To build a great team, hire people better than yourself and fire those who don’t perform. No matter what industry you’re in, you can’t run a successful company without a great team of people behind it. So how do you ensure that you build this team?
First of all, never be afraid of hiring someone who’s better than you. This is essential for success.
Just think, if everyone in the company is only willing to hire someone less able than themselves, the team will inevitably fill up with poor performers.
To paraphrase Steve Jobs:
If B players hire C players and C players hire D players, in no time at all you’ll find your company filled with Z players.
Instead, you have to be humble enough to admit that there are people more capable than you and you must have the self-confidence to hire them anyway.
Second, you must identify people in your team who aren’t performing and get rid of them.
This may seem harsh, but you simply can’t afford to keep them around. Every employee comes at a cost in resources like salary, office space and management time, and all these are wasted if you’re directing them at the wrong person. You need to remedy these situations quickly.
So how can you identify low-performers? When you hire a new employee, set personal milestones for them and define a review period during which you’ll assess their performance in relation to these milestones.
For example, if you hire a new salesperson, her milestones could include successfully completing training, developing a client database and making the first ten sales calls. The initial review period should be around 90 days so that both the employee and the company get to know each other well enough to decide whether or not to continue.
Much love, Marietta
