Dan Courser, President of Predictive Synergistic Systems in Pittsburgh, was featured in the August edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explaining how the most important decision any company has to make is hiring the right person for the right job. Dan says, "When people are in the wrong seat on the bus, 10 people will produce the work of six."
Marty Factor, an industrial psychologist at DDI, said the company's assessment center can identify people who have leadership potential before they develop in their careers so they can be steered to get the right experiences they will need to lead an organization.The most important decision any company can make is hiring the person to run it, and companies eager to avoid mistakes are willing to invest in getting it right.
Bill Byham discovered that when, as a thirty-something industrial psychologist, he wrote about corporate assessments in the Harvard Business Review. He described a system he had in place at J.C. Penney to put potential store managers into the position, then watch how they handled themselves.
Other companies were doing the same thing, in a system Mr. Byham's article said was patterned off the U.S. military's Office of Strategic Services' work choosing spies during World War II.
After the article was published, companies approached Mr. Byham to ask him to consult for them on assessing executive talent.
Fast-forward about 40 years, and Mr. Byham is running his own company, Development Dimensions International in Scott, where the company puts potential executives to the test.
There is plenty of competition in the industry, as companies offer different ways of trying to find the best possible way of choosing the right candidate for key jobs. The systems vary, and they can be costly. But then so is hiring the wrong person or putting good employees in the wrong place.
DDI charges anywhere from $3,500 to $15,000 depending on the assessment and the follow-up work.
Mr. Byham said more than half of the people who go through his company's assessments aren't there for hiring purposes, but rather to allow their employer to determine their strengths, weaknesses and training needs.
Every employee at DDI, for instance, has a development plan that is reviewed every six months. Just this summer, the company was named sixth on the list of the 25 best medium-size companies to work for in America by The Society for Human Resource Management and Great Place to Work Institute.
Mr. Byham said he takes his own advice, and that that includes planning for replacing himself. "If I drop dead tomorrow, the company's not going to lose a beat because we have a whole lot of people lined up to take over," he said.
Good leadership is key to an entire organization. Dan Courser, the CEO of Predictive Synergistic Solutions on the North Side, compared management to the story of two guys in the jungle who are being chased by the tiger.
One starts running, and the other follows and asks, "Do you think you can outrun that tiger?" The first guy responds, "I don't have to run faster than the tiger; I only have to run faster than you."
He said it's not hard to out-manage the other guy because so many managers in this country are so bad at it. "People don't quit companies -- they quit managers," he said.
Mr. Courser said managers need to follow what he calls the "Platinum Rule," which is to treat people they way they want to be treated.
He believes in a system of assessing personnel that he began using when he ran a supermarket chain. Now he is a licensee.
The Predictive Index tests a person's comfort zones for working. Then, using another test for the position, it promises to fit the right person into the right job. "This gives us our operating system to know how a person's wired," he said.
Mr. Courser sells the rights to use the Predictive Index to organizations so they can make their own determinations. The annual cost is $4,800 for a company with 100 or fewer employees, and steps up from there.
"The smaller entrepreneurial startups are so excited about using us," he said.
The two programs have some similar elements. The Development Dimensions system uses some personality tests, but it also tests performance through simulation.
Marty Factor, an industrial psychologist at DDI, said the company's assessment center can identify people who have leadership potential before they develop in their careers so they can be steered to get the right experiences they will need to lead an organization.
Mr. Courser said the intent was to get people in any organization in the right chairs so they have a "synergy."
"People come to work every day and intend to do their best," he said. When they are in the right spots is when the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
"When people are in the wrong seat on the bus, 10 people will produce the work of six," he said.