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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our season five co-host, dave Nurchi. Hello, dave, and this podcast is all about the takeaways from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. A little bit more about that, the whole premise of the podcast. We take good, inspirational books that we've read. We take the takeaways out of them. We talk about our experiences, what we've done with those takeaways, or, if we haven't, kind of, what our perspective is on it, or, if we're doing it in real time, what the actual impact is, and so, in our day jobs at Seed Planning Group, I'm the chief executive officer, dave's our chief operations officer. So this is real, this is what we do, this is our passion every day, day in and day out. Our big takeaway for today we are going to actually merge two different takeaways that really have a lot to do with each other Challenges, with hiring, senior people.
Speaker 1:
So we're going to pick on some senior people for a little bit. I don't mean senior as in old, I mean senior as in experienced I'm pretty sure Ben was talking about experienced people too, not just older people. So we're going to stick with senior people as in, people who know their job inside and out. Hire for specific knowledge and experiences in a specific area. The heck am I talking about? Let's do that again. Senior people who bring their own culture to your organization Sorry about that how to work the system. So they come in. They kind of know how to work the system. They know how to do the job better than, a lot of times, the person interviewing them. So there's some issues with trying to assess. You know what type of person you're bringing in. And then so, as we're talking about the challenges with hiring senior people, the solution is hiring for specific knowledge and experience in specific areas, because you're trying to accelerate the company's success in those areas. So we're going to first unpack what I messed up there the cultural part and then we're going to talk about how to actually implement senior people in a way that's more effective. If you're going to go that route and we've had quite a bit of experience with this Before we get to that, as always, do us a favor like subscribe, share our show, get it out there for more people.
Speaker 1:
And our sponsor today is Cutthroat College Podcast, helping people avoid going broke because of the cost of college. Find out more at nqrmediacom or wherever podcasts can be found. You'll find Cutthroat College Planning. All right, dave, after I butchered the whole thingy there, I think I got it fixed. Now let's first talk about the challenge with hiring senior people in the first place senior people in the first place.
Speaker 2:
The challenge that comes to mind for me is that there's going to potentially be a clash in the way that they do things and the way you do things, and it's going to be not us at first. Right, like you guys do this, you need to be us or we, and that takes some time. And I think that's where the you know the senior role kind of comes in. There is they've done something so long or they're very good at their craft that they're going to come in and say, well, I know how to do this, let me, let me do that. And if you just let them loose like that, you're going to have by clash, I mean you know the people who've been at your company for a while and learn the way of doing that and the environment you create. That's not going to translate necessarily to this new person. Even though they were senior at another role, that doesn't mean they're senior at your company. When it comes to that sense of it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you have a lot of people that come in and say you guys do things like this and it's like, well, no, you're part of us now, so this is how we do things. It's not you guys do it like this and I do it like this, cause that's how they did it over there, unless I hire you specifically to do that. If I hire you to come in and change the way that we do something specifically than it is. You guys were doing it like this. This is what we're going to do now. Right, but you, you tend to get this. Well, you guys do it weird and I'm confused because I do it like this, you know, and it's so.
Speaker 1:
You end up with that baggage and um people get confused yeah, well, you end up with kind of some battle, you know, um, and there's there's fight within the system if the culture is, for instance, very supportive and you get somebody who comes in like a bulldozer, um, because that's how they did it wherever they were at. That's a challenge. But the the bigger issue is, you know, the whole, uh, senior type of thing, where you've got people coming in and, if we kind of look to ben's point, um, so we've kind of touched on bringing your own culture. But they know how to work the system right. So what the difference between somebody coming out of school and somebody who's been working for 10, 15, 20, 30 years even? They know what to say to keep the boss off their back. They know how to play the game right, so they also know what to say in an interview. In fact, probably they've interviewed people, so so they know their way around. You know the country club there a little bit, and and and. So it makes it quite a bit more challenging actually, um, because they can politic it a lot better, um, and then, a lot of times, the person who's interviewing them.
Speaker 1:
If you're hiring a senior person, you may be hiring somebody to do a job that you don't really know. How do you know if they're bullshitting you or not? Right, because there's an awful lot of that out there. There's an awful lot of people in the Peter's Principle doing jobs that they're not qualified to do. They don't know what the hell they're doing and yet they're like I got the title, so they're applying someplace else for the're hiring somebody for, like, let's say, I'm hiring a CFO and I don't know what the CFO job is. Anybody who says they had a CFO job looks like they know more than I do.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's where it goes back to the hiring. You know the person, right? Not just that, that skill set I know we've talked about that on some previous episodes. So then, if we shift it to the second part there, right, well, before we do, yeah, here's my last point on this whole thing.
