A lot of interesting stuff has been going on over the past few weeks. A good bit of it touches on themes we’ll likely be visiting, here, soon, so let’s take a closer look at some of it:

Daily reading. Almost every source cited here, today, is on my daily reading list, and if you are a serious-minded practicing manager, then surely Michael Wade’s Execupundit should be on yours. See what he has to say about getting to the heart of the matter, and about how to approach the question of why you are in charge.

National moods. Please see this WSJ piece reviewing two books, one of which applies classically infantile arguments to malign the American habit of optimism as, itself, infantile, and the other which appreciates optimism, but is pessimistic about its survival in modern American society. Then, for some more realistic perspective, move on to view this article, from BusinessWeek, about India’s prospects.

Manipulative myths. The always worthwhile and thought-provoking PsyBlog offers, here, an item explaining how and why the ham-handed administration of incentive programs is bound to backfire. And please be sure to see this piece, by John Phillips, approaching the question of sanctioning employees from the opposite direction – John always talks straight, something we, perhaps, don’t see enough of in our particular corner of the blogosphere, and surely something you should value in an employment-law lawyer.

Managing management consultants. Here are two outstanding articles from two outstanding authors: Dan McCarthy gives us the straight-from-the-shoulder truth about what HR wants from executive coaches, and Mary Jo Asmus provides some absolute must-read advice about what serious executive coaches want from HR.

Ignoble Nobel. Hard to pass this one up. Steve Tobak, who writes The Corner Office column for BNET, has some strong words on the topic, fueled not by the surprise of the event, but by the chord it struck in a long-considered train of thought about leadership. Then please see this must-read WSJ piece about one rich and important peace prize that went un-awarded this year. And, as long as we’re on the topic, you will surely want to see this take on the matter from the blog written by no less an insider than TOTUS – the Teleprompter Of The United States.

Master trainer. It seems pointless, really, to single out particular posts by Steve Roesler. We should all read them all. But here are a few that you should read again: This and this (read them both!), on what your employees want to know – all managers should memorize these; Sandhill cranes – all self-mesmerized leaders should tape this one to their mirrors, or someone should tape it on their backsides; and please do see the sorts of ideas that just pop in to Steve’s mind when the topic of learning comes up.

There is more, from more must-read sources and authors, but we’ll pick that up on Monday. Have a great weekend!

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Technorati Tags: manager, Michael Wade, Execupundit, WSJ, American, optimism, perspective, BusinessWeek, India, PsyBlog, incentive, John Phillips, employment, Dan McCarthy, HR, executive, coach, Mary Jo Asmus, Steve Tobak, The Corner Office, BNET, leadership, TOTUS, Steve Roesler, employee, leader, learning

What are those, exactly – geniuses? Are they just super-intelligent people? As we noted yesterday, there is a strong inclination to presume so. Indeed, it is common to rate smartness as ascending by degree from basic common sense, to intelligence, to genius.

But we’ve seen before that genius may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Or, at least, it might be more varied and less helpful, in some of its manifestations, than commonly thought.

It is possible to think of it as coming in three forms. Let’s take a quick look at them (and please do let us know what you think):

Savantic genius is not only completely out of your control – it may come at the cost of compromising other basic cognitive functioning. It can reveal itself in a variety of realms – mathematics, music, art, feats of memory – but may be expressed mechanically, without enlivening comprehension, even entirely independently of context or purpose. On top of that, the resources consumed to fuel it leave little to maintain other important abilities.

Socratic genius is partially out of your control. You don’t so much create it, as give shape to its expression through you. It is a sort of brilliant insight that blinds all who behold it, including you. You seem to have an uncanny grasp of certain matters – particularly those related to human experience, emotion, ambition – and can render and relate them with rare perception, and in a manner that strikes rich harmonic chords in the rest of us. A peculiar danger of this sort of genius is the assumption – shared by all, including you – that your genius is unbounded, extends to fields well beyond those where it is actually quite narrowly restricted, and that you both comprehend and control it.

