People Management, Pt. 1 – Not Having Enough People

Published on 17 July 2024

People management. This is the idea that You want to defer work to other people. In fact, you want to defer as much as possible and reserve the most important things for yourself. But you can’t do everything.

And the busier you get the more you’re going to have to delegate.You might think that there are lots of obstacles to delegating. For example you might feel frustrated with the fact that you don’t have enough people to delegate to. That’s one problem. You might feel that the people that you have to delegate to are not qualified, that they’re not doing a good enough job, and that’s another problem.

So let’s address these one at a time.

The problem of not having the people. So there is a concept that you might want to embrace, which is always be recruiting. Always be looking for people so that you’re constantly surrounding yourself with qualified, talented people. And this means looking for people, even though you may not have the work right away

You may think that you don’t have the capacity to bring on new people. If you find a really talented person, you may not be able to hire them at that moment in time. But you should always be looking for candidates so that when you do need somebody, you don’t find yourself in a situation where you can’t find somebody.

You’ve already identified the people.

Another problem with finding people is that often firms are looking for the wrong candidates. They’re looking for people who have all the experience and all of the skills necessary to take on the work. That might be an unrealistic standard to set. Because if somebody is really talented and has lots and lots of experience, they won’t have any difficulty finding a place. The market now for talented, skilled people is very strong. And so you may have to change your expectations a bit. You still want to hire people that you like. And you want to hire people that you think are quality people and have many of the attributes that are important in an employee, but they may not have all of the experience that you need.

And so what you’re looking for ideally is somebody who can be trained, someone who is intelligent, someone who has a grasp of the information, but needs training and then learn how to be a more effective trainer. So the obstacle of not having enough quality people is solved by embracing the philosophy that you are always recruiting, you’re always looking for people.

And one other area of standards to consider is the issue of location. Now that the technology is in place so that people can work remotely, you may want to consider having people work for you that don’t have the ability to physically come into the office. People work from their homes.

People work from just about anywhere. I know people who travel around the world and continue to work and have meetings Uninterrupted as if they were in the office because the technology is so superior than what it used to be.

And so you’re creating an environment for someone who could conceivably be in another state, who doesn’t like to have regular working hours, but does have the intelligence, does have the qualities, does have the ability to be trained, and does have the ability to be available, just not in person. So the way you solve the obstacle of not having enough people is to embrace this philosophy of always be recruiting. And to consider re-evaluating the built in expectations that you’ve been living by in the past.

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