Speaker 1:
When you're hiring senior people like the decision to hire, should I hire somebody who's been around a while? Because they've been around, they bring some skills to me or should I hire somebody new and teach them skills right, or teach you know, put them through situations where they gain experience? I firmly believe it takes two to three years, regardless of which way you go. If you bring somebody in who's really sharp, world-class, but they don't have experience, it's going to take you two to three years to get them up to speed. And it does. There's no shortcut. There may be some things they can do quick, but it's going to take them two to three years to really put it all together. And then you see the aha moment. However, you bring somebody, somebody who's really experienced, and they bring all their own culture with them. They bring this is how we were doing it over there and they kind of fight your system the whole time. You know they think they know more than everybody else at the organization, maybe they even do, but they kind of have to figure out how that fits within your organization. Takes you about two and a half three years to break that of them too, and there's no shortcut on it. You know, before the aha happened moment happens where they finally buy in and say, okay, I trust everybody else around here, they're doing a good job. Back to that whole trusting and creating warriors that we talked about in a previous episode.
Speaker 1:
It takes time to do that. So even somebody with experience coming in, it's not like you could just set them loose and I don't got to talk to you again and if you do that, you're nuts. I mean, there are people I've, we I've tried to do before you hire somebody to say this person's got experience, I don't have to do anything. Then you're like you know a year later what the hell's going on with this. Well, because they have experience, but they don't have the experience in your organization meeting your standards and you need to get them up there. So do you want to pivot now and talk about maybe a better way to bring in experienced people?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I like that last point because basically, what you're saying is there is a timeframe there and the two to three years is what are you going to focus on? Are you focused on building their skills? Are you focused on getting them immersed in the company, right In the environment, and getting them to be part of we? Right, and not this is how we used to do it. This is how all of us are going to be doing this here. So that's a good point.
Speaker 2:
Them and I think it is more you know you have a a structured type of training or or entry of, like a subject matter expert type of situation. Right, like, hey, we're hiring you for this skillset, for this expertise. This is how you're going to help the company as we're developing some of this other stuff that we're talking about. Right, like getting being part of the culture, the environment, having them focus on the skills that got you to hire them in the first place, right, and what they're going to bring to the organization. Really having a focus on that, I think is a much better way to bring them in building projects around that right, having people understand and learn from them as they're developing the other things, I think kind of minimizes the you know the bad parts that we talked about, that could kind of bleed further and it focuses on the good skills that they have.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think you have to do a really good job of you're looking at the experience or skill set that's required right now. Right, like you're looking at it and saying, look, we have to hit the skip button, we cannot operate without X level of experience or develop skills, and that the cost of acquiring that outweighs the potential culture. Hit Right, outweighs the potential culture. Hit right Because when you're developing somebody from scratch, it's cheaper, right You're. You're their entry level. When you bring an experienced person, you're going to pay for them, right and? And so, yes, they can do more right off the bat, but the damage to the culture can be much more extreme. But the damage to the culture can be much more extreme. So you have to kind of weigh that in there when you're looking at that. So you purposely hire because you're saying, look, this thing right here that we have to do, and let's say it's a regulatory thing or let's say it's a credential type of thing or something like that. You literally have to have somebody in that role where, let's say, you know, cause we talk about the company growing and the managers that you have in place can't handle that job. You have to bring somebody in. You have to make sure that you're very, very specific with how you position that person into the organization and how you really define the scope of it. Like you're coming in and you're bringing these experiences, you're bringing, you know, this background with you. But here's the scope with a job, here as we define it Right and and and.
Speaker 1:
And I think you only bring in that experience or skillset when you need it. Like, if you don't need the acceleration of the experience or the skillset, don't do it because you the experience and the skill set. Don't do it because you're going to bring somebody in who's going to get bored. When employees get bored, you get all kinds of problems. Or when they feel like they're not being utilized correctly, or when they feel like their voice isn't loud enough or it's not growing fast enough for them, or they can't get paid enough or something like that. So you want to bring in experienced people only when you actually need that at the table. Otherwise, as much as it people are like, I don't like to train people, I just want to bring in, you know, mature people, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:
I've never hired an experienced person that didn't need to be trained yeah they may not need to be trained in their expertise area, but they need to be trained in how the the rest of the company stuff works right. So you can't. You know if you're hiring a in a silo, you're putting them in a bubble. Good luck. You know, if you're trying to make a really good hire, that you can, that's going to help you build the company. There's no shortcut. It's going to take you two, two and a half years to train them up.
Speaker 2:
Yep, and and we talked about this in the previous episode what's your? What's your defense against someone who's not fitting in culturally, having a team of warriors that are going to say this is how we do things?
