Louis, the TV buyer
Picture the following situation: with the World Cup coming up, this guy, let’s call him Louis, goes to an appliance shop, to get himself a TV. He wants a huge TV, 80" big, super-HD, with an audio system that will make him feel every kick against that leather ball deep into his chest. But all that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can imagine that, when Louis makes up his mind and chooses a TV he likes, and that he can afford, the TV says no.
Thank you so much for the offer, but I’ll pass.
Since you’re imagining, you can also imagine the TV says to Louis:
I’m very interested in what you’re telling me, but still I want to make it clear that I’m involved in conversations with other potential TV owners, so I want to talk to all of them before making a final decision.
Crazy, right? Imagine how crazy Louis got when the TV said no to him! Why? Because in Louis worldview, TVs never say no. Louis lives in a world in which objects don’t refuse to be acquired: the reigning logic on Louis’s strange world dictates that, if you found an object, and you can afford it, it’s basically yours. And if we’re talking about a TV, it’s enough to find one that you like, and that fits your aspirations and your budget: given all those conditions, you simply put the money down and take the TV home, and it has no voice or choice, it can’t decide wheter he goes with you or not, and you get to decide where to put it, how much time you’ll spend watching it, which channels you’re going to watch and what volume you’re gonna set it to, and how many people you’re gonna invite over to enoy it.
So far, your imagination is having a good time, but you’re probably getting a little impatient, because all of this is a bit ridiculous. Who can think that an object can decide? It’s ridiculous that Louis has to undermine his needs to an object’s decision. Maybe.
But, what happens when we’re no longer talking about an object? What if we were talking about a person?
In times where it’s no longer necessary to clarify that “no means no”, what I’m asking you is to formulate these questions to yourself, introspectively and very seriously. Here, we stop imagining and we also stop messing around: to me, the main difference between products and services has absolutely nothing to do with its tangible or intangible properties, with B2B versus B2C markets, or with the capacity to store them for later. The main and radical difference is that services can be refused, in the exact same terms in which the TV from our ridiculous example can refuse to be acquired by Louis. What makes the example ridiculous is an innate, cultural and tacit notion, according to which, when we talk about a product, the purchase decision lays 100% on the buyer, and it depends solely on his conformity with the product and his capacity to afford it. If that wasn’t so, the example wouldn’t be ridiculous.
When we talk about services, on the other hand, the provider can refuse to provide that service at any given time, and we know it. It’s actually part of the negotiation. And thus far, no problem. The problem, then, appears when we try to hire a service as if we were buying a product. And as ridiculous as the example of Louis and the TV is, I find these other Louises on a day-to-day basis, in many organizations, with diverse titles and offices, but always with the same vision:
If I need a /insert position or ability here/, and I can afford it, I’ll get it.
This should seem even more ridiculous. And yet, this is an everyday thing. Managers, directors, recruiters and leaders of all kinds, all united under the belief that, when they’re hiring someone, they’re operating within a service-hiring paradigm, when in truth, they’re acting under a product-purchasing paradigm. At some point, we lost the way. It would seem as if we forgot that, when we hire a person, we’re not buying something, but instead we’re hiring a service provider to provide a service and, as such, she has always the capacity to refuse it, to say “thanks, but no, thanks”.
It would seem the employee (current or potential) has no choice: if a company hunts her down, evaluates her, judges her apt to fulfill its needs, and has the resources to pay her accordingly, then she has to take the offer. And let’s not even talk about it if, besides, she has had two or three interviews with the company… then yes, definitely, it is a closed deal, she can’t back down now, and the company has to -and will- do everything in its power to get her to take the job.
Now, doesn’t this sound ridiculous? Building teams is a hard task, there are no manuals, no proven recipe ready to apply, no just-add-water. It’s an intuitive and complex process, without a lot of certainties, with a lot of betting and too little recognition. Be that as it may, even if we can’t know how it’s done, I will risk saying that this is not it. How do you know it isn’t? By asking some hard questions, and forcing yourself to answer them:
Why? What for? Is it useful to hire a person forcefully? When we forecefully incorporate someone who doesn’t want to be incorporated, how does that impact on the team -on its climate, its culture and its idiosyncrasy? How long can she last in that position anyway? Are we interested in bringing someone in just because, on a whim, merely because we feel like forcing her to showcase a channel we want, at whatever volume we feel like, in whichever corner of the living-room we think it looks good in?… Louis, can’t you see?
Probably not. Most likely, Louis will keep on looking to hire people as if he was buying a TV. You and me, on our end, have two big questions to ask ourselves:
- Do we want to become another Louis?
- Do we want to work for a Louis?
