Use of psychometric in Young Organizations

Use of psychometric in Young Organizations

If I look back today, last one decade has taught us a lot of new things- and perhaps one of the big things we have learnt, is how to shop online without ‘touch and feel’. Surely, the last ten years has been an era of start-ups and e-commerce.  An e-commerce organization is a nothing but a new way of doing the old business and the comfort and convenience of the consumer is kept at prime. In such new organizations, most of the times, a young team often comes together and create something dynamic- targeting the old problem but with a brand new approach.  When the initial core team is getting formed, obviously some experience is blended with the exuberance to ensure a smooth sailing. However, not every-one is a tailored fit for a start-up, including the founders. Some can be molded, some cannot. How to get the best fit as well as areas of improvements for people in a start-up, psychometric analysis can be a good tool. Before we get to probable usage of psychometric, let us look at some of the cases. I am sure, we all would have met someone similar people in our professional stint. It is only to highlight that how young organization have different initial members who with the growth of the organization need to develop certain complimenting skills in their team.

Case 1

 Sarvendu was one of the young entrepreneur CEOs.  He has thought of offering buying options online to Indian public which was confined to highly unorganized sector. Sarvendu was surely one of the best brains as far as business acumen and business plans were concerned. He was a friendly CEO and always wanted his employees to have fun at work yet he was a man of few words- very few words. With his online venture in it’s fourth year of existence, his company was almost 350 employees strong. It was also important for him to address media and employees on periodic basis. Addressing media or investors was still easier task for him. Meeting employees in public forum where 400 pairs of eyes are gazing at him and he is fielding their questions or speaking to them was tough part for him. Not that he was afraid of questions but not in the public under hundreds of stare. A pure introvert that ways. However, with people he had a rapport, he used to interact during and outside office as well but they were very few in numbers.

Case 2

Narayan was pretty elder compared to most at a senior level position in a four year old e-commerce company, almost by a decade in terms of experience or may be even more. He was a conventional old world finance person. A CA by profession, he had a background of 18 years in a two big manufacturing set ups before coming in to his current stint. He was not as popular in his direct team and otherwise as other leaders. He was more perceived as threat or autocratic boss among his team members. Others also tried to avoid him and kept the interaction with him to the minimal. He had constant tussle with couple of his young team members. They were young and wanted a young culture in this young organization. However, he was a follower of ten hours in office with half an hour lunch break.   Not too much into employee engagement and fun activities, some of his team members were finding it tough to adapt to his style of working especially when other teams are enjoying a free work environment within the company. He preferred hiring people who could align to his thought process without much of confrontation on any topic. His management style was surely of yesteryears but his finance knowledge was phenomenal.  He knew all the parameters very well where investors could ask questions and he used to ensure full compliance to all basic requirements.

Case 3

Hema was a dynamic lady and was heading the training and development. She was extremely driven by targets and deliverables and was perhaps the best person to get the output. Training is often neglected in most of the organizations but not where she had been in control.   Her planning and execution was near perfect and she has managed praises for implementation of program from all her superiors all through her career. She believed in connecting with people and hence lot of her work used to get done due to personal influence. She actually used to get deeply and emotionally involved with her work, team members and stake holders. However, in order to meet the deadline, she used to push herself, her team members and stakeholders all too hard, more often infringing into the areas she should not. Her passion for work was way too high and she expected even her stakeholders and team to put her job on priority- if not professionally then at least owing to the personal rapport they have, they should. Hence, quite often she used to feel being betrayed or being let down if her task is not valued with the same priority by others. It used to be a personal let down for her with the feeling that she is not getting the due importance by people.  

Case 3

Anurag was a young HR leader. He had an interesting career run. He looked like a safe risk-averse player but he always moved to a younger and naïve organization compared to his previous one. He looked for bigger responsibilities to drive things in organizations where things are not yet set. He looked for places where things are hazy and directionless. He was a policy maker and follower, driven by data, slightly reserved, was approachable but not proactive speaker. His team used to love him as he always focused on their development and cracked jokes with them. He was like a protective bubble for his team members. On the other hand, he was one of the most feared man on the floor. A hard task master and a perfectionist- bordering on being finicky. A dormant volcano who used to be quite dormant till he is pushed to explode and post that, it used to be fire and fury. If a deadline is missed or job not done despite his follow ups, the dormant volcano used to get active.

