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Trouble Finding Good People? Stop Trying to Hire Them.
By
Peter Meyer The Business & Economic Review - Fall, 1998
The
good news about the economy is that unemployment is down and there's more money
available for people to spend on your products. The bad news is that everyone
has a job, and there are fewer of the right people to work for you.
In your
product market, you compete with only a few key players. In recruiting, you
compete with hundreds. This is one of the two problems that consistently keeps
CEOs up at night.(1)
In this
article, we'll look at a different model that you as a CEO or owner can
initiate to bring the right resources to key opportunities. It may seem
obvious, but it will require leadership to change how your managers look at
recruiting. This is not an HR discussion: it's a line management issue.
The
competition for recruiting gets great press in the technology arena, but it
goes well beyond. Even in the industrial Midwest, Kay Casey of Standard
Register notes that, "We run ads now and get one or two responses. We used to
get 30 or 40."(2)
Much of
what your company does today may make the problem worse. Co-op programs, job
fairs, recruiting out of school and halfway houses, increasing benefits, and
offering signing bonuses are all necessary and good. But they deliver
diminishing results! Raiding your best competitors provides a solution - but
it's only a matter of time until they, in turn, raid your firm right back.
Instead of providing you a solution, these tactics actually increase the
competition as others do the same things.
It may
be time to look outside your normal recruiting processes. There are other ways
to get the brightest and the best minds focused on your most important
problems.
Minds
Your
need for people comes in two forms. For some positions, you need lots of good
people to satisfy an ongoing role. For those, you can get away with hiring in
bulk. You count on losing some as part of the process, and that's acceptable.
But
there are some key tasks where churning people will not work. You need single,
specific skills and backgrounds. For these, you want the best minds.
Why
minds and not people? Superb strategy execution is a result of individual
effort. When you put a person on a key task that requires judgment and
experience, you are betting your strategy on that choice. An average mind will
produce results far inferior to the best.
The
distinction between minds and bodies is control. Your managers are used to
controlling people, but they know they cannot control minds. With a great mind,
you aim it in the right direction and keep it excited. As venture capitalist
Ann Winblad notes, "A capital-efficient, people-driven company is not an
assembly line; it is a community of skilled craftsmen able to make decisions at
every level."(3) You can throw bodies at some tasks, but for the execution of
key strategies, the issue is which individual minds to apply.
Where
would you apply a best mind? Many of your development projects require that
kind of intellect. Writing code that works without increasing your support
costs requires a better-than-average mind. Some key customer relationships
deserve the best minds you can get. Solving production problems so they stay
solved requires a superior mind. Positioning products to get high margins needs
more than the average thought process. You may have 10 or 20 important projects
that do not seem to ever get completed. Would an exceptional mind with the
right background help you bring these to conclusion?
The bad
news is that some of the best minds in the business are not available to you as
employees - because they have decided to opt out of the corporate environment.
These minds will never respond to a recruiting pitch for a job, and would not
be likely to stay if you got them. They are not money and benefits driven. They
are project and idea driven.
If they
are not employees, knowledge workers, consulting firms, or traditional
contractors, what are these people? We have named them "Indies," for
independent minds. The name intentionally brings up the image of Indiana Jones,
the brilliant, highly independent, very successful archeologist hero of the
movie trilogy. If these are the Indies, you are the museum or government who
contracts for results. Your goal is to have someone go get the Ark of the
Covenant.
For
many jobs, you would hire full-time employees. For finding the Ark, you would
want someone with the skills of an Indiana Jones. You know, almost without
thinking, that you can't and won't make Jones an employee. But to have him
acting in a self-motivated way will be very valuable to you and your search. So
you ask him to achieve a clear objective, one that attracts him. He goes after
it with skills you could not hire. He is an Indy.
In your
real world, there are many projects that need the brains and self motivation of
an Indy. The good news is that if you can't hire them, neither can anyone else.
But maybe you can attract their minds to your needs.
