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[corporeal blogs about corporate cogs]

Change One Thing. Hire the Best People.

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HOORAY

You’ve done the research. Background checks. Interviews. Exams.

You’ve talked to friends. Colleagues. Advisers. Your parents.  Your pets.

But there are still nagging doubts.  How do you know you’ve found the right person?  I mean…how do you KNOW?

You don’t know. And that’s ok, because you can’t know.

…Or can you?

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Why do people fail at jobs?  Why do people fail at all?

There are lots of reasons. But there is one reason that is pervasive. This reason is pervasive because it’s unavoidable…it’s as unavoidable as the passage of time.

Before we depend on someone to do something for us, we need them to convince us they’re “qualified.” Convincing others – or ourselves – we’re “qualified” is what causes us to fail.

That’s because convincing someone you can do something is completely different than actually doing the thing itself (share this). 

Consider: People run campaigns before they get elected to office to become politicians.

What makes a great campaigner?

The great campaigner revels in the spotlight.  The great campaigner is an expert at reducing complexity with soundbites…digestible, repeatable catch phrases.  A great campaigner builds a tribe….like-minded individuals who feed on one another.

The great campaigner is a master of manipulating emotion. It is on a groundswell of emotion that their political wave is built.

And so – the great campaigner gets elected.  Does being a great campaigner qualify them to be a great politician?

Nope. Being a great campaigner does not qualify you to be an effective politician.  In fact…the best campaigners are the LEAST qualified to hold office.

What makes someone an effective politician? Here’s what I found:

Careful listening.  Consensus building.  Leadership of peers through influence.  Understanding of the governmental bureaucracy.  Clear judgement in the face of complexity.  Finding compromise, and bridging different – often equally valid – opinions on a subject.

Are there any other examples where being “qualified” doesn’t predict success?

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Qualifications are a proxy for time machines.  If a person has achieved some qualification, we conclude they can do a certain job.  And that can be true.  But these things are also true:

  • A person without a qualification can often do jobs as well as – or better than – people with them.  What’s the most common qualification for any corporate job?  A college degree.  Here’s 100 multi-millionaires without college degrees, including Richard Branson, Zuck, Bill Gates, etc.
  • In fact, Google doesn’t really care about college degrees or other traditional qualifications.
  • Qualified people often can’t do a job.  That could be for any number of reasons.  A big one is simply that time passes.  My master’s thesis was called “Design and Implementation of a Signal Interface System for Optimal Control of 3-Phase Motors.”  If you didn’t understand that…don’t worry.  I don’t either, and I wrote it.  (Don’t hire me to optimize your three phase motors.)

So…if qualifications can’t predict success, then what can?  How can you hire the best person?  How can you set them – and yourself, as their manager depending on them to deliver something – up for success?

To hire the best, change your focus from the past to the future (share this).

Don’t focus on qualifications.  Qualifications document the past.  Your focus is on the future – the job that needs doing.

How do you think of your own ability?  It’s not simply “the things you’ve done.”

Your ability = applying the things you’ve done to the things you’re about to do (share this).  That’s what you need to evaluate in your candidate.

I try to keep these three things in mind:

  • The Hard Skills.  Evaluate  the actual job that needs doing.  Are you hiring an analyst?  Ask them to analyze something…if possible, an actual problem you’re trying to fix.  Are you hiring a sales person? Put them in front of a customer.  Get creative and ask for help.
  • The Soft Skills. Who’s doing the job and killing it right now?  Think broadly across your whole network, not just in your company…or your industry.  Talk to that person.  Buy them dinner.  If they drink, buy them at least 3 of whatever they like.  Understand why they’re so successful.  How do they build consensus?  How do they lead through influence? How do they make decisions?
  • The Motivation. What motivates the person? What will have them boot up their machine on a Friday night because that’s the thing they most want to do?  Are they a problem / puzzle solver? Do they love thrilling users and having people depend on them for critical functions?  Is it the pursuit of money? Fame and notoriety?  Find this out – and find out if your job can provide it.

The outcome of this analysis should be: a person with the skills you need, who is like the best in the industry, that is motivated to deliver.

Did the last person you hired check those three boxes?  Did you check them before you accepted your current job? Would things be different if you did?

