How to Pick the Right Man

The problem of how to select the right men to fill executive jobs has been occupying --and, in some instances, preoccupying--many individuals in the business world for quite some time. Fully aware that no company can be any better than the people who run it, businessmen are ever hopeful of building management staffs made up of men who are paragons of all known or suspected virtues. Theoretically, there should be an ideal man for every position; but, in practice, this is seldom, if ever, the case. No one is without flaw. The perfect man--or, if you prefer, the compleat executive--may be born someday in the distant future, but I am inclined to doubt that he will make his appearance in my lifetime or in that of anyone who reads this article. Hence, the selection of executive personnel boils down, as do just about all things in life, to accepting the fact that although perfection may be a goal, it is seldom attainable. Instead, one must find the most promising compromise, seeking out the man who seems best qualified for any given opening and who is thus the right man for that job.

Business management is largely a matter of decision, and there are few decisions more critical than those involved in hiring or promoting executive personnel; for the men ultimately picked will themselves be required to make decisions that can quite literally make or break the company that employs them. In recent years, the devising of yardsticks by which an individual's qualifications and potential may be measured has become at once a parlor game, an honored profession, an obsession and an industry in itself. Businessmen, personnel specialists, management consultants, psychologists and countless others have devoted vast energies to formulating lists of characteristics that, they claim, a man should possess if he is to be a successful executive. There is some agreement on certain fundamental and rather obvious qualities (for example, most sources concede that an executive should be "intelligent"); beyond such basics, the crystal ball is clouded.

But then, there has never been anything like full agreement on what makes a man better or worse than his fellows. More than 2000 years ago, Plato theorized that human behavior patterns are controlled by three factors: appetite, emotion and thought, all of which should function in harmony. However, Plato warned, "even in good men there is a lawless wild beast ... which peers out in sleep." Aristotle argued that when any human qualities are carried to extremes, they become vices, and that "good" qualities are those that lie midway between bad extremes. For example, ambition is the desirable middle ground between the bad extremes of laziness and avarice. Socioeconomic theorist Charles Fourier spent years painstakingly cataloging what he maintained were the 810--no more, no less--types of human character; while William James simply divided people into two groups, the "tough-minded" and the "tender-minded." Sigmund Freud injected the id, the ego and the superego--and a host of theories regarding sexual motivation--into the question of personality appraisal. William McDougall, an avant-gardist in social psychology, neatly explained human behavior with seven motivating "instincts" --flight, fight, curiosity, disgust, parental behavior, self-assertion and self-abasement.

The list of theorists and theories could be extended almost indefinitely without showing any appreciably greater degree of agreement. Nowadays, personality and aptitude testing has become a major industry, said to gross well over $50,000,000 per year. A University of Texas Bureau of Business Research survey of 852 U. S. companies showed that 56 percent of the firms were using personality and aptitude tests in personnel selection. Fortune magazine placed the national average even higher. A single testing organization is reported to have more than 11,000 industrial clients on its books. Another large testing firm runs more than 35,000 job applicants--mostly (continued on page 158)How To Pick(continued from page 121) for executive or supervisory jobs--through its test sieves each year. Whole schools of thought and even elaborate mystiques have grown up around the question of personnel--especially executive personnel --selection. Some business firms, it is said, have even turned to phrenology, physiognomic analysis, handwriting analysis and astrology in their frantic search for a sure-fire means of picking the right men.

Still, with hundreds of theories, systems and tests, no one has discovered a foolproof and universally applicable method for matching men to jobs. Invariably, we return to the basic question: What are the qualifications that serve to make a man a successful executive? This is a question that has never been fully answered. For over a century, American business leaders have been outspoken in their opinions on the subject, though often their opinions don't agree.

"It is heart service that counts," declared Andrew Carnegie. "You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best." "Above all, you must have tenacity," was Daniel Guggenheim's view. "That is the greatest quality. Without it, no man can possibly succeed." Cyrus H. McCormick maintained that the successful executive must love his work and remain in sound physical condition. J. P. Morgan's partner, George W. Perkins, claimed that the successful businessman should look upon his work as play. IBM's Thomas Watson held that the main thing was to "aim high and think in big figures." Charles P. McCormick of the McCormick spice company stated that he considered "loyalty the greatest characteristic trait needed in an executive." Alfred Sloan of General Motors said that understanding how to work with people, along with personality, represented "75 percent of the necessary equipment." Sears, Roebuck's Charles Caldwell defined the qualifications for an administrative executive as: "mental ability, sociability, administrative skill, stability, predictability, drive, a sense of personal competitiveness and breadth of interests."

