The Three C’s and One D of Great Hiring According to Small Business Owners
Filed under: Career, Making Decisions, Management Education, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Experienced small business owners and managers understand the critical importance of making great hires. The right people propel your business and the wrong ones cost you precious time and money. The wrong hires ring up expensive opportunity costs by making less than optimal decisions, inappropriately leading or misleading your teams and not helping you create value and gain a competitive advantage.
There’s an entire industry and ample science and psychology behind the various tools and approaches for assessing personalities, gauging intelligence and conducting interviews that systematically uncover the real individual. That’s all good and important…especially the behavioral interviewing part, however, most small and mid-sized business owners and managers that I know, make key hiring decisions more on gut feeling than on the output of rigorous assessment practices and tools. And while some have finely tuned “hiring guts,” a good number of owners and managers lament the bad calls and the lack of access to help.
I spoke to a number of owners running visibly successful firms and asked for their insights on hiring talent on their teams. The roll-up of their advice is as follows (I paraphrase):
-Understand the nature of the position and your expectations for the individual in that position today and five years from now. Hire people that have the intelligence, acumen and drive to both grow the role and grow with the role.
-A caveat to the first point: don’t be cheap now or you’ll pay for it later. Invest in the right talent today, even if it means paying more than you had hoped for. The right person will pay dividends almost immediately and long into the future.
And importantly, hire for the 3 C’s and 1 D: Character, Critical Thinking Skills, Communication Capabilities and Decision Making Acumen.
-Character: look for evidence through behavioral interviewing and reference checking of core values, handling of ethical dilemmas and commitment to the development and support of others. It’s not hard to discern someone that’s in it for themselves and “win at any costs” versus someone with a more externally oriented focus. One business owner likes to evaluate people by how they compete as part of athletic teams. He’s been known to invite a potential male hires to his weekly basketball game at the Y.
-Critical Thinking Skills: truth be told, the phrase is mine and not one used directly by the business owners that I spoke with, but the meaning is the same. People are looking for individuals that see big pictures or that recognize patterns from the noise in the environment. They make sense out of chaos and are capable of forming plans to exploit the chaos to their firm’s advantage. These are the people that dream up new products, come up with new ways of marketing and selling or see opportunities for gaining efficiencies through improved processes. It sounds lofty, but it can be as simple as the example below.
One manager describes looking for any signs that the individual attacks problems with non-traditional solutions. “I would rather hear a potential sales rep tell me how she landed the deal by investing a business day observing the customer’s team and then tailoring the proposed solution based on what she learned, versus a rep that plays only by the price book. The latter are a dime a dozen.”
-Communication Capabilities: One comment: “I hire people that build credibility every time they open their mouths. I want to be impressed by what they ask and how they answer. It shows me how they think, it provides insight into their character and it tells me whether they have the gray matter that I need to grow my business.”
Another indicated, “I hire great communicators and it starts with how well they listen. If someone proves to me that they are a good listener and that they understand that when someone else is talking, their only job is to understand the real intent of the person talking,” I want to hire that person.
Still another offered that she looks carefully beyond the resume and how an individual expresses himself/herself in writing. “I want to understand the complete communicator, and too often, we forget to look at how an individual presents himself in writing. This is an important indicator of intelligence for me.”
-Decision Making Acumen: Again, my phrase, but consistent agreement. One individual summed it up best: “I look for the individual’s examples of tough decisions. What were the stakes? How did she assess risk? How did she gather her data? Who’s opinion did she seek? How fast did she act?”
Another commented: “It’s important for me to understand how people deal with bad decisions. Some are convinced that they can fix anything and will continue to pursue a clearly bad course of action. Others understand that accepting a bad decision and learning from it is the right next step. If I can find good examples of how someone handled genuine mistakes, I gain great insight into an individual’s approach to business and leadership.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
You can do much worse than improving your ability to gauge the 3 C’s and a D. Character, communications capabilities, critical thinking skills and decision making acumen are the raw materials required for individual and organizational success. Here’s to your hiring health!
Leadership 2009 Style-What We Learned
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Current Affairs, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Life and Business, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Professional Growth, Strategy, Talent Management
Mix one part global economic crisis with ample quantities of uncertainty and ambiguity. Stir in two-parts ever-changing global competition and a dash of geopolitical instability and you’ll end up with something that looks and feels a lot like the world of today, complete with the mild aftertaste of fear.
You’ll also end up with a remarkable living leadership laboratory, where the best leaders are rediscovering the importance of leadership blocking and tackling while simultaneously developing the new skills and approaches required in this complex environment.
