A Hiring Mistake That Can Cost You Dearly

Hiring mistakes are all too common, and that's okay because it's a tricky game for many reasons. There are numerous factors to consider when choosing the right people for your team. I'm here to add one more consideration. If your company is in the process of growth, building a strong structure, and creating new policies and procedures, you need to watch out for a potential pitfall.

A common error among recruiters is thinking that individuals from well-established companies with clear structures and detailed procedures for almost everything can effortlessly bring these systems to other organisations.

In these big companies, we can identify three types of people:

1. Those who thrive in structured and established organizations. They are great at following rules, enjoying the predictability and certainty that established processes provide. However, they might not be capable of starting such systems from scratch or implementing them in new organizations.

2. Then, there are those who learn from these big corporations and use that knowledge to bring structure and order to companies lacking it or in need of a significant overhaul.

3. The third group includes those who not only replicate existing structures, policies, and procedures but also improve upon them. They use their knowledge to assess what works and what doesn't, creating better systems. These are the innovators who build modern organizations by enhancing old knowledge to suit their specific needs.

According to Professor Peterson, "Our traditional social institutions are solutions to complex problems that humanity has spent millennia working on: How we can best structure our societies, organise large-scale actions such as building cities, live together in a civilised, non-violent way, and so on. Though at times they may seem anachronistic, they serve to keep human civilisation in good order.

At the same time, all traditions are prone to becoming dogma—rigidly following old ideas even when they’ve become outdated. In time, Peterson says, dogma falls away when creative thinkers challenge the flaws in an existing status quo and improve upon them. In this way, creative change counteracts the eventual decline of traditional ideas and ways of living."

Organizational procedures play a vital role in maintaining order, productivity, and measurability. Nevertheless, they can frequently turn inflexible and ill-suited to evolving environmental conditions. This is precisely where the third category of individuals steps in, understanding the purpose, advantages, as well as drawbacks of existing processes and skillfully modifying them to align more effectively with current requirements and circumstances.

Don't forget to evaluate your candidates if you are building or transforming organisations because if you hire the wrong people all you will hear is "Oh, these people don't even have ...." or "In my previous company we had....."

You want to avoid this.

If you need help creating modern organisations let us know.