RE: What am I looking for when hiring?

Thanks for the suggestion!

How can you inspire people to do their best? I like giving people a voice, asking their opinion. It makes them more vested in the outcome. "Do you think there's something we can do to improve/streamline (fill in the blank)?" "That's a good idea, thanks!" Or admit you're human. "I'm really struggling with x problem. What are your thoughts?" With some people, giving them more of a voice is enough incentive. Sometimes that'll help with problems A and C. With B, I just gently remind or have step by step instructions written down. Also, some people are just not hard wired for details. Then they get assigned different tasks. To me, jobs need to be flexible enough to accommodate different people. You have a person, try to make it work. My two examples of where it didn't, they both had a sense of entitlement and tasks were beneath them. They weren't collaborators. I tried everything I just mentioned, but either nothing changed or they complained. There's only so much you can do.

One of my favorite jobs was at PetsMart. It was my first paying job. The difference was that I made lifelong friends there, and I knew the managers had my back. Yeah, not every worker pulled their weight, but we had a built-in peer pressure system to make sure everyone did their part. We couldn't leave until everything was reset, so we all pitched in to help. If you weren't pulling your weight, even though I had no authority, I sure as hell told you! That was incentive enough for some people. :)