First Friday Book Synopsis

Many years ago, I had a teacher – a very, very smart teacher – who said that if you read something in one place, pay a little attention.  But if you read it over and over again from a number of sources, pay a whole lot of attention!

Here’s something you can read in countless business books.  It is repeated by enough authors in so many books that I think it is safe to say — be sure to get this one right.  Pay a lot of attention to this!  Here’s the lesson:

Hire the right people!

How many stories do you know about inefficient, unsuccessful, stagnant, even demoralizing workers?  Knowing that making the right hire is important is…well, common knowledge.  Actually making the right hire – this is the hard part.

I was thinking about this and remembered just how clearly Jack Welch expressed this in Winning.  Here are some key quotes:

Hiring good people is hard.  Hiring great people is brutally hard.  And yet nothing matters more in winning than getting the right people on the field.  All the clever strategies and advanced technologies in the world are nowhere near as effective without great people to put them to work.

Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.  Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.

If you’ve hired the right people, they will want to grow.  They will be bursting with the desire to learn and do more…  Good people never think they have reached the top of their game.  But they’re dying to get there.  A company that manages people well helps make that happen…  It makes sure that training is seen as a reward for performance, not a sop for time served.

Hiring the right people, investing in their development, rewarding them with more training and more challenges – this is the path to business success.

Look around you – are you hiring the right people?
Look at yourself – were you the “right hire?”

Let’s put it this way.  Making the right hire may not absolutely guarantee business success.  But it comes close.

Making the wrong hire – this is a sure fire path to business disappointment.