Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe

Got more than one super candidate for a position?  Don’t be fooled by appearances.  Some people just don’t have a sense of style. You can change appearances by establishing a dress code and watching it closely.  Look for desire instead.  If I have two people vying for a position, and I can’t decide, the one who wants it most is the one who gets it, every time. Sheer desire can carry a person a long way in life.  Candidates with desire will work harder and achieve more.  They have purpose that you can neither enhance nor diminish.  Capture it and give them an opportunity to make something of themselves, and your practice, along the way.

Finding the Best Candidates

By far, my two preferred methods of finding good people are referrals and the local jobs ministry.  Every single advisor, staff member, and professional on our team came from one of these two sources, from the operations manager and the controller to the attorney and the receptionist.  Looking for that next new team member? Put the word out. Tell everyone you are in the market.  Tell your staff, your clients, your neighbors and friends.  Tell your colleagues, tell strangers, and especially tell your family.  When you have occasion to discuss your standards and requirements with those who could potentially send you a referral, remind them that your recruiting decisions will be business decisions and nothing more. No nepotism and no favors.

Our local jobs ministry is run by a church in our area. Each Wednesday morning, around 500 out of work job seekers gather for an uplifting talk, testimonies of people who have found jobs through the ministry, individual career counseling, and training in résumé writing and interviewing skills.  Toward the end of the program, local employers take the stage and give brief descriptions of positions they are looking to fill.  Interested candidates form a line to the side of the meeting hall and do a recruiting form of speed dating with the employers.  Employers can have short talks with candidates, collect résumés, exchange business cards, and schedule formal interviews.  We have hired no less than 7 of our current staff members through this ministry.  It delivers.  Find one in your neck of the woods and check it out.

Working with Family

I once fired my mother-in-law.  We are great friends to this day, but she wasn’t right for the position.  If you hire people close to you (like family and friends), make sure they understand that you are running a business, not a social network where they will have special privileges. You are prepared to “un-friend” them at the first clear indication that you’ve made a mistake in hiring them.  It doesn’t mean you want to end the personal relationship.  In fact, make sure before you hire someone close to you that the person understands that your personal relationship is more important to you than the business relationship.  If the person won’t be able to handle being fired, and the personal relationship will likely suffer casualty, don’t make the hire in the first place.  Pass.

People say ‘never work with family.’  Nonsense. Family can be some of the best hires you will ever make.  They know they can trust you, and their interests are aligned with yours.  My brother worked for me for 5 years and did a terrific job.  My father in law joined one of our businesses when he retired from a 30+ year career with a single employer.  He was amazing. My cousin has been here for 6 years, and is still going strong.  He’s been promoted 3 times and now runs our business.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

The first time it glances across the edge of your consciousness that you should fire someone, that is when you should.  When you keep someone on too long, you destroy the morale in your office.  Your staff know who the slackers are.  They know who the incompetents are.  They know who’s looking out for their own interests and ignoring yours.  And, they will resent it if you don’t take swift action. Trying to rehabilitate staff members rarely works. Once the attitude has left the building, the concert is over.

Lastly, don’t feel guilty for firing someone. When you let someone go, you open the door for someone else.  Someone loses a job, but someone else gains a job.  Income stops flowing to one household, but starts flowing to another household. It is a zero sum game.  The person who lost the job is now freed up to find the perfect position.  You’ve done the person a favor, your staff will love you, and you will finally get the person you really need.  Everybody wins.

Not sure where I heard this, or if I made it up myself.  But, it’s a winner. Everybody deals with staffing issues.  In most cases, the problem lies not in the skills, but in the attitude of the person hired.  You can change someone’s skill set, but you cannot change someone’s attitude.  The attitude comes with the recruit.  Start there. You can build a good set of skills on the solid foundation of a great attitude and end up with a terrific staffer over time.  That’s how you build a winning team.  Be patient. If you can pick up just one or two good people a year, you are doing well.

