Why Poaching is a poor strategy for those who can see the big picture

A few years ago I had a problem, we were growing quickly and we had more work to do then people to do it. We tried recruiters and other methods but we struggled to hire the people with the right stuff so I considered an aggressive strategy to target known high performers in the area that I would now be willing to say would best be described as "Poaching".

I'm lucky to be a part of a group of people who challenge me on my ideas on a daily basis. They challenged me on that one and they were right to do so. They won the argument quickly with this very simple idea: If you are successful at achieving your goal to hire a team by way of levering poaching methods then you will end up with a team that is more easily poachable. Wow, that blew me away and I never thought twice about that kind of a strategy again. The results over the past number of years have proved the argument to be valid as the key members of our team are now constantly approached because they are very well known to be excellent at what they do. They don't appreciate those offers because they don't like that type of culture and don't want to be a part of it.

There is another reason to consider the problematic nature of engaging a poaching strategy that is best illustrated by a great scene in the move A beautiful Mind that describes in very simple terms, the principle of governing dynamics. I believe in the region and that if we don't work together we are not going to realize our full potential. When individuals or small groups act only in their best interest and ignore the greater group everyone loses out in the long run. When individuals understand that concept and look out for the benefit of the group in addition to their own interests, both are rewarded.

Bar Scene from A Beautiful Mind

So how do we hire and retain the best? Culture. that's it. We work hard and we have all kinds of challenges just like everyone else has but at the end of the day the core group has been working together for many years. They create a critical mass of culture that is honest, engaging, challenging, open, supportive, social, and forward thinking. The 3 key attributes of the team are integrity, intelligence, and energy and the most important of those is most certainly integrity. It means a lot to me and everyone I work with and I'm sure it's the reason that core group has a trust bond that is stronger then most. 

More educated people then ever are leaving this region and it's a trend that continues to worsen. Divisive strategies like poaching will not help foster a community of collaboration. I hear a lot of talk about how we need to hire and train people who come out of the great post secondary educational facilities that we are so very fortunate to have here in the region. Why not put our combined efforts and resources into that as a strategy for us in the greater tech community to benefit from as a whole?

The new chain of command in modern organizations

Empowerment is a word that I fear we all hear way too much these days. Unfortunately many who profess to subscribe to this concept are challenged to deliver on it's true intent. At it's root I see it as an agreement, a trade really, the delegation of power or authority is given to the same degree that accountability is reciprocated. If someone is not truly empowered then they can never really be expected to be truly accountable.  If someone is only partially empowered then they behave like they are on crutches. Conversely, someone who is uncomfortable or avoids being accountable should never be fully empowered.

It's a hard thing to do well, in my view to empower someone fully means that you can never give them a direct order ever. Good communication, genuine mutual appreciation, trust, and healthy debate are the only tools that can be employed to develop buy-in for ideas within a modern organization where the goal is to minimize hierarchy as much as possible.

The industrialized world's organizational business structures emerged out of military tradition. As it continues to evolve we can see how important true empowerment has become. In the past I've worked with managers who've said things like: "Span of control must be limited to 7 direct reports, never more". I suppose this may be true for highly hierarchical organizational cultures like the military but in flat organizations it's simply untrue and very limiting.

The idea of chain of command remains in an interesting way though. It's coupled with trust in a way that is almost magical when the right kind of people get together. Empowering someone includes trusting their judgement and practices when it comes to hiring, firing, and empowering others. If they fully empower the folks they work with then it creates a chain. Trust and being right about empowering effective people can create a chain that is stronger and more effective than any other organizational structure in my experience. So when something really unfortunate happens it can always be traced back to the CEO in a sense. I accept that if someone I've empowered, hired, and empowered someone else who then did X, it's a reflection on me. If that is fully understood and appreciated then it has the potential to create very significant bonds and amazing culture. It also means that any weak links in the chain need to be uncovered and unempowered efficiently because as the saying goes, "the chain is only as strong as it's weakest link."

There is a dark side to this approach that comes with empowering someone who is capable of betraying the trust bond in a significant way. This has the potential to cause very serious damage to the organization and its culture especially if it's relatively small or just starting out. It has happened to me in the past and when it did, I was surprised to learn how resilient the rest of the organization was. I suspect that once the empowered culture is past 20-30 individuals it's less likely to be a significant risk. It's inspiring to look at companies like Valve and Github who have done this well and have proven it can scale.

I hope my daughter is a hacker

I'm a huge believer in fostering an environment where being a "hacker" is something to aspire to. To be clear, I mean "hacker" in the greater sense of the word. For most folks (at least in the tech community) that's well understood to mean finding creative ways to remove barriers or to accomplish your goals through methods that are not obvious or standard operating procedure. When I see folks doing this I get excited because at least, for me, it's one of the great things that inspires me and that smaller, more agile organizations do so well.

It's an awesome time for this, with all the momentum around start-up culture and entrepreneurialism the DIY / hacker mentality is also on the rise. If you are new to this idea you need to checkout the legendary guys like Captain Crunch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper) and TMRC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club).

So when I learned about this picture that my 4 year old daughter made the other day I was thrilled to learn about how she decided to make it with her own hair ending up on the paper. She told me in a way that only a 4 year old can, that it was because the yellow marker was lost and she just thought that her hair would do a better job anyhow so with a pair of plastic kids safety scissors and some tape she hacked together a creative solution that makes her nerdy dad about as proud as he can be.

I wonder if each of us aren't all born with some seed of hacker in us and, if so, why so many of us tend to lose sight of its amazing potential and value.