Employees are Everything: Getting Ready to Hire
Intentionality is everything, but sometimes intentionality and forethought get left out of the hiring process. Traci and Rob examine two key areas when you are getting ready to hire: strategic planning of where your organization is going and understanding if your company is ready for growth.
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Rob:
So a common theme that we talk about a lot is making sure we have intention behind everything that we do. And I think one of the areas that I think sometimes gets left out is what does it look like to be intentional to get ready to add to our teams? And why would we do that?
One of the interesting things about being in the service business is that more people often means more money. We can almost always make the mathematical decision to add people if they're going to be building to our teams and we'll have more money and more profit. But just because it's more money, that doesn't always mean that bigger is better or that the timing's right or that you're doing it with the right intention.
And I think today, we want to talk a little bit about what does it look like to get ready to hire and why would you want to make those decisions and how does it fit your overall strategic plan.
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Rob:
Hey, Traci. How are you?
Traci:
I'm good. How are you doing?
Rob:
Oh, just living the dream.
Traci:
Good. Yeah. I'm excited to talk about this because you're right, I feel like we can get really mechanical and kind of thoughtless in our hiring processes. We can, somebody leaves, we just replace that position, replace that person. Or we feel like we want to increase profit, as you were just saying, and we say, "Okay, well, let's just add some people. We've won a client," whatever the trigger is. And then we just respond to the trigger. And that is not an intentional way of growing our business or looking at our business or maintaining our business.
And we like to talk about here on Overly Human really always pausing and taking a breath and asking those clear questions that lead to great answers. Why? Why do we need to hire? Why do we want to grow? What's the why behind what we're thinking about? The who, who do we really need? And then when do we really need to hire? You know, all of these kind of strategic questions and thoughts that we need to have as leaders and as leadership teams before we just react, before we just pull the trigger and start hiring people.
And there's so many things strategically to think about when we think about when should we hire, why should we hire, who should we hire. And I think that was clear to us when we were talking about hiring and onboarding and all of this, everything that's going around right now, the Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffling, whatever it is. Are people taking that first step and thinking about getting ready to hire before they start just jumping in and reacting to all the kind of chaotic things that are going on around us when it comes to hiring right now?
Rob:
Yeah. And it's really that going back, things we've talked about in the past, of starting with the end in mind. Where do we want to be? Who do we want to be? Who do we want our organizations to be? And what is it going to take to get there in a way that doesn't cause so much disruption that we can survive the change?
Because anytime we choose to add people to the team or grow or any of those things, it does change our organizations little by little—especially service-based organizations that most of it, most of the money being spent and most of the things going on is the humans. So if we're not being really intentional about the who and the why we're bringing in, then we'll actually lose control of our organizations and end up with a little bit of happenstance and just kind of getting the results of it instead of actually planning it out and knowing what's going on.
Traci:
Yeah. And employee disengagement is a big reason why people leave. And I like to look at each organization that we partner with in two ways. One is their health, their culture, and the other is how are they running the organization operationally.
And when we think about the health of an organization, there's four key factors that cause employee disengagement.
And one is misalignment with the job, that employee does not have the key skills or the behavioral traits needed for the job.
Misalignment with the manager. People often leave their managers due to lack of care, connection.
And misalignment with the team. We have to think about the team as a whole, which you were just talking about. Does this person fit with the team, does the person round out the team, or is there conflict there?
And misalignment with the culture, which is the organization overall. Is this somebody that's going to align with the core values and actually make the culture stronger or are they going to make it weaker?
And so when we're thinking about what we need, who we need, well before we ever have anybody sit down and interview with us, we need to be thinking about what does our team look like right now? And who exactly is it that is going to be the missing puzzle piece for our puzzle? And are they going to fit within all those factors?
And then the other side of it is the operational side, is our strategic plan. It doesn't matter the size of the organization, even if you are just a small entrepreneurial startup, you need to have a big picture. You need to know what your mission is, what your vision is, what your values are before you start building your team. And that is really how you optimize and align a team is when you have a clear strategic plan of how you want to grow, what direction you want to go in, what are your goals.
