How to Make People Decisions

Jim Collins just did an amaz­ing event talk­ing about some of the prin­ci­ples from his most recent book BE 2.0 (Beyond Entre­pre­neur­ship 2.0): Turn­ing Your Busi­ness into an Endur­ing Great Com­pa­ny, co-authored with Bill Lazier.

Hav­ing done a num­ber of events with Jim – big, small and inti­mate, and in this for­mat — I was very impressed with this excep­tion­al vir­tu­al ses­sion. The for­mat was out­stand­ing, and we didn’t feel the need to be there, in the same room, with him. We also had break-out groups so that par­tic­i­pants could meet and inter­act with each other.

While he talked about many things, one of the attend­ing CEOs said that most impact­ful were Jim’s sim­ple and pow­er­ful ques­tions used to decide whether to devel­op or replace some­one on your team:

Jim Collins’ 7 Ques­tions for Peo­ple Decisions

1. Are you begin­ning to lose oth­er peo­ple by keep­ing this per­son in the seat?
2. Do you have a val­ues prob­lem, a will prob­lem or a skills problem?
3. What’s the person’s rela­tion­ship to the win­dow and the mir­rors? The right peo­ple look out the win­dow when things go right, giv­ing cred­it to oth­ers. The wrong peo­ple look in the mir­ror assign­ing cred­it to themselves.
4. Does the per­son see work as a job or a responsibility?
5. Has your con­fi­dence in the per­son gone up or down in the past year?
6. Do you have a bus prob­lem or a seat problem?
7. How would you feel if the per­son quit?

We’ve used these ques­tions hun­dreds of times, with dif­fer­ent teams, since I learned them a few years ago. We’ve even built them into quar­ter­ly and semi-annu­al reviews of peo­ple in the most impor­tant roles in a com­pa­ny, to guide our deci­sion-mak­ing and to give feed­back to individuals.

When and How to Make Peo­ple Decisions

Inter­est­ing­ly, most of the time, we end up using the ques­tions to see what we can do to devel­op and grow the per­son fur­ther – not to decide to replace them on the spot. The answers can give you insights about the spe­cif­ic things that are work­ing and not work­ing — and the teams often team get epipha­nies they need to do some­thing dif­fer­ent­ly that gives the per­son a bet­ter chance of success.

I call this ​‘elim­i­nat­ing the man­age­ment vari­able’. We, as man­agers, might not be giv­ing peo­ple the right feed­back, direc­tion or clar­i­ty about what great looks like in their role and specif­i­cal­ly what behav­iour or per­for­mance cur­rent­ly isn’t that great; and direct­ing them towards pos­i­tive change.

Once we’ve made sure we are not in the way or fail­ing to give them what they need, we will see, over a sub­se­quent quar­ter or two, either notable improve­ment or growth, or if we need to make a dif­fer­ent decision.

Final note: If your answer to #7 is ​“relieved, excit­ed, over­joyed, thank­ful” or you want to offer some ges­ture of appre­ci­a­tion or cel­e­bra­tion, it means you are not doing your job. You are wait­ing for your employ­ee to make a tough call when, real­ly, it’s yours to make.

In the worst-case sce­nario, when some­one does need to move on from your orga­ni­za­tion, remem­ber to treat them with dig­ni­ty and respect (unless they have done some­thing hor­ri­ble to deserve oth­er­wise. Even then, hold your­self to the high­est stan­dard of your val­ues and professionalism.)

Remem­ber, you or some­one in your com­pa­ny made the hir­ing choice or gave them that pro­mo­tion or added respon­si­bil­i­ty or has tol­er­at­ed that behav­iour or lack of per­for­mance for a long time. They are not the guilty par­ty, so allow them to hold their head high, when­ev­er possible.

The Chal­lenge

• If you have chal­lenges with some­one on your team use these ques­tions as a guide to devel­op or replace them.

PS — Our team has mas­ter­ful tools, so please con­tact us if you need help:

• With chal­leng­ing peo­ple decisions
• To decide how to strength­en the indi­vid­u­als on your team or to improve your team as a whole
• To clar­i­fy and mas­ter some of the prin­ci­ples Jim Collins talks about.

Lis­ten to this episode of The Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast for more about this.

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.