3 Ingredients To Out-Compete The Big Guys For Consistently Superior Business Results
Why not manage your talent flexibly to get superior results, like NHL teams do, working around salary cap limits to ice a consistently competitive team?
Most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worry about not meeting productivity and revenue growth targets due to talent shortages. You can use your smaller size to advantage by being more agile than your competitors. By adopting a plug and play approach, tapping into proven talent that complements your employees.
Expand your talent available with an untapped, pre-qualified pipeline and use talent more flexibly than the competition. Here’s a quick and easy approach to managing for superior results over for the short and long term. It’s based on my experiences as a SMB owner and leader, large company executive, and consultant, contractor, fractional executive, freelancer, the experiences of many talented people – and yes as a hockey fan. This Globe and Mail article quotes me on this approach.
Like NHL teams, you’re probably operating your SMB under a hard salary cap. In a results-driven business, it’s become a critical part of those team’s on ice success to find flexible ways to optimize the talent available to them. To overcome poor performances or injuries, they may bury salary in the minors or on long term injured reserve to free up salary cap space. Then use that space to fill experience gaps on their PK, between the pipes, or bring in a shutdown defenceman at the trade deadline. Maybe sprinkle in a PTO (professional tryout) here and there.
The point is, they are constantly refining their talent mix, using approaches and tools to work around maxed out budgets.
Think Like a Capologist. Use Free Agents and A Farm Team.
You don’t need to employ a capologist like NHL teams do, and you’re not going to bury salary (we’ll leave severance out of it). But you can think like a capologist and use relevant tools now available to flexibly and dynamically optimize your talent mix, including sourcing untapped proven external talent – independent consultants, contractors, freelancers, fractionals. You can absolutely tilt the ice in your favour and compete with the biggest players in your market.
Fitting More Talent Under Your Salary Cap to Achieve “Perpetual Agility”
Just like NHL teams, you’d like to build your business to deliver top tier results ongoing, not just for a season or two. You’d really like to have the confidence that you can be continuously nimble over the long term, regardless of what comes your way. And that’s where your experience of not being able to easily find affordable, effective talent makes it hard to see a better path forward.
But there is one now, and it’s easily implemented and cost-effective. We call it Perpetual Agility (PA). Your SMB can create the conditions to achieve what PA by adopting 3 key ingredients.
Let’s explain the 3 ingredients by continuing the NHL analogy:
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Think Like a Capologist. Adopt a flexible workforce approach, which just means using external talent like independent consultants, contractors, freelancers, and fractional contracts. This will include a bit of a mindset change for you and your team. It may in fact feel quite liberating to your team, as they see how they can turbocharge the business using external talent dynamically.
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Insert new talent through free agency, the draft and a farm team. Tap into a reliable, proven, affordable talent pipeline, such as the high value from age 45+ businesspeople. Ensure your pipeline is reliable as your go-to source for ongoing needs, and curates talent for a fast time to shortlist.
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Use the farm team for easy talent access. Use a talent pipeline that offers dynamic, reliable, on-demand, self-serve access to that prequalified talent pool.
Your SMB can Work Around Its Salary Cap Too
Instead of bringing in a proven powerplay scorer, you could bring in talent to address both your strategic and operational needs. There are numerous ways to engage external talent even more flexibly than you have – independent consultants, contractors, freelancers, fractional contracts. For example, with a focus on age 45+ talent and the 5 ways they create business value:
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when your budget is really tight, and/or there is a fairly narrowly defined requirement, you can bring in relevant talent for a few meetings, for feedback, brainstorming, or networking.
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when you have more complex and/or cross functional requirements, or want multiple points of view, you can bring in multiple complementary talent.
To be more specific, you could bring in:
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a proven business development expert for 2 days per week for a couple of months to create your sales playbook and train your sales staff
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a procurement leader for a month’s contract to provide some optimization guidance
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a day’s meeting with a user experience (UX) pro to provide guidance on improving yours
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a mid-level experienced finance person to solidify your systems and approaches, for whatever your budget allows – a few weeks or more
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for your first international business plan, use small portions from each of several people experienced with the market you target, for culture/customs, language, regulations, channels, competitors, customers
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to address your climate plan and disclosure needs for clients, tap into a proven climate leader with business operating experience for occasional guidance meetings.
Activation of Perpetual Agility: Use Your Smaller Size to Be More Nimble
Now we need to consider how you can action it. Here’s how I approach achieving Perpetual Agility, based on my experiences, including bringing 5 emerging technologies and consumer trends from early adopter to the mainstream, having been a large company executive hiring staff and consultants, and having been a consultant, contractor, freelancer, and fractional executive. I am, as well, informed on the value of the age 45+ talent pipeline.
Large companies, with many moving parts, may go through an extensive strategy process to adopt Flexible (or Contingent) Workforce Management (FWM). But you can use your smaller size to advantage and be more nimble, simplifying and accelerating the process, allowing external talent acquisition to be somewhat ad hoc, rather than too weighed down with a centralized strategy and approvals. You’ll of course need some coordination and guardrails, and will want to leverage existing practices and processes.
Our Perpetual Agility Playbook for SMBs outlines how these 3 ingredients create the conditions for achieving it.
In addition, an upcoming blog provides our guidance on 5 implementation steps to activate Perpetual Agility.
So to wrap it up: those 3 ingredients help you create the conditions for Perpetual Agility and ongoing competitive advantage. That should make you a perennial playoff team. And as you know, once you get into the playoffs, anything can happen. 😊
About the Author
David Y. Smith, an executive with large blue chip companies & a leader or advisor for 4 tech startups, in the USA & Canada. Started 4 businesses. Consulted for many small, medium, large organizations in North America & internationally. Has brought 5 emerging technologies and trends from early adopters to the mainstream.
Perspectives informed by hiring talent – staff & consultants, by providing consulting services, by being a SMB leader and owner and by being a member of an untapped talent pool.
He launched Elderberry.work to match age 45+ proven experience, and the 5 ways they create value, to businesses of all sizes. All functions, seniorities, industries. For consults, contracts, freelance, fractional.
In tandem with your business’ embrace of a flexible workforce strategy, Elderberry.work helps you create the conditions for what we call Perpetual Agility, guidance that we capture concisely in our free Playbook.