Lesson 72: Intention
I spent a lot of time in the library as a child. The kids’ section had a rug where I could lie down as I turned the pages of Magic Tree House. Looking back on my experience in libraries and gravitating towards books, it was the people around me who made the difference in how I came to love reading. For years family, teachers and librarians encouraged me to read until I developed my own appreciation. Today, I love to read and this gift was born out of the acts of the intentional people who cared for me.
Intentional people make a difference by either providing a benefit, such as taking a child to the library, or protecting from harm, such as teaching a child to look both ways before crossing the street. Sometimes the focus in a business drifts from people to profit, so I have been reflecting on how the deliberate actions of people can shape a business’s success. For example, when acquiring a business my first impulse is to optimize processes. However, I do not know what the processes are let alone how to improve them. First, I need the best talent possible to either provide benefits or protect the business from harm. These people ensure we have good processes like the teachers who taught me to have good reading habits.
To learn how to recruit top talent, I read Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. This book provides a blueprint for recruiting top talent at your business. Their guidance uses a combination of their experience and research by Dr. Steve Kaplan at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The first step is making a Scorecard. The Scorecard is a one-page document outlining the mission, competencies, and outcomes of the role you want to fill. The authors explain, “Scorecards are guardians of your culture.” The Scorecard is the manifestation of the intentions you have for the culture of your business. If I am intentional with the Scorecard, then I will hire “A” players who will excel in the business.
Their book focuses on hiring, but I also need to retain top talent. Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition positions you to operate a business for years, so I want to prioritize keeping top talent over those years. This looks like managers shadowing direct reports to listen and learn about their day. In real time, people can explain their skills, responsibilities and even frustrations to their manager uninterrupted. These insights not only allow the manager to make adjustments across the team but also strengthens the relationship between those two people. Moreover, these relationships could drive long-term retention of key people.
My values are to act with love, humility, and wisdom. The first value of love is about people. From day one, I want my people to know I love and care about them. On day two and beyond, my responsibility is to reinforce that message with intentional recruitment and retention. Retaining top people provides the benefit of an experienced and effective team. Recruiting top people protects the culture of excellence built by that team. Being intentional about people is the gift we give to the future of the organization, just like the gift I received between the shelves of the library.
This is Lesson 72: Intention. Next week is Lesson 73: Structure.
