Chapter 4 – Surrounding Yourself with Great People, page 35.
“The best executive is the one who has the sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Common Pain Point
- You were growing your small business and felt overwhelmed.
- You hired new people to help distribute the increased workload.
- You found yourself losing patience with the time it took to get new people up to speed.
- You continued to do some of their work.
- You figured doing it yourself was easier than training people or correcting their mistakes.
- You then end up working even more hours and getting the same results, all while making less money.
Your Choice
- As a new boss, you have the opportunity and responsibility to choose the people that you want on your team.
- Even if you inherited several direct reports, remember that you must choose whether or not you want them on your team.
- Choosing your team is a privilege that bears great responsibility.
- Great bosses take the time to continuously (re)evaluate their team.
How to Surround Yourself with Great People
- The first step in surrounding yourself with great people is to define what you mean by great.
- Each organization will have a different definition of “Great People.”
- “Great People” are the Right People in the Right Seats.
Defining “Right People”
- In Built to Last, Jim Collins discovered that enduring companies have a culture that defines who they are, what they value, and what attracts like-minded individuals to the team.
- Your Core Values drive your culture and define the soul of your organization.
- Core Values should be “discovered” by the leadership team.
- Core Values have strong benefits– they define a culture that attracts people who have similar values and repel those who don’t.
Discovering Your Core Values:
The People Analyzer
- Once you have clearly defined your Core Values, you can determine if someone is the Right Person for your organization by using a simple tool called the People Analyzer.
- Begin by listing the people on your team down the left-hand column and your Core Values across the top row:
- Plus (+) means they live the core value “most of the time.”
- A Plus/Minus (+/-) means that “sometimes they do and sometimes they do not” live the core value.
- A Minus (-) means that “most of the time” they do not live that core value.
Defining “Right Seat”
- A “seat” is a function that reports to you as the boss.
- What makes it a seat is that you have clearly defined exactly what you expect of the person who is going to fill it
- To define a seat:
- Give the seat a name.
- List the five major roles that summarize the accountability or job description for that seat.
- Next, look ahead to the next six to twelve months, and determine all the seats reporting to you that are critical to your organization’s growth.
- With all your seats defined, you are now ready to assess whether or not all of your people are in the Right Seat.
- For each member of your team, ask yourself, do they get it, want it, and have the capacity (GWC) to perform (within their seat)?
- Answer either yes or no for “Q, W, and C.” There are no maybes.
The Bar
- To complete the People Analyzer, you must first establish The Bar.
- The Bar is your minimum acceptable standard for Right People and Right Seat.
- We recommend that a company with five core values set The Bar at any combination of three plus ratings, two plus/minus ratings, and zero minus ratings.
- The Bar for GWC ratings must be all yesses.
- Anyone at or above The Bar is the Right Person in the Right Seat.
- After completing the People Analyzer and establishing The Bar, you’ll be prepared for the Four People Issues that you will have to deal with as a boss:
- Right Person, Right seat
- Right Person, Wrong Seat
- Wrong Person, Right Seat
- Wrong person, Wrong Seat
- Most bosses end up spending the most time on wrong seat issues.
- While, wrong people are undermining everything you are trying to do.
- And unfortunately, right people in the right seats get very little of your time.
- As you go forward and build a strong team, we urge you to be relentless and inflexible when it comes to The Bar.
