One of your tasks as the CEO is to pick the right people to power your business. Building an environment in which they can thrive — your culture— is critical. But a culture without people who are properly aligned and focused is pointless and counterproductive. Culture cannot exist without people, and people must be properly aligned with the culture for results to manifest.

Building a culture of like-minded people is critical to the role that a CEO plays, and it is as much an art as a science. Hire the wrong person and morale crumbles and performance suffers. Bring on the right talent and performance increases and growth accelerates. Once the right people are on board, they grow and change, engage with new challenges and embrace the lessons of success and failure. This growth, while positive, can pose its own set of challenges.

CEO's know that finding the right mix of skills, knowledge, experience, and cultural fit can be a Herculean task. As with most tasks, being intentional about the end result produces profound results. That job belongs to the CEO and no one else. While you may delegate specific tasks in the hiring process such as involving those who will work day-to-day with the new hire, the CEO must make the ultimate decision to introduce a new person into a carefully constructed cultural ecosystem.

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