On an overcast and rainy Sunday morning, after reading about Stanford’s amazing win on ESPN.com, some interesting things from the paper over a couple of cups of coffee:
But my first smile of the day came from seeing JR Martinez on the cover of People magazine. While most of you know JR from Dancing with the Stars, he is also a graduate of the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities program…a program that I am proudly associated with...pick up that magazine and try not to smile when you read about this amazing young man. Here is a link to a story on the People magazine piece from JR’s home town Dalton Daily Citizen. Congratulations JR!
From the NY Times…while it’s much easier said than done, In a Big Company, Make Everyone an Entrepreneur. The article, a recurring weekly feature by Adam Bryant, is an interview with Lynn Blodgett. president and chief executive of ACS, an I.T. services subsidiary of Xerox.
From the article:
A. One of the ways that we do it is we drive the P.& L. as deep into the organization as we can. We have a P.& L. at a customer level, that’s mandatory. We have to be able to see how we’re doing with that customer. A lot of companies can’t do that. In our business we drive the P.& L. down to the people who are actually doing the work. So if we can make a P.& L. for a $10 million business, we’ll give that guy the P.& L. and he’ll have profit accountability, revenue accountability and customer satisfaction accountability. And as they grow, they make more money. That results in a higher performance, in my opinion.
So you give people control, hold them accountable, give them control of their resources, and then monitor what they do. And if you do that, you’re going to tap into, in our business, the highest level of drive — entrepreneurial drive. I want ACS to look like a whole bunch of sole proprietorships. Because that way, people are thinking to themselves, “If this was my money, if I was doing this, would I really spend it? Do I have to buy that computer right now or can I get by with my one that’s two years old?”
Q. What else is important to your leadership style?
A. Another is that nobody is above being moved, being touched, being influenced by a small gesture. I’ve experienced it myself. Somebody might call me or send me an e-mail to say, “Hey, I got that bonus and I just want you to know that really means a lot to me.” We have 85,000 employees, and I don’t get 85,000 e-mails. So when I get one it means a lot.
So it’s the little things. Like writing a note that says, “You did a great job,” or: “I’m sorry I got after you. You’re a super performer, and I lost my patience with you, and that’s my error, and forgive me for doing that.” We also set up phone calls when we win a deal, and we’ll get the team together and say: “Hey, tell me about that. What was the hardest thing? How did it come together?”
From the same article on hiring:
How do you hire? What questions do you ask?
A. The very first question is always “Tell me about yourself.” And not the résumé — I don’t want the résumé. Just tell me about yourself. What do you like? What do you enjoy doing? Because I think you can tell a lot from very open-ended questions.
Then I will say, “If you had the perfect job, what would you do?” And then I always ask: “Why do you want to come here? What is it about us?” Then, finally, “What do you think you could do to help us?” In the positions that I’m looking for, when you ask people what they can to do help, you often get some great answers and insights.
Q. What are the qualities you’re looking for?
A. People who are honest. That’s the No. 1 thing. I don’t have a test for that. I think that’s one where you have to go with your gut for a lot of it. And this is my prejudice because I didn’t go to college, but their intellect, their ability to think, is more important to me than any degrees they might have. And are they loyal? Will they take risks? Do they have integrity? Frankly, the technical aspects of it are way, way down on the list.
And in the Opinion section, What Tax Dollars Can’t Buy, Did you Hear the One About the Bankers and Our Unpaid, Extra Shadow Work give somewhat different perspectives on the current economic discussion.
Showing posts with label hiring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hiring. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Up in the Air and On the Way to V-WISE
Air travel in and out of Syracuse isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but traveling to speak at the V-WISE conference in San Antonio gave me the chance to read through the current issues of Fast Company and Inc Magazine. As usual, both issues carried lots of interesting articles for entrepreneurs. My favorites were in Fast Company, The Cure (by Russ Mitchell) the story of a journey of a new CEO for a hospital in Oakland. The leadership and team issues were particularly interesting.
From the article:
He quickly began building a new management team, including COO Bill Manns, who was hired from Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan, near Detroit. At Manns's suggestion, they immediately commenced a grassroots money hunt, which Lassiter now calls "the foundation of our success." The pair gathered the top 85 managers, formed them into a dozen teams, and gave them 16 weeks to find $21 million in cost cuts and new revenue. Lassiter says he told them: "It's up to you. We barely know where the restrooms are, so we're not going to solve this problem. You're going to solve it."
To encourage fresh thinking, Lassiter and Manns devised "odd-couple arrangements," putting together doctors, nurses, techs, and other managers. The teams drilled into vendor contracts and challenged their own habits. Take the kit used to test newborns' umbilical-cord blood, a $96.50 item. A simpler tool does the same job for 29¢. Is the more-expensive device better? How much better does it have to be to be worth the extra $96.21? ACMC had been choosing the premium option, at a cost of $322,000 a year. Now, the teams decided, ACMC could not afford it.
