At the recent Agile Leadership Summit in San Francisco, I had the good fortune to meet and listen to a number of like-minded people that I hope to continue to learn from. One of these was Pollyanna Pixton.
In her presentation she addressed the question of how to hire and promote The Right People. She summarized these views expressed by Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA International:
“Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
It is possible that that Mr Hock was referring to finding business associates, rather than staff, but nevertheless I like and associate with the romantic notion he describes. My daydreaming of an enterprise that followed these principles must have lasted for all of ten seconds, or the time it took Pollyanna to list them. I came crashing down in a ball of self-righteous fire when someone at the back of the room, likely David Anderson, pointed out that hiring on anything other than ability to perform a job would be legal quicksand.
<dream>One day I may get the chance to experience working at VISA and test for myself what it feels to be in such an environment</dream>
If you are intrigued, you can read about Dee Hock’s views on management here.
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June 17, 2008 at 11:23 pm
[...] is no such thing as the right person César touched on hiring and promoting a while back. This ...