Adjust as you change
While the CFO that Dukker talked about couldn’t be successful in the early stages of his business, executives like that often thrive in environments where rules and processes are already in place, and these are the types of people you need as your business changes and grows.
“As time goes on, you select for people who know how to take a manufacturing organization that does 1 million units a year and take you to a manufacturing organization that does 5 million units a year,” Dukker says. “That’s a completely different skill set from the person who created the original structure. Now you’re looking for people who like to adjust the dials perhaps more than the person who’s going to come in and say, ‘We want to change absolutely everything,’ which can be disruptive at many levels in the company.”
To start, Dukker likes to ask a question that seems like it has nothing to do with business but that he’s found to be quite telling: When you go to the amusement park, what drives you? There’s a big difference between the people who want to go on all the fastest, biggest rides and the people who prefer to appreciate the machines and how intricate they are in how they operate and keep people safe.
“There are people who tell you, ‘I like the machine,’” Dukker says. “The other says, ‘You point me at the target, and I go “bam” for it.’ People tend to self-select in that area. And further, if they don’t know why you’re asking the question other than to understand their personality — because you can’t really ascribe to what’s more valuable to the interviewer — people tend to answer those questions genuinely.”
Asking questions like this is important because not everyone will be as honest as that CFO candidate.
“Most people, when they’re interviewing, are very focused on getting the job, and that’s where you have to start asking that question to begin to understand whether they have the ability to create structure,” he says. “This you have to do by understanding and asking questions about their business-related personal life, how they deal with challenge, what makes them feel thwarted.”
He says these kinds of questions will help you determine if someone finds lack of structure exciting or if he or she is the person who thrives best in structure.
Taking this approach of determining whether someone is better early on or later on will help your business thrive. He says that if you can do better than 60 or 70 percent in your hiring percentage, then you’re doing pretty good, but when you make those hiring mistakes, just realize that it’s part of business and learn from them.
“Over time, through making mistakes, you begin to learn more about how to understand the personality dynamics of the person you’re talking to,” Dukker says. “Again, this concept of chemistry, teaming, comes up regularly in terms of why companies succeed and why companies fail.”
How to reach: NComputing Inc., (650) 594-5800 or www.ncomputing.com