And those are kind of the two big buckets that you have to pick apart and analyze and make sure everybody who is making the decision and hiring is aligned with.
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Rob:
Let's talk a little bit about the strategic plan because, at least the way I'm wired, that's where I always want to start. Right?
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
And I'm going to skip over the mission, vision, values. We've talked a lot about those in the past and I'm going to assume that those are at least established for the sake of this conversation, right?
Traci:
Yep.
Rob:
So let's talk a little bit about what I think is the next piece then is that operationalizing strategic plans and how to get there because we have our mission, vision, values, and the next piece of it is to figure out where our strengths, our SWOT analysis, right? What are our weaknesses, what are our opportunities and threats are because those are a lot of times how we need to move the organization to take advantage of our opportunities, to be able to cover up our threats and weaknesses and be able to move the organization forward.
And I think that gets a lot into why and where we could possibly want to hire is to shore up things that are weaknesses that shouldn't be or to take advantage of new opportunities that we've identified in the market.
Traci:
Yeah. I mean, the first thing that you need to be looking at as a leadership team is what is your accountability chart? How is your organization structured in order to grow and reach those goals? So every employee in your agency should understand what your go-to market strategy is. How do you plan to win a client? How do you plan to service them? How does each role contribute to that plan? What are your goals revenue-wise? What's your profit margin? All of those things are all baked into your strategic plan.
And when you can see those goals, then it will help you to understand who is it that we need to hire, what are the positions that we need, what are the responsibilities for each of those positions and outlining each of those seats. And then you can understand what your needs are and everybody on the team understands as well.
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
So if you make that decision, so say a developer leaves or designer leaves, but as a leadership team you know what your goals are and you know maybe you're going to bring a new vertical in or maybe you're going to go after something different and you understand that as a leadership team and you look at it as far as your accountability or organizational chart goes, you can show that to the team and say, "You know, we're not going to replace the position that Bob just left. We're going to actually add to this area of the business because here's our strategic initiatives for this coming year." And everybody understands, “Oh, okay, this is what we're going to go after.” And that's a very thoughtful leadership team. That's a leadership team that really is thinking through as opposed to just being very reactive in how they're going to staff up.
Thinking about how you want to grow, what your new initiatives are, as you said, after you kind of have gone through what are our strengths and weaknesses? Where is the opportunity? Where is the blue ocean? Where can we go after things and actually grow? And what area do we want to swim in where we know we're going to be successful? And that's ever-changing and always changing. And when we can as a team get behind that and go after that, it really does alter how we think about hiring and who we're going to hire.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think that one of the useful tools that we found over the years is even reducing that down to figuring out with new people or new positions we're going to go after is this a capacity hire or a capability hire?
Because if we're adding capacity to current teams, that's leaning into our strengths, leaning into the opportunities that already exist. It's not new lines of business. It changes the profile of who we're looking for. Versus if we're trying to add a new capability to our team, I've got to start with leadership first. I've got to start with somebody who's done it, who is maybe we're not able to mentor in the same way before.
So that's one of the things that we've had a lot of success with is saying is like, "Hey, this particular position is a capacity hire. This is going to fit on a team. We've got good support systems for them." "This is a capability that we're going to add to the organization. So we have to go find that first person first."
Traci:
Yeah. And I think too it's like we kind of talked about in the beginning is there's a difference in hiring just somebody to replace somebody who left versus scaling a business. And when we're talking about growing and adding staff, I mean, that's typically scarier for a leader and a leadership team because there's a lot of risk baked into that. But that just means that there's more strategy and thought that's going to need go into it so that you can mitigate that risk and that you can feel okay, and not just okay but confident about where you're going and where you're taking the business scaling-wise.
There's a lot of business out there and there's a lot of great ideas and there's a lot of stress on our teams right now being overworked and burnt out and it's hard to find people. And so there's a lot of reactive issues happening right now in leadership where people are just reacting and they're just hiring whatever the warm body is or they're making decisions not to grow or to be very conservative because we're not sure what's on the horizon. And that's all good. But I think we really do need to be thinking big picture all the time when it comes to hiring.