The controversy over what, precisely, makes the right man continues to rage. A few years ago, Steel magazine listed the "27 traits most common to good executives." These included "a superior level of intelligence," "creative ability," the fact that he "must have no special pressing problems with his wife" and that he "must have no serious health problems."

Fortune has reported that there is some consensus that "six dimensions" distinguish the executive elite from the "least good managers." The six traits are:

1. Initiative, assumption of responsibility and leadership

2. Job knowledge and skill

3. Dependability, thoroughness and follow-through

4. Getting along with people

5. Stability under pressure

6. Fine personal qualities and work habits

On the other hand, Nation's Business, having surveyed "America's top business decision makers and thinkers," cites five "most needed" executive skills:

1. Ability to be flexible and adapt to accelerated change

2. Ability to be imaginative and to innovate

3. Proficiency in controlling and reducing expenses

4. Ability to mobilize and motivate men

5. Skill in coordinating and correlating forces within and outside your company

All these points are well taken and valid to some extent in selecting management personnel. All the traits mentioned are valuable for an executive to possess, but their relative importance will vary from one situation to another. And, obviously, there cannot be very many men who possess all these qualities in abundance. But such guidelines are by no means the end of the trait-listing game.

A widely selling book on executive selection lists "Five Hidden Traits That Shape a Man's Career," plus "Ten Magic Keys to a Man's Character." Another book, written by a management consultant, offers a "57-point check list" to determine a man's qualifications for an executive position. Yet another book gives a "simple, easy 101-point personality inventory guide" that, the author claims, will "bring the margin for error in executive selection down to an irreducible minimum."

All in all, if I may be permitted a somewhat skeptical observation, an applicant for an executive position who underwent all the available tests and interviews would be well past the retirement age before he completed them. Executive-personnel selection is far from an exact science.

I do not mean to imply that I consider all forms of personality, psychological and aptitude tests worthless. Properly used, and held within reasonable limits, such tests may provide a certain amount of valuable information. How valuable depends on many factors. For example, I rather imagine that familiarity has a strong bearing on the results of any test; an individual who has taken the same test or very similar ones earlier will be likely to score much differently from the man who takes a test for the first time. Even if the tests can be helpful, I am dubious that the average assembly-line personality or aptitude evaluation can invariably prove or disprove an individual's qualifications for a job. Tests should hardly be the sole criterion by which an applicant is judged. Surely, his previous record and other pertinent data could conceivably outweigh almost any test scores.

In light of present trends, my views may be anachronistic, but I believe that responsibility for selecting personnel should rest primarily with those holding authority over the department in which there is an opening. The men who will be an applicant's superiors should be the ones to determine whether or not he measures up. These men are not infallible; but neither are the psychologists, management consultants and testers. The seasoned and successful executive usually achieves a fairly high batting average in hiring and promoting; his knowledge of the company's problems and his experience in dealing with people enable him to choose the right man at least as well as an outsider. If anything, the executive will be more careful, for he realizes that the efficiency of his own department--and thus, to some extent, his own success--will depend on the performance of his subordinates.

I know that I have long made it a policy to observe how the men an executive hires and promotes prove out, for this offers a usually reliable insight into the quality of the executive himself. If he consistently hires good men and if he is able to recognize and reward the most deserving among his subordinates, this is an indication of his own sound judgment and ability. If, on the other hand, a manager has a record of picking losers, I'm inclined to doubt his qualifications for the job he holds.

The selection of executive personnel divides naturally into two separate categories, each with its own particular problems. The first involves choosing a man from outside the organization to fill a vacancy; and this includes the recruitment of young men, mainly college graduates, for executive-trainee or junior-executive positions. The second involves the selection of men already in the organization for promotion to higher positions.

Whom to hire, which man to pick from among a dozen or a hundred applicants is, like so many other business problems, very much a matter of using common sense, drawing upon accumulated experience and instincts. No matter what check lists are used, the final choice of the man to fill an executive vacancy is still a question that should be settled by management decision. I believe that each executive should, within the framework of company policy, evolve his own standards for the men he has to hire.

To depend blindly on tests or arbitrary criteria set by some outside "expert" is to shirk management duty and to risk overlooking valuable human material. Certainly, a conscientious manager should exercise great care against the possibility that a tester's personal bias might influence his interpretations. For example, one much-publicized management consultant insists that an executive should have "no less than two and no more than three" children. Others feel constrained to ferret out the most intimate details of an applicant's sex life. And there are some "experts" who turn positively purple if an applicant displays the slightest sign of eccentricity in his dress.

