Hire the best, encourage challenge and failure

Since its founding, Microsoft has grown from an idea of two friends in college to the company with one of the world”™s highest market values. Bill Gates believes that, “The most important contributor to productivity is the quality of your employees.” No management system can make up for having less than the best people.

Microsoft”™s approach works extremely well at intellectual firms, but can be highly effective in all Hudson Valley organizations. If your employees are really good, they will be more concerned than management about making sure that new hires will do their jobs properly.

Many companies base their hiring practices on false logic and set pay scales as low as possible. They hire people who barely meet the minimum qualifications and hope “good management” will direct these minimally qualified people to do an outstanding job.

This theory, that managers ultimately determine the quality of work their employees produce is backwards. Over the past 30 years, corporate America has proven the theory wrong. Cutting middle management has improved productivity in most instances.

Microsoft consistently hires people who are in the smartest 5 percent. A product manager is different from a programmer, and both differ from an attorney. “Smart,” in the case of Microsoft, means smartest for that particular job. Microsoft wants people who have smarts or the ability to turn on their brains and think. Smart people save themselves work, while saving the company time and money.

We can also learn valuable lessons from Microsoft”™s interview process, which includes:

All interviews, and the final decision, are the responsibility of the group that the new employee will join.
Co-workers grill the candidate in hour-long one-on-one sessions.
When new employees come on board, they are joining a group that has already decided it wants them.

You can follow Microsoft”™s example and select only the people in the top 5 percent for the job. No matter how desperate you are to fill a position, do not compromise. Spend the time to find the right person.

The road to Microsoft”™s success is littered with failures. On average, 50 percent of an employee”™s time is spent on things that they later discover will not work. Failures are expected. If someone never fails, they are not trying hard enough.

Most projects fail because they went down the wrong path and no one was willing to change direction. Critical to failing is to fail quickly and offer new solutions. Microsoft”™s employees consider it bad form to leave a decision pending until the next meeting. Whenever someone presents a proposed solution, he or she has to outline any reasonable alternatives, as well as the pros and cons of the alternatives. Anyone who can list the reasons against the argument must understand the problem well.

Microsoft”™s employees are not just expected to fail they”™re also expected to argue with upper management.

However, they must have concrete, valid reasons for disagreeing.
They must provide a superior alternative. Stating that they “just don’t like” something is not acceptable.

Throughout the Hudson Valley business world, we must hire the best, allow them to fail and encourage them to challenge the status quo by bringing forward better solutions. If we do that, we can enjoy fantastic business success ”¦ starting with a great 2011.

Questions for discussion:

”¢ What one step can we take immediately toward the implementation of practices that have helped Microsoft become so successful?

”¢ Do we believe in the old adage, “You get what you pay for?” If so, how can we align our hiring practices to better reflect our belief?

Joe Murtagh is The DreamSpeaker, an international keynote speaker, meeting facilitator and business trainer. For questions or comments, Joe@TheDreamSpeaker.com, www.TheDreamSpeaker.com or call 800-239-0058.