Deloitte
Annotations
  • Services

    What's New

    • Ignored to J’ Adored

      How Deloitte helped a large fast food company become a leader in sustainability

    • Deloitte Private

      Connecting you to what matters

    • Compromised to Immune

      An Initial Public Offering can take years. We only had weeks

    • Audit & Assurance

      • IASPlus
      • Assurance Services
      • Accounting & Reporting Advisory
      • Accounting Operations Advisory
      • Disruptive Events Advisory
      • Media & Advertising Assurance
      • Global Public Policy
    • Consulting

      • Strategy, Analytics and M&A
      • Customer and Marketing
      • Core Business Operations
      • Human Capital
      • Enterprise Technology & Performance
    • Risk Advisory

      • Accounting and Internal Controls
      • Cyber and Strategic Risk
      • Regulatory and Legal
      • Sustainability & Climate
    • Financial Advisory

      • Mergers & Acquisitions
      • Turnaround & Restructuring
      • Deloitte Forensic
    • Legal

      • Legal Management Consulting
      • Legal Advisory Services
      • Legal Managed Services
      • Dbriefs Legal
      • Deloitte Legal Around the World
      • The Resilient General Counsel
    • Tax

      • Advisory and Transactions
      • Tax Transformation
      • Outsourced Compliance
      • Technology Consulting
      • Mobility, Payroll, Immigration
      • Climate & Sustainability
  • Industries

    What's New

    • Connecting for a resilient world

    • Future of Mobility

      Learn how this new reality is coming together and what it will mean for you and your industry.

    • Platforms and Ecosystems

      Enabling the Digital Economy

    • Consumer

      • Automotive
      • Consumer Products
      • Retail, Wholesale & Distribution
      • Transportation, Hospitality & Services
    • Energy, Resources & Industrials

      • Industrial Products & Construction
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil, Gas & Chemicals
      • Power, Utilities & Renewables
      • The Future of Energy
    • Financial Services

      • Banking & Capital Markets
      • Insurance
      • Investment Management
      • Real Estate
    • Government & Public Services

      • Central Government
      • Defense, Security & Justice
      • Health & Human Services
      • Infrastructure, Transport & Regional Government
    • Life Sciences & Health Care

      • Health Care
      • Life Sciences
    • Technology, Media & Telecommunications

      • Technology
      • Telecommunications, Media & Entertainment
  • Insights

    Deloitte Insights

    What's New

    • Deloitte Insights Magazine

      Explore the latest issue now

    • Deloitte Insights app

      Go straight to smart with daily updates on your mobile device

    • Weekly economic update

      See what's happening this week and the impact on your business

    • Strategy

      • Business Strategy & Growth
      • Digital Transformation
      • Governance & Board
      • Innovation
      • Marketing & Sales
      • Private Enterprise
    • Economy & Society

      • Economy
      • Environmental, Social, & Governance
      • Health Equity
      • Trust
      • Mobility
    • Organization

      • Operations
      • Finance & Tax
      • Risk & Regulation
      • Supply Chain
      • Smart Manufacturing
    • People

      • Leadership
      • Talent & Work
      • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Technology

      • Data & Analytics
      • Emerging Technologies
      • Technology Management
    • Industries

      • Consumer
      • Energy, Resources, & Industrials
      • Financial Services
      • Government & Public Services
      • Life Sciences & Health Care
      • Technology, Media, & Telecommunications
    • Spotlight

      • Deloitte Insights Magazine
      • Press Room Podcasts
      • Weekly Economic Update
      • COVID-19
      • Resilience
  • Careers

    What's New

    • WorldImpact

      Living our purpose, reshaping our world, making an impact that matters.

    • 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey

      Striving for balance, advocating for change

    • Alumni profiles

      Inspiring leaders

    • Job search

    • Experienced hires

    • Students

    • Life at Deloitte

    • Inclusion at Deloitte

    • Alumni

  • GLOBAL-EN Location: GLOBAL-English  
  • Contact us
  • GLOBAL-EN Location: GLOBAL-English  
  • Contact us

