The adage “get the right people on the bus” has never been more relevant than in today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving business landscape. But it’s not just about getting them on the bus; it’s ensuring they’re in the right seats. This edition is dedicated to the strategies behind choosing and positioning the right people to lead alongside you.
When I visit with businesses of all sizes they most often have some sort of organization of responsibilities allocated among specific individuals. More often than not the choice of person to a specific seat or area of responsibility happened because there was no one else to do the job. In other words, the choice was rarely because the individual in concern was particularly well equipped for the role or was even subsequently trained for it.
The Pillars of a Strong Management Team
Your management team is the backbone of your business, the commanders in the trenches, and the visionaries in the boardroom. They are the ones who will translate your business’s vision into actionable strategy and daily operations. But how do you ensure that you’re selecting the right individuals for these critical roles?
Identifying Core Competencies
The first step is to define the core competencies and skills each management role requires. This isn’t just about their past experience or their successes elsewhere. It’s about understanding the unique challenges and opportunities your business presents and matching those to the skill sets and personalities of potential team members.
Aligning with Vision and Culture
A candidate’s alignment with your company’s vision and culture is as important as their professional qualifications. The right person understands and embodies the values and ethos of your business. They should not only fit into your company culture but also be champions of it, fostering it within their teams and departments.
The Right Seat: Matching Roles to Strengths
Having the right people in the wrong roles can be as detrimental as not having them at all. It’s essential to match each leader’s strengths and natural abilities to the roles that will best utilize them. A great sales leader might flounder in operations, while a detail-oriented thinker could be misplaced in a broad-stroke strategy position.
The Selection Process
Look Beyond the Resume
When choosing your management team, look beyond the resume. Engage in discussions that reveal how a candidate thinks and acts in various situations. Scenario-based questions can uncover how they would handle real-life challenges your company faces.
Assess Leadership Qualities
Leadership isn’t just about making decisions; it’s about inspiring and motivating others, taking responsibility, and cultivating growth. Look for individuals who demonstrate these qualities and have a track record of leading teams to success.
Embrace Diversity of Thought
Diversity in management goes beyond demographics. A team that brings different perspectives, backgrounds, and problem-solving approaches will be more resilient, creative, and effective.
Cultivating Your Team
Once you have your management team in place, the work isn’t over. Continual development through mentorship, training, and feedback is crucial. Encourage open communication and foster an environment where new ideas are heard and challenges can be discussed freely.
Reality
In reality in smaller businesses, you are often not engaging in high-level hiring practices. Perhaps you are even in more remote locations where it would appear your access to high-level candidates for certain positions may be limited.
Additionally, you may also already have formed long-standing bonds and relations, and probably bear some sense of responsibility for individuals that even upon realizing an individual may not be terribly well suited for a specific role, you tend to keep them in this role, perhaps for much longer than you should.
Acting as a business consultant, I rarely focused on who could I slash away from a job in pursuit of reducing costs and increasing profitability. Yes, there are times when that is warranted and possibly even necessary, but it would rarely be my first choice of the options to go and fix a business.
Indeed, often when I found someone in a position they really could not master and when I deemed the likelihood of said person soon learning how to master the position slim to none, I would aim to seek how and where I could reposition said person into a more befitting role.
Ultimately as a business owner, you do want and need to have capable people in the right positions for the individual roles and areas of your business. The better your team, the better your results will likely be, and the higher will be your ability to step away from the business and become a true business owner. who is not an integral necessity for the operations of the business on a daily basis.
As alluded to before in our previous edition of this newsletter, if you are finding yourself wearing too many hats (most smaller businesses suffer greatly from this) or that single individuals are wearing too many hats, it is time that you get serious and change that up and delegating the areas of responsibilities further.
Perhaps you need to level someone else up in your organization, or perhaps you need to hire some extra individuals.
The last bit here is often where my clients tell me that they cannot afford to hire more people. And they are right. With the way they are handling their businesses, they often cannot afford to hire more people and often they are struggling to meet their existing payroll obligations.
However, as we shall soon see, they often really cannot afford NOT to hire additional people, and often there is much cash to be found from additional staff members. We shall see examples of that as we progress forward.
In Closing
Building your management team is one of the most significant investments you will make in your business. The right people in the right seats will not only drive your company towards its strategic goals but also shape its very heart and soul. This process requires a keen eye for talent, an understanding of your business’s needs, and a commitment to nurturing leadership potential. With these elements in place, you’ll have a team that’s not just equipped to handle the business challenges of today but also poised to seize the opportunities of tomorrow.
We are starting our process here, because it is vital that we have adequate people to help us generate the right rights.
