What Do Top Performing Firms Have in Common?
In the book “Breaking Through: Leadership Disciplines from Top Performing Staffing Firms”, authors Barry Asin and Mike Cleland researched the biggest, most successful, top performing firms in the country to find the shared qualities that determine their success. Here are five of those qualities summarized:
Commitment
To succeed in staffing, you have to be committed to building your business – and it starts at the top. The leadership team has to ask the most important question. Why are you in business? If it’s to succeed and grow, you can’t just put in a half effort.. The simple reason that most staffing firms do not grow is that they don’t want to. Success means sacrificing time with your family, or taking big risks like investing your own money in your business for a time.
Direction
Even if you and your team are 100% committed, a rudderless firm will soon find themselves adrift in a sea of tight competition. That’s why direction is the second key quality that most successful firms share in common. The decisions you make about your firm from the outset are critically important when it comes to success. What customers will you serve? Will it be in a specific industry? A big part of a successful strategy is also to determine what you are not going to do. To succeed, it is critical to say no to business that does not align with your goals.
Culture
While there is no one answer to what your company culture should be, the most successful firms have pervasive cultures that are driven from the top, aligned with strategy, and consistent in all things big and small. Culture is not just your mission statement. It’s much more about how you create and motivate your team – who you fire, who you hire, and who you promote. Actions speak louder than words when it comes to embodying the culture you develop.
Talent Development
Finding good people is critical in staffing, and that goes for both your internal team and your temporary employees. Talent development goes beyond just hiring though. It includes the training, development, and motivation of your recruiters and others in your company.
Execution
Finally, we come to the last key discipline: execution. Some firms want to jump right to execution, but it’s important to have the other disciplines in place first. Execution is all about identifying essential practices, scaling key processes, and then replicating results over multiple organizations. Easy to say – and very hard to do. Executing from a standard operating system and practices makes opening up new business units or training new leadership easier than “winging it.” Successful staffing firms follow a playbook, and that makes it easier to grow.