn’t Good Enough

If you don’t like change, you will like irrelevance even less.
General Erick Shinseki

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Jack Welch

The majority of people hate change.  Change increases uncertainty, impacts trust, challenges relationships, and if poorly implemented can make people fearful of the future.  It is these potential consequences that make managers advocate the status quo, and look at change and innovation with a skeptical eye.  When you consider the potential negative consequences along with the amount of work necessary to define and implement change initiatives, it is no wonder that many managers opt for the status quo.

However, the staffing industry is continuously changing and if managers do not learn to adapt to those changes, their company will invariably become less and less competitive.  Take for example the continuous improvements of applicant tracking systems.  From social media integration to more effective CRM capabilities, these directly impact the productivity of the production team as well as management assuming effective implementation.  It does not stretch the imagination to realize that managers who enable their team to leverage these capabilities will have a competitive advantage over ones who choose to simply embrace the status quo.

The continual and rapid improvement of applicant tracking systems represents a small example compared to other forces that driving change in the staffing industry. A few months ago I wrote an article for the SI Review on Understanding the Competitive Forces of IT staffing. The article focuses on three of the five of Michael Porter’s competitive forces and how they will continually challenge staffing firms to identify and implement meaningful improvements.  These forces include the Bargaining Power of Buyers, the Threat of Substitutes and Rivalry among Competitors.  Additional forces include increased visibility of the candidate pool along with legislative and regulatory changes.  All these forces thrust the status quo into irrelevancy and justify this basic premise:

In order to ensure long term sustainability, staffing executives and managers must dedicate time and resources to identify and effectively implement high impact improvements that are tailored to the company’s sales strategy, operations, and performance culture.

It is important to remember that change is disruptive, so managers must be selective on the improvements they choose and how they implement them.  Below are success factors that will ensure the management team is able to break through the status quo and prepare the company to reach the next level of performance.  There will be a further drilldown into each one of these factors over the next four newsletters.

Ensure Management is Not Too Internally Focused: Management must be aware of how the industry is evolving and how well the company matches up versus the competition.   How strong are their hiring practices?  How competitive are our compensation plans?  Can critical process be automated?  How effective is the sales strategy?  Are we effectively servicing our clients?  Is our team motivated and focused?   Managers with a balanced perspective on the above questions are able to objectively evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their operation and effectively prioritize what improvements will have the biggest impact.

Dedicate Time to Challenge the Status Quo: It is important to remember that the status quo has momentum and management must actively intervene to challenge it and implement improvements. Continuous improvement workshops provide an excellent forum to pull key employees, managers, and executives together in a room and answer a simple question.  Where do we need to improve in the next six to twelve months in order to remain competitive?

Develop a Plan with Clear Accountabilities: Oftentimes after workshops are completed management feels a sense of accomplishment.  These premature feelings of accomplishment oftentimes lay the ground work for ineffective implementation.  It is important to understand that even the best solutions poorly implemented can weaken an organization while average solutions properly implemented can still make an organization stronger.  Elements of a strong implementation plan include ownership, clear milestones, and frequent collaboration between key stakeholders to ensure the changes are producing the desired improvements.

Measure your Progress: Most companies have performance and operational metrics that provide visibility into how an organization is doing at any point in time.  However, progress needs to be measured as well in order to ensure that the improvements are being implemented properly and if so are producing the desired results.  Measuring progress requires dedicated metrics that are compared over a period of time.

In the end, it is management’s responsibility to rise above the day to day business issues, periodically challenge how the business is currently conducted, identify improvements, and implement solutions.    While the above may seem like a lot of work, organizations that do not dedicate time and resources to drive continuous improvement run the risk of becoming less and less competitive and more and more irrelevant. So while embracing the status quo may be the easiest path, doing so is equivalent to management malpractice.