These seem debatable criteria. I have known entirely too many crack executives who had no children or half a dozen. I can't really see how the answer to the question, "Do you ever go to sleep at night without saying good night to your wife?" --which, by the way, is considered a key question on one widely used personality-evaluation test--helps determine whether or not a fourth assistant vice-president can do his job properly. As for eccentricity of dress--well, it strikes me as extremely unlikely that long hair or a penchant for Argyle socks can drag an otherwise competent executive into the sloughs of inefficiency. The oil business, for example, has always had its share of rugged individualists. I've known more than a few crack managers in the industry who went straight to the top, even though they were types as likely to show up in the board room wearing Levis and coonskin caps as gray-flannel suits and Homburgs.

Of course, many of the standards involved in choosing a man to fill a job vacancy depend on the job itself, the character of the company and other variables. As an obvious example, one would hardly try to make a Middle Eastern oil manager out of an individual who had spent his entire career as a staff man in the candy industry. Once the person responsible for hiring has a complete and detailed knowledge of the position that is open, he knows what particular qualifications are needed. The hunt for the right man thus is narrowed to a search for the individual who most closely meets the given requirements.

In hiring young men without previous experience, usually those who have just graduated from college, there are certain standards upon which one is almost forced to rely, because there is no actual work record to indicate the applicant's capabilities. I agree that even an executive trainee should be intelligent, he should be able to grasp the ideas expressed by others and to formulate and express his own. A beginner's character is also important; it would be folly to try to make a junior executive out of a young man with a long record of car theft. On the other hand, I do not subscribe to the theory that an applicant should be refused consideration because of a minor teenage transgression or two. I myself played hooky from school when I was a youngster; but, of course, in those days, truancy was punished in the woodshed and not in the courts.

The tyro's scholastic record is also important--but, again, not decisive. A straight-A average does not guarantee that a young man will be a good executive, nor is it proof positive of his intelligence or ability. I have known many efficient, even brilliant executives who received only mediocre marks in school; and I have also known men with dazzling scholastic records who achieved only mediocre business success, because they were tenacious but uninspired plodders.

An example from my own experience may help emphasize the point. Some years ago, the president of a company in which I hold a controlling interest waxed highly enthusiastic about a new executive who had been hired largely on the strength of his dazzling scholastic record. The new man was a Phi Beta Kappa, the winner of scholarships and awards and the showpiece product of a graduate school of business. By chance, I happened to meet the man soon after he started to work for the company. Although I found him unimpressive --a bland, neither-here-nor-there type--I remembered his sparkling academic record and said nothing that would in any way hinder his progress. I didn't have to say anything. Less than a year later, I learned he had been allowed to resign. The reason? A fault not really his own and not really to be counted against him. He was simply too much the scholar, too much the academic theoretician. His brilliance and knowledge were not spiced with the necessary touch of the hardheaded and practical--prosaic virtues, perhaps, but essential for getting things done.

Alertness, imagination, enthusiasm, ambition, business acumen--these are among the characteristics that help make a beginner a desirable applicant. And I might hazard to say that they are characteristics that seasoned executives can recognize during the course of a personal interview at least as well as testers can spot them from questionnaires.

In recent years, some companies have conducted large-scale campus-recruitment programs that, if published statistics are correct, have largely defeated their own ends. The turnover rate of young men recruited during these campaigns is said to be inordinately high--up to 75 percent during the first five years, in some companies. Also, according to a recent article in Nation's Business, many of the companies have apparently sugar-coated the pill to an incredible degree. Discussing the recruiters' brochures that are distributed to students, Business Week reported: "Practically no brochure even mentioned the subject of work or otherwise indicated that the students would have to contribute something."

The desire to work and work hard is one of the most important of all qualifications a beginner can possess. I believe that the young man who seeks a business career wants to work hard--and this can compensate for many other shortcomings. The companies I own or control do not conduct campus-recruiting programs. Young men who apply for jobs with my companies are impressed with the fact that they will be expected to work very hard, indeed--and my companies have never suffered from any shortage of job applicants.

Certainly, anyone who is being considered for an executive or junior-executive position is entitled to have all the facts, the bad along with the good, laid on the line. He should be told frankly what problems he will be inheriting if he gets the job--and what other problems he is likely to encounter if he continues up the ladder. The man with the potential for success will accept even the worst news as a challenge to his own ability.

