Very often the conversations in corporate are about the strategy and market environment. Thus, the worry and general obsessions of lot of executives is trying to figure out missing piece of actions with respect to what competitors are doing? It is seldom seen the inclusion of "who" in the business plans. Excel, after all has limited formulas and formats of "Who". Profit and Loss accounts are drawn and projected balance sheets are made, but there is no space of the key ingredient of who is responsible for the delivery and matrix of success. In other words, how to essentially measure the effectiveness of key ingredient in the business, the "who"!
Claudio Fernandez has decades of experience in head hunting. The book is a memoir, a guide and a well laid story of understanding the aspects of "who" than "what" and "when". The book highlights the secret sauce of success of start-ups to large corporations and leaderships chosen in the modern democracies. The little known anecdotal story of the 'Head Hunting' is rooted from the interiors of ancient Borneo and the inhabitants known as Dayaks. As per their tradition, decapitating the head of the enemy was considered the proof of bravery and capability of protecting the family, community and land against enemy attacks and promote fertile soil and good harvests. While the brutal head hunting tradition is no more prevalent, the corporate world got the term 'Head Hunting' as fixture in its normal vocabulary.
In answering the question, "who", the most important aspect for the leadership is to understand their own biases and shortcomings as first step. The success of right decision on people lies in the way we are wired for thousands of years. Most of the interviews are conducted in the context of extreme shallow base of information available in the resume than getting to understand the depth of information beyond the resume. It is important to give time and attention to making the people decision. It is no different than buying a house or making a long term investment. After all, people who on-board have the potential to change the course of business. Most of the selections are rather done in the haste and hurry, leaving a huge possibility of conflict in expectations on both ends.
External environment plays an important role in the way we make our decisions. Most candidates have the ability to lie of their context of goals and objectives. It's important to minutely understand the background of what and why they want to look at contextual fitment both from perspective of their own degree of excitement and degree of perseverance needed for the job. Executives at times, completely disregard the information on the peripheries and obsessively focus on their own immediate requirement, leaving a big hole for the future failure.
Comparison both from the perspective of candidate to candidate and internal bench-marking of existing workforce is an important aspect. At times, most overlooked in the job interviews and selection processes. The decisions are generally made impulsively at times, lacking the depth of comparison. Even, if a candidate is liked and fits the bill, rather than jumping to the conclusion on remuneration, it is important to hold the horses and give oneself time to think for couple of days, before going to the next stage of discussion and negotiation.
If we think from the perspective of current talent pool of companies, one of the biggest challenges faced is in the middle tier of management. It is important to understand not just the emotional and intelligence quotient but also as necessary to understand the social quotient. It's important to understand the social biases, beliefs and fabric from which the candidates come from in making the hiring decision. After all, the challenges lie further than simply hiring, in terms of immersion in the team.
Organizations seldom make efforts of investing in the process of immersion of the candidates in the mainframe of the organizations. This requires a thoughtful and in-depth process as well as human interface to make their early experiences important in shaping their careers. Lastly, it is important to make an effort of making one more column in the projected performance indicators and peg 'who' in making the organizations successful. As a culture, if this is followed, it can open the organizations to a completely new way of dealing with not just humans but also the numbers. After all humans make the number and not otherwise.