In knowledge work the skill of the worker matters vastly more because "the process" mostly takes place in their head. You can optimize a workspace and tools fo

In knowledge work the skill of the worker matters vastly more because "the process" mostly takes place in their head. You can optimize a workspace and tools for productivity and the reduction of errors but ultimately that has a minimal impact on "the process" that's taking place in the knowledge worker's mind. If the process was the problem (or perfect), adding a new (or replacing) a worker would have minimal impact but we know this is not true. You could have the best documentation, training, and absolutely stellar code yet one person can turn everything to shit quite quickly! The opposite is true as well: Bringing on a fantastic new worker can make your existing team look like a bunch of inefficient laggards. Neither of these situations can be fixed by improving processes (maybe hiring processes? Though I doubt it). It'd be like having one magic blue bean in the box that--if found--can either drastically improve or degrade the final productivity by 90%. Would the optimum process improvement then be to try to eliminate magic beans entirely? Sure seems like it (i.e. hire the lowest common denominator and don't try to optimize for the 1%). That way you reduce the likelihood of taking on the "bad 1%"--even though it reduces your chances of obtaining the perfect magic bean.