Bob Sutton author of “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management” which I recommended in the past in an excellent post talks about Crappy People versus Crappy Systems which I have liberally included below:
“Simon Caulkin writes a management column in the Observer, a UK-based paper, and has written a couple columns that draw on ideas from Hard Facts. His first one, back in March, has the kind charming title that you don’t get in the states “Bosses in Love with Claptrap and Blinded by Ideologies.” Caulkin recently wrote a column called “You Could be a Genius – If Only You had a Good System,” which draws a bit on our chapter on talent in Hard Facts. He uses recent examples of failures by British sporting teams to show how coaches and critics focus on “naming and shaming” individual athletes, rather than on problems with the system.
This tendency to look for individual goats – and heroes – isn’t just a problem that permeates the world of sports. It is reflected in many misguided ideologies and management practices, which focus excessive energy on hiring stars and weeding-out mediocre and poor performers, and insufficient energy on building a great system that enables most competent people to succeed.
I agree – and can show you evidence – that there are huge differences in individual skill and ability in every occupation. BUT we’ve also got a lot of evidence that ordinary people can perform at top levels in a well-designed system, and even a superstar is doomed to fail in a bad system. Unfortunately, HR and too many other executives believe the advice in books like The War for Talent. (In fact, one of the authors is now head of HR at eBay.. perhaps another reason to short the stock). This is one of the worst management books ever written in my opinion: There is bad evidence from the authors’ own research, no mention of a massive body of research that contradicts many of their claims, and excessive claims are made that if leaders follow the authors’ advice, they can expect “expect a huge impact in a year.”
I will focus on just one claim from this bad book. I quote the authors, “We call it the Rule of Crappy People: Bad managers hire very, very bad employees, because they are threatened by anyone who is anywhere near as good as they are.” This claim is bold, but can’t be supported by any systematic research that I can find. There is evidence that people hire others like themselves, so a reasonable inference is that crappy people will hire equally crappy people — but there is no direct evidence on that hypothesis. I spent weeks and weeks trying to find even a hint that a single article in a peer reviewed journal supported the belief that bad performers systematically hire even worse performers. It is one of those management myths that don’t appear to have any empirical basis.
The worst part about focusing on keeping out crappy people, however, is that it reflects a belief system that “the people make the place.” The implication is that, once you hire great people and get rid of the bad ones, your work is pretty much done. Yet if you look at large scale studies in everything from automobile industry to the airline industry, or look at Diane Vaughn’s fantastic book on the space shuttle Challenger explosion and the well-crafted report written by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the evidence is clear: The “rule of law crappy systems” trumps the “rule of crappy people.”
Sure, people matter a lot, but as my colleague Jeff Pfeffer puts it, some systems are so badly designed that when smart people with a great track record join them, it seems as if a “brain vacuum” is applied, and they turn incompetent……. There are smart people in both the FAA and NASA (in fact, people from NASA run key parts of the accident reporting system), but one system is difficult to succeed in because it is crappy. And the other is comparatively easy to succeed in because it is well designed. Again, I still believe that people matter. The very best organizations have both smart people and well-designed systems – Google seem to qualify and so does Cisco.”
The Bottom Line: Organisational performance is driven by the individual and the system
In summary, one school of thought, let’s call it the “war for talent school” over-emphases the impact of the individual in a system. As pointed out by Bob Sutton in the above extract. Another school of thought, let’s call it the “it’s all systems” school tends to over-emphases the impact of the system in shaping individual behaviour. An example is Peter Senge in his book “The Fifth Discipline” states that “When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results“. Both schools have a valid perspective, as leaders we need to strike the balance ensuring that the right individuals are placed in the right system produce the best results.
Leadership is the difference maker. Just as having a crappy system can turn competent individuals into incompetent ones, having competent people in leadership positions can transform an organisation, such as what Lou Gerstner did with IBM. Taking a look at this issue from a leadership perspective, highlights the importance of ensuring that leadership positions are filled with the right people. Poor leaders create poor systems and generate unhealth cultural traits which can take years to unravel. For this reason organisations must hold their leaders to higher standards of capability, character and performance than any other position, given the scope of their impact on systems and people. Too often I’ve seen organsations leave poor performing leaders in positions for too long with disastrous long-term results. When it comes to poor performing leadership, urgent, swift and decisive action to remove them is a must!
John Maxwell expressed the importance of leadership in his book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” as “The Law of the Lid” which states “Leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness.“, the capability of an organisation’s leadership will determine its level of effectiveness. Building on this, consider an organisation with a competent workforce, the impact of its leadership and systems:
- Crappy leadership …. implement …. crappy systems ….. resulting in …. poor performance
- Great leadership …. implement ….. great systems …… resulting in …… great performance
What are your thoughts?
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Book, Management, Systems, Change, Business
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