Getting the Wrong People Off Of Your Bus

One of my directors on my team created this parody of the usual motivational posters hanging in many offices today. It’s a great parody of Jim Collin’s comment in “Good to Great” about getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off of the bus.

I’ve used Jim Collins thoughts on identifying talent as a tenant of my leadership style. The person on my team created this graphic and I printed it and hung it on my whiteboard. It’s funny in a twisted way but it really does speak to the harsh reality we face as leaders. Sometimes, the only way to improve the organization is to stop the bus and kick some people off.

I gave a speech at my April All Hands that discussed the tenants of “Good to Great.” Here is an abridged version of some of the key themes that I discussed.

• Level 5 Leadership:
  Modest & Willful, Humble & Fearless - More Plow Horse, than Show Horse — a workmanlike diligence. –
  Modest / Humble - a compelling modesty, self effacing, and understated, whereas two thirds of comparison companies (losers), had leaders with huge personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.
  
• First Who … Then What: We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats–and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.
  
• Confront the Brutal Facts (yet never lose faith): Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
  

One of the disappointing aspects of leadership is the acknowledgement that not everyone is going to buy into your vision. You can’t implement your vision when you have people in your organization who are smiling in your face and stabbing you behind your back. Having an idea of the talent and commitment you have and making painful but necessary “bus stops” is the only way to ensure you have a team focused on aligning around your strategy.