Get the right people on your bus!

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, popularized the concept of “getting the right people on the bus.” However, instead of trying to find the right people, most organizations are geared toward avoiding the “wrong people.”

Isn’t that amazing?

The result usually means that, instead of pulling together a stellar team, organizations feel successful if they’ve achieved “adequate” results. And, “adequate” results rarely are.

According to Richard Boyatzis, of Case Western Reserve University, most people hire for what are called “Threshold Competencies.” These are job description contents; a basic level definition of what adequate looks like. Threshold Competencies include:

• Having sufficient skills or expertise
• Having relevant experience
• Demonstrating sufficient knowledge of the profession and work environment
• Demonstrating the ability to critically think, relate well to people, and organize

High performance, specifically in the B2B content marketing functions, however, comes from a different set of competencies. “Performance Competencies” include the above, but add:

• Demonstrating ability to see and engage systems & patterns
• Displaying emotional intelligence: The ability to recognize deeper level emotions and motivations behind a person’s behavior; the ability to manage one’s emotions and the ability to manage one’s responses and behavior
• Displaying social intelligence: An awareness of, and insight into, how people are relating and responding in an environment; the ability to build new relationships, grow older ones, work through conflicts, recognize and respond meaningfully to other’s emotions and experiences, and work on a team.

And while you are transitioning to performance competency hires, sit down and noodle and calculate your way through your old or current process for engaging top B2B content marketing talent. It doesn’t take long to see some numbers pop out at you to show clearly the added value that comes from getting the right people on your bus.

Please don’t squander your dollars, time and energies on skills sets who will talk their way onto your team and then walk away and leave you with a productivity deficit in just a few months.

Choose Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (FCMO) services or Concept to Content (C2C) services that deliver real, measurable value and underscore the culture you are building.

Remarkable team . . . The Slade Group. Reach out and lest us respond.

Next week, I am starting a series on Emotional Intelligence and signs that it’s at work in business. Stay tuned.