The fledgling executive's personality is also a factor an establishing his relative desirability, but, in my mind, to only a limited extent. I agree that executives should be able to get along with people, that they should work in harmony with subordinates, equals and superiors. But an executive is hired to do his job and to get others to do theirs, not to reap high honors in a corporate popularity contest. Mr. Personality Plus is all too likely to worry more about what people think about him than about what they must accomplish on company time.

Needless to say, there is always a large element of chance involved in hiring a young and previously untried man. He is picked almost entirely on the basis of promise. On the other hand, the tyro can be more readily trained than the man who has already been employed and who has, in many instances, learned how to do things in ways that may not necessarily be preferred by his new employers.

But in hiring men with previous experience, the prospective employer does have concrete evidence of an applicant's ability--his past performance. What a man has done in the past can generally be taken as a fair indicator of what he will do in the future. From the employer's standpoint, there are only two types of men with previous experience: those who are unemployed and those who are working for another company and wish to make a change. If the man is unemployed, it is a sound idea to find out why. Was he fired for inefficiency or did he quit because he felt he wasn't getting anywhere? If an efficient executive with a good record becomes the victim of a merger or a change in top management and suddenly finds himself jobless, it is entirely reasonable to assume that he will be an equally efficient executive in a new position for which he is otherwise qualified. A sales executive who doubled the sales of his company and then quit when he found himself locked in with no opportunity for further advancement is likely to remain an energetic executive who will continue to produce when he moves to another firm.

Questions also need to be answered if the applicant is still employed elsewhere. It is important to know why he wants to make the change or to learn, if possible, if he is actually being eased out. Usually, an employed executive seeks a new job because he wants to make more money or have more opportunity. These are understandable motives, on the face of things. But, again, the astute businessman will probe a little further. There is always the chance that a man who wants more money may have an auction-block mentality and that he will soon be seeking yet higher bidders for his services. If he wants more opportunity with another firm, it is wise to make sure that he hasn't bungled the opportunities that his current company offered.

Beyond the question of hiring is the problem of selecting men for promotion. Here, I prefer to use what I call the "weight lifter's approach." It is by no means a quick or an easy way to tackle the problem, but I feel it's well worth the time and effort necessary--and it certainly achieves the highest percentage of right decisions. Put yourself in the shoes of a weight-lifting coach. If he wants to find out how much a new man can lift, he does not ask the newcomer to heft a 300-pound bar bell at the beginning. The man is allowed to warm up gradually. He starts with, say, a 100-pound bar bell. If he handles that without too much trouble, the weight is increased, by 20- or 40-pound increments, until the 300-pound mark is reached.

Now, just suppose that the man in question was told to start out immediately by trying to lift all 300 pounds. Even though it might be within his capabilities to lift it eventually, the chances are he would not be able to do so without a preliminary warm-up. Thus, he would have failed, even thoug he could have succeeded if he'd received a fair opportunity to prove himself.

The same principle applies to the problem of readying men so that they will be fully qualified for promotion. All too often, this principle is ignored in business. In fact, one of the most common corporate errors is to promote a man who, although he possesses the basic equipment, has not had the necessary warm-up before being thrust into a higher position. It is manifestly unfair to the man, and risky for the company, to suddenly give an executive far more responsibility than he is accustomed to having. The common-sense way to give a man an even break and, at the same time, to minimize risks for the company is to gradually and progressively increase his authority. And what holds for the tyro at the bottom of the ladder holds for all management personnel at all levels. The men who have better equipment and show more ability should always be trained and ready to take over a job on the next level.

When it comes to picking the man who gets the promotion, tests seem even less relevant than they are in hiring. Whether or not a man should be advanced to a bigger job should, I think, be decided largely by how he has performed previously in the company. How his proficiency is to be judged is a matter for management to decide. Local conditions and variables must necessarily influence the nature of the criteria used. Still, there are certain basic guidelines. For example, Charles W. Foreman, vice-president of United Parcel Service, has provided one succinct and, in my opinion, universally applicable yardstick for measuring which men are best qualified for promotion. Foreman holds that the true test lies in how an individual has handled the three basic materials with which all executives must work: money, time and people.

The executive's attitude toward the company's money is all-important. He must be acutely profit-conscious, unequivocally dedicated to the principle that every task, if humanly possible, should be translated into a profit. The executive who is promotable is the man who views the company's money as something that he is obliged to administer wisely and well, to see it spent with maximum care to achieve maximum results. How he handles company money is all the more significant because, after all, the higher he goes, the more money he will control.

