I recently had a great conversation with a new connection at an excellent client. Her LinkedIn profile mentioned she is a lover of great quotes. Interestingly enough, so am I. She asked me for a couple of favorites and I opened my Evernote app to share one from Teddy Roosevelt and one from Jeff Immelt. I then noticed on my desk the takeaway from my Mom’s funeral.

On the reverse of her photo were several classics we refer to as “Our Mom-isms.” Here are several that have definite business application:

* If you don’t listen you have to feel.

* If you don’t do it right the first time, when will you have time to do it over.

* If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Then there are some personal favorites:

About her never artificially colored hair – “It’s platinum blonde.”

And from the woman who usually had a cup of black coffee or an iced tea (heavy sugar and lemon) in her hand – “Water is for taking a bath, not drinking.”

A belated Happy Mother’s Day and here’s hoping you have as many fond memories and lessons learned from your mother as we have from ours!

Concerned about turnover? Of course you are, just like everyone else. Three examples I’ve encountered in the last 90 days show how some companies build loyalty early, when it really matters.

1) A new employee wants to take a week off, without pay, between finishing with their current employer and starting with the new one. The following week is a short week due to a holiday so the new employer would prefer that not be the starting week. Two weeks off without pay wasn’t really in the new employee’s plans. The employer’s solution – the new employee can have off both weeks, with pay!

2) A new employee is several weeks into training with a new employer when they begin experiencing serious complications from a previous Covid 19 infection. 10+ weeks later they are cleared to return to work. Guess what – never missed a paycheck from the new employer.

3) First week in their new role and a financial executive collapses from an undiagnosed pulmonary condition and spends several days in the hospital. The call from the owner of the firm isn’t to ask when he can return, instead he assures the new employee his recovery is most important and assures him his paychecks will continue and his position will be there when he returns.

These individuals took my call about a new opportunity but made it clear (very quickly I might add) they were interested only in seeing if they could help me with a referral. You want to build loyalty and reduce the likelihood of turnover? The time is now, before it appears your concerns are motivated by a recent rash of resignations.

I used to think it was just recruiters who were “ghosted” on a regular basis but sadly, not so! Here was a response to my April 2021 post regarding employee referrals and the need to acknowledge them with the employee and the referred candidate: “communication of any sort to any candidate is becoming a rare thing these days… Blows me away…my employer (national company 60,000+ employees) is horrible about keeping any candidate informed about their progress (or lack thereof) in the hiring process. It gets worse all the time. What has happened to common courtesy?? Sad.”

It isn’t just employers who ghost either. Candidates do it also. Here was my recent experience (names changed to protect the guilty): John is insistent I must meet him before deciding whether to present him to Bill the hiring manager for an interview. I meet him and appreciate his enthusiasm for the role and agree to encourage Bill to interview him. After the Zoom interview Bill reports: “quite possibly the worst interview I’ve ever had, one and two word answers to questions meant to spark discussion. It continued even after I mentioned I really needed him to expand his answers a little more.” You guessed it, John hasn’t returned my three phone calls or two texts and an email. I’m pretty certain my client Bill will always remember the name and not ever interview John in the future. I am completely certain I’ll remember the name and won’t be representing John in the future.

Employers and candidates – I’d love to hear your experiences and especially what employers are doing to improve the candidate experience.

I don’t know about you but I lost track of my 2020 resolutions, personal and professional, in the midst of all things COVID. Now I need to get back in the habit of reviewing my 2021 resolutions more regularly to help me improve in keeping them!

One of my dual purpose resolutions was to write more – personal letters (yes handwritten, envelope with a stamp) and more professional publishing. The easy (or so I thought) way to publish more was to publish something to this blog once per month and here I am publishing the first of 2021 in March. The write more letters portion was always going to be harder. Like many I’ve gotten out of the habit by relying on texts, emails and family group WhatsApp entries. The most consistent letter writing I’ve done in the last few years has been to a young gentleman I coached in Knothole baseball who found himself on the business end of a wrongful conviction and is currently at Madison Correctional in London, Ohio. Visitation has been closed since March 2020 and calls are monitored and limited to 15 minutes so writing a letter is my chance to draw him into some real thought provoking discussion. Despite knowing that, I mailed my first letter of 2021 last week!

Now is always the right time to recommit to good habits. I’m recommitting to my New Years Resolutions. I hope your New Year’s Resolutions are still intact but if necessary I’m encouraging you to recommit to yours.

The final directive to the assembled pre-teens at the first Monday caddy school was to “keep up!” What our caddymaster Pat Higgins really meant was “stay ahead!” What golfer who has the privilege of taking a caddy wants to look for his own ball? When I first started caddying I would lag behind my golfer when I wasn’t entirely sure where the ball had traveled thinking I would be forgiven for being a couple of steps slow but not for failing to follow the flight of the ball. What I learned was they knew I didn’t see the ball and thought I was a couple of steps slow. The lesson I learned was to get ahead of the game, be the first to arrive at the most likely landing area and furiously survey the area to increase the likelihood of being the one to discover the right answer.

So, going back to that Zoom meeting, it means thinking ahead before the meeting and understanding not only the topic being discussed but doing the research necessary to answer the most likely questions. The group isn’t interested in watching you furiously review documents or access another application on your system.

They also want you to make a decision. The endless search for more information will have people tuning out of your online meeting both literally and figuratively. Early in my CPA firm career an audit manager said “make a decision and move on, we didn’t hire you because you know what to do, we hired you because we believed you were smart and will make good decisions about what to do!” I captured this from a national firm partner instructing an Ohio Society of CPA’s continuing education session – “Your only consistent value add is in decision making and that comes from the training and practice that informs your sound analytical thinking combined with your objectivity and judgement.”