Alignment F
By Brad Harker, Author and Sales Growth Advisor
The Secret of HighPerforming Organizations
inding and retaining talent is often cited as a significant challenge for businesses in southern Utah. In a recent study of our local businesses, 45 percent of respondents agreed that “finding and retaining talent” negatively impacted their business in 2021. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, employee turnover was approaching 27 percent per year, costing U.S. business owners one trillion dollars annually. As I engage with business owners throughout the country, a few related questions often quickly bubble to the surface. Where can I find the right people? How do I motivate them? What can I do to create a culture for them to succeed?
To truly unleash the intrinsic motivation of your employees, you must first reach them at a personal level and understand what inspires them.
So what is the secret? After engaging with some of the best and worst organizations, here are two secrets I have discovered to find and retain talented employees.
Alignment High-performing organizations understand the power of alignment (when job functions complement core competencies). A great example of alignment comes from the “first who, then what” metaphor popularized by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. Collins’s research found that high-performing organizations prioritized finding the best talent and properly placing that talent in the right positions above the direction of the business. This organizational alignment, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Alignment impacts performance on an individual level as well. To illustrate, Bain and Company recently completed a study contrasting the productivity of employees who were classified as being either satisfied, engaged, or inspired in the workplace. Here were the results:
38 Southern Utah Business Magazine :: Winter 2021
