We dissect the dilemma of stretching salary norms for standout candidates and the subsequent shockwaves it may send through your team's dynamics. Our conversation takes an unflinching look at the high stakes of leadership decisions, where the wrong move could devalue your stalwarts and raise doubts about your hiring acumen.
Embark on a revealing journey through the perceptive corridors of employee perception in recruitment, as Dave offers a masterclass on avoiding the pitfalls of mismatched expectations. We address the precarious position of placing a new hire on a pedestal above devoted employees, scrutinizing the potential erosion of morale and motivation. This episode promises a wealth of insights, drawing from the wisdom of Ben Horowitz and serving as a guiding light for leaders striving to maintain an environment where world-class talent flourishes and every team member feels like a cherished contributor to the company's success.
We dissect the dilemma of stretching salary norms for standout candidates and the subsequent shockwaves it may send through your team's dynamics. Our conversation takes an unflinching look at the high stakes of leadership decisions, where the wrong move could devalue your stalwarts and raise doubts about your hiring acumen.
Embark on a revealing journey through the perceptive corridors of employee perception in recruitment, as Dave offers a masterclass on avoiding the pitfalls of mismatched expectations. We address the precarious position of placing a new hire on a pedestal above devoted employees, scrutinizing the potential erosion of morale and motivation. This episode promises a wealth of insights, drawing from the wisdom of Ben Horowitz and serving as a guiding light for leaders striving to maintain an environment where world-class talent flourishes and every team member feels like a cherished contributor to the company's success.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and season five. We're with our special guest, dave Nurchey, and we're getting lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and today we are talking about going world class. We're still talking about hiring employees, all that kind of stuff, but we're going to be going world class today and that's brought to you by NQR Media. Nqr Media is our parent company. That's how we produce these podcasts for you, and it's also where we unapologetically bring you things that we feel need to be talked about cutting to the hard truth, get rid of the fluff and just bringing you things that hopefully, can help you on this journey of life.
Speaker 1:
All right, so, dave, go world class. This is just cool in context, everything that we've been talking about. And we started talking about this, right, we started as we talk about hiring and recruiting and you know as desperation sets in because it's hard to find good people. It's a very tight labor market. So you're like, okay, I found this person who seems like they're going to be, they're going to be pretty good, right, they're going to be okay, okay to pretty good. And here's what we pay, here's the what we pay for the position.
Speaker 1:
but they want X, right, we pay 50, they want a hundred. And so the question is do we stretch to a hundred and maybe change some of our other things, because you know that person, we need that person, and so there's always that conundrum about okay, you know how does that impact things and how do we make the adjustments long-term? And and there's a couple of problems with this and this I think I've used the world-class argument now to solve the problem. The question is is if I break the rules for this person, are they world-class, meaning? Are they better than anybody else I got? Right, if they are that much better than everybody else I got, then they're probably worth whatever you need to pay them, and so you break your rules.
Speaker 1:
But there's not that many people, if you've got a good team, that are that much better than everybody you got, and if they're not better than anybody you got and you pay them outside of your pay scales, what's that say to all the great people that you already have on your team? Now, if you've got a bunch of bums on your team, right, it doesn't matter, because you don't care if you tick them off, but if you've got great people on your team and this was the discussion that we've had. We've got great people on our team. If we're going to stretch for anybody, they better be better than our best person. Yep, because that's me saying to our best person here's the new bar that you have to get to, and if that bar is below our people, then our people are going to be like what's the deal with that? Why wouldn't you just come to me and pay me more? You know what I mean. I'm worth more. I am.
Speaker 1:
My skills are, you know, level five. They're coming in at level two. You know you paid me X when I was at level two. Why are you paying them that? And so you can create this major issue? And so we used to dwell on that. We'd be like we got this position open. What do we pay them? Maybe we stretch because we just have to hire somebody. And then we figured out how to close the argument by just simply saying are they going to be world-class or not? And the answer 99% of the time, like I don't know if we've had one yet since we went to that. Well, we haven't had one since we went to that thought process where it's like, yeah, they're that world-class because we already have great people, right, and so there's no reason to stretch for somebody we'd rather again go back to. I'm not going to hire mediocre when I need to be hiring somebody great.
Speaker 2:
Yep, yeah, I really. I really liked the concept because it does give you the ability to get to kind of like, break out of that box. If you need to Right, it does say, okay, here's our parameters we set out and what we pay for the role, but this person comes along and they're world-class and they're going to raise the bar. So it gives you that ability to make the argument and say to your current team however you handle that, hey, this is who we're bringing in, here's why. This is the reason for it. So I really like it in that aspect.
