Sean: Why would some companies not attract talent? Was usually the problem and what's usually the solution?
Tony: Well, the first thing I always say to people who are leaders and I've always felt it myself, is that if you're the smartest person in the room, you've got a problem because you shouldn't be the smartest person in the room. You might be the most well-rounded person in the room. If it's if we're talking about this, there should be somebody else in the room who's smarter than you are on it. Hiring is very difficult.
It's very difficult at the moment because there are so many new dynamics that you have to bear in mind working from home. You know, the hybrid model that people want work-life balance, which is a particularly important aspect. When I started, it was all about higher, faster, and stronger. We stayed up later, we worked harder.
And that's how you beat your opponents. But the new generation working in that, that isn't what motivates them. They're not necessarily motivated in the same way. So one of the things that can put people off is if you're still working to that kind of model I was CEO of, I would still be there if I had to be there at 1:00 in the morning working to get That's how I was trained to be.
But very quickly, you realize I can't go and expect that of everybody. In the old days, people expected me to stay later than my boss. And it's not right. And what you have to do is listen. One of the things that's interesting is that we still think and I'm as guilty of it as anybody. We still think sometimes in running our businesses in terms of almost military. We talk about campaigns. We talk about people who walk toward the gunfire. We tend to think about it in that sort of slightly confrontational, aggressive way. And that isn't how a lot of the newer entrants into the job market want to think they want to advance.
So I think the companies that fail are the ones that are not thinking about what it is that the new job entrants would look for. They want to know that you have a purpose. They want to know that you're thinking about more than just profit.
What are your environmental policies or charitable endeavors? How do you keep us together? How do you entertain us? What is your culture like? You know, and I do feel for many current leaders because I find that a sort of odd paradox of workforces that desperately want enlightened cultures, good working experience team they like are rewarded properly with the flip side of they want to come in when we have to or we want to do hybrid working because it is very difficult to create a culture when there is minimal contact.
But we will find a way through it. At the moment because we never legislated for it, it's going to be difficult and there are all sorts of wonderful experiments going on all over the world. A company I know called Hutch, which is a sort of production company that has gone four day week. Everybody is on four-day weeks. We have three-day long weekends.
And they did it well because the people who worked four days already had some. Well, I'm a part-time worker. I work four days. Their salaries went up, then paid full-time as if they were on five days. You know, I think we're going to see some best practices and we just all have to be prepared to learn from it.
But I think this whole thing about, Oh, millennials are terrible and Gen Z and we can't work, that's nonsense. You just have to listen to what they want. So I think the difficulties come from if you're still a fairly unenlightened employer, they can smell it on you.
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