NBR Commentary – Employee Selection – Aug 30, 2007
I try not to overdue sports analogies, but here’s a place where other businesses can follow the lead of professional sports franchises – employee selection. In sports, where employee selection is scrutinized, to say the least, you want players with great individual abilities and statistics – they fill the stadium seats. But especially in a fast and fluid game like basketball, you also want players who bring out the best in their teammates, whose presence on the court correlates with victory, independent of their individual stats.
Assessing candidates in American business has long focused primarily on the skills and track records of people as individuals. I suppose this is partly cultural – with the rugged individualist and lone cowboy as our icons.
But businesses today, especially global enterprises and those that have embraced the Internet as a channel, are extremely complex. More than ever before, people have to communicate, collaborate, and work through others to get the important things done. There’s less room – and need – for the lone cowboy, for the heroic individual effort, including in the executive suite.
Measures of individual performance are easier to come by. However, employers also need to get at on how individuals enable the people around them; how they collaborate, including electronically; how their presence correlates with overall success. Businesses naturally want people who are skilled and accomplished as individuals. But today’s enterprise also needs collaboration “on steroids,” if you’ll pardon the expression.
I’m Robert Morison.
I try not to overdue sports analogies, but here’s a place where other businesses can follow the lead of professional sports franchises – employee selection. In sports, where employee selection is scrutinized, to say the least, you want players with great individual abilities and statistics – they fill the stadium seats. But especially in a fast and fluid game like basketball, you also want players who bring out the best in their teammates, whose presence on the court correlates with victory, independent of their individual stats.
Assessing candidates in American business has long focused primarily on the skills and track records of people as individuals. I suppose this is partly cultural – with the rugged individualist and lone cowboy as our icons.
But businesses today, especially global enterprises and those that have embraced the Internet as a channel, are extremely complex. More than ever before, people have to communicate, collaborate, and work through others to get the important things done. There’s less room – and need – for the lone cowboy, for the heroic individual effort, including in the executive suite.
Measures of individual performance are easier to come by. However, employers also need to get at on how individuals enable the people around them; how they collaborate, including electronically; how their presence correlates with overall success. Businesses naturally want people who are skilled and accomplished as individuals. But today’s enterprise also needs collaboration “on steroids,” if you’ll pardon the expression.
I’m Robert Morison.
