Early in my career, as a plant manager, I had a need for qualified individuals in the area of supervision. What I thought we needed were intelligent and highly motivated individuals. A local college put me in contact with a psychologist who was qualified in administering and evaluating psychometric tests. When we met, I explained to her that the solution to all of my problems was to find these smart and driven people. She just smiled and assured me that there was a much more to it than that.
We selected seven employees in our plant who were either supervisors or held other advanced positions. The test that the psychologist administered was new to me. The test was divided into two sections. The first part was made up of six measurements. The characteristics measured in this part were mathematical, verbal and reasoning skills. The second part measured 15 personality traits. These included interest in working with others or working alone, reaction to pressure, need for accomplishment, aggression, leadership, etc. The tests she gave lasted all day.
She was right! There was much more to solving my problems than I expected. The first thing that surprised me was that all the supervisors that we tested scored high in need for accomplishment. Remember, I thought that people with a lot of drive were rare. I was searching for highly motivated people and they were already on my payroll. Something else had to be wrong—in my mind the combination of an intense drive to succeed and an average level of intelligence was plenty to be able to accomplish the task of supervision.
As I reviewed the tests further, I could see that I had made another error: I believed that I would find people with all traits above average. No one scored high on all of the categories. In general, over the 21 categories, people tended to have from 9 to 11 scores above average and 9 to 11 scores below average. Up to this point, I had believed that if intelligent people were not performing well, it was just a matter of sitting down with them and explaining the situation and what was needed. After that, they would swing into action and get everything under control. I found that everyone had a balance of weak and strong traits. That was a problem because each job, as we had defined it, required that a person be capable in all areas. We expected that supervisors, for example, would be good with people, technically creative and well organized at the same time. We did not find such combinations in this group or in much larger groups tested later.
Although I had often heard others say that individuals were either people–oriented or things–oriented, I never really gave that idea much importance. The tests started to give the concept more validity. When the traits were compared with what we expected from our supervisory staff, we realized that we had problems. One thing that came out of the studies was that people who scored high on the thinking skills tended to score low in the people skills—the ability to communicate, to cooperate with and be tolerant of others. My early theory about needing only highly intelligent and driven people was being destroyed.
The test was originally administered in the plant for the purpose of understanding how such valuation methods worked. The plan then was to interview individuals outside the company to find those with the specific traits that applied to the open positions. The results of the test on our seven employees made me change the focus from searching for people outside the company, to identifying why our operation was not benefiting from the people currently in the organization.
We had people with many capabilities and yet the plant was not functioning as well as it should. We were not getting the products out on time; technical problems were getting out of control, etc. At this point, it appeared that we had to do some restructuring of our organization.
To start, we needed to determine what type of individual we needed on the production floor as a supervisor. Did we need someone who was a troubleshooter? There certainly were all kinds of production stopping problems on the floor everyday. Did we need a person who knew how to work well with and get results from others? If we did go with a people–oriented individual, would the technical or strategic problems get out of control? Could we get a combination of a bright problem solver and a person who could inspire others?
We again turned to our test results. We found that two of the supervisors were highly regarded by the operators in their line, and actually, by most of the employees in the plant. Their lines always worked diligently. The two lines did have problems staying on schedule. Looking at the supervisors’ profile further, we saw that they had qualities that made for good personnel relations. They had a good sense of their self–worth and that of their co–workers. They enjoyed working with others and they didn’t buckle under pressure. We did find, however, that their scores were average in the six intelligence tests.
Now we had something to work with. On the one hand, we had bright individuals without exceptional people skills. On the other hand, there were those who, while not having exceptionally high reasoning skills, ability with numbers and language skills, were quite good at working with and leading others.
After reviewing our tests and an additional 150 tests conducted in other similar plants on individuals who held technical and supervisory positions, we found the following:
- There were repeated clusters of skills.
- There were several individuals who scored high in areas that dealt with leadership but scored at average levels on intellectual skills.
- There were several individuals who scored high on intellectual skills but below average on leadership/human relations skills.
We could have started a search for unique individuals that scored high in both people skills and intelligence skills. We could have also changed the structure of the organization to be more in line with what we saw on the tests. We opted for the latter. Letting our current employees go and seeking individuals which we did not see in the 150+ tests was not an acceptable choice for us.
We went over the tasks and responsibilities in the plant in relation to the production function. As a result, the following changes were made in the plant to benefit from the skill clusters:
Production supervisors would assure that the production lines were manned, that people were qualified to do the jobs that they were assigned to and that the work was done according to the quality standards and at a pace determined by production standards. Previously, they were also responsible for scheduling their production and staying abreast of their technical problems, asking for help when they thought it was required. We would benefit from the people skills and not tax the supervisors with problems that required high cognitive skills.
Engineers were transferred to the production floor permanently. Their primary function was that of being fully familiar with the production processes and with the daily technical problems. Because of their cognitive skills, they would be expected to perceive and resolve technical problems early on.
Daily scheduling was done by production control personnel who also scored high in reasoning and math skills to review material availability and review complex scheduling with the supervisors. These people were also responsible for seeing that the material was made available to the production floor.
The changes did improve the efficiency and the output of the plant. Additionally, the supervisors and technical people were relieved to be able to with tasks that were within their skills. They became better at what they already did well. If they wanted to develop other skills, they were certainly at liberty to, but not require to do so. Concentrating on the strengths of the individuals and assigning work accordingly made our operation stronger. My thinking had come a long way from the simplistic view that all I needed were intelligent and motivated people to solve my problems.
Furthermore, the testing made me think globally about the way that plants are organized in general. The tests that we conducted showed that people have sets of skills in some areas and none in others. This reminded me of the many times that managers were ineffective in carrying out plans or completing projects. It made me wonder why jobs in a plant are divided in the way that there are. No doubt that some form of logic is applied in splitting up responsibilities among such areas as human resources, quality assurance, engineering, and so on. Even though there may be sensible reasons for separating tasks in this way, the tests brought up questions as to whether or not there may be a better way to organize. When you look at the way an organization is divided, you should ask yourself why. Why is there a quality control department? Why an individual production department, accounting, personnel, maintenance, materials, etc.? In the psychological testing, we discovered that the skills of the people we tested did not necessarily coincide with the requirements of the departments. We analyzed the needs of each department and found the way they were structured required that the managers be jack–of–all–trades. Our testing showed that in almost every case, the manager had strengths in about half the areas needed. We also found clusters of strengths. The more we reviewed the data, the more we felt that department had not been divided according to strengths, but to functions.
It appears that the various departments have evolved from product and responsibility functions rather than the skill clusters that we as individuals are expected to have. Even though a manager can hire people to cover the various skill areas, that manager would need far more skills than are normally found in one individual. Obviously, there is more that can be done to understand the implications of this experience. It is obvious to us who have worked for large organizations that there is a lot of room for improvement. The positive results that we experienced as a result of our analysis make it apparent that fitting the organization to the individual is a course worth pursuing.