Most of my time in leadership has been spent trying to distill (read: simplify) my thoughts and behaviors around being a more effective leader. Recently, my boss recommended a book, Traction by Gino Wickman. This book is, in essence, a summary of my professional experience over the past 25 years. I will share some of Gino’s thoughts and add my own as we explore the ‘people’ portion of the equation.
When I think about the most fun I’ve had professionally, it comes down to working with talented people who share the same values (i.e., approach to doing the work) and being successful at doing meaningful work. Wickman puts it this way: The ‘right people’ are the ones who “share your company’s core values. They fit and thrive in your culture. They are the people you enjoy being around and who make your organization a better place to be.”
Think about the number of leaders with and for whom you have worked who “didn’t fit” … not with the group, not with you, not with the culture. Was it because they lacked the knowledge and skills necessary for the job? Probably not. Very often they didn’t fit because they either didn’t share your core values and/or there was something a little ‘off’ in their emotional intelligence (the ability to read a situation and respond/interact in the most valuable way). I believe there are a number of things that we can do individually and collectively to help people fit, but I also believe that there are people who can’t fit in certain places, in certain professional settings. We spend countless hours trying to remediate these individuals when, from the beginning, they don’t share our values; they don’t, or won’t thrive in our culture; and/or we enjoy being around them and they make our organization a better place. We can do better.
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins popularized the phrase, “right people, right seats.” Wickman focuses on this by talking about Unique Ability® (referenced in the book by the same name by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller). Our Unique Ability is the place where we experience never-ending improvement, where we feel energized rather than drained, and where we have a passion for what we’re doing that presses us to go further than others would in this area. Wickman says, “When this combination of passion and talent finds the right audience, it naturally creates value for others, who, in return, offer you greater rewards and more opportunities for further improvement.” When a person is operating in their area of Unique Ability, he or she is in the right seat.
Sometimes we experience people who share our core values (right person), but they are not operating in their Unique Ability. Often these people have outgrown their job, been promoted beyond their capacity, or have been around awhile. We like them, but they don’t fit. Right people, wrong seats.
The reverse is also true. From the outside it appears that some people have the ability to do the job. The problem is, they don’t share your core values. No matter what you try to do, they are the wrong people in the right seats. These people, over time, tend to drag down the momentum and your ability to accomplish your goals.
The third option is wrong person, wrong seat. Not a complex decision: This person must go.
I appreciate Wickman’s succinctness in how to decide about right people, and then how to decide if they are in the right seats. I particularly like his placing Core Values at the center of the decision-making process around people. Organizations would be well served to spend more time deciding core values, and then living to them – from recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and reviewing employee performance, to making decisions about clients and interacting with their customers, etc. Core values – those things that inform our behavior and on which we won’t compromise – permeate all that we do with all of our stakeholders. They distinguish how we approach and do our work and how we work with each other.
Next month I will explore Wickman’s Accountability Chart around function, roles, and reporting structure. We will also look at the GWC – understanding those that ‘get it,’ ‘want it,’ and have the ‘capacity’ to do it. These are the ‘how to’ pieces of finding right people, right seats.
For now, I hope you will reflect on what I’ve shared and, hopefully, find your own ‘traction’ for ‘right people’ in your organization.
To a better you…
Jim