If the Shoe Fits: Yes Isn’t the Best Response
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
Flattery and agreement can be a lethal combination for a CEO, according to research by Sun Hyun Park, James D. Westphal and Ithai Stern.
“Our theory suggests how high levels of flattery and opinion conformity can increase CEOs’ overconfidence in their strategic judgment and leadership capability, which results in biased strategic decision making,”
In the same vein, John O’Farrell, Andreessen Horowitz, says that founder-CEOs need to be especially careful.
“Hire people who are different from you, and who will have the courage to challenge you when it matters.”
The road to failure hell is paved as much with yes-people, which leads to homophily, as with good intentions.
What you want are those who think differently, but have similar values.
Values are the foundation of your culture, not race, creed, gender, university, sorority/fraternity, fashion brand, etc.
Whatever your culture, by using it as a hiring filter you can get out of your comfort zone and stop hiring people like yourself—who are most likely to become yes-people.
Option Sanity™ avoids ISO flattery.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
Flickr image credit: HikingArtist
November 9th, 2012 at 1:17 am
[…] Last Friday I cited research from Northwestern and advice from John O’Farrell of Andreessen Horowitz on the dangers of flattery and importance of not hiring ‘yes-people’. […]