Goldcorp in Canada: Another Company With the Rule

Today's Globe and Mail has a story on Ian Telfer, chairman of "Goldcorp Inc., the world's second-largest gold producer by market capitalization, called The Dealmaker Shows His Giving Side. Mr. Telfer has a nice discussion of how he applies the rule: Here is an interesting excerpt from the interview with the Globe and Mail:

Are you really a manager?

You have to be. The head office of Goldcorp is 60 people and I probably hired 50 of them. If you get the right people, they can do the job.

There is a bestseller right now called The No Asshole Rule. It is all about: 'Don't hire any assholes.' So I spend a lot of time picking who we're going to hire. You need someone with technical qualifications, but you also have to find someone who can work with other people and respect other people.

Then you give them real responsibility and that is the secret to the whole system. You let them make mistakes. That is what the majority of managers seem unable to do: They can't let someone make even a minor mistake.

I would also add that, in addition to using the no asshole rule, Mr Telfer also applies one of the single most important management practices for any company --to create a safe environment where people are given enough autonomy to make some mistakes, and when it happens, it is used as a learning opportunity. Companies that slam people when they make mistakes create a climate of fear that undermines learning and usually leads to more mistakes -- and effort devoted to hiding errors or avoiding the finger of blame, rather than learning. This is a major point in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Weird Ideas That Work, and I've blogged about here under "The Best Single Diagnostic Question."

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