Rob:
And it's been really hard because most of us have signed deals and the work that we have we're trying to hold onto and with the great reshuffling or turnover being what it is. It's been for most of the studios and businesses that I've talked to and been involved with, it's been a lot of just hire all the time just to stay where they were and not lose people. And that's a really scary proposition too because we can be strategic and grow, but oftentimes most of these businesses that... You know, when we grow a little bit, we have to add new infrastructure to support the amount of people that we've brought in. And when people leave, some of the financing for that infrastructure starts to dissipate too.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
So it's not just only looking forward and seeing what those opportunities are, but being able to know and know what the cost structures are that exist so that we can continue to afford the businesses we've built and being intentional about, "Hey, if I am going to be a smaller team now and I'm going to reduce this, what other infrastructures?" Or a lot of times those infrastructures are people that have to be reassigned or reduced as well.
Traci:
Right. And that's why we have to be looking at the whole picture, looking at the entire accountability chart because if you're losing people because they're burnt out or overworked or don't have the support system or the culture's hurting or the management, somebody on the leadership team's toxic or whatever, then you need to be addressing that immediately as opposed to just refilling that position. It's like, “Well, maybe we need to be using those funds for a different position to offload some of whatever the issues are going on in the company.” And that could be a risk too.
But you're going to better take care. Going back to the four factors of disengagement, you better make sure that the people who are doing the managing and the leading are doing it well and that the team is solid and the culture is healthy because all of your other efforts are going to be for not if you are not managing all of that.
And so it's hard when as leaders we're juggling so many balls and there's just so much and we're just trying to keep the clients happy and there's a big internal game and there's a big external game that's going on. But if we're not keeping our eye on all of those things and completely aware of what's going on and making sure we're having those exit interviews, and not even having exit interviews but having interviews with our team, like pulse checks, making sure they don't go out the door, asking them why they're staying, what they're happy about, what they're not happy about, really making sure that we're engaged with them so that we can keep our staff and know how to refill that.
You know, sometimes our staff is telling us. They're like, "No, don't refill that position. What we really need is this." And unless we're engaging them and talking to them, we're not going to know that. And so they know. They're on the front lines. They know what they need. They know the tools they need, the people that they need. And sometimes that money is better invested in something else.
Rob:
Yeah. Absolutely. That's a huge piece of it is just paying attention and being able to forecast and have a plan that you're marching towards. Right? And I think that's one of the biggest things that I'm constantly reminded of is a plan is only as good as the paper it's written on and the direction it's providing. The end state doesn't really provide you a whole lot of value. It's one of those things that it's a bearing for where we're headed and that we'll make adjustments on the way.
And I think that's a huge piece of all of this is having these ideas with conviction but loosely held. Being open to what else is happening, what other opportunities to present themselves, what other things are changing, what you're hearing, what you're listening to.
And I think that gets back to this big idea that I've been and we've been talking about with our leadership team is one of the biggest assets we can have is our curiosity, to be constantly curious about like, "Oh, why does this work this way? Oh, this is new information. That's really interesting. Let's dig in deeper to that."
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Traci:
Yeah. And I think for your team to see that you're curious and thoughtful is huge. You know, there's so many exit interviews that I've read or seen or done where people just think the leaders aren't interested. They don't care. They're too busy doing this, that, or the other thing. They're just not engaged.
And when our teams see that we're curious and we're interested and we're being thoughtful about the decisions, then they're aligned with us even if they don't agree with our decision. They at least know that you've done your due diligence and that you're engaged and that you are being thoughtful about your decisions. There's nothing worse than a thoughtless, disengaged leader.
Rob:
This isn't a conversation about this particular, but I think it's really interesting right now is so many of our businesses have gone through this transition of being in-person to remote. And being disengaged is not always the reality, but it's also how our teams are perceiving that. What engagement looks like is different. When you're out of sight, you're out of mind. And it's really important that we find new ways to show that we're engaged because I think the reality is is most leaders that I deal with anyway and that I talk to, they're engaged, but their team, depending on the scale of their organization, doesn't see their engagement because it's not directly related to their day to day.