What do you do to make sure you’re hiring the best?

 

Here’s Why You Should Work at a 3 Person Company (Startup, or not).

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daisy

This is an article about why I think everyone should work at a very small company.

This could be a “Startup” or not…it could also be a small consulting firm, or a bakery, or a house cleaning business, or an online school, or a dog walking company, or an art studio, or a house painting business.

The aspect that’s important is that there’s you, and a few other people, and a common sense of purpose that binds your success or failure together.

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At my first job out of grad school, I was one person in a three-person company.

This was not a silicon valley social media crowdsourcing cloud computing venture capital backed startup. We did not have a ping pong table.  (we barely had a conference table)

We designed, manufactured, shipped, installed, and supported maritime control systems — the electronic things that control the ship’s engines, steering, autopilot, etc — for high performance marine craft (boats). Our customers were the US Navy, international Navies, luxury yachts, and commercial ferries, as well as some small high performance craft and working boats, like firefighting boats.

Our funding didn’t come from angel investors, investment bankers, or venture capital.  Our funding came from two places: the founders and customers.

I worked 90 hours a week.

I wrote code, designed circuits, and fixed hydraulic and mechanical systems to make the things work. I wrote the technical and user documents that explained how the things worked.  I assembled and tested things, and then packed and shipped those things.

Then I installed them.  I did a lot of the work myself and coordinated teams of people. Many of those people didn’t speak English very well. Most were not interested in taking direction from a 24 year old kid. (who could blame them)

Then, I provided support for them all over the world. Remotely if possible, but sometimes you have to get on a plane. (I was not flying business class.)

I had that job for about 5 years (full time and contract).

I learned more about myself than I could have imagined.

I wouldn’t trade this experience for any degree…what I learned, can’t be learned any other way.

Here is a defining story from this period of my professional life. I carry this with me today (for better or worse).

It is a story about getting the confidence to tackle the hard things in business and in life…and a philosophy on how to approach any challenge, in any size company.

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We won a new contract for a custom control system. The customer was a navy in Asia, and the application was a “special mission” boat. The system was complex and required some special software and changes to our standard hardware. It was also challenging to nail down the user requirements due to the time difference, language barrier, cultural differences, etc.

So we spent most of a month designing, building, testing, redesigning, rebuilding, retesting.  And when I drove the 75 pound box of stuff we had made to FedEx at 9pm on a Tuesday, I knew it would not be the last time I would “see” this system.

It took three months for shipping and installation…just long enough for me to have forgotten all the weird changes I made to get the system to (theoretically) work.

2am on another Tuesday, my boss called me. I knew he wasn’t calling to say that everyone was just! going! great!

Nope, the boat wouldn’t turn left (“port” in maritime speak). They were about 3 miles out to sea in the Pacific.  No way to turn left.  He really wanted to turn left.

He said, Rich, why won’t the boat turn left?
I said, well, I’m not sure.  It SHOULD turn left.
He said, well, we need to turn left. There are 15 people on this boat and we would like to no longer be on the boat and that requires us to turn left.
I said, OK, but I don’t know what’s wrong.
He said, Rich, sit up in bed. Look all around you. (I remember actually doing this.) If you don’t fix it, who will?

…Who will?  

I thought about that.  I had no engineering department, or quality engineers, or vendors or contractors or suppliers to lean on for help (even google wasn’t much help because this was 2004).

I had me.

So…

I went to the office, set up the test rig, fixed the software, emailed the file to the ship yard.

They sent a motor boat to the ship with a USB drive.  (I slept for 2 hours while that happened)

Then I walked an officer through the fix in very broken English. It would be unfortunate if the software patch didn’t work after all of that.

But…the boat turned left. They were able to dock the boat and everyone was able to get off. (Phew)

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I made one observation immediately:

The horribleness of causing the problem was matched only by the elation of fixing it. I don’t know of any other way to get that feeling. (If you do, please let me know)

During my time at this job, I had several other experiences like this one.  As I thought about these experiences, I discovered something else…something that has been a prime mover in my career and life:

I developed the confidence that I could figure something out, even if that thing was unfamiliar, complex, and important.

I learned to be self-reliant.

