One of the most exciting parts — this entire facilities expansion process has been managed not by me, but by an employee who’s skilled in the area of construction management. When I delegated that to him I had no idea what a full-time job it would be. I couldn’t have done it myself.

I realized I was going in circles, ruling out every option because I didn’t like something about it, and I knew somebody else wouldn’t like it.

I was being a pinball, letting myself be bounced from one obstacle to the next and settling nowhere. Pinballs don’t make choices, they just react to whatever pushes them.

Stating the obvious: that’s not leadership.

Here’s the thought process that helped me get a grip:

• I am being a pinball, and that’s not how I want to lead.
• I will be the decider in this situation. It is my place and I will take it.
• This is not a no-brainer situation. All options have downsides. I am willing to choose something less than ideal.
• My choice will be criticized by people around me. Those critics might even turn out to be right. I am willing to take those risks. I will still be the decider.

From there I moved on to normal strategic thinking about options, outcomes, and obstacles. I decided, and I like the results.

Choose from the options you have, not the options you wish you had. Include the options that will get you criticized. Be a decider.

Sometimes leaders are mistreated by the very people they took on all of the above for. Sometimes being a leader is no fun at all. Sometimes I question whether leadership is worth it.

If your goals are safety from criticism and freedom from responsibility, leadership will disappoint you.

If your goals are influence and opportunity to do things that matter, leadership will multiply your efforts like nothing else can.

If your goals are influence and opportunity and safety and freedom, it’s not gonna happen.

As for me, I want to live a life of influence and difference-making more than I want to live a comfortable life. So yes, I say leadership is worth it.

These hiring “fails” happen in every business, and more often than I’d like in mine. I think it’s worth drawing a few lessons from them.

When you realize you’ve made a hire that isn’t going to be a success, it’s really important to act quickly to correct the situation. Healthy organizational cultures quickly identify who fits and who doesn’t. Respectfully and appropriately send the person out the door and on the way to a job that will be a better fit for him or her.

Ask what did we miss, and how we could we see that in future candidates before we hire them? What else did we learn?

Don’t beat yourselves up. Examine your interviewing process, but remember sometimes you can ask all the right questions and still not know how a candidate will work out until you see them in action.

Realize you aren’t going to have a 100% success rate, and you don’t need to. Do-overs may not be ideal, but they are available, and they are way better than keeping someone who doesn’t fit in your organization long term.

See Hiring as a Major Project

It’s a lot of work to recruit and hire a great employee. In most small companies it’s an extra project on top of a manager’s regular workload. This can make it tempting to look at it as something to quickly take care of on the side. I’ve learned it’s more realistic to see it is a big project and give it serious time and attention.

Stack the Deck

Make it a tournament with many entrants and multiple rounds of elimination. We’ve found it’s much easier to compare candidates to each other and choose the best one, than it is to decide if any given candidate is good enough. Our goal is to get down to two finalists that are both excellent candidates for the job. Put yoruself in a position to choose the best of a great lot.

Don’t Give the Benefit of the Doubt

This is hard, because it’s not how we treat customers and existing employees. Hiring is not the time to give the benefit of the doubt. You must take the limited information you have at face value. If the candidate is late for the interview, don’t assume it’s a fluke. It may be, but more than likely it’s part of a pattern of behavior. If a candidate has a troubled history, look for objective evidence that lasting change has occurred. Past mistakes are not a deal-breaker, but a sincere story about turning over a new leaf is not enough.

Keep Digging Until The Story Unravels

There’s a point in the interview process when you’ve gained enough insight into a person to fairly reliably predict their answer to the next question. You’ve figure out their core motivations and seen common themes in how they respond to a variety of situations. I’ve learned if I haven’t gotten to that point, I haven’t interviewed that person well enough. If I can’t get to that point because a candidate is giving vague or inconsistent answers, that’s a red flag.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/03/three-masters.html

He asked, “Are you doing this because it’s best for your business, or because you want to be right?”

I like being right, and I hate being wrong, so that question was hard for me to digest. My thoughts ran forward to how much damage I might do to my lifetime impact potential. What if I don’t have the maturity to do the wise thing even when it means being wrong in my eyes or someone else’s? The foolish choices I could make in the name of being right scare me.

Leaders need to be resilient. Part of that is having the security to admit a wrong, or tolerate being called wrong, and not let that interfere with wise decision-making.

I’m really thankful he asked me that tough question.

When cultural alignment problems exist, two things need to happen:

1. The leader needs to clearly communicate in words and by example “how we do things here”.

2. Team members who are unwilling or unable to align with the desired culture must be replaced.

If you want a high-energy, can-do culture and you have a low-stress, enjoy-the-process team member, it’s probably not going to work.

There is no such thing as culture change without turnover.

Of course the logical thing to do going forward is purposefully select employees who fit the desired culture at hiring time.

My American friends, I want to challenge how you think about distant countries like India.

Value the Differences

Realize that there are good reasons for the strange customs, the strange food, the strange family culture. Do not assume that different equals inferior. In most cases the American way is not better, it’s just suited for a different context. In most cases our way wouldn’t work as well there as their way does. America is great at a lot of things, but not everything is better here.

See the Commonality

Some of the circumstances are different, but people everywhere have ambition to better themselves, loyalty to family and friends, desire for meaningful work, struggles with insecurity, and pain in difficult relationships. Human emotion and human psychology are pretty universal.

Care Across Borders

Do you see yourself on the same team with your fellow citizens of earth in all countries, or do you see opposing teams? Are you willing to give up some prosperity if it means more people across the globe can lift themselves out of poverty? Are you willing to send aid money to places in need? Are you willing to send outsourced jobs to places in need? Isn’t a job better than a handout?

Do you love people because they are from your country, because they are like you, or because they are inherently valuable humans?

I thought by now I’d be aching to go home, yearning for familiar comforts, and disturbed by the brokenness of this place. I feel an ache, but it’s one of sadness at leaving this place that embraced me wholeheartedly and gave me new friends. I feel a yearning to look into the face of every man, woman, and child here and inspire them to believe their own life is of infinite value. And although I see the brokenness here, as I leave I am disturbed by what is missing in America.

I thought I would pity the people here, but I don’t. They don’t need or want my pity. They want opportunity. They want freedom from corruption. They want to better themselves. They want human connection and they have it in spades.

Kolkata is a beehive overflowing with buzzing humanity. By contrast America now seems sterile, cold, and isolated. Here even driving down the road is an interactive experience full of humanity. Take the buses for example, jammed full plus a dozen people on the roof all chattering, laughing, leaning out the windows, jumping on and off as they lurch along. Or the constant blaring of horns which seems like futile insanity until you being to understand that most of it is caring signaling for the safety of pedestrians, carts, and bicycles engaged in the high stakes weaving dance of jockeying for space on the narrow road ahead.

In America we sit alone in our separate cars, staring straight ahead, barely acknowledging the fellow members of humanity we are passing. If you’ve never been swept away by a place like this I probably sound crazy to you, but right now it’s the American version of driving that makes no sense to me.

I came here hoping I could give the people of Kolkata something of what I’ve been blessed with. I didn’t expect to receive so much of what they have been blessed with. I’m leaving here with a bigger heart more deeply in love with the beauty of humanity.