Picture this: You are in a company that is growing fast. You might even be the CEO. You are consumed by designing a great product or service, getting it built, and figuring out how best to sell it. You have hit everyone’s social network every month for a year to hire your hard working employees. You have even paid several recruiting agencies, but you cannot hire fast enough to keep up with market forces and growing demand.
You are now entering the world defined by Packard’s Law (of Hewlett Packard fame)
Packard’s Law: “No company can grow revenues consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company. If your growth rate in revenues consistently outpaces your growth rate in people, you simply will not – indeed cannot – build a great company” David Packard.
Packard’s Law should be one of just a few irrefutable laws that shape business growth as the message is clear for all to see – we cannot grow our business outside the quality of our people. The key message being the ‘right people’, not ‘any people’ who we then try to shape into ‘our people’.
I am reminded of the movie Captain America – the story, for those who haven’t seen it, even though you will have seen the story played out many times. Take an average looking individual with limited skills and turn him into an all conquering hero. What’s the differentiator; attitude and integrity – the right person.
Steve Jobs often said, “Make sure you’re hiring only A-players.” Hire a few B-players, he said, and they hire B’s and C’s, and pretty soon the whole operation is going to pot. Steve also said “A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”
To guarantee growth in your business, get the right people in the right places in your organisation, only then give them the skills to deliver in their role.
Using Steve Jobs’ philosophy, if we want to build a thriving and successful business that is growing…get A+ people around us.
To do that, we must be an A+ person first ourselves. Being an A+ person is not about knowledge and skill, it is all about attitude and integrity (Captain America).
If we don’t have that first, we cannot invent it or hire it.
Packard’s Law may seem ominous or irrelevant, especially if we are a solopreneur or micro business, however, no matter our role, position or responsibility, the size or age of our business, when we start with the right people who have the right attitude, growth becomes inevitable rather than aspirational.
When you are ready to make growth inevitable, drop me a line and let’s talk about how you could do just that.
Book a call with me here to talk about who is driving your bus.
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I help owners, founders and leaders create a scalable business that works without them, build a world-class team, and 10x profitability. Book a call with me here to see if we could work together.
Remember, there are only three types of people – those who make things happen, those who wait for things to happen, and those who talk about why things don’t happen for them. Which one are you?
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