Idiots and Savants

97% of the world’s population is of average intelligence.  3% are roughly divided between idiots and savants.  I know, I know, you’re saying, “We don’t say ‘idiot,’ because it’s insensitive and crude.”  Lighten up.  Would you prefer I had said “mentally challenged?” Don’t get caught up in nomenclature. There isn’t time for it.  We loathe political correctness here.  Idiot is a perfectly good word and aptly makes my point.  Most people are not idiots.  And, most people are not savants.  Most of us fall in the 97%.  You will recognize the idiots right away when they come in for an interview, and the savants will not be applying for a position in your firm, so don’t worry about them.  Bottom line: pretty much everyone you meet that has a great attitude is a potential great recruit.  Look for that extra special something in the attitude department, and when you find it, snatch the candidate up fast before someone else does.

Phone Voices are In

The first thing I want to know about a potential new recruit is, “How’s the phone voice?”  If the caller is demur, speaks in a low voice, is hard to understand, uses slang, or seems to be put out with the idea of looking for a job, I keep searching.  If the caller is bubbly, professional, and speaks with good diction and grammar, that candidate has cleared the first hurdle. When someone else in the office is screening candidates for me, I give the same instruction: “Only send me candidates who sound like they’re having a great day.”  Callers responding to an advertisement or a networking lead are putting their best foot forward on that initial call to your office.  If they can’t cut it on the call, they won’t cut it on the team.

Résumés are Out

Résumés are only useful to a point.  We’ve all hired people with impressive résumés, only to be disappointed later when their true attitudes were revealed. Most of the skills you need your staff to be proficient in can be learned on the job.  Look at résumés at the end of the interview, not the beginning. And, beware of screening initial interview candidates by their résumés. If they made it over the phone voice hurdle, let them attempt the interview hurdle.  If someone rubs me the wrong way in an interview, it’s over.  If they have a great attitude, I am thinking, “I could train this person, I could work with this person.”

I once hired a Fuddruckers counter clerk.  She impressed me with her can-do attitude when serving my family one afternoon.  After our meal, I went back up to the counter and asked her how much she earned.  I interviewed her the following week and hired her on the spot.  In terms of sheer productive output, she was the best staffer we ever had.  She didn’t even have a résumé.  If she had, it would have listed hamburger flipper, dental hygienist trainee, and stripper.  Who knew?

Quarterbackus

Okay, so you have an illness.  Almanacus-Quarterbackus Syndrome. It’s bad, but you can fully recover.  We’ve already addressed your Almanacus (being a walking desk reference set for your staff) problem.  Now we will address your Quarterbackus (making all the important decisions for your staff) problem. This is going to be fun.  I feel like a spiritual chiropractor.  I am cracking my knuckles as I type.

I know how tough it is to think you are the smartest person in the room and that you should make all the decisions in the office.  This is pride in one of its ugliest forms – vanity.  It’s nice to show off how smart we are, but it kills the drive of those around us, and it severely limits our success to the boundaries of our own capacities.  We need to be about empowering everyone around us so that we all become superstars.  Don’t hog all the glory.

I am a detail-oriented (obsessive-compulsive) control artist (freak) with ADD/HD (Attention Deficit Disorder compounded by Hyperactivity Disorder).  I am self diagnosed and not on meds.  Pray for me.  My mind runs at 100 miles an hour, and I hear lots of voices (all of which are my own, of course).  One day, my cousin and Operations Manager, Dustin Martin, gave me one of his ADD pills (ADD apparently runs in the family).  Within minutes, all the voices in my head stopped.  There was nothing but silence in the background of my brain for most of the day.  I could not believe how focused I was.  I have never sought a prescription for whatever that med was, but there are those around me who would probably pay for them if I’d take them. Sorry, I digress.

What I’m saying is, I know what you’re dealing with.  You don’t trust other people to make key decisions because they don’t know what you know.  They don’t have your experience.  They don’t think through issues and problems the same way you do.  It isn’t their business that’s on the line.  There’s your trouble.  You are thinking little, instead of thinking big.  Your people are not empowered. In 30 years of managing people and building businesses, I have learned that the most effective decision-making tool I can give my team is a thorough understanding of the principles by which I run the business.  When I teach them my principles, and require that they adopt them and employ them in every aspect of their work, I am giving them a perfect framework for successful decision making.  That’s empowerment.

