Starts at 30:50 in the full video, available below.
Graham: One of the things we do that’s a little different is we put our own teams in place almost every time. Imagine you’re a VP of marketing, or even at a lower level, at XYZ company, and the founder comes in and says, “Hey, guess what? I just sold the business to Alpine Investors, and here’s Sarah Smith, your new CEO.” You’d be freaking out. There’s a lot that would feel wrong about that for you.
The first thing our CEOs do—Sarah Smith in this case—is go on a listening tour. She’ll sit down with the top people in the company, with a notebook, and spend 45 minutes to an hour and a half with each person, asking a series of questions. How long have you been here? What’s your role? What’s going well? What else? What else? What’s not going well? What else? What else? Where should we be focusing our time? If you were me, what would you prioritize? Where are we wasting time? What are your biggest ideas for the business?
Now, this VP of marketing might think, “Wow. I’ve worked here for 15 years, and no one’s ever asked my opinion before.” And if you hired McKinsey to come in and determine your strategy, you know what they’d do? They’d do exactly that. They’d talk to your people, talk to your customers, synthesize the information, and give you an answer. If Sarah does that herself, she benefits in several ways. First, she understands it better because she’s doing the work. Second, she saves the money on McKinsey. Third, she builds rapport with the people sharing their insights with her. Then she’ll synthesize that information and come back.
This doesn’t mean she takes every idea. For example, if Alex suggests, “Hey, I think we should go international,” Sarah can respond, “I heard you about going international. That’s not a current priority, but it’s on the list, and I appreciate your input.” Alex still feels heard, like she had input. It’s incredibly powerful.
We have a saying: “The answer is always in the room.” Here are people who have talked to customers, worked on this product for 15 years. The answer’s in the room. This is the mindset we coach our CEOs to adopt when they enter these businesses.
That approach changes everything, doesn’t it? Just coming into the room with that mindset. When we brainstorm, when we use our imagination, sure, those sessions may lead to research that needs to be done. But the actual idea generation? It’s going to happen in the room.
And I think it’s increasingly rare these days, for some reason, to recognize that people need to feel like they matter. They’re not just numbers at the end of the day. These are real people, and the best businesses have great people driving them. It’s essential to make sure people feel valued in these companies. They have families to think about, and if they feel completely invisible or like no one cares, of course you’re not going to get the best out of them. It’s just good business to see these people and let them know they matter.
Why people are disengaged at work, and how do we change it?
Starts at 33:58 in the full video, available below.
Graham: Harris Interactive and Gallup both do a poll similar to this one, covering a huge swath of the U.S. economy. Statistics show that roughly 70% of people working are disengaged. They don’t feel like they matter. That’s tragic, because imagine you’re a mom going to work every day and you just feel disengaged and disempowered, not excited or anything. Think about how you show up to your community, your family, everything.
And then, conversely, imagine you’re that same person, but now we help you connect what you’re doing to the company’s mission, vision—why it matters, how you’re important. Now think about how you go home to your kids, your community, your friends. It’s not just business; it’s half of your waking hours. And that half of your waking hours needs to be this epic adventure because it’s half your life. If you can tap into that—and you can—it makes a huge difference not just in results, but in your employees’ lives. The impact on health and everything else is incredible. Crazy, isn’t it?
What should I look for when hiring top talent?
Starts at 35:06 in the full video, available below.
James: What about a young person you want to mentor or bring onto your team? What qualities do you look for in someone you want to mentor or just connect with?
Graham: Over my career, I’ve learned that attributes are way more important than experience. So we really index heavily on attributes. And what I mean by that is, who someone is matters way more than what they’ve done. We’ve found that to be much more highly correlated with success. When we’re hiring for almost any role, we want the high-attribute candidate. The number one attribute we look for is the will to win. It’s one of those things where if you do an interview with someone, go through their background—starting in junior high or high school and working up to yesterday—and literally go through their entire background, depending on the age and experience of the candidate, it could be a two-to-four-hour interview process. That will to win will leap out of the interview or it won’t. People ask, “Well, how do you measure will to win?” You’ll know, or you won’t. And that’s something we can’t teach.
So that’s number one—the will to win. Then self-awareness, the ability to get along with other people, and grit and persistence. Those are the big attributes we find to be highly correlated with success, and they’re really not that hard to identify in an interview.
