Having a need often clouds reason. Especially when it comes to hiring and the interview process. There is work to be done and no one is doing it. So you prioritize filling the gap with a warm body, rather than focusing on the right person in the right seat. How’s that been working out for you??  Short-cutting the interview process is never a good idea because when you do, It will most often bite you in the ass! Guest Bio: Bill Snyder is the CEO of digital health startup Vivante Health, the employee benefit for GI care. Bill works with Fortune 500 companies and large health plans, includin ..read more

People like to join small organizations because they are challenging and fun. There are few rules to follow and very little red tape.  As the company grows, it becomes necessary to formalize business processes. With process comes rules and before you know it… Poof someone gets shot in the eye and the Nerf guns get taken away. Some might view this as a good thing, but the high performers who built the business do not. Take away the fun and they will just go somewhere else. Guest Bio: Steven Freidkin is the Founder and CEO of Ntiva, Inc., a full-service technology firm offering managed IT s ..read more

How do you change company culture when the values of the CEO evolve?  We all understand that to grow as a company, people need to embrace change. Yet a lot of us fear change because it requires us to work on ourselves. Which is uncomfortable.  But here is the truth, when you fear change the business will outgrow you and then change becomes inevitable! Guest Bio: Jason Lippert, President & CEO of LCII Jason has helped grow the company from $150 million in 2003 to over $5.1 billion  with over 12,000 team members world-wide. Jason has initiated a cultural transformation within ..read more

Core values are powerful. But core values driven by purpose are unstoppable! Today we are going to take a deep dive into an entrepreneur who has built not one but two highly successful businesses by not just living core values but tying purpose and giving back into the daily routines of the company.  And their results have been extraordinary!   Our guest today:  Jay Wilkinson,  Founder of Firespring, Bloom Growth & Do More Good Movement Firespring—a Nebraska-based Certified B Corporation featured by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 50 Places to Work in America.  ..read more

We all understand the concept of right person, right seat. But as the company grows the demands of each seat change. What is required from zero to $5 Million will most likely shift on your journey to $10 million in revenue.  So hiring ahead of that curve becomes the biggest challenge.  It is important that, in the earliest stages of the company, everyone in the organization identifies as a “builder”. Builders are the people who have a deep desire to problem-solve issues that have not even become identified and create systems from scratch.  As the business grows, the need for “im ..read more

Over the past few years talent has been scarce. And when talent is scarce, fear leads hiring decisions. We don't want to lose (what we perceive to be) “good people”, so we shortcut the interview process.  Here's the thing, our perceptions are often wrong.  Our gut is often wrong. And it is wrong because the data we input is either assumed or circumstantial. Resulting in marginal hiring that hurts your business.  So, what if every person that you hired thrived in your company? What would be the ROI if you operated at a hiring success rate over the 90th percentile? It would be pre ..read more

Let’s talk about building an advisory board. I think we would all agree that having strong advisors and mentors in your corner brings huge benefits to every organization. Not just as sound advice in making business decisions but also providing introductions and bringing credibility to the business.  So when is the right time to build your advisory board? As soon as you find the right people who will help. This means before you hire your first employees.  Building an advisory board, much like building company values, is often an activity to do later. But guess what, later is too late ..read more

10 business days is the optimal time to bring an interview process to a successful outcome.  The way to achieve this is to tighten timelines from stage to stage and cut down the number of people involved in the process. Now I know what you are thinking, that more people should be involved. Which is incorrect. The reason we involve more people in the interview process is because we value their “opinion” or “input” on the individual. But opinion has no value when it comes to making a hiring decision. And opinion is what you get when your interview questions are not tied to gathering evidenc ..read more

Let’s talk about performance metrics for a minute.   Do you have performance metrics drawn out for every person before they are hired? Are they clear on the expectations for the first 90 days of employment?  If not, you are setting people up for failure because expectations are never in alignment. We're going to leave it to you to “figure it out”.  Then we scratch our heads when the person fails, wondering what we missed in the interview.  What was missed was the work on defining the role and writing down the company’s expectations of what needed to be accomplished by the i ..read more

Two people sit down in an interview. What happens next??? What happens is that, well, we have no idea what happens.  But the data suggests that a decision is made on behalf of the interviewer in the first 7 minutes of the conversation. The remainder of the time is used to confirm the decision.  There is no way that a person can extract enough evidence to support making a correct decision without bias or personal motives in an unstructured process.  A perfect breeding ground for Murphy’s law- Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong How well a person aligns with the company’s va ..read more