I posted the link to the PBS News site yesterday, but here
it is again if you need it. In his post, the PBS commentator notes that
creating a job description and then attempting to find applicants to fit it is
a lot like creating a product and then looking for a market that wants to buy
it – a common mistake that I’ve also criticized in this space. Even if you can
produce a completely accurate description of exactly what the applicant will be
doing if they are hired – and this is rarely possible except in the most menial
and repetitious jobs – there is still no assurance that somebody with previous
experience but without talent, high intelligence, a compatible personality or a
strong work ethic will perform as well as someone who has never worked before
but has all of those positive traits. In fact, the published research suggests
that none of the factors commonly referenced in job descriptions or want ads is
the key indicator of high performance…
If you read the organizational behavior and human resources
research (not that I am suggesting for one moment that anyone ought to read the
organizational behavior and human resources research) you will find that the
key factors in performance are conscientiousness and generalized cognitive
intelligence, commonly abbreviated as the “G-Factor” or simply as “G.” There
are going to be some exceptions, of course; someone who does not speak a
language will not be able to speak it until they learn how, no matter how
conscientious or intelligent they happen to be, and someone without a counseling
license cannot (legally) counsel you to do anything about your personal
problems. But the vast majority of employers will require that any particular
job be done according to their specific standards, and many companies will
insist on training (or re-training) new personnel to meet those standards
regardless of any previous experience. Or, to put it another way, if you are going
to train people to do things your way anyway, doesn’t it make sense to start
with the best people?
Managers as a rule tend to assign tasks to whichever of
their subordinates is best at that task; anything else would be a sub-optimal
use of their resources. As a result, the employee doing any given task may not
be the one who was hired to do that task, but rather the one who is the most
competent. This concept takes that practice to its logical conclusion: advocating
that the company assemble a pool of intelligent, talented, hard-working people
and then assign each of them to complete tasks on the basis of ability and
suitability rather than arbitrary job title or classification. Naturally, this
will require a high degree of flexibility and improvisation on the part of the
managers involved, and willingness on the part of the human resources
department to put aside simple checklists and formal rating systems and
actually consider the specific applicants who are available…
Which explains why, despite the relatively simplicity of the
concept, and nearly a century of Management research to back up all of these
contentions, there does not appear to be any major company using this method as
of Fall 2013. I’m not saying that anyone out there could implement this kind of
change by fiat, or by throwing a switch in the system somewhere. What I am
advocating here would be a complete revolution in the way companies are staffed
and managed, every bit as radical as Scientific Management in its own time. It
would require the emergence of an actual profession of mangers, chosen for
their ability to match employees with tasks, and resources with requirements,
rather than the accident of their birth or the details of their previous work
history – and no one in the world is likely to accept that idea without massive
resistance. And yet, it’s the first thing we’ve seen to date that might
actually give rise to the practice of management the way it should actually be…
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