Management

Mini-Book Review — Jones – The Human Factor

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Jones, Ishmael, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, Encounter Books, 2008, 383 pp.

This book is the career memoir of a former Marine and stock broker who entered the “non-State Department” clandestine service of the CIA and was a deep cover case officer from the ’90s through the late ’00s. It covers the story of his training, deployment, and activities overseas focusing on radiological and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the course of tours in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, and finally a “combat tour” in Iraq. Serving overseas with his wife and children under the cover of a “software solutions expert,” he contacted disaffected or bribe-able scientists and business-people from rogue nations. By casting his inquiries as commercial and academic opportunities, he was able to gather a steady stream of intelligence on WMD programs in the Third World.

The central theme of the book, however, is how staff at the home office (from top to bottom) either intentionally or inadvertently got in the way of his doing an effective job. Most authors are the hero of their memoirs but Jones does an admirable job of giving his pride in his accomplishments a reasonable airing without masking the real value of his book. The CIA is a large modern business with a primary mandate to stay out of the newspapers and off TV. How it does so is a tale both depressing and all too familiar.

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Quote of the Day

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We must think things, not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Law and Science and Science and Law, 12 Harv.L.Rev. 443, 460 (1889).

Not Good

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“Whose idea was this?”

Weekly Standard: “That is one of Obama’s favorite questions, according to Game Change, the bestselling (and definitive) book on the 2008 presidential campaign. He usually aims the question at advisers in anticipation of their telling him the idea was his and had proved to be a good one.”

If correct, this is just pathetic, and demonstrates Obama’s complete lack of the instincts necessary for success in an executive position.

A good executive does not need to always be the smartest person in the room. A good executives does not engage in status contests with his subordinates. A good executive takes as much or more satisfaction in an idea coming from one of his team members as from an idea of his own…because he understands that his job is to cultivate and grow those subordinates, not to act as the source of all brilliance.

Peter Drucker once asserted that if a person doesn’t hold signficant management responsiblity before he is 30, it’s unlikely that he will ever develop into a really good manager. There are certainly individual exceptions, but in general this is correct…one reason being that he will not have developed the instincts to focus on the performance of the team rather than his own individual performance.

The cited Obamian behavior is very revealing, and is entirely consistent with his top-down-control attitude toward the American economy and American society as a whole.

(Weekly Standard link here)

The Five-Pound Butterfly Revisited

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Several years ago, the WSJ wrote about the tendency of many companies to do hiring based on a long string of highly-specific (and excessively-specific) requirements. One person interviewed remarked that “Companies are looking for a five-pound butterfly. Not finding them doesn’t mean there is a shortage of butterflies.”

Since that article was written, the five-pound butterfly effect has probably gotten worse rather than better in the business world. But hunting for five-pound butterflies also seems to be increasingly affecting other areas of life, including college admissions and the search for love and marriage.

First I’ll talk about the five-pound butterfly effect in a business context and then develop its applicability to other areas. The WSJ article mentioned a company that makes automobile bumper parts and was looking for a factory shift supervisor. They eliminated all candidates who didn’t have a BS degree, even though many had relevant experience, and also insisted on experience with the specific manufacturing software that was in use at the plant. It took six months to fill this job (during which time the position was being filled by someone who wouldn’t ultimately be chosen for it.) Another company, Wabtec, which makes components for railcars and buses, insisted on knowledge of a specific version of the computer-aided design system it uses, even though the differences between that version and the earlier version were not all that great.

And as the article (which focused mainly on engineering jobs) didn’t mention…there were certainly talented salespeople who didn’t get hired this week because they lacked specific experience with the particular sales automation or customer resource management system being used..knowledge that they could have easily picked up during their first week or two on the job.

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Theory vs Experience, Continued

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I’ve written several posts that deal with the relative roles of theoretical knowledge versus experience-based knowledge in business and other spheres of life (here, for instance), and we’ve had some good Chicago Boyz discussions on the topic.

Yesterday the Assistant Village Idiot posted an email from a friend (an executive now living in China) which deals with this issue in a very insightful manner. Recommended reading; discuss there or here.