Edisonian genius is completely under your control, if you have the endurance and discipline to keep it there. It arises from focus, sweat, and perseverance. You can’t call it forth more or less at will, and it doesn’t seize you suddenly, as the other types sometimes seem to do. Even the flash of insight identified with this form of genius is not its central characteristic, but rather is its end result, arriving at unpredictable times and in unexpected ways, while in the depths of concentrated, prolonged immersion in the matter at hand.

All three types of genius, though, can be compared to a loose cannon – you can never be sure if it will even go off, or if it does, what it will produce and in what direction it will project it. You can be sure, though, that while it’s careening wildly around the deck, it will have all of your attention.

Is that really what you want?

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Today’s tips: Speaking of out-of-context intelligence, please see this WSJ review of Matthew Stewart describing this problem in his new book, “The Management Myth.”

And here’s something else for your to-do list: a reading of Michael Wade’s to do list. My favorites: numbers 1 and 5. Yours?

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Technorati Tags: intelligent, common sense, intelligence, genius, control, mathematics, music, art, memory, comprehension, context, purpose, resource, insight, experience, emotion, ambition, perception, assumption, Edison, discipline, focus, perseverance, WSJ, Matthew Stewar, Michael Wade

Of course, we all do think we’re smart, don’t we? Certainly, those who challenge us on the matter think they are. And, as we’ve seen, often the least radiant among us think they shine the brightest of all.

But what if we really are smart – so what? Is that enough? Is our smartness sufficient to every mental test to which it might be put?

Consider this question: are there differences between intelligence, genius, and common sense? If so, are they differences of type, or of degree within the same type of mental capacity?

Can a person be possessed of (or by) more than one type? Are they permanent characteristics, as we typically presume, or transient – or, at least can they periodically fail, or seize, us?

Is one superior to another, as we also typically presume? Which one? Are you sure? How would you defend your answer? Do you base your opinion on what appears to make (common) sense, on personal experience, or on a review of how well people of your preferred type of smartness have been faring lately?

Does one encompass, like Russian nesting dolls, the others? Or does the possession of one necessarily exclude, impede, or suppress the others? That is, might geniuses routinely miss things that common-sense types perceive rather more easily, and the reverse?

What are the organizational implications of this? For which, if any, do you design your operations and processes? Indeed, for which, if any, do you build your hiring, assignment, and promotion criteria and assessments?

Are you sure you have that right? And you thought you were so smart.

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Today’s tip: This Bloomberg.com item suggests that the departure of Google’s CEO from the Apple board of directors is a result of increasing anti-trust pressure on Silicon Valley firms. Is that the only problem with a CEO of one firm being on the board of another?

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Technorati Tags: smart, intelligence, genius, common sense, opinion, experience, organization, hiring, assignment, promotion, assessment, Google, CEO, Apple, board of directors, anti-trust, Silicon Valley

How do we run our businesses, and how do they interact with their markets? A recent WSJ editorial cartoon has a manager reporting back to the CEO on the results of a new initiative: “Productivity is up twenty percent since your picture was installed on our screen savers.” And Murat Yetkin, a Turkish columnist, yesterday made an interesting comparison between the fall in 1991 of an “oppressive socialism unconcerned with people” and what he sees as the collapse today of “a spoiled, aggressive type of capitalism which ignores human concerns.”

Is that what’s going on? Are we just swinging from one extreme to the other in a competition over how best to exploit workers and consumers? Let’s take a brief look:

The law and leadership. This post by John Phillips includes a generous reference to this site. But I’m pointing to it here for his list of things that he says leaders should do. This is advice that could save a lot of attorney fees for everyone concerned – and that’s the least of it. Do you know business managers who do these things? Or, is it your impression that this advice is necessary precisely because they generally don’t?

