It’s the people, stupid.
December 6, 2008 by Joseph Ansanelli
Filed under Popular, Startups, Teams
A common question I am asked is what made (and still makes!) Vontu a successful startup, company, team, division, etc. The answer is simple. People. Great people. It is one of the most important (and defensible) competitive advantages a company can have. It’s the same core belief that made Microsoft, Google, and so many other companies, sports teams, non profits, political campaigns, and others successful.
Some people argue that having a great idea is what makes a successful company. But how does a company create great products or ideas? Great people create great products.
Some people argue that having great sales execution or marketing campaigns are what make a successful company. Here too, great people ensure you have great sales and marketing.
A common quote used to describe this idea is “People first, strategy second”. Maybe it is even better to say, “People first, and EVERYTHING else second.” Why does this make sense?
Well, think about this question for a moment:
Would you rather have a great team with the wrong strategy, or the wrong team with a great strategy?
Clearly, it is a far easier to have a great team come up with a new strategy (or marketing plan, customer service effort, product feature, etc.) than it is to replace a mediocre team…
And what about customers first? You guessed it, without great people it’s hard to get great customers and even more difficult to keep them.
It really is the people, stupid.
Right on!
One thing I would emphasize… it is important to ensure that the company is full of great people. All companies have a handful of great people, but there seems to be a network effect when you get a core group of great people. Sports teams are an excellent analogy. So many individually great players (Dan Marino, Charles Barkeley, A-Rod, etc) have never won a championship. As John Wooden wrote, “it takes 10 hands to score a basket.”
Great comment re: how many superstars never win a championship. Cycling of course is a great example of this as well. Most people think it’s an individual sport yet to win the Tour De France or any multi-day race, the team matters. Lance Armstrong always had a great team of people when he won the tour – from other riders to coaches to equipment manufacturers – and that made the difference in his continued dominance.
Spot on, with an added dimension that I see time and time again. You can have a great team of people (fantastically smart and talented individually) who come together with all the right intentions but the “yes… and then no” phenomenon can occur. Namely, leadership teams align around a decision (everyone says “yes” in the room) and then some of the leaders execute against the decision, or a different interpretation of the decision (saying “no” to a decision previously aligned around).
What’s required is clear leadership from the top to ensure this misalignment doesn’t occur (which Vontu of course had/has!). You would be surprised how many larger companies suffer from this challenge.
Keep up the posts, look forward to reading more.
I keep thinking about the auto industry and bailout/no bailout quandary, a topic for the future?
Yes, some book I read along the way had this phrase – “obliterate misalignments”. And that doing that is one of a leaders most important jobs. It is on the agenda for a future topic. How do you plan, communicate the plan, (over and over…), and ensure alignment and then adjust the plan when it makes sense.
On the auto industry, it’s been swirling around inside my head. Maybe in a few days I will get something out on that.
Thanks for the comments.
Your post makes a lot of sense — teams should focus on hiring the right people. I think though, that the work doesn’t stop when the positions are filled. Mistakes are bound to be made when hiring, so I think it’s equally important that the company (and its managers) be prepared to remedy such mistakes. Unfortunately my experience has been that companies that have mediocre hiring practices (and hence end up with folks that aren’t a good fit) tend not to have good processes for dealing with these mis-hires (for lack of a better word). Have you any thoughts (or tips) on handling hiring mishaps?
Totally agree. Building a great team is a process and part of that is to let go of folks that you realize are not cutting it. And you should assume that you will make hiring mistakes. The key though is to realize it quickly and take action. Firing someone is normal. It’s not a sign of failure. It should be happening. If it does not then you are probably being too cautious in your hiring decisions.
It seems like most managers make a decision to fire someone long after everyone else has already realized they should be let go. I encourage managers to get ahead of that and “lean forward” more on firing people because by keeping under-performers it hurts the morale of everyone else that is working hard and delivering. I am going to do a follow up post with some thoughts on the “people process” – hiring, engaging and also firing.
Thanks for the comments.
I have seen that when managers make a good call in identifying a ‘wrong hire’ and quickly act on it they gain respect of the team for recognizing the problem and acting on it. I have also seen that when manager fails to take tough decisions like firing ‘wrong hires’, not only does it lower morale of the team, it make a shift in company’s culture and lowers trust in management.
richa – totally agree. more often than not, the team knows when someone needs to be fired before the team’s manager! trust is so important to leadership and everyone who is great wants to know that everyone else on the team is being held up to the same accountability and level of excellence. thanks for the comments and hope you are well. joseph
Good People are great in small numbers, especially in entrepreneurial situations.
Somehow, though, it always seems that when you get them into large groups and clusters – they do very corporate things – like hiding behind others, posturing, making excuses, and avoiding tough decisions until they are forced to make them. Things get even more dangerous when management disintigrates into greed and self insterest. So even the good honest, hard-working middle-manager in a large bank, who may have always done the right thing, played ethically, and watched out for his customers and colleagues, can get the ax when a smarmy “yes man” with a 5 handicap gets a promotion and a huge bonus. While it would be great to have great people and great strategy, what really seems to happen is that once a company gets big enough – neither really matter. They are like supertankers, with so much momentum that the keep going regardless of what’s going on, until the SS Lehman Brother hits an iceberg and sinks! Do you think the “captains” of Lehman Brothers would have walked through their sinking ship, twice, to be sure they saved everyone they could (like the US Air Pilot?) – I think not – they were squirreling away their fat-cat assets as fast as they could – secretly, and behind as many sealed doors as possible.
Discouraging? Yes. How about a call for some ethics education? (My God, I sound like a communist!)
Rob – It’s typically true that as companies grow, they become more, well corporate and political. but at the end of the day, the only way to solve that is by focusing on people and leadership. With the right focus, process and commitment, mediocrity, or worse, can be avoided. Thanks for the thoughts. Joseph