The basics of effective leadership never go out of style. Articulating a compelling vision, backing words with actions and support, offering coaching and feedback and driving strategy are all table-stakes for good leaders and effective leadership in any era.
However, this is no ordinary era, and what worked during the last boom or even the last recession almost a decade ago, no longer fits and certainly doesn’t match or meet the needs of organizations and workers today.
The variables are different, the risks higher and the way forward for many firms in many industries masked by the fog of complexity and ambiguity.
Welcome to leadership circa 2009!
This high-anxiety environment that we’re all living in and working through has catalyzed an accelerated evolution in leadership practices, and while the period is painful for many, I truly like where this is taking us on the leadership front.
We’re learning to build the new airplane while flying the old one, and this balancing act requires remarkable leadership agility and creativity.
Consider:
- Practices that reflect transparency, honesty, accountability and straight-talk on the tough issues are increasingly de rigueur.
- Effective leaders are spending less time in boardrooms and behind closed doors and more time out where the work gets done, particularly in the factories and stores of their customers.
- Employee involvement is popular again with the smartest leaders recognizing the need to enlist front-line employees in identifying and sharing customer insights and to challenge everyone else to turn those insights into improvements and value creating services, products and systems.
- There is no “rising tide” effect lifting industries and companies. Leadership is on display and under a magnifying glass, and the collective good results of prior years have unmasked the ineffective and in some cases, corrupt leadership practices that were glossed over when the numbers rose in defiance of poor leadership approaches and lousy leaders.
What a great time to be a leader!
Critical Leadership Lessons of 2009:
The best leaders are heeding Deming’s advice to work on eliminating fear in the workplace. Fear is an organization killer, and the cure for this cancer is for leaders to attack it with transparency and visibility. Those comfortable with leading from the rear have learned the necessity of moving to the front and leading the charge with a constant flow of unvarnished information on the real issues.
Leading has always been about coping with ambiguity, but in today’s fog enshrouded world leaders are learning to reshape their cultures and their operating approaches to facilitate fast recognition and response to emerging opportunities and threats. Easy words to write…hard culture to realize, but the best leaders are working tirelessly to breed the right people, systems and behaviors to produce this sense and respond culture.
Good crisis leaders are capable of admitting, “I don’t know,” in answer to some of the most complex issues, as long as the admission is backed and packed with action. Few crisis leaders understand the details of the path to prosperity, but the good ones recognize the power in Drucker’s comment, “Actions in the present are the one and only way to create the future.” Good leaders mobilize teams, choose a direction and go based on their best intelligence and gut hunches. If the course turns out to be wrong, they correct without looking back and keep moving.
Organizations and leaders that recognize the complexity of this new world have jettisoned traditional planning models and approaches in favor of dynamic, fast-moving methods that facilitate market monitoring and organizational learning and place a premium on acting. These approaches require experimentation and embracing frequent small failures on the path to success.
The foundation of any successful business is talent and while much lip service is paid to this topic, and the smartest leaders are carefully navigating the most remarkable talent pool in many generations for those anxious and motivated to contribute and prove their former employers wrong. While it is too soon to see if talent management and leadership development will become part of the DNA of tomorrow’s organizations, the need has never been more apparent.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The leadership observations and trends above might seem like the domain of jumbo-sized global firms with deep pockets and robust talent systems. And while some firms of this ilk do have natural advantages and are pushing the envelope on breaking down walls and experimenting with new approaches to leadership and management (think Cisco), I’m seeing these practices in small start-ups, old-line manufacturers and innovative retail and service establishments on Main Street.
I have every reason to believe that the way forward is filled with obstacles that rival the labors of Hercules. There are no silver bullets, no easy answers and no magical leadership or management fads that offer miracles cures.
I do however believe that necessity is pushing us to innovate in management and operating approaches, and that a new style of leader must emerge to help firms cope with the modern day Herculean labors of ambiguity, fear, complexity, speed, ever-changing adversaries and a capable but shell-shocked talent pool. For right now however, the leader circa 2009 is busy mucking today’s equivalent of the Augean stables. Grab a shovel and we’ll finish this together.
Leader, Who’s Sitting at Your Table?
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Management Education, Middle Management, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Professional Growth, Talent Management
Once again, Mom is proven right. You become the company that you keep.
Surround yourself with intelligent, aggressive individuals comfortable in professionally articulating their perspectives and taking accountability for both their words and their actions, and you will flourish.
