Leadership...so crucial in retaining your best people

Hi friends,

As Singapore ride on the upside of the economic cycle, companies also begin to think about how they can retain their most valuable asset - human capital to stay competitive. With the many publication that came along, there was one quotation that I find very interesting and most appropriate about retaining human capital. It says that "people join companies because of the company name, but people leave because of leadership".

I feel that this is one point that small and medium enterprise (SME) can properly leverage upon to create a competitive advantage for themselves. There is almost always this notion that SME finds it very competitive to find and retain talents in their organization. After a hard search for valuable talents and spending much time to train them, many of these talents do not stay. They will reach out to find greener pasture which they believe will be in the bigger MNC. Of course there are some who do not even consider working for a SME, to begin with. So to many SME it is just difficult to retain, but then think about what this quote says:

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
~Margaret Drabble

In this writing I will not go down the path of what are the advantages and disadvantages of working for a SME vs. MNC. However I would like to share my thoughts that SME can seriously consider how they can sharpen their leadership traits as a means to retain talent. Some SME may not be clear about what Leadership do and what is it all about. Well, in brief:

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
~Henry Kissinger

Developing clear leadership traits and bringing your team on board is one of the key success factor. Business owners in SME should exploit the richness of their experiences and foresight, and find a way to communicate it. There are many general theories out there about Leadership but frankly there is no exact right or wrong way in getting it real good. It just have to start from a clear mind and adjust it along the way as one finds appropriate. The golden rule is to make sure your team understand and believe in it. Hence it is not something that SME need to spend a lot of money on leadership or staff retention programs. You will be surprised that it may not be as difficult as you think, if you put your heart to it as this quote suggest:

People are more easily led than driven.
~David Harold Fink

Hence to all the SME out there, you can have a competitive edge to retain your talent for it is not always only the organization matters.....leadership matters more..

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
~John Maxwell



Looking out:

Interactive marketing start-up looking for 1st or 2nd round of investment.


Take care,
KH