Now, this does not mean that they will always arrive at the same conclusion or decision that I would have, given the same information.  But, that is not what matters.  Give ten talented and experienced executives the same set of data and circumstances, and they will not all come up with the same decision, even if the decision is a simple yes or no.  But, they will usually still find success through the decision they made.  That is because they will, more often than not, make their decision work for them.  Everyone brings different training and experience to a decision.  But, if you give your team the principles to make their own decisions, they will make their decisions work in their paradigm of experience, training, and control. I have seen this countless times.  I am not the only one who can make a good decision and make it work.

Of course, some will err along the way.  But, that is an investment in their training.  You have to be willing to take risks with your staff by giving them the parameters (your principles) for making decisions and then giving them the room to make mistakes.  Risk takers are profit makers, as the saying goes. If you don’t give your people the tools and the freedom to make decisions, you will never grow your business beyond the limits of your own capacities.  When you delegate decision making to others, it is not with reckless abandon.  It is in the controlled and predictable environment of your careful tutelage of their business skills. Teach them how to make decisions, and watch them soar.  Everybody wins.

You Have an Illness

Okay, so you’re the one with most of the knowledge and experience in your office, and it’s all too tempting to answer every question and make every decision for your advisors and staff. I call this Almanacus-Quarterbackus Syndrome. You have allowed yourself to become everyone’s almanac or quarterback. Your first thought is, well, since I know the answer or can cut through the data and make the decision, it will save everyone time if I just give it to them. The problem is, it is not your role to save the staff time; it is theirs to save yours. You are the million-dollar thoroughbred. Your staff must learn to research their own answers, and you must empower them to make their own decisions. Every new team member goes through a learning curve with me.  A usual exchange goes something like this.

“Hey, Noel.  How do I [insert task]?”

“Don’t use my brain.”

“But, I don’t know how to [insert task]!”

“I’ll have to charge you, and you may have to sign a lease agreement.  I am not sure you can afford the rent on my brain.  It is very high.”

“Huh?  Why can’t you just tell me how to [insert task]?

“Because I’m teaching you two principles: 1. my time is best spent seeing clients, and 2. your job is to keep me in the conference room.”

“Gotcha! Where do I go for the answer?”

“Attagirl!  Now you’re catching on! Contact [insert person with answer].”

It takes a little time, but eventually the new staffer gets it and starts to assimilate into our culture.  When she does, it is then that she really starts to become useful.  If she doesn’t get it, she needs to be replaced by someone who will.  This may sound crass, but the best thing I can do for someone who can’t get it is release her so she can find the right position for herself; one where she will be able to get it and become a productive part of a team.  I owe it to her, and I owe it to my team.

Almanacus

Ever find yourself answering the same questions for the same people, over and over again? You have become a thumb-indexed, quick reference set. Why should anyone remember the information you so happily provide? They will continue to return to the well until the well runs dry. Look, you’ve hired some pretty smart folks.  They are very capable, or you would not have recruited them. Better that you stop answering questions about operations, new business processing, interest rates, dividends, home office policies, technical financial terms, etc., and send them scurrying off to find their own answers. This will cost them considerable time and effort that they will not be willing to spend a second time on the same information. When you say, “No,” you are investing in their education.  When they find their own answers, they will become their own almanac.

How did you learn to use a dictionary?  Your mom probably refused to answer the question, “Gee, Mom, how do you spell [insert any word here]?”  Instead of telling you how to spell the word, she told you to, “Look it up for yourself.”  While this seemed unusually cruel and lazy on her part at the time, the result was that you developed the skill of not only looking up the spelling of a word, but you also gained the knowledge of the definitions of those words.  You can thank your mom for your dictionary knowledge and skills.

Now, let’s be clear.  I am not suggesting that you should refuse to train your staff.  Of course, they will need to be trained.  But, your involvement in their training should be strictly limited to the basics of the position (duties, expectations, etc.) that simply can’t be handled by anyone else.  If there is someone else in the office, or at the home office, or at the vendor’s or carrier’s office, who can train them on the rest, let those other people handle it from there.  Your job is done. Once the initial training is complete, which includes learning where to go for information, turn them loose to get their own answers.  You’ll be doing them and yourself a favor in the long run.

Stay tuned for Part II…