Q. How do you attract the
right employees?
People aren’t just looking for
a good job. They’re looking for
a variety of things. The traditional military environment is
very good for military applications — it’s not so good in corporations. But a lot of companies still run their company
command and control down.
That doesn’t bode well for
attracting a high-performance
individual, because they don’t
want that kind of environment.
They’re looking for a safe environment where they might
make a few mistakes here and
there, but they won’t get battered over the head for it.
Quite frankly, the great corporations are ones where you
do make a few mistakes along
the way and you learn from
them. So in some respects, we
encourage people to tell us
what’s not working. We’re not
going to turn around and tell
you, ‘You dummy, you screwed
up.’ We’re going to recognize
that you took a path that didn’t
work. Now tell us how you’re
going to fix it.
Q. How do you create that
environment?
There is a lot that goes into
the mix of how you make that
happen, but there are some simple rules, like people support
what they help create. So you
have to make sure that your
people are part of the creation
process. Then, they are much
more likely to buy in to that and
be a strong advocate of it.
In some of the older styles of
management, you had a dictatorial CEO saying, ‘This is how
we’re going to do it. Now let’s
go execute.’
What’s more important from
a leadership standpoint is setting a clear objective. Inspire
them to climb that mountain.
Then ask them, ‘How do we
get there?’ They’re part of the
process of climbing the mountain, as opposed to saying,
‘We’re going to climb Everest,
and this is how we’re going to
do it.’
HOW TO REACH: XOJET Inc. (650) 594-6300 or www.xojet.com