Welcome back

Still not a member? Join My Deloitte

Getting the right people in the right seats

by Ajit Kambil
  • Save for later
  • Share
    • Share on Facebook
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Linkedin
    • Share by email
Deloitte Insights
  • Strategy
    Strategy
    Strategy
    • Business Strategy & Growth
    • Digital Transformation
    • Governance & Board
    • Innovation
    • Marketing & Sales
    • Private Enterprise
  • Economy & Society
    Economy & Society
    Economy & Society
    • Economy
    • Environmental, Social, & Governance
    • Health Equity
    • Trust
    • Mobility
  • Organization
    Organization
    Organization
    • Operations
    • Finance & Tax
    • Risk & Regulation
    • Supply Chain
    • Smart Manufacturing
  • People
    People
    People
    • Leadership
    • Talent & Work
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
  • Technology
    Technology
    Technology
    • Data & Analytics
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Technology Management
  • Industries
    Industries
    Industries
    • Consumer
    • Energy, Resources, & Industrials
    • Financial Services
    • Government & Public Services
    • Life Sciences & Health Care
    • Tech, Media, & Telecom
  • Spotlight
    Spotlight
    Spotlight
    • Deloitte Insights Magazine
    • Press Room Podcasts
    • Weekly Economic Update
    • COVID-19
    • Resilience
    • GLOBAL-EN Location: GLOBAL-English  
    • Contact us
    12 September 2014

    Getting the right people in the right seats

    12 September 2014
    • Ajit Kambil United States
    • Ajit Kambil United States
    • Save for later
    • Share
      • Share on Facebook
      • Share on Twitter
      • Share on Linkedin
      • Share by email

    Getting the “right people in the right seats” as quickly as possible is likely to free up your time to attend to the truly important issues. A few key questions can help you identify where you may have to replace key staff, reassign staff to other roles they are better suited to, or invest in training and coaching to upgrade their skills.

    “Getting the right people in the right seats” is a phrase and goal we often hear from seasoned managers during their transitions. Having the wrong people in critical positions can cost you valuable time—often your most critical and unrecoverable resource—as you have to review and repair work. It can also cost you credibility as a leader among your peers and even your staff if you are viewed as carrying and not attending to non-performers in a timely way. Accomplishing this goal begins when leaders quickly gauge the capabilities of their direct reports and other critical staff and decide if they will try to improve individual capabilities or recruit new individuals.

    Assessing the team

    A starting point for assessing your team is to peruse performance reviews. Sadly, these are often thin documents that are insufficiently informative. Sometimes, the previous leader remains in the organization and you can directly get their input on the strengths and weaknesses of key staff, but ultimately, you have to make your own observations and assessments. In the first month to 45 days, you are probably forming a gut-level impression of different direct reports and some key staff below that level.

    After 30 days, I suggest asking seven questions to give you a quick snapshot of your key staff and their capabilities:

    1. How confident are you in each of your direct reports and key staff below them?
    2. Who gives you and your team positive energy, and who sucks energy from you?
    3. Who would you take with you if you left tomorrow?
    4. Who is a good brand ambassador to other organizations for you?
    5. Who is or is not a team player?
    6. Who is a flight or retirement risk?
    7. Who is technically competent but managerially incapable?

    Each of these questions is discussed below.

    1. Confidence: Generally, you want to have confidence in three key areas: competence, judgment of your staff in critical situations, and execution abilities. To assess competence, it is useful to frame the Occam’s razor question for each functional area. For example, CFOs may ask their tax directors what they do differently if there were no taxes, and why? A good question can give insight into competence. Good observations probably give more insight into the behaviors and judgment of staff in a business and social context. Thus, 360s on staff can give insight into the observations of others into the competence and judgment of your staff.
    2. Energy: Those who drain your energy are probably energy vampires in the broader organization. You generally want to build a team around those who give positive energy to the organization.
    3. Stars: Asking who you would like to take with you is a good way to identify high potentials and stars in your organization. They are likely to be your “keepers.”
    4. Brand ambassadors: In most functions, you need folks who are technically competent and able to represent the brand you want to create for your organization. Good brand ambassadors can partner with clients and help enhance the reputation of your organization. We will revisit this in a later essay.
    5. Team players: Generally, you are likely to want team players in your organization. You will have to decide your strategy with those who choose not to team.
    6. Flight and retirement risks: You need to identify flight and retirement risks and establish retention or succession plans to mitigate these risks.
    7. Technically competent/managerially challenged: Another challenge is a direct report who is technically very good but a poor manager. This can manifest itself in poor delegation skills and bottlenecking of work in the department, turnover on a team, or poor hiring choices.

    While there are other important questions, the above seven questions can give you a quick initial snapshot of your organization and where you need to attend to improving talent in your organization. Generally, you have three options to deal with talent performance issues: replace problematic team members, reassign staff, or remediate performance gaps through training or coaching. Ideally, you will want to have high confidence in all of your direct reports. For reports you are not sure about, you will want to assign them key tasks to test either their competence or judgment to determine your confidence in them within 45–90 days. For those you do not have confidence in, you will likely want to replace or reassign them.

