In today’s competitive marketplace managers cannot be afraid of hiring the best talent inside their organizations. As Jim Ward points out Talent is the single most important driver of every endeavor he has been engaged in. Surrounding yourself with the brightest and best has almost always proven to be a successful tool provided they also are committed to the company and work they will be doing. Great Question and a strong answer is given below in an interview with CMO.com’s Nick Crocodiles w/ Jim Ward.
Its all about the talent you hire. Good companies thrive with good talented people.
Jim Ward has been behind the launches of some of the biggest brands and marketing campaigns in the business.
CMO.com’s Nick Corcodilos spoke with Ward to learn about Ward’s successful team-building methods in entertainment, technology, and consumer markets.
Corcodilos: Some managers would say, “I’ve got an HR department. Frankly, I’m too busy running marketing to go out and recruit people.” What do you say to that?
Ward: They’re wrong. Look, the business is simple. It’s talent, no matter what business you’re in. As you said, I’ve crossed a number of spectrums from technology to you name it—and it’s all about talent, it’s all about people, period. That’s No. 1 at the end of the day. And no matter what size the company, no matter what scale it is, there has to be that critical mass of talent. And if that’s not your No. 1 priority, period, end of story, success will not happen.
With all due respect to HR departments, they’re going to do the day-in and day-out grunt work of making that machine work. But at the end of the day, in order to evangelize, in order to express a vision, in order to sell someone, in order to recruit—head coaches in college football make personal visits to the candidates they’re after. They get their ass on a plane and go visit kids in their homes.
It’s the same thing when you’re running a company, or you’re the CMO. You’ve got to go out there and make that the No. 1 priority. Unless you’ve got that foundation in that farm of pigs, you’re just not going to be successful.
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