I also don’t want bystanders, people who give diagnosis but would not have a clue about treatment, people who dwell in what is wrong, those who quote their previous company every minute, complainers, or even rebels without a cause.
Life is short. I want people who build stuff, who fail and go back, who shape a future (sorry for the cliché, literally, I mean it) who don’t have all the answers, (particularly the ones who don’t have all the answers, the ones who have them are disqualified for any organizational job I can think of, mind you, they may have been good neurosurgeons), those who are infectious in their positive outlook.
Yes, builders can get tired, frustrated, disappointed, upset. But they move forward, they bring more bricks to the building, different colours and shapes, they keep going.
If I have builders, serious builders, of the kind above, I will also then have problem solvers and, who knows, a few flow charts. If you focus on problem solving, you’ll be proficient and will need more problems to solve. Those problems breed like rabbits.
And when I say ‘I’, I mean for me, for my companies, but also my clients, big or small, with small or big budgets. I don’t care whether you are in the business of building a company, an idea, a human health system, a political dream or a social movement. Building is the overriding, non-negotiable, highest rank competency. Compared with anything else, no contest for me.
I have not seen that much ‘building’ as a competence of HR systems. I’ve seen teamwork, and ‘managing change’ and coaching, and developing others, and listening, and all that good stuff in grids and matrixes of 30×30 little boxes in HR power points. Where are the builders?
By the way, people are trying to build corporate 21st Century with 20Th century (19th Century?) competencies. Good luck. A conversation for another day.
I have not said entrepreneur, or people with ownership, or empowerment, or business development, or M&A engineers. I said builders. Building is much bigger than all of that.
So, my ideal interview has two questions: (1) What have you built? (2) What will you build?
And the job offer has one line: come and help us to build this to its next level of possibilities, particularly the ones we have not even imagined yet.