It’s not the How or the what but the Who

Succeed by surrounding yourself with the best

Claudio Fernandez-Araoz

Claudio works for Egon Zehnder in South America and has written a book on Great People Decisions.

When you have really great people, you don’t need to baby them, by expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.

Steve Jobs felt that his job as CEO was to get rid of some people who didn’t measure up, he tried to do it in a humane way, it was an unpleasant task but had to be done anyways.

Yun Jong-Yong CEO of Samsung from 1996 to 2008 looked at five things for Samsung to be good at : technology/skill,capital,information, speed and people. Except capital all the others are people dependent.

Development was one of Yun’s big priorities, under his leadership Samsung launched impressive training centers where young executives learnt both functional and soft skills.

Jack Welch, ex CEO GE said that as a junior manager he got 50 % of the people decisions wrong, as a senior manager he got 20 % wrong, so in thirty years his average moved from 50 to 80.

The human animal is 2 million years old. We still think, act and decide the way our ancestors did.

Our primitive ancestors made decisions on the four Fs: Fight,flight,food and fornication. If a stranger arrived at their camp fire they looked for similarities to decide amongst the 4 Fs. If he was familiar, he would be accepted.

You need to surround yourself with people who have diverse backgrounds and complementary skills, and who properly challenge you.

Our brain is wired to make fast decisions on similarity, familiarity and comfort.

When CEOs are asked ”If you were building your organization from the ground up, how many of the current people would you rehire?’The answer is about 50 % !!

At most companies people spend 2 % of their time recruiting and 75 % of their time managing their recruiting mistakes

If a colleague isn’t meeting your standards, be honest with her, help her to improve. Candor and concern for those around you are two essential moral obligations for a leader.

Inertia overtakes all of us. In order to beat it, make formal commitments, think like a trader and compassionately consider long term consequences.

The best appointments happen when those hiring consider a wide pool of internal and external candidates.

In a candidate you want to see passion. But as a decision maker t’s something you have to watch, because emotion can seriously impair judgment.

I coin the other GDP-Globalization, Demographics and Pipelines. These three explain the talent crunch

Taken independently, globalization, demographics and pipelines will create unprecedented demand for the right talent in the right place over the next decade.

I found that the distance between the best and the rest grows exponentially with the complexity of the job.

The best are always 5 to 10 times better than the rest. In an age of hyper competitiveness, organizations that cannot retain their top performers will struggle to survive.

A typical interview is a conversation between two liars. The interviewer paints a rosy picture of the company and the candidate explains how great he is, giving the impression that the day he starts work, god himself will walk in.

Research has consistently shown that others are better judges of ourselves than we are.

Good candidates have self awareness and the 2 Hs – Hunger and Humility.

Ref checks are again a bunch of lies. Robert Thornton wrote a book on it ,The lexicon of Intentionally ambiguous Recommendations (L.I.A.R).

When a ref check says , a man like that is hard to find, they mean he is extremely rare talent or we don’t know where he is hiding at work!!

Liars tend to use more expletives, third party pronouns, and very complex sentences, in addition to being verbose.

Former bosses are great at assessing strategic orientation, peers can help measure influence, subordinates are the best judges of leadership in any candidate.

Motivation, combined with the four key leadership attributes-curiosity, insight, engagement and determination are important for success.

The right motivation in a leader is a blend of fierce commitment with deep personal humility. These type of people want to have a positive impact on the group for the larger good of the group. This leader gets satisfaction from seeing others succeed and values mission over personal reward.

Team specific human capital is important too. When people move together, they tend to do better than when they do it alone.

Versatility is a huge asset since the future is not a continuation of the past. Look for candidates who have a non linear career path.

In basketball luck accounts for 12 5 of results, in hockey it is as high as 53 %, in tennis, it is near zero. About a third of organization performance cannot be explained statistically.

The strength of a company explains 33 % of results, the industry 15.5 %, the CEO 13.5 %and the year just 5.2 %. The rest is up to leaders, the right leaders can help the company make its own luck.

All the best people have

• Strategic orientation

• Market insight

• Results orientation

• Customer Impact

• Collaboration and Influencing

• Developing Organizational capability

• Team leadership

• Change leadership

National cultures have distinct values which in turn create different behaviors. Power distance, Individualism, Tolerance for ambiguity, masculinity and long term orientation are a few.

Companies do not inform their high potential employees about their high potential, funnily the high potentials find out anyways through their own methods.

You can hire a turkey to climb a tree. But I’d rather hire a squirrel.

As a leader who wants to be surrounded by the best, you need to get your people inspired about improving themselves, especially when it comes to emotional competencies-to develop a clever change plan and to persevere and practice.

In what seems an incredible paradox, Japanese managers have higher potential than their global counterparts but lower competence.

Potential should trump seniority especially for complex jobs , complexity always beats size for someone to grow.

There is one skill that seemed more important than the rest in driving performance : CUSTOMER IMPACT. At least 40 pc of senior executives scored 5 or above in this competency.

Most effective leaders had spiky ratings, they were outstanding at something.

Collective competency mattered more than individual competency. The best performing companies had a critical mass of strong leaders.

Great companies had an ability to get their leaders to bring the best motivation to work every day.

Money never motivates the wrong people to do the right thing.

Team effectiveness explains 80 % of a leader’s success.

You can create an A team. The A team will only thrive when you’ve made it balanced, aligned, resilient, energetic, open and efficient.

Some classically dysfunctional teams

Team is low in Description

Efficiency and alignment

The debating society. Team lacks ability to prioritize, team misses deadlines and fails to complete tasks.

Openness and Balance The overtly tribal. Team lacks diversity. There is a Not Invented here syndrome. Team clings to the past and misses opportunities .

Energy and Resilience The victim of events. Team lacks resources to manage conflicts. Everyone thinks the problem is too big to be fixed. Team reacts slowly accomplishes little

A turnaround requires high efficiency and resilience.A post merger integration needs balance and alignment.

Building a great culture starts with you, the leader. Use that as a filter for hiring. The second step of building a great culture is coaching. Great leaders are good listeners.

In today’s knowledge economy, value comes from collectively creating and seamlessly sharing information. As a leader always ensure that collective goals are rewarded over individual achievement.

Family businesses struggle with leadership transitions and infighting over distribution of money and power.

The key to weathering a storm is to keep your long term perspective. Visionary leaders never look back, they stay calm and use the conditions to their advantage.