So I think you have to be that much more intentional. And there's a lot of ways to do it. An example of, we still do these, we still have a fairly sizable presence here in Dayton, and one of the things that our team does is gets together for coffee sometimes. And I make it a point to go and talk to people, usually not about work things but sometimes about work things, just with people and hang out with them. And I think that that's an intentional choice that we can make, to show up in spaces that maybe we're not needed or that somebody else has got a handle on just to show that we're interested and engaged still.
Traci:
Yeah. And I always say to the leaders I'm coaching, “Use your words.” You know, like I used to say to my toddlers, use your words, use your words. Because we get in our heads, and especially in a remote work environment where we're in our little universes and we're thinking about all the different things and we're so deep in our own thoughts and we think we're saying them out loud, but we're not. And we think that we're engaged, but we're not.
And so just the simple act of having a little checklist that I have used my words in two different ways each week. So that could be an email that I send out to the team saying, "Hey, I was just thinking about this. And if you have any thoughts, I'd like to hear from you." Or making a phone call and just kind of catching up with just random team members. Or like you're saying, going to a coffee and just chatting, chatting about life, asking questions.
And I think when we do that as leaders at least a couple times a week, then we know, okay, we've gotten out of our head, out of our little corner of our universe. We've engaged. We've been curious. And guess what? We've learned a lot from doing that.
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
You know, when we crack open the door and tell people we want to hear from them and tell them we're being curious, we are going to get feedback. And when we're thinking about this whole hiring and onboarding, there's no better evangelists for our company than our employees. And when they think we're curious and engaged and connected, they're going to go out and tell people.
Rob:
Yep.
Traci:
They're going to go out and say this is a great place to work. Our boss is cool and available and wants to hear from us. And I feel valued and I get to do things. Those are the people that are winning and winning new talent to our company. And it is so important.
You know, it is so hard right now to find good people. And I have clients who keep making mistakes. They panic, they hire people just to get a warm body in, and two months later they're offboarding that person. And it has been a huge waste of time.
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
So keeping the hiring and onboarding strategy plan always in action, always be engaging your team, always be having informational interviews, all of that. And I know we're going to get into the actual practice of hiring and practice of going out and finding people in our next episode, but the whole process of thinking about hiring as a complete and absolute strategic initiative within our company that's always going, the wheel is always turning, we're always thinking about it, we're always picking it apart and putting it back together again, I think is so important.
Rob:
Yeah. Well, it's that whole, like the old adage that I've heard for over a decade now is the whole idea of hire slow, fire fast. Right?
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
And we've all said that. And right now, this seems like we're in an epidemic of hiring fast and firing slow.
Traci:
Yep.
Rob:
And it's even worse if you're only doing half of it. Right? There's somebody I was talking to the other day that was like, "Oh, we're hiring really fast, but we're also firing fast." And I'm like, "Ooh, that's a recipe for a lot of toxic kind of things on your team." And I guess my point is don't follow just half that advice because it won't work out for you.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
It's time to be more intentional, not less.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
Okay. So we've talked about the first part of that strategic planning. There's a second part there as well.
Traci:
Well, the second part too is really looking at your team and who you need and what type of person, talent, behavioral traits. How's your leadership team set up to handle this? Where's your culture? Where is the level of health involved? Can our team handle growth? Are there things that we need to do before we actually grow to prepare ourselves for that growth? I think some people completely miss that step, right?
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
Who are we missing from our team from a diversity standpoint? You know, all of these questions that we need to ask in getting ready to hire, some people just skip right over it. And again, I get it. I'm very empathetic to the situation right now and the need for talent and how difficult it is to find talent. But we're talking about questions that don't take too long to answer. Right?
Rob:
Right.
