The Magic Bus
Best book I've read recently: “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins (author of “Built to Last”). Collins assembled a research team to investigate why some unglamorous companies beat the market—and the competition—so amazingly well.
If you're expecting a book with all the usual names of companies that grace the pages of Fortune and Business Week like Intel, GE, or Microsoft, you're in for a surprise. Collins found the most amazing companies in—let's be charitable—“traditional” industries like steel, consumer products, tobacco, banking, finance.
If you haven't read it, do. The most important aspect Collins turned up was “getting the right people on the bus.” Successful companies assembled great teams, then used those teams to figure out what to do, rather than the other way around.
How do you get the right people? Don't settle for less than the best. Better to wait for the right person than to have to make a correction. But if you do hire the wrong person, don't hesitate to get them off the bus. The wrong person can do more harm than no person.
Make recruiting an institutionalized skill in your company. Make sure that everyone is trained in what the company is looking for, how to do effective interviewing, and that everyone gets feedback on candidates. When I worked at Microsoft, the criteria for hiring never varied for the 11 years I was there: we were looking for people who were smart, hard working, and a good fit for the culture. Note that experience was not one of the criteria.
