Browse by Tags

Global Economic Watch » All Tags » hiring » management (RSS)

KnowNOW!

Global Economic Watch

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

View more

Other Useful Blogs

Archives

  • 'Coffee is for closers,' and Other Rules for Startups, from Mark Cuban

    Mark Cuban has had a great deal of success starting companies, and leading them, in his way. He believes in keeping companies flat, fun, and focused. At Entrepreneur , he lists 12 rules for the people who start new businesses, and for potential employees of startups. A few of Cuban's rules might sound familiar, but they are worth highlighting. Like rule #4: Sales Cure All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales. and #5: Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but aren't as expensive to pay. But we also find it interesting that Cuban clearly feels strongly about the type of environment that he believes foster success. For example, #7: No offices. Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show him or her how to use the lock on the bathroom. There is nothing private in a startup. This is also a good way to keep from hiring executives who cannot operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over a personal secretary, run away. If an exec won't go on sales calls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company. Read Mark Cuban's 12 Rules for Startups here .

  • Startup Success and Getting the First Hires Right

    Gurbaksh Chanal has successfully built a few companies, and he has come to believe that the potential success of any new business depends on the first hires. The first five hires are especially important. Get them wrong and the company will not take off. Chanal wants his first hires to be hungry. He explains his hiring philosophy in this short interview at Big Think :

  • Ned Hallowell and the Steps to Getting Employees to 'Shine'

    Edward (Ned) Hallowell , formerly on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and now the head of the Hallowell Centers, is a psychiatrist who seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes humans tick at work. His latest book, Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People , is all about learning how to manage employees and put them in position to succeed. Hallowell argues that the old method of just getting people to work harder doesn't get results. Rather, a good manager must master five steps in order to get the most productive and reliable workforce: select, connect, play, grapple, and shine. He describes the steps in this Harvard Business Idea Cast:

  • An Argument to Resist the Shining Star

    It is very tempting to want to pry a star performer from a competitor, but Michael J. Mauboussin argues, at Harvard Business Review , that can be a foolish approach: [T]here is a tendency to prize a few standout individuals while ignoring how much they draw on their surrounding systems for support. For instance, many companies, sports teams, and entertainment businesses hire a star when they want to quickly improve the organization’s results. More often than not, however, newly transplanted stars fail to deliver, because they’re separated from the people, structures, and norms that helped make them great in the first place. In one study, professors from Harvard Business School tracked more than 1,000 acclaimed equity analysts over a decade and monitored how their performance changed when they switched firms. The dour conclusion of the research: “When a company hires a star, the star’s performance plunges, there is a sharp decline in the functioning of the group or team the person works with, and the company’s market value falls.” Read When Individuals Don’t Matter here . (H/t Henry Abbott )

  • Cherry-Picking Best Employees in a Recession

    Jobless claims may have dropped last week , but another the US economy still managed to shed another 565,000 jobs last week. There are few, if any, silver linings in the climbing unemployment statistics, but it does mean that small businesses that do have the resources to hire have a lot of choices and leverage. Mirela Iverac writes in Forbes that the trick is "figuring out which of those left behind were victims of the economy, and which deserved to go." Iverac cites advice from Barry Deutsch , CEO of Impact Hiring Solution s, who says that small businesses frequently hire what he calls "mismatches." How to avoid all those mismatches? As with most things, some smart work up front does the trick. First, specifically define the job you are looking to fill--generic titles are useless, says Deutsch--and quantify your expectations. Say you need a marketing director. You might require that she, within the first 30 days, assess the division, identify gaps and come up with a personal development plan for each team member; within 60 days, come up with a detailed list of potential product extensions; and within 120 days, execute a new product launch. The power of defining goals up front is that it serves as a road map for the interview, making it easier to predict whether a candidate has relevant experience and the chances she'll thrive in the new environment. Once you know what you're looking for, you have to let the world know you're looking for it. There's an art to Want Ads. One that lists a dry set of qualifications--five years of this skill, 10 years of that skill--won't cut it, says Deutsch. Read Hiring The Best Of The Left-Behind here .

  • Hiring A-Players in a Downturn

    With unemployment high and a lot of businesses cutting back on pay for those employees left, this would seem a good time for companies looking to hire. But as Seth Godin says, "if you need cheap bodies, this is your moment. But if you need amazing people, be prepared to work hard to find them." Godin points us to a compelling piece on hiring by Auren Hoffman , CEO of RapLeaf . Hoffman writes that economic downturns can make it more difficult to hire the right people, simply because there are more people looking for work. Hoffman believes in always hiring "A-players." And in the clutter of additional applicants, there are a lot of C-players available who might not look all that different from A-players on paper. So hiring the A-players take extra work. Essentially, Hoffman believes the number of A-players available remains somewhat constant. During big rounds of layoffs, companies shed C-players and B-players in greater proportion (see chart at right). So what's the answer? Hiring managers need to dedicate additional time to screening and testing applicants, or take your chances with B and C-players. Hoffman also says companies that are innovating in times when everyone seems to be playing it safe have an advantage. Some A-players are less likely to be looking to jump ship during tough times due to a risk adverse profile, security, financial reasons, or other reasons. They are happy where they are and more likely to hunker-down in tough times. On the flipside there are A-players that are MORE likely to leave. Tough times often paint companies into a corner and force them into maintenance mode rather than continuing to innovate. Great players love to innovate and usually NEED to innovate. It’s usually very hard to keep these type of A-players caged-up and thus this presents a big opportunity for recruiting. For instance, in the past it was really hard to hire great software engineers out of financial behemoths like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase. These companies have outstanding people and pay these people really well (often 50% above the salary at a tech company). Nowadays, even if these people have not been laid off, the great people are going to be leaving in droves. Why? Because in the next two years, it is really doubtful they will be doing anything remotely innovative. Instead they will be maintaining current systems due to the understaffed and underfunded technology departments. No fun there so expect a big exodus out of these companies. Read Hoffman's full post here .

  • Managing Crisis into Opportunity

    Management guru Jim Collins --he of such bestsellers Built to Last , and Good to Great --certainly knows how to turn crisis into opportunity. He's been working on a book on how successful companies manage turbulent times. He told Fortune some of what he has found in his research. His big takeaway, it appears, is that it is all about people. In downturns and recessions, companies have an opportunity to bring in talent. The businesses that bite the bullet and acquired the key ingredient to success--the right people--will reap the benefits. The right people don't need to be managed. The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. The right people don't think they have a job: They have responsibilities. If I'm a climber, my job is not [just] to belay. My responsibility is that if we get in trouble, I don't let my partner down. The right people do what they say they will do, which means being really careful about what they say they will do. It's key in difficult times. In difficult environments our results are our responsibility. People who take credit in good times and blame external forces in bad times do not deserve to lead. End of story. You can read the full article here , or watch a short video with Jim Collins here .
    Filed under: , ,