Why does a well-crafted job description, a lucrative compensation, a team of expert head hunters, with all the institutional resources available to the modern day organisation still end up with misfits?
Our selection is based on meticulous judgement of expertise, past experience and skills, all of it tested scientifically. Multiple interviews are planned and executed. Yet, many a times we end up fitting round pegs in squares holes.
More important than “did you find the right person”, is the question, “did you think this through well enough”. It’s important to evaluate your strategy of hiring people because that’s what determines the final outcome.
How long do organisations stay patient with their search? How many out there would have the courage to wait until they find the right talent?
Mostly, we tend to select the best of the lot under the garb of market scenario, availability of candidates and industry trends. And let’s say even if we picked a genius, what are the chances of finding a passionate partner?
All organisations (no matter where on the planet) struggle with driving synergy - in vision, in association, in trust and faith - because that eventually determines how the whole system delivers results. Now imagine this situation where we have hired someone without paying any attention to the cultural fit, to team dynamics and to whether the person will get along with others. Sadly, we call these the softer aspects and leave them to an assessment center. In reality, all breaking points converge on this very hard aspect.
Does “who” come before vision and strategy for you? If yes, only then can you be successful at building a team of great partners who needn’t be managed and motivated to produce great results. Great vision without the right people is irrelevant. The very first trait of the ‘right talent’ is their inherent drive to be a part of creating something great and working with others to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
If you can gauge this one aspect, it’s almost certain that you will end up putting coherent passions together. And when you have such people with you, they end up building excellence for their own sake irrespective what challenge is thrown at them – and that’s a team.
It’s the ability to get and retain the right people that makes an organisation. No wonder the best of companies attach great importance to character dimensions apart from just educational background and skills.
We all make mistakes, the problem is that we don’t wait to revisit decisions. We fall prey to defending our judgement and end up persevering something that was always revocable.
We wait, even compensate, substitute and hire more people to cover up for limitations of that one wrong decision. This achieves nothing except siphoning energy away, creating beureaucracy and ruining syenergies.
Right people are those who are self-driven and do not need motivation. However, the easiest way to demotivate them is to ask them to work with the misfits where they end up compensating for the latter’s incapability.
The passionate lot always wants to be a part of building something great. It’s not about managing problems and filling positions but about fuelling a culture that ignites imagination and drives synergy. Not people, but right people are most important. Unfortunately we call them assets in managerial terminology. If that’s a word you use for people, you’ve lost the plot already – you may continue to robotically assess the assets.
If you realise that its people who eventually create the magic, then to keep them involved and going would mean creating fresh, vibrant and infectious energy.
Not assets, but people, the right people, the passionate ones bring in the vibe.
Rolly Srivastava