Before Christmas 2022 I held several days of recruitment training for all the store managers of a very well known multinational company which is one of the clients I really like for its real concern for employee development.
It was a perfect opportunity for me to risk twisting the knife once more. To help heal, you know I'm not a sadist. Not one bit.
The occasion was the subject: Fluctuation or lack of staff. I've been thinking a lot about how I can be really useful and how to shake up the paradigm of thinking of the participants and I want to tell you about the impact of this.
Do you consider it understaffed? Or a lot of staff turnover?
Does it affect you in any way?
Do you consider this a problem?
Well, it must be. But it does nothing to help you focus on the problem. We've had staff shortages and turnover for long enough to take it for granted. Accept it as a truth and a reality.
How can you still be profitable or even more profitable under conditions of staff shortage or turnover? Here's the question I propose. And I've put it to the managers I was telling you about.
They were amazed, but not negative. They wanted to know more. I told them that we are in the same context as farmers in Romania who, for over 20 years, have seen that there are no longer 4 seasons and yet they farm in the same way, based on the same cycle that no longer exists. Isn't that masochism?
We moved on. I told them I was going to risk it. That before I talk to them about recruitment, I want to talk to them about the Law of Duality. About how everything has advantages and disadvantages, we're just not trained to look for both. If we're in a positive situation, we're used to seeing only the advantages. So if you have enough staff, you only see the advantages. If you're understaffed, you only see the disadvantages.
From this imbalance, you expose yourself to making bad decisions.
For the decision you make to be the best for you and your goals, it's essential to get into balance. Emotionally and mentally.
For this balance, we coached them to find the advantages of understaffing for them as managers and the disadvantages of a full staffing scheme. Also for them as managers. How does that sound? What do you think, they found in each? Sure. Even more disadvantages of the full scheme.
Next Monday I'll tell you what they put on each list. It may help you. It's a different perspective.
Until then, I invite you to look at each wish/plan as a list of disadvantages (because the advantages you surely know) and each negative situation as a source of advantages (the disadvantages you surely know even better).
See how you feel and evaluate over time what decisions you make that way.
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