If you are starting your own company or creating a new team that will report to you, the CEO of a company, the question is how to choose right people for the right job and that's not entirely a question for your human resource department.
Article continues below
As a manager, you already know that the three key managers in any company are its CEO, CFO and COO. Those three managers are responsible for the overall business aspects, finance issues and day to day operations. However, if you need or want a bigger team to lead the company with you, you need more experts and the question is how to choose them to maximize the possibility that you will get the best possible answer to your questions.
See, we said the best possible answer, not the answer your like the most and the difference between those two is huge. That leads us to the criteria No1: don't choose people from your field of expertise.
People usually tend to choose the company of similar people and that, obviously, reflects on the business life. A financial expert tends to summon other financial experts to the team, an engineer knows how to speak with other engineers and will call them, and that stands true for any other field of expertise. But, that's wrong in the core.
To lead the company efficiently, you need diversity. You need people from different fields to create you a bigger picture seen from several angles. Maybe you are a truly engineering company, for example, but you need a financial expert, somebody deep in marketing, somebody who knows with people, an expert that can sell anything to anybody... Without diversity your views will be narrow and you and your team will not explore all the possibilities out there.
Advice No2: Don't choose people that think and act like you. You know from life that there are people that act almost the same. This is cool if you are going out for a beer but not so good for the company. You don't need people that think the same, you need people with different opinions and courage to say that and express their visions and ideas.
You need people with opposite ideas about your business. Remember: if they all agree with your ideas all the time, either a) nobody has their own idea or b) somebody is just trying to keep his job and doesn't want to disturb the flow. In other words, you need diversity in personalities.
Advice No3 is very simple but important: Choose people of different ages. Young people will bring their energy and older people will bring their experience to the table. Together, they will be unbeatable. In other words, you need diversity.
Yes, we are probably boring with "diversity," but if and only if you have different personalities and experts in your team, you can be sure that you will get the best possible answer to your questions. And when you compile that team, move away and let them work. ■