A question I frequently hear from managers is “how do we hire excellent employees?” and I get frustrated when I see training/management/HR professionals dismiss the workforce as unmotivated or lacking something that makes them excellent. Most people come to the table excellent and it is the organization that provides roadblocks to that excellence.

The question of excellence is a legitimate question and I like hearing that an organization is focused on bringing the right people into positions. But I think this point of view can get skewed and I see organizations letting talent slip through their fingers because they are waiting for all their people to follow them when really, the organization should be following their people. If leadership has done its job and provided a clear vision, it is the talent that will lead a company and make it succeed. Rather than getting worker bees to complete the tasks set out for them, an organization can utilize the power of the employee population and combined education/experience pool to help strategize and implement.

I see potentially great organizations stuck in mediocrity because rather than utilize the talent pool they have or could have, they just want people to do task work. They are more interested in headcount and salary than hiring great talent that may take them to places they never imagined they could and would go. Visions are about potential. Now this may all sound loosy-goosy and impractical. I’m not saying the organization ignores its basic mission in favor of fun pie-in-the-sky projects. This is about giving employees some latitude and support to innovate even the basic mission tasks. Just because one process has worked doesn’t mean it is scalable over time. All processes should be reviewed and improved and even automated down the line somewhere.

I can’t tell you have many organizations I’ve talked to over the years where I discussed what they were doing and what they could do to advance their own work. Time and time again their response is "Wow, we aren’t ready for you yet. Maybe in two or three years…" That always floors me. What do they need two or three years to do? Why wouldn’t they start making changes now so that in two or three years they have those changes implemented? Why put off growth? They just set themselves up to hit a crises first and then they are scrambling to implement change as a response.

Hiring someone should mean matching education and experience with the skill set required for the job. But once they are in, if they aren’t succeeding, simply wondering why the employee isn’t excellent is a mistake and a missed opportunity. What is wrong in the organization where the person with the knowledge and the skill can’t succeed? What barriers are preventing their success? To some people this sounds like coddling but this is also an indication of something that is broken. If a person doesn’t have the resources or the support to be successful, it is likely most people will fail in that position. In fact, it may mean that the WRONG people end up succeeding. Then the question of excellent employee becomes about having the wrong people in the wrong places and whose fault is that?