Laying off of layoffs. Wally Bock has written recently about how to prove your vaunted faith in human resources during financial squeezes by avoiding automatic recourse to layoffs; he also addresses the costs of such layoffs on those who survive them – including your business. It seems that this important message is gaining in currency. Please see this New York Times piece about how more companies are, as Wally advises, cutting labor costs without layoffs. While you’re reading it, note the unfortunate opening illustration – how stirring, really, do you find it; what message does it really send? Don’t stop there, though; the examples get better.

Quantifying consumers cynically. The Economist has an excellent special section in this week’s edition containing a diverse range of thought-provoking essays. One is on the truly fascinating advances made by retailers in evaluating the customer experience in their stores and how to convert that into sales – in real time. This is a must read. How do you react to it – is it cold exploitation of crowds of faceless customers, or careful consideration and thoughtful addressing of their joint and individual needs and preferences?

Darwinian self-interest at work. Another essay from that section looks at a rebirth of the controversial concept of behavioral evolution, and what it suggests for social policy. With that perhaps chilling purpose in the back of your mind, the entire piece will gain new interest for you, but note especially the section entitled “A woman’s place” about women at work. This is a classic example of something you should consider carefully – certainly if you agree with its implications, but especially if you don’t.

Are we really so uncaring? Is that even the point? As is often argued by free-market liberals, those who pretend to care the most typically wind up doing the most harm. On the other hand, if there is a greater individual and common good achieved in the general economy by expressing selfishness through capitalism, might there not be the same attained in the workplace by employing selfless management practices?

Another recent WSJ editorial cartoon has two dogs gazing wistfully down into a bottomless chasm. One says to the other, “Sometimes you just have to let the stick go.” Might our tendency to cling to our favorite orthodoxies be denying us some fruitful opportunities in this new environment opening up beyond the current crisis? Perhaps the reading pointed to here will help in evaluating that proposition.

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Technorati Tags: business, market, WSJ, manager, CEO, initiative, Murat Yetkin, socialism, capitalism, competition, worker, consumer, John Phillips, leader, Wally Bock, human resource, layoff, New York Times, Economist, customer, exploitation, evolution, policy, women, work, free-market, liberal, economy, workplace, management

The apprenticeship model of management – or leadership – development is a deeply perceptive approach to this vital topic that is most effectively championed by Wally Bock, of Three Star Leadership. The basic premise is that leadership cannot be learned in school, but must be practiced on the job. The wise organization will provide mechanisms – from career path assignments to mentoring programs – to facilitate this.

That single insight by itself can save organizations a tremendous amount of aggravation in infusing truly effective and robust talent development systems into their structures. And it need not start only at the entry level for management – but in the staff, as we discussed on Friday.

In a comment to that post, Gannon Beck offered a terrific example of how this idea worked for him as a perhaps unanticipated, but highly effective management development program:

I’m convinced that even the most complex job can have a piece of it broken off so that someone can be hired to do it with little or no training. In my business, that’s the job of coloring designs for T-shirts. Even though it would take years to develop the ability to illustrate T-shirts at our level, we can train a candidate to color designs in a few weeks.

The criteria for this position shifts away from skill sets, to merely a desire to do the work. Enthusiasm for the job seems to be the key indicator for success.

One candidate showed up who never used any of the software we use, didn’t own a computer, never worked in screen printing, and never even took a single art class. He wanted to do the job so badly, though, that he kept showing up even when we didn’t have a position. He kept expressing how much he wanted to work in the company.

He was hired on a part-time trial basis and has worked his tail off to become as skilled as possible. He is now an expert with the software and has a better command of this industry than any of the college students and graduates I’ve interviewed in the last two years.

If I’m out of the office, I know I can rest easy because he is capable of handling almost any situation that may arise while I’m away. He does not do entry-level work anymore, but without creating an entry-level position, I would have missed out on him.”

Undeterred by the absence of traditional credentials, Gannon was alert to the promise indicated by the persistent desire and enthusiasm displayed by this candidate. He designed a low-risk, containable and controllable program to see how far the employee could go.

