Individual Fit

An article, in www.star.com, titled “When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages”, by Todd Rose demonstrated exactly how a grave imperfection was resolved and amendments commenced in 1950’s are still in application.

Selected sections of the article are listed below and subsequently will enquire into the working environment in corporate world:

“Rather than suggesting that people should strive harder to conform to an artificial ideal of normality, Daniels’ analysis led him to a counterintuitive conclusion that serves as the cornerstone of this book: any system designed around the average person is doomed to fail.”

“Daniels published his findings in a 1952 Air Force Technical Note entitled The “Average Man”? In it, he contended that if the military wanted to improve the performance of its soldiers, including its pilots, it needed to change the design of any environments in which those soldiers were expected to perform. The recommended change was radical: the environments needed to fit the individual rather than the average.”

“Rather than fitting the individual to the system, the military began fitting the system to the individual.”

Questions to contemplate by corporates:

·         Recruiters still check whether the person fits into a job environment (description)

·         Questions are tailored around the Job to be performed / ethos of the environment

·         Qualifications and experiences are valued to the core

In other words the individual recruited has to fit into the corporate environment, if one fails then the recruit is considered a non-conformist and if succeeded, recruiter / recruitment methodologies are saluted.

It is time that questions are to be asked why people leave the organisations. Is it because the performance was bad / the ecosystem of the organisation was too rigid to accommodate / allow the new recruit sufficient space to manoeuvre.

There are many reasons why organisation never knows why individuals leave:

·         Exit interview are never conducted seriously, it’s a form filling activity

·         Questions / reasons for leaving never go into database for future analysis

·         Analysis of the individuals left are never correlated to the interviewer

·         Employee exit just like dead is activity best to be forgotten and not be learnt from

It’s time to reflect upon the changes required in the way prospective employees are recruited in the organisation and employees’ exits are handled.

Reference: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html