The System Holds The Answer

by Matt Mattson

dr-full-color-copy I sometimes find myself stuck.  Do you ever feel that way?  You look at your organization, you look at your role in the organization, and just feel stuck.  What do you do next?  How do you push forward?  How do you improve?  How do you lead?

Then I remember, "Oh yeah, dummy, the SYSTEM holds the answer."  It’s weird, but true.  Every time I wonder what I should do next to push the organization/group/company forward, I remember that between Social Excellence and Dynamic Recruitment , the answer is there. The system works if I choose to work the system.

See, we’re all a part of membership organizations, and membership organizations are made of… (wait for it)… MEMBERS.  Therefore the quality of your organization (and everything it does) is determined by the quality of its members.  Want to get better?  Want to advance your cause?  Want to make a difference?  Want to truly lead?  –  Start with the core ingredients of your group — people and purpose.  Bring in more of the right people, who will focus on the group’s purpose, to make a larger higher quality impact.

For me, when I get stuck, I go back to doing the Dynamic Recruitment system while living Social Excellence — it lays out my answer for me.  If I do the Dynamic Recruitment system while living Social Excellence, I’m doing my job, I’m leading, I’m doing results-producing work, I’m making a difference.

For example… something I’m really proud of is that we have built our company to be very successful by doing the Dynamic Recruitment system and trying our best to live a Socially Excellent life — that’s been our whole business plan.  Cool, right?

Here is a snapshot at some of the core principles of Dynamic Recruitment, if you’re not familiar…

People Join People. All organizational members can point to the one person who is responsible for bringing them into the organization.  Relationships, interpersonal comfort, and shared personal connections are the determining factors that can influence a person to invest their time, resources, energy, reputation, and money into the organization.  Slogans, T-shirts, banners, advertising, and events have very little impact when it comes to convincing the best of the best people to join an organization.  People join people.  Organizational recruitment is about relationships.

Quantity Drives Quality. This simple statement reflects the core of Phired Up’s recruitment philosophy.  In other words, because you can’t recruit who you don’t know, the larger an organization’s social network, the larger its potential.  The larger an organization’s network, the more people it has a chance to recruit.  The larger an organization’s network, the more people it also has a chance to select from – thus increasing the probability for higher quality members.  Everything starts with an organization having specific, practical, detailed guidance on how to grow its network of “friends of the group.”  Phired Up teaches specific, practical, proven (in some instances scripted) techniques to grow an organization’s network through authentic relationship building.

Interpersonal Skills Development. Handshakes, powerful conversations, listening skills, remembering names, first impressions, body language, approaching new people and groups, eye contact, getting contact information, powerful questions, authenticity, vulnerability, and confidence.  Phired Up’s recruitment system is about personal connections and today’s young adults (especially) need practical, experiential, detailed guidance on all of these “skills.”  Dynamic Recruitment depends on members’ abilities to adopt a sense of interpersonal excellence within their social interactions. To learn more about Phired Up’s Social Excellence message, click here .

Product Knowledge. When a prospective member wants to learn more about the organization, every member should be prepared with not only the features and benefits of membership, but also powerful personal stories and insightful questions to help potential members emotionally connect to the organization. In Dynamic Recruitment, “knowing your product” is about having the ability to help others realize how the group could dramatically change their life for the better.

Behaviors of the Best. Phired Up teaches specific behaviors of high performing networkers, salespeople, statesmen, and recruiters.  These are every day patterns of behavior that provide access to a larger pool of people to interact with than most organizational members have.  Some of the core messages of the “Behaviors of the Best” include: You have to give to get (how to get contact information and how to get access to others by providing something of value to them). Ask the rest to find the best (how to engage everyone around you to identify high caliber prospective members). Follow-up or fail and Eat a bunch of lunch (how to build relationships through small activities not big events).  Make ‘em prove it (using a Values-Based Selection Process). Give the gift (re-framing recruitment to be about sharing the gift of membership with deserving others instead of trying to “get people to join”).

Audience Understanding. Often members struggle with a lack of perspective.  No matter the organization, often members only think of a small pool of people as potential members, when the actual pool is always many times larger.  Many fraternity/sorority members in particular believe their recruitment potential is limited to the people who participate in “rush” or "formal recruitment."  Phired Up’s curriculum helps expand the context of organizational leaders to understand the actual recruitment potential for their organization.  Having a greater understanding of how big the organization’s prospective audience is, where they are, and what they’re looking for results in “ah-ha” moments for most participants.

Names List. With a new understanding of their true audience, and with a firm grounding in the principles of: You can’t recruit who you don’t know. People don’t join organizations, people join people. And Quantity Drives Quality. It then becomes obvious that for an organization to reach its full potential, it cannot depend only on the people that its members currently have a relationship with – it must build a larger network. To manage that network and to keep track of its members’ progress as they bring their acquaintances through the recruitment process, an organization that practices Dynamic Recruitment uses a Names List.  A Names List is a dynamic, living, continually updated database that measures the amount of and the quality of relationships with potential members that are being built by the chapter.  This is not just a list of people the group is wishing would join the chapter – this is a list of the chapter’s entire network because Quantity Drives Quality.

Values-Based Selection. As an organization increases its network through positive, proactive, social interactions, it has the opportunity to be more selective.  Once the opportunity for increased selectivity is achieved, the organization must then select members not based on whether they’re a “good guy,” or "a sweet girl," but on measurable, objective standards that match up to the core values of the organization.  Each organization that practices Dynamic Recruitment builds a written set of membership selection criteria to ensure only the highest quality people are invited to join.  This is a key to true values-based recruitment.

Horses vs. Mules. The old 80/20 principle holds true in nearly every organization we’ve ever worked with.  For most groups, about 80% of the results are produced by about 20% of the members.  That small handful of “workhorses” can choose to try to motivate their unmotivated members (a.k.a. “mules”) to participate in recruitment, or they could just gather the horses and get to work. After all, horses recruit horses, and mules recruit mules.  When faced with a lack of motivation or apathetic members with regard to recruitment, don’t ask “How do I motivate my members to recruit?”  Instead ask, “How do I recruit with my motivated members?”