Evaluating the Candidate
Regardless of the nature or scope of the position they hold, successful people do certain things that unsuccessful people do not. Successful people are successful time and time again, over long periods of time. Success is never a surprise or an isolated event.
Unsuccessful people seem to always miss the mark in one area or another, whether it is people skills, organizational ability, commitment or technical competence. Measuring past performance is the best predictor of future success. Great managers also have a consistent track record of hiring great people.
Weak interviewers seem to fall into three broad categories. The first category included those who are too emotional. These are the ones who make very quick decisions based on first impressions and personality. The second category includes those who are overly intuitive, to the extent that they short-circuit the process, superficially assessing only a narrow group of attributes. Finally, the technical interviewer is great at fact-finding, but lacks decisiveness.
Effective hiring constitutes 80% of a manager's success. If we are to deliver "A Players" and great managers to our client-companies and firms, we must assure ourselves we are presenting candidates with a record of hiring great people. One of the ways to get to the root of this challenge is to ask your candidate to describe his or her hiring successes and failures. Because the selection process is tedious and time consuming, most of us have a tendency to fall prey to the energetic, attractive, affable and articulate candidate who many times will fall far short of expectations once on the job.
The very best interviewers and hiring managers understand that the hiring decision must be intuitive to some extent. There is never enough information to match abilities, needs, and interests completely. Despite the intuitive component, they recognize that the hiring decision must be based on an analytical, fact-finding process. Therefore, if the client's job description requires someone who can operate in a highly leveraged or a resource-strained environment, we will probably look for a candidate who has performed successfully in a leveraged environment in the past. We have seen plenty of
CEOs who could do a fabulous job in a situation where the company is relatively debt-free and has ample resources, but they could not function well when they were put in an environment where they were resource-constrained; the company was highly leveraged; and 90 percent of their EBIDTA had to go to service debt.
One great idea we've seen used many times is to ask your potential executive to write a document detailing a charter of his or her past organization, or to articulate his or her vision for your organization in charter format.
EXAMPLE
Our organization operates with total integrity. This is to say that there are no gray issues in terms of honesty or integrity. We are not here to kid each other or to make the numbers or conditions appear other than they really are. We call a spade a spade. We communicate with total honesty. Honesty is appreciated and expected. Messengers are not shot. Surprises are not received well. The charlatan is shot.
Integrity means being totally honest with superiors. It means telling the truth, whether it feels right or not. The senior leadership of the company deserves to know the truth. They are responsible for finding out the truth. Putting on a show serves no useful purpose.
It also means being totally honest with subordinates. Everyone in our organization deserves to know exactly where they stand in terms of promotional possibilities, disciplinary issues and even possible termination. For an example, an associate that is being terminated or promoted should never be surprised.
Integrity also means acting in the best interest of the company. It means not playing games to minimize "shrink" at the expense of gross margin by buying in on items that carry no cost advantage, only "shrink gain." To go a step further, integrity means making sure that all reporting systems are reporting the actual, not a "doctored figure."
In summary, integrity means being totally honest in everything you do and expecting the same of your organization. There is no such thing as minor theft. There is no such thing as minor fabrication of the truth. Integrity is the cornerstone of everything we do.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
We believe strongly in the concept of continuous improvement. In short, this means that while we certainly will celebrate the superior performance of the day, we will never be totally satisfied with our performance. We will always be hungry for improvement. We are always look for productivity enhancements, potential cost savings, sales enhancements, margin dollar improvements, overhead reductions, store standards improvements, associate quality improvement, and personal improvement. We realize that no individual, no organization, ever stands still; we are either improving or declining, and we are determined to improve constantly. We solicit feedback from the total organization in order to utilize and recognize the total organization in this process. We celebrate and recognize even the smallest contribution to improvement. Continuous improvement is a common thread that runs through all of our endeavors toward achieving legendary service leadership.
