“He Ain’t Pulling the Smoke over the Eyes of Anyone, Except, Maybe, His Own!” – Lesher Jr.

I have an appreciation for creative misuse and abuse of language, especially the modification of idioms into utter nonsense. My son knows I’m a fan, so he was kind enough to share the quote that serves as the title of this blog with me.

He was watching television and heard a former NFL player talking about the Super Bowl, when he said, “He ain’t pulling the smoke over the eyes of anyone!” Of course, the intended idiom likely (hopefully) was about pulling the wool over someone’s eyes; fooling them, in other words. But, you have to love this variation. It made me think of how often we pull the wool, smoke, or whatever over our own eyes and not someone else’s. This phenomenon of self-delusion could not be more evident than when we, as organized leaders, seek to talk ourselves into hiring the wrong people. What is the cause of this mistake? Does it really matter? And how can we maintain a clearer vision when it comes to choosing our next colleague?

A significant part of the human condition is our ability to rationalize. For those unfamiliar with the term, rationalize can mean two interestingly different things:

1. To attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate; or
2. To make (a company, process, or industry) more efficient by reorganizing it in such a way as to dispense with unnecessary personnel or equipment

In my experience, when it comes to the selection of our teammates – from leaders to rank-and-file employees – these two meanings are often fused in such a manner where we attempt to explain making the organization better by hiring people in spite of the evidence that we have suggesting not to. I’m a strong believer in the power of potential, and I think all candidates need some integration and development to achieve greatness in our organizations. However, there’s a “but” here; there are people who just straight up don’t fit, and should not be hired by us – EVER.

Yet, we inflict the injury of hiring mistakes on ourselves over and over because we avoid collecting and accepting the information we need to make better decisions. And we still DEFEND the fact we ignore the information!

• What causes this “blindness”?—Urgency, expedience, ignorance, laziness. Ouch – I went there. Urgency: We need someone, FAST. Expedience: They’re the “best” person we can find. Ignorance: We don’t assess personality or skills effectively through testing or our interviews. Laziness: I don’t have the time; this is good enough.
  
  
• What our lack of vision costs us—Many of you are familiar with the Saratoga Institute’s 1.5x first year compensation as being the direct costs of a bad hire. Most of us have experienced the pain associated with working for and with the wrong people. Too few of us take into account the damage to our brands – our customer brand and our talent brand. The damage to either or both of these can be so significant and long-term, it’s no wonder we want to run and hide from the harm we’ve done. Bottom line – the cost is HUGE; and none of us can afford to risk as much as making avoidable bad hires causes us to put at risk.
  
  
• How we open and clear our eyes—We need to allow our urgency to drive better, rather than lesser, processes. There’s no reason for us not to have a set of core values that are defined and on which selection questions are based and scripted. Those questions need to be job-related, open-ended questions about specific times that the skill required for your job has been demonstrated. The number of folks who – even after having been trained and coached not to ask general or hypothetical questions – do just that. If the need arises before you script effective questions, please keep this guidance in mind: when you hear yourself asking something like “How would you ____ if…?” be aware that you are asking a hypothetical question that allows the person to tell you what they SHOULD do rather than what they ACTUALLY have done.

Your selection process should be mapped out and ready to roll; including: those scripted questions, an assessment instrument aligned with our required profile, a timeline, templates for job-related tests or scenarios, realistic job previews, emails, offer letters, and onboarding. All this and more prepares you to move quickly and well. This preparation also removes ignorance as a pitfall or excuse.

As with any bad habit, recognition of the issue is a good first step. Stop lying to yourself, and to others, about the efficacy of your approach when you continue to make poor hiring decisions as measured by performance and fit. If it’s producing poor results, your process is lacking and so is your execution. The good news is that you have control over the process and its execution. In the words of the late, great advice columnist, Ann Landers; to raise your selection acumen and effectiveness, I suggest you seek professional counseling.

If you’re balking at what you perceive as too high of a price on building a sound system or getting help in executing it, you need to go back and ring up the costs you’ve already incurred by your challenges and failures up to now. If you kept your receipts, you’ll discover quickly you likely need to run, not walk, to someone who can help you make sense of it and put all the good about your organization to work for you, your colleague, your clients, and your community.

Push the wool away, wave that smoke away, and see the bright future that you needn’t be separated from any longer.