Take a good look at your company, region, store, or
department. Is it outstanding? Are you achieving most of your goals and
heading for greatness? Do you have
wonderfully low turnover, with a line of the best people waiting to work for
you? Is your team full of those people
that you would love to clone? Are almost
all of your customers appreciative and very happy with what they are getting
from you?
Now look at other businesses… The ones your company buys
from, as well as the ones where you and your family spend your money. Are most of them doing an impressive job of
exceeding your expectations? Are they
responsive to your questions and needs?
Do you believe that they really care about you and are working hard to
meet or exceed your expectations? Are
almost all of the people you interact with in customer service wonderful to
deal with, and obviously happy in their jobs?
Do they belong in customer service?
Very few of us can honestly answer yes to more than a couple
of these questions.
Why? Why aren’t
businesses able to be great instead of just OK?
One of the biggest reasons is because most of the time
The People Who Do The Hiring Are In No Way Accountable
For The People They Hire!
We will, of course, assume that those people are doing their
best, and that they care as much as anyone about the people they hire as well
as the success of the company. And
unfortunately
The people who do the
hiring are almost never responsible for the actual behavior (the work) of those
hires. And…
They are totally
removed from getting any actual first hand, real world and real time feedback
on the quality of those people.
They are doing the best they know how, and they are shooting
in the dark. I would also bet that most of the time the people
doing our hiring are finding people who have what they are looking for. Unfortunately… our own experiences in the
world show us that they are clearing looking for the wrong things.
Even if the people doing the hiring are interested in the
fate of their hires, it is all too easy to pass the blame when those hires
don’t work out (or at least not up to our expectations).
“They misrepresented themselves in the interview process…”
“Something must have changed, they were great when we hired
them…”
“The manager/supervisor/leader must be doing something wrong
because we are sending them great people…”
Unfortunately, most of the time the responsibility is laid
on the person to whom those hires report, and sadly for them, they are usually
already responsible for the team as a whole meeting its expectations. We assume as well that these Leaders are also
doing the best they can, so…
Where do we go from here with this conundrum?
Stay tuned…