All growth in a business inevitably leads to the need to expand your team. In our team, our ability to deliver consistently was under immense pressure. As our base of long-term clients grew, so did our need to provide support, rhythm and client accountability. There was just too much sitting on each team member’s back and the time had come to make the move and expand. In a small team, this can be a make or break moment, and we were determined to do it right, first time.
Walking our walk
One of our biggest challenges in the process was to walk our walk. We support our clients to define their team requirements and hire the right people, who are aligned in values and flow. Now it was our turn and we had to demonstrate what was possible when you followed the right process, with consideration and focus. Game on!
There was no doubt that the Contribution Compass was going to play a pivotal role in the process, as it does with all client recruitment we support. Contribution Compass is an individual and team profiling methodology and is a powerful approach to developing people and building highly-effective teams. In recruitment, it supports you to design your recruitment process to be highly effective in delivering the profile of candidates you need while still upholding the principles of fairness and equity.
We were also very excited to try out the new free tool from Contribution Compass, called the Contribution Identifier. This tool is aimed at supporting you to clearly identify the contribution you need next rather than the job title you think you need. This was such a game-changing tool that we were eager to put it to use and show just what was possible.
Strategic focus answers the question
Our starting point was to look closely at our next growth pivot. We considered what we needed to have in place in order to reach up to the next level of growth. You could also think of this as our biggest obstacle in moving forward. What’s in the way of the next step?
It seems obvious to say, yet needs highlighting, that our strategic focus had to be the reference point for this reflection. How do you know which obstacle to overcome if you don’t know where you are going? Yet time and again, we observe founders and executives making these kinds of critical people decisions without a clear strategic outcome or next step.
Our obstacle or next step pivot was the time and focus of our founder, Ann Baret. A large portion of her time was invested in supporting clients with routine and strategic execution support, at the expense of her much-needed focus on building out the Team Dynamics methodology. We needed to liberate her time to focus on doing mission-critical work on the business not in it.
It was clear that our next role was Client Support, with four key focus areas: co-ordinating people, both within our team and within our clients; tracking the performance of our client’s strategic execution initiatives; leveraging our team’s time and focus; and supporting our longer term client projects. We encourage you to check out the role definition we put together for insight on a new way to approach recruitment – focus areas rather than long lists of job responsibilities and competencies. Click here for this role definition.
All lined up and ready to go
And here is where Contribution Compass comes into the story. Despite agreeing that this role of Client Support was best aligned to a Connector profile, we wanted to check that we clearly understood the role we were recruiting and the profile of natural energy most suited to that role. Several of us completed the Contribution Identifier to see if we were all on the same page.
Make no mistake, the Contribution Identifier is not a Facebook pop-quiz. It’s an in-depth 24 question questionnaire that really makes you think deeply about the profile you need. And that’s what we love about it. It’s significant and potent, and why would we not invest our attention for such an important business undertaking.
To our delight, we were on the same page. All results came out as a Connector profile, which contributes the unified natural energy of people and process, of connection and execution. This gave our team massive confidence to embark on the next step in the recruitment journey with clarity and certainty.
In our next case story, we will share more about the interview and selection process we experienced. In the meantime, if you would like to access this free tool, get in touch for the link to get started or alternatively let’s exploring working through it together.
