The Worst Ideas In Management

by David Burkus

Management, as an invention to help organizations run smoothly, has been around for a little over 100 years. In that time, we’ve come up with some amazing tools and tactics to enhance productivity and engagement. We’ve also implemented some well-intended, but absolutely terrible, ideas. A few of these, despite their problems, are still being used today. Here are the worst management ideas, why they’re so terrible, and how we could fix them.

Interviews

The job interview process seems straightforward and effective; a manager meets face to face with potential new hires and then picks the one that fits the job the best. But in writing a forthcoming book, I found research that shows that job interviews are consistently one of the poorest predictors of job performance. Candidates can be good interviewees but poor workers, especially when they only need to impress one or two people. Instead, smart companies hire using a variety of discernment methods and incorporating the new candidates future team into the process. Some even put a new hire’s permanent status on the team up for a team vote shortly after hiring. It may be easy to fake it in a job interview, but it’s hard to stay fake working with a whole team for a long time.

Read the full article on Forbes.

David Burkus is the author of Under New Management and this month’s Thinker of the Month.