The CEO's Fight Against Isolation

Fred Wilson recently wrote a blog post about how when the CEO loses the confidence of the team, this is a signal to the company's board that the CEO's time is up.  I have a lot of empathy (and respect) for CEOs.  It's a lonely job.  But sometimes it is made lonelier by the CEO's lack of willingness or ability to cultivate a relationship with the team that creates a flow of information, and more importantly, a source of vital feedback.

I questioned Fred in the comments, "How does a CEO not get to this place?" (i.e., fired due to losing the support of the team) His brief response:  "being self aware, working with a coach, getting good mentoring, listening to the board."

I found this post and the comments to be particularly stirring.  This is probably why the following paragraph from another article read a day or so later grabbed my attention:  

The greatest danger leaders can face is isolation and an inability to keep learning. Most leaders agree with this in concept but, upon reflection, realize they are more isolated than they thought. For example, as you become more senior, your people are less likely to give you bad news or criticize you for your shortcomings. In fact, most of your colleagues are subordinates who are more concerned with making a good impression on you than trying to give you coaching. As a result of this, leaders need to work harder to seek advice and encourage debate and disagreement. In addition, they have to work harder to see clients as well as solicit advice and constructive criticism from those who observe them. In short they have to work harder to fight isolation and they have to make a conscious effort to keep learning.

From an interview by Alexandra Wolfe with Harvard Business School’s Robert Steven Kaplan on his new book What You're Really Meant to Do.

The stakes are high for a CEO.  I have heard from so many sources and observed up-close that not only does isolation make this tough job even tougher, it can have disastrous consequences.  Like the one Fred described, for instance.  I wonder how many CEOs live with this awareness?

Hiring "The One" May Mean Hiring the Exception

                               
Those of us who bring a lot of creative thinking to the hiring process often feel that our hands are tied.  

Occasionally, there is the hiring executive who will agree to meet the oddball candidate, or who will let you make a case for the exception, the candidate who doesn't have the prescribed credentials, or whose resume is less than perfect and yet your professional judgment or even your time-proven hunch tells you this could be "the one."  Many times the formula is too well-ingrained into the hiring process, or worse yet, there is too much fear, to let those who do not fit preconceived notions enter into consideration.

I understand.  Hiring is a scary, risky business because making a mistake has repercussions. I get this. I am deeply sobered by what my clients entrust to me.  But still...

As I continue reading The Rare Find by George Anders, the following jumped out at me:

...the sorry truth is that hiring norms in recent decades keep leaving less room for individual perspectives.  In big organizations especially, the notion of hunting for talent in quirky ways evokes shudders.  Formulaic conformity feels safer.  In the rearranged world, hiring becomes a labored exercise in not making mistakes, rather than an ambitious hunt for greatness.

Anders mentions big organizations, but understandably small businesses and startups are at times even more careful, and sometimes fearful, in their hiring practices because when the team is smaller each hire represents a greater proportion of the company. 

As someone who is painstaking in the hiring process, I am not suggesting carelessness, but, rather, more openness.  As Anders writes elsewhere in this book:

When you are exploring, ask:  "What can go right?"  Most conventional assessment is all about finding candidates' flaws.  That's appropriate in the final stages of selection, when top-tier candidates have already established their allure.  But...the outer fringes of talent work differently.*  Great discoveries happen only if assessors are willing to suspend their skepticism at first, so that the underdogs get a chance to show a spark of promise.

I am looking for those opportunities to help companies search for greatness.  It is out there in unexpected packages and places and I want to find it -- I have found it before.  Taking a more open-minded, creative approach, leaving the pack, this is what will give a few special companies the leading edge.

*Anders uses as an example, Facebook's use of puzzles to attract candidates that recruiters might miss, with the hire of Evan Priestly being a prime example.

Job Description Clinic: The Essential Question

Because I am convinced of the value of the job description as a management tool and creating a job description seems to be an intimidating task for some, I am going to spend time on this topic.  This series of posts is geared toward those of you who lead teams.  Today I am starting with what I believe to be the most important question to ask when writing a job description.  

