Staffing for Success: Leveraging Strengths in Your Organization
Chapter 4 - Making Strength Productive of Peter F. Drucker's The Effective Executive Book delves into the strategic approach of utilizing individual strengths within an organization. The focus is on creating roles that enhance strengths and ensuring that each job is aligned with what an individual can do best. This method not only optimizes performance but also fosters a more dynamic and effective workplace.
Strategic Steps for Staffing by Strength
- Set Realistic Job Roles: Start by assessing current job roles. If they prove ineffective, redesign them to better suit human capabilities and strengths.
- Make Jobs Demanding and Expansive: Every role should be challenging, pushing individuals to utilize and enhance their strengths. A bigger and more demanding job often brings out the best in people.
- Match Strengths to Job Requirements: Instead of focusing solely on what a job requires, consider what a person can achieve given their unique strengths. Align roles accordingly.
- Account for Weaknesses: Understand that no one is perfect. To harness strengths effectively, executives must accept certain weaknesses in their team members.
Rules to Avoid the Pitfalls in Staffing for Strength, Not Personality
- Challenge Existing Job Designs: If a job consistently defeats capable individuals, it's not the people—it's the job. Redesign the role to make it achievable.
- Create Challenging Jobs: Every job should be big and demanding, encouraging the employee to rise to the occasion and bring forth their best abilities.
- Focus on Strengths: Start with what a person can do rather than what the job requires. This approach leads to better performance and job satisfaction.
- Promote Based on Performance: Always promote the individual who has proven their capability, regardless of any objections based on age, experience, or other factors.
- Remove Non-Performers: Executives must act decisively to remove those who consistently fail to perform well, especially in management roles.
Key Questions for Appraising People
- What has this person done well?
- What are they likely to do well in the future?
- What do they need to learn to maximize their strengths?
- Would I want my child to work under this person? If not, why?
Understanding Your Superior's Strengths
- What can my boss do really well?
- What has he done well in the past?
- What does he need to learn to further leverage his strengths?
- What resources does he need to perform better?
The Myth of the Indispensable Employee
Sometimes, a person is labeled as indispensable for the wrong reasons:
- Incompetence: They survive only because they are shielded by others.
- Misused Strength: Their abilities are used to prop up a weak superior.
- Concealment: Their strengths are used to avoid addressing serious problems.
Making Yourself Effective: Leading from Strength
To become an Effective Executive, an effective executive leads from their strengths. They focus on what they can do well and strive to make their strengths productive. This involves being authentic—understanding what tasks come naturally to them and performing them in a way that aligns with their personal strengths and work style.
Study your own performance in order to identify a pattern of results. Ask yourself:" What are the things that I seem to be able to do with relative ease, while they come rather hard to other people? "
Takeaways and Conclusions
- Staffing should be based on strengths, not just on filling roles. Align people’s strengths with the demands of their job.
- Job roles are flexible and should be designed to bring out the best in people, challenging them to perform at their highest potential.
- Focus on what individuals can do rather than on their weaknesses. Promote those who demonstrate strong performance, regardless of perceived flaws.
- Avoid the trap of "indispensable" employees. This could indicate underlying issues that need to be addressed.
- Effective executives lead by leveraging their strengths and being authentic in their approach.
Related Books
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
- StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
