How do you hire?
Do you attract top Ivy League Talent?
or…
Do You Do This?
One of the fastest growing companies from 2000 to 2010 was Polaris out of Roseau, MN. I once attended a key note by a Harvard professor / consultant who went up to interview their CEO. As he was in Roseau he was puzzled on how they got top Ivy League talent to come work for them.
Funny how a Harvard guy assumes the best businesses are started by Ivy League educated people. The best businesses I come by are bootstrapped from hard working people who have education, but typically not Ivy League, but I digress to prove my point. 😊
So the naive professor asked…
“How do you get top Ivy league talent to work in Roseau?”
The CEO laughed and went on to tell the Harvard professor to go
spend a couple days in Roseau and come back with better questions.
After a couple days the Harvard professor came back and said…
“You don’t get top Ivy league talent in Roseau. How did you find
great talent to build, grow and make Polaris one of the fastest
growing companies?”
The CEO responded…
“You can’t worry about hiring the right people. You have to make
the people right.”
As we are a fast growing company at LBS, Matt Linklater and I discuss this daily…
There are two absolutes that you need to do to “Make Your People Right.”
#1 – You need to train your people.
This doesn’t have to be costly and it doesn’t have to be feeding them by
a firehose when they start. The key is constant improvement over time.
#2 – Prime them daily.
You need to be responsible for the state that your employees are in on a
daily basis. Think about it when they come to work they probably already
had a full day. They were either fighting with their kids and spouse or at
the minimum were running around in a hurry. Coming to work is there
moment to chill!
You need to create an atmosphere that fosters a team effort accomplishing
a mission and you need to create an environment daily to push them into a
peak performance state. One way is to have a morning meeting and huddle
to get everyone on the same page.
No matter what you do it’s your decision everyday to….
“Make Your People Right.”
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