Executive Summary
Welcome to CEO Brain Food, a show aimed at providing key insights, fresh perspectives, and proven tools that CEOs can apply to build enterprise value, generate higher profits and develop the talent needed to succeed in their businesses.
In this episode of CEO Brain Food, Michael breaks down the importance of finding the right talent to grow and scale an organization. Michael references the great Jim Collins’ six core competencies of hiring a team. These include hiring talent who are responsible, consistent, and do not require micro-management. Michael also introduces the concept of mirror maturity and urges all organizations to develop their own set of core values in order to identify and retain the right talent.
Episode Highlights
00:49 – Introducing today’s topic, Do You Have the Right Talent
01:26 – Why this is such an important topic in the early stages of a company’s growth
02:16 – The People Equation
02:55 – Developing the skillset necessary to identify the correct talent
04:39 – Growing and scaling a business
06:10 – Challenges growing companies face when looking to add talent
08:49 – Top Grading
09:56 – How Zappos’ culture became a magnet for new employees
10:47 – Why some companies fall asleep at the wheel when it comes to hiring talent
15:24 – The six core competencies of hiring a team
17:35 – The importance of responsibility
19:18 – Consistency
20:34 – The power of saying ‘No’
22:26 – Why the right people do not require micro-management
24:57 – Mirror Maturity
26:17 – Developing a set of core values
30:08 – Michael teases the topic of the next episode of CEO Brain Food
Tweetable Quotes
“If you can think broadly about skills versus passion and alignment, those two things are critical in determining whether or not a person is going to be successful in the position or in the company.” (03:17)
“The more people that you have on your team that believe in what you’re doing and have passion about it, the more successful you’re gonna be.” (06:01)
“It’s often proven that the A performers, the best people that are highly productive and very much aligned with what you’re doing, they have a network and they like to hang around other A performers.” (09:37)
“If you begin with ‘who’ rather than ‘what’ you can adapt more readily to the ever-changing marketplace. If you have the right people on the bus, the problem of motivating and managing people largely goes away. With the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction. You still won’t have a great company.” (14:09)
“If you feel the need to be tightly managed then maybe you’re the wrong choice for the company or the job.” (23:11)
“Nothing great ever happens unless it is fueled by passion and passionate people.” (24:50)
“I would just, in summary, say develop you’re core values first and build a set of core values for your company.” (26:17)
Links Mentioned
Knowledge at Wharton Video Series
Books Mentioned
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t