January 15, 2025

Happy New Year, Peripheral Thinkers™!

You’ve likely heard salutations and well wishes for a prosperous and healthy New Year from many others by now. There is a sense of optimism and excitement for 2025 across industries, communities, and families.

Last weekend, we celebrated our grandson’s first birthday. His party guests ranged from a few weeks old to senior citizens from diverse backgrounds, multiple ethnicities, faiths, and professions.

Conversation topics ranged from political change to diaper brands and everything in between. People shared their likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, and opinions. We also shared an abundance of food and birthday cake!

As I stood in the kitchen with a view of the main room, one thing was apparent—human beings are fascinatingly complex and valuable.

Human beings are still the source of interest for other human beings.

It is reported that one issue business founders/owners face in 2025 is a shortage of skilled labor.

From the kitchen, I didn’t see a shortage. I saw people with more to offer than is expected in their given professions.

Is there a labor shortage, or are we looking at labor incorrectly…

Join me in the kitchen, and let’s talk about it.

Peripheral Perspectives – People-Value

One conversation with a stay-at-home mom enlightened me on the value of sacrifice and pouring one’s life into another.

Another conversation with a healthcare professional uncovered a gap between hospital policies and practical patient needs.

A third conversation with a professional recruiter revealed the disconnect between what some business leaders expect to pay for AI talent and the going rate—by a factor of 2!

That’s just the cost. Attracting and retaining talent is another metric altogether.

Suffice it to say that people are still important in the age of AI.

How you find, attract, and retain the best talent for your business in 2025 is important. More importantly, what do you expect from your employees, contractors, and partners?

AND… what can they expect from you?

PEOPLE ARE IMPORTANT AND CHALLENGING

Whether you are a Solopreneur, SMB owner, or F500 executive, people are part of your business. They contribute to your business costs and revenue. They influence your ability to grow and innovate.

And they are people.

Complex. Multidimensional. Sometimes unpredictable and surprising.

Business leaders use people, processes, and products to serve markets. Nevertheless, we have all had a moment when we thought, “Business would be great if it weren’t for the people.” It may not be often, but if you’ve been in business long enough, a client, supplier, or employee has made it more challenging than expected.

Regardless of your business model, people are involved.

And as much as you may be betting on AI to reduce your labor costs, there’s no evidence that it will eliminate your people challenges.

READY. SET. LET’S GROW!

Nearly two-thirds of business leaders express optimism about the economy heading into 2025, marking an extraordinary shift in business sentiment. This confidence is translating to improved growth outlooks.

Almost three-quarters (74%) of leaders expect revenues to increase in the coming year, while 65% project higher profits.

About half (51%) plan to expand their workforce, even as 77% of businesses report rising costs.

With 71% seeing no recession on the horizon, the focus has shifted from caution to growth. – J.P. Morgan

In case you are wondering, improved growth outlooks are not exclusive to using AI.

Profitable revenue growth allows you to invest in your business—processes, products, and people. Nevertheless, labor shortages, retention, and recruiting are significant challenges for growth-oriented businesses. Industry analysts report that business leaders are considering tactics like increasing wages, offering flexible hours, or increasing benefits to address these issues.

This sounds encouraging until you realize that, in one form or another, these same tactics have been applied throughout history with little or no positive change.

So why do these shortages, retention, and recruiting issues persist?

PEOPLE CONTRIBUTE COMMENSURATE TO THEIR VALUE

There is a correlation between performance and pay. There is also a more meaningful correlation between the value an organization expresses about the employee and the employee’s contribution.

Employers commonly demonstrate their employees ' value by increasing wages, offering flexible hours, and increasing benefits. However, this approach doesn’t address most reasons employees feel undervalued.

Common strategies don’t fit uncommon/complex issues—people. This is evident in the current reasons people leave one company for another:

1. Lack of Career Growth Opportunities: Employees feel stagnant when they don’t see clear paths for advancement or skill development. 63% of employees cited "lack of growth opportunities" as a primary reason for leaving. (LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report)

2. Toxic Work Culture: Unhealthy environments marked by lack of respect, poor communication, favoritism, or harassment. Toxic culture is 10.4x more likely to contribute to turnover than compensation. (MIT Sloan Management Review)

3. Poor Leadership and Management: Managers who lack empathy, provide inadequate feedback, or micromanage. 57% of employees have left a job due to a poor manager. (Gallup)

4. Desire for New Challenges: Boredom or dissatisfaction with repetitive tasks or lack of innovation. 45% of employees leave due to lack of meaningful work. (McKinsey)

5. Lack of Recognition and Appreciation: Feeling undervalued or unappreciated for their contributions. 79% of employees who quit cite lack of appreciation as a major reason. (Glassdoor)

6. Better Job Stability: Fear of layoffs, unstable financial conditions, or downsizing. Job stability is a top factor for 56% of employees considering new roles. (Forbes)

7. Poor Work Relationships: Conflict with coworkers, feeling isolated, or a lack of team cohesion. Strong work relationships boost employee satisfaction by 50%. (Harvard Business Review)

8. Misalignment of Values: Feeling disconnected from the company’s mission, ethics, or values. 50% of employees want to work for companies with aligned values. (PwC)

9. Poor Compensation and Benefits: Salaries and benefits that do not align with industry standards or their expectations. 61% of workers say better compensation is the top reason for changing jobs. (SHRM)

10. Work-Life Imbalance: Excessive workloads, inflexible schedules, and lack of remote work options. 53% of employees prioritize flexibility in choosing new roles. (Gartner)

Except for numbers 9 and 10, increasing wages, offering flexible hours, or increasing benefits will not address why people leave and join another company. Therefore, talent shortages, retention, and recruiting issues will persist.

