What You Will Learn [expanded list]

Best Practices for Recruiting Talent

1. Why half of new hires will fail (and how you can quickly transform your hiring process)
   We’ll show you the results of a groundbreaking study on the real reasons why new hires fail.  You’ll learn to diagnose mishires and hiring failures in your company to discover their root causes.  And you’ll get specific tactics that will reduce “mishires” by 80% or more (including the questions that are always asked in interviews that should never be asked).  You’ll also learn how to get the upper-hand with candidates that are hyper-prepared to beat your interviews.

2. How Google and Southwest hire stars (that fit with their culture)
   These companies have discovered the critical elements that determine success (and failure) in their companies.  We’ll show you Google’s cutting-edge “biodata” approach (and learn why it’s greatly improving their success rates vs. their previous interview approach).  You’ll learn Southwest’s “Brown Shorts” method for hiring candidates with the perfect attitude.  You’ll learn how to adapt both approaches to your company and hire that perfect mix of skills and attitude.  You’ll be developing actual interview scripts to bring home and start using immediately.

3. How to develop an employment brand for recruiting advantage
   You’ll learn how these great companies build brands that permeate the workforce to fill their applicant pipeline (both companies get thousands of applications every day).  You’ll learn how to create an employment brand, and move beyond transparent gimmicks like posters, slogans and advertising.  You’ll learn an “open source” approach to creating your employment brand, from leveraging free technology (like blogs and social network sites) to creating employee evangelists.  You’ll learn how to leverage the psychological drivers that make employees ready to build and evangelize your brand (if you know how to ask them).

4. Breakthrough tactics for overcoming workforce shortages
   You’ll learn the root causes of workforce shortages and how you can forecast and avoid them with remarkable accuracy using a powerful (but easy) financial modeling technique.  You’ll learn how to mobilize untapped labor pools, systematically redesign key job roles to alleviate shortages, and avoid compensation “price wars” during intense shortages.  You’ll learn dozens of instantly implementable approaches to solving short and long term shortages, from referrals to narrowcasting to direct sourcing and dozens more.  We’ll also teach you the best practices for structuring recruiting departments and assigning responsibilities to maximize (and increase) recruiting expertise.

5. How the Ritz-Carlton does onboarding and employee orientations
   Only 15% of employees can correctly identify their company’s strategy, values and competitive advantage.  Roughly half of new managers will fail within the first 18 months on the job.  As troubling as these findings are, they could largely be fixed through effective onboarding and employee orientations.  You’ll learn a day-by-day roadmap for onboarding programs (designed for both employees and leaders).  You’ll also learn how to avoid future performance problems through intense, systematic and truly educational orientations (we’ll use the Ritz-Carlton as our guide).

Best Practices for Retaining Talent

6. Seven hidden keys to employee loyalty
   We’ve studied more than 100,000 leaders and 500,000 employees and you’ll learn what makes these people stay (and what makes them quit).  And we’ll show you actionable recommendations for immediately increasing employee loyalty in your organization.  You’ll get a tool for diagnosing employee loyalty and predicting problems before they blow up.  You’ll receive a formal process for getting managers to take ownership of the issue and generate greater loyalty employee-by-employee. 

7. What you should never ask in employees surveys (and what to ask instead)
   When employee surveys are done incorrectly, they can actually lead to employee unrest (and even labor problems).  We’ll show you the science of designing insightful questions and analyses you should conduct.  You’ll also receive an employee survey you can immediately use in your organization to diagnose your culture, employee loyalty, leadership pipeline and more.

8. Why exit interviews can point you in the wrong direction
   There are lies, damn lies and statistics.  Even though exit interviews seem to point out deep issues (assuming the questions have been asked correctly), they can still be misleading.  Employees may reveal a demotivator, but if it’s a demotivator they’ve always experienced and expect to experience again, it may have little predictive relevance for identifying their true demotivators.  The issue that really pushed them out the door may be lurking under all the obvious answers, occurring less frequently, but with much greater emotional importance.  We’ll show you three market research techniques that reveal what people are really thinking and how to apply them to exit interviews. 

9. What to do when a star employee quits
   If your biggest customer quit, every salesperson (and executive) in your organization would move heaven and earth to save them.  But when employees quit, managers passively react with guilt, shame or anger (not productive emotions when it comes to saving someone from quitting).  You’ll learn a 6-step process that will undo as much as 60% of employee resignations, even after they’ve handed you their letter of resignation.  You’ll also learn the indicators that tell you when you should (and shouldn’t) try to undo a resignation.

10. Protecting against employee burnout
    When employees are getting burned out, there are warning signs everywhere.  And when you can identify those signs, you can prevent burnout (and the resignations that inevitably follow).  You’ll get an early-warning system for identifying employee burnout and practical steps for reducing burnout while the symptoms are small.

11. Motivating multiple generations
    When the Greatest Generation manages Millennials, or vice versa, watch out.  But increasingly, managers are being asked to lead highly diverse workforces and generational gaps.  We’ll show you specific tools for significantly increasing managers’ ability to lead across generations.  You’ll also learn how generational differences impact employee loyalty, and dozens of tactics for motivating each of the unique generations in your company.

Best Practices for Developing Talent

12. How GE does succession planning (and leadership pipelines)
    GE’s ability to develop 3 or more great candidates for every leadership position is legendary.  They represent the ideal for “bench strength.”  But they weren’t always that way, and in fact, they’re always adapting their approach to keep pace with the world around them.  You’ll learn how to build a succession plan, using GE as a framework.  You’ll identify the critical success factors for your leaders, how to conduct intensive succession planning reviews, and what to do with your high potential candidates.

13. How to implement career mapping and mentoring (to help employees develop their strengths)
    One of the most effective mechanisms for building employee loyalty is to develop each employee’s unique talents and put them in job roles that allow them to succeed.  Most companies talk about doing this, but very few do it well.  We’ll show you a concrete approach for leveraging employee’s strengths and building unique career maps that leverage those strengths and interests.  You’ll also get a roadmap for developing mentoring programs and making them add real value to managers and employees.

14. Make performance reviews a meaningful process that managers & executives value
    Only 6% of CEOs think their performance review process is meaningful.  And only 13% of employees think it’s worthwhile.  We’ll show you the 5 critical flaws in most performance review processes, and immediate steps you can take to leverage this tool to create value and enhance your culture.
    
    
15. How Goldman Sachs does leadership development
    Leadership development is a multidimensional process that ranges from training to coaching to new job experiences.  We’ll show you how to identify the right mix of tactics for your organization.  And you’ll learn the specific tactics that companies like Goldman-Sachs, GE, Valero and others are using to develop their leaders at all levels.
    
    
16. Getting managers to take responsibility for talent management
    HR and senior executives can only do so much.  Ultimately the success or failure of any talent management strategy will rest with frontline and middle managers.  We’ll show you several processes for easing them into talent management, demonstrating real value to them and building a core group of early-adopters that can sell your strategies to everyone else.  You’ll also learn how to strengthen managerial accountability.