Helping Companies Rethink, Recover & Refocus on the Future

I have always believed and often teach the virtues of hiring the best person for the job.  My naivety has also made me think that most “right-minded” managers agree with this simple premise.  Organizational talent is the best indicator of long-term success in the game of business.  The team with the best players will win the most games.  Blah, blah, blah!

I recently experienced something remarkable in my life as a speaker, author, and business coach.  It was painful, like a toothache that would not go away.  I tried to ignore the reality of its presence and postponed the inevitable.  The existence of this knowledge became something I could no longer ignore.  I stirred with this information until I finally had to verbalize my newly formed opinion about the current view of talent in a typical organization.

Like most HR (human resource) types, I had been boiled (as in the frog and the water) to the point of accepting that we constantly seek the best talent for the team.  I had been confident that most managers agreed with this simple idea.  I wondered why something so vivid in my mind was cloudy in the sense of struggling leaders.  I could not imagine an organization that didn’t want the best talent money could buy.  After all, the modern resume, behavioral interviewing techniques, testing, and personality profiles all lead us to the logical conclusion that we are searching for that “one” right and often the best candidate to do the job.

And, yes, I believed the hype.  Until that day, of course!  That day changed my thinking completely... 

Discover why I changed my mind