Case 4

Juhi was a good trainer of behavior and leadership skills. She knew how to drive other vendors when required. Developing the training process, thinking of content and making a flow was like a cake walk for her. She was a risk taker and used to accept open challenges without thinking too much. This attitude sometimes used to land her in troubled waters too. She used to meet her real waterloo when the documentation, process and protocols were to be done. With finance and other teams, obviously she had to ensure all documents reach in a particular format and basic process is followed. This was not something which used to come naturally to her and often were procrastinated till being inevitable.

Case 5

Nigam, was a senior person and a well-known name in field of marketing. He had lot of creative ideas, often tried and tested and if not tested, still a safe bet to give a decent result if not radical. He was friendly when approached. He was quite respected at the young organization he was working for. He brought in a rich fifteen years of experience with some of the most renowned and old business houses. However, due to his age, team was slight reluctant to approach him if the doubt is not very big. He has given decent results to the organization so far. However, with few competitors coming up in last one year or so, he was facing the heat from the management to do something radical to improve the presence among young people. Overall, he was respected as a nice uncle to look up to but not someone who can bring dynamic changes.

Now we have seen few personalities. Some of the traits we witnessed are shy, aggressive and emotional, passive aggressive, aggressive but unorganized, rigid to a change, and risk averse.  Are they all fit for a young organization? Do they all bring in certain proposition to the table for organizations? Do they have big skill gaps as senior professionals that need plugging in? We can have lot of open questions and some of those can be answered through psychometric.

Psychometric may not always be an evaluation method during the hiring. It also need not give a verdict in binary whether someone is fit for the given job or not. However, it shall be a tool for one’s development especially in young organizations. Two common mistakes we may do while making psychometric evaluation for younger organizations are

·         Creative doesn’t mean only artists: We take the mentioned quality for a particular personality type on its face value. For instance, INTP, ESTP or ISTP are creative people. However, we often confuse creative people with professions like writer, musician, painter or someone similar. However, creative people need not be only artists. They can be inventors or for that matter any professional who brings in fresh perspective and out of box solutions to their existing work areas. An HR person can be creative in terms of people practices he brings in or a software developer can be equally creative in terms of what he creates

·         We shall not stereotype a personality type and people: Most of the recommended professions through psychometric evaluations were on the basis of established organizations. For instance, a person with ESTJ profile as per MBTI profiling, is said to be a good CEO as he/ she possesses good supervisory skills. However, not that every ESTJ becomes a CEO or vice-versa. In-fact, most of the modern CEOs are of creative personality type since they have created an out of box solution for long standing problems.

In young organizations, a CEO might not always be an ESTJ or with a high D-I as per DISC profiling. The person may be a more creative person who would have thought of an innovative solution to an existing problem. He is bringing in a passion and innovation. Hence he started something so creative and innovative and had he been just a good supervisor, he would not have created something new.

The psychometric can give feedback on skill-set/competencies of a good leader who needs to manage people and processes simultaneously. Similarly, an individual who is low on ’Compliance’ as per DISC, needs to have someone who can complement him/ her on process adherence. Each individual discussed here, brings in certain characteristic and competencies if they all have to start an organization together. They all had their respective shortfalls. Psychometric tools only help us in understanding that there are certain areas to be plugged in and identification of development areas. Like Sarvendu needed to work on his communication or must have someone close who communicates on his behalf. Juhi, must have a team member to put all documents together and Narayan needed a direct reporting person who can bridge the gap between his old world sincerity and new age work culture.  In short, a strong gut shall be backed by data, an introversion shall be complimented by extroversion, an intuition shall be complemented by sensing and low on compliance shall be accordingly complimented.

Early on in the evolution of an organization, one finds employees with a certain leaning- non-compliant or non-follower looking for innovative breakthroughs. Once the organization stabilizes, it needs people who can steady the ship and navigate through the stormy seas. Then competencies such as compliance, adherence and process orientation need to blend in then for sustenance and continued growth of the organization and psychometrics helps in getting the right fit but only when the ship has gained certain momentum.