Super Jobs for You

The current financial crisis has owners, managers and employees worried about their companies, their jobs and their futures.

More than 20 years ago I went through something similar as a manager and employee.

The company I was working for eventually went into bankruptcy. I can see now that the leaders of the business could have handled the situation much better than they did. I could have done some things differently as well.

It wasn’t a pleasant descent from working for a solid midsize consumer products company to getting your paycheck in the form of a cashiers check every couple of weeks.

Looking back
Hindsight is almost always 20-20. I write this years later without malice or anger, just from a vantage point of someone who has gone through what many people today are experiencing: employed but with an uncertain future.

The company that employed me also employed some of the most dynamic and interesting people I have ever worked with and for. They were professionals and the politics, as improbable as it sounds, were so minimal that it was an absolute pleasure to work there. Everyone was focused on getting along and getting their jobs done.

The turbulence started when the company drifted into a cash crunch. One day we were flying along, safe and smooth, and the next day it seemed people were being bounced around without knowing what was happening.

The leadership responded by doing a cut-back on personnel. We were overstaffed, so the idea of some people being asked to leave wasn’t unexpected.

Not very many people left the first time there was a layoff. But three more layoffs followed at roughly 60 day intervals.

The leaders could have better communicated about what was taking place. No one liked working in the “dark” without some understanding of what was taking place. What I wished the leaders had done is leveled with everyone about what the situation actually was.

Like far too many people in an organization, I was making a good salary and was expected to be a good soldier, so who was I to ask the tough questions of the leaders?

I should have, because the truth then, as now, was that it was my company. I worked there too; I worked very hard there and was dedicated to the success of the organization.

I did not have skin in the game; I was not a shareholder. But I was taking a significant risk to my reputation, career and finances by working for a company that couldn’t afford to keep me on the payroll.

I should have had one of those “fierce conversations” with my boss and his boss to demand what was going on.

Loyal soldiers, however, whatever their rank, aren’t supposed to question the wisdom of generals. Generals by virtue of their rank are supposed to know everything.

The leaders could have developed and shared a plan that they wanted the managers and employees to implement with the goal of turning things around. That meant getting out of the cash crunch.
Later it surfaced that no one was getting financial reports explaining what had happened and no one was calculating any projections to see what was going to happen.

It was if the accounting and finance departments had stopped doing their jobs. Yet these folks showed up daily, acted as if they were doing something and kept getting paid. What they produced, no one knew.

Led by the blind
In short, the company was being lead by the blind. Not only didn’t the leadership know what was going on, they didn’t know when or how it would end.

As leaders, they failed the company because they did not have the proper tools to successfully manage the business.

As leaders, they failed the employees and the families of those employees by not communicating anywhere near as often as they could have or should have about what was taking place.

As leaders, they failed to understand the emotional impact of putting hard working and loyal people through the turmoil and pain of the long slide into bankruptcy.

In the book Good to Great, author Jim Collins refers to “facing the brutal facts of your current reality” and the leaders of this particular organization chose to ignore reality. They also ignored the brutal facts.

After almost a year of this, I was laid off, whatever that means. I took it to mean that I was out of work, in a city where I knew very few people. I felt anger, pain and despair, but I landed on my feet and moved on.

During that dark year I asked myself more than a few times “what is going to happen to me?” and the answer was always the same: when this job is over, find another one. It may take some time, but someone will hire you because good, hard working people are always in short supply.

Super Job Information gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for Zinc Die Casting Jobs look at this website. This Zinc Die Casting Blog will give you more information you can use for zinc castings.

When the Green Bay Packers football team hired Vince Lombardi as its new coach, he was intrigued with the challenge of turning the franchise around. Naturally, Lombardi being Lombardi, was all pumped up about it.

He began leading practices, inspiring, training and motivating. But at one point in a practice, he just got so frustrated with what was going on with the players that he blew the whistle.

“Everybody stop and gather around,” he said. Then he knelt down, picked up the pigskin, and said, “Let’s start at the beginning. This is a football. These are the yard markers. I’m the coach. You are the players.”

He went on, in the most elementary of ways, to explain the basics of football.

Small businesses, those with 500 or fewer employees, have 116 million workers on the payroll and produce half of the gross domestic product in the United States, according to the Department of Commerce. In a survey conducted by the National Small Business Association last month, 67 percent of owners surveyed were impacted by the current credit crunch; 63 percent were hit by harsher credit card terms and 32 percent are suffering from tougher bank loan terms.

Yet, a survey of adults conducted last weekend indicated that 58 percent of Americans believe that the country will enjoy better times within a year.

The question is: What can a business do to succeed until better times arrive?

Like Lombardi, it might be a very good idea to go back to the beginning and back to the basics. In my mind that first lesson is by asking if the current business model your organization is operating under is viable and asking what can be done to strengthen it.

An excellent place to do this assessment is to visit Wikipedia, type in “business model” in the search box and review what is posted.

There are many examples provided that offer excellent ideas to compare and contrast to your current model.

From these examples ideas should surface that might be worth considering.

The National Football League business model has changed dramatically through the years.
When Lombardi was the coach of the Packers, the team made money by selling tickets to each game and from concessions (food and drink).

Now, in addition to selling season tickets (the waiting list is around 45 years for the Packers) the franchise has guaranteed revenue through a revenue sharing plan from broadcasting rights; and also makes money on merchandise, luxury boxes; sponsorships of every kind and shares a salary cap to keep payroll expenses under control.

Because of the constant revising and updating of the NFL business model, the value of each franchise has increased almost every year.

The Pittsburgh Steelers were bought by Daniel Rooney in 1933 for $2,500 was recently valued at over $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

The second lesson is to review current staff to see if they are helping or hurting the team.
When Lombardi took over at Green Bay, he was open-minded about his players and coaching staff. He knew his “main thing” was to win football games and do to that, he needed the best available personnel.

During his tenure, Lombardi had difficult talks with players and coaches about what was expected and he made it clear that better results would be necessary to stay on the team.

Lombardi did what he needed to do for the improvement of the team.

Doing these assessments wasn’t a one-time thing for Lombardi; he had a game each week and each week he reviewed every player. His best players were not immune from either his assessments or his talks.

He knew that the longer the under-performing personnel were allowed to stay under performing while taking a check the louder the message was being sent that this level of performance was accepted and appreciated.

Lombardi did not enjoy letting people go, but he understood that it was unfair to the rest of the team to keep a player who was not performing.

The third lesson was that Lombardi understood that it was up to him to take responsibility for the results of his team.

He knew that each of the teams he was playing against had the same number of players, the same league-approved equipment to work with; the same footballs to use during practice and in the games.

His only available competitive advantage, therefore, were his players.

Lombardi believed in practice. In business terms, he invested in the constant training of his players.

And while it may sound laughable to teach grown men who have played the game of football for years, Lombardi taught the basics.

Teaching the basics as head of the Packers paid off. He never had a losing season and his teams won three championships in a row, a record that still stands today. As a tribute to his work ethic, dedication and high standards of excellence, the NFL named the trophy awarded to the winning team of each Super Bowl the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Reviewing the current business model, training personnel in the basics and making tough decisions about “who is helping and who is not” are the keys to making it through the difficult times.

Super Jobs Information gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for Aluminum Castings Jobs look at this website. This SEO Information will give you more information you can use for Search Engine Optimization.