Right People in key seats… Generic characteristics (Courtesy: How the mighty fall by Jim Collins)

[Muralidharan Chennai India]

1. Right people fit with the company’s core values. Great companies almost build cult like cultures, where those who do not share the institution’s values find themselves surrounded by antibodies and get ejected like a virus. People often ask, “How do we get people to share our core values?”. The answer: you don’t. You hire people who already have a predisposition to your core values and hang on to them.

2. Right people don’t need to be tightly managed. The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you might have made a hiring mistake. If you have the right people, you don’t need to spend a lot of time “motivating” or “managing” them. They will be productively neurotic, self motivated and self disciplined, compulsively driven to do the best they can because it’s simply part of their DNA.

3. Right people understand that they do not have “JOBS”. They have “RESPONSIBILITIES”. They grasp the difference between their task list and their true responsibilities. The right people can complete the statement.. “I am the one person responsible for……..”.

4. Right people fulfil their commitments. In a culture of discipline, people view commitments as sacred – they do what they say, without complaint. Equally, this means that they take great care in saying what they will do, careful never to over commit, and to promise what they cannot deliver.

5. Right people are passionate about the company and its work. Nothing great happens without passion, and the right people display remarkable intensity.

6. Right people display “Window and Mirror” maturity. When things go well, the right people point out the window, giving credit to factors other than themselves; they shine a light on other people who contributed to the success and take little credit themselves. Yet when things go awry, they do not blame circumstances or other people for setbacks and failures; they point in the mirror and say, “I’m responsible”.

Comment on the engagement point of view....? Thanks

Muralidharan/Chennai/28th June 2009