Can we build a great company and a great life?

Ingrid Kast, CEO at DAV - March 2008

If we spend the majority of our time with people we love and respect - people we enjoy being around who do not disappoint us - we’ll almost certainly have great lives, no matter what we set out to achieve.

Could the first step in building a great company be to have the right people in the right positions? This has been DAV’s experience in our 33 years of recruitment.

After a 5 year research project based on the compelling question: “Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how?” the author of the best-selling book ‘Good to great’, Jim Collins, provides evidence that all great companies first concentrated on getting the right people in the right roles. Only then could they develop a new direction, vision and organisational structure, even before strategy and technology.

Now you may be thinking: “That’s just good management, what‘s new about that?” It’s the sequence! First “who” is a very simple idea to grasp, but a challenging one to implement.

Now you may be thinking: “That’s just good management, what‘s new about that?” It’s the sequence! First “who” is a very simple idea to grasp, but a challenging one to implement.

We’ve extracted five practical guidelines

• If you have good, honest and able people who are underperforming, it’s important to try and move them to other positions where they might blossom. Only then will they be able to become the best they can be.
• Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. While trying to parcel off your problems, you easily sell off your best people. Understand that managing problems can only make one good, whereas building opportunities is the way to become great.
• When recruiting, place greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational backgrounds, practical skills, specialised knowledge, or work experience. Not that these are unimportant, but they are teachable, whereas dimensions like character, work ethic, intelligence, dedication to fulfilling commitments and values are ingrained in a person.
• Look at outstanding people whenever and wherever you find them, and hire them even without a specific job in mind. Make sure your recruitment team knows what skills and attributes you value and informs you about available expertise, thus injecting an endless stream of talent directly into the veins of your company.
• When in doubt, don’t hire - keep looking. Make sure you have the right recruitment team at your side. One that truly understands your needs. Every company’s growth is limited by its ability to attract and retain enough of the right people.

The experience of being associated with good people who respect and admire one another, enjoy each others company and actually look forward to meetings, goes way beyond mutual acceptance and creates lasting camaraderie. Bringing us a huge step closer to the future we all dream of - working in great companies together with great people.

Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

Our best candidates substantiate this all the time: they look for positions where they can do what they love, unburdened by people who are not achieving.

If we get the ‘people thing’ right, it will be the strongest link between working in a great company and enjoying a great life.

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Tags: Leadership, Talent Retention, Talent Attainment
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