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Chapter 6

Alignment

Part III - Align Your People and Culture

Hire Drivers, Not Passengers, and Get the Wrong People off the Bus

Drivers are driven:

  • get their satisfaction from making things happen, not blending in with the furniture.
  • They feel a strong sense of ownership for their projects and teams and demand high standards from both themselves and others.
  • They exude energy, urgency, ambition, even boldness. Faced with a challenge, they usually say, “Why not” rather than “That's impossible.”

Finding, recruiting, rewarding, and retaining them should be among your top priorities.

Making a distinction​

  • Few people are exclusively passengers or exclusively drivers 100% of the time. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

  • If you can't answer the question in an overwhelmingly positive manner, you are probably too much of a passenger.

  • Employees should be able to look at themselves in the mirror and feel strongly that they matter to the organization, that they contribute in significant ways, that their absence would significantly hurt its results.

    • If they can say those things honestly, they will feel far more secure and confident in their own value. It will also advance their careers at any company that recognizes and rewards drivers.

Passengers are usually the first to go in a Reduction in Force

  • It is not unusual to see organizations actually perk up after a RIF because all those passengers are no longer dead weight.