Roles & Responsibilities - Post #1

I've been dragging on my 10 keys to exponential growth series, but I really need to get some of this out. I've discussed R&R before, but I want to reiterate how critical I think this aspect of business building is. When I first started as an entrepreneur I never even considered writing a role description. I always assumed that because “I” knew what the company need and what I wanted out of the hire. As you can imagine (or maybe not) I made a lot of poor hires, and the ones that were really good often ended up doing things other than what I wanted them to do. I realized that my picker is good; that is to say I am pretty good a finding smart, hardworking, dedicated, passionate and on-culture people, but I don’t necessarily align them with the right roles. Of course getting great people is critical. In fact, this skill is probably more important because once I learned how to write a good role description, my recruiting acumen started to hockey stick. Here is how I approach a new role.

A good role description does 2 primary things; first, it gives me and my team an opportunity to fully vet out what it is we need and expect from the job. Second it gives the new hire a very clear framework for success. As simple as it sounds, if an employee doesn’t know what they are expected to do and if they are unclear about how effective they are at achieving the requirements of the job, they will most likely fail and certainly be frustrated. You would be surprised how many people at your company have no idea what is expected of them or if they are successful in the role.

I start by researching similar roles in other companies that I respect. For Leads360, I almost always start with Salesforce.com. Incidentally, borrowing what works from other companies or people who have proven success is one of my favorite strategies. There’s no shame in copying what works vs. reinventing the wheel (that’s a topic for another post). I go to Salesforce.com and look at the comparable roles. From there I start to build out the role. I always use the same formatting and I require all my managers who hire people to use the same format.

I think it’s important to include very specific and measurable objectives for the role and the performance metrics the person will be held accountable for. No matter where the employee is in the org chart, this practice will pay dividends and save you many headaches.