Businesses often recruit in reaction to a problem. Someone leaves, something’s urgent, or a new project has just landed. In these situations, businesses hire to fix what is broken now, rather than to build what they want next.
Your future business will be shaped by the people you bring in today. Their skills, values, and how they show up. They shape your culture. If businesses are constantly focussed on fixing the problems of today, they will never create the space to build the business they want tomorrow.
Starting with the end in mind means hiring, leading, and developing teams with a long-term view, creating stronger engagement, resilience, and real momentum.
Don’t Hire to Fill a Gap – Hire for the Future
Hiring to relieve immediate pain is tempting, but it often leads to long term regret with misaligned expectations, lack of long-term commitment, cultural drift, and even higher turnover. Instead, ask:
- Will his person still be the right fit as the business grows?
- Could they step up into something more in the future?
- Are they aligned with where we’re going, not just where we are?
Businesses have a responsibility to deliver what they promise. Ensuring prospects are stepping into a role that matches their expectations. When there’s a mismatch between what’s been described and the reality, it can lead to frustration, disengagement, and a loss of trust.
It’s important to present the role and business honestly. Focus on the real opportunities, like how the role can grow, how individuals can develop (the real development tools/strategies that are in place), and how they can contribute to something bigger over time.
Being clear from the start helps attract people who are genuinely excited about the journey, not just the idea of the role.
Development Isn’t Optional
Developing your employees should play a fundamental part in your business. As Richard Branson said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
Most businesses invest in developing technical skills. Yet many of the challenges people face at work aren’t down to a lack of skill. They come from something less visible: how people communicate, work together, and respond to pressure. It shows up in all sorts of ways:
- Conflict that’s never properly addressed
- Working relationships that feel tense or difficult
- Misunderstandings that slow everything down
Helping people build self-awareness and better understand how to work with others is just as important as training them to do the job. It makes feedback more constructive, teamwork more effective, and conflict easier to manage.
Strong working relationships create the foundation for everything else. And when development includes how people interact, not just what they do, performance improves.
High-Performing Teams Don’t Just Happen
Bringing together great people doesn’t guarantee a great team. It takes work.
Teams that actually perform are built intentionally through:
- Trust that allows for open and honest conversations
- Constructive conflict where ideas are challenged in healthy ways
- Commitment to shared goals
- Accountability that’s clear and consistent
- Results focus that keeps the whole team moving in the same direction
They communicate well, challenge each other constructively, and keep moving forward.
But it doesn’t happen by chance. These behaviours need to be developed, encouraged, and modelled from the top down. Left alone, most teams will default to playing it safe, avoiding conflict, lacking clarity, and working in silos.
It’s not about pushing for perfection, it’s about creating the conditions where people feel safe to speak up, know what’s expected, and understand how to work through challenges together.
Start with the End in Mind
Imaging where you want your business to be in five years. Who’s in the room? What kind of culture exists?
In order to get there, we need to be hiring, leading, and developing employees with this in mind instead of fillings gaps, reacting to pressure, or keeping things ticking along.
It means asking better questions before someone joins, and setting clearer expectations once they’re in. It means aligning recruitment, onboarding, and development with your bigger goals, so people aren’t just coming in to do a job – they’re part of something with direction and purpose.
The most successful businesses understand the value of this. They invest in tools, insights and approaches that help them build the right culture from the ground up.
