Hiring

The one “don’t”: Don’t give new people major assignments, for doing so only compounds the risks.⊕ (Drucker 2008, chap. 9)

Executives spend more time on managing people and making people decisions than on anything else, and they should. No other decisions are so long-lasting in their consequences or so difficult to unmake.⊕ (Drucker 2008, chap. 9)

The central question is not, What can this or that candidate do or not do? It is, rather, What are the strengths each possesses and are these the right strengths for the assignment?⊕ (Drucker 2008, chap. 9)

The largest single source of failed promotions–and I know of no greater waste in U.S. management–is the failure to think through, and help others think through, what a new job requires.⊕ (Drucker 2008, chap. 9)

Whenever a job defeats two people in a row, who in their earlier assignments had performed well, a company has a widow-maker on its hands. When this happens, a responsible executive should not ask the headhunter for a universal genius. Instead abolish the job. Any job that ordinarily competent people cannot perform is a job that cannot be staffed.⊕ (Drucker 2008, chap. 9)