The Best Job Titles of 2022!

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At least a couple of times a year, I share something from my friend, Rob Kelly, over at OnGig, and this was something he and his team put together earlier this year.

100+ Creative & Funny Job Titles by Department & Position

I think we are all a bit of job title whores, in a sense! I mean, if you’re a “director,” you really want to be a “vice president.” If you’re a VP, you want to be a “chief of something.” And on and on it goes. A manager wants to be a senior manager. A “typist I” wants to be a “typist II”. We love our titles!

My buddy Kris Dunn let me choose my own title when I first started writing over at Fistful of Talent, and I chose “Chief Storyteller.” Then I started writing a lot and showed up at a conference, and they had my title as “President of FOT,” and that to this day, gets KD all up in arms!

I think we should allow people just to choose whatever title they want to call themselves. I mean, if Karen wants to talk to the manager, make yourself the manager!

Here are my favorite titles from Ongig’s list:

Ambassador of Buzz (Corporate Communications Associate) – didn’t Rod make Jerry his “Ambassador of Quan”? If you know, you know!

Colon Lover (Copywriter) – I like big butts, and I can not lie. Oh wait, I’m terrible at grammar, wrong colon!

Collector of Business Cards (Business Development Rep) – I haven’t had business cards for like five years, and when someone asks me for one, I just take out my phone and Google my name!

VP of ABC (“Always Be Closing”) (VP of Sales Team) – it’s not a list without a Glengarry reference!

Head of Customer Wow (Head of Customer Service) – I love a “Wow” experience!

Vibe Manager & Head of all things Awesome (Head of HR) – Hell to the yeah! You feel me?!

C3PO – Chief Power Plugs & Patches Officer (CTO) – Stop it! Perfect title.

Chief People-Herder ( Community Manager) – These cats aren’t going to herd themselves! This also works for HR leaders.

Digital Overlord (Web Site Manager) – Anything with “overlord” is a winner!

Head of PR and Other Fun Stuff (PR Director) – good. Head of Fun Stuff – better.

Lead Enabler (Assistant) – There’s so much truth in this title, I felt it in my soul.

Captain Underappreciated (Office Manager) – This one made me remember the Captain Underwear books my boys read growing up!

Chief Cheerleader (CEO) – I think every single one of us needs our own Cheerleader. None better than your CEO!

Dr. No (CFO) – If I had a dime for every time…

Master of Coin (CFO) – Game of Thrones, anyone?

King of Sneakers – this might be my new title for the world!

Master of Disaster (Crisis Manager) – It’s funny! Until it’s not.

Out-of-Work Officer – And one for the sign of the times.

I get why we have titles. I get organizational dynamics. I spent the first half of my career title chasing. I got to be 35 years old, and I wasn’t a VP, and I thought I had failed. Then I finally got the VP title and realized the title meant nothing because it was really about what responsibility you have.

I’ve met managers who had the ultimate responsibility to change their company and their world. I’ve met chiefs that couldn’t change the size of the computer screen on their desk.

People won’t admit that titles matter to them. They act like it doesn’t matter. It only doesn’t matter to those who can choose their own title! For 99% of the world, titles are very important to our personal psyche. Titles give confidence and status to those who need that. Don’t ever discount the importance of a title for someone else. We can do that for ourselves, but not others!

What is your favorite job title you’ve seen or had? Hit me in the comments.

Recruiting Communication Hacks #1

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I was out at iCIMS Inspire last week, and I was listening to a recruiting product leader and TA leader talk about a process involving texting candidates. iCIMS purchased TextRecruit years ago, and it’s now baked into iCIMS. I think across the board, everyone believes you should be texting candidates at this point. It’s 100%. You won’t meet anyone in recruiting who’s like, “Hey, yeah, texting candidates is bad” as a form of communication with candidates.

I say statements like that above to see the one dumb person on LinkedIn who will share this post and give me the one outlandish reason in the world when you wouldn’t text a candidate. “Well, TIM! I once had a candidate who was blind and deaf and lived only underwater and communicated telepathically, so what about that person!? Should we text them!?” Yes! Now, go away.

