We’ve all heard of the phrase ‘get the right people in the right seats on the bus’. It talks about ensuring that team members are aligned and committed to success. However, Jim Collins has a very specific definition of the ‘right people’, and when you’re considering if you have the right people in the right seats, and this includes six key characteristics that might help to understand what ‘right’ actually means.

This week we’re going through Jim Collins definition of the right people in the right seats.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

 

00:13
Brad Giles
Hi. Welcome to The Growth Whisperers, where everything we talk about is building enduring great companies that last, companies that endure, companies that people actually enjoy working at and own in. My name is Brad Giles. Today I’m joined, as always, by my co host with my co host, Kevin Lawrence G’day. Kevin, how are things today?

00:33
Kevin Lawrence
Things are great, Brad. Isn’t it fun to you see, it was a good way to start the show, kind of mixing up a couple of words, kind of being creative. I’d like to call it hey, indeed. Being creative today.

00:45
Brad Giles
Indeed. Indeed. So, Kev, we like to start with a word or phrase of the day. Tell me what might be your word or phrase for today, my friend?

00:56
Kevin Lawrence
Sales cures all.

01:01
Brad Giles
Doesn’t it just it does.

01:03
Kevin Lawrence
It’s interesting in this dynamic in the economy, I’m hearing a lot of CEOs and our teams talking more about sales than normally. Yeah, we always talk about it, those little thoughts of, I don’t know why my sales team isn’t producing like it used to. I’m wondering, people are starting to look under the hood in sales a lot more because the frothy growth isn’t in the market as much as it was in most industries. People are just taking a closer look at sales and saying, well, what’s really going on there? I’ve always said some of the best sales reps I know work part time or three quarters time, and they are amazing at what they do, but they might need to be putting in a bit more time. Sales a little harder for a lot of people. But anyway, sales cures all. Put the energy towards the front of the house, and generating sales is what a lot of people are doing, and they’re just looking under the hood a little more is what I’m seeing.

01:59
Brad Giles
Very good. Mine is timeless. I had a chat with one of our listeners who shall remain nameless and said, what I love about the podcast is that you’re talking about things that we’ve perhaps often learned before, but it’s with a different take, and it’s things that are still timeless principles. I kind of said that’s the intent, because these things work well, we’re not trying to reinvent everything. We’re trying to talk about things that work because they work and so timeless. Yeah. We’re not trying to come up with this is our answer and this is the only way you can do it. We’re looking for things that work and that work consistently to build these enduring great companies.

02:47
Kevin Lawrence
Yes. Not the flash in the pan idea of the week. Chat GPT going to change the world or save the world or destroy the world? Those are great things, but the principles are beyond those things. They’re timeless. Speaking of principles, one of our favorite thought leaders that we’re digging into today, mr. Jim Collins, who’s done some amazing research, which he’s thankfully shared with us through his books and his talks and his sessions with CEOs, and he has six. And thanks for digging us up, Brad. Six great characteristics of the right people in the right seats. We all talk about building a great team and right people, right seats and all this good stuff. It’s a great concept, and we know what makes a massive difference, and we often refer to it as a players or high performers or whatever the heck you want. Jim’s got six principles like he does.

03:46
Kevin Lawrence
He has simple lists that we’re going to walk through them and share some examples of things we’ve seen in companies. But six principles? How do you actually have the right people in those most important jobs?

03:56
Brad Giles
Yeah, we talk about A players, top performers, we’ve got to get the right people. What does that actually mean, the right people? What I love about this list is that it’s very specific. This is what the right people means. We know that Jim Collins said you got to get the right people in the right seats, doing the right things the right way, and then over time, we can build flywheel momentum. If we’re doing that, coupled with everything else that he talks about, it’s good. Now, this is from a book called Built to Last, one of Jim’s books in his catalog or in his library. It’s so important because this way you can look at this list or listen to this list and ask yourself, do I actually have the right people in my business? You can look at them and maybe you think, yeah, maybe.

04:56
Brad Giles
When you go through this list, you can actually say to yourself, okay, is Joe or Joanne or whoever it might be, really one of the right people?

05:07
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah, I can help you think about a specific personal role. What I’m going to suggest, Brad, maybe we’ll should we just list off the six, or should we go through? Okay, were going to go through them one at a time. I just wonder if we should give people the list and then we’ll dig in. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

05:22
Brad Giles
What do you think? Yeah, I think we’re going to go through and we’re just going to see just elaborate on what that means. We probably should prepare beforehand, but hey, we’re shooting from the hippies. It’s okay.

