Does the Position Make the Person or the Person Make the Position?
By Ruth Haag of www.ManageLiving.com
I remember my seventh grade teacher posing the question, “Does the time make the man, or the man make the time?”
We were supposed to debate this, but we had trouble, because seventh graders have very little life experience upon which to base deep philosophical discussions.
Making the person fit into the position
In business management, I continually see people trying to solve their problems by first creating a position, and then going out and looking for the “perfect person” to fill the position.
We actually tried this once at our company. We decided that we needed more structure for our field teams. We looked at the staff that we had, and decided that we needed some new supervisors to lead our teams’ day-to-day efforts.
We needed supervisors who were able to oversee HazMat/construction work, and who were diplomatic enough to handle interactions with clients and the public. We advertised for these experienced supervisors.
We must have interviewed 15 people for our three newly-created positions. We finally selected three people, and all three were dismal failures. We then took a look at our patient staff, and found three people who could take over some of the team leader/supervisor tasks.
We had to match the field teams to the skills of each supervisor. Thus, we had one crew focused more on construction, one that focused on sampling and one that handled the jobs that required interaction with other people. This worked well.
The person makes the position
A supervisor must find the strengths of each of their employees, and then create positions that match these strengths. Using this approach, we once had a scientist who did complex computer database work, cleaned the bathrooms and delivered special orders for our other business, a gift shop. When he decided to go to graduate school, we did not go out looking for a database-manger-bathroom cleaner-delivery-person. Instead, we split up his various tasks among the remaining staff.
An amorphous system
To successfully get work done, first look to see who is willing, and has the skill set to do the work, then create a position for them.
I say to you: “The person makes the position.”
Ruth Haag (www.ManageLiving.com) is the President and CEO of Haag Environmental Company, a hazardous waste consulting firm. Ruth is also a business management consultant. She trains supervisors to identify their shortcomings and tame them, while creating management systems that focus on their employees rather than themselves. She is also the author of several books, including a four-book series on supervisory management which includes Taming Your Inner Supervisor, Day to Day Supervising, Hiring and Firing and Why Projects Fail. She and her partner, Bob Haag, host the weekly radio show Manage Living, which can be heard on-demand on her site.