For the most part, recruiters are pretty good about using expected communication norms with candidates. We kind of have to. If you’re awful at comms, your recruiting career will be shorted lived. This doesn’t mean there aren’t recruiters out there working in sweatshops that still don’t spam. Of course, we’ll always have that. But, for the most part, the vast majority of professional recruiters, agencies, RPO, and corporate try to communicate around expected societal norms in the areas they recruit.

One of those comms standards is the Opt-Out text message sentence:

“If you no longer wish to receive text messages from this company, reply “STOP” to unsubscribe from any further messages.”

Now, these messages all sound and look the same. We basically just copy each other. One person, one time, wrote a version of what’s above, and we’ve stolen and tweaked this same message.

When I was at iCIMS, this leader was sharing an example, and this came up, and no one batted an eye. Yep. Yep. Move on. That’s when it hit me. That’s an opportunity! Every single comm we send that touches a candidate is an opportunity to stand out and leverage your brand! We should be better than what’s above!

So, I started thinking. What would a great opt-out text message be for a recruiter? Try these on for size:

“If you no longer want to receive messages from Tim, simply reply “I HATE TIM” and make him cry!”

“Yeah, we know you didn’t opt in for this, but can you blame us? We wanted to offer you a job!? Reply “No Job For Me” to Stop these messages.”

“Hate Text Spam? You can call me instead and stop all of this nonsense! Come on. I dare you!”

“Look, I’m a Stan! No cap, but you’re super dank. Texts hit different but if you’re sus just reply “This ain’t it chief”

“Hey, I just texted you, and this is crazy! But if you don’t like me, just reply.”Maybe Later”

“Wait, we get it. This isn’t for you. Before you opt-out, maybe you know someone who could use this. Please share it with them. Reply “Stop” to end these messages.“

Had enough!?

We might want just to disregard this and think about our corporate brand and being “professional.” The reality is this isn’t your corporate brand. This is your employment brand. For some, yeah, just stick to the same old boring script. It’s safe. For many of us, let’s show candidates we can be fun and have fun, and we don’t take ourselves so seriously.

If we are going to jam thousands of text messages out to candidates, you might want to have a little personality in those communications. You don’t have to. You can be like everyone else. But you can.

Dare to be a bit different!

American Government Has a Giant Talent Problem!

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Coming out of the midterm elections, I was neither upset nor happy with any of the results. I was disgusted by how far we’ve fallen on the talent funnel. Let’s be honest. No one was really ever impressed by very many politicians. It’s not just an American running joke. It’s a worldwide running joke. Basically, only major narcissists and idiots want to be politicians everywhere. We luck out if one of those giant narcissist idiots actually has a brain.

There’s a rule in talent acquisition, and organizational behavior – “Bad hires worse.”

So, if you fill the government with idiots running the show, they will hire bigger idiots to help them run your country into the ground faster. Red, blue, purple, it doesn’t matter. Bad hires worse.

Recently, I’ve had a number of conversations from the federal government down to local city government leaders, all facing the same problem. They can not get anyone of quality to apply for their jobs. In many cases, this hiring problem is market driven. A software engineer making $250K in private industry is not going to take $85K to work on dated systems and technology, no matter how much they might love their country, their state, or their city.

But it’s not just compensation.

Great talent also doesn’t want to work with a bunch of fools who are unmotivated to change the broken system and make it better. They have too many options. For decades the government has developed a process of hiring where they believed they had all the power and would make people jump through endless hoops to get one of these “amazing” government opportunities. Believing this aggressively long process would end with only the best. What they got were only the desperate few who wanted a job they would never get fired from, regardless of how awful they performed. They didn’t get better talent. They got survivors of an awful process.

Government: “Tim, how can we get candidates interested in our jobs?”

Me: “You’re f*cking kidding me, right?”

Government: “No, seriously, we need to fill these roles.”