Traci:
I don't think we need to take forever to hire. I think that, again, if this is an ongoing topic on our leadership team and we're assessing these things constantly, then we're not taking too long because we're in the rhythm of this, we're in the rhythm of asking these questions, of analyzing our culture, of making sure the team's ready, of having conversations about diversity. You know, all of these things if they're happening on a regular basis, then we're not elongating or unnecessarily drawing out the process of hiring. We're a team that's kind of that well-oiled machine where we're constantly kind of poking at these things and making sure that we're examining them.
And so just don't skip over the step of looking at the health of your culture before you start hiring is just so key.
Rob:
Yeah. Looking at it. But I also think it's maintaining and improving it.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
Right? Because a huge part of being successful when we're adding team members is having that the current team members have a unity.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
When people join teams that have unity, they quickly will join into that unity. That's the influence they're getting. And we definitely want to try to hire people who we have alignment on values and all of that stuff, but we're never going to find 100% alignment with anybody. 100% alignment is something we've worked towards during the relationship, during employment to continue to promote unity over time.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
And I think the work's never done.
Traci:
The work's never done because we're dealing with humans. Right?
Rob:
Yeah.
Traci:
And it's humans are messy and all of that. But again, going back to the intentionality. If we are intentional about how we're hiring and how we're building our culture and how we're caring for our culture, that's 95% of the work right there is just having the intention. It's the teams that, "We'll get to that later. That's not very important. We just have to get to the client. We have to make sure we get this work done. We have a bottom line. This is the percentage, profitability." Those types of teams that are completely focused on the bottom line and just keep saying, "We'll get to the culture later, stop complaining, just do the work," those are the teams that are having the most trouble. You know?
Rob:
I mean, of course, because if you're completely focused on all of those metrics over time and I'll get to, I'll get to, I'll get to, usually means you never do.
Traci:
Right. And a lot of these people just don't want to. It's not something they enjoy.
Rob:
Right.
Traci:
And it's not like we don't like to make money. Of course, we like to make money. Of course, we like big profit margins. That's the main goal of a strategic plan is really making sure that you are a company that doesn't have a lot of waste, that is focused, that is creating profitability. But you have to have both sides of the coin. You know?
Rob:
Yeah. And most of the successful organizations that I've been involved with and I think you would echo the same is when they look at those kind of numbers as a result of doing this other work, they're better off.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
There's other foundational things that produce results rather than results first and then try to push into the people and the intention and all of those things.
Traci:
Yeah. And you have to have both, you have to have both. I've gone into companies where the teams are all lovey-dovey and they love each other and they're so happy and they're all aligned with their core values and their business sucks. They have no, barely no profit margin. It's like, "I'm glad you guys really love each other, but..." You know?
And then you see probably more often than not the other side where completely focused on profits and maximizing their bottom line and not focused at all on culture. And that's not great either. So team's burnt out, people leaving left and right.
So we need both. And it's an art. I think it's an art to balance both and to have a healthy amount of attention to both sides.
Rob:
Yeah. And especially it's even harder to maintain both while you're growing or while you're changing directions or adding services lines. It's a lot easier to maintain both if you're just in a maintenance mode.
Traci:
Right.
Rob:
Right? You increase the complexity if you're dealing with something that is changing and morphing and you're still trying to figure it out.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
Yeah. So okay, getting ready to hire. What's your parting thoughts here?
Traci:
Well, my parting thoughts are make sure you're getting ready to hire as opposed to just hiring. We were just talking before we started recording about patience. And again, I'm not saying drag out the process, but take a breath, take a breath, analyze, make sure you understand the why, the who, the when, and that your leadership team is aligned before you start jumping into the hiring process.
Rob:
Yeah. I think that's pretty good. I think that whole thing that's become a theme is starting with that end in mind, coming up with a plan, working the plan, adjusting as new information is learned and things change, but then going right back to the plan and changing the plan and constantly be updating it. So much of the work that so many of us do is so iterative, we have to treat our businesses like that too.
Traci:
Yep. Absolutely.
Rob:
All right.
Traci:
All right then.
Rob:
Thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Thank you.
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