Have the self-confidence to bring together groups of extremely capable individuals with varying skills and divergent views and you will be challenged to raise your game every day and on every key issue. This type of an environment sharpens your skills, keeps you honest and ensures that you focus on your job…creating the environment for others to do theirs.
Show me a troubled organization and I’ll guarantee you that I’ll find leaders that failed to remember and heed Mom’s advice.
Instead of the super-charged professionals in high performance organizations, I’ll find Yes-Men (and women) or individuals of questionable character and even more questionable motivation.
It’s certainly not new news that many less than effective or overly paranoid leaders view it as important to secure their power by surrounding themselves with individuals less capable and if you’ll pardon the term, weaker than themselves. It’s an ancient story, and a tactic that is both visible to all and horribly flawed.
I’ve built winning teams in global giants and in small, troubled and ultimately successful firms, and I’ve yet to experience a case where an organization was worse off because I found the smartest people that I could and put them in positions to do what they do best…drive positive change and create value. There was remarkable joy and success in watching and supporting these people tackle challenges that I could not master on my best day.
The Bottom-Line:
If you don’t have the self-confidence to hire people smarter and stronger than you are, it’s time to get out of the leadership profession.
If you are preoccupying on fixing people’s weaknesses instead of leveraging their strengths, it’s time to get out of the leadership profession.
If you can do better, then take time to assess what potential mix of strengths plus values will help you and your firm, and don’t rest until you’ve put those people in place. Then start leading by doing everything in your power to help them succeed.
Oh, and once you’ve set this new table with talent, be prepared to find out how great and what a privilege it is to serve others. And last and not least, remember to thank Mom.
Is it Time to Panic?
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Current Affairs, Leadership
I suspect that anyone not concerned about the state of “things” going on in our world and specifically in our economy would reasonably be labeled as naïve. We have big problems, they could get bigger in a hurry or maybe they won’t. The loss of some long-standing financial icons is annoying, the potential for the choking off of access to working capital for otherwise healthy companies is downright disconcerting. The issues being debated in Washington have long-since ceased being about Wall Street and are most squarely about mitigating catastrophic risk on Main Street.
You don’t have to look far for some pundit somewhere offering up the end of life as we know it, usually with comments about a worldwide depression the likes of which we’ve never experienced. Hey, they may be right or they may not. I’ve long since given up trying to peer into the crystal ball and prognosticate beyond the late George Carlin’s famous weatherman bit that called for a forecast of “dark, followed by widely scattered light in the morning.” The sun will rise and it will still be in the east.
In spite of my inability to foretell the future, I do know one thing for certain, it is never good to panic. For you science fiction buffs out there, Frank Herbert had it right when he wrote that, “Fear is the Mind Killer.” Panic creates a fight or flight response, where rational thinking is replaced by instinctual flailing. Individuals panic, participants in markets can panic, and organizations can panic. More often than not, the panic results in dramatic or even fatal mistakes.
Unfortunately, we have recent experience with horrific scenarios. What happened on 9/11 was unthinkable on 9/10. There were no road maps for dealing with the grief and the anger, and for awhile no one understood what was next. It was a time when the best that many could hope for was to process on taking the next breath. In all likelihood, we are still dealing with the ripples of this unthinkable day, and those ripples will likely shape the lives for generations to come in some form and fashion.
In addition to the pundits and talking heads, some really smart people that I know are beginning to let fear creep into panic. Discussions of how to grow, how to compete better and even discussions about the pursuit of excellence are being replaced with focus on retrenching, battening down the hatches and/or boarding up the windows for the storm on the way. Again, we would be naïve to ignore the signs and we would be naïve to think that anyone actually understands the impact of this horrific financial mess unfolding in front of us in real time, albeit drawn out over the past few weeks. It’s time to focus on taking one breath at a time.
While there is some probability that the worst cases will play out, I will place my bet on widely scattered light towards morning. There are many reasons why the world’s global capital markets cannot stop and why the earth’s burgeoning population and the world’s rapidly growing economies will not stop consuming, investing and yes, even growing.
As you look at your own firm and your own situation, it is not a time to take foolish risks. Frankly, it’s never a time to do that, so nothing has changed. It is a time to adopt a philosophy that seeks to find opportunity in chaos. It is a time to carefully evaluate your strategies and check your assumptions. It is also a time to consider making some hard calls on your future. Working for a firm in the post 9/11 world where the board and leadership had the courage to invest in reinventing the firm’s core offerings at a time when our competitors were scaling back R+D efforts, was a brilliant learning lesson.
