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Hire talented people and empower them otherwise you suffer
Dieter Weisshaar • October 16, 2020
Photo by Drew GrahamonUnsplash
Hire the best people and empower them to drive results
There is this famous quote from Steve Jobs: 'It doesn't make sense to hire smart people
and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.' Source: Inc.com. That is obviously to the point. You are searching for great talented people with potential to drive your business on all levels. If you found a great leader or expert, who can transform and lead your business, you shouldn't tell her or him what to do because you actually fall to old habits in doing the things the way you have did them before. So why hiring great talent and not just continue as is?
The first issue
is with the decision makers who decided to get great talent on board. They either are not ready to empower people, or they are love control too much or they are afraid of people leading and motivating the team. No matter why, it is obvious that great talented people will not be able to leverage their potential in such an environment and will earlier or later face demotivation.
Larry Ellison
was talking to founders on developing businesses: '...all of a sudden, you have to hire managers and you have to let go of certain parts of the business... I think the most important thing about scaling ... I think the people who scale successfully have one critical skill. They can identify and attract really good people.' Source
The second inhibitor
for change - that should be the reason why you have hired great talents is about driving change - are organizational and cultural boundaries.
If you have a cultural or organizational setup which blocks required change, you need to think about changing both. Hiring a great talent isn't good enough, you need to establish the framework and enviroment for success.
Hire the right skill to run your business rather than engaging consultants to do so
There is a rumor at Oracle that consultants are not engaged to advise how to run the business because that shows that you haven't got the right people on board to run it on your own hence you should better get talent hired to run your business successfully. A lot of companies hire consultants to analyze the broken business and pass the ugly message
to the workforce on what has to change instead of the management. They fear burning themselves on bad news in certain cases.
This is not about great leadership and the employees spot easily that the management is hiding behind the external consultancy. People know if something is broken and expect good leadership to take action and communicate the plan to get well. You generate much more motivation in doing so and people will buy in and deliver on the mission.
Revisit why you hired talent
to your business:
- you were not satisfied with the performance
- you lost market share
- your team isn't motivated
- you won't deliver on your strategic goals
Understand what are the road blockers
to success:
- Lack of skills or leadership
- Organizational setup or business processes
- Cultural issues
- Product strategy
- Market challenges
Listen to what the talents tell you what to do and if you agree to the plan, support and empower them to drive the required change. Do not tell them what to do or let the old organizational and cultural setup which causes the problems, make them fail. Talented people have multiple opportunities
and will leave companies which are not ready to support the mission they have been put on.
'..all of a sudden, you have to hire...' talented leaders
' ...and you have to let go of certain parts of the business... I think the most important thing about scaling. I think the people who scale successfully have one critical skill. They can identify and attract really good people. ..' Larry Ellison
Steve Jobs: 'It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.'
The conclusion:
Let your skilled and talented people build their teams, organize their businesses and processes along required boundaries but don't block the business or
leave it as is and don't get surprised what you get in return. This is your call and not the talents decision.
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