Flawed Assumptions Can Defeat Your Business

Here's a management lesson from the world of sports:

In the 1990s, cricket star Sachin Tendulkar was regarded by many as India's greatest ever batsman. The powers that be, the Indian team selectors, figured that he'd be a superior team leader as well for the Indian national team. And so, bowing to this logic, he was made captain. This turned out to be a disaster, since not only was he an inadequate captain, but his batting suffered as well.

Luckily, he was relieved of the task, and the reins were handed over to Saurav Ganguly, an average player who captained the team brilliantly and became an extremely accomplished player at the same time. And not surprisingly, Tendulkar re-emerged as the premier batsman in world cricket.

So what does this story from the sports page have to do with running a business?

In today's global economy, the greatest companies have realized that the only way to build sustained success is through emotionally engaging the employees who work for them and the customers who buy from them. To build engagement, every company must focus on three keys:

• the selection and development of people
• the role of the manager in engaging employees
• the role of engaged employees in creating customer engagement

The story of Sachin Tendulkar perfectly illustrates the first aspect of creating emotional engagement: the selection and development of people. Indeed, the powers that be threatened to derail the career of India's greatest sportsman. Fortunately, things worked out fine in the end, thanks to Tendulkar's timely choice to step down as captain.

But do companies fall into the same trap that Tendulkar's team did? Do too many organizations unwisely promote their star salesperson into management? These questions are crucial to the success of any business enterprise.

To answer these questions, The Gallup Organization has asked millions of employees from companies across the world to respond to this statement: "At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day." The results were staggering: Only 30% of employees were able to reply strongly in the affirmative. And it's extremely unlikely that the remaining 70% will achieve world-class performance. (See "The Third Element of Great Managing" in See Also.)

Gallup has found a similar pattern of responses at all levels of the corporate hierarchy. This suggests that leaders are as likely to be miscast as entry-level employees. What's more, this is a worldwide phenomenon.

Flawed assumptions

The problem lies in four flawed assumptions about managing and developing people:

• You are what you've learned.
• You can accomplish anything if you try hard enough.
• Training can achieve miracles.
• You must be well-rounded to succeed. To become well-rounded, you must focus on eliminating your weaknesses.

Let's see how these faulty assumptions play out in the context of the roles people have in organizations. The problem starts with the selection process and is exacerbated at each subsequent "pain point."

Pain point 1: The selection process. Look at the job listings in any recent newspaper or magazine. In fact, let's take a hypothetical ad for a brand manager: "Wanted: an MBA from a premier business school with two years of marketing experience who is able to work as a team player in a high-pressure environment." The ad states the basics, which is perfectly acceptable. What's unacceptable is that in most companies, this isn't just a statement of the basics, it's practically the entire selection process.

Too many companies and hiring managers assume that people who meet the same basic criteria have the exact same potential for superior performance in a given role. That's the corporate equivalent of assuming that all participants in an Olympic 100-meter race would finish in a dead heat. There's something that separates the best runners -- and the best employees -- from the rest, and that's talent.

Interestingly, although many human resources professionals are aware of the problems of this hiring method, they still stick to it; screening to see if applicants meet basic criteria, such as educational background, serves as a safety net. The message is that education is all-important, while having the right talent to do the job is incidental.

Pain point 2: The evaluation. In most companies around the world, performance appraisal is a circular process that, like the parade in Alice in Wonderland, ends up going precisely nowhere. Far too much time is spent on what the employee doesn't bring to the job -- after he or she is hired to do it! This frustrates managers and employees alike.

To quote the plaintive cry of a typical employee returning from a typical performance evaluation: "We spent five minutes discussing who I am -- and an hour discussing who I'm not. I came out of the session wondering whether I was capable of doing any job at all."

This one-dimensional focus on a person's weaknesses is depressing and destructive. What compounds the problem is the solution -- training. This brings us to the next pain point.

Pain point 3: Training. Training employees in areas in which they lack both aptitude and interest can be a complete waste of time for both the trainer and the trainees. The term "undergoing" training is perhaps appropriate here, since one typically "undergoes" painful things like surgery or tooth extraction. And that's the case with most training, because employees most often undergo training in their areas of weakness, which turns out to be an immensely painful process. Managers must ask: Can training in areas of weakness ever help create world-class performance?

Let's consider Gallup's research of customer-service representatives (CSRs), for instance. Most CSRs in a typical call center come from similar academic backgrounds and go through training sessions that are virtually identical. Yet, here's what Gallup discovered when speaking to customers who interacted with CSRs in a typical call center: The top seven CSRs created loyal customers each and every time they spoke with a customer. The bottom performers, on the other hand, managed something even more remarkable -- they alienated or angered every single customer they talked to. (See "The Source of Your Company's Value" in See Also.)

So how do most companies address this problem? They focus their training on their miscast bottom performers. But can this really result in improvement? Can you really train a scarecrow to lay eggs? (See "Mismanagement in the Henhouse" in See Also.)

Pain point 4: The Peter Principle. A standing joke within companies is their unfailing adherence to the Peter Principle, which postulates that people get promoted to their level of incompetence. Promotions undoubtedly are supposed to reflect accumulated knowledge and prestige. But far too often, talent is promoted to positions where it cannot shine. Look around, and you'll see examples of this everywhere: the sports superstar who failed miserably when elevated to team captain and the extraordinary sales executive who became an extraordinarily bad sales manager are just two examples. In effect, this kind of promotion becomes a punishment -- a no-win situation for individuals, teams, and organizations.

The missing link

As companies look to select and develop superior talent, they must remember that world-class performance only comes when people are placed in roles that use their talents best. Using and building on talents leads to world-class performance, but weakness prevention, at best, only helps reduce failure. Talented employees in the right role can build emotional bonds with customers, while other, less talented employees, cannot. Typically, when customers are asked to think of their best and worst customer service experiences, they almost inevitably credit memorable, positive experiences to talented people and nightmarish ones to people miscast in their roles.

From an organizational standpoint, it's crucial to discover the talents needed for success in a role and cast employees in roles accordingly. Too often, companies make the mistake of believing that talent is resident only in their superstars, or that only exceptional employees are talented and can deliver world-class performance. That's not true -- a talent is simply a predisposition to behave in a particular manner, or a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling, and behavior. And the beauty of this is that each one of us has many talents; each one of us can do something better than thousands of others.

If only companies could cast people in roles that make use of their talents. When talented employees are supported by the right knowledge and training and nurtured by great managers, they deliver superior performance.