Hire Passionate People and Get Out of Their Way
As your company grows, the most important and hardest decisions that you will make will be about the people you hire and those you have to fire. There’s a lot of talk these days about technology, but some things never change and the fact of the matter is that the ONE sustainable competitive advantage that any business can have for the long run is talented, committed and passionate people. Everything else erodes over time – especially technology which eventually in every case becomes accessible, cheaper and more broadly applicable by your competitors
Many years ago I made this chart to track the price-novelty curve of technology which shows how the price of new technology diminishes over time and the other marketplace changes that accompany this process. (You’ll get some idea of how old this chart is by noting that the software I used couldn’t really even replicate a smooth curve.)
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As you can see from the chart, while at the outset, new technology is almost indistinguishable from magic, by the time it becomes widely available and accepted, people basically take it for granted and price drives the discussion. As you can imagine, discussions about the lowest available price are never what we would call “happy talk”.
But, good people, well-educated and motivated, just get better, stronger and more valuable all the time – especially if you watch their backs and stay out of their way. The real trick is to find ‘em, hire ‘em and keep ‘em. Equally important is to move quickly to fire the people who aren’t making it. Simple rule: Hire slow; fire fast.
(I’ll deal with keeping your top performers and firing people who aren’t in the next couple of posts, but suffice it to say that virtually NO ONE was ever fired too soon. Once you know that things aren’t working out, you almost can’t move too quickly to fix the situation. Every day you wait is one day too many and much too late.)
Let me start with a piece of bad news that comes from my friend Jay Goltz who says that CEOs are among the worst possible people to do their company’s hiring. Why? Because, by and large, they’re (a) short on time and often distracted; (b) great talkers and bad listeners because they’re always selling themselves and their businesses rather than asking and learning about the interviewee; and (c) too good-natured and trusting about people and not skeptical enough to ask the hard questions. So you may not be the best person in your organization to do this job even though there are few that are more important.
So consider yourself warned. Now, what can you do to at least give yourself a fighting chance of doing a good job? Here are a few ideas and rules that have helped me over the years:
- People lie about their resumes all the time. I’m not saying this to get you down on mankind in general or anything like that. I’m just suggesting that it’s perfectly reasonable to ask detailed questions about a resume and to take everything on it with a grain of salt or a tablespoon. I looked younger than my age for years (not sure when things caught up) and I once flew to France for a huge meeting with some folks over there involving millions of dollars. I got there – walked into the room – and was treated so shabbily by these folks (even taking into account that they were French assholes) that I was dumbfounded. I had lunch and went right back to the airport and returned home. I later learned that they saw me and having read my pretty extensive resume decided that I wasn’t old enough to have done half the stuff written there and so I must have been lying to them. I wasn’t, but it was a real lesson in managing information and expectations that I’ve never forgotten.
- Credentials are not the same as accomplishments. Degrees are nice to have, but it’s your deeds and the things you’ve actually gotten done that matter in the final analysis. And, there are plenty of “smart” people out there who aren’t people smart. If you can’t get along with the “natives” as part of an effective and collaborative team, your native intelligence doesn’t mean squat.
- The best person you interview may not be the best person for the job in question. Too many CEOs think that they should hire any great person who comes along and figure out a good job for them later. As important as it is to have super-talented people, trying to “warehouse” them (even when you’re growing like crazy) is a losing strategy. Get a clear job description, understand the criteria for a successful candidate, and focus on filling that job.
- There are no easy jobs today. Every candidate should have the basic required skills as a starting point. But the right prospects are the ones who have the ability to get the job done. Ability in any area is the successful combination of toughness (mental and physical), resourcefulness (flexibility and adaptability) and powerful concentration (focus and direction).
- Gray hair is a sign of age, not necessarily wisdom or relevant experience.Young and (first-time) CEOs tend to get a point in the early growth of their businesses where they believe that they need to add some “grown-ups” to the management mix. There are usually a number of pretty standard excuses, explanations and reasons offered for these kinds of feelings, but ultimately the real driver is fear: (a) fear of being alone and responsible; (b) fear of being in way over your head; and (c) fear of fucking things up.I can’t make the fears go away, but I can tell you that 90 times out of 100 these types of lateral hires fail miserably and you will be the most miserable of all concerned because you did it to yourself and your company. There’s not a simple or single explanation for the overwhelming failure rate, but generally the 4 main misses are: (1) a quickly-emergent lack of energy (stamina) and enthusiasm; (2) a totally absent connection to and comfort with the rest of the employees; (3) an early tendency to criticize the way you run the business; and (4) a focus and excessive interest in and emphasis on financial and compensation issues.
PP: “You Get What You Work for, Not What You Wish for”
