Hi everybody, it’s Richard Milligan, welcome to another recruiting conversations, and we are going to talk about a topic today, okay? I’m just gonna pause for a moment, I don’t want you to tune out, when I tell you the topic. I want you to tune in what we’re gonna talk about today is accountability, and how accountability matters to your recruiting efforts. Now, if you’re like me now maybe there’s a rebel inside of me somewhere, that when someone if someone came to me and said Richard I’m gonna hold you accountable, immediately I would have a negative response to that word and I don’t know what it is maybe it’s I lack some maturity maybe I’ve got a long way to grow in my life but there is something about that word that tends to conjure up some negative emotions. You know maybe it’s because it can be associated with micromanagement, and I’m a bit of a free spirit but at the end of the day that does matter. In fact, how this comes to even being on this podcast is yesterday, I was in a conversation with extremely bright, and young recruiting leader, and in that conversation this area of accountability came up, because it is really important to whether you’re gonna cross that finish line that you have established as your vision and your goals. And so I wanted to bring this to you because there are some areas that if you will focus on creating accountability, that you can actually guarantee success, there’s just a way that the world works. There’s just a way that the universe has been created to operate and that is when we do the right things, right? Right now we need to know what the right things are, and thus this podcast right well you know what the right things are and recruiting but when we know what the right behaviors and the right activities are, around life in general and then we go do those things, then you actually become successful, you actually have things that go well in your life, right? Like there’s a lot of things that you get from just doing the right things right and accountability is an element that says that it will ensure that those things get done. Inevitably, if you try to operate in this area of recruiting on your own without any form of accountability around the day-to-day activities that you need to do, you will come to a place where those things just don’t get done, there’s a lot of reasons for that. It’s not a lack of you, you know having some intangibles like being tenacious or being willing or willing to work hard, what you know there’s it’s not because of that, it’s because the recruiting leader operates in controlled chaos, and I would dare say, in seasons in my life, as a recruiting leader that I operated in uncontrolled chaos. So, if you’re in controlled or uncontrolled chaos then the easiest thing to do is to let this particular day-to-day activity go, and the reason why is that the scene, the ship will not sink if you don’t recruit today, and this is specific to the recruiting leader role if you’re a true recruiter and that’s all you do your ship will sink, if you don’t do that the activity today but the recruiting leader let me remind you is someone that’s leading a team but then it’s also responsible for recruiting and so this person is doing 12 to 15 things every single day, in a lot of different areas, and so when you’re managing people and you’re managing a team and you’re operating in the day-to-day this thing can actually get punted, from today to tomorrow and it’s very easy to just say “today was a busy day and I’ll do this tomorrow”.
So let’s just start in a place that just says like if I don’t do this would you agree with me okay and I’m nodding my head up and down agree with me, would you agree with me, that if you don’t do the day to day in terms of the activities that you will not win if you’re not consistent in the day to day is that you will not win the way you want to win in terms of growing your team and if you’re shaking your head, yes, with me right now like I’m shaking mine then the second component of this is this, would you agree that creating accountability would ensure that those day-to-day activities got done, and I’m shaking my head right now and so I’m hopeful that you would shake your head with me, and so if that is true and that’s a fact, then it’s a problem that we have to solve, if we don’t have accountability. Now, even if you have accountability there’s some things I’m going to share with you here today that I think are of value in terms of how you actually frame the behaviors for the person that’s going to hold you accountable or for the system that you’re going to create that’s gonna hold you accountable, okay?