Do your managers do that? Do you? And, how about your hirees – how are they coming along?

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Today’s Tip: Speaking of failing to look far enough for true indicators of success, how about not looking far enough for the true sources of failure? Please view and carefully consider the implications of this piece by Michael Wade, of Execupundit.

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If you look at the contents section on the sidebar of the main page of this site, you will see a listing of the article series that have been published here. You can click through to view summaries of the pieces, and then read the full series or selections that are of most interest to you. Enjoy!

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Technorati Tags: apprenticeship, management, leadership, development, Wally Bock, learn, school, practice, job, organization, career, assignment, mentor, insight, effective, talent, management development, training, business, candidate, skill set, desire, work, Enthusiasm, indicator, success, college, student, graduate, entry-level, credential, employee, manager, success, failure, Michael Wade, Execupundit, Gannon Beck, Three Star Leadership

It may seem obvious that it is important to understand what skill sets you need in a job before you start looking for someone to fill it. And, indeed, many Human Resource departments know precisely what is required in closely defined line positions. From sales to production or service fulfilment, these criteria are often quite clear, and the process of discovering who has or can develop them can be just as clear.

Unfortunately, the situation is more muddled for managers at various levels in many types of work. It is for this reason that we raised the question last week. The very same companies that have a fairly precise awareness of the requirements for most of their staffs, have no real clue what their managers actually do.

The evidence of this is in the language in their job descriptions (where those even exist) for management slots. These are often simply aggregate summaries of what the managed work-unit does, or wistfully assembled lists of commonly desirable personality characteristics.

So, what do you do? To begin with, you could examine the situation. Ask your managers what activities they regularly engage in that they believe advance the work. Ask them what are the skills or traits that they believe help them do that. Ask the staff. Hire business coaches to follow them around and study their schedules.

Or how about this: As Gannon Beck noted in a comment to last Friday’s post, “Don’t hire your managers as managers – at least not initially.”

Gannon illustrates this strategy with a description of how the marketing author Seth Godin used it in developing the management team for Squidoo. The key point is that the staff members were initially hired as interns (no MBAs), and the positions they ultimately took emerged from their interactions in the course of actually doing the work (please be sure to see Gannon’s comment for the full story).

So, they weren’t hired into positions, they arranged themselves into them.

This is a valuable and actionable concept. It is comparable to ideas such as giving line staff who are candidates for management, assignments in which their potential can be observed, or stretch assignments for managers being considered for promotion.

But the most interesting aspect of it has to do with how it suggests that you should fill entry-level or vacant higher-level management positions: Don’t fill them. Place individuals or groups in the positions below the vacancy, assign some or all of the duties of the entry-level or other management position to them, and see who emerges to fill the need.

There are a number of points about this that bear consideration, of course. Here are just three:

1. This method was used at Squidoo to generate the entire management team of a start-up; it’s use in an ongoing enterprise, particularly to fill individual openings, might be more problematic.
2. That concern, however, merely highlights the potential value of the increasingly appreciated wisdom of cultivating a bias toward discovering and developing talent from within.
3. Even when hiring from external sources, why not try to find a way to hire into the level below the requirement, even though that would result in a surplus there? Then have the managers/staff at that level sort out on their own how to pick up the duties of the missing manager, and use the information surfaced by this process to select the next occupant of that position – whether it is the new hire or a current manager.

Certainly there are costs of various sorts that may be associated with approaches like these. But is the approach you use now cost-free?

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Today’s tips: Speaking of the costs of plunging into an investment in an MBA, consider this interesting piece from the WSJ about how and why the divorce rate is higher among female than among male MBAs.

If you can’t quite figure out a good system for your daily internet scans (a real issue for me, as an American living overseas, relying heavily on the internet for news), or if your RSS reader is becoming ungainly and disorganized, consider the new site, Alltop. On its home page it sorts information sources from traditional media to well-vetted blogs into intelligent and useful categories for easy examination. Take a look – you’ll likely find it solving some real problems for you. Be sure to stop by the Career section under the “Work” heading – that’s where you’ll find this blog (and a lot of our blogroll colleagues).