Me: Giving an exact plan on what needs to happen.

Government: “Yeah, we can’t change anything. So, what else do you have?”

Look, I get there are some great people working in government jobs. I know some of them personally. To a person, they will tell me it’s a hopeless cause. They are surrounded by too many peers who show up and do the minimum and don’t want any change because that might mean they have to do more. The system has stage 5 cancer, and the patients don’t want a cure. They just want more pain meds to live peacefully until they die.

Now, you would think we all see this, and our elected officials see this, and they would be like, we have to cut out the cancer and start over. But bad hires worse. Our elected officials are too dumb and too narcissistic to understand they are surrounded by idiots. They are surrounded by “Yes” people. They’ve surrounded themselves with people who think they are working for a rock star.

Okay, you bitched enough. What’s the plan?

We have to stop electing idiots—all sides.

In less than two years, we will have to choose between two giant idiots for President. One who can’t put together two coherent sentences in a row, and one who thinks this is all just some gameshow on tv with no consequences. That’s the “best” America has to offer us! This is where we are in hiring for America. Two final candidates you wouldn’t allow to watch your children for an hour unsupervised!

We have to demand smart, ethical, and hardworking people lead us. We have to compensate these people at the level top talent can get. Why? Because we pay them like crap now and then, they use their position to get wealthy and stop acting in our best interest.

Great leaders hire great talent. And that rolls downhill into government positions that aren’t hired directly by politicians. We have to stop acting like the government and start acting like we need to run a profitable business.

All levels of government basically only hire kinds of people right now:

  1. Entry-level with degrees that couldn’t get them a good job.
  2. Experienced low performers who got fired from every other job.
  3. Dreamers who have been disillusioned, yet.

They can not compete with private industry unless they drastically change. Part of that change has to be their ability to get rid of low performers easily. Right now, that does not happen. It’s a two-sided issue. You can’t bring in better without getting rid of the walking dead. Accountability has to start at the top and filter down into every level.

Bad hires worse. Rant over.

87% of Employee are Thinking About a Promotion, and That’s a Problem for You! @iCIMS #ICIMSINSPIRE

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iCIMS 2023 Workforce Report is out, and it’s jammed full of some great data and facts. Here’s just one that caught my eye:

iCIMS 2023 Workforce Report

Now, some will read this and think, “Wow, that’s awesome!” But if you’re a leader of people, you quickly understand how problematic this is! 87% of folks want a promotion. About 10% actually get a promotion. And we wonder why over 50% of our workforce is disengaged.

You can download the full report here.

I didn’t even give you the good stuff, here is another peak:

  • 63% of job seekers say a primary factor in their job search is whether the job is remote, hybrid, or on-prem. (editors note: shouldn’t this be 100%? 😉 What this shows is how important where the work of the job is done more than ever.
  • 80% of workers do not feel secure financially or professionally. (Ouch)
  • 2 out 5 workers claim to not have a work-life balance.
  • More here.

What about all those employees who want a promotion?! What can we do?!

This is where great leaders make their money.

Being able to provide opportunity and development, mentorship, and on-demand training programs, are all a part of the plan. The biggest part of the plan truly has little to do with all of this. Your employees must feel they can trust you with their careers. That you, with them, have created a plan and will follow through with that plan to reach their goals.

Every employee can have a plan, but are you willing to be upfront enough with them about what that might look like? For some, their path might be in a year. For others, it’s much longer, and this is where it gets really difficult. Being able to provide a great opportunity takes a combination of great tools, great leadership, effort, and patience. I find that most organizations fail on at least 2 out of 4.

Great tools can be expensive, but the ROI is strong. Great leadership is expensive and hard to maintain because we also under-invest in that as well. Effort and Patience are the two that any employee can do, and the ones who have those usually succeed, but those are also very rare. This then comes down to if our leaders were born or built. We can debate that for eternity. The reality is it’s both.