Indies
Joan(4)
is one of the best root-cause analysis and process minds in the country. If you
have a nasty customer-affecting problem that keeps repeating, Joan is exactly
the sort of person you want to solve it. Getting to the root of this kind of
problem excites her. Teaching your people to do the same is part of what she
enjoys. She works fast and well, and does very high quality work.
Joan
has worked for a university and for a large computer company. She will never
work for a corporation again. In fact, she won't work for a boss again. She
doesn't need to and doesn't want to.
Oscar
writes communications software for fun. These are things he can produce in
months, and you can then sell for millions of dollars. And by introducing new
capabilities, they move the market forward. Oscar can help to create and
dominate new markets.
Oscar
has worked for large software firms and a hardware firm. He will never work for
a boss again. He writes good software because he enjoys it. Oscar does not
collect a paycheck, often no money at all. He gets his reward as equity in your
company.
Pat
listens well. By asking good questions, he can identify the core business
problem and show people how to solve it. He helps companies smooth incoming
revenue so it doesn't all appear at the end of the quarter. He helps companies
find revenue where they are missing it, and increase margins.
Pat
does not work for a boss. "Been there, done that, got the T-shirts." He helped
someone find $2 billion in otherwise unidentified prospects, but won't take a
salary. Pat likes to know he can fire companies whenever they get boring.
Pat,
Oscar, and Joan are typical Indies. There are thousands of people like them -
i.e., expert minds you'd love in your business. You can't hire them. But you
can rent them for a few dollars and a very interesting problem. When you start
to define your needs as minds, not employees, you start to open yourself up to
this pool. These are the people you can get, and the people you want, working
on your most pressing problems and opportunities.
Indies
ebb and flow into your business on two symbiotic conditions. One is that you
need them. The other is that they're interested in working on your problem.
They are not telecommuters, they are the true virtual work force: minds that
are there when you need them and gone when you don't.
This is
all contradictory to how we run businesses today. Using Indies probably
violates your internal rules and practices. Your legal and HR teams can show
you 50 reasons not to do it. Your line managers will need guidelines so they
can start to change how they do things. This is change that will require your
leadership.
This is
so counter-intuitive few companies will do it. That gives you an advantage in
recruiting. Fewer companies competing for the best talent pool substantially
increases your chances of getting the great mind you need.
Strategies
To get
the best minds doing your most important work, you will need to do things
differently. Try the following strategies.
Start
by making your most important work as interesting as possible. Indies work for
themselves and for fun as much as for money. To attract them, build up
opportunities for self actualization as much as you do for money or health
plans. Winblad notes that, "We can attract talent by offering two kinds of
opportunities: to contribute to a vision for the future, and to share in the
rewards."(5)
Know,
and then target, whom you want. Instead of using HR to go to brokers to get
more contractors, get your line people to look in places where individual
Indies hang out. Your line managers are the ones who can define the opportunity
best. They are the ones who can recognize the right talents.
Depending on the skill set, each Indy has a
network he or she likes to work with and talk to. It may be a Ascend group on
the Interne, it might be a particular conference. A good place to start is to
ask several of your knowledgeable people to participate in Ascend groups. Pick
the groups and lists that focus on the kind of work you want help with the
most.
When
you begin to find Indies, be sure you do not take people who are "good." Only
take the "insanely great." Check references, and don't cut corners because
they're not permanent hires. Then set up the right flexibility. Be sure you
have an HR person who is proficient at contracting with individuals and willing
to treat Indies as business people, not employees. Be prepared to make
innovative deals that reward for performance, even if it means paying for
performance.
Reduce
the "pain" of working for you. Don't ask Indies to go to staff meetings or
serve on task forces. Don't require them to work in your office. If your
company is slow pay, be sure you pay these people on time. They help you best
when they are focused on your work, not your administrative process.
Some
people you find may be employed elsewhere today but thinking of leaving. Stan,
a vice-president at a high-tech company, is one of the best operations trouble
shooters in the country. He will leave his present company this year, but not
for another company. He will follow his dream to become independent. Stan could
use the support; you can provide that.
