Imagine your team operating like a precision-crafted sports car, each member a high-performance part crucial to winning the race. It's a no-holds-barred look at the sometimes tough decisions leaders must make to foster a team of A-players. Throughout our vibrant conversation, we challenge the conventional approach of trying to plug team gaps with available, yet underwhelming hires. Instead, we advocate for doubling down on the strengths that set your team apart, much like assembling an all-star sports lineup that outshines its weaknesses. With Dave's seasoned perspective enhancing our debate, this episode is an essential playbook for business leaders aiming to craft an environment where excellence is the standard and every new addition fuels an unstoppable momentum toward success.
Imagine your team operating like a precision-crafted sports car, each member a high-performance part crucial to winning the race. It's a no-holds-barred look at the sometimes tough decisions leaders must make to foster a team of A-players. Throughout our vibrant conversation, we challenge the conventional approach of trying to plug team gaps with available, yet underwhelming hires. Instead, we advocate for doubling down on the strengths that set your team apart, much like assembling an all-star sports lineup that outshines its weaknesses. With Dave's seasoned perspective enhancing our debate, this episode is an essential playbook for business leaders aiming to craft an environment where excellence is the standard and every new addition fuels an unstoppable momentum toward success.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss. I'm with our season five special guest, dave Nurchi. He's going to be with us for the entire season as we go over lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and today's big point is don't hire mediocre when you need great. So that kind of sounds like where we left off with stop hiring for lack of weaknesses rather than strengths. Now we're going to hammer this home with some more points, but this is brought to you by One Big Thing Podcast, called OBT for short, but One Big Thing Podcast, because you are not alone. Learn how to reframe your challenges and overcome the things that are holding you back. You can go to our YouTube channel, actually, which is NQR Media, and you can check out that show. They record everything. It has some great art and they have some really, really cool guests. We've got about 20,000 subscribers there. We'd love for you to be a subscriber as well. One of the recent videos from one of the podcasts actually went viral. We had, I don't know, somewhere. I think we're approaching 15 million views on it. So check it out, be a part of what's going on there. I think there's some great messages to learn there as well.
Speaker 1:
So back to our point, though, for today is don't hire mediocre when you need great and yeah. So you go out and you hire somebody because you need somebody in a position, and you got great employees already. Right, you already got a great team. So I'm going to pretend I'm us right, I already got a great team. I mean, I feel really good. We have people who are really good at stuff. We got people who are really good at stuff that do have some weaknesses, but they are superstars at the stuff they're good at right. So the weaknesses you figure out how to learn enough skills to deal with the weaknesses and you focus on getting them in places where they can be stars. So you get an open position on the team. We have an open position on the team and we're going to hire somebody for that position, and we've made this mistake too many times. I mean, it's just, and sometimes you don't know you're making a mistake, but you've got great people, and great people they're like, hey, we need some help here because we're great, a lot of people want to work with us, and now we're we're getting spread thin Say, okay, I'm gonna go find somebody.
Speaker 1:
You find somebody who's, let's say, mediocre with everything they're. They're not bad. There's no weaknesses on paper at least. With everything they're they're not bad. There's no weaknesses on paper at least. But they're not. They don't have the um. They don't have any indicators that they're going to be great in anything. They're not already great in anything and they don't have any indicators that they're actually going to be able to excel in anything.
Speaker 1:
So you bring this person onto a team that is great and it's dynamic and it's growing fast, right? Yeah, like you can't come in, and let's say that there's five levels of development. You can't come in at level one and sit at level one for six months. The team will eat you alive. They expect you to be at level two, and not only to be at level two, but to get yourself to level two with the tools provided. Of course, we're going to give you all the tools and everything, but you got to come in and work your rear end off and really focus at being, you know, a great student and getting really good at stuff. That's not for everybody. So we end up with somebody who comes in and they check all the boxes Not really great at anything, not really an interest in being great at anything. Right.
Speaker 1:
And now you've got great people who are getting frustrated because they're sitting there going. You know, I'm training this person, I'm mentoring this person. You know the manager's like we're paying this person and they're still at level one. What the heck? Now the great people are having to do the level two work for that person. That person should be at level two, doing level two work. They can't do level two work. So the great people who are making the sacrifices to try to develop this person, they're not only putting in time to train them. Now they got to put in time to do that person's work, which they were supposed to be doing as payoff for the training. And the company's still paying them and they're like what the hell is the point on this? So then the person doesn't make it. So you might as well have not hired that person.
Speaker 1:
Let's say it takes a year to wash that position out.
Speaker 1:
You might as well have not hired them at all.
Speaker 1:
And we hire them because you know we have a position open, we really need somebody in it, and it's better to have somebody than nobody.
Speaker 1:
Well, what we have learned the hard way is it's not better to have somebody than nobody. It's better to go to the the superstars on the team and say, look, we're going to fill that position as soon as we can, and I know that we're short staffed and I know that you have to bust your butt. So if you have to bust your butt because we're unable to find somebody to fit on that team, here's how we're going to take care of you. Right, we're going to make sure that you're taken care of, because we're not going to spend money on somebody who's just going to come in and waste your time. So, theoretically, here we have some more resources that we can spend on you to take care of you, because we'd rather tell you I'm sorry, we know that you have to work harder and here's what you get for that than say, oh, I'm really sorry, we brought in this big distraction that basically sucked out resources and you had to do all their work anyway. Right, hard lesson learned.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and the key to that whole scenario that you gave there is the recognizing. You made a mistake with the hiring because if you keep that mediocre in the great culture that you have right in the great team, it's like a direct hit. Direct hit. It's a direct hit to your team, a headshot that takes them out. Because what happens is now the standard starts lowering.
