Big Idea Guy

Monday, May 26, 2008


The adoption of new employees is what they need to call the recruiting process. Yes, adoption. You know buying someone for your family that you do not produce yourself. It is cheaper to get employees than to adopt. (My neighbor just adopted two children and it was much more expensive than the cost of recruiting an employee) It sounds crude when you look at it as a family, yet in business it makes real good sense. To adopt someone and not recruit, is to say you want that person to be part of the corporate family.

When I was a hospital administrator in California I had to find a new Director of Nurses for the hospital. This was going to be the most important person on our team to assure the best care for our patients and the best success for our hospital. I interviewed way too many people, and it was very hard to find the right fit (the supply of good nurses was short and the cost to find a good director was very high.) When I found the right one out of Nevada, I treated her as family. In return, she was a great Director of Nursing and she sent me a magnificent Grandfather clock, which I still have in my home, as a gift for the kindness I showed her in the hiring process. Now, I did nothing extraordinary. I just made sure she was happy in her new home, our hospital. The same you would do for a child if you adopted them.

Later, as Director of Sales for a large corporation, part of my responsibility was to recruit the sales staff for jobs that were commission only, a very hard sell. I always looked at the as to how they would fit in the family, so to speak. Many times my superiors would say just bring in a dozen or so and let the fall-out do the work. That was the way they had done it in the past.

Would you do that to your family if you were thinking about adopting a child?
“Yea, I would like five kids and have them live with me, but I only want one. I want to see which one fits our family best and then I will send the rest back.”

So why don’t corporations look at the same process of recruiting as adoption? Is it the cost? Or the investment if the fit is not just-right, or the time involved in making the right choice? I am sure there are lots of good companies that do view the process as adoption. Many more need to take a look at the process and see if they want to adopt, or just hire?

( The boys in the picture are my twins. If you want to adopt one let me know I have two... and in three more years they will be teenagers and you might get both of them for free)

Saturday, May 24, 2008


Time and money, that is what the world runs on most days and it seems that there is never enough time or money, so why does the world run on something there is never enough of? Maybe it is like gas, we know there is a better way to do things but right now we will pay $4.00 or more a gallon to do it. And we know it will run out some day. Idea, view the time money thing as it really is, there is always the same amount of time every day and money is just a thing you print if needed so it can not be that important. Yea right... money is very important, but it should not be the key focus of all decisons.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Keep Your Room Clean

I clean my house up when my Mom comes to vist. (She is coming in two weeks) Not that it is a mess when she is not visting, it is just nice to have it extra clean for company. Or maybe it is I don’t want her to say, "Hey, clean up your room!" like when I was a child.

The CEO of the company I work for is coming to our plant this week and it is funny - the same thing is going on . The company is cleaning up the junk sprucing up the place with new paint, etc. Are they afraid Mom might say "clean up your room"? In the business world you would hope that operations would be the same on every day.


When I was a Hospital Administrator we never knew when the State would come in to inspect us. Had we known, would we have cleaned up for the visit? That would mean we were not doing our job the best we could on all the other days. So would you want to be a patient on those days, or just when the State was visiting?

In the manufacturing world one would hope that the plant looked good and ran well every day . Yes, maybe a few extra things could be done, but shouldn’t they be done already for the sake of the employees that work there now? What does this action say to them? That they are not worth the effort; only the CEO is? Would it be nice to say we cleaned up and painted just for Susie who is in production or that we restriped the parking lot for the night shift so it would be easyer and safer for them. One could even celebrate that it was done for them. Wow! retention and job satisfactin might go up!!!!

AND I WAS ASKED WHERE DID ALL THIS EXTRA BUGET MONEY COME FROM TO DO ALL THIS.

Maybe my idea is to do what you should do every day whether Mom is coming over or not.

Spay breath freshener with vitamens

About Me

My photo
Spanish Fork, Utah
Ideas that need to be out there. Some good, some bad, some crazy. I have ideas on business, life, lyrics, story lines, movies and just silly stuff. I have always had ideas. Not all have worked out for my benefit, but many have been more than successful for others.