Why hiring not firing is the secret of performance culture | Mumbrella360 video
In this session from June’s Mumbrella360 conference, Suresh Khanna, chief revenue officer at AdRoll, explains why building a performance culture has nothing to do with firing, and a lot to do with hiring.
AdRoll’s Suresh Khanna believes that when it comes to building a successful performance culture, “80% of the battle is won or lost in hiring the right people”.
Khanna begins his talk by pointing to a moment early on in his career where his job title changed from “customer strategy manager” to “manager, customer strategy”, a promotion which was known as his company as “the comma promotion, because you got new business cards with a comma on”.
“Nobody asked me what I thought, nobody challenged me, nobody really took on my development. It was one of those things where it didn’t really matter how hard I worked.”
Performance culture has historically been given a bad rap, with Khanna admitting that it’s generally seen as “managing people out of your business really aggressively”, or, more simply: “firing people a lot”.
Suresh Khanna says trust is key to building a performance culture
According to Khanna, performance culture is actually the opposite of that: “That nurturing environment is precisely what gives you the room to be tough on them, and to demand excellence.”
In fact, “80% of the battle is won or lost in hiring the right people”. In order to do that, it’s essential that recruiters look in four key areas, with a particular focus on the first two: “candidate background”, “culture fit”, “cognitive” and “functional expertise”.
Seating is another key factor in obtaining a strong performance culture: “I would take my best reps, and consider all the seats around them to be very prime real estate. I would take new hires or people who were struggling to get off the ground and I would put them next to those senior people.”
Another essential part of building a performance culture is defining the “we level”, or each team’s working norms: “Do I care what time you come to work? Do I care what time you go home? If I have my headphones on, can you walk over and tap me on the shoulder and ask me a question, or does that mean don’t bother me? Can I call you on the weekends? Am I able to give you feedback?”
Performance culture requires its leaders to practice consistent introspection, as Khanna concludes: “You really have to push hard to be as thoughtful about your own style and leadership philosophy, and really work on your we statement.”