The leaders in our organization are passionate about the business. We are students of the business. We want to know everything we can about the business and we put systems in place to ensure that our organization learns maximum amounts of information from competitors, trade journals and business publications.
We are committed to improving our operation each and every time we enter a store.
FINANCIAL
Our overall objective as it relates to "the numbers" is to optimize financial performance for the store, the district, the region and the company in keeping with our philosophy of continuous improvement.
In addition, we take ownership for the sales and gross profit lines, as a sole proprietor would. We realize that over the long term, operations team has more impact on sales than any other. This is not to downplay the importance of the marketing effort, for we play a very important role in that regard. We realize that through legendary service leadership and superior store operations, that we have more long term impact on sales and profits than any other discipline.
We pay attention to all factors in the market. We are acutely aware of all of the competitive activity within our markets. We are aware of the economic environment as well. In short, we are totally aware of our external environment and are able to discuss externalities intelligently with all. We provide feedback and recommendations to those who can assist us in dealing with our external environment; we may even be very persistent along these lines. We do not, however, dwell on things that we do not control. After having made our recommendations to senior management at the service center with regard to marketing and administrative issues, we concentrate on the issues that we control entirely.
PEOPLE
We realize that people are our most important asset. As a result, we spend a major portion of our time developing our organizations.
We know who our strongest players are in every role and we are intimately familiar with management personnel at least two levels deep in the organization. We concentrate on our strong players in that we insure that they are continuing to move ahead both personally and professionally. We keep them challenged, provide them autonomy, and use them as organizational resources. We realize the value of these informal leaders; we recognize and allow them to lead in ways that benefit the individual and the organization.
We also know where our weaknesses are. Many of our weak players are new. Others have lost the vision, or have somehow become distracted or disillusioned. We realize that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and that it is our responsibility to improve or replace individuals who for one reason or another contaminate the winner's circle. Our weak players who are in trouble are given every chance to succeed, but they know exactly where they stand. When the unfortunate does occur, when we do have to terminate or demote, it is never a surprise to the subject. They have been given more than a fair opportunity to correct any deficiency that might exist. We face conflict and poor performance head on and take decisive action when and where it is called for.
We do not abuse, or tolerate the abuse of people in any case. While we recognize the value of discipline, we are situational leaders who praise in public and conduct constructive criticism in private. We are always careful not to demoralize. We always maintain or enhance self esteem when criticizing.
We use meetings for information, recognition and decision making -- that's all! We never use the meeting format for criticism because we recognize that this activity is best done one-on-one, in private.
We are also aware that, because we require much of our associates, it is critically important that we have fun at work. We believe in this so much that we actually plan fun, and we plan it often! We have associate dress-up days, appreciation days, associate and family outings and an array of other activities to show our people that we appreciate their efforts.
We make every effort to keep our organization stable. We move people only when it makes perfect sense. When we do make moves, the person(s) involved know where they are going, why they are going there, what their role will be, how their strengths will complement their new peers and how their new environment will compliment or augment their strengths.
STORES
We are keenly aware of our objective as it relates to store conditions. Our objective is to have store conditions and a total shopping experience that is noticeably better than the competition. We pay much attention to detail and subscribe to the philosophy that everything has a place and every place has a thing. We realize that superior store standards have a positive impact on associate morale and pride, as well as customer perception. We are absolutely determined to have sparkling clean, well merchandised, well-organized sales floors, back rooms, break rooms and restrooms at all times.
CUSTOMERS
We strive to provide legendary service every day, on every shift. We accomplish this level of service by constantly observing our personnel in action and by setting the right example. We are all members of the quarter fine club. We are absolutely committed to our "Pledge to Keep Our Customers Coming Back" and we insist on compliance to the "eight points." We make it a point, at every level, to recognize associates individually (catch them doing it right) for specific acts of good service, and we also make it a point to correct associates who have "not gotten it right" yet. We realize that legendary service is the key to our competitive future and we give it our all every day.
