Diagnose your weaknesses
When you’re looking to fully evaluate your company to help with direction, a self-evaluation is an important part. Ubbing knows the most successful organizations have diversity in thinking and skills at the top, and as talented as she is, she knows she can’t keep all the balls in the air by herself.
“I always hire among those with whom I’ll be working most directly to my weaknesses and not my strengths,” she says. “I don’t need six Minas here; I need one and people who can supplement my skills with skills that are not mine.”
In order to find out what skills someone would need to complement you, you have to do a survey of your own skills. That means taking a moment to figure out the things you know to be your weaknesses.
“I’m not clinical at all, my background is finance and accounting, obviously I’m going to hire some very good communicators that are very well trained in the clinical aspects of the organization and can handle that,” Ubbing says.
Beyond obvious gaps in your own skills, you have to be willing to understand who can do some of the things you can with higher efficiency than you.
“Our CFO is much more detailed than I ever was as a CFO, and he enjoys the analysis,” Ubbing says. “I can still interpret a financial statement and develop a budget. … I just know that there are others who can do them much better.”
Another indicator of where you need more help is in things you just don’t enjoy doing — that may be telling. You can’t delegate everything on that list, obviously, but it may be a sign you’re not efficient in some things.
“Sometimes it comes around, and this is the advantage of being a CEO, it comes around the things that I don’t enjoy doing,” Ubbing says. “Of course, there are things I don’t enjoy that I have to do.”