Chris LoCurto

Finding The Life & Business You Really Want

Leadership ·

I was interviewing Clint Smith, co-founder of Emma, for an upcoming EntreLeadership Podcast when he said something that jumped out at me. We were discussing when his company realized that doing short interviews in the hiring process didn’t  work. To which he said, “Early on, we revamped our process.” 

The key is they revamped EARLY in the process. As I travel around the country, I meet leaders and entrepreneurs who tend to have the same thing in common when it comes to this hiring thing— they keep doing the same ineffective, non-productive style of interviewing. They talk to a few people once or twice and hire someone, only to find out 30 to 90 days later the new team member just isn’t working out.

The twelve steppers have a name for this—INSANITY! By their definition, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As a leader, you have to recognize when something isn’t working well inside your organization. No matter how bogged down and chaotic your life is at the time, all you’re doing is perpetuating the problem when you don’t revamp your processes.

When you see there is a problem, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is there something not working with this process? If so, what exactly is it? Can I pinpoint the problem by looking at the situation? If not, can anyone else on my team see that there’s a problem?
  • Now that I know there’s something wrong, what in the world can I do to fix it?! What NEW processes can I put in place to make sure this doesn’t continue to happen? Will the new processes become part of my company’s culture? If so, how am I going to share them companywide on a consistent basis?
  • Now that I’ve successfully revamped this particular situation, what other areas in my organization need a hard look? What do my team members think is broken and needs some quick attention?

As you do this, you will find that it takes time to save time. A little bit of effort on the front side will save you a looooooot of time on the back.

Question: What steps do you take to change broken processes?