Are you 100% happy with your People?

In a recent talk I gave on The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), I asked everyone to rate their company in terms of how ‘great’ their people are, on a scale of 0% to 100%, where 100% is perfect. I heard one person laughing, one of those nervous laughs. So I asked him how happy he is with his people. He answered with a question: “Can I put a minus sign in front of my people rating?”

He clearly has frustrations with his people! Does this sound familiar? What do you do when you feel something isn’t quite right with your people? Maybe deep down you know the reason(s), or maybe it’s still a bit fuzzy?

It starts with defining what it means to be ‘great’ for your company. In EOS we use a tool called the People Analyzer™, to help leadership teams to uniquely define what it means to have ‘great people’ in their company. This definition then allows leadership to gain clarity on two things for each person in the company:

• Do I have the right people? (Does each person truly value and care about the things that we value and care about most?)

• Is each person in the right seat? (Are they rock stars at what they do?)

Leadership is then able to gain clarity on which type of people issue exists. Two of the most common are: 1) Right person in the Wrong Seat and 2) Wrong Person in the Right seat. This is not intended to be a firing tool; rather it’s simply used to smoke out the specific people issue. Once the issue is known at the root cause, only then can it be solved permanently for the long term greater good of the company.