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OK, I’m now going to get on my soap box. (Please indulge me)

People say “big companies should act like small companies!” “They should act like a startup!”

What does that even mean? “Big companies” are not people or cats or chimpanzees that have the ability to “act” like anything.  The way big companies “act” is the sum of how all the people within that company — and especially leadership — act.

I think what people mean is: people in big companies would (or could) be more effective if they BEHAVED like they were in small companies…and specifically, if each actor in a big company was more self-reliant.

Self reliance is a trait that is ingrained deeply and celebrated in the American value system (probably many other value systems too).

We romanticize it: the farmer that can fix anything on her farm, the cowboy that builds civilization in the wilderness, the entrepreneur that pulls an idea from thin air and simultaneously makes a billion dollars and changes the world.

In a company, you may know self reliance by another word: accountability. It means you tie your personal success to the company’s success. It means the success you enjoy (or failure you learn from) is tied directly to the decisions you make.  It’s on you, and you’re cool with it.

Here’s what I believe: there should be one approval on a document. One owner of a decision. A single point of accountability for the things that drive the business (or fail to).

I certainly don’t mean that this accountable person is not the only one with input into making the decision. But they are accountable for getting all the input, assessments, analysis, data, and consensus needed to make the best possible choice…and they are accountable for the business result.

In this model, the company relies on a person to deliver something. That person relies on her team to choose the right thing, plan it, monitor it.  And that person relies on herself to deliver it.

This requires trust…the company leadership must trust employees, and employees must trust each other (and their subcontractors and consultants and vendors). It requires commitment, and delivery.

But I believe this model of the “empowered individual” can deliver more for less than any bureaucratic decision by committee ever could.

I don’t have a raft of scholarly articles to back up this claim.  All I have is my own personal experience.  And this claim has been proven to be true for me over and over again, at 10, 1000, and 100,000 person companies.

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Is self reliance revered in your company? Do you value it in your daily work? Do you strive for, and advertise, your own personal accountability with your colleagues?

I’m not going to tell you that you should. I wouldn’t presume to know what the result would be. But what I do know is that if everyone in one group, or one department, or one entire company approached their work from a place of self reliance…the work would be better, and the results would be too.

Because if there’s one thing I look for in someone I rely on, its that I know that person can rely on herself.

Can you be that person to your colleagues?  Try to be.  See what happens.

I predict only good things will come to you.

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I Am In The Problem Solving Business. Are You?

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QMJN4TIZ7J

We need a new Dashboard! It is the rallying cry of leaders everywhere.

Leadership is a customer demanding a product. Leadership can be an especially demanding customer. They should be.

Of course, its true that they might need a Dashboard.  Also, they might not.

What they actually need is a problem to be solved.

Customer service = doing exactly what someone asks you.

Solving problems = identifying something that’s broken, fixing it, proving that you fixed it, and being personally accountable for the result.

What business are you in…customer service?

Or solving problems?

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I will give a two (anonymized) examples from my experience that illustrate the difference between “demanding service” and solving problems. It’s (almost always) as simple as: asking questions and thinking about something before you actually commit to doing something.

Example 1: A market analysis shows that a manufacturing plant’s capacity will fall short by 25% in 2 years. The plant leader directs the organization to add a new manufacturing line.

The thing is, “We don’t have enough equipment” is not a problem statement. Here’s the problem statement: we need 25% more stuff to sell.

Had she brought the requirement (add 25%) instead of the “solution” (new manufacturing line) to the org, many more ideas could have emerged.  Can the existing process be optimized? Can we outsource to a contract manufacturer? Can a partner meet the extra demand? Can another site in the company make this stuff? Can we white label someone else’s product?

Example 2: A department develops a homegrown software application.  They need to maintain it.  No one has time to do the testing.  So, they open a headcount for a Software QA specialist.

The thing is “I need to hire someone” is not a problem statement. Here’s the problem statement: We need our software QA’d.

Can they contract it out? Can they automate the testing with scripting and software? Can they reduce the scope of the application, to reduce the scope of the required testing?

Behind every request is a requirement. A problem statement. A broken thing that needs fixing. It can be difficult to uncover sometimes. But it’s there, and uncover it you must, if you want to fix it.