The issue of race in the United States has been raised during the current American presidential campaign. In a reversal of the usual course of events for such things, it began with perhaps less than helpful impulses, but has developed into a more-or-less civil and thoughtful dialogue. Many readers of this site may be interested to know that Peter Drucker was a long-time observer of this issue; please see this excellent column from Business Week, written by Rick Wartzman.

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If you enjoy this way of accessing this site, you can sign up for text alerts (of new posts) to your phone simply by enrolling your number in the mobile subscription link, also at upper right on the sidebar of the main page. Why not try it now!

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Technorati Tags: skill, job, Human Resource, manager, work, job description, trait, business, coach, strategy, marketing, management, team, intern, potential, stretch, assignment, promotion, Squidoo, start-up, enterprise, wisdom, talent, information, investment, MBA, WSJ, Alltop, United States, American, president, campaign, Business Week, Rick Wartzman, Gannon Beck, Seth Godin, Peter Drucker

This is an informal term used in the US Marines to refer to an officer with enlisted experience. In a civilian automobile factory, for comparison, it might describe someone moving up from being a blue-collar production-line factory employee – and perhaps through some of the supervisor levels, as well – before entering the white-collared ranks of management.

There are definitely advantages to this pipeline. For one thing, mustangers are often able to detect the sorts of orders coming down from on high that are destined to be greeted, by those who are to carry them out, with amused bafflement – almost never a productivity enhancer. Sometimes they can do something about those, and this usually works to the execution-enhancing benefit of both the recipients and the issuers.

But there is another interesting aspect to this, suggested in a comment left on Tuesday’s post by Mike King, who is the author of Learn This:

I find it very interesting to see the different styles and techniques of managers who have and haven’t come from MBA backgrounds. Personally, I prefer the ones who haven’t come at it with an MBA . . .”

In the military, the phenomenon is noted with real interest – and sometimes quite strong opinion. Marines are certainly intrigued by the approaches used by mustangers in comparison with officers commissioned in the usual manner, straight from college. Over time I became aware of three different sorts of outcomes. These varied among individuals and over time. But, initially, they fell into these two general categories for the Marines concerned:

1. We like it: Mustangers understand and know how to deal with us.

2. We dislike it: Mustangers play the experience card too much, and sometimes are too critical and dismissive of us.

A bit of a wash, really. An experienced and insightful senior officer once suggested that the best mustangers tended to fall into the first category if their enlisted experience was limited to a few years, and at most to the lower supervisory levels. But if they had a lot of years in, and had reached the mid- to higher-level supervisory ranks before becoming officers, they tended to be problematic; in addition to falling into the second category with their Marines, they had a more difficult time getting along with their fellow officers. One reason for that is that this group’s rank peers tended to be much younger due to the experience differential; a difficult adjustment on a number of levels for all concerned.

That touches on issues that are quite common in civilian enterprises, as well. But there is another angle to the topic that is relevant, here. It is revealed in the last phrase of Mike’s comment, which I left out, above; here it is again:

Personally, I prefer the ones who haven’t come at it with an MBA and instead with a real passion to manage.”

As we noted yesterday, military officers – whatever may be their path to commissioning – tend to have self selected for their dedication to organizational vision and the personal desire to be a part of advancing it from leadership positions. In the military, mustangers do not distinguish themselves from those who follow normal commissioning paths by their superior dedication or drive – they all share that.

But how many civilian managers seek out a career in management generally, or as managers in a particular firm specifically, with the combination of personal fire and altruistic zeal displayed by military officers? Probably not a lot.

So, Mike’s observation points to a very interesting notion: the better indicator of motivated managers (in civilian organizations) may be their having worked – rather than merely studied – their way into the job. Moreover, they may very well also enjoy greater credibility, resulting in increased productivity, with the staff – at least initially. This deserves study in its own right.