05:35
Kevin Lawrence
Sometimes you get an idea. Well, back to creativity the idea in a moment, we’ll go through one more time. Here’s the thing in sports, and here’s the way I think about it, and we talk about sports metaphors a lot in business, and much of it translates and some doesn’t. The one thing about sports, and whether it’s soccer or basketball or hockey or football, people have positions, and they know their positions, and they’re so clear. They do training based on those positions, and they have coaches and programs and everything else about those positions. That’s what those key seeds it’s so critical, but their expectations are so clear in sports and measured like crazy that if someone isn’t the right person for that role, it’s really clear and they make a decision really quick to keep them or move them on. In business, we’re not quite at the same level that it would be in the NBA, the National Basketball Association, in the US.

06:35
Kevin Lawrence
Or the NFL or whatever it happens to be. That’s kind of what I guess these people are critical. How do if they are really thriving in their job when you’re not just watching them on the basketball court all day, every day? Practicing is a little harder to see. Should we just jump into the first one?

06:53
Brad Giles
Brad let’s do it. The right people fit with the company’s core values. This is number one. This is something that we talk about quite a lot here, Kev. Core values, like a freebie.

07:07
Kevin Lawrence
It’s almost a freebie. We’ve talked about this so many times. It’s critical, but yeah, go ahead.

07:13
Brad Giles
Yeah, but it is critical, and we should keep talking about it because core values make a difference. We’ve got countless stories about companies who maybe didn’t know what their core values were articulated or then perhaps rediscovered those core values and then looked and measured people against those core values. What’s important here is that you can’t get people to align with your core values. You can’t change people, you can play at the edges. This is about hiring and onboarding people don’t change what they value.

07:53
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah. The key thing is you got to pick the right people to start with. And it was interesting. I was with a client last week. I won’t say the city because I don’t want to give away the details of the story, but I was with a client last week in another country, and we have a person that we brought on to the team. Now, this is a hardworking, high performing team, down to earth as it gets and not flashy by any means. Well, it was interesting. I got a ride back to the airport with one of the execs one day, this new guy that had been hired. Unfortunately, he didn’t go through the proper hiring process. He just sort of got slid in. As I’m sitting there and I’m noticing he’s got a lot of really fancy stuff. I like nice things. I’ve worked a lot in luxury, and I appreciate luxury because not a problem with them.

08:39
Kevin Lawrence
We’re in the office, and he’s got his Louis Vuitton wallet and key fob. This is a company. Now, if some of the women might have their Louis Vuitton bags that they wear on the weekends, but in that work environment, there’s none of that. I’ve been in other companies where that’s common, but in this company, it isn’t. He’s got his fancy wallet and stuff and this is a company where the execs drive GMs, Toyotas, regular mid market cars. People aren’t driving fancy cars. Turns out this guy in the office, he was driving his Maserati to work every day. Now, I like nice cars, I appreciate those cars, but in a company like this, that’s not the kind of car you drive to the office. He had all kinds of other issues, but generally he was very much a flashy, shiny type. At the core of who he was that didn’t match the DNA, he could have been great at his job and it still would have been an issue, because that’s off culture and there turned out to be lots of other weird stuff after we let him go.

09:51
Kevin Lawrence
You’re not going to change that about a person. That’s who he is, that’s what they value.

09:57
Brad Giles
The values the right people fit with the company’s core values.

10:03
Kevin Lawrence
Yes.

10:05
Brad Giles
You’Ve got it hard to pick up what car they drove to the interview in at a job interview, did they drive in the Toyota or the Maserati? There are definitely things that you’ve got to pick up and those people will stand out. The quicker that you act on it, the better. So let’s move on.

10:26
Kevin Lawrence
Let me be clear. I want to make a point, though. In a different company, if everybody drove Range Rovers and Maseratis, the person who loved to drive the Toyota also might not fit. So, please, it’s not about the cars that people drive or the clothes that they have or the jewelry. It’s not about that. It’s about it being in alignment. And that’s just an easy visual example. So, please, it’s not good or bad, it’s about what the company is about and what the people in the company value to create a kind of a cohesive aligned team.

10:58
Brad Giles
Yeah, every time you bring a new person onto a team, the team fundamentally reinvents itself and you want that reinvention to strengthen or to be aligned with the values. Not a complete mismatch.