People who wish to appear smart always present the solution instead of stating the problem. This is especially true of people who are actually smart, because they are used to solving problems and being right and having people listen to them.

It takes bravery to admit you have a problem, but have not yet found the best solution.

But if you are the one owning the solution, you had better make sure you know the problem first. Because if you don’t, and the solution doesn’t work, you just created a second problem. And now you own both.

The problem statement is the rust under the paint. It is the termite-ridden pillar wrapped in brand new vinyl siding. It’s the teenager, whose angst is thinly veiled by a smile.

You must peel back the veneer, find the problem statement, and fix it.

Become a fixer of problems.

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At every company I’ve worked, in every role I’ve played, I’ve had to translate feature requests, demands for new equipment, or desires to change business processes into problem statements. Here are three things I have observed as I’ve collected problem statements over the years.

Observation 1] Some problem statements are transient. Other problem statements last forever.

Consider: “We can’t ship product because the packing machine is jammed.” Fixing this problem is 100% within the four walls of a company. Buy a new packaging machine. Fix the existing one. Outsource packaging operations. Resell a competitor’s products. The problem statement disappears.

Now consider: “Our competitors spend much less than we do to deliver an equivalent product.” “Fixing” this problem requires action by the company (of course).  But the factors that cause it, characterize it, and drive its evolution live outside the company.

Maybe the price pressure is permanent due to some competitor’s innovation. Maybe it’s not sustainable and the competitor folds and the problem goes away. Maybe a new regulation comes out that adds cost, and destroys margin. Maybe a regulation is repealed or amended that does the opposite .

This second type of problem — the durable type — requires constant monitoring and vigilance. Solving it is not a one time event. In fact: It can’t be solved. It must be managed, optimized, constantly monitored.

These are the ocean currents and winds that guide the ship. You cant control them. But you must understand them.  Only then can you harness them, and use them get somewhere.

This kind of problem statement, I call a “Critical Business Question.” (I will call them CBQs to avoid typing that over and over again)

Finding one of these is a big deal, because they can, and should, change how you think about the business unit / function / department.

When you find a whole bunch of these and manage them together, you know what that is?  I call that strategy.

What are your company / business unit / department / personal CBQs? Do you have a strategy manage them?

Observation 2] Critical Business Questions (CBQs) are durable and universal.

Think about this CBQ: Is our portfolio of projects delivering our strategy?

How about this: Do we have the right number of resources to run the business?

How about these: How does each activity or project impact our cost of goods/services? How do defects/bugs impact cost of goods/services? How do defects impact customer satisfaction? How does our defect rate / cost of goods / operating margin compare with our competitors? What projects should we be working on? What are we actually working on? What’s the gap? What’s the plan to close it? How are we tracking against that plan? How can we speed up closing the gap?

It doesn’t matter if you make software, Tylenol, gummy bears, microchips, chicken nuggets. It doesn’t matter if you make things, or deliver services, or both. I’m willing to bet most (or all) of these questions apply to you / your department / business unit / P&L.

I know this because they applied when I was working at a startup with 3 people making control systems for navy seals’ boats. They also applied when I designed automated pharmaceutical manufacturing systems, and when I had a small start-up making headphone amplifiers, and when I ran construction crews building industrial production facilities, when i ran my own music recording studio, and when I started my own software company.

They apply to you too.

Observation 3] Direct, explicit management of these questions is (1) not common, and (2) a competitive advantage for a busienss.

And it’s really uncommon below the top tier of management. Where are the critical business questions asked at your company? Are you a part of that conversation? How can you help define them? Answer them? Manage them?

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So that’s it: you can choose to be in customer service, or be a problem solver.

It’s easy to slip back in to customer service mode. I do it frequently. “Customer Service” mode is not as good as “Problem Solver” mode, and sometimes it’s actually bad.

Being a problem solver requires skepticism, vigilance, courage. You have to challenge the people that pay your salary.

You have to risk being wrong.

You have to be willing to accept the consequences of being wrong.

But solving problems is the essence of business. It is what creates value…for the company, for customers, for shareholders, for society.

Be a value creator. Go find the problems and solve them.

(And In the next article, I’ll talk about one approach to solving the problems once you’ve found them)

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