Employees are your key assets. Whether you fail as a business or come out as a winner is a direct function of your employees abilities to adapt to changing environments. You could take away my coffee, freeze my bonus, cancel my GYM membership, ask me to take a pay cut; but if I believe in the company's strategic vision, the current landscape I serve, and the people I work with, I will stick around. Some may argue otherwise given the economic situation and I won't deny that. I will, however, say that if my work is well positioned within a company's value chain and I am creating and bringing value (sales leads, product expertise, process expertise, business development, brand development) - I AM the company! So why are people let go, why do people leave and why do certain types of individuals stick around only to leave after a short time. This blog might help some of you assess your employees abilities beyond what is required by HR and maybe retain your assets.Say you have an employee reporting to you. What do you look for from him outside of his functional contributions? - Start by measuring the success of his projects by how happy his clients are. He could have missed a few specs but if they were critical, the client would have noticed. But it has been a while and no one really cares - so what the heck? Give him credit - more so if the clients were jerks all along. It's all about the people - not some stupid software.
- See what he is really capable of and what is he doing now? The biggest mistake companies make is to hire a super-star candidate and make him work on projects he could deliver with his eyes closed. The art of identifying a persons abilities is not commonly found - which is very unfortunate. If that super-star is bored or works on crappy stuff - it's your loss. He will be gone as soon as the time + opportunity is right. If on his resumé, the candidate was a hedge fund manager or has build multi-million dollar companies or has experience working across national boundaries managing large scale projects - you can't give him some lame task to "start him off". These guys don't expect a ramp-up time. They expect you to ramp-up to them! Besides, its financially expensive for you to have such candidates deliver on low-ROI projects.
- Look what the candidate does outside of work: Most people go home at 5 PM, switch on the TV or go to a bar or hang out with friends or family. Some people leave work to go change the world. You want the latter! Not that the former group is bad but stick with the latter as far as you can help it! These people are not 'distracted' - you just need to leverage their abilities and the context of what they do outside by bringing it in the office. By assessing your employees abilities only on what they delivered at work based only on their assignments is a mistake. Because you are discounting what that person really stands for - and he/she does not stand for living in a characterless cardboard box 9 hours a day. These folks are smart enough to judge you on how you assess them and often say to themselves "You have no idea what I can really do and what I am am capable of - do you?" . . . and that's fatal. This employee will be gone - soon!
- Assess where your employee wants to go: not by asking him "where do you see yourself 5 years from now?". The second you ask him this standard question - he will realize its value and feed you want you want to hear. No one has a crystal ball into people's minds - but think about the person as an idea. Where will someone with his skills, abilities and contacts go in 5 years? Will he still be doing what he's doing now? Stellar candidates are risk takers and usually, they will NOT get into what they already know how to do. If this employee has been in IT for 10 years but knows a lot about finance and all his arguments and interests are visibly aligned towards this topic - leverage him to your advantage instead of alienating him by asking him ridiculous canned questions designed by your HR drone.
- Don't fear collaboration: Almost every company (with 1 or 2 exceptions) I have worked in (9 of them in all), fear their employees collaborating internally. If I am in marketing and if I befriend the CFO, my marcom director will usually tell me to "get my priorities right" or "need to focus more on the job" or "create value for your department" and other funny thoughts! Now this is not only hilarious but downright narrow minded. Why would you not allow me to talk to people in your own company? I was always discouraged to network with other employees. Do you realize that I could become your best ally or even the next CEO of the company and do you realize that companies are created based on communicating internally? If you want someone who only talks to people you ask him to talk to, hire Bob from "Office Space". Your employee will laugh at you and leave you scratching your head. BTW - that marcom director I talked about, she recently sent me her resumé not knowing I reported to her almost 10 years ago. She is still in marketing doing the same thing. Nope - I am not going to call her. :) Small world . . . . . (hint hint)
- Reporting to the wrong person: is a CRITICAL FAILURE on your part to assess your employees abilities. This is usually the # 1 reason why good people leave. However friendly your employees are, the minute you ask your super-star to report to a random developer or someone you clearly know (you are a complete idiot if you don't know) is not even half as capable is this employee - you are toast! You cannot - just cannot have stellar people report to run of the mill folks. Just does not work. Call it ego, call it whatever - reality is stellar people want to work for evangelists and leaders. They can't stand working an average person. Period!
- Lastly, encourage your employees to take your job: Groom them to be the next leader. Tell them that their job has a higher calling. Become your own obsolescence. Thus, hire above you. You don't want someone like you - whats the point. You want someone better than you. Someone who can execute, grow the business and attract other great employees. If you hire a super-star, guess who he/she will attract from his deck - other super-stars (and vice versa). Don't get intimidated by this employee - think of him/her as the next leader.
I am sure there are exceptions to the above but from what I have seen, experienced and realized over the years is that the above was not taught to me in b-school neither did anyone tell me how to manage people. I personally don't manage anyone (I am happy that way ;) - but it came from observing how great companies are created and what really works.
Think about why Google and Apple attracts the kind of people it does? You can pass by any department in Google and every single person will act, walk, talk and think like an entrepreneur who wants to change the world. Think about what motivates them - other like minded employees! It's all about people. Everything else becomes secondary.
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