Send to KindleFinding Rockstars
I read a lot about getting “rock star” people on the team. Jim Collins talks about getting the right people on the bus. There is lots of advice available concerning how to hire the “right” people. That’s great. I’m all for building the best team possible, but is selecting the team the only way to do that?
My milita
ry experience provides an interesting alternative view. Military leaders seldom if ever have the opportunity to select their own team. Instead, leaders are assigned to an already existing team, its members almost always assigned there by a system that takes little notice of individual strengths and weaknesses, placing them based on complex algorithms that only a computer could love. Those of us who led those teams took what we got.
A recipe for disaster right? Or at least mediocrity. Yet, those teams repeatedly exceeded expectations, doing difficult jobs under often very trying conditions. How can that be?
Those teams, so seemingly random, are imbued with core training that makes them not quite as random as they might appear.
Everyone has the same basic understanding of mission and they understand, they are part of something important and bigger than them as individuals..
There are well defined levels of leadership within the organization and each level receives training that is standardized throughout the service. Leadership development starts early and is continuous.
But there’s another important factor that makes teams successful, even if the leader wasn’t able to hand-select the members – allowing current members to become stars. Rather than trying to recruit stars, which military leaders generally can’t do, they make the people they have into stars.
You can too. I bet, in your organization, right now you have at least two or three people who have the potential to be stars. What are you doing to encourage them and help them become more than they are today? Do you spend all your time looking out for new hires that appear to be stars or are you building your own?
Don’t get so busy looking outside your organization for new talent that you miss the developing talent that is right under your nose.