11:12
Kevin Lawrence
It’s critical. I want to make sure it’s really clear for people that I worked at another company that everyone did drive Range Rovers. The whole team drove Range Rovers. The problem was the guy that drove the Ferrari to work, right, because it was taking it too far. If you drove a Toyota to that company, it might have actually been a problem because they were in that kind of luxury space. So, again, please, it’s not what it is, it’s just being in alignment. We’re on that one and we’re trying to create a team that doesn’t have a lot of friction. The second one, this is a bill, but basically the right people don’t need to be tightly managed, people need to be led. If you have to follow up and get involved and this is a killer one, this is the one that kind of makes it or breaks it for a lot of people on teams when we’re not sure what to do.

12:04
Kevin Lawrence
If you have to drop down and help them do their job and I’m not talking about when you’re onboarding a person and training them and developing them. I’m talking about generally even when they know what to do, you still have to be getting involved and managed and following up on something. I had to do it today with an executive. In a simple example. We had a meeting about six weeks ago. We set some goals. People were supposed to do some finishing work on their goals. It never got done. We had a follow up meeting last week. Everyone on our team did about one. I said to that one person, when can you have it done? Blah, blah, I’m busy. They committed to do it on the weekend and have it to me for Monday morning. Monday morning, I go to my computer. It’s not there.

12:51
Kevin Lawrence
I send it on note. Thought we discussed this was a be here. I said it nicely and I had to follow up and ask for it. They finally ended up sending it the third time. After I’d asked about it again today, I finally got it. That’s following up and having to manage someone, that’s not a good sign. If it’s one time, hey, everyone makes mistakes. If you’re consistently having to do that, it’s not the right person. Whether it’s because of their capability, because of your leadership, there’s a lot of reasons it could be, at the end of the day, the right people in a job that isn’t required, they’re obsessed with getting things done normally. You don’t have to tightly manage them. You got to manage them to stay healthy and maybe keep them from taking on too much because they’re just obsessed with crushing amazing amounts of work.

13:44
Brad Giles
We’re talking about adults and most likely leaders here. These people. The fact that you’re laughing means how funny this is.

13:56
Kevin Lawrence
Adults. This is not kindergarten kids that you’re telling away. Yeah, sorry. Just how funny was it revealing with adults? That’s true.

14:07
Brad Giles
Yeah. They don’t need to be tightly managed. It makes me think about one team where this team, the CEO is we do homework preparation before an off site. We’ll be saying, this is the series of questions and pre reading that you’ve got to do in preparation. We can tell when leaders have done it and when they haven’t. The CEO is having to constantly go back to one person in particular and say, can you complete this? Can you complete this? Of course, it comes back to we’re dealing with adults here. If they don’t complete it, there’ll be consequences. That person’s consequences were the leader had to say to them, look, if you don’t want to be on this team, that’s fine. If you don’t want to be a leader on the leadership team of this business, setting the strategy and making decisions, that’s fine. You’ve got to know that there’s consequences that come with that.

15:13
Brad Giles
Further consequences. We’re not asking you to build the Titanic.

15:17
Kevin Lawrence
We’re asking you to do your job.

15:21
Brad Giles
Do some simple preparation. If you are being tightly managed by your boss, there is something in that for you to look a bit more deeply at.

15:35
Kevin Lawrence
If you’re the boss and you need to make a list of things to follow up with a person on, it’s also a bad sign an A player. You don’t need to make lists. They make their own. You might choose to, but you don’t need to. By the way, one of my favorite lines is, hey, how many times have you had to follow up with me to make sure you got your paycheck in full on time? To which they should only be able to say never, and then you can say, well, great. It would be wonderful if you could keep up your end of your bargain as well. I’m doing my part. It’s a bit in your face, but I had a CEO said that to someone once. You don’t have to ask me to. I have to follow up with you to do your job.

16:18
Kevin Lawrence
You don’t have to follow up with me to do mine, which is to pay you for doing your job. Funny. That okay. It’s an awesome one. So that’s a challenge. That’s number two, right? They don’t have to be tightly managed or almost managed at all. You just have to watch out to make sure they stay healthy and don’t push themselves too hard. Go ahead. Go ahead.

16:45
Brad Giles
I feel like this is a big deficit in the world, and that is the right people understand that they do not have jobs. They have responsibilities. They know the difference between their task list and their responsibilities. They know what they’re responsible for. And it’s not having a job. It’s a completely different mindset. I had an example of this just the other week, and it was a CFO who was, I would say, six months into the job and was using the phrase, when addressing the team in our workshop, I think you need to. Rather than saying, I think we need to, it’s a very subtle difference.

17:34
Kevin Lawrence
Sure.

17:35
Brad Giles
I think you need to do this. I think you need to do that as if they were an external accountant or something like that.

17:42
Kevin Lawrence
They’re not on the team.

