Hiring Leadership for The Next Phase
When you’re seeking to hire new associates, there should be some consideration for the needs and desires a potential candidate has in mind when evaluating the viability of any offer presented.
Too often, I’ve seen prospective employers go into the recruitment phase with insufficient infrastructure to their hiring process. They haven’t firmed up the salary they’re willing to expend for the position, or they haven’t decided upon the necessary “amenities” to be offered with a salary, or they haven’t fully identified the job responsibilities, job requirements and expectations for the job’s performance. Less obvious than these key elements, in many cases they haven’t determined what can or should be shared as to the inner workings of the organization and how much access they will be willing to provide to their new hire (dependent on the role being sought).
This is never more apparent than when some businesses seek to hire for a position that has not already been established. A business posts a job opportunity for a Chief Operating Officer without even understanding the business’ responsibility in seeking to acquire an officer of the corporation. There is no true appreciation for the necessary structure beneath the role, to ensure a successful integration into the framework of the business, nor is there an understanding of the amount of control that needs to be handed over to the role, and most likely away from the current leadership/ownership.
If the business owners aren’t comfortable sharing their control of daily decisions, if they can’t provide the infrastructure of support and personnel, if they are unwilling to open the financial data for complete disclosure of the relative health and merits of the business’ current processes, they are not ready to bring a COO, a CFO, a CIO or any “officer’ into the organization. Yet many small businesses, in an effort to elevate their brand or their stature in the eyes of their clients, their suppliers, their competitors often hire for the role, only to discover they were not ready for that “next level” move.
What they really wanted was a mid-level manager or maybe even a loftier role, as a Vice President of Operations or Finance. More likely, they want someone to hold a title that allows the current leadership some distance from less than enjoyable tasks or situations. They hire a “hatchet person” to perform employee terminations. They hire someone to interact with troublesome vendors (who expect to get paid) or troublesome clients (who aren’t paying as needed). The owners state their lofty goals, but then avoid the hard decisions to implement the necessary changes to achieve those goals. When things go sideways, they then lay the blame at the feet of those who hired on with different expectations of the role they were to fill.
More importantly, often owners hire someone they expect to fix all the broken parts that have accumulated over the prior year or decade, and they expect those broken parts to be fixed in an unrealistic short period of time. If your business has been declining for several years (either due to COVID, the supply chain, the economy in general or due to poor business planning and execution), it will likely take more than a few weeks, even a few months, to restore to full capacity and on a growth track.
Unfortunately, the leadership they’ve hired to chart that path, are often dispensed with before being given adequate time, adequate resources and the necessary access to information to fulfill their leadership role. If you’re a small business and want to build strength for the future, hiring experienced and accomplished talented leaders is an excellent strategy. Tactically you need to determine if you’re capable of compensating such a talent, that you have the ability to provide resources and support for their execution of plans to meet your goals and if you’re prepared to relinquish some measure (if not all) of control to enable them to build their leadership bona fides within your organization. If you are not ready to meet these criteria, you are probably not ready to engage this next level.