Why won't you build a big company until you bring these people into the company?
By “these” we mean high-performing people. This is not about proactivity, discipline and other clichés from vacancies. And about the personal construct, thanks to which a person is able to create results for business.
You want results, but you get problems
Situation: you have a functioning business, everything seems to be going well, but as soon as you leave, problems begin. You plow like hell, but the exhaust is zero, the results are zero, point ten. But there are more than enough mistakes from the team. But in general, I want to deal with strategic matters, get ahead of competitors, spend more time with my family, and not wipe up after my own employees.
Why can't everyone work like me? If people were cloned, I would make a company out of myself or my best employees – CEO's thoughts in despair
Of course, you start by looking for causes and solutions. And always find them.
Revenue not growing? → Few leads → We need to flood the sales department with leads, let’s turn on marketing
Are your employees doing mediocre work? → Nobody needs someone else’s business, people work for money → You must either fire them or work with what you have
But in fact, we are able to see solutions to problems only in our area of competence. For a man with a hammer, the solution to a problem is to “hammer the nails.” For a person with a nail puller – “pull out nails.”
Therefore, your “solutions” to problems are limited by your own knowledge and observation. Few people look deep and see the true reasons. But you and I will try now.
Not enough leads?
Who brings them to you? → Marketer
Employees' work is of mediocre quality?
Who brought these people to the company? → HR
Marketers and HR are people. A company is people. Yes, a company is a lot more: processes, goals, office, identity, etc. – but all this is created by people to organize their own work.
Therefore, when there are not enough leads, it means that one of the people in the company is not creating the desired result. You haven’t been able to find the right person for six months → the person responsible for hiring is not creating the desired result. Yes, it is at the same time easy to realize, and at the same time difficult. Entrepreneurs often believe that (read subheading below)
“A team is just several floors of performers”
For many, a strong team is a “dormant need.” Companies inside often look something like “me and three floors of performers who don’t care at all about what’s really important.” And it seems that this is what it is – a team. She doesn't want to deal with it at all.
This is most likely due to the low level of standards regarding the professionalism of employees. Without solid hiring technologies, we usually hire great people but weak employees. Hence such family groups where no one offends anyone, but also does not create great results.
When we try to grow X any amount with this team, problems begin. But the people are good, we can’t find anyone better on the market, we will raise them. We take into the team those whom we have to, and educate them as much as we can.
We agree to HR, which measures the level of happiness, but does not know whether people are bringing profit to the business. We agree to marketers who test hypotheses that do not affect financial performance for a lot of money. We agree with financiers who create losses.
Gradually, mediocrity of results becomes our norm. And we completely forget that if out of two people in the room, neither one can create the desired result, the point is not always that the proposed task is inherently unsolvable. Much more often, the fact is that the right professional simply wasn’t in the room.
Also, entrepreneurs often underestimate the very idea of a team as a group that achieves its goals. And if they are not achieved, they begin to think about the adequacy of their goals and the legitimacy of firing people who do not help achieve these goals. Instead of asking yourself the question “are these people really bringing results?”
How to spot these ineffective
Good question. There is an answer, but let's first unpack how differently people behave at work.
Let us immediately note that there are no “absolutely effective” people. It is also impossible to flood the company with “completely UNproductive” employees. Performance is always a gradient. And you will feel it now.
Many people can recognize their subordinates in the following situation. You give some task, the person goes to do it, asks questions in the process and, in general, you get the feeling that he is really trying. He communicates a lot with the customer and resolves important issues with him. And then he comes and says: “I tried very hard, but the customer…”. And what follows is either a listing of objective circumstances, or carefully disguised excuses. You can distinguish one from the other in the moment, by clarifying the details of the circumstances, or in dynamics, by observing how the employee will act in similar situations. This kind of behavior regularly is a red flag.
An even clearer sign of ineffectiveness is when all a person’s actions are aimed at finding reasons why something won’t work. You set a task, and sabotage is already at the start. Instead of solving the problem, he goes into reasoning: “But this can’t be done, because… After all, if you look closely, then…” And half an hour of chatter in order to excuse yourself from the work before it even starts.
And you can’t hear enough of all kinds of mental twists. Then the calculations will show them the complete “unrealism” of the plan. Either the seasonality of demand, or the inflation rate and the hryvnia exchange rate.
Let’s say right away that similar situations are possible among high-performing employees, but they are never a regular occurrence in any company.
But the main thing is not to allow ineffective people into the company
And this needs to be done, of course, at the hiring stage. Next time at an interview, instead of asking what the last books the candidate read, ask what he considered the result of his work in the last place. Listen to the answers. Talks about processes – ed flag. He talks about KPIs, money and results that can be measured – green flag, a person worked not for show, but to achieve certain goals.
In addition to the question mentioned, there are several others that will help test a candidate’s ability to produce results. We collected them here, along with instructions about how to interpret the interviewee's answers.
We hope these questions will help you when selecting candidates. If you have your own ways of weeding out “ours” and “not yours” – write in the comments, we encourage you 🙂
