Russ: This is The BusinessMakers show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And now it's time for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, brought to you by Aflac. Ask about it at work. And for this morning, we're going to roll back to earlier this year when we had an expert on the show, an expert at talking about what business decision makers use to determine who gets laid off and who gets to stay. Because our guest was Dr. Don Minnick of Interpersonal Skills Laboratory. So how did your organization survivor expertise evolve?

Don: Well, Russ, we've been doing this kind of consulting work for a long period of time, about 30 years. And over that period of time a couple of things were going on. One was that as economic cycles go, there have always been periods of downsizing, periods where outsourcing was a business strategy, where organizations shrunk to meet the needs that they had.

Russ: Oh yeah.

Don: During that same period of time, organizations were changing their structure a little bit from very vertically silo kind of structured organizations that were functionally independent, to an organization that was much leaner, meaning it had fewer employees, much more horizontally structured, team based, a different kind of organization, basically.

Russ: Okay, okay.

Don: Now, during that period of time, a lot of the people that we were working with in these organizations, when they came to our training programs, they were interested in the content that we were providing, of course, but they had some other things on their mind very often. And those other things were looking at these changes in their organizations and trying to understand what they needed to do as individuals to be considered indispensable in their organization. In other words, how can they keep their jobs and how can they be sure that they're going to keep their jobs.

Russ: Okay.

Don: Now, what we did was, since there was such an interest among our participants in those kinds of issues, we initially just scheduled some offline discussion time for them, so that they could talk with each other about their experiences, about what they noticed, about the kind of skill sets that they thought were important.

Russ: Right.

Don: We listened to that, tried to capture as much of that data as we could because we had a sense that this was a real important issue to be addressed. As time went on, we decided to gather a little bit more data in a more rigorous fashion. We began to do some structured interviewing of these same folks. And again, these were individuals who had maybe survived a downsizing period. These were also managers who were in the position of deciding who to keep in their resized organization.

Russ: Okay. Okay.

Don: So they had some real good data about how to do that. In our surveys we ask them basically three questions. We ask them list the personal characteristics, as you understand them, of those employees who will be the most valuable in your organization. Another one was, if you're a manager who's been involved in hiring staff for your resized organization, what did you look for?

Russ: Okay.

Don: The third thing we asked was, give us as specific an example as you can of a behavior of somebody that you have personal connection with that you feel is a real indispensable part of your organization. In other words, describe the skills that you're seeing.

Russ: Wow, so I guess once you've captured quite a few of those answers, you have a pretty valuable database?

Don: We do and we're continuing to collect that information, and surprisingly enough, the content of that information is not changing a whole lot as the years go forward. What is considered to be important in being indispensable in your organization is the same today as it was five years ago, ten years ago. What we did as we gathered this information, was really set about to put together a model that would pull this information together in a way that people could understand it and use it to help make themselves indispensable in their environment. What fell out right away in this model was that there were two basic value choices that we're calling survival instincts.

Russ: Okay.

Don: And those two things are this, individual initiative and capacity for collaboration with others. Now what that means is, individual initiative, obviously, it's somebody who sees what needs to be done in an organization and sets about to do it without having to be directed to do so. Capacity for collaboration is somebody who has kind of a personal orientation and tries to involve other people when appropriate in the kind of work they're doing.

Russ: Okay, well that does seem to make sense.

Don: Absolutely, and we're calling these instincts for a specific reason, and that is that we think that everybody has the capacity for both of these capabilities.

Russ: Okay, okay.

Don: Now, they come more naturally to some than to others, but they are things that are certainly in our repertoire of skills, all of us. As we gathered this data, a huge percentage of our respondents, something like 80% to 85%, mentioned either individual initiative or capacity for collaboration as being an important capability. Organizations really like people who show initiative. Organizations really like people who can collaborate with other folks. But the most important thing that we found was that organizations really like folks who have those two capabilities in balance.

Russ: Okay.

Don: Well, kind of coming from those sort of core capabilities, those instincts, we found four other sets of skills that we're calling survival skills.

Russ: Okay.

Don: And those things are mental agility, personal visibility, boundary spanning, and a set of skills we're calling action learning.

Russ: Okay.

Don: Now, I want to make sure that I make this point clear. This is not a theory that we developed. It's not a theory at all, rather it's a-it's a set of observations, and it's a set of observations by people who are in a unique position to know. Those are people who have either survived a downsizing themselves or people who have been in a position of hiring other folks to remain in their downsized organization.

Russ: Okay, okay.

Don: So, this is real life information, and what our job has been is to try to craft this together, this information that our clients provided, into a model that is usable, that's practical, that people can apply in their own organizations.

Russ: So tell us a little bit about these other four.

Don: Well, mental agility is what the name implies, and sort of an analogy that I've used in the past is this. All of us at one point or another have had a ten speed bicycle. I would ask folks how many of those ten speeds do you use? And people will say, "Oh, I don't know, two, three maybe at most." Well, people who are mentally agile, have a ten speed bike, they use all ten speeds. They get all their gears going. It also implies some specific things. Obviously, quickness in thought and action, that's what mental agility is kind of all about. That in some ways has been dictated by the way organizations have changed over the last few years.

Russ: Right.

Don: We don't have time to wait around and do the laborious work that we used to. We just don't have time. In an instant world, in an Internet connected world, you have to be quick both in thought and action.

Russ: Okay, let's talk about personal visibility. That means having everybody in your company know you and see what you're doing, and know about you, and see what your work ethic is?

Don: That's exactly right, and there are some of us who have labored under the misassumption over the years that if we just did a good job, kept our head down and did our work, we were going to be rewarded by our organization. Fact of the matter is, no matter how competent you are, if your competence is invisible, it doesn't do you any good.

Russ: All right.

Don: Doesn't do your organization any good, doesn't do you any good.

Russ: All right. Let's talk a little bit about boundary spanning. What is that?

Don: Boundary spanning is pretty much as the name implies, and that is somebody who can reach across the functional boundaries of an organization and make connections all over the organization in a way that's going to be helpful in accumulating knowledge, gathering people together who need to be together, and working on projects jointly. So if visibility is about other people knowing you, boundary spanning is about you knowing other people, and knowing the right people, the kind of people who have the information that, pooled together, helps the organization work most effectively.

Russ: Okay, and then the last one is action learning. Now, tell us about that.

Don: Action learning is really the skill of helping an organization learn from its own process. What someone with a skill of action learning does is that they can assume a participant observer role. Now, what that means is somebody who can be actively participating, a full contributor in their technical area, but somebody who is also able to take a figuratively step back from time to time, look at the larger organization, and look at not only what we're doing, but how we're doing it. Very important skill, and there are organizations that have terms to capture that. Getting the 35,000 foot view is a good example of that skill.

Russ: Meaning that they're not so myopic that they're just on their area; that they can see how they're affecting everybody else and what the organization as a whole needs to do.

Don: Exactly so.

Russ: Cool, okay. So all of these points that you've just shared with us, six total consistently came out from all these business participants that were right in the middle of making these types of decisions.

Don: That's correct.

Russ: And that concludes our discussion with Dr. Don Minnick. To go hear the entire interview, just go to thebusinessmakers.com, and up in the right-hand corner in the search box, type in Minnick. Dr. Don Minnick, a cool interview. And that wraps this morning's Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, brought to you by Aflac. Ask about it at work. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at The BusinessMakers.com