Path through the Noise
by Ted Konnerth

Many years ago, when I was VP for a large manufacturing company, we had endured a serious operational setback when we converted to a new software program at the same time we were moving production from one facility to another. The result was sheer operational HELL; we couldn't ship the right order to the right customer at the right price for months. When we did ship a full order, it was the wrong stuff, if we shipped it on time; it was to the wrong customer, etc. etc. As VP, Sales, with a staff of over 45 sales managers and a field sales organization over 1,000; suffice it to say that we were inundated with customer complaints; some that were less than polite.

In response, I called a national sales meeting and brought in every sales manager and gave them a speech that basically said your job is to be a regional sales manager; which in plain speak means; travel the region and sell product. Your job isn’t the complaint manager, so stick to the path; stick to promoting the products and refer and/or defer every service complaint to the people who were trained and paid for handling service complaints and get back to selling. I told them they needed to stay on their path; the path towards selling products and try as best as possible to avoid long diversions from the noise of our internal production difficulties. Be polite, be professional, but remain true to the path through the noise. We grew sales despite our service problems. Yes, it took a couple of reminder calls to a few of the RSM's about the PATH, but it worked. The service people handled the service calls, we eventually solved our production problems and we grew sales; exactly what a 'sales' team is supposed to do.

The maelstrom surrounding our daily lives these days reminds me of those heady service problem days. We're incapable of getting through a day without 20 emails that report the latest economic threat, the number of new layoffs and the projections of those incessant 'experts' on when the sky will fall. I never knew how many high-priced people can be employed by 50 networks to do nothing but offer their opinion on what's going to happen next. The noise is deafening. We talk to our clients about their plans for growth, how they will grow sales or profits; introduce new products and maximize their market share and a large number of them reply with answers that have been honed by repeating the drone of the impending crisis du jour. It's noise. It plugs up the system. It takes all of us off task and renders us borderline useless.

From my perspective of the staffing aspects of this industry, the perceived surfeit of talent isn’t a benefit to most companies. Most companies’ needs are very narrowly defined, such that the talent requirements to accomplish the solution are rarely found in the Resume Inbox. Yes, there are good people out of work right now, but how many of them are a specific 'fit' for addressing the core issue within your company? And how many hours of time can anyone devote to sorting through the thousands of new entrants into the marketplace? The system right now is as noisy as I've seen it. For those people who have left a job, the competition to be heard above the thundering herd is daunting. For those who are actively looking for talent solutions; the ability to wade through a sea of paper to identify the right fit is insurmountable. As a rule, we don't 'post jobs' on any job board, because the noise of replies takes us off our path to success. 

As Mom always said; "this too shall pass". The noise is approaching deafening levels right now. The system is becoming more difficult to manage through and yet there are companies who are hiring, right now. Most companies who have announced large layoffs are also hiring, right now, but there's no press release for hiring.  The perceived glut of talent is far smaller than it's portrayed and the quantity of excellent talent is still microscopic. The resumes stacking up in your HR department or in your inbox are mostly a clog in the system. And even worse, they detract from identifying the right solution, in pursuit of the easy solution.

Every company should be lean-sizing their organizations. From a perspective of direct or indirect labor, there may be compelling reasons to wholesale reduce employment, but lean doesn't mean removing the strategic talent requisite to crafting the very solution to the current problem. Lean should include reducing the noise in the system. Remove any impediments to following the path to success, attract those people who can develop a better path or who can attend to the chosen path with more commitment and rigor. Deafness can be a virtue at times like these.