But let’s just start the very beginning let’s define accountability, so definition of accountability is this being the one who must meet an obligation or suffer the consequences for failing to do so, I there’s just something about going and getting a real definition of a word that put some things in perspective and so from time to time I actually just go out, and I want to see what the definition of a word is that I can have that put in perspective. So, let’s just talk about this the definition of accountability is that I’m being the one who must meet the obligation or I have to suffer the consequences for failing to do so, okay? So, the truth is this as I see and I coach and primarily in three to four different industries, and as I see changes take place within organizations or within industries what I notice is that, the recruiting leader ultimately is middle management. You are a branch manager, you’re a team manager, you are an area manager, a regional manager, a divisional manage, this is typically what I would put into this thing that I will call middle management. Now, when things get difficult the easiest place for an organization to go and to trim is in terms of expenses is middle management and to get flatter across their leadership, so why, I look at the end part that definition suffer the consequences for failing to do so what I know is that middle management that can actually build and grow things is extremely more valuable to an organization, than the recruiting lead or the middle manager that’s simply managing teams. So, if I’m gonna look in the mirror and say I don’t like suffering consequences and I like job security, and I like to be successful and win and be seen as successful in my career, then you have to create accountability. So it’s not about micromanagement this is about winning, let me share a couple of stories with because I think this will help put this in context, and the reason why this is relative to this podcast I’m cutting right now is that, look I had completely forgotten about a scenario that I created to create accountability. So, let me let me give you two stories number one this podcast only takes place because I’ve created accountability, yes, the brief the reason that you’re listening to this podcast is because I have created accountability. Now let me describe that accountability for you, one of the things identified from the very beginning was that this was going to be difficult to do, and the reason why is that this is not what I would consider direct response marketing, this is ultimately larger branding for me. Direct response marketing to me is something that I’m going to do that’s gonna initiate an immediate point of / an immediate sale for me, and I don’t typically get sales from this but I do get a lot of emails I get a lot of people dropping me lines in social media saying thanks for doing it, and that’s nice, but at the end of the day, I knew that this was going to be a conflict in term terms of my energy, and my effort, and my time, and then at some level there would be a time in a place where I would look in the mirror and go I don’t have the hour to cut the podcast. So, I created accountability around just doing this let me tell you what I did I found someone that that could actually cut the podcast beyond me just actually recording it, I found someone that could actually do all the deliverables around this let me just describe what that looks like, I’m recording this on video, this is good this will go on my YouTube channel, there go my Vimeo channel, the video get cut up into two or three different shorter videos, outside of that long video that will get loaded to YouTube or Vimeo, and then I’ll use that in social media, put it in some closed Facebook group, so I’ll put it on LinkedIn, I’ll put it in Facebook, Instagram, these other places, and so I’ll use this as part of my larger branding, and so there’s extra pieces that have to be done beyond this. So I found someone who could do everything someone that can take the actual podcast recording, that could actually drop that into the platform that I’m actually using as a host for this, that could actually transcribe it that could put it on my website, that I mean there’s a there’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes is this, and because of that I found one individual and I said this, I said, if you will manage my podcast, and you’ll actually hold me accountable to recording it, in the weeks that I don’t record it, I will pay you our agreed-upon fee, if I don’t cut the podcast. Now, the reason why I did that, was I knew that if I had to write a check, I don’t pay her by cheque but if I had to exchange some money with someone, that I would I would actually record this podcast every single week, and so that individual leans in, we get to the end of the week and I haven’t produced that podcast that person says are you gonna deliver a podcast this week, and I know that I’ve made the commitment with her, that if I don’t I will actually still pay her. So this podcast comes from simply creating accountability. Let me go back to the story that I shared yesterday with someone that really brought this to service and brings his podcast a lie and it’s this, I go back to 2012 now it’s 2019 right now when I’m recording this podcast but in 2012, seven years ago I went into that year and in this particular era of recruiting I knew that I had to move the needle significantly on my routing efforts. Now one of the things that was really near and dear to me at that time here’s a moment of vulnerability, owner ability, and transparency one of the things that was really near and dear to me at that time was the Oklahoma City Thunder. Now if you’re in the basketball and you’re into the NBA then immediately you know I’m talking about if you’re not that’s actually the only professional team that we have in Oklahoma. Now if you go back to 2012, and you know anything about basketball you know that we had a really good team okay Kevin Durant played for us Russell Westbrook played for us, and by the way in recording his podcast the week that Russell Westbrook gets traded so you know let me lean on your shoulder for a moment for a moment and maybe that’s why this is surfacing right now there’s an emotional place that’s actually connected to him, and he’s leaving our market and so I digress, but in 2012, here’s what I was doing I was I actually had season tickets I had a terror suite which is a small suite that that is a four seats, that’s a box that’s ace your own suite, pretty cool setup, you got food you’ve got a waiter, you’ve got TVs on both ends, and I was literally going to every game. Now