Useless Ideas That Spread Like Wildfire

According to Jim Collins in that loveable fairy tale Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, a key to success is to get "the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats" on the bus. Excellent! Good advice! But what exactly are you supposed to do differently, as a result of this great advice?

The common approach is to examine the positions you need filled and make an assessment of what kind of person is suitable for that job. Then, you assess each of the available people, both incumbents and new applicants, and select the person who is most suitable for the position. This, then, will be first step on your guaranteed path to greatness! The right people, in the right seats! Hooray!

But, how exactly do you know that you have gotten the right people in the right seats? And what exactly did you think you were you doing before you heard this advice?

I imagine a world before Good to Great, a magical place where hiring the wrong people was the key to success. A world where leaders strove to put people into completely innappropriate jobs. A place where managers and HR professionals would try to force round pegs into square holes.

This is crazy talk. Can you imagine anyone, anywhere, hiring someone specifically because they thought they were not right for the company, not right for the job, or not the best match for the selection criteria? Every interview, every promotion, every selection process, has, from the beginning of time, tried to get the right people in the right seats on the bus. We're already doing this! Yet companies still fail.

The questions we really need to ask about this are:

"When will you know for sure that you've hired the right people?"

"When will you know for sure that they're in the right seats on the bus?"

In ten years, you'll be looking back at your company and talking to a reporter about all that's happened. She'll ask you, "What did you do that got you where you are today?"

If your company has been wildly successful, you'll lean back in your leather recliner, stroke your pet albino tiger, take a sip of cognac and say "Well, we made it a point to only hire the right people, and get them in the right seats in the bus."

On the other hand, if your company crashed and burned, you'll pull some more newspapers over your shivering carcass, retreat into the depths of your cardboard condo, take a swig from your trusty bottle of paint thinner, and lament "...we ... just didn't ... have the right people ... in the right seats ... on the bus ... aaaaaarrrggghhh!"

So, of course, continue trying to match people to appropriate jobs. That's a no-brainer. But don't waste too much effort on it. The whole right-seat-on-the-bus thing is an idea that sounds good and spreads quickly, but really doesn't have much substance or value.