OK, so I am stealing a story I read about 15 years ago in an airline magazine (If anyone out there recognizes it and can help me attribute this, please let me know!)
Here is the story – This was a science class and there was a homework problem which was the following: If you needed to find out the height of a tall building using only a barometer, how would you do it?
The “correct” answer involved measuring the air pressure at the top of the building and on the ground, and using the difference in air pressure to calculate the height of the building. Kids that used that approach and got the math right were marked correct and given full credit.
But there were two other answers that stood out to me, that the teacher marked wrong, with no credit. I would have marked these correct and given these two students a job!
One student said he would take the barometer to the top of the building, drop it off, count how many seconds it takes to hit the ground, and calculate the height based on the time of the fall.
This is probably at least as accurate an answer as using the air pressure-based approach.
This student said, I would find the general manager of the building and say to him. “If you tell me how tall this building is, I will give you this barometer.” – Fantastic!
Not only did this solution meet the requirements of solving the problem, it was likely to give a far more accurate answer than the correct answer based on air pressure!
What a shame these two students were marked wrong. These are precisely the kind of creative thinking skills that help people solve important problems when the by-the-book way does not work.
I have made many hiring mistakes by looking for job skills — by keeping my interview only to the specifications of what needed to be done by the person in the next six to 12 months.
People would come in with very impressive experience and just the right skills to do the job that needed to be done right now. These hires are so tempting because you can see how they will immediately take some pain away.
But, what about when the job changes?
But more often than not, when the world changes around them, they get stuck. They don’t adapt easily. They need to find another job that matches their skills vs. being able to step up to do the new job that needs to be done.
The most valuable hires are the ones that can do the job today, but also can learn and adapt.
You are far more likely to hire a star if you ask questions that get at how the person thinks, and hire creative thinkers that are fast learners.
In your interview process you need to try and assess how much potential the person has to learn, and judge how fast they will grow. People with the most room for growth and the most acceleration (smarts and ambition) are your best hires.
This approach is valuable from hiring summer interns to top executives. I have used it at every level, once I learned that sticking to the job spec doesn’t work very well.
If you have used some great questions, puzzles, problems or other approaches to learn more about your candidates creative thinking, and learning skills, and are willing to share them with us, please leave a comment.
This article was originally published on Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog.
