With the New Year well underway, I trust you're vigorously implementing your New Year's business strategy. With that in mind, I wanted to share one of my favorite Brian Tracy recordings on that same subject. The title is TurboStrategy and in it, Brian discusses some of the best, but also simple and profound thinking tools for planning. Enjoy! (Note: After clicking on the link above, right click on the player and you should be able to save the file as an mp3.)

More importantly, I want to remind you not to let bad hiring decisions mess up the great business strategy you pored over the past several months.

Whether you need to improve future recruiting and hiring processes or "re-hire" current employees, to succeed, your talent must be in alignment with your strategy. You must have people in jobs that are closest to their strengths and in alignment with your strategic needs. And as "Good to Great" author Jim Collins stresses, not even the best companies get their people decisions right every time, but they correct their mistakes quickly.

By "re-hiring," I'm not just suggesting a simple talent review, but a re-commitment to why you hired the employee in the first place. That's really the essence of this "Zero Based Thinking" question: If I had not hired this person, knowing what I now know, would I hire them back again today?

Once you've committed to "re-hiring" your team, you'll have some decisions to make. Some employees will be coached and encouraged to maintain their excellent performance, others might have the potential of improvement through coaching and still others who will most likely be coached out or into a more suitable position.

So what are you waiting for? "Re-hire" your team today and increase the likelihood of your strategy's success this year by making sure you have the right people on your bus now!  Need Help?