You can’t always find the right people

The right people are everywhere... they are all around you. Yet the statement is always heard among employers, "It is so hard to find the right people."

What they are really saying is, "It is so hard to find the right people at the cheap price I am willing to pay."

Justin Foster comments that if you find the right people, you don't need a process for everything. His terminology seems a little different than mine. He talks about people filling in the gaps when not having a process and I think of the gaps as the procedures of a process. I think that everything needs a process.

The challenge, though, is finding the right people. Although the people are all around, they aren't going to come to work for you based on your current tactical approach?

Why?

Well, here is the issue. In order to find the right person, you have to find the person who is willing to take ownership. Someone that is willing to take long term ownership. Someone that is willing to take extra time and put in extra effort to make something his own.

That person costs more than the average. That person will want to step outside the realm of his responsibility and create new processes, new procedures and implement new ideas. This person expects to be empowered to do that.

There is a significant problem with this person. Or, more accurately, these people. You get too many bosses and not enough workers, processes get out of hand, quality suffers and automation ceases.

And just when you think you have the right person, that person will leave you for the other "right job". It is like the old saying, "A man waits all his life for the right woman. Once he finds her, she won't marry him because she is waiting for the right man."

When you are an organization with three owners that all know their part, it is really easy. When you are an organization that relies on many people, there things that have to be dictated. Not everyone will take ownership. No matter how good you are at recruiting, you will never get all of your people exactly where you want them.

The best example is a fast food restaurant. I would be great with the customers. I would be efficient with the food. I would be exact with the money. I would cost more than 15 times their normal starting wage. I would never be hired.

Finding the right people is a good sentiment, but sometimes you have to settle because you can't afford the $100 per hour price tag that good people will cost.