Why you should hire the best: In almost every category the best is way beyond good. You’ll get 10 times the results from the best people than you will from really good people. It will be more fun to work with a team like that. And they won’t cost you 10 times as much.

About hiring the best sales people, Seth says Good is not almost as good as great.

About hiring the best programmers Joel says It’s not just a matter of “10 times more productive.” It’s that the “average productive” developer never hits the high notes that make great software.

Similar things are true in every job category.

When you should NOT hire the best: Extraordinary people won’t work at an ordinary company. So you have to be extraordinary, not just have it on your mission statement. They need to be managed like adults and this is harder than you think. You have to pay them more (not 10 times more but certainly at the high end of the pay scale). They need the right environment. I’m not talking super-star requests for a certain kind of bottled water (this occurs but is rarer than you fear). I’m talking the right equipment, training, culture, and other support.

So if you’re not in a position to support these people financially, managerially, and culturally so they can do their jobs well, you should just hire ordinary people. Seriously.

How to hire them.
1. Describe what you want in behavioral terms – not vague platitudes. Don’t say “self-starter.” Would anyone look at that and think “I won’t apply to that job, I’m really a bum.” Instead, describe how you’ll recognize a self starter’s behavior. And, it won’t be the same everywhere. For example: At one company a self starter may be someone who comes in early and stays late to get the job done. At another company a self-starter may be someone who invents new ways to get the job done quicker so they can leave at 3 and hit the golf course. Same platitude, different behaviors. More about behavioral interviewing here from Inc Magazine.

Note: I was recently in a meeting with a person who at one point told me he wanted to hire people who would come in early and stay late. At another point in the meeting he said he wanted to hire people who could invent ways to get the job done sooner and leave early. You’ve got to get clear on what you really want.

2. Find them. They aren’t looking for a job. They have a good job. And if they have a good job and they are still looking, you don’t want them working for you because they’ll be looking then too. [Exceptions are the ones who are looking because of a reason you can fix - like they want to move to your part of the country]. Look for them as individuals not as a demographic. Find names, find addresses, find current employers. So you’ve got some sleuthing to do. Get going.

3.Woo them. I’ve always said the best metaphor for business is dating. Here’s the coolest example I’ve seen of how to woo people. Not that you should copy the details – they won’t be relevant to your company or the people you’re wooing. But you should copy the approach. And here are details of the pitch with pictures.

Seth Godin’s comment about this effort is: It’s not particularly difficult or even expensive, yet it’s rare. The reasons are simple: most recruiters don’t really care about hiring the very best people, and/or recruiters haven’t yet realized that they are marketers too.

Takeaway:

• Hiring the best isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.
• When has being hard stopped you?

[tags]hiring, entrepreneur, small business, [/tags]

My natural inclination is to believe the facts but disbelieve the story. That is, I usually think there are explanations (perhaps luck, perhaps existing trends) that people don’t give enough credit to. Instead they tend to assume that everything good that happened was caused by something that they did.

Even with that caveat, Hugh MacLeod’s explanation is impressive.

Note: The picture is from the Stormhoek Blog

Takeaways:

• Know the market you’re in (see Hugh’s #10).
• Marketing can become a conversation not a lecture. The implications of that are huge.
• The differences can appear subtle yet have amazing impact.
• How it applies to you and your market will probably be very different from how it applies to anyone else (even your competitors).
• That means you kind of have to make it up. But you have to get the subtlety / amazing impact connection to do it well.
• Granted these are not just takeaways from that one post but from a lot of what I’ve been reading on Hugh’s blog and Seth Godin’s.

[Update: The hyperbole is mine not Hugh's. I knew that. Check out Hugh's comment here]
[tags] entrepreneur, marketing, web 2.0, blogging, small business [/tags]

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither it’s pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John W. Garner, Forbes “Thought” page Aug 1, 1977 from The Official Rules by Paul Dickson

It occurs to me that this applies in business if you substitute leadership, vision and other high level ideas for philosophy and you replace plumbing with management, training and oversight.

It’s amazing to me that amount of high falutin’ clap trap folks will espouse (not to mention pay consultants for) in the first category, without considering if the ideas actually work. Then they’ll go to all kinds of effort to convince themselves they don’t need to be consistent and specific in the later category.

The truth is, it’s more fun and feels great to philosophize about your vision and the like; while it can be tedious and time consuming to actually discover what’s important to measure and hold people accountable (especially yourself).

If you want to play football, a game plan is nice. But accomplishments happen on the field, in the huddle and executing plays. You’ll do better with good execution and good huddles and no game plan than the other way round. Better if you have people who can do both well.

[tags] management, leadership, vision, business, CEO, entrepreneur [/tags]