if you know anything about the NBA they don’t you don’t get like ten just ten games at home, this isn’t like you know in football where you know college football team plays 12 games. In the NBA these teams play an enormous amount of games okay and so we’re talking about 30 – 40 you know events that you’re going to. I was going to every one of them, and so I looked in the mirror one day I said I want to actually grow and I’m spending all this time going to these games, what if I gave that up, so I sat down and said what would that look like, how much time would I recover, if I said to myself that I won’t watch a single Thunder game for an entire year. I go from having you know going to every game and loving this team of watching most of the road games on TV DVR and watching them and to getting to a place right where I was actually challenging how much time I was investing in it and would I be willing to give it up to accomplish something bigger in my business. So the process I went through was I determined how much time does it take me to get to the game, how much time am I at the game, how much time does it take me to get home from the game, right? What how what does all of that look like and then how much time am I investing I’m watching the games that aren’t home and then what does it look like whenever they make the playoffs, because then you’re attending more games and if they get the next round you’re tuning more games, right? And when I got done with this it blew my mind how much time I was investing in that. So, it may ease before me on the surface to say like I’m not gonna do that, for the next year because I need to grow my business, I want to invest in my business but here’s what I knew saying that I was going to do it and doing it was two completely separate things, and so I knew I was going to have to create accountability around this. So, I went to a person that had a lot of respect for that was in my business at the time and I said Scott would you be willing to hold me accountable for this, and I laid it out for him and Scott said that he would, on the flip side of that Scott also said I’m gonna join you in actually not participating or watching Thunder games for an entire year because that’s a brilliant idea and it will help me move the needle on my business as well, okay? This is someone in the market that I’m that I am in, that was also a huge Thunder fan, what transpired for that entire year is this, I did not I did not watch a single game because I created accountability. Now I also tied a check and some money to that, that if I did that I had to write it to him so I made it I basically created a contract, that if I broke the contract I had to pay him some money. So that added element actually created a system around carving out an enormous amount of time that I could invest in my business. So when I start talking about accountability this isn’t just about going and finding someone that will check up on you every single week and say you did this, I mean going two lengths, to ensure that in the day-to-day you will actually do this. So, you’ve got to use some some creative juices around this to create accountability at the highest level, and that’s where I’m encouraging you, okay? So with that said I want to actually go through a methodology of how you why really why you should create the accountability and then give you an idea of how you can actually create what I call a scorecard, so that you can start tracking the things that you’re doing in the day-to-day, okay? So I always want to talk about the why, before I talk about the how, but why is this why is this an important topic to recruiting leaders.
First and foremost is that you typically operate in the day to day without any supervision, okay? you operate in terms of managing your team without someone leaning over your shoulder, no this is true, not always true, with this is primarily true about this particular role, and so if no one’s there managing you, and saying “did you do it” it’s easy for this to not get done, right? Leadership trust that you’re gonna do what’s ever necessary to hit the goals that you set or the expectations that they have set for you, right? They realize that you’re, as a recruiting leader someone who has all the intangibles and has gotten to this place because they’ve acted on those intangible, okay? The other part of this is something that I’ve already brought up, controlled chaos is what you’re operating in right and so we can go by, two weeks can go by, three weeks can go by, and you can get caught up in the busyness of that and let this particular activity slide because nothing falls apart if you don’t recruit not in one week, two weeks, three weeks, right? It will eventually because attrition is something that’s just natural look the industry that I came out of thirty percent year-over-year was normal, that’s normal now if you’re in a different industry it may not be that high but I would say as I’ve studied other industries ten to twenty percent, it’s very normal attrition you go three years and don’t recruit you’ve lost close to 50 percent of your team in most businesses, okay? Specifically, for the recruiting leader because you’re managing and leading typically sales people, the other reason why this is important is that this is job security, growing your team is job security, not only is it just this particular job security its career security, right if you’re good at this you can go recreate yourself anytime anyplace, like that’s it that’s the truth. Like this is you being secure, right? If you’re great at recruiting and you’ve got a system around how you recruit then you can go anyplace and grow your career, right? The other thing is this don’t miss this getting better at recruiting and holding yourself accountable to these behaviors is a direct investment into your career. A lot of people think that you know growing is helping the end is you know is helping the business that they’re in, but at the end of the day you’re your resume your ability to build and grow actually creates more opportunity for you inside your own career, this is a true fact inside my coaching over the last 18 months whose people that I would consider middle management, that are in these roles of like you know team managers, branch manager, area manager, regional manager, five people that I have individually clip coached have gone into director head of sales, head of organization type roles, and the reason why is that as they’ve gone through my coaching they’ve improved this skill-set and they’ve been able to grow very quickly and immediately that person becomes more a more valuable asset to the organization.
