Most of my clients are CEOs of growing companies, and most of the rest are leaders in similar organizations, so the challenge of hiring is a constant theme in my practice. Two of the more complex aspects of hiring that I often discuss with clients are conducting better interviews [1] and developing stronger People leadership. [2] But a simple framework that's also proven useful in my work with clients who are struggling to define their needs in a given search, particularly when recruiting senior executives, is to ask the following:
- Are you hiring for capacity?
- Are you hiring for methodology?
- Are you hiring for innovation?
Capacity
At the most basic level, the leader just needs more capacity--the proverbial "extra set of hands." The work to be done is reasonably well-defined, and they're capable of doing it themselves, but it no longer makes sense for them to do it. This may be because the amount of this particular type of work has increased, or because the value of this work relative to the amount of their attention it consumes has decreased. [3]
This is often the case when a leader needs to delegate a set of responsibilities to an individual contributor. For example, I've worked with many CEOs through the process of obtaining their first executive assistant, a step that leaders often take only when they realize that by forgoing such support they're not being "scrappy"--instead, they're wasting attention that could be dedicated to more value-generating tasks. [4]
But a version of this occurs in more senior roles as well. Most of my clients have expertise in a domain that they continue to oversee as the organization grows, from product to engineering to finance. In many cases they're slow to hand it over to a direct report--sometimes because they're concerned about quality control, but also because they find this work personally fulfilling, or because it allows them to take a break from other, less rewarding tasks, such as fundraising or people management. [5] Inevitably, though, they realize that they need additional capacity at the executive level and must delegate to those leaders if the company is to continue growing. [6]
Methodology
In other situations merely hiring for capacity is insufficient--what the organization requires is a more rigorous approach to a particular methodology. This is often the case when a leader's technical expertise has allowed the organization to achieve a certain level of success but will be inadequate for its future needs. For example, many founder/CEOs have some skill as salespeople--that's how they convinced early employees to take the job and early investors to commit capital. But effective sales and marketing efforts at scale often require an in-depth understanding of a host of disciplines that most founder/CEOs lack.
Similarly, many founder/CEOs have an intuitive sense of the product vision, or a particular understanding of the relevant technology, but lack experience in managing large product development or engineering operations. The CEO may well continue to play a role in these domains--for example, they'll often get called in to close an important enterprise sale--but their effectiveness will increasingly rest their ability to hire leaders with greater domain expertise. [7]
And note that this can apply to individual contributors as well. In addition to working with clients through the process of obtaining their first executive assistant, I've also worked with others through the process of obtaining their first professional assistant. As the organization grew in size and complexity, mere capacity was insufficient--effectiveness in the role required a different level of expertise.
Hiring for methodological expertise introduces a new set of challenges, however. Experts rightly expect to be able to act with a degree of autonomy and independence that's consistent with their expertise--and yet leaders may be reluctant to cede decision-making authority. [8] Alternatively, I've worked with many CEOs who've succeeded at filling their executive team with domain experts only to wonder, "How do I add value as a leader now?" Finally, in many situations an experienced executive with methodological expertise levels a talented, ambitious employee who the organization hopes to retain--that's not impossible, but it's often very difficult. [9]
Innovation
And at times even deep domain expertise will be insufficient--and occasionally counter-productive. The organization is seeking to do something entirely new, and adherence to a proven methodology may constrain what's possible. The leader doesn't want just to hire someone with a playbook--they want someone who can, when necessary, blow up the playbook and invent an entirely new game. What's required is innovation.
This can take a number of different forms. We tend to associate innovation with "creative" disciplines, such as design, and it's certainly necessary in developing radically new products or services, particularly when there's not yet an established market. But innovation can play a vital role any time an organization extends itself into uncharted territory, such as transforming HR from "admin and compliance" to truly strategic People leadership, or re-organizing business units with separate P&Ls into a centralized corporate structure with geographic sales territories (and vice versa).
The challenge here is that innovators blow things up, and innovation necessarily involves change--and change, for most people, is hard. [10] The leader who seeks to hire an innovator must be prepared to face resistance throughout the organization and to help the innovator navigate around it--or overcome it. This gets much harder when the innovator begins to challenge some of the leader's own preferences and prerogatives--as they inevitably will. This shouldn't involve a reflexive deference to the innovator, but it does require a degree of "comfort with discomfort" on the part of the leader. [11] The key to success is being prepared to encounter friction in the relationship and investing in making it better. [12]
Footnotes
[1] Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews
[2] The Truly Strategic People Leader
[3] Growth, Profitability and Return on Attention
[4] Three Stages of Executive Assistance
[5] The Work You Must Stop Doing
[6] How to Scale: Do Less, Lead More
[7] Three Buckets (On CEO Job Descriptions)
[8] Leadership, Decision-Making and Emotion Management
[10] Why Change Is Hard
[12] Better Working Relationships
Photos: Shovel by Santeri Viinamäki. Excavator by kishjar. Explosives by Bugeater.