Speaker 2:
But you have to be so careful with it because if you are wrong, right everything you just said. If you are wrong, that will have a huge impact on on your current situation. So if you have great people, like we do already, and you're going to risk that, you better be 110% right that everyone's going to agree that you better be 110% right that everyone's going to agree that this person's world-class right, not just because you said so, but because they're actually going to prove that when they come in. And on top of that, I think you have to consider the cultural fit.
Speaker 2:
Ben didn't really cover that too much in the book and that's one of the notes I made of that know. That's big for us, I think, because we are a small company too right, and I think that should be a big point for any business, but especially how we run our business. So not only does this person have to be world-class and better than everybody you have, they also have to be an exceptional cultural fit, because the people you have are already also great and a cultural fit yes so it'd be which, which is an amplifier, right, yeah, so if you rate it great on, you know a scale of one to ten, so great, maybe it's like an eight right.
Speaker 1:
world class is maybe ten, yep, and. And the only reason the only thing that you would say is the difference between great and world class is somebody comes along and absolutely blows your mind you didn't even know they could be that good right. And so they reset the bar right. So it's not like you're looking at your team going you're a bunch of eights, it's you're a bunch of tens, until somebody shows that, oh my gosh, we can push it farther, right, so so it's not, it's not, it's not.
Speaker 1:
Um, we're not taking a swipe at that, anybody by saying they're only great in that world class. It's like you you only know how good you are until you see somebody else who's that much better, and so we may have all world-class people we don't know. And we won't know until either we never find a world-class person you know, or somebody who qualifies as world-class, or we do, and then we figure out okay, that's where the standard is now and that's where entitlement comes to too, if you bring somebody in that is not world-class and or that is world-class, but they don't fit your culture. Now you're going to have an entitlement problem where it's like what was the movie with the Cleveland Indians and baseball, where they try to lose on?
Speaker 1:
yeah, they try to lose on purpose and they end up winning anyway.
Speaker 1:
And they got the Parkman. It's major league too. They get Jack Parkman and he's like I'm here because you know, I'm the superstar, you know, and it's like they can't stand them Right and so they eventually, you know, get rid of them or whatever, but it's like that, it's the. You could have somebody come in who is such a cultural bomb that, even though they're world-class at a certain thing, they destroy your organization. But I think it's like.
Speaker 1:
I think in the book they talk about Dennis Rodman and Chicago bulls and they talk about making the exception for Dennis Rodman because they did all they let Dennis Rodman get away with, like murder. Basically, yeah, when people are like, well, that's not fair, why is Dennis Rodman get to do that? The answer was because it's Dennis freaking Rodman. Yeah, right, because there's not another person in the world who can do what he does and because he's here, you all get to reap the benefits now. And their point was there may be a situation where once in a while, you have to do that, but you can only ever have one Dennis Rodman at a time, right.
Speaker 1:
Right If everybody's an exception, then nobody's an exception, that's just you're doing. You got a bad business Right. So it's like if you have that one transcending talent that brings so much value, you're going to deal with the baggage and everybody gets it. We get it, we got to deal with that guy because he gets us where we want to go, yeah, you know. Then then okay, you make the exception, but that's other than that. You make the exception, but that's other than that you're. You're setting the benchmark. And if you're going to set the benchmark higher, if you're going to do like with comp and say, hey, look, you know, you come in at this level and get this comp, you you better proactively raise everybody else above that benchmark, then Right, yeah, and I think the key part of the Rodman example there is.
Speaker 2:
You said like everyone was on board with it in a way right now. I'm sure jordan pippen, I'm sure they all were very frustrated with rodman at times, right when he would do things or not show up to practice. Right, and they're. They're busting their ass in practice and rodman's you know wherever being rodman, rodman and, but at the end of the day they accepted him as their teammate and what what he did on the court, and for them was enough to accept that, and and you know back to the strengths and weakness argument.
Speaker 1:
Right, like he was so strong in what he did, well, that even the crap he did wrong was worth it. Right, but there was only one of there's only one, dennis Rodman, they had to deal with, right? You know the same thing with Terrell Owens. If you're a football fan, you know he was a freakishly talented player. Yeah, right, that in his prime you would put up with his crap because of how good he was, you know? Um, so it's. It's.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there's certain situations where, okay, you could make an argument, but not at the. They literally have to be that transcending figure. Um, otherwise, what you're telling everybody? Like, take it, think about it. Like, if we believe that our people are world-class and we bring in somebody who's not world-class and put that person above them, what are we telling them? We're saying that this is how good we think you are. We think you know, if world-class is level 10, we just said that this new person who's not as good as you is level 10, which means that we think you are even lower. So that person is really a six and we put them at level 10 because because we broke some rules for them. Then that really tells them that we think they're fours, right, right. And so when you have great people who are, who are bought into what you're doing and they believe in you, and you punch them in the gut like that, I mean that's what it is, it's a gut punch, yeah.