We realize that Legendary Service is an attitude, a mindset; it is not added hours or resources. Adding resources does not result in legendary service. The right commitment does.
MERCHANDISING
We realize that our primary mission along these lines is to build the business. We are merchants, not just shrink controllers. This is not to say that we are not concerned about shrink; we utilize all of the tools at our disposal to control shrink. We date our coolers and strictly enforce the 3X program in our meat coolers. We carefully analyze our movement records when writing orders. In addition, we pay close attention to sanitation and rotation. Still, we are merchants. We have systems in place to ensure that we fully support all ads and have total variety. We realize that perishables, in terms of product merchandising, are our primary vehicle to differentiate ourselves from the competition.
We strive to build our FRESH image. FRESH is a critical component as it relates to produce, meat, seafood, floral, cheese shops, salad bars, deli and bakery. We adhere strictly to our dating standards and pay close attention to the appearance of all of our perishable case merchandising and products. We never leave merchandise in our counters or cases that we would not be proud to take home.
We make sure that all of our cases are sparkling clean. We take the responsibility for scheduling the cleaning of all of our perishable cases on a regular basis.
TEAMWORK
We operate under the philosophy that Top's is a team. None of us is as smart as all of us. We are not dependent or independent. We are interdependent. This is to say that the total organization comes first. An example - The Marine Corps has a code.....Unit - Corps - God - Country. Our code is Company - Region - District - Store - Individual. Our code does not diminish the importance of the individual, for the company is composed of individuals, all of who are important. Our code does imply that all decisions must be made with the good of the total company, region, district, store and individual in mind. Each individual has a responsibility to make a meaningful contribution to their unit.
It is our responsibility to contribute to the overall success of the company. It is the responsibility of our associates at the service center to serve us. It is our responsibility to become easy to serve.
We are competitive by nature. We enjoy comparing numbers with our peers, but our focus is on beating the competition -- the other supermarkets in our trade areas.
It is our responsibility to serve with total dedication. We operate in a safe environment that encourages each core associate to speak their mind, the right way. This is to say that we have a responsibility to fight for what we believe in, for what we stand for. We understand however that it is easy to criticize, condemn and complain. When we disagree with a particular course of action or philosophy, we express our concerns diplomatically and respectfully, and we are prepared to offer suggestions that we truly believe are better alternatives.
We understand that there will be times when we must execute a course of action that we would not have chosen. At the instant it becomes clear the orders are firm, it is our responsibility to execute flawlessly and with conviction. We take ownership and responsibility for the particular mission at hand. We assume the corporate, regional, district, or store position and are prepared to defend and explain the action. We understand our responsibility is to support, communicate and execute the mission of the company, region, district, store.
In summary, we constantly strive for continuous improvement. We are proud of the accomplishments of the past and we experience ambitious dissatisfaction in every area of our operation.
This is just one example you could consider. My point here is that you are taking an enormous risk when you bring an outside CEO or executive in to your business. The cost of a misfire is enormous. Spend enough time evaluating your candidate to get really comfortable that he or she can succeed in your environment. Remember that roughly 45% of all newly placed senior executives will quit, be fired or otherwise forced out in scenarios in which standard hiring practices are used.
Be aware of the Superstar. In 2007 I attended Harvard Business School's program entitled Leading Professional Service Firms. I learned a great deal about the way global professional services firms work. I also learned that it is very common for these kinds of firms (and for that matter, all companies) to want to hire the competition's superstars. While the best predictor of future performance is in fact past performance; this is a very slippery slope. What must be considered if you are to hire the superstar from your competition are all of the variables responsible for your potential future superstar's success. We often make the mistake of looking at performance in a vacuum.
Throughout this book, we've been examining all of the variables associated with a successful placement of a CEO or senior executive. Stack the odds in your favor and consider all of the critical success factors we've been talking about.