Let me make a hasty, initial assurance: this is going to be a short write-up! The ground is thick with literature on how leaders and organisations can do a better job of hiring people, managing their performance, and developing them. We have no major proprietary tool to sell (yet). And we have no major quarrel with the various tools and methods recommended in the literature. So we do not see the need to repeat the usual literature.
Keeping the Balance Among Criteria
To our mind, the only important unaddressed issue is that of criteria of selection and development. Today, it is easy to come across sage advice that one must hire for attitude as skills can be taught. Separately, the world in unison seems to be recommending to young people that there is no point in learning specialist skills, since those skills will become redundant fairly soon.
We disagree. Vehemently.
Capital equipment installed this week in plants across the planet will definitely be seen humming along fifteen years from now – some of them much longer.
Moreover, and even more importantly, anyone who displays the ability to master some tool or equipment today, is likely to display that ability with other tools tomorrow as well (typically, they would have already displayed that ability in some other field in their student days). That ability will keep them ahead of the others – rest assured, in the world of tomorrow, we will all be using more tools than we are using today. This ‘detail-orientation’ ability does not mean absence of strategic thinking abilities. Instead, it means these are people who, despite being in strategic roles, have a good feel of the work challenges on the ground. Which is not to claim that they automatically are strategic thinkers – that ability has to be assessed separately.
Conversely, most of those who recoil in horror on seeing anything that looks complicated initially will forever stay dependent and following others, sticking with the familiar, incapable of learning anything significantly new. Typically, they are not strategic minds, either.
‘Detail-orientation’ abilities do not mean absence of strategic thinking abilities. Instead, it means these are people who, despite being in strategic roles, have a good feel of the work challenges on the ground.
A function must decide well on the criteria to be used to select and develop the members. They cannot go by popular pills. It is fairly easy to see the quality of thinking underlying these processes in a function. And as mentioned in the beginning, there is a lot of good advice and resources available in the wide world to improve quickly in these areas.
Related Readings :
CAPPELLI P. Your Approach To Hiring Is All Wrong, HBR ( May-Jun 2019 )
ROSENZWEIG J. I’ve Spent The Last 20 Years Recruiting Top Talent For Over 500 Companies. Here Are The 4 Most Important Hiring Criteria Every Company Should Prioritise, Business Insider ( Oct 2019 )
