Aside from visionary management, it is your most important work.
Many of us go through hiring motions to fill a position, trying to use our intuition and our skills to find the best candidate for the job. Sometimes we use consultants or recruiters; often, we use internal talent to fill most positions.
And over the years, we, business success students, have learned that there is a science in the hiring process that continues throughout one's life. employed with the company. Bradford Smart captured this succinctly in his book, Topgrading . His thesis is that "A" players represent only the top ten percent of the talent pool at any one time, and your job is to find, recruit and retain only "A" players to succeed. It's hard to argue with that.
What is hard to come by, is the rare CEO who makes the process of hiring recruits such a priority that he spends a personal time deeply involved in the specification, the revision of the resume, the interview and the selection of the best employees. Most of us are "too busy" to do all this. And yet, in addition to managing the vision of the company, the most important job of a CEO is to find, recruit and create productive "A" players for the job. team.
As an investor and board member of many companies, it's increasingly easier for me to quickly assess the quality of team members leading an organization by measuring the strengths and weaknesses of the company. Teams where the CEO is comfortable enough to delegate to "A" players and manage growth strategies stand out as rare and powerful. Conversely, it is very difficult for a CEO to derail what could be a good team and a good company, ignoring the details needed to find the right candidate for each top position and not communicating the strategies and allowing the # 1 39, team to execute.
A successful hiring is not just the responsibility of the recruiter and manager to whom the recruit will report. Many companies require finalist candidates to be interviewed by contemporary companies, with good employees in similar positions. Some even encourage interviews with those the candidate would manage. The agreement between the investigators becomes a rewarding experience for those who conduct the interviews and accept the decision to hire, and paves the way for a faster assimilation of the new employee into the organization whose cohorts are already willing to welcome and encourage the new employee. This is not an inexpensive process when one considers the cost in time and the productivity of the interviewers. But finding "A" players is not an easy task, requiring a quantity of resources at every stage of the process.
A few weeks ago, we explored strategic planning within the company. We talked about developing measurable strategies and tactics for each department. The time has come to complete this chain by suggesting that the payment of significant incentive compensation to those who are able to execute these strategies and tactics is essential to the success of the plan and the organization. Aligning everyone towards the same goal and using the practice of rewarding for achieving the milestones defined by the tactics of planning, makes a great deal, run by a leader who understands the process.
What makes a great leader awesome? Of course, it is an excellent performance on behalf of large employees acting as a unit in the best interest of the company. Nobody can do it alone. No CEO can do it with "B" players or less.