Written by Duane Brown, Sales & Marketing Manager
We are often asked what key traits we search for in the people that we hire at J. Geiger Consulting. Of course, the business and technology talent of our employees is always at the top of the list. We search out innovative, creative, outside‐of‐the‐box thinkers. But that is not all. I think it can best be described by a quote that I have long admired from one of my business heroes, Dee Hock.
“Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
Well said Dee! Let’s break it down.
Integrity – The dictionary says that integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. If we cannot trust our consultants to maintain high standards of integrity, how can our clients?
Motivation – The desire to act in the service of a goal. We are constantly setting targets and goals along with our clients. How can we achieve them without being motivated?
Capacity – In our world, capacity is the act of creating an output, a good, or service which has high value and contributes to our clients’ achievement of their ideal outcome.
Understanding – This can best be described as the empathetic comprehension of our clients’ ideal outcome.
Knowledge – Here is where the rubber meets the road. Our clients’ success requires talented thinkers that know, understand, and can access and employ current advanced technology and business processes. They need to code in their sleep!
Experience – The final quality, and this one is interesting. It is relatively easy to find people with lots of experience. But as Dee points out above, experience is blind by people without the preceding five qualities. Why would anyone take a chance on a highly advanced wizard with a terrific resume that has lower integrity, weaker motivation, reduced capacity, indifferent understanding, and less knowledge?
J. Geiger Consulting won’t. Why should our clients?
Dee Hock is the founder and former CEO of VISA International – the dominant player in the credit card industry. I once heard statistics that startled me about Visa’s success. Some of the statistics for Visa include:
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Since 1970, Visa has grown by 10,000%
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Yearly growth of around 20% per year
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Operates in over 200 countries worldwide
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Has 22,000 member banks
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Serves over 750 million customers
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Reaches over $1.25 trillion in annual transactions
Since then, Hock has become the founder and coordinating director of the Chaordic Alliance, the purpose of which is to develop new organizational concepts. He is the author of the bestseller Birth of the Chaordic Age.