Are You Hiring People You Can Actually Trust to Make Decisions?

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Hiring somebody should eventually mean you have fewer decisions to make yourself. That’s part of the appeal, right? You bring in a capable designer, project manager, administrator, or procurement person so she can own part of the work and stop routing every little thing through you.

But that only works if you actually let her make decisions.

Many firm owners hire because they need help, then accidentally train the new person to ask permission for absolutely EVERYTHING. We talked about that in our recent article “How to Be a Better Leader So Your Team Can Do Their Best Work.” The employee asks what you think, you answer because you already know what you’d do, and everybody keeps moving along. It seems efficient until you realize you’ve created a team that can’t make progress without you. Oh no! It’s the OPPOSITE of efficiency.

In a throwback episode of the DesignDash Podcast (an oldie but a goodie, if you will), Laura Umansky and Melissa Grove talk with Jacky Fischer, CEO of Three Men Movers and author of The Growth Paradox, about what happens when business owners stop making every decision themselves. Jacky grew her family’s moving business from about $3 million to more than $40 million in annual revenue, and a HUGE part of that growth involved teaching other people how to think through problems without waiting for her answer. 

Five Ways to Build a Team That Can Make Decisions Without You

#1 Stop Answering Every Question for Your Team

You hire somebody new, she comes into your office with a question, and you know the answer. Of course you do. You’ve probably made the same decision fifty times before.

So you answer her question. Which might be a mistake.

Then she comes back with another question, and you answer that one too. Pretty soon, answering you has become part of her process. She knows the fastest way to avoid making the wrong call is to ask what YOU would do first.

Jacky thinks firm owners need to break that habit early. Instead of immediately saying yes, no, do this, or absolutely DO NOT do that, ask the employee what she thinks should happen and why.

That “answering booth” line is painfully accurate to what we experience as firm owners. If you’ve ever hired someone, you know how true it is. Because when everybody knows you’ll make the decision anyway, there’s not much reason for them to spend ten minutes thinking through it first.

The next time somebody brings you a problem, ask what she recommends before giving her your answer. You’ll learn a lot about how she thinks, and she’ll get practice making the kinds of decisions you eventually want her to take over.

#2 Let People Make Some Decisions Differently Than You Would

This is where hiring can get a little uncomfortable. You finally have someone who can take work off your plate. She knows the client, understands the project, and has enough experience to make a reasonable call without you. Then she makes one. And you immediately think, Well, that’s not how I would’ve done it.

Okay. But is it actually wrong? Your firm isn’t just YOU anymore.

Jacky has had plenty of employees bring her ideas she didn’t love at first. Instead of immediately shutting them down, she asks questions. Sometimes, once the employee explains what she knows, Jacky changes her mind completely.

Your designers and project managers are going to know things you don’t. They were on the vendor call. They’ve been emailing with the client all morning. They know why the installer is irritated and why the original plan probably won’t work anymore. If you hired capable people, sometimes they’re going to have a better read on the situation than you do.

And even when you still prefer your idea, you don’t necessarily need to overrule theirs. Jacky will sometimes let an employee try a reasonable solution she wouldn’t have chosen herself because that person needs the chance to actually make decisions. If every choice has to match yours exactly, nobody ever gets much better at making them.

Laura talks about wanting the same kind of initiative from the LUDC team.

You don’t have to use Laura’s exact language in your firm. The greater point here is that somebody has to be allowed to solve a problem before she’ll actually be good at solving problems. If she has to run every tiny decision past you first, you’re still doing half the job you hired her to do.

Before you jump in, ask yourself whether the decision is actually bad or simply different from yours. You can probably live with a lot more of the second category than you think.

#3 Hire People Who Will Tell You When You’re Wrong

A person who agrees with every idea you have is very easy to work with right up until one of those ideas is terrible. You DO NOT want a “yes man.”

Jacky knows she moves FAST. Earlier in her career, she would look around at her team and wonder why everyone else seemed so slow. Eventually, she figured out that they weren’t particularly slow. Her natural pace was just much faster than most people’s, and she was expecting everyone around her to match it. 

That realization changed what she wants from the people around her. When she asks for something by next week and an employee says, “No, I can’t do that,” she doesn’t automatically assume the person is being difficult. She wants people to tell her when there’s too much on their plate.

That seems particularly relevant in an interior design firm, where the answer to “Can we get this done by Friday?” can very easily turn into somebody working until 11:00 p.m. on Thursday because she was afraid to say no. You need people who will tell you the deadline is ridiculous BEFORE Thursday night.

