HR Expert - Tim Hansen

Levers help induce, drive or empower change in people. When will people change? What stops people from changing? FEAR (The Anticipation of Pain) is usually number one reason why people avoid change, even if staying in a current situation already causes a lot of pain. Below is a case study from a client of mine that chose to go through the process of facing her fears.

Lynn owned a golf driving range business providing golf carts to big golf clubs. She was spending a great deal of money on her marketing: hosting in-house networking events, treating people with food and wine, having staff go to other functions to represent her business. Lots of marketing activities and expenses, but very few results.

As a very busy entrepreneur she was juggling a lot of balls and she knew it wasn't serving her well at all. She had issues with her main partner and felt she needed to do everything by herself: closing sales, prospecting (which she didn't like), accounting, staff and HR related issues, sourcing new products, you name it!

Create a Team

Work your strengths and delegate your weaknesses to others whose strengths are your weaknesses.

The first recommendation I always make to my clients is to have them understand the importance of knowing in what ways they naturally 'operate', what way they attract opportunities, what ways they give value to others and how they can leverage; we do this by using a profiling methodology. There are 8 different ways you can 'operate' and only one way that fits you!

The Profiling Test, which each team member can take, captured all key pieces of information about Lynn: in which positions she best performs effectively and which she does not. The latter is critical to identify. It enabled Lynn to find her optimum path and maximize her ability to create and contribute, both in business and personally, because what she is doing in her business is not necessarily the same as who she is, naturally!

The profiling test takes the entire world of confusing, contradictory and convoluted information on team building and puts it into a coherent and comprehensive system and reveals the optimum 'game' each of us should play. It's only when we understand the specific 'game' that matches who we are, and then play our 'game' according to its rules, that we can maximise the success of what we do, individually and as a team. Then we get clarity on our path of least resistance to wealth creation and productivity: what our strategy should be, who we need in our team and how we should apply ourselves, when we should take action and - very importantly - when we should not.

By doing this, Lynn found that her very best skills were setting up systems, fine tuning operations and documenting how her business could run smoothly without her needing to be there all the time. Some of her weaknesses were following up on prospects and clients and going to networking functions where she needed to be polite to people that didn't interest her at all. By understanding this she could start focusing on delegating promotional tasks to her existing team that enjoyed this type of activity, and she could begin to document every move to systemise her business. One of her goals was to be able to franchise her business model out and her profile happened to be a 100% match in regards to making this a reality. To do this, you must be extremely detail oriented and knowing what your strategy is, which we walked through from the Wealth profile, is a 6 steps process.

Clear communication leads to success.

Lynn realised that she needed a key partner to take care of the marketing and sales activities, and with the knowledge about her own profile she now understood this person would think and act in a very different way from herself.

She was in unknown territory and had fears about how to find the right person without incurring a lot of extra costs, as she was still only running at break even point. At this point I told her, "The better you can outline your perfect candidate, the easier it is for your trusted network to assist you in getting the person to you, quickly. The more specific you can describe the position, the easier it is for someone to identify if he/she can be of value, or not". Again, Clarity is Power.

We wrote up a job description for Lynn's perfect candidate and disposed of her fears since she now knew what her own strengths were and, very importantly, how she attracts and gives value and how she does not. Most people really don't know WHAT they want or are looking for! I told Lynn she should be prepared to receive a lot of different opportunities because of how specifically she expressed what she was looking for. Opportunities come from different parts of your network and each will be a new way for you to create wealth. They usually lie in one of the following areas:

• Financing
• Business & Investment
• Productivity
• Expansion
• Efficiency

The 6 criteria to use to check if the opportunity presented is for you or not, are:

1. Does it fit my passions & purpose?
2. Does it allows me to create value?
3. Will I be able to create leverage for myself and others?
4. If this opportunity fails, will it steer me (motivate) or will it sink me (permanent damage)?
5. What specific learning outcomes motivates this opportunity?
6. Does the return (on my time and efforts) inspire enough to go ahead?

Rate all points between 1 and 10, 1 being 'no way' and 10 'absolutely'. Using the technique created massive clarity for Lynn when she spoke to candidates about what they could give and what value they could bring to her. Lynn was thrilled with her results.

I was excited for Lynn and what this meant for the future of her business. Once she found her key sales and marketing arm, her sales exploded overnight, and at the same time she is documenting every process and is looking to have her franchise document ready in the 4th quarter of 2008.
Note: The names of the people and businesses in this case study has been changed to ensure the privacy of the people involved, but the details, recommendations and results are based on actual events.