Not long after he joined the
company in 2004, John W.
Combs gave ShoreTel Inc. the
equivalent of a sucker punch.
The recently named chairman,
president and CEO told the
then-$18.8 million unified communications company that the
new revenue goal was $100
million. With the room suddenly
silenced, Combs — who helped
lead Nextel’s growth during the
’90s — assured people that the
aggressive challenge was one
the company could handle.
His track record helped sell
his employees on the idea, and
four years later, the company
exceeded the goal, posting fiscal 2008 revenue of $128.7 million. After that, Combs found
his people a little harder to
knock out.
“When it was clear we were
going to make the goal, it was
not as crazy to say we’re going
to hit a billion,” Combs says. “A
new hire might say, ‘This guy
doesn’t know what he’s talking
about,’ and other people tell
them, ‘He is crazy, but we will
do it.’”
Smart Business spoke with
Combs about why you need to
ask who a potential hire’s biggest
antagonist is, how you get your
people to believe in unbelievable
growth goals and why you have
to build an A team.
Take the time to find an ‘A.’
You
have to attract people to your
team that are A players. If the
executives at the organization
are not A’s, then that isn’t happening. A’s hire A’s. B’s don’t
hire A’s — and C’s never hire
an A. So if you’re going to build
a team — particularly if you’re
going to grow something very
large very quickly — you’ve
got to have people who can do
and accomplish a lot more and
are more adept than people
who are a B or a C.
I personally expect that the
quality of the management
teams, the sales teams, the
engineering teams that we’re
bringing in are top notch.
There’s a real tendency to say,
‘This (person) seems good. I’m
in trouble, and I don’t have any
other candidates, and she may
not be an A, but let me get her
on board right now.’ … And
you say, ‘We’ll straighten her
out later.’ And that never happens because you don’t
change people.
A lot of people seem to think
that checking references is
just something that you do as
it’s convenient. I personally
take time to check references
for the people that join my
team, and I will spend an hour
on the phone with those individuals probing.
I developed a list of questions, which helps to really get
at the issues. If they didn’t
include their former supervisor, ask, ‘Who was their boss,
and what would he or she say
about them?’ The one I like the
best: ‘This guy Mike sounds
like a good guy; who was his
biggest antagonist in the
organization? Oh, it was the
CFO. Well, what would the
CFO say about him?’
Or, ‘Give me a difficult situation you were in and how he
reacted. Would you hire him
again — if so, why?’ And if the
answer to that question is yes,
you ask, ‘Why haven’t you
hired them in your organization?’
