Big Think

Topic - The six attributes every new employee needs.

Jim Collins: The first, a right person for a key seat a priori shares the core values of the enterprise.  People often ask how do you get people to share core values?  And the answer is you don’t.  You can’t install new core values in people.  Instead what you do it is you find people who already have a predisposition to sharing the values.  You create a culture that so systematically reinforces those values that those who do not share those values tend to be encircled and ejected like a virus.

Number two, the right people understand that they don’t have a job, they have responsibilities.  And they can answer the question I am the one person ultimately responsible for X or Y or Z.  Now think about it as an air traffic controller doesn’t have just a job, has a responsibility to keep the airplanes safe.  You think about a surgeon doesn’t just have a job to do cutting and sewing, but actually has a responsibility for the safety of the patient.  And so when you think about this idea that the right people accept I don’t have a job, I have responsibilities.

Number three, the right people do what they say they are going to do, period, full stop.  Which means they're very, very careful what they say they are going to do.  There are only three outcomes, three possibilities for the commitment, for the right people.  They fulfill that commitment brilliantly.  They are basically explicitly absolved from that commitment or they have probably died.  Now if you think about it that way, those are the only three ways to get out of a commitment.  You're no longer here, you're explicity absolved or you fulfill it brilliantly.

Now, a right person understands that so much that they are able to be very disciplined to make sure they do not make commitments that they cannot fulfill.  That brings us to number four.  

The right people don’t need to be tightly managed.  The right people are self disciplined, are self motivated, are self managed, are self obsessively driven to make great results, are self learners.  And as we wrote in Good to Great, the moment that you being to feel the need to tightly manage someone you might have made a hiring mistake; guide them yes, teach them yes, manage them no.

Number five, the right people have tremendous passion for the enterprise and what it’s trying to do for a very simple reason, nothing great ever happens unless it is fueled by passion.

And number six, the right people display a window and mirror maturity.  Now a window and mirror maturity means this.  It means that when things go well, when there are successes, they’re very comfortable pointing out the window to other people and to factors like luck and good circumstances that are out of their control, and not taking the credit for themselves.  And they want to pin the blame of success on other people.  But when things go badly their very comfortable looking in the mirror and saying, “I’m responsible.  I’m the one ultimately responsible.  Here’s how I accept that responsibility and here is what I learned from that.”  Those who do not have that window and mirror responsibility do not deserve the opportunity to be permanently in a key seat. 

Question - How do you find the right people?

Jim Collins: I have a passionate love affair with data.  I just love numbers and graphs and excel sheets and calculations and anything where we can marshal lots of data and statistics and it just makes me happy.  And one of the things that we did was to look at an analysis that had tons of data, 50 years of prixy reports.  A member of my research team named Eric Hagen, who was a remarkable research back when he was on my team, did this analysis where he looked members and key seats on the executive teams over 50 years in the good to great companies and he comparisons.  And then he looked at their tenure on the team.  And what he found is that as a company became great there was kind of a bimodal distribution in terms of how long someone was on the team in a key seat.

By bimodal I mean that there were a bunch of people who were there say only a year, and then there were a bunch of people that were there for a very long time, maybe 10 or 15 or 20 years.  And what that says is that the ones who were there say only a year they were a mistake.  And even the best executives that we studied, the best leaders that we studied, they made mistakes in selecting.  But what they had was the discipline to correct a mistake quickly once they had made it. 

] The second is they had the discipline to perpetuate their good decisions for a very long time.  And it leads to a really key point which is how do you know that you have one of these right people for a key seat?  How do you know that someone is going to be one of those good decisions you want to perpetuate for a long time?  How do you know?  You don’t know until you have empirical experience with the person, until you’ve worked with them, until you’ve seen them under pressure, until you’ve seen them when things go badly, until you’ve seen how they manage commitment. 

And what at means is there’s no way to just go out and know for certain that you’re going to find all of these people.  You have to bring people in, test them, put them under fire, see how they do and then make very rigorous decisions based upon how you see them actually perform when you’re up close, personal, under duress.

Question – As a coach, when do you throw in the towel?

Jim Collins: Dale Gifford, Chief Executive at Hewitt Associates had a wonderful frame work that he suggests for this and it’s very compatible with our research.  That framework, think if it as sort of three levels; values, will, and skills.  And when you look at someone what he suggested and this is very consistent the way our executives manage, at the lower levels skills level you ask yourself the question, “Do I have a skills issue here?  Is it something where they just need to learn, they need to develop in the role, they can grow into it?”  And then we can be really quite patient because, or more patient because they, skills are an acquirable thing.  We can develop them, we can learn, we can grow.  

The next level up is will.  Well maybe the reason they don’t have the skills is they don’t have that kind of burning compulsive passionate obsessive need to do something great, to do great work.  Maybe they just don’t have the will, they don’t have the motivation.  They’re not self motivated.  So then the question is well maybe it’s something I’m going as leader and as a manager that’s de-motivating them.  Or maybe I have them in the wrong seat or something.  But the real question is can I address the will question.  Be a little less patient there.

Then there’s the values level.  And ask the question well wait a minute, maybe we have a values issue.  Maybe it’s just a values misfit.  And there, there’s no compromise, because a great enterprise has to have people who fit with the core values. 

Recorded on: August 12, 2009