Hire, Fire — Then Repeat
ByI was having lunch last week with my race car mechanic Ray, and he shared a very interesting story with me. Ray and I have gotten to be good friends in addition to him being my mechanic. We do spend a lot of time together (remember I drive a vintage Fiat).
Ray runs a one man shop southeast of Seattle with his wife running the office. During the 70’s and most of the 80’s, Ray was the head mechanic at the largest Fiat dealership in the northwest. When the dealership folded, Ray started his own repair shop working strictly on Fiats. Lots of service bays, lots of employees, you get the picture.
Now, for the story.
Ray was telling me why he shut down the repair shop and opened his one-man facility. It was because his employees drove him crazy. Imagine my surprise.
You see, Ray could not understand why his employees would not take the time to do the job right (Ray is a perfectionist which is a nice quality in a mechanic). He could not understand why his employees would not take the time to learn a new skill or technique rather than just give up. Ray could not understand why his employees would walk out the door at five o’clock even if the car they were working on was not finished.
His solution was to hire and fire, hire and fire and then repeat. This went on until he could take it no more and he just closed up the shop. This is not all that unusual for most businesses.
Let’s look at how you can avoid this situation. First, LEARN HOW TO HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE! I know I sound like a broken record but hiring the right people fixes so many of your problems. And part of hiring the right people is to use the performance-based success profile from my Selecting Winners System. With this document you will set expectations for your people up-front. And, managing to stated, agreed upon expectations makes life much easier.
The key principle of the Selecting Winners System is to identify the behavior necessary for success on your job and find people who behave that way. Ray was looking for people who behaved similar to himself. The problem was he was not interviewing for that behavior. Work ethic, attention to detail and the ability to learn would have been far more important than the ability to rebuild a carburetor.
This is a lesson that all of you can put into practice. I hear people ask about fit and culture all the time. They ask me how to interview for these difficult concepts. My answer is to identify how the person has to act and react (behavior) to the situations to be successful. Once you have identified that behavior, you can start to interview for it in the interview.
I am not trying to convince you that hiring and managing employees is easy. But, you can do things to make it a much more pleasant and successful endeavor.
For more information please visit us at www.SelectingWinners.com
