Hiring the best and the brightest

The million dollar question that every hiring manager deals with is how to find the best and the brightest talent every time, and avoid costly hiring mistakes.  People have many philosophies and strategies to arrive at the right answer for this. So, what is the magic formula for hiring the right person? Do you look for the best…

• Technical skills?
• Talent?
• Experience?
• Passion?
• Communication skills?
• All of the above?

Throughout my leadership/management career, I have interviewed hundreds of people both for my own teams as well as for teams outside of my organization.  Like most people, I evolved my interview strategies over the years as I experimented with what worked and what didn't work, based on the success rate of the hires. For example, early in my career, my focus was on finding a good match based on technical skills and domain experience. I quickly learnt that having the technical match was no good if the hires weren't producing great results. So, looking for strong and proven track record was critical.  As I hired for managers and more senior roles, it became more important to hire people that not only get results, but get there while building great interpersonal relationships with their peers and teams. Even more important after that was to find people that are not only high performers themselves, but are great at building high performing teams and have great organizational skills.

However, no matter what the position was and what specific skills I was looking for, I noticed that there was one thing that set apart successful hires from the occasional misfires. This one thing isn't talent, technical expertise communication skills, organizational skills, experience, or track record. This one underlying phenomenon is hunger . Hunger is the desire and drive to do more, learn more, and to constantly better oneself. Those that had this hunger turned out to be far more successful in their careers in the long term, trumping people with the other criterion. This is probably not a big surprise, because people with hunger are genuinely interested in learning and improving their skills and talent continuously, seeking new experiences, and constantly pushing themselves to get better at everything they do.

As obvious as this may sound, we don't apply this filter as much as we should during our interview processes. It is most common to spend time looking for the right expertise, experience, team fit etc., and less time thinking about how hungry the candidate is. If I think back on the hires that didn't quite work out, while they all looked great on paper, hunger was the key missing ingredient in all the cases. 

In all the interviews I do now, I spend a lot of time looking for evidence of hunger, above all the other criteria, as it has a high degree of correlation with other skills, expertise, and experience. It is the one factor that often explains the past accomplishments of a person, and acts as a leading indicator as to how successful he or she will be in the future!

Have you checked your (job) posture lately?

Most of us are running at 1000 miles an hour, trying to accomplish everything we need to. With all that goes on, despite our best intentions, it is normal to get caught up in the tactical and routine stuff,  and lose sight of the big picture. Every minute we are spending on something, it is a minute we are not spending on something else.

Just as we check our sitting posture from time to time and make adjustments to make sure we are not slouching in our seats, it is important to check our job posture regularly and make the necessary adjustments to ensure we are spending our time on things that matter.

A quick way to assess our job posture is to ask ourselves and answer these 5 questions honestly:

1. Am I doing things needed for my current role, or still doing things that I was doing in my previous role? Am I doing enough to prepare myself for my next job/role?
2. Am I prioritizing well and staying focused on the big picture?
3. Am I delegating as appropriate?
4. Am I trying new things out and learning from these experiences?
5. Am I working smart, or merely working hard?

Sun Tzu said "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories."

In many cases, we are our own worst enemy. Getting to know ourselves through this simple self-assessment on a regular basis can turn our thousand personal battles into a thousand victories!

What do success and exercise have in common?

It is that time of the year when most people are making a resolution to exercise regularly, and thinking about what it takes to be successful in the new year ahead. Interestingly enough, both of these have a lot in common.

Here are some things Success and Exercise have in common:

There is no stopping: Exercise keeps you and your body fit only as long as you continue doing it. It doesn't matter if you exercise rigorously every day for 10 years, as soon as you stop, you will start seeing the ill effects of not exercising. Similarly, it doesn't matter how successful you have been in the past and for how long, since the minute you become complacent and stop striving for success, your success will start declining. There is no such thing as "attaining success" and stopping, just as there is no such thing as "reaching fitness" and stopping.

Challenging yourself: To get the best results with exercise, you have to change up the routines and try to challenge yourself in different ways. Similarly, to continue to be successful in any field, you have to do different things, learn continuously, get out of your comfort zone, and challenge yourself.

The more the merrier: Both in the case of exercise and success, the more you go for it, the better results you get.

Getting inspired: Just as being around and interacting with people that exercise regularly will help you stay motivated to exercise, being around and interacting with people who continually strive to be successful in their fields will help you stay motivated to be successful as well.

What's in your way: Laziness gets in the way of exercise. Complacency comes in the way of success.  Don't let either of them get any where near you.

Exercise or no exercise, I wish you a happy & successful New Year!

Talent Retention - Let's divide and conquer

Talent retention is a hot topic that never gets old.

Based on my experience, here are the primary reasons why people quit their jobs, in order of importance:

1. Direct managers 
2. Lack of recognition for their efforts 
3. Lack of exciting work 
4. Not enough money and/or career progression 
5. Other reasons - commute, hours etc. 

Although as leaders and managers we may not be able to control every one of these aspects in every situation, we can still impact a lot of these by making some simple changes in our thinking and behavior. In fact, if we can address the first problem well, all the others factors can be mitigated to a great extent or eliminated altogether.

In a large organization, it is impossible for the senior leaders at the top to have a connection down to every individual in all of their teams and stop attrition all together. However, if every manager from the top down has a goal of doing everything in their power to not lose any of their *direct* reports, and if this philosophy cascades throughout the organization, then, suddenly, retention even at a large organizational level doesn’t appear so daunting.