17:44
Brad Giles
Like, they’re not on the team. Like they don’t have the responsibility. Yeah. If you look at people in your team, do you think that they have a job, or do you think that they have a responsibility? And what do they think?

17:59
Kevin Lawrence
What is when someone’s got a responsibility, most of the people in the exec teams we work with have responsibility, and if they think it’s a job, usually they don’t get there, or they sure don’t stay there. When it’s a responsibility, you’ll stay up at night, you’ll get up early. So it was interesting. People make excuses in meetings all the time. I remember I was having a conversation with a CEO last week, and it was a morning that I was behind. I had a busy week. I was traveling, and I had to get up at six and start working at 630 on to get a project. Normally I like to start my day, but I skipped my workout and started cranking on to work earlier to get things done. I’m on a call and the executive makes an excuse of not getting something done. Like, I want to freaking kill him.

18:44
Kevin Lawrence
Like, hey, if I can get up and self sacrifice at times to do my job, you can do yours. Now, I didn’t say it smart enough not to do that, but it’s like when you have responsibility, you’re going to make it happen. An excuse is not even you can’t even contemplate make an excuse because it would be wrong, because you feel deeply responsible. Just no different than raising a child or something like that. Anyways, I get fired up about this one. Yes, these people have responsibilities, and you can see it in their actions and their commitments. If they do miss, man, they’re upset with themselves, which takes us into number four.

19:22
Brad Giles
It does.

19:23
Kevin Lawrence
The right people fulfill their commitments, and at the end of the day, they do what they say they’re going to do. They find a way, and they will stay up late, they will get up early, they will work the weekend, they will ask for help, but come h*** or high water, they get it done. You can count on them. They’re going to get it done. The thing at the root of this, these are the people you want on your team because they don’t let your customers down. They don’t let you down, they don’t let their teammates down. It’s interestingly. We start going into an exec team. We see all kinds of people who are very nice and persuasive and everything else. I’ve learned over the years to become loyal to performance. I e that’s delivering. And we just give people tools. Like, we have the right scorecard by exec for what they’re going to deliver every quarter.

20:17
Kevin Lawrence
We have their KPIs and their goals, and how they’re going to produce and their talent review, and how they’re going to develop their team. We just red, yellow, green, everything just to make it visible. At the end of the day, if someone has a bad quarter and gets a bunch of red, that’s understandable. Maybe they’ll learn and get better. But you can see over time. I evaluate executive teams for how they produce based on what they say, which is this? Do they deliver what they say they’re going to do or do they back up the excuse train more than just anyways?

20:48
Brad Giles
In the roles that we play, we’ve got a great deal of pattern recognition about people who commit to priorities and how many of those are they consistently executing and they commit to KPIs? One of the really important things about this, again, the headline is the right people fulfill their commitments is that they don’t overcommit, they don’t promise what they can’t deliver. They’re very careful in picking that out. For us, we can see on average how many this team or this individual, how many priorities do they execute each quarter and how often are they making their KPIs, the metrics that they’re accountable for working in the business and based on real?

21:34
Kevin Lawrence
They’re not just setting super low goals. They’re setting realistic goals. And they’re pushing still. Yeah, basically they deliver. It’s interesting you talk about pattern recognition. A lot of the systems that we set up in companies enable us to get more data to see the pattern. I was talking to a CEO today about an exec and I pretty well have enough data to know we’re done. There’s a 90 something percent chance it’s not going to work. We’re still going to keep on trying with this exact because they got a lot of potential but there’s just way too many points of data of all basically the things that violate what’s on this list. People fulfill their commitments and we need systems to help us to get better at that, sometimes to have more data. But it’s usually pretty obvious, like this.

22:23
Brad Giles
Next one is obvious. The right people are passionate about the company and its work. They’re passionate. They’re not just saying this industry, we’re not really that excited about it. Now, it doesn’t mean that they need to be excitable people, but it does.

22:42
Kevin Lawrence
Mean that they’re passionate about the industry. It might not be about the industry, but they are excited about what we are doing for whatever reason that is.

22:51
Brad Giles
Yes, because if they’re not passionate about the company, the team, the leaders, well, it’s very hard for them to get some of these other five things to.

23:07
Kevin Lawrence
Be effective for them and that belief and that energy is contagious and that spills over onto people. At the end of the day, they’re passionate in their own way about something, about what the company is doing. And it’s obvious. That’s why we continually help reinforce culture and instill culture. Basically either they’re adding good energy into what we’re doing quietly in many cases, not necessarily just the extroverts, but their energy and their passion and their commitment is showing up and adding to what they’re doing because they want to be there and they’re getting something out of it, more than just money.

