Category Archives: new ways to manage work

Silver Lining of The Great Recession: Hiring Over-Qualified Candidates

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Astute Employers Can Benefit from Treasure Trove of Potential Candidates
Do the rewards outweigh the risks?  The experts would suggest as much.

The Great Recession presents new opportunities for employers who have just begun to hire again.
The experts are telling us: before you decide to pass on a candidate you might think is overqualified, take a little time to get to know him/her; even though you might be inclined to dismiss the offer, the “extra” skills of the applicant could be effectively utilized to boost performance in your work group or business.  
Unless you undertake this small task (a phone call?), you’ll never know the reasons why he might be interested in the specific position: does he want to shift industries?…relocate?…create a better work/life balance?  Find out.
Here are a few ideas on how to go about the process of discerning whether you should pursue the overqualified: 


First, define the risks: 

  • What are the hazards of hiring someone with more experience than you think might be needed for the job?  
  • Might she upstage her manager?  
  • Quit early into the job because she’s not challenged or because she finds a better job?
  • Disparage co-workers for being stupid or inexperienced?

Second: define the upside: 

  • What are the possibilities, the potential benefits of taking on a worker with some bonus abilities?  
  • Might it propel your work group to a new level of attainment?  
  • Could she bring personal, organizational or technical skills that are either non-existent or in short supply that could help the group function more effectively?  
  • Does her character offer some features that might help others on the team…just by observing?

With these two pieces of work out of the way, you’re likely to be a better helmsman in steering the process.  


Ideas that can help both in the hiring and the  ”onboarding” process: 


Expand Your Thinking About the Job
Stretch your thoughts about the job: in the past, you might have searched for the right candidate to fill the opening.  Now, you can look into the future: are there needs that we will have in the future that this candidate could address?


Be Careful How You Bring Him On
Unmet expectations are, often, a key reason for turnover; it can be amplified in situations where the employee is over-skilled.  Make sure to clearly spell out the job, in detail.  Preemptively outline the tasks, responsibilities which might be “below” the skills of your new thoroughbred.  
Assure that fellow employees are aware of your decision and are going to participate in making the new hire work.


Pay Her What She Is Worth
Even though it would be easy to “discount” pay, according to the experts, by as much as 25% compared to pre-recession levels, the strong advice is against that: pay her what she’s worth.  It will work better in the long run.
If you can’t afford her, then it would be more prudent to pass.  If you have to pay her less than market, make sure she knows what the possibilities for advancement and bonuses are and, then, she can make the decision to accept.  


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Using appropriate strategies could help you add key people to your organization.  I, for one, would recommend “pushing the envelope” to get the best talent that’s possible.



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Eliminate Red Tape: Why?

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Policies Are Biggest Impediment to Throughput, Effectiveness

Are you interested in boosting performance, efficiency, throughput?  It might be time to revisit the lessons from Goldratt’s “Theory of Constraints” and look at your organization’s rules, procedures, methods.  


The simple conclusion from the book: policies, not necessarily bad ones, get in the way.  Not machines.  Not bad, unthinking people.  What’s the solution?  Think systemically.  

The 1984 Parable  



Policies, in my view, are often designed to deal with the exceptions…the customer who wants to ship to multiple locations with one billing address, let’s say.  So, we create a new policy to deal with the previous ineffective one.  (Look at what much of what comes out of Congress, too.)


In my experience with client organizations, I’ve seen policies — aimed at dealing with 10% of the employees, customers, whomever — take up 90% of the intellectual energy of the business, whether it’s a non- or for-profit organization.  There’s no energy or motivation left to really figure out how we leapfrog from where we are right now.


This kind of stance — to develop solutions for the exceptions — could have negative systemic impacts: many of your best folks could get the wrong message.  


That message might be seen as: “let’s spend a good part of our time and energy on insuring this mistake doesn’t happen again….oh, by the way, we didn’t really get damaged from that mistake…it was just a violation of  another policy…”  In the process, the 97% of the work that’s going well can be ignored, forgotten.  More unintended consequences.  Think whole-istically.  

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Theory of Constraints White Paper: Open PDF

Moskoff’s High Performance Organizations Blogpost: July 2010: Theory of Constraints.

Throw Out the Performance Review

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Finally, Some Frank Talk About the Failings of An Old Paradigm

The Annual Employee Performance Review: both boss and employee respond with an “Ugh!” to this event.  How could we justify getting rid of these archaic and unproductive exercises?

Does the process help boost organizational output, increase throughput?  Doubtful.  Does it make the employee feel good?  Unlikely.  One would be motivated to ask the logical question: “Why do we keep doing them?”  I would say: “It’s a bad habit for which we…yet have no replacement.”

“First, they’re dishonest and fraudulent. And second, they’re just plain bad management,” writer and UCLA professor Culbert says in a radio interview the week of July 6.

Tough talk from (what looks like) a not-so-friendly-looking guy.  (I wouldn’t want a Review from the likes of him!)  But, he’s right: performance reviews don’t do much to get out in the open the challenges in the business nor facilitate a discussion of the possible solutions.

Employees come to the process anxious about its impact on their pay or career.  Supervisors, managers are given a limit of how much the pay can be increased and, that small view, becomes the focus of the discussion: what did you do well? — and, of course, that becomes the employees shield — and how much more money am I going to give you.  Which, of course, the boss knows before he heads into the Review.