Speaker 2:
If you don't get, if you don't cut that mediocre out, it starts to kind of fester in there Right, and it's like well, jesus, you know this, this person's doing fine. They're kind of moving along their career path here, whatever, and the standard gets lower because that's accepted and the more of that you bring in, the more it's going to kind of spread out and really detract from the motivation of all your A players. That you have right, and you're really just setting the team up for frustration, whether it's in the training or the way that they see things happening on a day-to-day basis. They're going to be frustrated with that employee. That's going to be bad for the employee. It's bad for the team overall because they're not going to want to stick around. For that they're going to lose a lot of motivation.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, you're benchmarking it. What you're saying is here's our great people. When I'm hiring somebody, I need somebody who, who can keep up with them right, and be at that level. Because let's let's just grade on, like, on an average. You know, here's the average score. If I were to average everybody out, I don't know how great we are. So when I bring in somebody who's significantly below great and doesn't have the ability to quickly get to great, then what I've done is I brought down the whole average and yeah, it's a drag, right, it's gonna, and it gives an excuse to the people who are great. I guess I don't have to be great for and I can still get paid what I'm getting paid because that guy is yep, um and or frustration. You know, like you know, this place is run by a bunch of idiots. Why are they hiring these types of people? Like, just get out of my way.
Speaker 1:
And you know one of the things that we've talked about, because we're in upstate New York and for anybody who doesn't know, upstate New York is the part of New York that is not New York City and Albany, so it's the rural part of New York and it is really hard to recruit people in rural New York. A lot of it's because of the weather, a lot of it's because young people are particularly keen on staying, and the other part of it is is that the young people who are, there's a lot of competition for them because there's not a lot of them staying right. So it is really hard to recruit. And we do a lot of business virtually. So we do a lot of Teams and zoom type of meetings and stuff with people, and the argument is here's the argument. So you're in an area where it is hard to find great young people. I think we have some, but it's hard to find them Right.
Speaker 1:
So I can do one of two things. I can put somebody in person with you so you can sit down and you can have somebody in person to meet with, and they're just okay, and you know an okay person when you sit down with them, right, and they're just okay at what they're doing and they'll survive in this community because there's nobody else to sit down with and so their superpower is the fact that they're in person, not that they're good, and so their superpower is the fact that they're in person, not that they're good. Or I can put an exceptional person in front of you that you got to talk to through a computer screen, and when we're talking about somebody's life and their life decisions and their finances and their kids and their grandkids, and you know what I mean it's like which one do you want? It's like which one do you want? Do you want somebody in the flesh who is okay with the advice they're giving you, or somebody who is dynamite and you just won't be able to actually sit down in the same room with them in the flesh? I mean, like that's. That's the difference to me. I would rather not hire the person in the flesh. Yeah, right, I don't want to put somebody who's mediocre, just okay, in front of somebody.
Speaker 1:
Yep, I want to put somebody who is the absolute best and you know what everybody else better figure out how to get along with that person, because that's what you need. You don't like? Let's say it's not a financial advisor, right? Let's say that, because we're talking about seed planning group now. So we're talking about, you know, the wealth management or day job, right? So let's say it's not that. Let's say it's a manager. Let's say it's somebody like you, right, you're the chief operations officer, so I can either hire somebody who can be great at being a chief operations officer and you can help lead our company and grow our company and double and triple and quadruple in size. Or I can hire a bum because they happen to be in a certain location or they happen to be available for less money or something like that, and I can run the damn thing into the ground.
Speaker 2:
That's what he's talking about yeah, you need to. You need to stack your team with the a players and it I compared to when you look at like drafts right, we talk about fantasy football sports a lot, so think about, like the draft mentality of the best available. Right, like, pick the best available so you have all these teams I'm a giants fan right, so that we have a lot of needs. And it's like, okay, you need an offensive line, you need this and that. Well, what if the best offensive lineman available is crap? Right, like he, he's not really that great.
Speaker 2:
It's not what you need. Maybe it's a guard on the opposite side, whatever right, but I'm gonna take them because that's our need. Or should we just be taking the best available athlete and player that's on the board and and build a team around them Right and continue to get the best athletes and players on our team Right and make a better team overall?
Speaker 1:
So, dave, what you're saying is, if I have a shitty left tackle and the best draft, the best person to draft, if I have a shitty left tackle and the best draft, the best person to draft it that I could get is still shitty. All I'm going to do is replace shitty with shitty. Yeah, so I might as well not do that. If I have a chance to go, get a wide receiver that is the best wide receiver out there, or a linebacker that's the best, somebody else who can transcend another part of my team, but I don't, because my tackle is really bad and I only replace them with another flavor of bad. All I've done is I've perpetuated disaster.
Speaker 1:
Right, it's like look, I can't fix this problem, but I can make us stronger over there while we're trying to figure out what to do about this problem. And that's the reality of business and leadership sometimes. Sometimes you're just going to have a glaring weakness and a big, huge problem and you're just going to have to deal with it for a while, because that's the. You know the cards you've been dealt.
Speaker 2:
We talked about it. It's building your strengths. Keep getting stronger in areas right and kind of hide and minimize those weaknesses as much as you can until you can fix that too.
Speaker 1:
Yeah Well, and you might be able to live off the strengths. I mean, yes, you want to always be fortifying your weaknesses, but you know, if you can be so strong in another area, like you, don't have to be the best offense and the best defense to win the super bowl. A lot of times the best defense wins the super bowl, or the best offense wins the super ball, and the other the other part of the team is just serviceable. You know, we're even below average. It's just they're just so good on the other side, and so it's like that. You don't have to be the best at everything, and you can even have a glaring weakness if your strength is so strong that it makes it worth it. Exactly, yep.