It’s always time to improve your talent…either by investing in growing their knowledge and capabilities and by culling the herd. It’s a great time to evaluate spending, to hold marketing accountable to genuine measures of value creation and to deploy the best-trained, solutions focused sales force to serve your customers. It’s also a remarkable time to scale up your communications with your stakeholders and with your employees and provide them opportunities to share their many great ideas.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
At the end of the day, people must eat, people must clothe themselves and frankly smart people will figure out how to use the opportunity to challenge themselves and their organizations to improve. The rest will start boarding up the windows to hunker down for a long, agonizing wait. I know which team that I want to be a part of.
Career Growth and the Product Manager
I wear my respect on my shirt-sleeve for the many dedicated Product Management professionals that hold down what I believe is one of the most difficult and one of the most critical roles in today’s fast moving technology and B2B organizations. (See my post: In Support of the Product Manager as MVP) The individuals in these positions have a tremendous responsibility to provide guidance to the organization, often with little formal authority to translate this guidance into action.
While admittedly biased based on my own PM and PM leadership experience, I firmly believe that these talented and well-rounded business professionals are potentially some of the most valuable assets in an organization’s talent pool. Of course, realizing value from this talent requires a proactive approach to helping Product Managers develop some of the “softer” skills that we all know are important, but that we as leaders often overlook in our preoccupation with the day to day crises that can rule our lives.
Here’s my short-list of the skills that Product Managers cum Executives must focus on if they want to crack the ranks of senior leadership. Given the fact that Product Managers are some of the only individuals that see the firm from the outside-in and inside-out, it is well worth it for Product Managers and their managers to steer development, and yes, training efforts towards these areas.
- Leadership: This is perhaps the stickiest or squishiest of all skill sets and yet developing context for the true role of a leader, understanding what it takes to build credibility and engender trust as a leader are critical lessons on the road to success. Instead of generic leadership training, focus on an approach that emphasizes the development of key leadership skills and the application of these skills in a series of diverse leadership situations. Ideally, any leadership development program for Product Managers will emphasize developing the skills and gaining experience for leading as an informal leader, leading horizontally and managing upwards. (OK, again, I’m biased, but a manager armed with my book, Practical Lessons in Leadership and committed to creating a robust developmental program for their Product Managers is miles ahead of the manager sending their PM to some of the generic leadership training in the marketplace.)
- Strategic thinking. Like leaders, strategists aren’t born and in most cases, they are made. Few positions in a firm have the potential to contribute more to strategic thinking and strategy process creation and sustainability, than that of the Product Manager. I was fortunate enough to enjoy early career mentors that challenged me to constantly think outside of my product, outside of my company and to look at the big picture, tune in to my various audiences and to develop and test strategic hypotheses while growing the business. That is a very different way of thinking versus “what are the top 10 features that I can jam into my next release?” Too many Product Managers don’t learn to look beyond their narrow scope (product, market segment) and all too many don’t grasp the importance of their role as a strategist in the overall firm’s plans. Challenge yourself or your Product Managers to take an active role in educating the firm on the market and customer situation and proposing ideas to leverage the situation for growth.
- Communications Skills and Mastering the Art of Diplomacy. Great Product Managers learn to speak the language of executives and they recognize that every encounter regardless of who they are meeting with, is an opportunity to build trust by understanding needs, creating shared perspectives and creating reasons for people and teams to move forward. The recent HBO miniseries, John Adams, based on David McCullough’s biography of the same name, shows the mercurial and aggressive Adams nearly destroying any chance to earn France’s support for the revolution, as he demands action and nearly destroys the hard-won credibility that Franklin had earned in several years of creating an understanding and developing shared-reasons to fight the British. The days of command and control leadership in the corporate world are generally over. Developing a communication style that creates interest and fosters respect is essential for success. Diplomatic skills to manage upwards, to manage across and to manage the generations and the various cultures via distributed teams are skills that will carry the Product Manager way beyond their mid-level role.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Rather than coming across as picking on Product Managers for being deficient in leadership, strategic and communication/diplomatic skills, it is my intent to encourage them to proactively develop these skills. It is remarkably easy to get caught up in the pursuit of day to day business and forget that everyday is a chance to advance your career. If you are fortunate enough to have a great mentor, that is good. If not, it’s incumbent upon you to take the initiative to create the experiences necessary for you to develop and fine tune these critical skills. Your future depends upon it.
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