It's Not the How or the What but the Who

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Inertia

A few years ago, I spoke at a leadership retreat for a leading US life sciences company and asked one group of three hundred executives, “If you were building your organization from the ground up, what percentage of the people would you rehire?” They submitted their responses electronically (and anonymously) and the most common was “about 50 percent.” It reminded me of the reply Pope John XXIII gave when a journalist asked him how many people worked at the Vatican. “About half!” he joked.

A few months later, during a workshop for executives at a big equipment manufacturer, I asked the same question of seventeen top leaders. Their confidential answers ranged from 10 percent to 100 percent, but the median answer was 60 percent. That ...