Agile2014

Why are some organizations more agile than others? And why do some people fit and contribute in agile organizations better than others? More importantly, how much time, energy and expense is required to train, coach, mentor, or manage a team member or leader who isn’t agile?



What exactly causes the issues and problems? Could it be the people?



When you experience difficulty with people you usually believe the person is the problem. We suggest the root of the problem is more likely to be your recruitment and hiring practices.



In this session, hiring managers and their recruiting/hiring partners will examine the impact and significance of adopting a hiring framework that assesses Adaptive Skills (explained below) as a critical part of the recruitment and hiring process. You will learn (and apply in the workshop) a framework you can use to improve your hiring systems. These changes will better define and assess the Adaptive Skills needed for a position.



We recognize that initial conditions most often determine the outcome. An initial condition for creating an enterprise is recruiting and hiring people, and especially leaders.



Hiring well increases the probability of an effective organization or well-functioning team.



Sidney Fine, an innovator in the field of job analysis, introduced three categories of skills: Adaptive Skills, Functional Skills, and Specific Content Skills. In this session you will work with these three categories to gain key insights about agile recruiting and hiring.



Most resumes and job descriptions focus on Functional Skills and ignore Adaptive Skills.



Adaptive Skills are the skills that enable people to lead and manage themselves -- i.e., to self-organize. They appear to the outside world as personality traits, temperament, attitudes, and behavioral styles, but they are skills! They are generally acquired through life experience subconsciously. As such, they are difficult to teach or train or change without considerable personal work.



Since Adaptive Skills are challenging to change, maybe the leverage is in hiring rather than training.



It is individuals’ Adaptive Skills that significantly impact the ability of teams and enterprises to work effectively. But there is little or no attention to dealing with assessing Adaptive Skills as part of the recruitment and hiring process.



In this session participants will:

* Review what is known about hiring for Adaptive Skills

* Conduct mock-interviews of candidates with varying Functional Skills and Adaptive Skills and will speculate about subsequent performance.

* Work together to develop an operational taxonomy for hiring for Adaptive Skills