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For all the talk in recent years about a war for talent, few companies are waging it strategically. Most have fallen victim to a myth: The war is won by those that acquire the most talent in the shortest time. Companies that believe this myth can easily hire the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Even those that hire the right people often do too little to integrate and motivate new people. Lots of their new employees end up not fitting in, and then leave. High-performance organizations are not products of high-performance individuals. They are products of high-performance cultures. Why? Individuals come and go, but cultures pervade an organization and endure. We discovered this the hard way. A while back, we snatched up an apparently ideal candidate with a platinum résumé for a top job, only to find that we really hadn’t done enough homework on whether he would mesh with our culture. He soon left. Through that experience, we learned that hiring top talent doesn’t deliver top performance automatically. As in sports, landing a few first-round draft picks is never a guarantee of a championship team. Just take a look at the Boston Red Sox with Pedro Martinez, the greatest pitcher in the game. They haven’t won a World Series since 1918. When a company enjoys tremendous success year after year, when every organization within the enterprise performs at peak efficiency, it’s not the work of a few superstars. There is something in the water that motivates people to perform at their best. To get the best people—and get the best from the people you have—you have to select, deploy, and develop talent with care. HIRE FOR THE RIGHT FIT. We have identified 12 personal qualities and work habits we value most, including competitiveness, a sense of urgency, and empathy for customers and colleagues. Now, we use our findings to screen candidates for key positions. Skills alone won’t get the job if the prospect doesn’t pass the screen. Hiring people who embody our values prevents us from diluting our culture. Finding the right fit in the hiring process makes it easier to integrate new employees rapidly, as well as retain them once they’ve come on board. SET THE RIGHT GOALS. Effective organizations manage people by setting objectives. All companies set annual goals. But few go so far as to set specific, quantifiable goals for senior and middle managers to meet each quarter. We do, and it works, because it drives results sooner rather than later. If something is worth doing, it’s best done right away. At our company, your goals reflect your individual responsibilities. The higher your title, the greater your responsibility for the performance of your team. Achieving your goals entitles you to a bonus, typically 20% of your base salary, paid out on a quarterly basis. When a company ties financial rewards to the achievement of quarterly objectives, it sets clear expectations of performance and empowers middle managers to make the right decisions quickly. By sharing the goals of senior managers with employees at every level, a firm ensures that everyone understands his purpose within it. There are no lost souls sitting around the company wondering what to do next. Setting stretch goals each quarter pushes individuals, as well as the entire company, to reach higher. The system drives responsibility and accountability for results deeper into the organization. When people fail to deliver on commitments, the message from colleagues will be clear: Either carry your share of the workload, or find another place to work. One might assume that peer pressure to "produce or perish" would lead to high attrition rates. Actually, it’s our greatest motivator and retention tool. People work harder knowing they are rewarded for their accomplishments. They are proud to give their all when everyone else is working just as hard. PROVIDE THE RIGHT TRAINING. In an economy where speed and a sense of urgency separate winners from losers, honeymoon periods for new hires are nonexistent. New-employee orientation at our company is no casual introduction to the business. It’s the beginning of a cultural assimilation process, called "Fast Start," that is designed to help recruits operate at full capacity by the end of their first quarter. Fast Start is about more than transferring technical skills. It’s about teaching new employees our culture, our values, and our priorities, and instilling in them the thought processes and behaviors that are necessary for their success—and ours. After Fast Start ends, we make additional training and education available. Some is mandatory, but much of it is just there for the taking, in the classroom or at a desktop via "distance-learning" programs online. Our quarterly goal system puts the responsibility on employees to seek the training they need to achieve results. So we leave it up to employees to take what they need while sparing themselves, as well as us, from wasting valuable time. No company—no matter how fast it grows—should hire faster than its ability to offer new employees the mentoring, feedback, and coaching they need to succeed. It’s far easier to hire talent rapidly than to deploy it and develop it successfully. When competent new hires are slow to reach productivity, it could be a sign of a company that has failed to prepare its managers to perform their roles. A cooling economy allows employers to be more discriminating about the positions they cull or choose to fill. But a cooling economy is even more competitive, making it absolutely critical to have the most appropriate talent in the right place, with productivity at its peak. The difference between a high-performance team and just any team is not how much talent you acquire or how fast. The difference hinges on finding the right talent for your culture, accelerating time to productivity, and continually motivating employees to give their best once they’re up to speed.
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