While I’m always a bit leery of articles providing corporate lessons from the playing field, Lessons of LeBron (by Chuck Salter) was nonetheless interesting and a fun read as well. Knowing that I always read articles on the food industry, I enjoyed Inc Magazine’s piece, Toughen Up Cupcake (by Burt Helm) on the Washington DC cupcake wars. I also thought Jason Fried’s piece How to Hire an Assistant, about how he and his partner hired an assistant particularly intriguing. I mention that because in it he mentions that when they were hiring the assistant, rather than drafting the typical boring job description, they instead the things that the assistant would have done over the last day had then been on the job. He said based on the ad, they were flooded with applicants. It still took time to find the right person, but in part that was because they neglected to include a key piece of info in the ad. But despite that misstep, it seems their approach has merit and should be considered. Here is how they described the position:
Instead of a boring list of skills—this software, that many years of experience, "team player," etc.—we wrote a list of 26 things that this person would have done in a week had he or she been working here.
The list included things such as "Booked two hotel rooms and two flights for out-of-towners"; "Packed up and shipped out about five copies of Rework to various people"; "Coordinated with Abt Electronics to schedule installation of four flat-panel TVs"; and "Researched and recommended local floral arrangers for weekly flowers for the office." This way, whoever was applying would know exactly the kind of work he or she would be expected to do. (You can read the job posting here).
What drew me to the piece was that right now in the Entrepreneurship Department we’re in the process of hiring three professors, two of which will spend a considerable amount of time mentoring student businesses. I find myself wondering if rather than drafting the usual ad, we should have said that if they were on campus, in the last day they would have taught a class, mentored a student, talked with an alum, attended a couple of meetings with student startups, and met with the E-Club on a new business idea.
Oh well, maybe next time.
From the article:
He quickly began building a new management team, including COO Bill Manns, who was hired from Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan, near Detroit. At Manns's suggestion, they immediately commenced a grassroots money hunt, which Lassiter now calls "the foundation of our success." The pair gathered the top 85 managers, formed them into a dozen teams, and gave them 16 weeks to find $21 million in cost cuts and new revenue. Lassiter says he told them: "It's up to you. We barely know where the restrooms are, so we're not going to solve this problem. You're going to solve it."
To encourage fresh thinking, Lassiter and Manns devised "odd-couple arrangements," putting together doctors, nurses, techs, and other managers. The teams drilled into vendor contracts and challenged their own habits. Take the kit used to test newborns' umbilical-cord blood, a $96.50 item. A simpler tool does the same job for 29¢. Is the more-expensive device better? How much better does it have to be to be worth the extra $96.21? ACMC had been choosing the premium option, at a cost of $322,000 a year. Now, the teams decided, ACMC could not afford it.
While I’m always a bit leery of articles providing corporate lessons from the playing field, Lessons of LeBron (by Chuck Salter) was nonetheless interesting and a fun read as well. Knowing that I always read articles on the food industry, I enjoyed Inc Magazine’s piece, Toughen Up Cupcake (by Burt Helm) on the Washington DC cupcake wars. I also thought Jason Fried’s piece How to Hire an Assistant, about how he and his partner hired an assistant particularly intriguing. I mention that because in it he mentions that when they were hiring the assistant, rather than drafting the typical boring job description, they instead the things that the assistant would have done over the last day had then been on the job. He said based on the ad, they were flooded with applicants. It still took time to find the right person, but in part that was because they neglected to include a key piece of info in the ad. But despite that misstep, it seems their approach has merit and should be considered. Here is how they described the position:
Instead of a boring list of skills—this software, that many years of experience, "team player," etc.—we wrote a list of 26 things that this person would have done in a week had he or she been working here.
The list included things such as "Booked two hotel rooms and two flights for out-of-towners"; "Packed up and shipped out about five copies of Rework to various people"; "Coordinated with Abt Electronics to schedule installation of four flat-panel TVs"; and "Researched and recommended local floral arrangers for weekly flowers for the office." This way, whoever was applying would know exactly the kind of work he or she would be expected to do. (You can read the job posting here).
What drew me to the piece was that right now in the Entrepreneurship Department we’re in the process of hiring three professors, two of which will spend a considerable amount of time mentoring student businesses. I find myself wondering if rather than drafting the usual ad, we should have said that if they were on campus, in the last day they would have taught a class, mentored a student, talked with an alum, attended a couple of meetings with student startups, and met with the E-Club on a new business idea.
Oh well, maybe next time.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Hiring Decision
Yesterday’s blog in the NY Times by Jay Goltz struck home. The Hidden Cost of Bad Hiring brought back some not-so-wonderful memories of hiring decisions I’ve made which were less than memorable. In addition to the costs that Jay mentions, there are also the costs involved in hiring the new worker who didn’t work out as well as the cost for their replacement. Remember those interviews that you and your key team members did? Think of the time you spent doing the interviews, preparing for them, following up, the ads, the time drafting the job description…all costs that impact your bottom line. Plus, keep in mind that most employees take at least six months before they really start producing for you, which means that you have a boatload of costs which will never be recouped every time you hire somebody based on a gut reaction that says that he or she is the right person. Do the work, hire an HR expert, ask the right questions…and good luck!
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