Leadership Ladder

Welcome back! It’s another #3NoMoreThan5 in 5 and this is Part 3 of my SOS series. To all of you subscribers, thank you so much for being part of the subscription family. I appreciate you! I hope these videos, tips and blog posts are helping you think about what you do. Prompting perhaps creativity and allowing you to apply some of these tips and tricks in your day to day activity. 

But back to SOS — The SOS call went out because Laura had a challenge and she had to find a way to work through it. In the second installment, Executing the SOS, I provided Laura with a framework. A plan to help her get through this challenge. In this third installment, this is Team SOS. We don’t accomplish much if we do this on our own. I needed to observe Laura working through this and shape how she was moving forward. As I gave Laura the framework of what to do, I tasked her; go out there and bring the talent acquisition and manager teams together. Drive that, facilitate that and get them speaking the same language. To her credit, Laura also engaged the directors! These are the supervisors of the hiring managers. As senior leadership, the directors got so excited about the plan that they set up a count down clock so we could track of how we were progressing and to motivate the hiring managers to keep on that efficiency track. Prior to the being put into place we were averaging 140 to 170 days of cycle time. That’s the moment we put a posting out to the time an individual is hired. The goal was 60 days of cycle time. Something we’ve never accomplished before and a real stretch, but it showed the level of commitment and engagement that the directors had in this endeavor. And Laura, to her credit again, made sure that the VP of our cyber team understood what we were doing, new what the roles were and was also engaged in the process. 

Through all of this, Laura and I would have 1:1 calls and I would observe from afar how things were going. Initially, there was some pushback from some of the managers, but because Laura had the buy-in from the directors she was able to leverage them and crack the whip sometimes to get these managers back on the team. With the VP aware of what we were doing, there was a lot of high-level support and accountability that was now part of this process. 

With everyone coming together — Talent acquisition, hiring managers, directors and even the Vice President of this organization — Laura was able to bring the team both to a level of engagement and execution that landed us at a window of 70 days of cycle time. Didn’t quite hit the 60 day mark, but a huge improvement from where we were before. 

I wanted to make sure Laura had a framework, that she could adapt and that she was empowered to make this her own. It was really fulfilling to watch her take this project, engage all the stakeholders and now come out with a process that she owned and could be applied in future challengers. Whether that’s this role or a future role. 

I hope that through this SOS series you’ve had a chance to think about how you can Show, Observe and Shape. Or perhaps ask your manager or senior leader to do the same with you. All of this with the intent to make you and the organization better. Again, thank you for being part of the subscription family. I hope this was helpful, I’d love your feedback. Until next time, cheers!