IT's all about people

The right person is context dependent.. Therefor we need to understand both the person, skill, competencies, requirements and context.

One of my favorit quotes is from Sir Gerry Robinson’s book “I’ll Show them Who’s Boss” from 2004.

"Get the right person running something and your problems are fundamentally solved”

It’s a bit more complex than that sentence tends to imply, I would say. First of all.. I don't believe in the one man army.. You need a team of the right ones. How do we find the right one? How do we ensure that person stays to be the one? How do we know how skilled a person is? How do we release the full potential? How does the context - e.g. the other people in the team - impact that person? That’s just some of the questions…

Today I’ve had a couple of valuable meetings with different people that work full time with this – and are very good at it - finding the right person for the job. Bo Eske Nielsen from Odgers Berndtson and Carsten Svane from ShareMinds . They are experts within their field!

Carsten, Henrik Antonsen and I talked about, among other things, tests as part of the competence mapping and recruitment process. Tests can be good and act as a good tool for dialog with the candidate. A lot of testes is more about preferences than competences, and that’s very important to be aware of. Preferences are not the same as skills or competences.

There are quite often a collation between our preferences and competencies, though. But it's of course not the same. We agreed on, regardless of which one we talk about, that the persons self awareness is crucial for high performance - both as a person and especially as part of a team.

When you know you weakness (or less skilled areas ;-)) and dare to face them and to be open about them you AND your team can compensate for those - or develop them - and thereby perform better.

We agreed on that you probably will - from two people with the same score on any preferences or competencies - see different behaviors and thereby different competencies depending on their self awareness and context.

This quote by Stephen Covey:

"We judge our self by our intentions and others by their actions."

can also remind us that our skills needs to be put in action and that competencies are also context dependent. "I'm a good leader"... Great!.. What makes you a great leader? For what kind of people and in which context? Are you better at leading some type of people than others? Or is it just so that everyone by nature follows you, sees you as af motivator and inspiration and gets exactly what they need from you?

What do I mean by "competencies / skills are context dependent"? Let me give you an example. I have a great balance - standing on one leg. That's a skill. But it's context dependent. I have a fear of heights.. So put me on a balance board on the ground and you'll see that I'm very skilled. But ask me to walk the plank at a height of 2 meters and I will be overtaken by a turtle.

"Can you clean the windows?" ....yes I can... On a 30M high building.. No way! In both cases it seems quite obvious that you off course describe the context - both as a recruiter and applicant - High is important in this case too! But how do you get the same context clarity in other jobs like IT project manager or director?

Bo Eske Nielsen talked about the importance of being specific about what you have achieved and what competencies you activated. "We improved the turnover by 250%"... Great!.. Was the starting point 1T or 10M? How did you make a difference in that achievement?

So reflect on what you do, what actually makes the difference and how people sees it. Be open and transparent. Talk about the context, needs, skills, competencies and blind spots.

Go find the right one

Finally I tweaked another Sir Gerry Robinson quote a bit: "It's all about people"....

We create IT with people and for people.. so yes... even robots are all about people ;-)

IT is all about people

Brian Busk, 2023.01.20