I think another great question to ask this 87% of employees would be if we can keep all things the same. Same job. Same location. Same everything. Except we give you the same raise you would get if you were promoted, would you still want the promotion? I’m guessing that 87% drops to around 25%, and that’s more doable. One in four employees wanting a promotion seems like a number that makes more sense. Our problem is how we take care of our individual contributors.

Another day, another post. Right now, you have an 87% problem. Have fun!

The Trait Every Employer is Looking for in a New Employee

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Don’t buy into the hype! “Oh, just do what you love!” That’s not being an adult. That’s being a moron! Just do what makes you happy! No, that’s what a child does.

“Tim, we just want to hire some ‘adults’!” I hear this statement from a lot of CEOs I talk with currently!

That means most of the people they are hiring aren’t considered adults by these leaders. Oh, they fit the demographic of being an adult from an age perspective, but they still act like children!

I tell people when I interview them and they ask about our culture, I say, “We hire adults.”

That means we hire people into positions where they are responsible for something. Because we hire adults, they take responsibility for what they are responsible for. If I have to tell them to do their jobs, they’re not adults, they’re children. We don’t employ children.

I think about 70% of the positions that are open in the world could have the same title –

“Wanted: Adults”.

Those who read that and got it could instantly be hired, and they would be above-average employees for you! Those who read it and didn’t understand are part of the wonder of natural selection.

How do you be an Adult?

– You do the stuff you say you’re going to do. Not just the stuff you like, but all the stuff.

– You follow the rules that are important to follow for society to run well. Do I drive the speed limit every single time? No. Do I come to work when my employer says I need to be there? Yes.

– You assume positive intent on most things. For the most part, people will want to help you, just as you want to help others. Sometimes you run into an asshole.

– You understand that the world is more than just you and your desires.

– You speak up for what is right when you can. It’s easy to say you can always speak up for what is right, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an adult.

– You try and help those who can’t help themselves. Who can’t, not who won’t?

My parents and grandparents would call this common sense, but I don’t think ‘being an adult’ is common sense anymore. Common sense, to be common, has to be done by most. Being an adult doesn’t seem to be very common lately!

So, you want to hire some adults? I think this starts with us recognizing that being an adult is now a skill in 2021. A very valuable skill. Need to fill a position, maybe we start by first finding adults, then determining do we need these adults to have certain skills, or we can teach adults those skills!

The key to great hiring in today’s world is not about attracting the right skills, it’s about attracting adults who aren’t just willing to work but understand the value of work and individuals who value being an adult.

I don’t see this as a negative. I see it as an opportunity for organizations that understand this concept. We hire adults first and skills second. Organizations that do this will be the organizations that win.

The Motley Fool has a great section in their employee handbook that talks about being an adult:

“We are careful to hire amazing people. Our goal is to unleash you to perform at your peak and stay out of your way. We don’t have lots of rules and policies here by design. You are an amazing adult, and we trust you to carve your own path, set your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it.”

You are an amazing ‘adult,’ and we trust you…

If only it was so simple!

America’s Blue Collar Starbucks are Big Gas Stations!

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I drove from Michigan to Utah and back over the past two weeks. Twenty-six hours each way. I got to stop at a lot of big gas stations. I’m not sure you can even call them gas stations anymore! You can purchase gas, but you can also purchase coffee, soda, slushies, made-to-order breakfast, lunch, and dinner, some clothing, and so much more. They have these brand new, clean bathrooms. Some have showers. They really are amazing places! I mean, these are not your Mom and Dad’s gas stations!

All of these are on the highway. So it’s mostly a collection of all those folks who travel the highways and byways of our great country. A cross of truckers, retirees, the new van people, and folks who still don’t trust airplanes. I was taking my dogs out on vacation, and one of them was too old and too big to fly. So, we had to drive.

What I noticed on my drive west was the farther you get west, the better the big giant gas stations are! I know there are a ton of Buc-ee’s fans out there, but don’t sleep on Maverik’s, Wawa’s, Sheetz, Racetrac, Casey’s, and Kum and Go. As you come east, the gas stations get worse. Speedway in Michigan and around the midwest is really good, but once you get past Ohio, the gas stations suck. Why are gas stations better south and west? It doesn’t really make sense.

