Who to Hire and Who to Fire

In my experience as a CEO, I came to learn that surrounding myself with A-plus people was one of the most impactful things that I could do for both myself and my company.

Even if you are above average with respect to your ability to hire great people, it's worth noting most people think they are and most people are not.

It's a virtual guarantee that you'll make some mistakes as you build up your leadership team.

I certainly did.

It took me many years and many mistakes to learn about great hiring practices.

To prevent you from making some of those same mistakes, I've compiled a list of the major lessons that I learned while hiring my own executive team over many years.

There is no single recipe for building a great company, nor is there a definitive formula for becoming a truly effective leader.

Anything that you hear or read that suggests otherwise should be treated with due skepticism.

Even among the world's most successful and admired CEOs, there exists a wide variety of personalities, strengths, weaknesses, educational backgrounds, and general management philosophies.

In light of this high level of variability, I always find it particularly interesting when I find a commonality among successful leaders.

One such commonality that seems to be mentioned so frequently that it borders on unanimous is as follows.

Successful leaders tend to attribute a great deal of their professional accomplishments to the people and to the teams with whom they've worked.

And this makes sense, after all.

What good is a CEO's coherent strategy and compelling vision if his or her company doesn't have the right people sitting in the right seats, successfully executing on both? Indeed, having the right people sitting in the right seats lies at the heart of substantially every business problem and opportunity.

My own experience as a CEO taught me this lesson firsthand.

Quality issues with your product? That's a people issue.

Time-consuming and ineffective budgeting process? That's a people issue.

Underwhelming corporate culture? That's a people issue.

And so on.

It took me many years and many mistakes to learn about great hiring practices.

Though I learned these lessons making hires at the director, VP, or C-suite level, I suspect that many of these same lessons can be applied to substantially any hire within your organization.

So let's jump in.

In my experience as a CEO, I came to learn that surrounding myself with A-plus people was one of the most impactful things that I could do for both myself and my company.

Even if you are above average with respect to your ability to hire great people, it's worth noting most people think they are and most people are not.

It's a virtual guarantee that you'll make some mistakes as you build up your leadership team.

I certainly did.

It took me many years and many mistakes to learn about great hiring practices.

To prevent you from making some of those same mistakes, I've compiled a list of the major lessons that I learned while hiring my own executive team over many years.

There is no single recipe for building a great company, nor is there a definitive formula for becoming a truly effective leader.

Anything that you hear or read that suggests otherwise should be treated with due skepticism.

Even among the world's most successful and admired CEOs, there exists a wide variety of personalities, strengths, weaknesses, educational backgrounds, and general management philosophies.

In light of this high level of variability, I always find it particularly interesting when I find a commonality among successful leaders.

One such commonality that seems to be mentioned so frequently that it borders on unanimous is as follows.

Successful leaders tend to attribute a great deal of their professional accomplishments to the people and to the teams with whom they've worked.

And this makes sense, after all.

What good is a CEO's coherent strategy and compelling vision if his or her company doesn't have the right people sitting in the right seats, successfully executing on both? Indeed, having the right people sitting in the right seats lies at the heart of substantially every business problem and opportunity.

My own experience as a CEO taught me this lesson firsthand.

Quality issues with your product? That's a people issue.

Time-consuming and ineffective budgeting process? That's a people issue.

Underwhelming corporate culture? That's a people issue.

And so on.

It took me many years and many mistakes to learn about great hiring practices.

Though I learned these lessons making hires at the director, VP, or C-suite level, I suspect that many of these same lessons can be applied to substantially any hire within your organization.

So let's jump in.