If you can grow something, right? You can also teach other people to grow it and so you become more valuable as a leader inside your organization. If you can coach, if you can teach other people to grow, other people to build, that’s the why, okay? Let’s talk about the how now first let’s just establish something when I talk about the how I’m going to talk about how you actually measure and report this okay so Pearson’s lawn if you’ve never heard of Pearson’s law in the 1800’s Pearson came up with a principle, and he determined that it was actually a law that this holds true to everything as it applies to us as humans, and what he said was this what we measure, we improve, okay? So, number one I’ve got to measure this if I’m going to maximize what I’m trying to do, okay? So I’ve got to measure it, now the second part of Pearson’s law was this what we measure and report improves exponentially. So, not only do I need to measure it okay I gotta report it that’s the accountability piece, okay? So, I’m going I’m going to measure this yes so now I got to figure out how am I gonna measure it. So, I needed what I call a scorecard I’m gonna track my winds and my losses in the day to day the week to week but then I have to report it and why would I report that, to someone why would I create accountability because when we do that it not only improves it improves exponentially, and I want the exponential, right? I want the other side of that I don’t want to just improve someone I want to actually be on the largest scale, I want to be on the largest stage of success, this is why you would create accountability and this is why each one of us should actually look in every element of our lives and say how can I incorporate that that reporting piece so that I can improve exponentially. Like this comes into play in all areas, look if I asked my wife to hold me accountable to eating certain things or not eating certain things, I improved my health exponentially, right? If I asked someone to meet me at the gym, right? that’s accountability I now improve the opportunity that I’m going to show up at the gym and workout I improved my health I improved my life exponentially. There’s lots of areas of our life we can capture this piece, but it takes a willingness to step into it. So let me let me give you three questions that need answered start with this, am I willing to create accountability am I willing to commit to this, and if you’re not you’re 20-some minutes into a podcast, you can click off, and you go on to the next one, okay? But if you’re going to answer first question am I willing to create accountability am I willing to commit to this, and you say yes then let’s move to number two and only answer the those who answer yes to that what will fall into the 1/10 to the 1% of the successful people right we all know that the 1 percenters exists and the 1 percenters typically are extremely driven they’re there they’re hardworking, they’re tenacious but when you create accountability around all aspects of your life you become a 1/10 to the one percenter and those are the people that are that’s when I mentioned the 5 people that have actually moved into some sort of head of sales director type role, those are the people that have created accountability in this particular area, in the area of recruiting, okay?
Here’s the second part who’s going to hold you accountable, you have to answer that question who’s going to hold you accountable in this particular area now here’s what I know finding someone that also needs to grow in this area, someone that maybe is in a similar role or someone that’s in a leadership role over you, this that would be the perfect person to actually hold you accountable similar to the story I told you about the not watching the Oklahoma City Thunder games, the moment I brought that idea up to Scott, Scott said I’m in, me too. Most likely you go find someone that’s in a similar position as you whether that’s inside your organization or outside your organization, whether that’s a friend that you have, or that’s someone you’re gonna go and initiate a relationship with, when you do that it’s highly likely that individuals going to say I’ll do it too, okay? And so who’s going to hold you accountable, you have to look in your circle, your close circle around you, as to who that will be look at times my wife, my spouse has been that for me. Now she’s not always the in this area business the best person to be able to look at something and say you know I can hold you accountable. So, I need to go find someone that it makes sense that will actually be able to identify am I truly doing the right thing right, okay? So the second part is the who, once you’ve identified that now you need to answer the third question which is, how am I going to track how am I going to measure how am I going to report these activities. So, let’s talk about this there’s multiple ways to do this I’m gonna give you a what I call recruiting scorecard okay and if you go to recruiting conversations that’s the name of the podcast, if you go to recruitingconversations.com/scorecard, okay? There will be a PDF of a scorecard there that you can download, okay? Now, here’s what I recommend, if you don’t want to use that scorecard create your own score card, but print that and put that on paper, there’s just something about having that with you on paper and bringing it into the day-to-day to where it’s in the line of sight, that actually creates a form of accountability. Here’s what I found, you can use spreadsheets, you can use software, right? There’s lots of software that you can create a create accountability and probably create some alerts, and incorporate that into what you’re going to do, right? You can actually go create cool spreadsheets, and I know some of you probably spreadsheet people, I find myself becoming a spreadsheet person the older I get. I have too many things to measure and so I need these things in places that I can go and see the information immediately, but what I found is that actually putting something on paper and actually having to write it down that transference the paper of being able to visibly see it having to carry it in to the day-to-day and it can’t get hit beyond something on you on your laptop is going to bring value to you. So I would recommend going and checking out my scorecard printing that scorecard and begin using it. Now here’s what the scorecard is going to do what it’s going to track what it’s going to measure the day to day, what are you doing in the day to day. Now here’s what a lot of people do is that they confuse lead metrics measuring what should be leading the day to day versus lag metrics, okay? So a lot of people when I say go create a scorecard here’s what they do they write down the end results, right? How many hires are you