My own experience is that over time, managers who have that devotion and drive converge on excellence, whatever their route into the management ranks (this is the third outcome). But the question over the past few days has been, how do we know who are likely to develop into such managers? The instinctive suggestion that an MBA signals good management potential seems to pale in light of the considerations raised in this discussion.

We also noted yesterday some suggestions that education alone may have no signalling value at all for employers. Added to today’s considerations, where would that leave us?

Should we indeed reduce our instinctive reliance on formal schooling? Should we establish management development programs designed as direct pipelines accessible to our own employees? Might we receive more predictive signals from the reaction to them than we do from the resumes of traditional applicants?

What do you think?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of predictors of management ability, we’ve argued here that women generally bring skills to the field that are both vital and sorely lacking. Indeed, while their abilities and those of men in this respect are complementary, it may nevertheless be that the primary set is the feminine one, amplified, rather than animated, by the masculine. In that light, please see this BNET piece by Michael Fitzgerald pointing to several articles covering similar themes.

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Why not try out this feature provided here by Answers.com: If you double-click on any (non-hypertext-linked) word on the main page of the site, a window will open providing definitions or encyclopedic material about that term, together with links to additional sources of information. Try it out – it’s interesting and fun.

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Technorati Tags: US Marines, officer, enlisted, experience, civilian, factory, blue-collar, employee, supervisor, white-collar, management, pipeline, mustang, productivity, Mike King, manager, MBA, military, Marines, mustanger, college, experience, enterprise, organization, vision, leadership, credibility, productivity, excellence, education, employer, management development, ability, women, skill, BNET, Michael Fitzgerald

Among the many great hopes pinned on the MBA is that attainment of it suggests meaningful things about one’s knowledge, ability, and character. That is not an overstatement of the regard in which it is held.

While it is fair enough to assume that someone who has completed such a program can be expected to know what was taught in it, his or her ability to apply that knowledge cannot be assumed with equal confidence, despite all the hyped-up internships, case studies, and role-playing exercises.

Moreover, many MBA programs have jumped on the leadership bandwagon, and presume to “teach” leadership and to “make” leaders. The best that can actually be laid at the doorstep of the MBA in this respect, however, may be ambition and some degree of self-discipline.

Let’s just stipulate to this: many holders of MBAs are indeed talented managers and even, according to the popular understanding of the term, leaders – and ethical ones, at that. But not because of their MBA. Something else in their background led to their development of these abilities, and to the character which possession of them implies. If you want those abilites and character, you need to look deeper than the MBA alone.

Otherwise, you may get only knowledge and disciplined ambition. As Warren Buffett famously observed, you want intelligence, energy, and integrity in your managers; and if you don’t get the last one, the first two will kill you.

Of course, you have to look somewhere – use something as a discriminator – but if not the MBA, then what? Please consider the following, from a comment on Tuesday’s post made by Cam Beck, of ChaosScenario:

I couldn’t think of a group of people I’d trust more with my life – or my business.”

Wouldn’t you love to be able to say that about your managers? Cam is speaking of a readily identifiable group of people immediately prepared to step into management roles at organizations of all types and at all levels. It is quite a simple matter to distinguish and verify a person’s assertion of membership in this group. And, in case you think we are talking about MBAs after all, note the balance of the quote: “MBA optional.”

For what group of people would an MBA be optional as preparation for a career in management – not to mention as an indicator of success? Cam is referring to the military.

He makes the significant point that people who have honorably completed tours in the military are not only likely to have learned management skills to an unparalelled degree – they have also self-selected from the pack for some of the most important qualities that organizations seek. Chief among these is the desire to work as part of a team to pursue worthwhile objectives that transcend individual ambition.

I must say that as a military man, myself, and an observer of organizations of all types all around the world, I am hard-pressed as well to find a more reliable indicator of management talent and character than the military. But there are a couple of things about this: For one, the supply is far from sufficient to meet the demand. And, for another, who says there aren’t other comparably valuable and reliable sources of management ability?

