Breaking Bad Habits
Everyone has bad habits, just don’t let them become contagious.
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When you hire a new person, you aren’t just bringing on someone who can contribute great things to your business. You’re bringing on all of the bad habits they have learned at all of their previous jobs. Most companies have bad habits, and every new hire brings a few of them along when they join you.
For example, most companies are bad at hiring. Those companies think (wrongly) they are good at it, and their employees learn their process believing that they are learning an important skill. However, in the end they are just getting good at a bad process which is becoming a bad habit. When they join your company, they will continue to be bad at hiring.
Worse, they may start to “teach” others those same bad habits. Pretty soon, a team that was great at hiring becomes bad due to the infection.
Bad habits are dangerous.
Instead of hoping for the best, or believing that good habits will replace bad habits, you need to approach this problem head-on. Assume every new hire is coming in with bad habits you cannot see, and proactively train them on what is important. How do you do that? Be explicit.
Before a new hire can…
… join an interview panel, train them on what interviewing means at your company. Have them observe interviews and sit in on discussions. Only after they prove they know your process do they get to join, regardless of how many times they have interviewed people in the past.
… talk to a customer, train them on how you treat customers. Have them watch recordings of good customer conversations, and learn how you talk about your business. Record their first attempt and review it with them.
… build something, train them on your development process. Do you favor velocity or quality? Have them observe a great build from zero to completion so they know what great looks like.
A lot of this involves discussing why you do things. Training someone on your process is not enough, because they still might believe their bad habits are wisdom and try to change your process. You need to explain why you do things so that they start to see the bad habits.
All of this extends the on-boarding time for a new hire and means it takes longer for them to make an impact. If you are moving fast, that can seem expensive! However, what is more expensive is losing velocity when bad habits infect the rest of your team.
If you want to build a top performing organization, you need to realize most organizations are poor performers. You can hire great people from them, but be careful. Flush out their bad habits before they take root in your team.
For more on Recruiting, see:
This is great advice, and provides some context on why spending time training is valuable even when you are growing fast. You can quickly lose the ethos and operational quality in your org if you do not.