It turns out that employees also say, “Work would be great if it weren’t for the people.”

YOU + YOUR PEOPLE HAVE WHAT YOU NEED TO GROW…

…When you know how and where to deploy them.

Here is how business innovators consistently attract and retain the best talent, producing the best outcomes for your entire business ecosystem.

Innovative business leaders engage their people with a genuine desire to understand. CURIOSITY.

Sounds simple, and it can be when you know how.

If you are a founder/owner, your curiosity created the business you have to serve a market need. Your curiosity led to understanding and an offering. You also know that the skills to take your business to the next level and consistently grow for decades differ from those that got you here.

When you amplify and add to the skills that built your business, you join the ranks of consistently innovative business leaders. Best of all, these skills will permeate your organization, where every resource—especially your people — is empowered to deploy its full value.

Curiosity’s Super Skills

Curiosity is a driving force behind many explorers. I propose that an explorer's curiosity is at the heart of business innovators.

To identify, attract, and retain the best talent, Peripheral Thinkers™ are energetically curious. We look for, study, and use new ideas. Whether for a new solution, a better process, or empowering our people, it begins with curiosity.

Here are three specific skills that support the innovator’s curiosity:

1. Investigating. This Peripheral Thinking™ skill examines things in a way that means the most is learned and discovered. It goes beyond the cursory overview. Dig deeper. Share deeper.

Innovative leaders build trust with employees by sharing personal experiences. Employees are more willing to share insights from outside their job description with trusted leaders. They share ideas from family, personal, and previous work experiences.

When your sharing elicits sharing from your people, dig deeper. “Why is that an important family experience/memory?” “How has that personal experience influenced who you are as a professional?” “What else did you learn from that work experience?”

2. Studying. This Peripheral Thinking™ skill turns your curiosity for new things into learning new skills. You may find that you share similar skills with the employee. Allow your curiosity to expand until you identify a new skill you can learn and the employee can share. As you ‘investigate’ your employees' experiences and perspectives, ask them to share the skills they value—personal, professional, and technical skills.

Will you show me how you _______?

By putting your studying into practice, you’ll experience the lesson and gain a deeper understanding of the skill.

3. Applying. This Peripheral Thinking™ skill uses new knowledge to achieve a result that surprises, pleases and uniquely serves your people, business, clients, and market. You’ve already started this skill when you ask the employee to show you how to _______.

Applying involves the unique combination of multiple lessons/skills. It is messy and nonlinear, and some combinations won’t work together. Keep going. The lessons and skills you uncovered from your people contain potent combinations. Involve them in the ‘applying’ process to strengthen mutual trust and spark additional (connecting) lessons.

Using the ‘Applying’ skill positions your business for innovations that your competitors cannot replicate. Your people see their value respected and applied. Labor issues become less concerning because your curiosity naturally investigates, studies, and applies insights from all of your resources. Further, your people see their value through your interest in them and the application of their insights.

People are your most valuable asset when they are valued. You demonstrate their value by investigating, studying, and applying their experiences to your business. Any and all of their experiences and skills!

NOW WHAT?

Look for correlations between the lessons you’ve investigated and studied across the organization. Empower your leadership team to do the same.

Let’s say you and your leadership team try the first two skills for 30 days. On the 31st day, you gather the leadership team for a half-day offsite meeting. All of the lessons, skills, and sources are written on Post-it notes and placed on a whiteboard. Categories will naturally emerge.

Now, list your company's strategic goals and most pressing issues across the top of the whiteboard. Start combining Post-it notes to create new approaches, solutions, and strategies and associate them with one or more strategic goals/issues.

Commit to implement one or more in the next 30 days and engage the contributing employees in the deployment.

THE PERIPHERAL THINKERS™ APPROACH

Genuine curiosity about what makes your people tick and transparency about yourself expand the resources you can access. Everyone has experiences, both personal and professional. By understanding your people, you permit them—STRIKE THAT—you empower them to bring their whole selves to work.

Further, using these Peripheral Thinking™ skills encourages your people to learn and apply them. They learn more about their colleagues, and collectively, your business’s unique resources compound dramatically.

You gain more insights.

Your teams collaborate and innovate…

More easily, naturally, and rapidly than ever before.

They share their experiences with other people who want to join your mission.

There’s nothing you can’t do with that kind of organization!

I’ve seen it repeatedly across 31 industries and 27 countries.

People can immensely contribute to your business's impact on customers, partners, industry, and community. In many cases, they are just waiting for someone to take an interest in them and appreciate the unique value they offer the business.

ONE MORE THING… PLEASE…

Please help me share the Peripheral Thinking™ message with 75K more people by the end of 2025.

For every person who hears my keynote, reads this newsletter, or follows my LinkedIn posts, 5-7 people benefit from the Peripheral Thinking™ insights.

Will you please refer me to 10 friends/colleagues?

1. To speak at your/their next event. https://www.pauldanielsjr.com/speaker

2. For the newsletter. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/lessons-from-the-periphery-7164646484234153984/

3. To follow or connect with me. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauldanielsjr

THANK YOU!

All Image Credits: Image Creators

January 2025 Peripheral Thinkers™ Newsletter