Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance Alliance wrote interesting article Looking-for-biz-leaders-in-all-the-wrong-places
Main point of it is the following: shall we ask Where are the business leaders we need? or maybe we are simply looking for leadership in the wrong places.
I would add one more question: Maybe we are using wrong methods looking for business leaders?
All procedures and methods used by HR are well known, well described and we can find many articles with advice how job seekers should behave at interview, what should be mentioned in CV, etc. The whole process is computerized and formalized. You can be new Bill Gates or Steve Jobs but with a couple of «wrong» replies (wrong by HR point of view) you are out of consideration. In Men In Black movie, future Agent J takes part in the examination together with the «best-of-the best» candidates and wins the competition by his non-standard methods of thinking. In reality he would be filtered out by "standard" HR at the very beginning...
On my point of view we see the worst breaking of process management principles – independence of HR from business process and misunderstanding of HR Dept. its critical role in business development and playing as a company guard instead of workforce selective breeding. That is the reason why a job applicant is prepared to say or do anything to please HR and get a job (regardless of actual abilities).
The whole interview is based on Results which tell us nothing about how the employee achieved them. I met a lot of sales managers who consistently exceeded their quotas by encouraging customers to over-order, and later allowed them to return the excess merchandise. I met purchase managers buying excess - and sometimes not needed - merchandise saying that it is responsibility of sales or promotion departments to distribute it. Senior executives only saw their top-level records and paid bonuses and promoted such people. Definitely it is possible in any firm where owners/top-managers don't use process management.
Real manager should have a unique set of skills which is quite rare. How to assess ability to diagnose performance problems, coaching skills, planning skills, organizational skills, integrity, cooperation, teamwork, conscientiousness, caring about subordinates, giving clear direction, etc. by “standard” methodology?
The result of such methods is well known: only 20-30 percent of people holding management positions are skilled managers. Looking for candidates to fill key positions in my companies I usually asked HR to invite me to some interview and talk to job applicants myself. Mistakes in key positions can be very expensive.
At the beginning of my career I thought low performance could be fixed by sending people to special courses, workshops and seminars.
This belief was supported by various theories and Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. I forgot that the last transformation was possible only by means of magic and very strong desire of the wooden puppet to be a real boy.
Without these two prerequisites we can not expect transformation of incompetent person into a competent one. Training can improve a skill the candidate already has, but it cannot graft a skill where none existed earlier.
Real managers know their role is to set objectives, coach subordinates, and get them the resources necessary to do the job. Real HR managers know their role is looking for, finding and breeding candidates able to be trained use existing resources and fulfill the company objectives.
