Employee Selection

It is the leaders’ responsibility to select the right people. In Good to Great, Jim Collins states it is vital that all businesses have the right people on the bus.¹ There are many examples of leaders working toward this goal. For example, Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, enacted a process ("vitality curve") that annually eliminated the lowest performing 10%.² He also insisted the middle performing group increase their performance and achievements or risk release. While Mr. Welch's approach can be helpful once an employee is aboard, it is more difficult to identify and select the right people from the start.

Selecting the right people begins with understanding the specific work to be performed. The goal is to match the worker's knowledge, skills, abilities and behavioral preferences to the position. Work can be classified as either structured or unstructured. Structured work provides clear steps and procedures and usually does not require forging new ground. Alternatively, unstructured work is ill-defined and often complex and messy, requiring the application of strong cognitive skills.³ Different capabilities are needed for complex knowledge jobs versus the more routine structured work.

Another variable is to determine a candidate's locus of control and his/her level of self-efficacy. A person with high internal locus of control has a strong belief that he or she controls their own actions and destiny.⁴ Alternatively, high self-efficacy signals confidence in one's own abilities to complete a task.⁵ High internal locus of control and high levels of self-efficacy are required for unstructured jobs/tasks. On the other hand, structured positions are aligned best with those who have an external locus of control and lower levels of self-efficacy because more routine tasks provide a sense of control and confidence. 

Another issue is to categorize the follower and match the individual to the most suitable work. Followers’ behaviors can be classified using a 2 x 2 matrix representing two dimensions. One continuum suggests that workers range from low to high on critical thinking (does not apply or does apply critical thinking).⁴ The other dimension suggests that workers range from passive to active engagement.⁴ Some work requires active engagement combined with a high degree of critical thinking (e.g. unstructured tasks), whereas other jobs might call for high active engagement, but less critical thinking is needed. In my view, an organization cannot afford to have someone who is passive. I suspect that Jack Welch's system of removing the bottom 10% performers was designed to cull passive workers. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to investigate the reasons for the poor performance; if it is determined to be a skill issue or a job mismatch, then the organization should train or move the worker to a more suitable position.

Another important variable is an understanding of the person's values, goals and future plans. For example, an aggressive go-getter may not fit well in an organization that is primarily mission driven. Further, the culture of the business, which governs acceptable behaviors, must have members who are aligned to it. For example, a culture that calls for honesty at all costs needs individuals who will pursue that objective even in the face of moral or ethical dilemmas; this would mean a salesperson would not sidestep the rules to make a sale. The organization should eliminate people who do not fit the imbedded value system. Of course, since values of organizational members influence a business' culture, those with different values might be hired to speed along a change effort.

Another consideration is a deeper review of the work the individual will be doing and "test" their ability to do it. Elliott Jaques developed a system that is useful in predicting one's innate abilities.⁶ His theory states that how individuals use and present information when making an argument gives the observer the ability to assess an individual's capacity to handle projects with different time horizons; higher complexity in one's thinking correlates with increased aptitude to handle projects or tasks that have a longer time frame (task beginning to end). 

There are two important points that Jaques' work speaks to for this week's publication. First, individuals differ in their levels of complexity and there is an appropriate project time horizon associated with that level. A worker with an increased "mental processing"⁶ level is better able to handle longer projects or tasks. For example, a child is usually at the lowest level of cognitive ability and, therefore, only short projects (e.g. lasting an hour) are most appropriate. CEOs, on the other hand, are hopefully at the other extreme whereby their processing, thinking and articulating of information has reached a higher level of abstraction. This means their arguments will "refer to...thoughts and words rather than things" and use "conceptual abstract [thinking] and words to form coherent propositions...[along with illustrating ideas in]...concrete verbal...examples (p. 23)."⁶   Thus, time horizon coupled with complex thinking level establishes a person's skills to handle the intricacies of long-term projects or tasks. For example, strategic thinking often has a time frame of 10, 15 or 20 years and requires much higher cognitive powers.  

Stated differently, an important step in selection is matching a person's identified time horizon "skill set" with the specific assignment of projects or tasks. For example, if a leader decides to assign a stretch project to a worker without consideration of some of the items described here, it could be harmful to the person and the business. If innate abilities are not present, no matter how much the leader wants to develop the individual, a successful outcome is not likely.

In summary, the leaders’ job is to learn more about the candidate's self-efficacy and locus of control and match it to the type of work (structure or unstructured). Further, it is important to assess the strength of active involvement and application of critical thinking. In addition, the leader should identify and compare the candidate's values and determine its alignment with that of the business. Finally, workers should be assigned or hired only for projects and tasks that do not exceed their time horizon. With all of these considerations, leaders will have increased the chance that the right people are on the bus¹ so he or she can drive the bus forward.

Please feel free to make comments.

 

References

¹ Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

² Welch, J., & Byrne, J.A. (2001). Jack: Straight from the Gut. New York, NY: Warner Books.

³ Griffin, R.W. (2011). Management (10th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.

⁴ Daft, R.L. (2008). The Leadership Experience (4th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson Southwestern.

⁵ Robbins, S., & Judge, T. (2011). Organizational Behavior (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

⁶ Jaques, E. (1998). Requisite Organization. Arlington, VA: Cason Hall. To learn more about Jaques' work, visit: http://www.requisite.org/index.html