"Jim Collins has this wonderful metaphor, where he talks about one of the things you have to do as a leader in an organization is you have to decide, do you have the right people on the bus, and then have the people on the bus in the right seat? And so those are two different steps. You want to hire good people that are passionate about your mission, what you're doing, have the basic skills and whatever, but sometimes they're mismatched for a particular role. And you want to keep them in the organization. Because they have good focus and energy, etc. But you might have to switch their seat. For example, how about we try you in Finance for a while, and you produce the financial reports, and let's see how that goes. Right? That's changing the seat. But sometimes, and it’s the hardest point, I think the hardest thing for a leader and a manager is to say, is this person is not the right person to be on this bus. They don't really believe in what we're doing. They want to go this way, and the bus is going this way. And then you have to decide to have the conversation: the bus is going to this destination. Here's the path we're taking. And you have to decide, are you on the bus? Or are you off the bus? And if you're off the bus we'll give you time to find another position. But the bus is leaving the station, you got to decide, are you on the bus or off the bus? And that's hard. So the question you have to ask yourself about this person is, first of all, are they saveable? Secondly, is it worth the effort? And if you believe that that's the case, then you invest the energy to provide them more training or more coaching. And maybe try them out in different types of assignments.
But I think that fundamental question of having that hunger to discover what's in the mind of the customer. That's critical for a UX person. It's an interesting question to ask, what are you hungry for in this organization?" |