HIRING IN FAST TIMES

Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to get it right

Charles Morgan

CEO, First Orion

FOR GOING ON 50 years as a CEO, my top two business tenets have been ‚ÄúHire the best people you can get‚ÄĚ and ‚ÄúKnow what you don‚Äôt know.‚ÄĚ Today those two pieces of advice are more important than ever, and the reason for that is that business tenet number two has never been harder to master.

We live in an age in which every company is a technology company. Even if you‚Äôre in manufacturing, you likely need engineering knowledge to guide your robots down on the production floor. But the difference between today and yesterday is that technology changes constantly. The tools you‚Äôre using now will‚ÄĒfor certain‚ÄĒbe outdated in a handful of years. And what will replace them? It‚Äôs hard to know. Will what‚Äôs coming be friendlier to you or to your competitor? It‚Äôs hard to know. What this means is that today‚Äôs executive can‚Äôt afford to turn a blind eye to trends in technology, much less to become complacent about his or her present tools and systems. Leaders make a lot of bad decisions because they just ‚Äúdon‚Äôt know‚ÄĚ the real information and won‚Äôt take the time to find it out.

In my company, First Orion‚ÄĒwhich is in the business of providing scam and spam protection for telecoms, as well as branded communication‚ÄĒI hold an all-hands-on-deck Tuesday Morning Meeting, and I often don‚Äôt even talk about our ongoing projects. Instead, I might bring up new developments in IoT that I‚Äôve read about in the tech section of The Wall Street Journal. Of course, I‚Äôm an engineer by training, so I naturally love to geek out on arcane tech trends. Four or five years ago, I might‚Äôve said, ‚ÄúHow will 5G change our business?‚ÄĚ Three years ago, I might have opened the discussion by asking, ‚ÄúHow will AI change the way we do things?‚ÄĚ Early on, we saw that there are all sorts of applications for AI in our world, like for doing data analysis. For example, if our customer gets a voicemail, can he or she listen to that voicemail and accurately determine what that voicemail is all about? Does it sound like a scammer, or a legitimate offer? Computers, using AI, can answer that question more accurately than people can. So for a while now, we‚Äôve been using AI to analyze call patterns for our scam solutions. Because we kept our eyes on the far horizon, we were ahead of the game on AI.

My goal in these freewheeling discussions‚ÄĒand they do become discussions‚ÄĒis to emphasize to our staff, whether they be data scientists, product managers, recruiters, marketers, or the receptionist at the front desk, that it‚Äôs in all of our best interests to keep one eye trained on the future. You never know who‚Äôs going to spot some game-changing (or game-saving) idea somewhere on the far horizon. And I always try to lead by example.

These Tuesday Morning Meetings aren‚Äôt nearly enough, though. At a time when it‚Äôs harder than ever to know what you don‚Äôt know, my first tenet of business‚ÄĒhire the best people you can get‚ÄĒbecomes more important than ever, especially in the tech realm. At First Orion, we‚Äôve gone to great lengths to search out and bring aboard top tech talent, especially those operating in our particular field. And we‚Äôve partnered with bona fide tech geniuses, in all areas of data analytics and software development, to help keep us ahead of the pack. There are people in this world today who can see beyond walls, and those are the people you must have around you if you expect to stay current.

So for this new age we‚Äôre in, I‚Äôve revised one of my main business tenets a bit: ‚ÄúIf you don‚Äôt know what you don‚Äôt know, at least know someone who does.‚ÄĚ If you hired well, that someone already works for you.