Mickey Cargile had been making the same mistake for decades, and it cost him a lot of money.
For the first 20 years that he ran WNB Private Client Services LLP, if he had a job opening, he’d simply hire somebody for that specific position. But this approach created a problem in his financial products and services company.
“I was a big believer in building processes and just plugging someone into the chair that could do the process,” the founder and managing partner says. “We had a lot of turnover because of that.”
Ten years ago, he decided to try something different. He didn’t have any “aha” moment. There was no sudden enlightened revelation.
He just figured he would try a different approach and, worst case, if it didn’t work out, he’d go back to the way he did things before. So the next time he had an administrative opening, instead of just hiring for that position, he decided to double the salary and hire someone with a lot more potential.
“The results were so phenomenal that the next person I hired was very similar,” he says.
Seeing a clear difference in performance, he started upgrading the skill-set requirements for employees and hiring better talent. He doubled salaries — some two and a half times what the pay was before.
“It’s actually self-fulfilling because what we’ve found is they’re so motivated,” he says. “They deliver better value without having to be — they’re certainly accountable — but they certainly meet their accountability standards on their own. They require less management.”
Since starting this approach, turnover has dropped, the bottom line has roughly tripled and the company now oversees more than $800 million in assets.
“You don’t know how much of that is just the natural progression of the business, but I certainly give a lot of credit and value to the employees here,” he says.
With so many top performers coming in, Cargile needed to find a way to keep them. He’s completely revamped WNB’s culture by creating a career path for his 191 employees, hiring for different skills and addressing problems.
“I just started hiring better talent and, of course, had to start paying them more, but the result on the bottom line was just significant, and I can see now that while, for 20 years, my procedure process was utilitarian, it was misguided,” Cargile says. “I think you have to hire the best employees and pay them and try to keep them forever.”