    When we ask executives of their single biggest regret after their first year of transition, we often hear they did not move quickly enough on the talent performance issues in their organizations. Realistically, it usually takes between six months and a year in most companies to assess the team and upgrade key staff; according to our labs, the talent agenda can consume up to a day of an incoming executive's time for this period. For example, given the average tenure of CFOs or CIOs—around five years—the opportunity cost of low-performing staff can be significant drag on the progress toward your agenda during the first year.

    Replacing or reassigning staff or remediating performance will require partnership with human resources across multiple dimensions. Depending on existing performance management systems, replacing staff can take time to build the case for dismissal. Furthermore, existing compensation systems may need to be renegotiated to recruit critical talent. Reassigning staff to roles they are best suited for and the provision of coaching and training programs to staff is also likely to require HR support. Thus, it is important to get HR on board as quickly as possible to your talent agenda.

    Takeaway: Nearly every incoming executive has to critically assess the talent on their teams to deliver their key priorities. Getting the right people in the right seats as quickly as possible is likely to free up your time to attend to the truly important issues. A few key questions can help you identify where you may have to replace key staff, reassign staff to other roles they are better suited to, or invest in training and coaching to upgrade their skills.

    Credits

    Written by: Ajit Kambil

    Topics in this article

    Executive Transitions , Talent

    Deloitte Consulting

    Learn more
    Download Subscribe

    Related

    img Trending

    Interactive 3 days ago

    Ajit Kambil

    Ajit Kambil

    Deloitte LLP

    Ajit is the Global Research director of Deloitte LLP's CFO Program. He oversees the diverse research initiatives of the program in areas such as leadership, capital markets and risk and created CFO Insights, a biweekly publication serving more than thirty five thousand subscribers. Ajit also developed Deloitte’s Executive Transition Lab which helps CxOs make an efficient and effective transition into their new role. Prior to his role in the CFO Program, Ajit was the global director of Deloitte Research. He is widely published in leading business and technology journals on varied topics. An eCommerce pioneer and expert on market design, his book Making Markets: How to Profit from Online Auctions and Exchanges was published by Harvard Business School Press.

    • akambil@deloitte.com
    • +1 212 492 4286

    Share article highlights

    See something interesting? Simply select text and choose how to share it:

    Email a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
    Copy a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
    Copy your highlighted text.

    Getting the right people in the right seats has been saved

    Getting the right people in the right seats has been removed

    An Article Titled Getting the right people in the right seats already exists in Saved items

     
    Forgot password

    To stay logged in, change your functional cookie settings.

    OR

    Connect Accounts

    Connect your social accounts

    This is the first time you have logged in with a social network.

    You have previously logged in with a different account. To link your accounts, please re-authenticate.

    Log in with an existing social network:

    To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

    OR

    Log in with an existing site account:

    To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

    Forgot password

    Subscribe

    to receive more business insights, analysis, and perspectives from Deloitte Insights
    ✓ Link copied to clipboard
    • Contact us
    • Submit RFP
    • Job search
    Follow Deloitte Insights:
    Office locations
    GLOBAL-EN Location: GLOBAL-English  
    About Deloitte
    • Newsroom
    • Social media
    • Leadership blog
    • Press releases
    • Submit an RFP
    • Job Search
    • Global office directory
    • Contact us
    • About Deloitte
    • Our impact
    Services
    • Audit & Assurance
    • Consulting
    • Risk Advisory
    • Financial Advisory
    • Legal
    • Tax
    Industries
    • Consumer
    • Energy, Resources & Industrials
    • Financial Services
    • Government & Public Services
    • Life Sciences & Health Care
    • Technology, Media & Telecommunications
    Careers
    • Job search
    • Experienced hires
    • Students
    • Life at Deloitte
    • Inclusion at Deloitte
    • Alumni
    • About the Deloitte organization
    • Terms of use
    • Cookies
    • Privacy
    • Privacy Shield
    • Accessibility statement

     

    © 2022. For information, contact Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.

     

    Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”), its global network of member firms, and their related entities (collectively, the “Deloitte organization”). DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) and each of its member firms and related entities are legally separate and independent entities, which cannot obligate or bind each other in respect of third parties. DTTL and each DTTL member firm and related entity is liable only for its own acts and omissions, and not those of each other. DTTL does not provide services to clients. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more.