23:46
Brad Giles
This is how the company’s purpose can be understood and used. You talk about the core purpose of the company, either with a candidate or a person who’s already there or in their onboarding, when you’re talking about the core purpose and you’re perhaps talking about core purpose stories where people have lived the core purpose, how does the person relate to that? Are they a bit hohum or are they getting a bit excited about that?

24:16
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah, some people are really excited about the purpose and some are in alignment with it. Some are really excited about the work they’re doing or the team that they’re building or the opportunities they’re given people. Like they’re there for more than just the check.

24:33
Brad Giles
Yeah, cool.

24:34
Kevin Lawrence
Number six. Finally, and one of my favorites is the Right People have More of a Window and Mirror Maturity, as Jim calls it, and to explain it really simply, you can get more deep. The simple version is when things go well, they often give credit to others and when things don’t go well, they normally reflect themselves in the mirror. They look in the mirror and reflect it themselves instead of pointing out the window and blaming somebody else. During good times they share and give other people the credit for it. During bad times, they take a lot of responsibility and look into that mirror because they learn and they get smarter and they get better. And that’s the problem with the excuses. The most dangerous look at and we all make excuses. I make excuses sometimes, right? It’s a natural reaction to save face or feel better in a situation.

25:29
Kevin Lawrence
I’m not talking about the person that makes an excuse on the spot because they feel crappy. I’m talking about people who do that and believe it and are always trying to blame. For example, if I made an excuse about something and it happens sometimes, for whatever reason, I’m quickly going to come back and take responsibility, learn from it and try to do better and articulate that to another problem. Don’t judge them into 3 seconds after the conversation, judge them in the three or 30 minutes after. Generally there’s a lot of people who it’s always someone else’s fault. It’s just great saying if everyone you meet turns out to be an a******, maybe you should look in the mirror.

26:12
Brad Giles
Yeah, it could be you. This is critical because if you’ve got people who aren’t displaying that window and mirror maturity, then they’re not the right people. That’s the headline at the top right of this episode. They’re not necessarily the right people because they’re always going to be casting blame elsewhere and it’s probably not appropriate. Often it can come back to them and equally, they’re probably going to be taking credit for the successes when it should be due elsewhere and that’s disengaging for those other team members.

26:56
Kevin Lawrence
Exactly. And they don’t learn, basically. And that’s a key indicator, really key. Let’s just review these really quick so, number one, they fit the values. Two, they don’t need to be tightly managed, although they still need to be led. Let’s not forget about that. Three, they know that they have responsibilities, not just jobs. Four, they do what they say they feel like. Five, they’re passionate about the company and its work. They’re not just there for the money. Finally, six is that they are more of a mere type person, is that they learn from their mistakes, take responsibility, and then get better next time. So, for more lessons, I know in your oxygen mask. First, I’ve got a book, a chapter that’s called Make Yourself Useless, which is about building an amazing team. This supplements that a lot, or vice versa, about just having an absolutely amazing team that supports you in what you’re doing.

27:58
Kevin Lawrence
Any final thoughts there, Brad, before we wrap up?

28:01
Brad Giles
Well, this is just a simple list that you can use to assess. Do I have the right people on the bus? What are the right people look like if I’m interviewing?

28:11
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah. Well said. Keep this in your eye, because at the end of the day, you deserve to have a great team. Again, as the great Jim Collins says, you can’t build a great company with good people.

28:24
Brad Giles
Right?

28:25
Kevin Lawrence
You need great people to build a great company. Jim is doing a live event that we’re helping with in October in Chicago, october of 2023 in Chicago. If you’re interested in bringing your team to work with Jim one one, it’ll be a spectacular event. He is the absolute master and very grateful for the great thought, leadership and research he has done to put into our hands so we can help our clients build enduring great companies. All right, well, thanks for listening. This has been the growth. Whispers with Kevin Lawrence here in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. And Brad Giles down in Perth, Australia. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do and give it a rating for the video version, Youtube.com, and search The Growth Whisperers. You can see our smiley faces. Brad and I both put a lot of energy into our newsletters and a lot of resources on our sites, and we’re here to help.

29:19
Kevin Lawrence
We have people on our teams that can also help you if you would like. Brad is Evolutionpartners.com.Au and my firm is Lawrenceandco.com. Hope you have an awesome week. Remember and keep in mind that you deserve to have a team of the right people in the right seats, and it’s just a matter of working on it and finding things like these principles to help you get there. Have a great week.