For the most part, great employees are not found, they’re made. In order to delegate and allow your company to grow, you really have no choice.

All this takes time, energy, preparation and lots of patience, but by working together in concert, you can see wonders.

1. Good Seed. Start with people who demonstrate a high degree of integrity, take responsibility for their own behavior and have a history of long-term commitment. They should be willing to learn and extrapolate conceptual ideas and apply them to new situations. A good way to test this is to give the applicant a verbal run down of the job, the company’s challenges and your expectations for the position. Then, have them send you a one-page summary on a deadline. This will tell you volumes.

2. Good Ground. Make sure their job is clearly defined in writing and explains how your products and services produce the income to pay their salary, bonus and benefits. We used to give our people a “Money Map”. It started with the consumer and worked its way back through distribution, production, and all the payables to finally get to their check. This gave them respect for how and where the money came from – the customer, of course.

3. Care. You must inspect what you expect, especially in the first year. Once you are convinced you have “good seed” it’s worth your while to regularly spend time with them answering questions and mentoring. Listen to what’s behind their questions to discover what they really need to excel in their new position.

4. Light and Space. Give them permission to make mistakes. That’s what allows them to develop into the independent decision makers you need to confidently delegate. To “make those mistakes right,” have them write down what needs to be done to prevent those mistakes in the future. Have them make new polices, procedures, checklists, sign-offs, or whatever, but they have to document everything. Consider rewriting their job description to fit their real skill set.

5. Nutrients. Give them the training they need, in person and in writing. If a document doesn’t exist, have them write it. Create a mini manual for every job with the growing list of frequently asked questions and as many charts and graphs as are necessary to depict processes, relationships and decisions. Provide outside training with conferences, or field time with sales or production staff. The more they understand your total operation, the faster they will become invaluable.

6. Time. How much time you give them before they “get it” really depends on the position, their ability to learn, and how much faith you have in them personally. Some folks take longer but “get it” at a core level. Others may learn a specific process quickly, but miss the big picture. So it’s a judgment call based on your assessment of their progress and conceptual understandings, and the preparation, time and energy you have put in.

Even if you do these essentials, there’s no guarantee of success, but you will be much more likely to succeed. To grow those new hires into fruitful producers it takes preparation, permission and patience.

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post Successful Hiring takes Preparation, Permission and Patience appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

The problem is that nothing remains the same for very long. Constant operational changes and market pressures can make even new job descriptions obsolete within months. Job descriptions should be seen as living documents that require frequent updating.

Particularly in start-ups where duties and responsibilities are evolving, job descriptions should not be taken too literally. Entire functions can suddenly shift or be outsourced, leaving your staff questioning what they are supposed to do. Here are some principles about job descriptions we have found helpful:

• Hire the person, not the job. The job you hired them for may not be the job in which they excel. The person may be worth keeping even if they are not performing well in their original job. If they demonstrate the ethics and quick learning abilities you seek, they will apply those attributes no matter what they are doing. You may soon discover they are better suited for some other job.

• Cover all the bases (but not necessarily by the same person). When you organize your business, don’t forget to take a micro view of each job description. Your goal is to cover all the bases with the people who are best suited to handle those components. By identifying the components independent of the job descriptions, you become more flexible and have the luxury of building the job for the person instead of the other way around.

• Define the job in customer service terms. Every job description should begin with a preamble that states what your company produces and how this particular job helps make that happen. Make sure everyone gets a flow chart that shows how their paycheck, bonus and benefits get from your customer to them. Identify the performance gauging metrics for each job. Develop pay for performance compensation systems based on your company’s sales.

• Reorganize often. Every time someone leaves your company, you have an opportunity to reshuffle the deck. Match your people’s personal skills with the various tasks in your company. Ask each member of your staff if they are happy with the assorted components of their jobs. Put the components of the job just vacated up for discussion. You may be surprised at the horse-trading that takes place! The job opening you end up with may look quite different from the one that was just vacated.

• Let your people write their own job descriptions. Every year have your people update their job descriptions with what they are really doing now. This will help with training in the future and send your people a message that you value them and their approach to the job more than a static description that may be obsolete. Give your staff a chance to discover more efficient ways to perform or communicate. They will take ownership of the performance metrics if they have a voice in their creation and refinement.

Keep your company up to date. Engage your people in the process of creating and updating their own job descriptions. Allow them to show you where they excel. Make the job description a current, living snapshot, and not a stale, portrait, wall hanging.

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post Job Descriptions – A Portrait or Snapshot appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.