Send In The Clones??
Many corporates believe that in order to build a high performing team, hire top talent, in turn they’ll attract their own ilk, et voila, problem solved for talent acquisition.
The best hire the best, right? Mediocre talent hires even worse talent. That’s the thinking, and has been ingrained in management. This is, of course, nonsense, the sort of blather I alluded to in my last post on the silliness of the ‘war for talent’..
Top talent (and for now, let’s skip qn exact definition..) often does a lukewarm job of hiring great people. And there are no statistics I have ever seen to show that bad talent hires worse talent (the usual rationale of ‘they are threatened by those who know more’). The problem often is that organisations–comprised of many individuals–hire others. And the higher up a hire goes, the greater the stakeholders, most with skin in the game. The job, and hence the “fit”, often gets pulled various ways.. This, however, is an organisational challenge, and little to do with “A’s hiring other A’s”.
What is true with hiring–and easily verifiable–is very simple; we hire our own, much as we profess otherwise.
British often hire British, Germans prefer German speakers, Americans like American-Born-Asians, Indians gravitate towards each other. And it’s all perfectly understandable, I don’t think I’m stating anything but the obvious.
Most of us are hard-wired to move towards our comfort zone, similis simili gaudet. It is seldom true that corporate opposites attract. We err on the side of those who look like us, talk like us, act like us, celebrate the same holidays, much as we claim to be agnostic in our attitude towards others joining us..
As multinationals continue to grow globally, and with Diversity and Inclusion departments trying to steady a balance, many corporates sound like Captain Renault in Casablanca, “I’m shocked, shocked”… when it comes to facing the ‘People-Like-Us’ syndrome, told they need more diversity. What is fascinating is that many deny they do it!!
People want to be with others like themselves, and shy away from those not like them. In the past month alone, I have seen this with two MNC’s I know. Different industries entirely, but management is looking for senior talent. Whom do they prefer for their regional hires? For one company, an Australian [male] hiring manager liked two Aussies, and one American [all male]. For the other company, the hiring manager’s [British male] top picks were one Brit, one Aussie, and one Indian[British]–and yes, all males.
(By the way, both of these companies used large search firms, and shame on them for putting forth only clones to their clients..)
It’s not difficult to understand, but let’s follow the demographics, folks.. Asia has 60% of the world’s population, over 4 billion people, so if one considers where future leadership will be from, the numbers don’t lie..
In the not-too-distant future, those leading large organisations will not be westerners, but neither will they be [primarily male] ABC’s or NRI’s.
They will be those who have lived and been educated in their home country–or are virtual autodidacts, exposed enough to the world around them through technology and social media, and they will look and talk differently than the stereotype of MNC leaders. But they’ll be the ones running the shop.
