I’ve been advising business on avoiding “New hire failure” for over twelve years. Too often, however, I’m asked to advise on a business after they’ve experienced an expensive and very time consuming new hire disaster.

Causes
Despite a great CV (Resume), powerful past experience, great qualifications (MBA) the biggest cause for new hire failure is an inability of the individual to make the transition from one job to another (promotion or business change).

The reasons given by team members and colleagues for a leadership failure always include some of the following:

• Inability to solve specific business problems
• Troubled relationships with the team
• Intimidating or bullying management style 
• Failure to develop team or subordinates
• Unable to deal with conflict
• Failure to adapt to new boss’ managment style
• Failure to build team (recruitment isues)
• Overuse of one mentor or advisor
• Inability to think strategically

The question is why?

After a robust interview process how is it that so many senior new hires fail due to the above list?
Here are some, but by no means all, of the reasons I find so often:

• Friend being appointed (always a problem)
• He did a great job for his previous company (But are the circumstances the same?)
• Sloppy hiring process (Failure to follow up on information)
• No integration process (or ignored due to seniority of hire)

I’ve noticed over the past few months that many businesses are concentrating on restructuring their sales teams as part of their business strategy. The problem is that so mant sales appointments fail to deliver what was anticipated.

Sales teams have contacted me to advise on how to select good salespeople. The point I always make is that whilst the interview is useful always worth check on the information given by the candidate. Follow up references,  check sales statistics given for previous posts and so on.

The next step is to integrate the individual into the team. Relying on just past experience for the individual to succeed is a recipe for job failure too often. Remember that only 60% of new hire salespeople succeed.The 40% that fail cost huge amounts of management time and lost opportunity costs.

One of my joys each week is listening to Lucy kellaway on the radio. Her latest broadcast focusses onto corporate guff and how sick-making words have arrived in China.

Her examples of “management bullshit” had me listen to the broadcast twice. (though in itself not unusual I would love to tell her that I prefer to listen to her in bed instead of reading a book)

“Uplifting meaningful customer experience”
The examples that had me laugh most were Standard Life’s use of “Employee Journey” to describe, I think, a job. Then there was “Uplifting meaningful customer experience” which is so woolly as to be meaningless and finally the company that was sharing “Thoughtware”.

In my experience the problem with corporate guff is that too many that listen to such rubbish nod their head sagely as if they have complete understanding of what’s being said, when they don’t. A few years ago I came across a business consultant that was always desperate to use the latest corporate guff to his customers. He said that his clients were always impressed by his knowledge. As far as I knew most of his customers didn’t understand what he was talking about and he’s since ceased trading!
That’s what I call “A malfunctioned career experience”

My thirteen years of working with teams to make them more effective and profitable has taught me to never “count one’s chickens” as far as agreed team actions are concerned.

The Greek Prime Minister’s decision to announce a referendum on the aid package to solve its debt crisis demonstrates that very effectively. Too often I’ve been asked to help a situation where everyone thinks they’ve come to an agreement only to find that someone has changed their mind. It leaves everyone stunned, perplexed, angry or open mouthed. So I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall in Angela Merkel’s office in Germany when the news broke of the Greek announcement, I bet the air was blue!

Often happens in Board Rooms
But then I’ve seen it happen so often. Team agreements, Board Room discussion or Partnership meeting often agree a course of action and almost immediately afterwards someone changes their mind and does the exact opposite! For some it’s a game, for others it’s “Playing politics”

However, it generally happens when one person has been bullied into an agreement. Often it’s only after the meeting that the individual feels brave enough or angry enough to make a U-turn.

How to prevent it

• When you think you are helping an individual or team don’t assume you’re giving them “a gift” and that they’ll thank you for it
• Don’t bully people into a corner where they are obviously at a disadvantage and then assume that you have agreement.
• Secondly, provide the “loser” with lots of reassurance after the agreement that they’ve made the correct decision.
• Finally, provide support to take action that makes the individual “look good” to their team and to those being affected.