If you answer this question and do nothing else, then you will already have something of value to work with.

The way you answer this question will determine how you view the job and the person performing it.  It will influence how you recruit and hire, and how you communicate about the job with the person in the job or the person you are hoping to hire. It will influence how the job is perceived and the type of person you will attract.

When I recruit, in the back of my mind I am always thinking of retention.  Not just how to fill the job but how to find the person who will love this job and thrive in it, and will bring maximum sustained value to the company. 

In hiring, a key question to ask in finding this sort of match between person and company/role is “What are the person’s motivations?”  In other words, “What is the person passionate about and how does this translate into this job and this company?” 

The thing that has kept me motivated in my profession is not the detail of the work that I do, but what the job accomplishes.  In recent years, it has gelled in my thinking that I am passionate about helping to build leadership teams – especially for startups or reinvented companies.  This is what gets me through the tedious aspects of my work and the setbacks that come with my profession.  What I am really excited about is helping companies to succeed and bringing in the right people for the leadership team or the core team is a critical part of a business's success.

In other words, it is the purpose of my work that most motivates me, and this is true of most of the people that you will want to hire. 

However, it is possible to have a highly motivated person who finds meaning in his/her work, and yet the person may have a different sense of purpose for the role than the CEO's sense of purpose for the role.  I've seen this happen with very smart people involved. 

So the question to ask and answer in order to find people who will be passionate about the job and right for the the job is this:  Why does this job exist?

The answer needs to be fairly specific. Recently, a client was hiring his first ever HR person and the primary reason this job existed was to help him scale the company by hiring and onboarding the best employees possible as quickly as possible.  We tweaked the wording and this actually went into the job summary at the top of the job description.

Because this CEO had in the back of his mind that this person was essential to his plans to scale his company, he brought excitement and energy to the discussion with prospective candidates.  In screening candidates, he also ruled out people who did not grasp the larger purpose of the role or who did not have a sense of urgency. 

"Why does this job exist?" is the foundational question to ask before defining the role.  The "what" and "how" come from the "why."  This also helps you to make sure you have the right configuration of roles in the company.  This question determines the job’s value to the company and also helps to identify the right person for the job.  The answer to this question will be part of maximizing the motivation and sense of purpose of the person in the role, and evaluating how effectively the job is being performed.

And while you are at it, it may not hurt to answer this question about your own job as well.  Why does your job exist?  

Of course, I love when people add their own insights and experiences in the comments.  And if you disagree with me, bring it on.  Let's discuss.

Abolish the Job Description?

The other day in the AVC.com comments, the topic of resumes and job descriptions came up and one commenter was pretty vehement in his opposition to both:  

I think a job description is a blunt, outdated instrument to explain what it may be like to work in a certain position at a company. It's better than nothing, I suppose (like a resume would tell you more about a person than nothing) but it's 2013 and we can deliver more interactive explanations. Resumes are designed to make processing and filtering people easier. Job descriptions (which look quite similar - text + bullets) are just the other side of that same coin.

Because I travel in circles where words like innovate, disrupt and reinvent are commonplace, I no longer hold onto anything for the sake of it.  And resonating with startup thinking I have discarded a lot of what I learned during my years in corporate America. But I have a hard time with the idea of letting go of the job description as a management tool. And that is just what a job description is -- a tool.  

Here are some of the uses for a job description besides, of course, describing the job:

• Clear description of what is expected for satisfactory job performance.  This becomes a contract of sorts between the employer and the employee.

• Evaluating the job to determine job requirements and qualifications which also translates into well thought out recruiting and training and development criteria. 

• Comparing the job to other jobs in the marketplace and internally to determine the right pay level.  Titles are not enough to use in comparing jobs.

• Organizational tool to help plan who does what – in other words making sure you have the right people on the right seats on the right bus. 

• Objective standard for measuring job performance. Which means that the job description needs to be written in performance language.