Inside a Maverik gas station

I got home and, the next morning had to stop at one of these big new gas stations in my own town. That’s when it hit me. These gas stations are the high-end coffee shop of the blue-collar workforce! I do not say that disparagingly. I say that with some affirmation. I saw all these hard-working folks getting ready for their day. Big cups of coffee, energy drinks, breakfast burritos, lottery tickets, and a full tank. (By the way, don’t sleep on big gas station breakfast burritos!)

The comradery of these folks was much more lively than I’ve seen in any stuffy Starbucks!

I was driving my suburban dad Pickup Truck, wearing my Friday casuals with a trucker cap on, so I almost didn’t stand out. I had the feeling that many of these folks stopped at this same gas station every single morning they went to work. Many probably came back for lunch and maybe even stopped on the way home if they needed something.

Neighbors and work peers swapping stories from the games the night before. Giving each other grief over some mistake someone made on a job. Asking for favors and help. It was the corporate water cooler of their day. But with a much more robust and colorful network of folks.

These big giant gas stations have it figured out. They figured out all these hard-working folks need a place to congregate before their day gets started. They need a place where they can use a clean restroom. Maybe sit for a bit and make a call. Access to wifi. Grab a bite of lunch or a cold drink in the afternoon.

I’m a big fan of the blue-collar Starbucks. I like the vibe. I like the people. I like the energy.

Creepy Bosses and Cool Moms! #HRFamous

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On episode 108 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Madeline Laurano, and Tim Sackett come together to discuss problematic executives, all the functions HR serves, and Tim’s campus recruiting experience!

Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

1:00 – JLee asks the crew what famous movies they haven’t seen that they should see. JLee has never seen The Shining or Princess Bride. 

4:20 – JLee mentions the news of a senior Apple executive due to him making a vile joke in a TikTok video. This viral TikTok format asks people how much money they make and what they do for work. 

7:15 – Madeline brings up a similar situation in the Boston Celtics coach getting fired for having an affair with one of his co-workers. 

11:00 – JLee and Madeline are the cool moms in town!

13:00 – JLee brings up the extra functions that HR often gets assigned to, like party and events planning. She thinks that this could be a failure upon managers and leaders for not taking accountability in something like career growth for their employees. 

16:00 – Tim talks about the 3 responsibilities he sees for a people manager: fiscal responsibility, building a well-rounded team, and maintaining and developing that well-rounded team. Then, HR can help support these functions in whatever way they can.  

22:30 – Tim asks the question “why would you outsource the most important thing to your company” while talking about RPOs and outsourcing recruiting. 

27:00 – Madeline brings up the trauma of the 2021 hiring craze and how this may impact the job security of recruiters. Tim talked about a company that he talked to that re-positioned their recruiters when there was a downturn in their company, so they didn’t have to lay anyone off. 

30:30 – JLee mentions that the people who stayed on at Marriott during the pandemic were the “swiss army knives”, the people who were versatile and could fit in anywhere. 

31:30 – Madeline asks if people will seek out being a recruiter or if it will be seen as a stepping stone to different jobs. Tim thinks that more colleges and universities will develop programs for recruiters and the importance of recruiters at companies will grow. 

34:00 – Anyone want to see a sitcom about Tim’s campus recruiting experience??

We Didn’t Train These Kids, Now We’re Going to Pay the Price!

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Which kids? The GenZ’s? Nope, we didn’t train the Millennials! And now we’ll deal with the aftermath of a decade of undertraining and almost no development of an entire generation.

You see, for the past decade, money was basically free. Zero interest rates, and we all went around spending and hiring like the party was never going to end. Because of all this free money, no one really took the time to ensure anyone knew what they were doing. Lose $100M?! Oh well, here’s some more. Lose it faster next time!

