Possibly 3 of the most important decisions you have to take for the future of the company, your department, your team… are deciding who you are going to hire, who you are going to promote, and who you are going to fire. These 3 decisions are going to be very important for the success (or failure) of your project.
- First of all, YOU SHOULD THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT WHO YOU ARE GOING TO INCORPORATE INTO THE PROJECT, the professionals you are going to hire for your team. This is a decision of great importance and impact on the future performance of your team. Initially, it is going to be a clear statement of intent. Above all, your first hiring, the first incorporation to the project will give many clues about what area you see as a priority to reinforce, about what type of professionals you like, about the work style you want to develop… So you must devote enough attention to the incorporations. Hiring is not only a responsibility of the HR management or the headhunter you hire; You must get involved in the first person. Invest time in defining well what profile you need. And then spend time verifying which candidates best fit the profile you want to incorporate. And I am not just referring to basic parameters such as professional experience or training. I mean knowing their talents, their motivations, their attitude, their values… The Australian recruiting expert, Greg Savage, made it very clear when he said: “hire attitude, not just experience and training”. The better you know these intangibles, the easier it will be for your onboarding to be a success. And for this, you must invest time and money to achieve it. In this sense, Steve Jobs himself stated that “the secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world”.
- It is also very important to DECIDE WHO YOU ARE GOING TO PROMOTE. What kind of professionals, what attitudes and behaviors do you want to reward. It will not only be a matter of justice offering greater responsibility (and generally also greater remuneration) but also a clear message to the rest of the workers, to the shareholders and why not, also to customers and suppliers, about your style. In this sense, I really like the quote of the leadership expert Tara Jaye Frank, “people are not promoted because of how well they do their job; they are promoted for demonstrating the potential that they can do more.”
- Finally, the third of the most important decisions you have to make is DECIDING WHO YOU ARE GOING TO FIRE. Which professionals are you going fire? In this sense, on many occasions, firing the right people is one of the fastest steps to improve the performance of one team. Think carefully about who deserves to be part of your project… and who doesn’t. Firing someone is a difficult moment, I would say the worst moments I have had to face as a manager. Some professionals avoid firing people for not having a bad time. Others fire without taking care of the forms. If you have to fire someone, be fair and considerate. Be compassionate and very careful in the forms. Explain the reasons why they should abandon the project. But don’t avoid layoffs because they’re embarrassing or uncomfortable. The future of your team, among other things, depends on how successful you are firing.
So recruiting well, promoting the right people, and firing well are 3 of the great challenges facing managers today. The future of your project basically depends on the success or not, in these 3 decisions. Give it the importance it deserves.
