Recent Posts by Jason Richmond

Customer personas have been used for years to develop more effective, targeted marketing strategies. Also known as “buyer personas,” they help marketers identify and evaluate potential customers and clients.  This same process can help recruiters be more effective in communicating with and identifying prospective job candidates. Basically, a candidate persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal candidate, depicting things like a name, a job title, key demographic...

Has there ever been a more exciting (or more challenging) time to work in the human capital field? Just consider some of the key issues we have been watching over the past year or two. Economic, Social and Political Challenges: Organizations of all sizes and industries are struggling to deal with uncertainty, unanticipated change, and shifting policy. We are all being buffeted by these conflicts – and the question of what is going to happen to the economy in the next year or...

Look around you. The world has changed. Diversity no longer means having a few representative people who look different from the majority of your workforce. Diversity today is a key driver of organizational financial performance, and we need to consider diversity of markets, customers, ideas, and talent. These four mega-trends are creating a business context that is far less homogeneous and much more diverse than has historically been the case.  The need for organizations to...

Creating a work environment that appeals to all the generations found in today’s workplace can be challenging. The companies that truly get it focus their time and energy on maximizing their employee’s potential, bringing everyone to the table, and providing experiences and training that benefit both company and employees. As I write in my book Culture Spark: 5 Steps to Ignite and Sustain Organizational Growth many companies have realized that the way to get good people is to...

Every year LinkedIn publishes a “Top Skills” list, which analyzes its huge professional social network to rank which skills are in top demand yet low supply. LinkedIn Learning editor Paul Petrone wrote in a blog post that 57 percent of senior leaders on the platform say soft skills are more critical to their businesses than hard skills.  According to LinkedIn, the top five soft skills—for 2019, at least: creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability, and time...

There’s a quote that I love attributed to Mary Kay Ash, founder of the Mary Kay Cosmetics empire: “A company is only as good as the people it keeps.” In some form, this statement has been made many times and in many different ways. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc., has a perspective that also rings true. “A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating.” Fundamentally, any company is...

The rapid advance of technology has had a seismic impact on the ways companies do business—probably the equivalent of a 9.0 on the Richter scale. Just consider the impact of Wi-Fi, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and social media, and the ways they have not only dramatically changed business operations but also business culture. What are the positives and negatives of the high-tech environment? It’s an issue that can’t be ignored because technological capabilities will continue...

Executives considering any type of merger or acquisition do their due diligence. They pore over balance sheets, scrutinize operational procedures, evaluate budgets and forecasts, and conduct numerous other analyses. But how often do they pause to consider the people. Bringing together two companies also brings together two sets of people. And the corporate cultures within which these people operate may be significantly different. What can you do to overcome any differences and...