Are there? Might there be other distinct and readily identifiable groups of people whose readiness to step in to management positions is strongly indicated by their membership of those groups? This, by the way, largely rules out educational programs – we need to be talking about experience, here.

Could a work history in certain not-for-profit outfits fall into this category? How about other volunteer activities, such as membership in community organizations? Are there other callings or even, simply, industries that convey this sort of information?

Can we come up with ways to help organizations relegate the MBA to a more appropriate value: helpful, perhaps – but optional?

Tomorrow we’ll look at evaluating managers from another angle. Please do drop in for that!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of optional, might the MBA – or education, generally – actually be simply ineffective as an indicator of future performance? Please see this fascinating post on the topic by Tyler Cohen of Marginal Revolution. Be sure to view the comments, also.

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Technorati Tags: MBA, knowledge, ability, character, confidence, internship, role-playing, leadership, leader, ambition, self-discipline, manager, character, Warren Buffett, intelligence, energy, integrity, Cam Beck, management, organization, preparation, career, success, military, team, supply, demand, work, not-for-profit, volunteer, education, Tyler Cohen, Marginal Revolution

Yesterday’s discussion of the almost mystical faith that has developed in the efficacy of the MBA generated some interesting points among the comments. One of them appears to revolve around the value of the degree as a predictor of performance by hiring or promoting firms. The other, interestingly, looks at the question from the other direction, asking what sort of manager – MBA or otherwise – people prefer to work for. We will take a look at these issues over the next few days.

To begin with, Joe Raasch, author of The Happy Burro and legitimately proud holder of an MBA, points out that firms need some criteria for screening the piles of resumes they receive for management jobs at various levels. On the one hand, they could struggle through each meticulously embellished depiction of the candidates’ profound challenges faced in their worklives, and their singular genius and heroism in surmounting them. On the other, they could look for an apparently clearer indicator of knowledge, discipline, and ability, such as an MBA degree.

Moreover, Joe points to another aspect of the issue: many firms have mid-level or even higher positions that, for a variety of commonly encountered and perfectly appreciable reasons, cannot ordinarily be filled from their internal career pipelines. So, they still can’t evaluate candidates based on close-up experience with them; they have to go through the same process of balancing the story-telling in the experience column against the more easily assessed and verifiable items in the education column. Which seems to make more sense, at least to serve as an initial culling of the mountain of applications?

It should be noted here that Joe decidedly is not arguing that this is a premier approach to handling the issue; he is just highlighting the presence and logic of it, inasmuch as this important perspective was insufficiently addressed in my original post. So, let’s look at it again.

In many countries there are protections for classes of people against discrimination in hiring practices. In the United States, one tool in this effort is the concept of the Bona Fide Occupational Qualifiation (BFOQ). That is, if you claim that an employee must be a man, or have a college degree, or the like, in order to apply for a particular job, you must be able to prove that the requirement is positively linked to the safe and effective performance of that job. This prevents direct or indirect discrimination against people unable to meet the nominal stated requirements but who are otherwise, in fact, fully capable of performing the actual duties at hand.

In addition to helping to thwart intentional (and unintentional) discrimination, the use of the BFOQ has come to be an effective tool for hiring firms, themselves. It forces them to examine the elements of the jobs they are filling, and to try to ascertain what sort of capabilities or preparation will indicate the presence of these. In particular, it has driven them to question what had previously been viewed as obviously valid assumptions about what not only predicts, but what is a fundamental requirement for, successful job performance.

How many firms really understand the specific elements of the jobs their managers do? How many can point back from a comprehensive appreciation of those elements to the education, training, and experience – if any – that are their precursers? I’m not talking about fill-in-the-blank opinion, here, but specific, rigorous study.

