'The average was completely useless.' - Lt. Gilbert Daniels, US Air Force
Take a minute and think about how much you use the concept of 'average.'
If you are like me, and most everybody in the Western world, 'average' infiltrates your life on a daily basis and has since you were young. Your length and weight was compared to the 'average' when you were born. Your parents wanted to make sure you were 'above average' as you developed, and the goal was to get into 'above average' schools. Your test scores, grades, GPA, SAT's, LSAT's, GRE's, and countless other rankings were based 'on the average.'
Did you get married at the 'average age'? Or was it younger or older than the 'average'? Do you have 'above average' pay? Benefits? Is your job 'above average'? Is your credit score 'above average' or 'below average'? Your mortgage? Your car payment? Tuition?
The idea of 'average' is so pervasive that we don't even think about it anymore. It's just a given. And in all sorts of various situations and contexts the 'average' is helpful for making sense of and applying order to our lives.
But is it the right way to think about people? Not according to Todd Rose, Professor of Education at the Harvard Business School and author of 'The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness', a book that is changing the way I think about averages - and should change your thinking too (To read an excerpt from the book, click here).
The basic contention of the book is pretty simple. Averages work great when you are analyzing a static system or one variable of a particular category, but are inadequate to understand dynamic, changing systems...such as a human being.
Here's an example from the book. If you want to measure someone's height and compare it to the average, you can do that pretty easily, because there is only one variable (height) and after adolescence it doesn't change much. Simple enough.
But let's say you want to measure something like the 'average size of a person.' An average doesn't help, because there are so many different measurements: head size, height, arm length, chest circumference, weight, etc etc. And just because someone might be 'average' on one measurement doesn't mean they will be on any other measurement.
There's no such thing as an average in this case. And that applies to almost anything we want to know when we are looking at employees or potential employees: skills, behaviors, motivations, emotional intelligence, experience, or any other measurement.
We are hiring, managing, and developing individuals in our lives, not averages. People are complex, dynamic, and changing. We have to be far more sophisticated in our interviewing, managing, and development in order to get the right people in our organizations. By measuring individuals, we can understand them uniquely and identify what that particular person brings to the job.
By doing so, we ensure that we will save time and money by having the right individual for the job - a good fit ensures high levels of motivation and productivity.
If that is something you want for your business, connect with us. We help you hire, manage, and develop your most important asset: your people.