Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization Show

Never let a good crisis go to waste is a philosophy that drives Tony Guarnaccia. Beginning when his parent’s business failed and they lost everything, Tony set out on a life journey to "Democratize Marketing," to figure out what it takes to run a profitable business. Now more than ever is the perfect time to re-assess your marketing, re-imagine your target markets, gut-check your offerings, and revisit your value proposition.   Within seconds of listening, you’ll discover that Tony Guarnaccia is ridiculously relatable, practical, and knowledgeable as he shares the red flags that signal that your business or reputation may be in trouble. He then shares the 6 steps of his "results loop,” 6 small steps that grow profits, starting with marketing, good offerings, and a differentiated value proposition.  While much of our conversation might seem focused on operations and marketing,  be assured that everything we discuss must be applied to human resources and talent acquisition, too. Tony is the founder of Results Trained and Big Fish Results. You can also learn more about the 6 factors here.

Most companies overlook the idea that Human Resources should be a labor multiplier. If you spend $100,000 each month on payroll, HR’s job is to multiply the effectiveness of that labor. You do that by paying attention to how well recruiters recruit, managers manage, new hires comply with onboarding, how well performance management is working, even how well employees are terminated.  COVID-19 has driven changes in the world of work that we never anticipated. HR can no longer ignore good people processes. For businesses to adapt to a new normal, human resources must step up and reimagine how it does what it does. What does a top performing HR process look like? What is the ripple effect of inaction or inefficiency? People Processes are the KEY to scaling your company! Rhamy Alejeal is our guest on this episode and he joins us to talk about the importance of prioritizing people and process. You can purchase Rhamy's #1 Best Selling Book on Amazon!

Do you think sheltering in place and working from home is tough? Imagine finding yourself in the world’s most extreme workplace, experiencing a plane crash, living in a constant blizzard with temperatures that hover about -35 degrees, and “seeing” nothing but darkness for 6 months...and that wasn’t the toughest part. Add to that being only the 2nd female expedition leader of a team of 17 random people that you didn’t select...and they didn’t select you. That was the life of our guest Rachael Robertson who was “accidentally” selected to be only the 2nd female expedition leader at Davis Station in Antarctica. From fighting the extreme unnatural challenges of confinement, defusing intense interpersonal pressures, to even rescuing her team following a plane crash, Rachael never expected the extreme leadership lessons she learned leading her team would ever be used to help others cope with adversity. diversity, inclusion, and the ability to survive a global pandemic. In her new book Respect Trumps Harmony, Rachael shares why the highest performing teams let go of harmony and focus on respect, diversity, and embracing difficult conversations.

Forty-three percent of women drop out of the workforce after becoming a mother. When they return or even while balancing work and raising kids, women are forced to take lesser job titles or put career advancement on hold. Even the entrepreneur world of venture capital seems to penalize working moms with only 3% of female-owned companies earning investment dollars. Claudia Reuters sees a world of better options for women who want to balance work and family. A former stay-at-home mom herself, Reuter went on to be a venture-backed CEO, an executive at a >$2B company, a General Manager at Techstars, and host of The 43% Podcast. She is the author of the brand new book “Yes, You Can Do This!: How Women Start up, Scale up, and Build the Life They Want.”  You can connect with Claudia follow her at @reuter_claudia. "

Delivering a positive customer service has always garnered a lot of attention. But then the SHIFT hit our plans. COVID-19 was the last straw. Every company, customer, employee, supplier, and vendor is now grieving over the death of Normal and re-prioritizing the future. “Experience Rules,” says our Geeks Geezers and Googlization guest Joyce Gioia. (“Experience Rules” just happens to be the title of her newest book too - available in the summer 2020 on Amazon!)  In the post-pandemic era, it’s no longer good enough to focus only on the customer. Employees demand a positive experience too. So do suppliers and vendors. Experiences Matter.  Listen as Joyce Gioia - futurist, author, and founder of Employer of Choice International - reveals why experience rules and your next CEO must be a Chief Experience Officer. BTW Joyce is the co-founder of The Herman Group and  Employer of Choice, Inc., author of 5 books, and has been a popular speaker at #SHRM, #HR, and #Business conferences for many years.  I first interviewed Joyce 19 years ago for my 1st radio show...and I have the cassette tape to prove it!

We’ve got another first on this week’s episode of Geeks Geezers and Googlization. Our guest is the “World’s 1st Industrial Philosopher” - Cristina DiGiacomo - and her visit couldn’t have come at a better time. The future of work arrived ahead of time thanks to the COVID19 pandemic and death of George Floyd. These events exposed massive cracks and vulnerabilities in our society, traditions, laws, and norms. The future of work needs fixing. And if we want a better future, we need to create a better now! Relying on the wisdom of the greatest thinkers of all time (Socrates, Lao Tzu, Emerson, Plato, and the like), Cristina helps executives and entrepreneurs face the greatest challenges they confront at work. She shares those challenges and reveals how we all must begin to think and respond differently to the now so we have a better future that works for everyone. Cristina is also the author of Wise Up! At Work and founder of MorAlchemy.

Recruiting in a VUCA world? (BTW, VUCA represents Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous.) To get a sense about what’s going on and where talent acquisition is headed post-pandemic, we brought back a good friend of Geeks Geezers and Googlization and an amazing thought leader in recruitment and talent acquisition, Craig Fisher. Craig shared his own personal experience with job search and then peered inside his crystal ball for trends on the future of video interviewing, employment branding, company culture, employee assessment, and learning.

Unemployment in America is headline news in the U.S. As high as it is, Vinay Singh has real concerns that the actual rate of unemployment is significantly underreported. He questions how unemployment is tracked and more importantly that it misses the dark side of income inequality, social inequality, and ageism - exacerbated by under-employment, wage suppression, age discrimination and CEO compensation. He’s a passionate student and user of technology but concedes humans need to learn how to apply technology in a more human way. He implores recruiters and HR to stop asking inane and irrelevant interview questions (such as “if you were the first human on Mars, what would you do?”) and urges both companies and workers to take this pandemic crisis to reskill and upskill. Singh is the author of the Amazon best selling book “Your Future in Pieces.”

Hiring right is definitely not the “no-brainer” many HR and hiring managers think it is. They often allow conscious and unintended bias to cloud their judgment and predictable decision-making. The disappointing success rate of new hires (30 percent) over time confirms the poor choices many managers make. Our guest HireBrain CEO David Nason intends to change that through the use of neuroscience, probability science, and social science. He has the data and methodology to prove that even the commonly used situational interview questions offer zero predictive value. Worse, they often introduce significant negative impact. Tune in now to hear how HireBrain’s advanced interviewing methodology removes the guesswork and bias from hiring, shifting decision making from gut instinct to predictable evidence.

Success will not be measured the same way in the New Normal as it was just a few months ago. Hopefully that’s a good thing. Recovering from the pandemic stronger and better will require more grace, more compassion, more empathy, more humanity, according to our guest Julie Ann Sullivan. From interviews with over 60 C-Suite leaders and conversations with hundreds more who created thriving cultures and workplaces, she discovered four attributes these leaders all have in common. She published them in her new book Catalysts of Culture. (You’ll need to listen and/or read the book to learn what they are.) An important read before the pandemic crisis, it’s now an essential leadership guide for a successful reopening and relaunch of business in Age of Continuous Certainty.