The Ultimate Business Career

Are you ready for the challenge?

A career with SBR demands an adventurous spirit, a winning personality, superior intellectual ability, toughness of mind, and a high degree of personal integrity. SBR will challenge your intelligence, tenacity, and ability to solve the complex problems of our increasingly diverse client base. Fast-moving, ambiguous, unstructured situations will stretch your resourcefulness to the full. Working with us grants exposure to a wide range of sectors and leading-edge business and political issues. Personal development is relentless.

So we seek dynamic, self-directed, results-driven staff at all levels who can deliver in stressful, fast-paced situations. For our professionals, a graduate degree is required (our typical manager has 7 years or more of university training). In addition to an exceptional academic formation, you need to demonstrate poise, a determination to succeed, and a track record of accomplishment.

Do You Have What It Takes?

SBR is not a place for everyone. We're intensely focused on those we serve and obsessive in terms of the detail and the discipline required of superb performance. One out of every 100 applicants is offered a position with us.

This means that those with us for over 2 years are an exceptional lot. In 2001, Profit Magazine considered us among Canada's "Best Bosses". Twenty-five percent of our staff hold over 3 years of service, with 80% of these having at least doubled their incomes since joining us; all have held at least 3 different positions. The majority of those who leave us after one year of service have seen their fair market value increase over 25% since first arriving. Twenty percent of all professional staff under the age of 30 join our customers (under select circumstances), continue on to graduate school, or start up a business of their own. Most of those who leave our service indicate that their experience was intense and that their work practices (especially time management and goal-setting) have been dramatically improved. 90% of all who resign indicate that their colleagues were exceptional in terms of skills, intellect, work ethic, and character; 80% of this group seek to join our Alumni program.

Specific Management Principles under which we operate include:

1. Aim For The 70% Solution. Decide quickly on even an imperfect plan rather than attempt a perfect plan when it’s too late.
2. Determine The Essence. Transpose the most complex situations and project assignments into simple terms.
3. Build A Capability-Based Enterprise.
4. Orient For Speed And Complexity. Learn to react quickly and effectively to chaotic situations particularly across the project portfolio.
5. Organize According To The Rule Of Three. In times of stress, most staff can effectively handle 3 key responsibilities.
6. Build An Authority-On-Demand Hierarchy. Create a fanatical, seasoned management that encourages staff at every level to make fact-based decisions quickly in the accomplishment of their missions.
7. Focus On The Small Team. Allow front-line staff of every positional band to execute under a framework that is disciplined and highly task-oriented.
8. Organize Tasks Under An Aggressive MBO Pyramid. Set clear objectives – by year, by quarter, by month, by week, by day. Our planning horizon is 25 years out.
9. Trial-By-Fire. Aggressively screen for talent, character, competence after extensive pre-selection testing.
10. Make Organizational Doctrine And Policy A Living Thing. Standardize and discipline practices to provide continuity, then continually fix, refine, and rebuild.
11. Zero Tolerance for – political behavior (e.g. conduct that advances one’s own interests at the expense of others), unethical business practices, and staff who take more out of the business than they contribute.

In an age of the "fast and loose", of utilitarian and situational ethics, networked relationships, and political correctness, we espouse an alternative. Honor, absolute integrity, total commitment, traditional values, noble ambition, meritocracy, and a community of interests preside as paramount values to which we aspire. In establishing ourselves in the specific markets targeted, we seek to build an elite. Those we serve set the expectations and hence standards with which we must operate. Those who join our ranks do not find the experience easy. Success comes at a price; great success is not for the faint-hearted.

What's In It For You/WIIFY

Opportunities abound for those who take them.

Stability

1. Successfully in business since 1979.
2. Policies & procedures specify all recurrent activities by functional area.
3. Business model has been “tried and tested”—structure and innovation combine to produce results.

Staff

1. Local elite. The opportunity to work with the best and the brightest—hire only the top 20% I.Q., or 1:100 applicants.
2. Multi-disciplinary. Staff come from highly diverse educational and experience backgrounds—some former customers, Ph.D.-level (20%)—a broad spectrum of learning opportunities.

Compensation

1. Hourly rate. Staff generally receive 10-15% more than sector average. All positions tied to fair market value/FMV.
2. Effort. Every hour worked is every hour paid.

Performance & Morale

1. 15-day assessment to endorse or reposition.
2. Monthly performance self assessments on 50-point scale, with supervisory review. Approximately 20% of all staff bonused.
3. Reward program quarterly and yearly including—Rookie, Analyst, Finders Seekers, Guts ‘n Grit, Customer Service, Recommendations, Innovation, President’s.
4. Well-being programs—Rookie Breakfasts, mentoring, Town Hall meetings, business unit social functions.

Professional Development/ProDev

1. Landing Gear, over first 90 days + panel review. This provides a solid grounding to the business culture and model.
2. Positional band annual 15-week series including—analyst, field sales, admin, HR, specapps.
3. Annual career development and planning cycle.

REFERENCES

For a better understanding of our operating style and temper consult the following which are among the mandatory readings attached to staff orientation.

• PRITCHETT, Price. A series of handbooks including: New Work Habits for a Radically Changing World, Fast Growth, The Ethics of Excellence, Culture Shift, Business as Unusual, Team Work, Mindshift.
• TRACY, Brian (1999). Get Paid More and Promoted Faster: 21 Great Ways to Get Ahead in Your Career.
• PITINO, Rick (1997). Success is a Choice: 10 Steps to Overachieving in Business and Life.

For an appreciation of the philosophical underpinnings in which we operate see:

• SENNETT, Richard (1998). The Corrosion of Character. This sets the stage as to what it is we are attempting to manage against.
• GOLDSTEIN, Jeffrey (1994). The Unshackled Organization: Facing the Challenge of Unpredictability Through Spontaneous Reorganization.
• COLLINS, Jim (2001). Good to Great.
• KELLEY, Robert (1985). Gold Collar Worker.