• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, October 23, 2008

I recently attended "Stream 08," an "un-conference" in Greece co-hosted by Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP and Yossi Vardi. Yossi, one of the world's best and most prominent technology investors and entrepreneurs, is famous for his un-conferences, which are basically open-source events where all of the participants are expected not only to listen and engage with speakers, but to be presenters as well. The focus of the events is to establish original dialogue among a diverse group of entrepreneurs, executives and, in this case, marketers and advertising agency folks. It was a pretty extraordinary couple of days and I can certainly say that I came away enriched -- whether it was learning about the surprising opportunities for mobile Internet in East Africa, hearing Sir Martin's extremely well-thought-out perspective on the current financial crisis and its global ramifications, or meeting some great entrepreneurs working on some really cool ideas.

Since you can't just be a sponge at one of these events, but must contribute as well, I led a small session on recruiting and retaining talent in start-up companies. It was a lot of fun. And, in the true spirit of an "un-conference," I found a co-leader in one of the other participants ten minutes into the session, when Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Mahalo, walked up and joined our group. As those of you who have followed Jason's career and writings know, Jason has been a real leader in the Internet industry in building talented teams and in managing them through both good times and bad. Plus, he's never been afraid to share either his experiences or his opinions. A lot of our discussion centered on the challenges of finding the right people to work in your organizations and then how to evaluate, motivate and compensate them.

The group came up with some great insights through the course of the session. Here are some that really stuck with me:

When hiring, focus on the mission, not the money. We talked a lot about the role of compensation in finding talent. We found that while offering competitive compensation was important, it was never the primary motivator for great talent -- great missions and the chance to grow and make a difference are.

Hire slow, fire fast. We all agreed that the vast majority of our personnel disasters over the years resulted from hiring too quickly and bringing in someone that we knew was a risk, rather than patiently waiting for exactly the right candidate. Other big mistakes included keeping folks around that aren't cutting it, are disruptive, or in a role that they are not suited for.

Hire excellent, fire good. I know that this sounds draconian, but in the hyper-competitive markets that most of us are competing in these days, being good is not good enough. You need to be excellent to survive and thrive, and you need excellent people to do that.

Find your hiring "template." Enterprise Rent-A-Car is famous for its early strategy of hiring recent college graduates who were presidents of fraternities or sororities to help establish its remote rental locations. They want self-starters and great organizers, comfortable working to establish themselves and the company in communities where they launch. It makes sense. Since much of my career has been focused on relatively complex advertising technologies understandable and accessible to media companies, brand advertisers, and agencies, I have always liked to hire as many tech-savvy liberal arts graduates as possible.

Hire less than you need. We all agreed that it was generally better to be a bit understaffed than overstaffed. Not only does it keep folks busy, but it also gives them room to stand out and grow. When you have too many people and too little work, that's when the grumbling starts and the work satisfaction goes down.

These were some of our thoughts on recruiting, retaining and motivating talent in our organizations. What do you think of them? Any lessons of your own to add?