Find those who know which job
they want. During the interview, I try to find out if this is really
the job this person wants. The
majority of turnover is people
say they want a certain job
and then, when they actually
start to live it, they start making a case why they should be
doing a different job.
I spend time trying to understand why people change jobs,
why did they leave a job, why
did they go to a job, what did
they learn and would they have
done it the same way looking
back. It’s not that there’s necessarily right or wrong in terms
of how much time you spend
at a company, but it helps me
understand their thinking. If I
don’t get good answers to why
a person left, that causes me to
question whether that person
understands what they’re looking for.
I ask, ‘What is it you like
about this job? Sell me on why
you want this job, not why
you’re qualified.’ And you have
to wait because everybody will
say, ‘I’m motivated by challenges and the reward.’ Well,
OK, we’re all motivated by
challenges, but I want to know
about this job in particular.
It’s not that hard to figure out
whether someone is qualified.
Occasionally you’ll make a mistake there, but the bigger the
issue is, a lot of times, someone
who is qualified for the job but
didn’t really want to do it ends
up failing, and it looks like they
weren’t qualified.
Reinforce change with positive
examples. Say you expect people to change, then find examples and ways to reinforce that
with individual behavior and
reward people.
You can’t simply stand up,
tell people to change and
expect them to do so. You
have to do that to start with,
because you can’t expect them
to change without telling them
they need to, but it’s one of
those, tell them, watch what
they’re doing, then continue to
tell them by finding individual
cases where you find the
behavior you’re looking for.
Always put your passion on display. You have to be careful as a
senior executive when you go
through periods where you are
depressed or sad. Maybe it’s
personal, maybe it’s business,
but you have to do as much as
you can to departmentalize that so that you are never really truly sad or pessimistic.
In situations where it’s too
much for you to handle, take a
break or step out. A lot of people aren’t going to go through
the same basic analysis to figure out whether they should be
interested in this and, to some
extent, people take their measure of trust and confidence in
something through you.
So maybe I woke up with a
headache, but if I’m going to
get up in front of a bunch of
employees, I need to show
that passion. If I can’t, I need
to cancel the meeting or do
something else. You have to
understand that the more senior you are, the more critical it
is that your passion be seen,
shown and understood.
HOW TO REACH: Blue Coat Systems Inc., (866) 302-2628 or www.bluecoat.com