During World War Two, at the request of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, I took over active management of the Spartan Aircraft Corporation. It was a time of considerable stress in all industries and good personnel were scarce. There was one executive in the company who, according to his immediate superiors, deserved promotion. I was about to approve a boost in both salary and responsibility for him when I happened to learn, purely by accident, that he made a habit of bringing his personal letters to the office and having his secretary run them through a company postage meter.

I immediately discarded all idea of promoting the man and, indeed, let him know diplomatically that his resignation would be most welcome, the sooner the better. I explained my reasons to his superiors who had plumped so hard for him. True, the total amount involved was small--ten dollars, perhaps fifteen dollars over many months. But the amount isn't what counted. The money was not only a loss to the company but, since we were working on Government war contracts, a loss to the taxpayer. And, of course, I mentioned--quietly and en passant--that the man's acts constituted petty larceny.

All of us had reason to be glad that we had gotten rid of this particular man. He went to another company, where he received several promotions during the next few years; and then, not long after V-J Day, someone brought a newspaper story to my attention. It was an account of how this penny-ante postage pilferer had been arrested and had pleaded guilty to charges of embezzling more than $200,000 from the company for which he was working.

In the business world, time is scarcely less important than money. The eminently promotable executive is always one who knows how to budget his time. He does not squander time any more than he squanders money; and he does not cheat the company of the time he should devote to his work. The man who is most likely to move up the ladder is seldom tardy on the job and he is not likely to be the type who habitually leaves early. The good executive is also aware that time is important in other ways--that deadlines must be met.

As for people--well, management has been defined as "the art of directing human activities." The manager's principal task is not so much to do things himself as to direct other people in performing their duties. An executive who is unable to direct people is unable to do his job. The better he is at handling people, the better he is as an executive.

However, it's advisable to slice the evaluation even finer, to take into consideration other factors, tangible and intangible. For instance, there is the quality that some prefer to call resiliency --the ability to accept setbacks and criticism manfully, without going into a brooding blue funk. The outstanding man will accept the setbacks, take the criticism and, learning his lessons from both, will energetically strive to do better the next time. Also, the promotable man will certainly be an executive who does not hesitate to accept responsibility for any of his actions. As far as I am concerned, nothing eliminates an individual from consideration for promotion faster than the knowledge that he is a buck passer. And the higher a man rises in the organizational line-up, the more essential it is for him to be an individual of absolute integrity. If he does not stand by his decisions, accept his responsibilities, where necessary admit his mistakes and otherwise prove his honesty, an executive cannot move up; he can, at best, only remain where he is or--even better, from the company's standpoint--move out.

The man destined to climb the ladder of success most nimbly will also value knowledge, all knowledge, not just that which pertains directly to his specialty. He wants to learn--and he does learn. The more he knows about more things, the better his equipment for meeting the requirements of higher posts. Maturity-- of judgment and of action--is another key asset that should be taken into consideration when promotion time rolls around. The mature executive can live without panicking in an atmosphere of stress; he is stable and capable of handling emergency situations and problems. A company hard put to decide whether Jim or Tom should fill the assistant vice-president's opening, because in all other things the two men are equal, can decide the issue quickly by comparing their maturity. Which of the two men reacted best under stress?

While I obviously do not believe there are any hard-and-fast rules for executive selection, I do have my own ideas of what basic qualities a good executive should possess. These are intelligence, initiative, interest, integrity, imagination, leadership ability, loyalty, energy and enthusiasm--plus, providing the man has a previous employment record, the knowledge and experience necessary to do the job.

Such a man will naturally want reasonable compensation--in salary, commissions, stock options or other emoluments; and he will want assurance that his earnings will be increased if he does his new job well. However, if he is really good executive material, money alone will not be enough to make him leap at the position. He will want to be shown that he can use his imagination, talents and initiative, that he will be given the chance to show what he can do and the opportunity to advance further.

Whether he's concerned with promoting or with hiring, the seasoned businessman or executive will weigh all the data available on an applicant, size up his man and then make his man and then make his management decision. By so doing, the businessman is proving his own ability. Jonathan Ogden Armour, once chairman of the meatpacking firm, summed it up many years ago, when he was asked what traits he thought contributed most to a man's success in business. "The most valuable ability of all is the ability to select the men of ability," Armour declared. And therein lies the key to successful executive-personnel selection. Good executives can recognize other good men; and from these they can pick the best man, the right man for the job.