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Learning From Others Mistakes

I recently interviewed a claims manager who took over a branch that was seriously dysfunctional. He understood right out of the gate the branch did not have enough quality people to be successful and that to call several of the people “poor performers” would have been kind. He told me that they made some hiring mistakes at first which taught he and his staff that they needed to improve their own interviewing and selection skills.

This reminds me of the following quote from Dr. Stephen Covey, Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Franklin Covey and author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In response to the question, “If you had to do it over again, what is the one thing you would do differently as a business person,” he responded …

“I would do more strategic, proactive recruiting and selecting. When you are buried by the urgent, and have a thousand balls in the air, it is so easy to put people that appear to have solutions into key positions. The tendency is to not look deeply into their backgrounds and patterns, to do due diligence, not to carefully develop the criteria that needs to be met in the particular roles or assignments. I am convinced that when recruiting and selection is done strategically, that is thinking long term and proactively, not based upon the pressures of the moment, it pays enormous long term dividends.”

Obviously, the Garrison Organization plays an important role in helping our clients identify the people they need to raise the bar on performance in their organizations. We are going to spend the next several posts sharing some easy to incorporate, “Hiring 101” ideas that we hope will be of good use.

Along the way, perhaps some of you will share what you have learned about good hring practices.