It has always amazed me how many entrepreneurs honestly believe that the people they hire will morph into a creative, productive team with no management effort.

They class themselves as “leaders,” but see “management” as a need and function of large/old companies—not startups.

They say they hire self-starters and these people don’t need to be managed; as long as they understand the vision they are self-propelled.

They talk about connecting their people through social networks, Twitter, texting and other modern tools.

And if (when) that doesn’t work they term them fools and dump them.

But the old adage “give a fool a tool and you still have a fool” still applies.

First, for them to actually be fools means you hired fools.

If you don’t believe that you are guilty of hiring fools then what you have are talented lost souls looking for a path to productivity and personal satisfaction.

People want to do their work well and they want to feel good about what they do; they care about their company’s success.

It’s not simple or easy or even much fun, but your real job as a founder is guiding your people out of fooldom and into becoming a powerful team.

Not every startup succeeds, but no startup succeeds sans management—whether you call it that or not.

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Henry David Thoreau said, “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”

I say, “Avoid being either fool.”

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Yesterday I said I would share ways to find employees who would be invested in your company and not just in themselves.

The best place to start is to take a look at the stupidest hiring practice I know and why it is so stupid, i.e., only hiring people who are currently working or not off more than six months.

I’ve seen this attitude before during other recessions, but to see it this rampant now, when the economy is still shaky and the job market hasn’t turned around is beyond belief.

As I told the managers who contacted me and I’m telling all of you, I have no empathy for managers who say they can’t find good people.

Pundit managers (those who share their views through articles and blogs) are constantly saying that attitude is more important than skills; add willingness and ability to learn and the value skyrockets and if the candidate is a good cultural fit the value jumps by an order of magnitude.

Manage them well and you will get additional benefits that money can’t buy—gratitude, appreciation and loyalty—all because you gave them a chance.

The wisest engineering vp I ever met once told me that he would rather have a programmer who knew multiple languages than an expert in the one he needed at the moment. He said that technology would keep changing faster and faster and he needed people who could learn on the fly and change with it. He said that a proven ability to change was more valuable than expert status.

When hiring stay focused on the fact that your next top performer won’t necessarily

• have the best grades;
• attend a prestigious school;
• work for your competitor,
• in your industry or
• even be working at all;
• be younger than X;
• have a full head of hair, with no gray; or
• fit easily into your comfort zone.

The bottom line is your success is the result of your ability to recognize jewels where others see only lumps of coal.

Flickr image credit: ZedBee | Zoë Power

The following email came in over the weekend (edited and shortened for clarity).

Hi Miki, About seven months ago my company (name deleted) started providing most of the perks you see written about, including teaching how to be an entrepreneur. We thought that our efforts paid off when we were about to hire some amazing people. Fast forward to the beginning of July when two of my top developers quit because the entrepreneur class was canceled due to the launch schedule of a new product. To top that off, Friday my architect gave notice, explaining that he had found an angel investor and it was a guy he had met at one of our classes! What the hell is going on?

I’ve received seven similar emails and four phone calls over the last few months; they’ve come from executives and managers in development, sales and marketing at all levels in new startups, growth companies and larger, public corporations.

They all say they have gone to extraordinary lengths to attract people, but many of those hired left in 15 months or less.

They all complain that talent is scarce and that many of the people they do manage to attract have no loyalty or interest in anything except their own career.

The managers say they hear variations of the same stories over and over at events they attend, over lunch or when grabbing a beer after work.

My response to each is tailored to their personal situation and much gentler than what I’m going to write now.

You know the old saying that you get what you pay for? That is just as true when it comes to hiring as it is when shopping.

People who join for money or stock or perks will leave for more money or stock or perks.

They have no loyalty because they are not invested emotionally—there is no reason to be. Many candidates get the feeling they are doing the company a favor by joining, based on the lengths to which companies are going to recruit and hire them, and if they leave, they leave. No big deal.

The next part of our discussions focused on where to find and how to hire people who would be invested in the company. Obviously, no silver bullets, but the basics of solutions that each could tailor to their own needs.

Please join me tomorrow when I share that information with you.

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