I am since years a regular reader of the #HBR, Harvard Business Review, and I am generally in agreement with the contents of its articles, mostly sharing the same opinion and having made the same observations and analysis. And yet, I very often get a sense of frustration after reading. Why that?
Some of my favourite contents are about strategy, innovation and leadership. For example, I run last week into this article https://hbr.org/2019/03/stop-eliminating-perfectly-good-candidates-by-asking-them-the-wrong-questions, talking about hiring of the most suitable candidate for a job requiring independent, creative thinking and problem solving abilities beyond the average ("Want to hire a problem solver? Here are the interview questions to ask"). A specific article in this case, but the same considerations can be valid for several others.
I do share the acknolwledgement of the problem (there is a gap between the declared goal, hiring an innovative canditate, and the actions/strategy used, which actually prevents the reaching of such goal), and the awareness that the questions asked are not the right ones to spot an innovative candidate. I am in agreement with the analysis and the suggestion given on what to do to improve the situation. And yet, this is not enough.
While the analysis of the problem is correct, what is missing is sometimes the fact of going one step deeper into the real mechanisms and motivations at the origin of the problem. Into human nature.
Let's take once more the example of the article mentioned above. It is absolutely correct, as reported, that you should ask "Questions that uncover capabilities, not just experience" since "The upside of asking for years of experience is we get someone who has done what we need. The downside is we risk limiting what we can create next by doing what has already worked". To this statement follows the question, which is also a suggestion to the leader or hiring manager on how to find more creative candidates: "Are you asking questions that get to someone’s capabilities or are you seeking confirming data that someone has done exactly what you have already scoped?".
But here comes the "gap": what if the real problem was not the fact of not asking the right question, but actually the fact of not wanting to have a candidate that can create the new rather that repeating what Experience has thought him so far? What if there was not even the awareness of the fact that there is a (big) difference between knowing how to do and execute well what has already been long known and done, and doing well something that nobody knows yet what will be?...
Or even one step further: what if the leaders and hiring manager did not even realize what it means that the best person for the job could exactely be someone that is not "prisoner" of his past experience, what if they cannot conceive or accept that this could be the case? That doing a job well might not mean doing what has been done and has been successful so far, but rather the opposite? How do you measure how good is something that doesn't exist yet, or has yet been done?...
And here we go in a very dark gray zone, here we go into the identity issue...and even, further down, into anthropology...
We should ask ourselves, who those leaders, who those hiring managers are, and how they got there, where they are, and what social and human mechanisms, behaviours, perceptions, lead to chosing a leader versus another...
But without going here into the anthropological part of the explanation (which I will quickly reassume as the role of biological and social aspects, the distribution of certain characteristics in the overall popolation, leading to a prevalence of a specific type of personalities in certain types of roles, and the impact of this...to be better elaborate in another moment), I would go as far as taking for granted the fact that most of the current managers, specially in those companies that have a desperate need of innovation, are not innovators (Obviously. Otherwise there would not be the desperate need to innovate. It would have happened already. But I will stop here with this "spiral thinking"). Not only, they do not properly grasp what it means being really an innovator, which implies a capacity of thinking beyond the known into the possible, and this is not a common trait (see the anthropological explanation...). Those managers at most try to apply the definition of "creative" and "innovative" that someone wrote for them, without understaning it fully. I will even say, being rather suspicious about it. They most of the time would ask themselves how can someone who has not done something before be able to do it well. To do a better job than they would do with their years of "experience". This goes against what they have always known (...since as I said, they are mostly not innovators: no negative judgement here. Just a matter of fact). It even goes against themselves: it is as if what they are, what they have done up to that point, their loyal and reliable and solid contribution to the company's growth, based on a properly exectuted job "as it should be done", was suddenly canceled. Denied. It is as if their own professional past and career and loyal work would be suddenly defined as "irrelevant". It is as if they were made irrelevant. And this goes deep into their identity. And their identity cannot be canceled. And of course, should not.
So we are in front not only of an oximoron, but of an almost merciless expectation: asking the non-innovator to deny himself.
The combination of those two factors, the identity issue and the distrust that someone who has not done the job yet could actually be the best person to do it (or to transform the job...find new questions and new answers), leads them, the managers, to chose again and again, in good faith, the candidate that is not the most innovative. Because they actually think this is what is needed, because with all the best intentions (and sometimes with some bad, self-protecting one...) they do not see how it could be different. Because this is what they have always KNOWN.
You see the problem.
It is not simply about not asking the right questions, it is about not understanding what a real innovator is, it is about being "secretely" convinced that how things were done so far is afterall the right way, is about not wanting something different, is about not being convinced that someone whose way of thinking they do not understand can indeed be an advantage for the company.
So how do we solve the problem?
Not easy. For sure, it is not enough to talk about the issue and hope behaviours will change by themselves just because now the problem was explained. We all know, structures and habits go back to what they were very quickly if no structural change happens. Create Awareness is essential but per se not enough. Structural barriers, strictly defined processes are to be eradicated...how can you hire an innovator at all, if you require and oblige her/him to submit the resumè and all documents, included reference letters, through an online portal...I will tell you a secret: this is the most reliable way to cut the real innovators immediately out, because they will be completely "turned-off" by the process, and likelihood is high that they will not have a reference letter you will like to read...
I am afraid, the answer to the problem is not obvious to be found, we need both innovators and not in our society, and there cannot be a "one-fit-all" approach. Not leaving the hiring process in the hands of existing line managers or recruiters who follow established processes, but base it on totally new criteria (...as I mentioned before, if a job candidate does not comply with your rules, well this is the person you should hire, rather than reject...), introduce as a corporate policy the fact of taking risks, not looking for someone who "fits in" but rather for someone who does not...I truly believe a standard answer cannot be given. The best would be relying on people who have a deep understanding of human personality traits and who are ready, if necessary, to take unpopular decisions. But we cannot forget the anthropology...real innovators come in drops, I would estimate they are not more than 5% of the population...and they need to be hired by those who do not understand them, and they need to survive and find their way in an hostile environment to be able to change something. This is why innovation in big human systems is so difficult.
It is not only time for genetically personalized medicine, it is also time for genetically personalized psychology (in relation to the environment, of course)...but this will not come before a century or two...
It ain't a world for innovators, I experience this again and again on my skin, and we know this since quite a while, at least since the creation of the Inquisition tribunal, and latest since Galileo Galilei was obliged to abjure in front of it...and no, it hasn't changed much till today...
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