The same goes for your ideas. Jacky specifically hires people who think differently from her because she knows they’ll catch things she misses. Sometimes they make her idea better. Sometimes they talk her out of the whole thing. Both are way better than six people nodding in a meeting while privately thinking this is going to be a disaster. 

If somebody on your team sees a big red flag, you want to hear about it while you can still do something about it. And if nobody ever disagrees with you, you should be a little suspicious. Either you are making flawless decisions at an astonishing rate, or people have learned that disagreeing with you isn’t worth the trouble.

Hire people who will tell you what they actually think, and pay attention when they do.

#4 Pay Attention to Whether Someone Actually Fits Your Firm

You can hire someone with a fantastic résumé, plenty of experience, and glowing references and still make the wrong hire.

Jacky has seen this with people coming from much larger businesses. Some of them were thrilled to suddenly have a lot more say in their work. One employee had previously worked in a huge retail business where his decisions could barely affect his little piece of the operation. With Jacky, he was running the entire marketing department. He loved having that much influence. 

Other people from similar backgrounds had a much harder time. They were used to more layers, more redundancy, and a lot less risk. Jacky’s business changes quickly, and she wants people who are comfortable trying things that might fail. Some employees loved that. Others absolutely did not. 

Interior design firms have their own versions of this. Maybe your studio is highly organized and everybody follows a very specific process. Maybe your team changes direction constantly because projects change constantly. Maybe designers talk directly to clients from day one. Maybe they don’t. Maybe you want someone who asks a million questions before making a call, or maybe that would drive you completely insane.

And it isn’t just firm owners expanding their teams for the first time who make these misaligned hires. Jacky once had an employee who struggled with the pace of her business. Eventually, she let him go. He joined another business and did extremely well.

Before you hire the next person, ask questions that get past whether she can technically do the job. Ask what happened the last time priorities changed with almost no warning. Ask how she likes to make decisions. Ask how much direction she expects from her boss. Ask what kind of work environment drove her crazy at her last job.

You might learn more from those answers than you will from another question about her “greatest weakness.”

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#5 If Someone Isn’t Doing Their Job, You Need to Do Something About It

Jacky has a pretty low tolerance for business owners who complain endlessly about employees they continue to employ. And she has a point.

If somebody has been missing deadlines for six months, producing work you constantly have to redo, or needing far more supervision than you expected, you have a problem to address. Complaining to another firm owner over drinks doesn’t actually count as addressing it.

That doesn’t excuse an employee who isn’t doing her job. It means YOU have a decision to make too. And be careful before you assign blame entirely to her. Maybe she needs training you never gave her. Maybe you assumed your expectations were obvious when they were mostly obvious to you. Maybe she genuinely has no idea how frustrated you are because you’ve been correcting everything yourself rather than having the uncomfortable conversation.

And sometimes you’ve already had those conversations. You’ve trained her. You’ve explained the problem. You’ve given her time. It’s still not working.

Jacky brings up the old “hire slowly and fire fast” advice in the episode, then immediately admits she’s not particularly good at the second half. Firing somebody is awful. Then you have to find another person, interview her, hire her, train her, and hope you didn’t somehow make an even worse decision this time. 

So people wait. Maybe she’ll finally figure it out. Maybe next month will be better. Maybe this next project will magically reveal the employee you thought you hired two years ago.

But if you keep kicking that can down the road, Jacky says you’re probably being “lazy, chicken, or delusional.”

Firing somebody often feels cruel, but there’s another side to this. The employee usually knows she isn’t doing well. She knows you’re disappointed. She can tell her coworkers are frustrated. Dragging that out for another year doesn’t necessarily do her some enormous favor. Jacky’s former employee went somewhere else and thrived, remember?

Train people when they need training. Have the uncomfortable conversations when something needs to change. And when you know you hired the wrong person, don’t make everybody spend another year proving it.

Your Team Should Need Fewer Answers From You (Eventually)

Of course a new hire is going to need you.

She has no idea why that particular client requires three follow-up emails before answering anything. She doesn’t know which vendor you stopped using after The Sofa Incident. She doesn’t know that when you say a presentation needs to be “basically done” by Thursday, you actually mean VERY done.

That’s what training is for.

But six months later, you should notice a difference. She should have answers she didn’t have before. She should recognize problems earlier. She should know which decisions are hers to make and when something really does need your attention. And every once in a while, she should come into your office with a solution you hadn’t thought of.

Written by the DesignDash Editorial Team
Our contributors include experienced designers, firm owners, design writers, and other industry professionals. If you’re interested in submitting your work or collaborating, please reach out to our Editor-in-Chief at editor@designdash.com.