Good post from 37signals about self-managment - one of the key principles of democratic organisations:
"When you’re hiring, seek out people who are managers of one.
What’s that mean? A manager of one is someone who comes up with their own goals and executes them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves.
These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of handholding or supervision.
How can you spot these people? Look at their history. Have they been self-sufficient at previous jobs? Have they defined their own role before? Have they started their own site/company before? Or done their own thing in some other way? Find someone with initiative and a budding entrepreneurial spirit. And then nurture it.
You want someone who’s capable of building something from scratch and seeing it through. When you find these people, it frees up the rest of your team to work more and manage less."
What’s that mean? A manager of one is someone who comes up with their own goals and executes them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves.
These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of handholding or supervision.
How can you spot these people? Look at their history. Have they been self-sufficient at previous jobs? Have they defined their own role before? Have they started their own site/company before? Or done their own thing in some other way? Find someone with initiative and a budding entrepreneurial spirit. And then nurture it.
You want someone who’s capable of building something from scratch and seeing it through. When you find these people, it frees up the rest of your team to work more and manage less."
In my experience this is much easier said than done. It's so hard to test for these kinds of character traits in the recruitment process. I do like the idea of seeking out people who have started their own thing in the past before - will give this a try.
Hi Tom,
A couple of things to help you identify and keep/motivate these people long-term.
A recruitment seminar with some well-thought out group activities will reveal a great deal about a persons interpersonal and motivational skills. We tend to behave in 'default' mode when faced with the unexpected, this is what you need to see at interview.
Great people often stand out for easy identification, I think the real challenge then falls to you as an employer to be just as excellent. By having compelling career development paths you will always be able to maintain an employees self-initiated drive, determination and motivation.
I currently hire for a big techie fruit company and these are our current directives too so i though I'd share them with like minds ;)
Good luck
Hadj
Posted by: Hadj | 03 December 2008 at 11:54 PM
Tom,
We really enjoyed the ideas and sentiment of the "Hire managers of one" post. One of our biggest challenges as a boutique ad agency is finding people with a diverse knowledge base and self-sufficiency. Internally we speak of people that can view and participate in the entire "conveyor belt" (from start to end) as opposed to simply focusing on one section of it.
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