4 ms·
I don't think that is what the OP is saying. The problem is not associated with risk taking but its opposite - finishing things after the primary risk has been
by frossie 16y ago
I don't think that is what the OP is saying.
The problem is not associated with risk taking but its opposite - finishing things after the primary risk has been tackled. I have no idea what happens inside Google, but as a user of their products I am often shocked (given their resources) at the lack of polish, at the seeming unwillingness to tackle that infamous last 20% that takes the 80% of the time. I can only assume this is policy of some sort since it is so pervasive.
In my experience running software projects, getting things done (as in DONE DONE) is a skill that is loosely correlated with sheer smarts if at all. The best project managers/geek herders I know could never survive a technical interview with Google, but they have this ability to focus things so it all clicks together. I have always wondered whether Apple is the kind of company that seeks those kind of skills.
As an example, think of some hyper competent PAs - they might not have higher degrees in mathematics, but they have an uncanny ability to create order out of chaos. Good software project managers are like that - the eye of calm in the storm of smartness.
If you are the kind of person who is bothered on a personal level by unfinshed stuff (what some personality analysts call a "completer finisher"), I can imagine working at a place where the organization is always on the lookout for the next shiny could be very frustrating. That could be plausible reason for these departures, though that is only speculation.
- robryan 16y agoI think it's down to designing an interview process that minimizes the chance of bad hires which has been written about before. The qualities you mention and more subjective and thus there is more chance someone hired based on those qualities could be a bad hire.
- frossie 16y agoI agree that it is hellishly difficult to hire for that kind of GTD ability. However I put it to you that if you have 25,000 employees, you must have fluked some of these personality types even with just technical interviews. Ergo if these people are not being leveraged, it says that your culture does not value those skills, and that you have some very frustrated people.
- wisty 16y agoBelbin's theory of Team Roles (which is one of the few lenses that doesn't strike me as complete BS) breaks people in to a number of categories: Plants (idea's people), Resource Investigators (starters), Co-ordinators (competent PA), Shapers (classical good non-technical PMs who take the project through from soup to nuts), Monitor Evaluators (critics, QA folk), Teamworkers (the quite guy who sorts out fights), Implementers (Intrepreneurs, who set up the bug tracking system that everyone agrees is a good idea), Completer Finishers (perfectionists), and Specialists (what tell you that they read an article 20 years ago that showed how to do it better in 3 lines of code). Google seems to want "Plants", who are great people, but too many cooks spoil the broth.
- Dylanlacey 16y agoYes, I get what you're saying. Risk was possibly the wrong word, I meant it in the sense that people come to think that reviews, documents and meetings are the only way to keep the company 'safe'.