The business world is consumed, these days, with the role that AI will play in transforming work and the workplace — including the potential for AI to help compensate for the continued shortage of people with the technical skills to do the work required.
But you know what I worry about?
I worry that in the scramble to adapt to this tech transformation (and in scrounging for the right people to hire), too many organizations will spend too little time on the most important consideration: what type of work actually needs doing.
Failure to look at the type of work that needs doing happens when leaders focus on the organizational chart, and look at which boxes (positions) are open and which need to be filled.
Instead, the real focus should be on the design of the organization — what work will be required, and what skills are going to be necessary to do that work, and achieve business goals.
And the only way to determine the right design is to focus first on strategy.
Each strategy is unique
A business strategy must answer some basic questions: What value do we deliver; to which customers, and in what unique way so we can win in the marketplace?
Strategy needs to come from the very top, from the CEO, with the board’s backing and it must translate all the way down through the organization.
The right people are important, of course, but it’s not necessarily a matter of finding the very best people.
It’s about figuring out what work needs to be done and who has the aptitude and attitude to do it.
Some companies are very good at coming up with a business strategy and executing it.
A classic case many years ago was the early days of Southwest Airlines. Instead of the hub-and-spoke model that the major airlines were using, Southwest devised an efficient, low-cost model of point-to-point routes, using only one type of airplane.
But strategy must be unique to the organization that adopts it.
Copycatting seldom succeeds.
When major airlines like Continental tried to mimic Southwest’s model, trying something called Continental Lite, they couldn’t make it work.
The organization wasn’t aligned with the strategy best suited to its unique needs and aspirations.
The point I’m trying to make is that strategy is not a one-step process.
You start with pen and paper, or with a whiteboard. You try different ideas. You iterate, just as architects do in playing with different designs until they and the client are aligned on what they’re trying to achieve.
But only after the CEO and top management have the strategy in place should they be thinking about the organizational structure and the work required to implement the strategy.
The perfect candidate doesn’t exist
Once the organizational design has been mapped out and aligned with the strategy, there needs to be a process for finding the people to fill roles and positions.
True success lies in aligning talent and skills with strategic objectives, not simply in finding the best individuals available.
For one thing, not every organization can afford top-tier talent, or even attract them even if they could.
Besides, do you only want people who are interested in money and might jump ship for the next bigger paycheck
Business is, in many ways, like sports.
It’s not individual stars who win championships. It’s teams of people with complementary skills, and the right motivational attitude, that win championships.
You’ll never find the perfect person for a job, so you aim to find the best person for the position in question.
There’s something that management consultants refer to as the “flow channel” – the balancing of competency and motivation.
An overqualified person will get bored and disgruntled. So there must be room for someone who’s motivated to grow in the role.
If you hire for aptitude and attitude, you can train for skill.
Often, that means first looking inside the organization.
Who has already shown their competency, loyalty and trustworthiness?
Interviews alone can’t test competency
And if you do need to search externally, those who do the screening and hiring must have clarity and agreement on what’s required for the job.
Somebody can probably come up with a list of 20 attributes of the ideal candidate.
But which three or four really matter? And even with those, which are you willing to compromise on, if necessary?
Next, design a screening and selection process that mirrors what you want from the person’s work. Interviews alone are ineffective ways to test competencies.
I’ll give you an example:
At a tech firm, I was hiring a software developer who would need to write complex code for machine learning.
One of the leading UK universities offered a major in such work, and so I asked them who was their best student. They all agreed it was a young man who we’ll call Ian (not his real name). We brought him in for a round of interviews.
Now, Ian was on the autism spectrum. He was not good at social rapport. As we spoke, he kept his rucksack on his lap.
But when I had him come up to the whiteboard, I could see how brilliantly creative he was, how he could make connections that most people wouldn’t be able to.
And yet, when I asked the other interviewers if we should hire Ian, they all said no.
I asked, “Why? Wouldn’t you trust him?”
One person conceded, “Yeah. I mean this is a guy who wouldn’t be capable of telling a lie.”
But the group’s sense, nevertheless, was that Ian wouldn’t be a good fit with our culture.
I said: “What do you mean by cultural fit? That he’s weak on rapport? Yes, our salespeople need to be like that. Our management consultants need to be like that. But our people writing code don’t need to be like that. That’s not a requirement of the role.”
So, guess what we did?
We hired Ian.
I’ve since moved on from that firm. But eight years later, Ian is still there, doing amazing work.
To me, Ian illustrates my larger point.
Before organizations plan a structure to ensure vital work gets done, they must decide what work will be the most vital.
And that decision comes only after mapping out a well-defined business strategy.