The Top 10 of Choosing Employees

1. Choose a field thoughtfully.

Make it one you enjoy. It's hard to be productive without genuine enthusiasm.

2. Hire carefully and be willing to fire.

You need a strong team, because a mediocre team gives mediocre results, no matter how well managed it is.

3. Create a productive environment.

This is a particular challenge because it requires different approaches depending on the context. Sometimes you maximize productivity by giving everybody his or her own office. Sometimes you achieve it by moving everybody into open space. Sometimes you use financial incentives to stimulate productivity. A combination of approaches is usually required .

4. Define success.

Make it clear to your employees what constitutes success and how they should measure their achievements. Goals must be realistic. People will accept a ``bottom-up'' deadline they helped set but they'll be cynical about a schedule imposed from the top that doesn't map to reality.

5. You have to like people and be good at communicating.

You need relationships--not necessarily personal friendships--with a fair number of people, including your own employees.

6. Develop your people to do their jobs better than you can.

Transfer your skills to them. This is an exciting goal but it can be threatening to a manager who worries that he's training his replacement.

7. Build morale.

Give people a sense of the importance of what they're working on--its importance to the company, its importance to customers. When you achieve great results, everybody involved should share in the credit and feel good about it.

8. Take on projects yourself.

You need to do more than communicate. From time to time prove you can be hands-on by taking on one of the less attractive tasks and using it as an example of how your employees should meet challenges.

9. Don't make the same decision twice.

Spend the time and thought