From the vantage point of a recruiter, many of the reasons that a person is willing to hear about a new job opportunity fall into the category of poor communication within their current setting, and closely related to this, unclear or conflicting perceptions and expectations.  If I ran a company I would err on the side of over-communicating and a well-thought-out and well-written job description can be a valuable communication tool.

The thing about tools is that they are meant to be used to accomplish an objective. The more skillfully used, the more effective the tool.  I don't think the problem that most people have with job descriptions has to do with the document itself but with how poorly it is constructed and how ineffectively it is used.

I hope that those of you with an opinion on this will weigh in by commenting.  I wonder if the AVC commenter was onto something that I am missing.

Winning the War for Talent through Thievery

Note:  Now that April Fools Day has ended, I must inform you that the following post was written tongue-in-cheek.  

There will not be a series on how to plan the perfect heist to acquire your competitors' best talent.  Sorry to disappoint.

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All is fair in love and war and in the War for Talent, the best strategy is thievery.  Of course, we don’t typically use the word thievery when discussing recruiting, but in effect , this is exactly what it is:  Stealing talent.

The way that you approach stealing talent is to imagine that you were going to pull off a bank robbery or some other significant heist. You then plan this step by step and allow this type of planning to guide your efforts in acquiring talent from your competitors.  This can be fun.  How many of us would actually rob a bank even though we might be brilliant at it? Stealing talent allows us to use some of our craftiest thinking that would ordinarily go underutilized. 

Headhunters have been using these techniques for years although we do not generally discuss these trade secrets outside our inner circles.  You might wonder why I am sharing these secrets.  One of my goals is to help companies build their teams and this means making these insider secrets more widely available. 

Using the “stealing talent” approach is quite effective, but the steps are painstaking and elaborate. Rather than attempt to spell out this entire process in one blog post, I will offer a series of posts.  Today, is meant to pique your interest and hopefully inspire you to consider thinking more creatively, and some might even say “deviously” about recruiting the absolute best people for your team.

  

Stay tuned…  This is going to be fun!

Creative Hiring to Win the War for Talent

The War for Talent has been a continuing theme in the employment market throughout much of my career as a recruiter.  I often think that this “war” is created, in part, by employers’ narrowly defined ideas of the right fit for the job.  Often the conversation with a new client begins with the experience being sought in a new hire rather than what is being accomplished by hiring someone.  

If we start, rather, with the business objectives influencing the hire as well as the objectives for the role, there may be a range of experience scenarios that might prepare someone for that particular job, opening up the possible candidate field.

To sharpen my ability to give my clients the edge in building their teams, I am reading The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else by George Anders.  I am loving this book, and as early as the introduction, I found this gem:

…it is arguable now that our ability to identify great people has deteriorated.  We have created so much data that we’re drowning in it.  We scrutinize people so exhaustively for signs of proven competence that we may be losing the ability to do anything else.  All we see are past credentials.  Trying to forecast what people might achieve is a bigger mystery than ever.  As a result, executives shy away from the mavericks, the late bloomers, the overachievers with the underdog past, or the inexperienced newcomers with the amazing potential.  We are so afraid of making a mistake that we have lost the courage to do anything spectacularly right. [emphasis mine]

Anders considers the business opportunities to be seized coming out of the recent financial collapse and makes this observation:  

Organizations with the courage to hire great people and turn them loose will capture the rewards of a new era.  Gun-shy outfits will let the moment slip away.  

It becomes clear early on in this book that “great people” may not necessarily be defined by the obvious.

I find the idea of "courageous hiring" to be exciting.  As I continue to read the book, I hope to reflect more on what it looks like to hire courageously, but for now I know that courageous hiring starts with creative hiring; for instance, being willing to color outside the lines of rigid thinking about what experience a person needs to perform the job.  

Often during a search process I will ask the client to give me the opportunity to present one candidate that he or she wouldn’t ordinarily consider.  I haven’t kept count, but more times than not, the person hired has been that “creative” recommendation.  

