I recently read "How The Mighty Fall" by Jim Collins. An excellent business book. The Appendixes alone were amazing. This is a summary of appendix 5 about having the right people in your organization. WOW! Good stuff.
APPENDIX 5: What Makes for the “Right People” in Key Seats?
The right people fit with the company’s core values
◦People often ask, “How do we get people to share our core values?” The answer: you don’t. You hire people who already have a predisposition to your core values, and hang on to them.
The right people don’t need to be tightly managed
◦The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you have made a hiring mistake.
◦If you have the right people, you don’t need to spend a lot of time “motivating” or “managing” them.
◦They’ll be productively neurotic, self-motivated and self-disciplined, compulsively driven to do the best they can because it’s simply part of their DNA.
The right people understand they do not have “jobs”; they have “responsibilities”
◦They grasp the difference between their task list and their true responsibilities.
◦The right people can complete the statement, “I am the one person ultimately responsible for…”
The right people fulfill their commitments
◦A culture of discipline
◦People view commitments as sacred - they do what they say they will do
◦Equally, this means that they take great care in saying what they will do, careful to never over-commit or to promise what they cannot deliver.
The right people are passionate about the company and its work
◦Nothing great happens without passion, and the right people display remarkable intensity and passion.
The right people display “window and mirror” maturity
◦When things go well, the right people point out the window, giving credit to factors other than themselves
◦They shine a light on other people who contributed to the success and take little credit themselves
◦Yet when things go wrong, they do not blame circumstances or other people for setbacks and failures; they point in the mirror and say, “I’m responsible.”
