you need the right person, not the almost-right person

Most managers say they know how important it is to have the right people on their staff, but many (or even most) don’t act accordingly.

We've all worked with managers who dance around performance problems rather than addressing them head-on, who don’t focus enough on developing and retaining their best people, and who are way too slow to fire, if they do it at all. These are managers who either under-estimate the importance of having the right people or overestimate their own powers to shape their staffers’ performance.

The impact of having a team of high performers is dramatic. I'm not talking about small gains, like 5% or 10% in productivity and effectiveness. I'm talking about massive, startling gains. Research from a range of fields shows that high performers can outpace lower-performers by factors of five times or more. In other words, one high performer can have the same impact as five average performers.

You've probably seen this in your own experience. Most people have had the experience of having an employee who struggled to handle the volume of work and who swore that there was too much work for any one person to juggle ... but when they left, their replacements were able to handle all of the work and then some, to the point that we ended up giving the replacement extra work. I once inherited an employee who had racked up a six-month backlog of work. I replaced him with someone new, who within one month had processed the six-month backlog and was fully caught up.

Having the right person in the job makes a huge difference. And having the wrong person will hold you back tremendously.

What does this mean for managers? You should put significant energy into getting and keeping the right people and moving out the ones who don’t meet that bar. And while it's certainly worth some investment of your time to help develop people who are struggling, ultimately the person needs to meet a high bar, not a medium one. Otherwise, the opportunity cost is just too high.

male team won't talk to me

A reader writes:

I am a female (in my thirties) working within a team of men (IT developers). I am a new role for me as a business analyst. I have been working in the team for approximately 6 months, and if they didn't say hello to me in the morning, they wouldn't speak to me at all. They speak fine to each other, often joking around, but spend the rest of the time with headphones on while they do their work.

I've tried initiating conversation with them. They respond well, but they don't initiate conversation with me. For example: I need to ask them how their weekends were, they won't ask me the same question. It is like pulling teeth. I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

I am frustrated that I cannot get to know these guys. They go to lunch with each other at least once a week and I am not invited. I am really not sure how to break the ice and get these guys talking and communicating with me. I have mentioned this to my manager (who I used to work with in another position) but he cut from a very similar cloth as the guys I am trying to get to know.

Warning: I'm about to make a wild generalization. Many men who work in IT don't have great social skills around people who aren't like them and/or aren't comfortable with the kind of small talk and chit chat that can be normal social currency in other groups.

Many men in IT don't fit this profile -- in fact, I've somehow ended up with an IT team who don't fit this stereotype at all (and if they're reading this, I don't want them to think I'm talking about them because I'm not). But for whatever reason, the field certainly attracts a decent share of guys who get along really well with guys who are like them, but not so easily with others. (Here are a couple of interesting takes on this.)

So I'd caution you against thinking that this is deliberate or about you. I think it's more likely that this is just how these guys are with everyone except other developers and they don't even know they're making you feel shut out.

What can you do to build relationships with them? Pay attention to what interests them (probably not small talk about their weekends, but try technical topics); ask them intelligent questions about complex subjects they know well, and listen to their answers; and don't take it personally if it takes a while.

Also, read The Nerd Handbook (his term, not mine) over at Rands in Repose, written by an engineering manager.

What do others think?

what it's like to make a job offer

One of my favorite parts of my job is making job offers. It's a great feeling to call someone up and offer them a job that you know they really want.

Most candidates, when receiving a job offer, fall into one of these five categories:
- the excited freak-out
- the pro-forma delay
- the play-it-cool
- the sucker-punch
- the unexpected refusal

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I explain each of these categories and which I like best. Please head over there and check it out!

Can I reapply after being rejected?

A reader writes:

I don't know if this is a scenario that happens very often, but I had what I believed to be a successful initial phone interview with a company in a similar field. The HR manager I interviewed with had been very enthusiastic about continuing the interview process. I felt confident that I had all the qualifications and skills needed for the job, and was waiting for news on an interview with the hiring manager, but two weeks later, I received a fairly formulaic "thanks, but no thanks" email.

I assumed they had found someone else for the position, but to my surprise a month later, the same job has been re-posted. Should I contact the HR manager again, and what should I say? I don't want to be a pest but I don't want to give up on this opportunity either. Any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated!

I think you should give it a shot. There's no harm in contacting them and saying that you noticed the job has been reposted and that you'd like to reiterate your interest in it.

They may have reposted it because their chosen candidate didn't work out for some reason, or because they ended up dissatisfied with all of their finalists. Of course, it's also possible that they rejected you earlier for reasons that still stand -- that the match isn't right in some way. But you won't know unless you try, and in some situations they may be glad for the opportunity to consider you again (for instance, if they've reconfigured their ideas about what they're looking for, or if you were earlier a runner-up to someone else who ultimately didn't work out).

I wrote a few weeks ago about the usual futility of appealing a job rejection, but this is a bit different. You're not writing back right after your rejection and asking them to reconsider; you're saying you noticed that the job has reappeared and are wondering if circumstances might have changed.

Good luck!