Pick Your Player(s)
“Great vision, without great people, is irrelevant.”
-Jim C. Collins
I know. Before you even say it, I know.
Finding good people is hard. Finding great people is next to impossible. But you are doing yourself and your business a disservice if you put any warm body in a position because you need that role filled yesterday. It will come back to bite you in the ass down the road. People issues turn into bigger headaches than any other kind of issue.
So how do you find great people to add to your team? You focus first and foremost on making sure they align with the principles you value in your business. Then, and only then, you make sure they meet the three non-negotiables to fill a role.
If you’ve already completed your Roadmap, you’ve already determined your core principles. Good on you. If you haven’t completed it yet, don’t fret. Just head here and let the vibes flow.
What’s most important for this discussion is understanding that when you’ve settled on the right principles for your business, you treat them as your true guiding principles. That means you make decisions based on those values. You do or do not offer new products or services based on those values. And yes, you hire or fire based on those values.
Because here’s the thing: if it means a lot to you, you want it to mean a lot to the people representing this beautiful business you’ve built. If one of your core principles is Do the Right Thing aka INTEGRITY, you wouldn’t want to hire a serial cheater or someone who might commit fraud while on the clock. That would definitely not align with what your company stands for. However, if you interviewed someone who found a wallet on the sidewalk, and only opened it to figure out where to return it and left every dollar bill and credit card inside, you’d feel really great about hiring that person onto your team.
Once you’re positive that a potential team member shares your core principles, you need to know that they have what is needed to be successful in the role. I think of the core values as the soft qualities and these next three as the hard qualities. And those are Clarity, Desire, + Ability.
The Clarity is going to come from you. You’re going to set crystal clear expectations before this person ever steps foot into the role. The purpose of the job, the job description, the objectives of the role, the metrics they’ll be hitting, and everything else that could possibly go into this job will be outlined and thoroughly defined for this person. And you will be able to clearly convey those expectations. This can all be accomplished with a kick-ass job scorecard.
The Desire part is all on the person. Have you ever worked at a job you didn’t want? You’d show up, but you were definitely only there in body and not in spirit. Let me tell you about the time I was a bank teller. I hated every second of it because I did not want any part of that job. The person you want on your team not only wants this role, but they want to own it, they want to grow in it, and they want to excel.
Ability is the hard skills one needs to do the job. And it’s not just knowledge - it could be the resources (i.e. training or education). It could be the actual time to do the job. Is this person ABLE to do the job successfully?