Steady Hands in a Shifting Market
Why tougher conditions demand better leadership and recruitment decisions
There’s been a bit of noise this week about the economy.
Unemployment has nudged up, growth is a bit patchy in places and confidence feels cautious. The headlines are doing what headlines do – a mix of concern with just enough drama to keep us clicking, worrying and paying attention.
If we take a bit of a deep breath and look at it calmly, things are softer, true… but they’re still a long way from broken. A tightening market more than a crisis – and frankly, we’ve had enough of those in recent years.
Tightening markets don’t usually expose bad businesses overnight, but they do have a habit of exposing rushed thinking and shaky decision making.
When pressure builds, behaviour changes
In recruitment, you can almost set your watch by it. When the market tightens, some organisations freeze hiring completely, others rush it because the pressure is building and they “just need someone” and some lower their calibre and values bar and hope it all works out for the best.
None of that is particularly surprising but much of it is reactive rather then proactive.
The reality is that most hiring mistakes don’t come from a lack of care or intent, they come from pressure and pace. Organisations are busy, teams are stretched and there’s a natural pull toward getting things done quickly rather than stepping back and getting them right.
So we hire quickly rather than clearly, we prioritise skills and capability because they are easier to measure and we look past alignment because that takes a bit of time and effort. Effort we’re struggling to sum up as we’ve got plenty of other things to be thinking and worrying about already…
Moving quickly and focusing on skills and knowledge alone can sometime work in the short term. It will work right up until it doesn’t.
The reality is that poor hiring generally doesn’t fail in loud and obvious ways (although sometimes it does!). More often there is a quiet tapering of positive attitudes, shared team outcomes and cultural engagement.
The wrong hires will eventually start to create drag, drain energy from the team, chip away at trust and create just enough friction to slow things down without anyone quite being able to put their finger on why things suddenly seem to be going a bit wrong. In the softer market we’re experiencing at the moment the drag hits harder and can cause more severe consequences.
Canterbury (said slowly, in a deep voice, with far too many aaaa’s!)
I’m going to be a bit one-eyed and parochial for a minute (sorry wider NZ!) but one of the things I like about working in Canterbury is that we tend not to panic too easily.
We’ve been through enough over the years to know that things move in waves and, as a result, there’s a quiet pragmatism here. A willingness to roll the sleeves up and get on with it without too much fuss.
Our economy isn’t immune to what’s going on, but it is reasonably well balanced and potentially somewhat insulated by major projects and the tail of recovery and anchor rebuild projects. But I also like to think, economic bubble aside, that there’s a leadership mindset here that leans toward steady hands rather than dramatic reactions.
This is where leadership shows up
It’s easy to talk about leadership when things are going well and the wind is at your back. Growth tends to cover a multitude of sins.
But when the environment tightens, leadership becomes a bit more visible in the day-to-day decisions and behaviours that might otherwise go unnoticed. In the choices made, the standards held to and the shortcuts you decide not to take. No matter how often we see recruitment being treated as an admin or simple HR task, I will always talk about the fact that every hiring decision, whether we treat it that way or not, is also a leadership decision.
Not just because you’re intentionally growing your business, but because you’re shaping culture, capability and momentum at the same time. Every person you bring into a team shifts the dynamic in some way, sometimes subtly and sometimes significantly.
And when pressure is high, those decisions tend to carry a bit more weight. Get it right and you build resilience into the team but get it wrong and you introduce drag that takes time and energy to fix.
The temptation to “just get the recruitment done”
This is usually where things start to wobble a little. There’s a gap, the team is stretched, the workload isn’t easing up and there’s a temptation to say, “just get someone in and we’ll figure it out from there.” Whilst that can feel entirely reasonable the wrong person in the role is almost always more expensive than an empty chair.
Not just in terms of salary or recruitment cost, but in the momentum that gets lost while things are corrected, the energy that gets drained from the team and the leadership time that gets pulled away from more important work.
It’s a bit like building a paper boat and acting surprised when it starts to get soggy and sink … you kind of knew in advance how it was going to end!
So what does matter?
If the market is tightening, the answer isn’t always to rush hiring or even to stop it altogether.
The organisations that tend to come through these periods best are usually the ones who get clearer and more intentioned rather than faster. Clarity on what success actually looks like in a role, clarity on the kind of person who is likely to thrive and clarity on the values they are not prepared to compromise on.
They also spend a bit more time thinking about what motivates someone to genuinely engage in the work, rather than just turn up and do it. Because capability on its own is just the base layer that gets someone in the door. It doesn’t guarantee they’ll thrive or contribute positively over time.
In my experience, what tends to sustain performance, especially when things are a bit tougher, is alignment.
Values. Motivation. And a sense that the work actually matters.
That’s where discretionary effort tends to come from and that’s what you need when economic conditions and rising fuel prices aren’t doing you too many favours.
Clarity is not a luxury so much as good risk management
There’s sometimes a tendency to think that taking a bit of time to plan and get clear is a bit of a luxury, something you do when things are quieter.
In reality, it’s one of the more commercially smart things you can do. Clarity reduces risk, alignment improves performance and motivational fit tends to drive engagement in a way that is quite hard to manufacture later.
Or put a bit more simply, when you’re thoughtful upfront you tend to spend a lot less time cleaning things up further down the track. Like they say in special forces – perfect preparation prevents p!ss poor performance!
The clarity advantage
The bit that often gets missed is the fact that many leaders forget about lifting their own game during those tougher times. Some get cautious or reactive or just plain tired and jaded.
This creates an opportunity for leaders and organisations that stay clear, continue to lead with purpose and intent and that continue to hire thoughtfully and treat people well.
Those businesses don’t just survive the downward cycles but somehow manage to build momentum through them. I often say that the organisations that manage to do okay during the tough times are learning, acting and working towards healthy models that will really stand them in good stead when the times get better.
Which they always do. (At least so far!)
The economy will do what the economy does. It will rise, fall, wobble and recover and it will probably surprise us again at some point in the near future (particularly with some of the slightly odd global leadership going on at the moment!).
That part isn’t new.
What matters, and what is entirely within our control, is how we lead through it. The choices we make, the standards we hold to and the way we go about building our teams.
And our hiring choices aren’t simply a transaction to complete – they are leadership in action.
Act wisely!
About the Author
Rob Bishop is the Director of Bishop Associates, a Christchurch-based executive search and recruitment consultancy known for its values-driven, people-first approach. With over 25 years’ experience in recruitment, leadership assessment and governance advisory, Rob and his team work closely with boards and leaders on CEO & senior appointments, executive alignment, generalist recruitment and human resource needs; supporting long-term organisational success.