One example is the combination CFO/VP Operations role for a rapidly growing engineering consulting firm specializing in sustainability and energy efficiency.  The CEO was certain that he needed to hire someone out of the construction or engineering industry, because he always had, but instead hired someone out of BioPharma.  By all outward appearances, the industries were vastly different but upon close examination the candidate's experiences had some striking similarities to my clients business challenges.  There was the small business owner seeking someone to help run his company so that he would be free to focus on business development.  I asked that he consider someone whose only work for the past 10 years had been volunteering at her kids’ schools.   In both these cases the hires were a huge success.

My experience with “creative hiring” began about a decade ago with a technology startup introducing a groundbreaking product.   Since the product was unique, there were no direct competitors so we had to think analytically about what types of companies would produce similar enough experiences, especially in developing their market. 

What Anders describes as courageous hiring involves thinking both creatively and analytically.  It may feel risky because you aren’t hiring according to a formula. It requires reading resumes differently, looking for clues to the person’s capabilities and potential and not just trying to find identical experience.  It may require a more relational approach to interviewing and not just a series of Q&A sessions.  It requires discarding preconceived notions and questioning status quo hiring patterns.  It may feel risky, but it is more akin to a calculated risk than to a wild gamble.  The question is, do you want to build an extraordinary team?  This may require that you find the rare talent that others will miss because the fit isn’t as obvious. 

Writing this post doesn’t mean I have all the answers.  I am still figuring this out myself.  I will continue to post my reflections as I read through The Rare Find and share what I am discovering.  I’d welcome any input in the comments from your own thoughts or experiences with regard to hiring outside the box.

I admit that it takes time to learn to hire creatively, but the reward is a goldmine of potential team members that others  have bypassed.   

Here are some initial steps to help get you thinking differently:

• The next time you are planning to hire someone, study the LinkedIn profiles of several people in the role that you are hiring for.  Don’t just look at their current job, but look at the path taken to get there.  This may broaden your perspective about the types of experiences to target in your recruiting efforts.

• Expand your thinking about the job by considering the work being performed and asking the question (and also ask others) “In what types of jobs or environments could these skills be found besides the same exact job at a similar company?”  Creatively brainstorm at first; you can always scale it back later. 

• In posting jobs, focus more on what you want the person to accomplish and less on the background or type of experience you are requiring. Keep this to a minimum and as open-ended as possible, but request a cover letter explaining why the person believes he/she can accomplish each of the key objectives of the role, using specific examples from their experience. 

This is really only skimming the surface, but it is a start.  The main thing is to expand your thinking.

Essential Startup Quality: The Curious Type

One of the best pieces of advice I received about cold calling when beginning my career as a recruiter was to approach conversations with prospective candidates as "strictly exploratory."

This means that rather than starting the conversation with "Would you be interested in a new job opportunity?" to instead begin with something along the lines of "I was wondering if we could talk on a strictly exploratory basis?"

I had a conversation like this today. The executive was pretty sure that he would not be interested in making a move, but he was willing to at least talk.  As we talked, it became apparent that he was approaching the conversation as a learning experience.  He was the curious type.  It didn't surprise me as we continued talking that he had a few entrepreneurial irons in the fire. In fact, he gave me the link to a Kickstarter page for one of these projects. I laughed at this turn of events -- he was selling ME! In this particular instance I was not recruiting for a job at a startup, but I realized that this was someone who showed the potential to make the shift to a startup.  He would definitely be hearing from me again.

This conversation reminded me of some of the qualities that indicate to me that someone is "startup material."  I look for people who are deeply curious.  I also look for a sense of adventure.  Even better if addicted to learning and discovery. They live in a world of possibilities.  They will almost always be willing to have an exploratory conversation.  That word exploratory gets their attention.

If you live in a world of possibilities, you are more likely to find them.  People who work at startups are really into possibilities.

Sure, the person who is not interested in a "strictly exploratory" conversation may just really love what they are already doing. I'll buy that. But if I am recruiting for a startup, I am going to take this as indication that they may not have been the right person in the first place.  (True of sales recruiting, too.)

So this is not meant to be an exhaustive list ...or foolproof.  Just some indicators. Do you agree?