My sincere apologies for you not being able to get on this call! There was a glitch in the system and I do hope this transcript of my recording will help.
I was reading this article in Harvard Business Review of an interview between Sarah Green and Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman and Jonathan Rosenberg, former SVP of products for Google. She was interviewing them about their new book 'How Google Works'. It made for very interesting reading and I would urge you to get on that site and listen to that interview. Some of the things that caught my attention had to do with their hiring procedures and how they were beginning to move away from well-established norms in terms of hiring people and trying to figure out ways in which they could mine deeply and come up with really good creative interesting people who would add to the flavor of Google. One of the things that they were talking about was how they were trying to look beyond the metrics, beyond the normal, and find people who, even though they may not have gone to college and had any formal training, were keen, bright and creative. They would pick up these people, throw them in and see how they would function.
Forgive me for using the cricket analogy, but this made me think of the youngster called Kuldeep Yadav, 19 years old has been picked for the India team. He has absolutely no previous experience, hasn't played a single over-50 over match, no Ranji Trophy experience. Yet, the selectors thought that it might be a smart move to bring him in. it kind of went with what these 2 executives from Google were talking about. They look widely to find people that they feel can add to the culture that is prevalent at Google.
But as they went on in this interview, they began to talk about ways in which they hire people. They seem to be moving away from specialist positions to more generalist positions, which raised my antenna and made me want to pursue this a little more. It is something that goes a little against the grain because today, when we look at filling positions, it has to do with trying to get a round peg in a round hole and making sure that we don't get square pegs in round holes – specialists to fill specialist positions. Yet, they were going out of the way to make the point that they were looking for people who could look even broader than the specialist positions that they were trying to fill. They were looking more for people who had a broader understanding than somebody whose thinking and expertise was a little myopic.
In their book they mentioned what they call 'Expand the Aperture' where they looked at people who were probably in another department like a product manager who wanted to move to engineering, or vice versa. They felt that they had the knowledge to help in that particular category. I thought that was interesting because one of the things that they mentioned was that they have what they call 'the LAX test'. LAX is the Los Angeles Airport and in this test, they sit with people for six hours, as if stuck in an airport, and see if they person can keep you entertained for those six hours; find something that they are passionate about and try and learn from them. He said that the LAX test is really very interesting as it really throws up interesting personalities.
One of the things that I got from this interview was that 'breadth of perspective trumps depth of knowledge' and it's a line that they use too. Somehow, the deeper you go, it's not going to allow you to rise too high in an organization because organizations are looking for people who have breadth as the positions get higher and higher.
I was travelling in the California Bay area about a month and a half back and I met a good friend who is Senior Vice President at VISA International. He mentioned that today, there are younger people who are trying to get his job. He's been in VISA for over 20 years, which in itself is something as VISA has gone through many changes, dropped people, slimmed down their workforce. He said, "There are things that I do that may take me a couple of hours. But the youngsters that are coming in are so good at formulae and things like that; they can throw out figures within 20 minutes." It made me wonder why VISA was keeping him. Then he mentioned some of the things that he was talking to senior management at VISA like where they ought to be going, new areas that had been untapped till now, how they could reduce the percentage that VISA takes and increase their database of people who use VISA. As I heard him talk, it suddenly clicked that he was thinking far beyond the skills that he had been hired for. And VISA has acknowledged that. They saw someone who was looking at VISA in terms of a huge perspective; a broad perspective, a futuristic perspective. That helped to keep him in place.
I felt that it was something that I needed to pass on to all of you today. The higher you go in the organization, the more people are looking for the ones who have breadth, ones who are well-equipped with seeing the big picture and not getting too myopic or too focused on a specific area of the company.
Tracy Hill, replying to a blog on this topic says, "The problem is that most companies only value that sill set i.e. the general versus the specific, in the CEO position." That is so right! As you move up the organization, that's what people are looking for. They are not looking for the specialist any longer; they are looking for the generalists.
In an article in the Journal of Financial Economics, the authors say, "The pay is higher for a CEO with general management skills gathered during lifetime work experience than for someone with specific skills." So it seems as if, in the debate between generalists and specialists, the generalists are coming out a little bit on top. As the authors of 'How Google Works' say, "In a dynamic industry, we need people who will think rather than how one has done something before, which is a specific solution to a specific problem. We need people who will see the big picture broadly and know how to interact."
I thought I would pass this on to you, as you begin to look at yourselves and see yourself moving up the organization and maybe challenge yourself today and say, "I got into the organization because I had a core competency that nobody else had and I've done well there. But as I move up the organization, what I need to convince people at the top is that I can see the large picture. I can connect the dots from various other departments. I can look ahead and see trends. I can be futuristic in my outlook." I think that is what we need as we move up the organization.
So I want to push this out to you. I've talked a lot about Indra Nooyi and her core competencies and how that is so important. Yet I think that it is not 'either this or that'. I think it's a 'both-and' situation, that you have your core competency but you also have a breadth of knowledge, which is something that others don't have. That gives you the edge as you move higher and higher up the organization. As always, we need to rely on the Almighty God for that. Who, other than Him, has the big picture, the complete picture? He tells us, "If you need My advice, if you need My wisdom, ask Me and I will give it." Maybe today is a good day to stop and say, "Almighty God, would You help me to see what I can do to expand my role, expand the big picture? What do I need to do in my life?" Maybe today would be a day of change for you as you think of yourself and say, "Maybe I need to do this course. Maybe I need to read up a little bit more on other topics as well." It could be the start of you taking a few more steps up the corporate ladder that you are in at the moment.
Can I pray with you? Almighty God, bless each one who hears this talk. Give to all of us wide vision, peripheral vision to be able to see things that others may not see. Help us to widen the scope of our understanding, to be able to see things that others may not see and help us to be more effective in our organizations as we hone the things that you have given to us. Help us to do well in our areas of work with Your blessing. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
• "How Google Manages Talent," http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/09/how-google-manages-talent/
• Vikram Mansharamani, "All Hail the Generalist." http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/06/all-hail-the-generalist/
• Cláudia Custódio, Miguel A. Ferreira & Pedro Matos, "Generalists versus Specialists: Lifetime Work Experience and CEO Pay." http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/uploadedFiles/Darden/Faculty_Research/Directory/Full_time/Matos_CFM_GeneralistCEOs_2012_07_24_JFE.pdf
• Aprameya, C "Kuldeep Yadav in Indian team for West Indies ODIs http://www.thatscricket.com/news/2014/10/04/kuldeep-yadav-in-indian-team-west-indies-odis-072778.html
• Tracy Hill comment in Michael Baer, "6 Reasons Generalists Are More Important than Specialists."http://www.talentzoo.com/news/6-Reasons-Generalists-are-More-Important-Than-Specialists/18955.html
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