Like Hires Like

Mike -

I sincerely hope that Phil meant the executive team members! Most CEOs I know really don’t a great handle on their behavioral weakness and strengths when hiring people as leaders on their teams. Even if they do, they still really have to make an effort not to hire mini-me's. Like hires like.

This role for a CEO is a HUGE mistake in the ET. If you charge the CEO with recruiting and make one of the CEO's metrics retention, you take away the power of the office for holding people accountable. I want my people (and the Board) to know that I will move anyone off the team if they are not performing according to expectations. And I will do it FAST! If you judge me on retention, and my team knows this, they might act differently and so might I. Also, the CEOs job is NOT to allocate resources, it is to make certain that their team knows how, and to hold them accountable for the appropriate allocation and usage of corporate resources - budget, deployment of people, retention of key personnel, training and development, risk mitigation, opportunity capture, all these fall into the resource allocation bucket. You have to get out of your team's way and NOT micromanage them, no matter how tempting this is.

The only time you should step in is when things are going as anticipated, and then you coach , monitor, find the person some help, have them put a recovery plan in place (pray they recover!), and if they don't, it should come as no surprise to anyone what will happen next :) You should set your folks up for success by making sure that you have the right player in place from the get-go, and that you get help if you put something in their roles and responsibilities (for their professional growth or by necessity) that they are under qualified to handle.


Hellen Davis CEO Indaba