Sonny Iqbal of Egon Zehnder sent me this wonderful book by Claudio Fernandez Araoz. This is about leadership, it is about hiring great people, it is about figuring out what to look for in great candidates. The book offers some simple but effective tips on how this can be done.

1. It’s not the How or the what but
the Who
Succeed by surrounding yourself
with the best
Claudio Fernandez-Araoz

2. Claudio works for Egon Zehnder in
South America and has written a
book on Great People Decisions.

3. When you have really great
people, you don’t need to baby
them, by expecting them to do
great things, you can get them to
do great things.

4. Steve Jobs felt that his job as CEO
was to get rid of some people who
didn’t measure up, he tried to do
it in a humane way, it was an
unpleasant task but had to be
done anyways.

5. Yun Jong-Yong CEO of Samsung
from 1996 to 2008 looked at five
things for Samsung to be good at :
technology/skill,capital,informatio
n, speed and people. Except
capital all the others are people
dependent.

6. Development was one of Yun’s big
priorities, under his leadership
Samsung launched impressive
training centers where young
executives learnt both functional
and soft skills.

7. Jack Welch, ex CEO GE said that as
a junior manager he got 50 % of
the people decisions wrong, as a
senior manager he got 20 %
wrong, so in thirty years his
average moved from 50 to 80.

8. The human animal is 2 million
years old. We still think, act and
decide the way our ancestors did.

9. Our primitive ancestors made
decisions on the four Fs:
Fight,flight,food and fornication. If
a stranger arrived at their camp
fire they looked for similarities to
decide amongst the 4 Fs. If he was
familiar, he would be accepted.

10. You need to surround yourself
with people who have diverse
backgrounds and complementary
skills, and who properly challenge
you.

11. Our brain is wired to make fast
decisions on similarity, familiarity
and comfort.

12. When CEOs are asked ”If you were
building your organization from
the ground up, how many of the
current people would you rehire?’
The answer is about 50 % !!

13. At most companies people spend
2 % of their time recruiting and 75
% of their time managing their
recruiting mistakes

14. If a colleague isn’t meeting your
standards, be honest with her,
help her to improve. Candor and
concern for those around you are
two essential moral obligations for
a leader.

15. Inertia overtakes all of us. In order
to beat it, make formal
commitments, think like a trader
and compassionately consider
long term consequences.

16. The best appointments happen
when those hiring consider a wide
pool of internal and external
candidates.

17. In a candidate you want to see
passion. But as a decision maker
t’s something you have to watch,
because emotion can seriously
impair judgment.

18. I coin the other GDP-
Globalization, Demographics and
Pipelines. These three explain the
talent crunch

19. Taken independently,
globalization, demographics and
pipelines will create
unprecedented demand for the
right talent in the right place over
the next decade.

20. I found that the distance between
the best and the rest grows
exponentially with the complexity
of the job.

21. The best are always 5 to 10 times
better than the rest. In an age of
hyper competitiveness,
organizations that cannot retain
their top performers will struggle
to survive.

22. A typical interview is a
conversation between two liars.
The interviewer paints a rosy
picture of the company and the
candidate explains how great he
is, giving the impression that the
day he starts work, god himself
will walk in.

23. Research has consistently shown
that others are better judges of
ourselves than we are.

24. Good candidates have self
awareness and the 2 Hs – Hunger
and Humility.

25. Ref checks are again a bunch of
lies. Robert Thornton wrote a
book on it ,The lexicon of
Intentionally ambiguous
Recommendations (L.I.A.R).

26. When a ref check says , a man like
that is hard to find, they mean he
is extremely rare talent or we
don’t know where he is hiding at
work!!

27. Liars tend to use more expletives,
third party pronouns, and very
complex sentences, in addition to
being verbose.

28. Former bosses are great at
assessing strategic orientation,
peers can help measure influence,
subordinates are the best judges
of leadership in any candidate.

29. Motivation, combined with the
four key leadership attributes-
curiosity, insight, engagement and
determination are important for
success.

30. The right motivation in a leader is a
blend of fierce commitment with
deep personal humility. These type of
people want to have a positive impact
on the group for the larger good of
the group. This leader gets
satisfaction from seeing others
succeed and values mission over
personal reward.

31. Team specific human capital is
important too. When people
move together, they tend to do
better than when they do it alone.

32. Versatility is a huge asset since the
future is not a continuation of the
past. Look for candidates who
have a non linear career path.

33. In basketball luck accounts for 12
5 of results, in hockey it is as high
as 53 %, in tennis, it is near zero.
About a third of organization
performance cannot be explained
statistically.

34. The strength of a company
explains 33 % of results, the
industry 15.5 %, the CEO 13.5
%and the year just 5.2 %. The rest
is up to leaders, the right leaders
can help the company make its
own luck.

35. All the best people have
• Strategic orientation
• Market insight
• Results orientation
• Customer Impact
• Collaboration and Influencing
• Developing Organizational capability
• Team leadership
• Change leadership

36. National cultures have distinct
values which in turn create
different behaviors. Power
distance, Individualism, Tolerance
for ambiguity, masculinity and
long term orientation are a few.

37. Companies do not inform their
high potential employees about
their high potential, funnily the
high potentials find out anyways
through their own methods.

38. You can hire a turkey to climb a
tree. But I’d rather hire a squirrel.

39. As a leader who wants to be
surrounded by the best, you need
to get your people inspired about
improving themselves, especially
when it comes to emotional
competencies-to develop a clever
change plan and to persevere and
practice.

40. In what seems an incredible
paradox, Japanese managers have
higher potential than their global
counterparts but lower
competence.

41. Potential should trump seniority
especially for complex jobs ,
complexity always beats size for
someone to grow.

42. There is one skill that seemed
more important than the rest in
driving performance : CUSTOMER
IMPACT. At least 40 pc of senior
executives scored 5 or above in
this competency.

43. Most effective leaders had spiky
ratings, they were outstanding at
something.

44. Collective competency mattered
more than individual competency.
The best performing companies
had a critical mass of strong
leaders.

45. Great companies had an ability to
get their leaders to bring the best
motivation to work every day.

46. Money never motivates the wrong
people to do the right thing.

47. Team effectiveness explains 80 %
of a leader’s success.

48. You can create an A team. The A
team will only thrive when you’ve
made it balanced, aligned,
resilient, energetic, open and
efficient.

49. Some classically dysfunctional teams
Team is low in Description
Efficiency and
alignment
The debating society. Team lacks ability to prioritize, team
misses deadlines and fails to complete tasks.
Openness and Balance The overtly tribal. Team lacks diversity. There is a Not
Invented here syndrome. Team clings to the past and misses
opportunities .
Energy and Resilience The victim of events. Team lacks resources to manage
conflicts. Everyone thinks the problem is too big to be fixed.
Team reacts slowly accomplishes little

50. A turnaround requires high
efficiency and resilience.
A post merger integration needs
balance and alignment.

51. Building a great culture starts with
you, the leader. Use that as a filter
for hiring. The second step of
building a great culture is
coaching. Great leaders are good
listeners.

52. In today’s knowledge economy,
value comes from collectively
creating and seamlessly sharing
information. As a leader always
ensure that collective goals are
rewarded over individual
achievement.

53. Family businesses struggle with
leadership transitions and
infighting over distribution of
money and power.

54. The key to weathering a storm is
to keep your long term
perspective. Visionary leaders
never look back, they stay calm
and use the conditions to their
advantage.