going to have how’s that going to influence the production on your what are your goals I want to hire four people by the end of the year, okay? That’s a lag metric, but a lot of people will see that as a lead metric, and just go to pursue recruiting efforts, okay? That’s the wrong way to do this you have to back into what are you going to do today, okay? What are you going to do in the next hour, and what that is, is the actual activities and the behaviors that are going to actually end up producing the results. So those are your lead metrics, the results are your lag metrics, do not confuse the two, I’m asking you to create accountability around your lead metrics, this is how many calls are you going to make this is are you going to be active on social media, and you should be you should be walking through our 4C you should be connecting you should be delivering content you should be communicating to the audience of one and then you should be creatively brainstorming around after doing those three, how are you going to get conversions, okay? and so that are you going to be active on social media, what does that look like, and what things are you going to do in the day-to-day, there’s some things that are old-fashioned that just work like when you have a phone conversation or you engage someone in a conversation on any of those social platforms, and writing a cards a brilliant thing to do, right? How many follow-ups are you going to make every single day right so there are things that these are the lead metrics you need that you need to identify those you quantify how many you’re going to actually do in the day to day in the week to week and then you’re going to hold yourself responsible for doing those now at the end of the week the accountability here’s where I think the accountability should come into play, send that scorecard to the person that has said I will hold you accountable, will you review this and give me feedback, okay? Now this only works if you’re willing to be transparent because I can take the scorecard that I just gave you and I can write some vacant numbers in there and I can make it look good but at the end of the day what you’re gonna have to walk in transparency with this or it won’t work with the person that’s gonna hold you accountable, that person needs permission, okay? This is part of the conversation when you’re asking them to hold you accountable they need permission to ask the hard questions, okay? And they need permission as a voice to speak to areas where you’re not doing what you said you were going to do, and to remind you of why you’re doing what you said you were going to do, that’s where accountability will come in best, right? Richard you said you were going to do X and I noticed that Tuesday and Wednesday those days are blank, what happened, okay? How can you solve the problem of that and how can you hold yourself accountable ensuring that doesn’t happen again I might have had the flu on Tuesday and Wednesday and there’s no way that I could have made those calls or made the connections or done the things I said I was going to do, right? So this accountability piece needs to be able to speak into your life and that will only happen if you actually give them permission to do so, okay? Look when I sat down I looked at my career, over my entire career this is true over my entire career where I spent 15 years in one business. Now I spent another 10 in another business, but in those 15 years in one business, I never had a leader who was in the role above me that could have been CEO, could have been president, could have been some sort of director, regional role, I never had anyone in that role create accountability around this and hold me accountable for the day-to-day, okay? They were always asking questions about the lag metrics and they were talking about them as though they were the lead metrics, okay? How many hires I’m going to have and my projections around how many units or how much volume or how many contracts that you’re going to do, I mean all of that is lag what ultimately matters is what are you gonna do tomorrow it’s going to produce that and you got or measure tomorrow, and the activities that’s going to actually produce that, okay?
So with that said grab my scorecard right recruitingconversations.com/scorecard grab that scorecard and begin using it and if you want to improve on it if it doesn’t work for you find something that will work for you go find someone that will hold you accountable give them the permission that they need to speak into your life where you may not actually do the things that you said you were gonna do, and this single piece will ensure that not only are you set establishing goals but you’ve built a system around actually accomplishing them. James clear made a statement, in atomic habits, great book you should pick it up, you’re welcome for the plug James, in the book he made this statement “we never rise to the level of our goals we only fall to the level of our systems”. So, tracking your day-to-day behaviors which are your lead metrics tracking those behaviors is part of your system, finding someone that you’re going to send that to report that to every single week is part of your system, that person reviewing it and speaking truth to you speaking life to you around that scorecard, applauding you when you’re doing it the way you said you would do it, and speaking truth to you and asking hard questions when you’re not doing it this is all part of your system, remember what is measured is improved, and what is measured and reported is improved exponentially, we all want the exponential. Thanks for listening everybody, if this brought value to you look if you’re if you aren’t in an upper management role, this is this is a problem for you to solve as well as it is for the people that are in the recruiting leader role. If you’re listening this you have got to creatively figure out how to create accountability, that’s necessary and then the flipside if you’re in that recruiting leader role it’s typically middle management, you have to be receptive to having accountability from your leadership in this particular place. Accountability is not micromanagement, accountability when it’s done right is so beneficial that you win at a much on a much larger scale than you will if you don’t have it. So yes it needs to be done right, but let’s not be resistant to this, because if we have accountable don’t have a count ability we got to create it if we already have it it’s there for a reason because we will win exponentially because we simply have that one piece. Thanks for listening everybody I look forward to sharing some more recent conversations with you soon, right here on the podcast recruiting conversations have a great week and until next time, we will talk to you then.
