The 3 Things to Look For In the Pursuit of Great Employees
Here at the Landscape Management Network, we often preach about how essential it is to have a team of good people behind you. That’s because if you want to take your business to a better place, you need to make sure your company has the engine to get itself there. The engine that drives your business is your people.
According to Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great,” we have to lose this notion that we can develop unmotivated people into motivated people. We also have to drop the idea that with enough discipline and incentive we can create a team of highly-efficient, ambitious people. Collins insists that people are ingrained with self-discipline as a result of their upbringing. It was either established in them by their parents or their teachers or it is an innate trait that they were born with – either way it is something that is ingrained in us at a young age.
Because of self-disciple and self-motivation is intrinsic, trying to motivate or manage people is simply a waste of time, according to Collins. Rather than try and make your people motivated, you need to find self-motivated people and hire them. You also need to find ways not to “de-motivate” your already self-motivated people. There are certain people out there who, regardless of how great your incentive program is, are self-motivated. You need to hire these people!
Here are Collins’ three things to look for in great employees: (we at LMN like to refer to these types of people as “superstar employees”)
- The employee produces results
- The employee doesn’t just produce results for excess credit
- The employee continues to produce results when they move to a new or higher responsibility in your company
What are your thoughts on Collins’ criteria? Is it a good model for evaluating employee performance?
In your opinion, what are the characteristics of superstar employees?