We’ve noted here before that there is a fitful beginning underway to recognizing that an MBA may not actually appear – at least not exclusively or even prominently – among the predictors discovered by such study. In particular, we’ve seen that at least one academic, Professor Henry Mintzberg, is questioning those commonly held assumptions about the MBA as currently understood, and pushing for those studies. More work needs to be done. But it can’t really proceed until there is more awareness of the need for it.

However, that still leaves us with Joe’s point about the value of the MBA as a screening device for hiring or promoting firms. If only at some indirect level, it is hard to argue that possession of one doesn’t suggest actionably positive promise in a candidate. If further study reveals that we ought to abandon that screen for lack of more direct evidence of its value, what will take its place? Will firms simply have to adopt some vague position about the story-telling capabilities of their applicants based on their entries in the resume experience column?

We’ll take a look at that, tomorrow. On Friday, we’ll wrap up with a view from the opposite direction. Please do join us!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of magical reliance on unproven assumptions, please see this very interesting piece, by Jeremy Dean of PsyBlog, about graphology – handwriting analysis of personality. According to the item, up to 90% of companies in some contries regularly use it to screen job applicants.

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Technorati Tags: MBA, predictor, performance, hiring, promoting, manager, work, Joe Raasch, resume, management, candidate, challenge, knowledge, discipline, ability, career, pipeline, experience, story-telling, education, discrimination, United States, Bona Fide Occupational Qualifiation, BFOQ, employee, college degree, preparation, assumption, academic, Henry Mintzberg, Jeremy Dean, PsyBlog, graphology, handwriting analysis

In their efforts to make effective, efficient hiring and promotion decisions, many companies and consultants have devoted considerable effort to developing sophisticated psychological assessments. It is hoped that such tests can ultimately predict general employment success, or the potential for performance in particular assignments. At the least, responsible managers attempt to use the results of such tests to inform their final decisions.

Sometimes psychological studies reveal useful information, such as the idea that people don’t become good employees by your making them happy, but rather that happy people simply make good employees. Indeed, this general concept has now, according to Management-Issues, been developed into yet another employment screening test.

This one is directed at helping companies reduce post-hire turnover. The trick is to identify people whose personality traits are associated with being quitters, and those whose characteristics have been determined to be those of stable, conscientious employees.

This sounds rather promising at first glance. But it does suggest some questions. One has to wonder what these traits are that are argued to be predictive in these ways. What is the organizational consequence of consciously peopling your company with pre-screened personality types? What are the societal consequences of having those that psychologists have identified as quitters being routinely denied employment?

Once you’ve spent some time with all of that, consider another article from Management-Issues which discusses additional research (published in the same journal as that referenced above) which flatly questions the predictive ability of personality tests used by HR departments around the world. So here’s another question for you: if the psychologists can’t agree on the predictive value of their work, why are we using it?

The big problem I’ve seen is that these tests seem so rigorously researched, designed, packaged, and administered that they attain a quasi-scientific aura that suppresses questioning – even doubt – by lay people. Indeed, they are ubiquitous, used in a wide range of applications, lending them further apparent credibility.

And so, what happens is that if a test suggests negative potential in someone who has knocked the hiring managers’ socks off during the rest of the assessment and interview process, it can become extraordinarily difficult for mere human decision-makers to overrule the judgment of those test results. This appears to me to be just another instance in which managers tend to allow quasi-scientific formulae to supplant not just their own judgment – but their fiduciary responsibility.

What has been your experience with personality testing or other psychological screening of employees – from new hires to CEOs?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of trying to figure out what’s going on within our own ranks, please see this interesting item about unnoticed achievers by Michael Wade at Execupundit.com. This is a real poser for managers that is too often simply ignored.

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Technorati Tags: hiring, promotion, decision, consultant, psychological, assessment, test, predict, employment, success, potential, performance, assignment, manager, information, employee, happy, Management-Issues, screening, turnover, personality, trait, quitter, characteristic, conscientious, predictive, organization, psychologist, research, HR, scientific, credibility, potential, manager, decision-maker, judgment, judgment, fiduciary, responsibility, CEO, Michael Wade