Spoiler Alert – There is no one way.
I’m very into the Star Wars universe. I attribute it to my dad, who passed along his love for Sci-Fi to his eldest daughter with great pride. Which means, like all good Star Wars fans, I was VERY caught up in the Mandalorian when it premiered a few years ago.
My nephew watched it first, and very quickly started saying “this is the way” every time we saw him. As I watched the series, I was caught up in the idea that these Mandalorian had a single code that they all lived by, and anything that they did had an unspoken rule or ritual which was punctuated by that phrase.
I’m going to let you in on a secret – in the world of business, professionals DO NOT have a single code that we go by. From my own experience, you will not catch anyone in the HR or Training department saying “This is the way”.
Why? Because everything is relative.
Sure, there are some hard and fast rules (in HR world this looks like discrimination, wage and hour, harassment, etc) but so much of what we do in our world is individualized and nuanced.
A good talent development professional focuses on many factors – the stage a business is in, the team they have on board, the appetite for change within the business. And all of this can change on a dime.
Don’t believe me? Look at how businesses have reacted to the recent bear market.
Some have hedged the downturn with layoff.
Others continue to hire (and add recruiters internally to their team to hire in scale).
Manufacturers may be ramping up and scaling back depending on their projections.
Organizations may be choosing to cut spending or invest in expansions.
Organizations that may vastly different approaches may all equally succeed. Other organizations that take the same tactics may see different results.
You ability to assess the situation, take into account factors that impact your business, and make decisions based on the information you gather are CRITICAL to your long term success. Beyond your individual capabilities, problems are often so complex they require a team to successfully solve them.
If you’re waiting for a business version Mandalorian creed to show up on your doorstep, its not coming. In the complex world we live in, no one is going to look at you and say “This is the way”. It’s time to leverage your team to solve problems in a personalized way.