You would think with all that free money, we could have over-trained the kids, but instead, we just paid them more and bought them dairy-free ice cream and cool hoodies. “Their training will be this startup experience, and it’s better than any formal training they’ll ever get.” In some ways, that is very true. In other ways, that’s the biggest lie we sold in the past decade.

While real-world experience is part of a great training program, free money is not. We’ve grown an entire generation of “leaders” who lack financial discipline. Most have no idea how to run a company that actually makes more revenue than it spends. This isn’t how the world runs long-term. You see, there’s this little thing successful companies call Net Income, which basically is the positive money you make from your revenue after you pay all your bills and taxes. I know. I know. All these old-school terms are boring and confusing! Profit. Revenue. Net Income. Taxes. Interest Rates.

Have you wondered why all these companies are bringing people back to the office?

No, it’s not because these bosses are old and hate you. Well, they might be old and hate you, but that’s not the reason!

It’s because the vast majority of you aren’t actually working hard enough. “Hard enough” is another old-school phrase meaning you’re work level and your pay level aren’t matching up. The old folks who sign the checks and all their financial data are telling them they need fewer of you working at home if you keep sucking.

By the way, you are right. The old folks failed you. They didn’t train you to be a productive worker. They didn’t train you to lead high-producing, effective teams. They didn’t train you to be fiscally responsible with corporate resources. Blame them if you want. They should own that.

Now they are leaving the workforce right at the beginning of the second recession you’ll see in your lifetime. The first one was when you were in college or just entering the workforce, and honestly, you acted all dramatic about how that impacted you, but it turned out pretty well for you. You entered the workforce and had a magical ten-year run where your salary and benefits seemed like monopoly money as compared to your parent’s first ten years in the workforce. Congratulations! It was an awesome time to be alive!

Now, you’ll be in charge. The GenXers are too few to take over. We have to rely on the Millennials to run the show, for the most part. It’s going to be a really hard lesson. It’s going to be painful for a lot of people. Recessions suck when you’re in the middle. That’s where the cuts hurt the worse. The folks on the upper side will weather the storm. The folks in the lower half will scrap by like they always do. They are used to life being hard. They were born into the hard, you are just visiting.

The best organizations and c-suites will double down quickly on training and educating their new leaders. Hard skills and soft skills, but mostly hard skills. We will mourn the layoff losses as unfair, but within a few years, we’ll come to realize that it was just the payoff of not understanding how to run our business. Call it a bad leader tax. Businesses weren’t meant to run on free money. Money has value, and those investing in your business expect a return in profit and net income, eventually, not user growth.

I’m not punching down on Millennials. They are a product of a decade of free money, and now we’ll deal with the aftermath. They just are going to be the ones responsible for cleaning up the mess.

In Low Hire Times, Great Recruiting is More Important!

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We have been on a great run! A historic run of hiring for about a decade now. That does not happen often. For the most part, over half of the current workforce has never seen a downturn in the economy that was sustained for more than a few months. It has been a heck of a good run.

Over the past decade, recruiting has seen massive evolution and growth. Our technology has improved immensely. Our skills have improved. Our branding and recruitment marketing has improved. At no other point in history has talent acquisition wielded more power than they have over the past decade.

I mean, it almost feels like recruiters have gotten respect! (almost)

Here’s the thing.

With all of this change and growth, we will still have organizational leaders when a downturn hits who believe we can cut recruiting as one of the first things. The axiom is if we aren’t hiring, we don’t need recruiters. That makes logical sense. In reality, we don’t really stop hiring. We just hire way less.

The truth is, when we hire less, each hire takes on much more significance. Our ability to hire really well when we hire fewer increases with importance. We don’t have slack in the system to make bad hires and have them be covered up by all the other hires.

If I have to hire one hundred people per month, leadership assumes some of those will be misses. If I can only hire ten per month, I can no longer have misses! False-positive hires can not happen when you only hire a few.

Why?

If times are tough and I only get to hire a few people. Multiple factors are at play. First, my hiring number is small. Second, the business needs great performers to survive and grow. Third, we truly need to know who the great performers are before we hire them. Forth, every low performer that makes it through the process exacerbates our already dire problem.

