Taking a punt

Press, 1 July 1986, Page 30

Taking a punt

(By BURNEY DAGLISH, managing director, Southland Management Services, the Invercargillbased associates of Knight Consulting Group)

Following the Consensus Management and M. 8.0. mangled days of the 70s, it is fascinating to see how easily progressive management teams have taken to the more practical style of the pragmatic 80s.

We have, of course, been helped by such writings as "In Search of Excellence,” by Peters and Waterman, a book that so neatly described the terrible results of getting into the “please try my theory” bind, which over the last decade seemed hell-bent on making everyone from the office junior to the chief accountant into either a spokesman capable of justifying every little jot of policy, or some sort of amateur psychologist whose aim was to ensure everyone was feeling all right and blow the results.

It seems that the drive for ultimate practicality, effectiveness over efficiency, has even reached the personnel business. The formerly sedate art of making the safest possible selection from an applicant sample is being replaced by the much less safe, but often more exciting art of "taking a punt” — enough to make generations of grandfathers revolve in their respective graves at a more than sedate speed. Strangely enough, the theory of this more modem trend is not as silly as it may sound at first. It goes something like this:

“If the employees are poor, then the company will be poor. “If the employees are safely satisfactory, then the company will also be safely satisfactory. “But, if the employees are brilliant, then the company will be brilliant and have a much better chance to be a top performer.”

If this simple formula is

applied to the selection process, the resultant appointment may be radically different from the traditional.

Every applicant sample generally contains three elements:

(a) Those who would obviously be unsuitable.

(b) Those who would be safely satisfactory. (c) Those who may be either very good or very bad, i.e. brilliant or disastrous.

The easy choice is category (b). Safely satisfactory applicants are easy to identify. (Stable history, people would re-employ them because it is safe to do so, good fellows.) They will neither move mountains nor create tidal waves.

But if you have enough of them they will personalise your total company image and they are almost impossible to dislodge. You are locked into many years of a safe but only satisfactory operation.

Select from category (c), however, and there could be some excitement. You will be in for some disasters, but at least you can rid yourself of them (with proper personnel practice), which is more than you can do with a category (b) appointment. Above all, you will give yourself the chance of having some brilliance. Have enough of that rare commodity and others will start asking why your organisation suddenly stands head or shoulders above the rest.

“Oh, I just took a punt, that’s all.”