People want their work to matter, to mean something.  And, the annual Review doesn’t facilitate such a goal.  The process is devoid of humanity, in many cases.

“Once you set up the metrics, that’s the only focus for the employee,” Culbert says. “The problem with performance reviews is that the metric that counts most for the employee is the boss’s opinion. So the employee starts doing what he or she thinks is going to score in the boss’s mind, and not even talk about what he or she believes is necessary for the company to get the results that really matter.”

With what should we replace these arcane practices?  How about a frank discussion where, perhaps, the boss provides some clear targets for the employee that are aligned with the goals of the organization, the unit?  Good.  Another major problem solved.

For anyone who would like to gauge where they stand on the annual review issue, Culbert and Rout have posted a test on their site, with the slightly biased title of How Much Do You Hate Performance Reviews?

Moskoff Gets Some Recognition from Alma Mater

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Skidmore College: Feature Piece on “Human Natured” Moskoff

My alma mater decided I had been doing enough important things to warrant some attention.  Surprise to me: I feel like the cobbler with his head down, aimed toward his work.

I’m grateful for all the collaborators and supporters who have blessed me with their gifts.

A small piece from the article:

“While performance and profit are inevitable topics of discussion, what interests Moskoff most is the concept of community.  ’I'd like to see people asking “Why?” more often.  Asking “why” helps ‘steer the conversation towards values and principles rather than tactics,’ Moskoff explains.  ’I'd like to see organiztions working on a more purposeful existence.’”

High Anxiety Makes Sense: What Model is Next, Emerging?

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Macro View Creates Grave Concerns: Is Society Viable?

Phillip Blond is a senior lecturer in theology and philosophy at the University of Cumbria. He is currently writing Red Tory, a book on radical conservatism. He writes frequently for the mainstream press on economics, politics and religion

“Look at the society we have become: We are a bi-polar nation, a bureaucratic, centralised state that presides dysfunctionally over an increasingly fragmented, disempowered and isolated citizenry.” 

– Phillip Blond, British author, lecturer at U of Cumbria

So, tell me: how does one run a business — for- or non-profit — in times like these?  When the model that should be steering behaviors and strategies seems…absent or no longer applicable?  No rudder?


Phillip Blond’s acute analysis, referenced in a David Brooks New York Times Editorial, displays one of the great difficulties of the times that mirrors the incessant reminders of fiscal betrayal by Goldman Sachs and the like: We’ve been duped!  Where does one go from there?  A retreat seems likely.


How to make sense of this twisted situation? Blond would argue that we need to come back to our human associations, to our original sovereign station of “the people.”


Because of the inherent flexibility of organizations — they’re more nimble than governments and…more responsive —   these institutions can assist in the movement quite effectively.  Ironic yes and true, too: here’s the reality: your company can be the agent of change in the world: a focus on community, association, service above self.

“The welfare state and the market state are now two defunct and mutually supporting failures.” — essay by British writer Phillip Blond.  

If Blond is right, we’re in a limbo period, waiting for a more effective model to emerge.  While we’re waiting, he would argue that we could be the creators of that new model: should we give it a try?  First step?  Try listening a bit more and talking a bit less: humans like that.







Chimps, Grief and Human Arrogance: Applications in Organizations

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What Can Chimps Teach Us About Organizational Dynamics?

This picture  in the December issue of National Geographic magazine captivated me for several minutes when I first saw it.  Not only is it a bit eerie but it brought two thoughts I have not been able to dispose of since the viewing.

The first thought, of course, has to with our species’ level of anthropo-arrogance: many humans believe that homo sapiens is “exceptional,” unique. I’ve never really held that view; this picture showing a group of grieving chimps — watching a 40 year old former tribe member being carted to her burial site — demonstrates some of the proximity of chimp / human behaviors.

The second thought had to do with the similarity of the picture to a corporate situation: layoffs or terminations, firings.  The wire fence is simply replaced with the Steelcase office partitions; the viewers, wide eyed and terrified, are peeking over the five foot barriers.  And, in the corporate world, of course, the “victim” is self ambulating, not being wheeled…unless you consider the security guards that often accompany, ahem escort, the terminated employee out of the building a wheelbarrow sort of vehicle.

Is that what former co-workers are doing when they peer over their little steel walls?  Are they grieving?  They could be.  They are, after all, losing a member of the “tribe.”  Change is afoot.  And, “who’s to say I’m not next?” is part of the thinking that the left, frontal neocortex is considering. 

What can these, and other, chimpanzees teach us about our culture and our organizations?  Franz de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, has been studying this question for decades.  Mostly, de Waal has focused on empathy; his research has concluded, with some scienific support, “that non-human great apes and humans are simply different types of apes, and that empathic and cooperative tendencies are continuous between these species.”

How does this sort of stance jibe with the corporate world?  Well, if we are “wired” like chimps, might it make sense to first acknowledge the similarity of behaviors?  The reality of “favorites” and “special protection” (you know, the people who make mistakes but there are no consquences because of their loyalty?) as just one example?

And, then there is the illusion of the heterarchy — the “flat” organization.  Chimps don’t operate that way — they tend towards hierarchies naturally — so why shouldn’t humans?  Perhaps, once acknowledged, we can dismantle the illusions and myths that keep things the way they are and…change a bit, become a bit less “furry.”

“To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo.  But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us.”

Frans de Waal (1997-07). “Are We in Anthropodenial?”. Discover. pp. 50–53.

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