Putting a Red Velvet Rope Around Your Bus

If you are like me, it has been a very long time since you have stood in front of an establishment waiting in line to get past a red velvet rope. These days, if I see a red velvet rope out front I know it is just not my kind of place!

Today, I want to tell you why you must have a “red velvet rope” policy at your business.

Red Velvet Rope

What is a red velvet rope supposed to do at a club? It (and the bouncers behind it) are supposed to keep the people who don’t “fit in” on the street. That is exactly what the red velvet rope policy at your organization must do – keep people out that don’t fit your values.

Trust me – keeping the wrong people off of your bus is a whole lot easier than removing them once you’ve let them in. We’ll cover “bus cleaning” in next week’s post.

Why all the “bus” talk? Getting the right people on the bus is a phrase from Jim Collin’s book, “Good to Great.” In that book, Jim makes the great point that one of the first things you’ve got to do to take a company from good to great is to get the right people on your organizational bus. I couldn’t agree more.

We’ve discussed the importance of values in a previous post. One of the hardest parts of living out your organizational values is learning how to hire for values. Most of us have gotten pretty good at hiring for skillsets and past successes and that is still very necessary, but to have a healthy organization you must be willing to fire your best performer if they don’t follow the values of your organization. Keeping a fantastic performer at the expense of your culture is a terrible trade off. Do not do it!

How do you hire for values and skills? There is no one perfect answer and this post would get way too long if we tried to cover everything, though we will probably dig deeper into this topic in a future webinar. Below are 6 steps that you must have in your hiring process if you want to get the right people on your bus and keep the wrong people off:

  1. Have a Pipeline – You need people lined up at your door to work for you. Always be hiring, even if you can’t always hire, always interview. You never know when someone amazing will walk through your door. If that amazing person shows up, find them a spot on your team.Your current “A” players are your best resource for finding more “A” players. Make sure your A-players are happy and telling their friends about the fantastic place they work at!

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  2. Know What You Want – Sounds kind of dumb to state, but know what skillsets and experiences are needed to excel at the position you are hiring for. You should already know your core values and that this person must fit the values and have the skills. For more on defining your core values, go here.

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  3. Know Your Questions – Structure your interviews with specific questions for values and skills. If you don’t, hiring dissolves into a petty personality contest. You’ll have unstructured time to “get to know” your candidates later but make sure each of your interviewers works through the same list of questions. They will need to compare the answers they received later.

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  4. Take Your Time – Hiring is the most important aspect of your job as a leader. Trust me. Once you’ve cleaned up enough messes from bad hires, you will stop underinvesting in your interview process. This investment includes an in person debrief by everyone involved in the hiring process at the end of the day.

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  5. Take them Home – This one may strike you as a bit overzealous, but it works. You may not be able to do this with all of your hires, but your managers can. Take your candidates out to dinner with your family. Have them bring their family. When you hire a parent, you are hiring all the problems associated with the whole clan. Make sure you know them. If someone is married to crazy, understand that you are hiring crazy when you hire their spouse.Also, your spouse will see things in your candidates that you will never see! Why? Because they don’t need to hire the person like you do. Just try this and let me know how it works for you. It has been an amazing tool for some of the greatest leaders I know.

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  6. Two Separate Interviews – Break your interviews up into values interviews and skill interviews so you can stay focused on making sure your candidate fits both.

Let me share with you one last story that I picked up recently from a Patrick Lencioni book. One firm that really valued humility in their culture asked 5 candidates (all male and dressed in suits) to switch out their suit pants for khaki shorts for the interview day. Get the picture – dress suit and tie, dress shoes, dark socks and khaki shorts. Some of the candidates found the exercise humiliating and left. The others had fun with it and were a great fit for the company’s culture.

Don’t be afraid to break the mold a bit when you are deciding who gets on your bus!

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