One of the first audio books that I read, as I mentioned, was From Good to Great by Jim Collins. This was an incredible book. In it, Jim and some of his researchers created a system by which to profile a company to understand if they were good or great, and how to get down to an understanding of what made the company become great. They profiled over 500 companies, and in the book they detail many of the Great companies and the details.
I won't give away everything, but Jim talks about many core, fundamental concepts that companies must follow or do to help them to become great.
In one of those statements he talks about the fact that companies, traditionally, always say that people are their most valuable asset. But, that's not true. It's the right people that are your most valuable asset.
And, he's absolutely right. This principle rang clear and true for me and our practices here at Telligent. As some people may have heard, Telligent has a tough interview process and we're VERY picky about new hires. We are adamant and unwavering in the fact that we must always hire the right people.
Now, that's not to say that we don't get it wrong sometimes. I'll admit, we have hired a few people that weren't a good fit, for one reason or another. But, we're very good about identifying those persons and making the corrections as necessary.
That may seem cold and cruel, but it's a terrible fact about business. Sometimes you have to make those hard decisions. Sometimes you can't avoid conflict. And, sometimes that affects people's livelihood. That sucks. We don't like it at all. But, it's unavoidable, unfortunately.
Take for example our internship program, this summer we started off with 6 great interns. Unfortunately, about half way through one of those interns were asked to leave. In this case, this particular intern wasn't right for Telligent - he was too young, too immature and had too much of an ego to really fit in. Very unfortunate because he was very, very smart. But, that's how it goes - you have to make sure that you're always hiring and keeping the right people.
Definitely check out that book, and look around at your company and think about it - do you think your company has done a good job of hiring the right people and making sure they're in the right roles.
