If you’ve ever worked for a boss that reacts before getting the facts and thinking things through, you will love this!
The new CEO of Arcelor-Mittal Steel, feeling that it was time for a shakeup, was determined to rid the company of all slackers. On a tour of the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall. The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant business.
He walked up to the guy leaning against the wall and asked, “How much money do you make a week?” A little surprised, the young man looked at him and replied, “I make $400 a week. Why?”
The CEO then handed the guy $1,600 in cash and screamed, “Here’s four weeks pay, now GET OUT and don’t come back!” Feeling pretty good about himself, the CEO looked around the room and asked, “Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?”
From across the room came a voice, “Pizza delivery guy from Domino’s.”
Perhaps, if the boss had spent a little more time asking questions to learn the details, he might not have looked so foolish. As the old saying goes, “the devil is in the details” and every job requires an appropriate level of detail orientation. We often refer to a person’s work ethic in our reports which is their desire to work combined with their detail orientation. For most roles, we generally prefer to see the detail score a little higher than work, but not by much. This permits the person to work hard and to provide quality work in a timely manner.
As someone who flies commercially quite often, I want to travel on planes flown by pilots who have good attention to detail. One of the primary causes of private plane crashes is lack of fuel. The pilot forgot to check that one little detail–the gas gauge. So, I guess you could say that pilot had low detail. Of course, if a pilot is obsessed about details, he/she may never get the plane off the ground.
My attention to detail and work score are on the low end of the scale so, unless I find a particular task enjoyable or challenging, I don’t give it too much emphasis. But, I am willing to put a great deal of time and effort into something that I find challenging, such as writing our hiring and coaching reports. But, when it comes to doing accounting work, my eyes quickly glaze over. With my low detail orientation and high challenge orientation, I guess it is a good thing that I did not become a pilot.
However, I probably would have made a fairly good salesperson. Good salespeople like to move quickly through tasks that don’t require much of their attention and are motivated by the challenge of making a sale. So, successful salespeople need to be supported by people who do have high attention to detail and can take care of all the paperwork associated with making a sale.
On the other hand, there are people who are driven by perfection and obsess over the smallest detail of everything they do. They tend to focus so intently on one thing that they have difficulty seeing the ‘bigger picture’ and they usually don’t like to be interrupted while working. However, their work is usually error free and they leave no ‘loose ends to tie up’. A person with this character make-up would be successful in engineering or accounting because they are comfortable handling the responsibilities and demands of this type of work.
Maybe it is a sign of the times, but we often see people who have a need to socialize and to be around others. An ability to interact with others is definitely a good trait for most jobs but, when a person’s work ethic is lower and their sociability score is higher, then you can have an employee who spends more time visiting with people than working. This may be acceptable for sales or customer service but, if the person is supposed to enter data into the computer or look after the bookkeeping, it probably would not be beneficial.
Every job has certain requirements—some require high attention to detail, while others require a person who can move quickly from one task to another without spending too much time worrying about whether every ‘t’ is crossed and every ‘i’ is dotted. Of course, that is why the Simmons Personal Survey is such a powerful tool. It allows us to match the requirements of the job to the job candidate’s character make-up. Your good interviewing and background research in combination with our character assessment is the partnership that provides the best opportunity to place the right person in the right job.
Each of us has the ability to make changes in our lives but there are some people who are more flexible and open to change than others. This is also something that the Simmons Personal Survey helps us to determine but we will talk more about change later so, until next time, let me tell you about my neighbor.
I live in a semi-rural area. We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING sign on our road. His reason: “Too many deer are being hit by cars out here! I don’t think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore.”
Watch out! That guy may be looking for a job with you someday.
