Are You In The Right Seat?

A couple years ago we were positioning ourselves for a strong period of growth – as we were forward forecasting we knew that we had the right people but as we began to move into the period of growth we found that we were stumbling.

We had the business, we had the people but what was the issue – then it came to me; are they in the right seat in our bus?

You see as business or people change so do their skill sets, capabilities and desires (what do I really want to be when I grow up?).

We had mistakenly assumed that if you were in a certain position in the company that is the position that you wanted or would be at for years to come.

It makes sense right ----- I mean if it worked at $XX million level then it should work at $XXX million level right? Nope...not the case at all – so we created a simple questionnaire that we gave to everyone.

Here is what we asked them......

1.     Your current seat on the Bus (job position)

2.     Your current responsibilities (self explanatory)

3.     Performance against those responsibilities (How do you think you are doing?)

4.     What you indicated you would like to do based on your initial response

5.     Your demonstrated strengths (Let us know)

6.     Areas to develop (A simple self assessment)

7.     Your new seat on the Bus ( In case you were in the wrong seat - where would you like to be?)

Then we sat down and talked with each person one on one and reviewed the answers – we found that as the business was growing we needed to have some people change seats or in a case or two we had to stop at the bus stop and let people off and let new people on.

Did it work?

 Yes it did – as a matter of fact we use this tool on a regular basis to make sure that we are not assuming anything as we grow. 

How are you doing? Need to change seats?