Get the wrong people off the bus, get the right people in the right seats
"It can be difficult to remove a ‘wrong person’, especially in client facing roles"
Tariq Mohammed | Founder | 360 OM
How would you explain what “get the wrong people off the bus, get the right people into the right seats” means?
I consider it great advice, especially in a fast paced agency environment. When you're a small 1-20 person agency. Everyone must move their weight. Appointing a wrong ‘un, can have some serious consequences.
These consequences are not limited to:
Toxicity that impacts culture and creates bad energy. They can demotivate others, causing top performers to leave. Leading team members to not refer potential talent and losing clients due to their inability to work with them.
Not just those things either, but they are effectively taking up a seat with a salary which when given to a top performer, can give your company an edge, motivation for others. There’s nothing like good energy from new motivated team members.
In my experience, I’ve had people who fit into the wrong role, and sometimes you know very quickly. It’s important to have a structured recruitment process, no matter how quickly you are looking to fill roles so you can service more clients. What I do is spend a long time on LinkedIn looking for potential hires to fill my recruitment pipeline, this ensures I have warm conversations and have gotten to know people, minimising the chances of getting a wrong person. I also make sure I do the screener calls and then hand them over to the hiring manager if I think they are still a good fit. The hiring managers are methodical and know what they are looking for from a skills perspective.
What steps does Tariq Mohammed go through before deciding someone is ‘wrong’ for his company?
When you learn you have the ‘wrong’ person, it can be difficult to remove them, especially in client facing roles, where you’ve championed them to clients or in new business they have a pipeline which could be impacted by them leaving as they are the point of contact. When removing the wrong person, sometimes it’s the case of putting pressure on someone and making them aware of the consequences of the impact of their actions. Over-repeat actions, it can lead to the wrong person deciding on their own the company isn’t a good fit for them.
If you have the right people in the right seats, they’ll drive the company forward. They will bring talent to you. Your sales process will be a lot smoother, you’ll be having conversations with clients and your words will naturally flow due to the confidence in your team. They will motivate other team members to do great things.
Humble promo of Tariq Mohammed and 360 OM
Tariq is a great human being who deeply cares about his team, as you can tell from his write up above. He's also a big supporter of the new generations coming into our industry. So if you're looking to get into PPC marketing, I'd definitely recommend a chat with Tariq. Also make sure to follow Tariq on LinkedIn, as he posts regularly about his learnings of building 360 OM.
Explore other perspectives
Paul Stephen
Founder @ Sagittarius
"We have been using this philosophy to underpin our whole approach to talent"
Domenica Di Lieto
Founder @ Emerging Communications
"You need a team. Not just any team, the right team"
Jenny Kitchen
Co-founder @ Yoyo Design
"It can be an effective guide but you shouldn't be blindly wedded to it"
Nitzan Regev-Sanders
Co-founder @ The Creative Copywriter
"It’s just a bit simplistic and misses a few steps"
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