Five Tactics To Win The Talent War.

1. Remove Rigid Job Descriptions: The days of drawing up rigid job descriptions are over. People want variety, flexibility and a sense of self-determination in their work. Instead, give your staff a constantly evolving set of projects (tasks that have an end) and prototypes (tasks that are ongoing). Those who produce the best outputs gain more responsibility and can literally be promoted monthly. And conversely you can quickly trim back the projects or prototype responsibilities of those who aren't delivering.

2. Internal Promotions: Gain a reputation for backing people who already work within your organisation. Over 90% of Blueprint’s management team originated from entry-level positions within the company. This built a loyal and committed staff culture, which ensured people hit the ground running when promoted rather than taking time to find their feet. And there peers in seeing them recognised put in more effort to ensure they would be next.

3. Keep Score: People want to be involved in the success of the company, yet profit or share price is often demotivating or out of the control of the average employee. Instead, develop a magic metric – the one figure that dictates ultimate success (e.g. % of time in the opposition half for a soccer team, or number of property listings for a real estate firm). This narrow focus ensures you celebrate success and sets milestones that will help your people play the game of business to win.

4. Openly Communicate: As leaders we often assume people know what is going on because an email was sent, or we assume they don’t need to or want to know some of the big picture strategies we are working on. To engage and inspire your workforce you need to communicate with them regularly across different media. Every Friday afternoon we held a ‘fire-down’ where departments shared their wins, humorous happenings and changes if they could. Every quarter we would hold a ‘director’s launch’ for everyone on staff to communicate the focus for the upcoming 90 days.

5. Empowerment: Let go of your 1980’s inspired micro-management techniques and instead start to trust your people to make better decisions than you. This includes giving them progressive financial approval limits and implementing a decision-making methodology allowing people to make good decisions with confidence.