Bad Times Are Not The Time To Cut Talent Acquisition!

Bad times are the time to double down on ensuring your TA function is humming at maximum efficiency and effort. That your technology is performing exactly as it is supposed to perform. That you have very few false positives, and your Q0H (Quality of Hire) is through the roof. Also, you need to have hunters on your team, not just farmers.

Organizations will get leaner, and TA teams will get leaner. The recruiters who should keep their jobs should not be process jockeys. I can literally hire anyone with two ounces of sense to process applications. That is a pennies-on-the-dollar job. The recruiters who thrive in a down economy are assassins. Recruiters who can go out and find the best talent and talk that talent into coming onto your sinking ship.

This past decade was not a great decade to grow assassins. Why?

You would think the opposite to be true. Everyone was hiring. The competition for talent was fierce! Why didn’t we grow more assassins?

It’s a combination of technology, flow, and ease of apply. We had this strange convergence of a time when we had millions of open jobs, a time when it was never easier to find talent, and you could apply to jobs with one click. Basically, most TA shops turned into Inbound recruiting process shops. We post jobs. People apply. We process those applications. Rinse and repeat.

If there is candidate flow to your jobs, why spend the extra effort to make sure that flow is actually good? It must be good, right?! Just process more applications. We are hiring so many it doesn’t really matter, we’ll make some great hires out of that pile. Or we won’t. It doesn’t matter, we have another pile to go through.

Assassins grow when times are tough. You need to find yourself some assassins and get ready. Winter is coming.

As Leaders Should We Involve Everyone In Decision Making?

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There is an African Proverb that says:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

It’s a paradox we face as leaders right now. We are forced to move fast because the world is moving fast. We are also forced to believe we must involve everyone. Yes, we want to go fast, and yes, we want to go far!

Typically, that turns into something like this. The Boss lady calls a meeting of the team. Everyone jumps on the Zoom call, and the lady boss says, “Hey, we need to make some changes” based on some market/industry/tech change. “So, we are going to use this time to brainstorm and make some decisions on what we should do.” We’ve all been in these meetings.

The other way this can go is no meeting, Boss lady brings in a few confidants on the team, gathers some information, and then she just makes some decisions. Good or bad, she’s the boss, and she’s paid to make these decisions. A little old school, we are told this isn’t really how it should be done anymore.

The reality is both actually work differently. One is fast, one will go far, and we need both.

As a leader, sometimes the best course of action is just to make the call if there is a need to move fast. Look, we have a new product launch that got moved up, and we need to be fully staffed in four months. I’m pulling in a few, or one, people who can handle this item, and I’m getting out of their way. Go, make this happen!

We understand, as leaders, this might piss some folks off. “Well, no one asked my opinion on this!” Yes, you are correct, and by your reaction, I can see I made the right decision by not pulling you in. We desperately needed to move fast! I wasn’t looking for input. I was looking for fast results.

Then, we have times when what we are trying to do will have a long-term impact on our organization. A bunch of moving pieces and multiple stakeholders. Moving quickly, while desirable, might not be the best course of action. We need to hear folks, and folks need to be heard. We want to go ‘far’ with this project.

My leadership comfort zone has always been to go fast. If you’re fast, you can course-correct with the extra time. If you go slow, my belief was the decision would most likely be made for you. As a leader, were you hired to make decisions or have decisions happen to you? Now, this isn’t really the case, but man, that sh*t sounded good on my PowerPoint slide deck!

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

Both strategies are correct. Both have a purpose of when to be deployed. Too often, we tend to stick with the one strategy that we feel most comfortable with as leaders. It’s important we understand what we are most comfortable with because that is also our blind spot. I have to remind myself constantly to slow down when it’s right so that we can go far.

I’ve worked with a ton of leaders who were most comfortable with going together, truly believing they were the best leader. In the end, they failed because while they were well-liked, they didn’t execute fast enough for what the business needed.