Each manager typically has a manageable number of direct reports, and should be able to keep a good pulse on these small number of people. It should therefore be easier to identify any potential problems and act on them proactively. If every manager in the organization does the same, it will help solve the talent retention problem throughout the organization. This divide and conquer approach really works, as we can break the problem down into smaller manageable chunks.

Although no manager thinks losing people is okay, most managers don’t explicitly think of setting a personal goal to not lose even a single member of their direct reports. Changing to this style of thinking can cause a subtle, yet significant change.

From the employee's perspective, the fact that his or her manager cares enough about them to have such a goal might be a reason in itself to stay!

How to tell if you found your passion

We have all heard the advice "follow your passion".  I doubt all of us are fortunate enough to wake up one day and find our passion. More often than not, we end up choosing careers or jobs by chance or circumstance. Most of those jobs and careers may turn out to be just fine, and we may find ourselves in a reasonably happy place. But, how can we tell the difference - if we are truly pursuing our passion or merely stumbled upon something that seems to be good enough?

Look for these indicators:

• You look forward to get going every morning, some times to an extent you can hardly wait to wakeup.
• You never think about taking a day off unless you are very sick
• You come home excited and full of energy after a whole day's work
• You are bubbling with ideas and see possibilities in everything
• You don't  feel the need to  "balance" your work and life

If you find yourself saying "yes" to each of these statements, congratulations, you have found your passion.

Organizational Success

Looking at various companies and organizations small, large, and everything in between, there seems to be some common themes that are key to the success of an organization of any size. It all boils down to the following 5 things, doesn't it?

1. Right talent and team: It all starts with having the right talent, both on the top leadership team, as well as at all levels throughout the organization. As obvious as this sounds, it is surprising to see how many times we come across organizations making compromises on this front. It is absolutely critical to ensure we hire the best talent humanly possibly for any position. It takes a lot of time and energy to do this, but more importantly it is all about recognizing the importance of having the right talent and making it a top priority above all else. For this to work well, every leader that is in a position to make hiring decisions throughout the organization needs to share this philosophy, and drive this with almost maniacal passion - for every position every time, no matter how small or big the role is. 
2. Right structure with clear lines of accountability: Having the right talent is winning half the battle, but the other half is about what we do with that talent. How should the teams be organized for maximum efficiency and clear lines of accountability? Right structure is very critical not only to make things happen rapidly, but also to drive the right culture. 
3. Structured Decision-making process: You have the right talent, and they are organized well. What next? What is the process for making key decisions in the organization? Who makes key decisions, who are the stake holders? How do we decide on priorities, make trade-off decisions? Having a well thought out decision making process upfront saves a lot of time and thrashing, keeps the organization nimble and run with speed and agility. It also helps avoid bad politics. 
4. Communication: Most organizations understand the important of communicating the vision and strategy. But often there is not enough thought given to communicating how decisions are made or what key decisions have been made. Communication about decisions is as important as the decisions themselves to drive alignment and commitment within our teams. 
5. Course correction: In spite of having everything right for 1 through 4 above, mistakes are inevitable. Successful organizations are those that have the courage to recognize and admit these mistakes, and that are good about quickly course correcting where needed. 

I am sure it all sounds very obvious and simple if we think about it, and it should. The key is to be purposeful and deliberate about these in our thoughts and actions every day!

Sense of Humor at Work

Having a sense of humor at our workplace is not only appropriate but also essential.  Most of us spend more than half of our waking hours at work, dealing with many kinds of stress. A little sense of humor goes a long way to look at these stressful situations in a different light, and helps maintain a fun environment at work.

Having a sense of humor isn't necessarily the same as being able to tell jokes. It is the ability to see humor in day-to-day situations and appreciate jokes. Some people have the knack of putting others at ease instantly with their sense of humor, which can be particularly helpful in conflict or icebreaking situations when meeting with new people.

The benefits of humor go beyond helping with stress at work. Humor and laughter can bring people together and develop very strong bonds. Robert Provine, author of 'Laughter: A Scientific Investigation', conducted research that says 90 percent of the things we laugh at aren't even remotely funny, and most laughter is not about jokes, but rather, about relationships between people. Many of you may have experienced this phenomenon, where you and a very close friend may find simple banter very funny and have a laugh whereas others may not think it is funny at all. So, a laughter filled work environment might be a good indication that people are comfortable with each other and that they share a very positive and healthy working relationship.

Given these many benefits of humor and fun at work, how do you promote these in your teams? It starts by having a sense of humor yourself, taking some risks and leading by example. When you are in the middle of a serious discussion, make an offhand remark or a joke that might surprise people and bring on a smile. Stick to simple and generic lines and make sure not to offend any one. As long as you pay attention to people's sentiments and don't overdo it, most people enjoy a good laugh. Think and create situational humor that the whole group can relate to. You will be surprised to see the group really stays connected through that shared situational humor for a long time after. If you know someone on your team that has a particularly good sense of humor, provide them the opportunity to show it off.  It only takes a few people start and create a fun environment, as laughter is very contagious. Before you know it, it will rub off on others.

Is 'sense of humor' inherent or can it be developed? The answer is yes to both. Almost everyone has some sense of humor inherently, but everyone can develop it further, by watching others who are good at it, exploring, and experimenting on their own in different situations.

If you have a serious work environment today, try some of these ideas, and soon you may find yourself where "work" and "fun" become synonymous.