Instead of trying to hire him, consider putting Stan (and others like him) in
business as a sole practitioner. Then become his first client. He will be
happier, and you will have the mind you want. You can grow your markets as you
help him realize his dream.
Most
important, keep the work interesting from the start. It will excite them and
make them likelier to innovate for you. When you start an Indy on your key
projects, be sure you invest the time to guarantee success. Since you will be
asking for team work between employees and Indies, take time to get that
started correctly.
Ask the
work team to sit down for two hours before they start. Many Indies (and your
own good people) have little patience for classic team building exercises. But
most will respond to a request to come to the office to negotiate and set
success criteria for a project. Start with introductions and a little chat, but
make this a very high-content meeting. Ask the team to return with an action
plan with specific success criteria attached. You want all the participants to
be focused and excited about the results.
Our
corporate habit is to want to control our resources. But access to the minds is
more important than that control. To get the best people, you have to change
your habits as an organization. To get the best results, remember that these
experts are most effective if you let them work at the top of Massless
hierarchy. Let them do it from their deck in the redwoods or at the
beach.
All
over your industry there are companies trying to hire the best and hardest to
find minds. You can be the company that gets the cream of this crop. They are
brilliant, different, and extremely valuable. And they will never work for a
larger company again. Get them on your key efforts and save your competitive
recruiting efforts for other things.
Right and Wrong Expectations
There's
a lot of talk about virtual teams and alternative work forces - and there are
many disappointments. Why the latter? Because unreasonable expectations get
set. See below for some common but incorrect expectations.
- The
cost of people and benefits will drop. You will find that using virtual experts
is not cheap. Save it for the key projects, where the value of the result is
very high.
- Uninteresting work will get done by
nonemployees. Indies are people who are excited and rewarded by the task. When
it gets unexciting, they may opt out.
- Infrastructure costs will decrease. Minds and
ideas make things happen for you, not bricks and mortar. Sometimes that costs
you less, sometimes it doesn't. Either way, focus on the effect, not the cost
to support it.
-
You'll reduce the risk of bad hires. Putting the wrong mind on a task will hurt
no matter whether it's a permanent hire or a short-term assignee. You can get
rid of the assignee with less effort, but that doesn't help you get the result
you need.
So what
are the correct expectations?
- Break your own rules to attract and use the
right minds. Some great minds are available, even if they do not meet your
normal hiring standards and you don't meet their employer standards.
- Define clearly stated success criteria. Indies
want this because they respond best to a clear definition of success, a goal on
which they can focus. You want to know when they are done so you can end the
relationship or give them another assignment.
-
Move your people who are doing the wrong jobs to the right assignments. Why is
your Vice-President of Engineering trying to design interfaces? An Indy could
do that faster, and free up the VP to do tasks only he or she could do.
- Focus on results instead of control. Indies have
climbed Maslow's pyramid. They like self-actualization. They work best when
they work for that internal sense of contribution. Traditional bosses need
control as a tool. Indies feel that as claustrophobia - it diminishes the sense
of contribution. Indies left the control-oriented corporate environments long
ago. They will often refuse to work in another one: they don't have to.
Peter
Meyer speaks and writes on management issues from Scotts Valley, California. A
Principal in The Meyer Group, he is also a Contributing Editor for the Business
& Economic Review. Meyer responds to his E-mail. Try him at
Petereva@aol.com
Endnotes
1. See,
Peter Meyer, "What Keeps CEOs Up at Night," Business & Economic Review
(October 1997)
2. In
conversation with the author, Dayton, Ohio, April 24, 1998.
3. Ann
Winblad, "Leadership Secrets of a Venture Capitalist," Leader to Leader (Winter
1998)
4. The
people used here as examples are real Indies, but these are not their real
names. If you want to contact one of them, please get in touch with the author.
5.
"Leadership Secrets of a Venture Capitalist, Ann Winblad - Leader to Leader,
Winter 1998, Page 13"
Copyright 2002 by the Meyer Group, all rights reserved.
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