Lately, I have been confronted with two separate problems, both of which require me to separate my heart from my brain.

The first problem is actually simple. It deals with hiring a professional candidate at one of the companies I have invested in. This candidate has the kind of verve, drive, and ambition that I seek in everyone.

I can feel this. But I also know this too, because our very own “Oracle at Delphi” (a.k.a. “the Predictive Index”) tells me so.

But unfortunately, this same index also predicts a personality type that does not fit very well with some of the other requirements of the job we have in mind for this individual. For one thing, this job requires a great deal of personal patience. And our candidate is anything but patient.

There is an even bigger problem – the Predictive Index consistently shows that our candidate is more “big picture” than detail-oriented, thus more prone to delegate than deal with the details.

It seems as if just about everyone in the company is high on this candidate. This is not surprising to me since I know that people generally gravitate towards strong personalities. They feel as if the individual in question would be “fun” to work with.

But the nature of the job to be performed by this candidate will require a lot of research too. A great deal of “thinking before acting”. Not a strong suit of the candidate, says the Predictive. And I’ve been using the Predictive since 1989, when we first introduced it at Mastech Corporation.

I know that this is the wrong candidate for this job. And so I also know what I must recommend and that it will not be a popular decision.

There are two problems with how this entire episode was handled by this company: First, of course, the hiring process itself. The Predictive analysis should have come first, and it didn’t. This may appear to be just an oversight, but it is now an oversight with expensive ramifications. We now must find an immediate replacement for the person that is leaving this position; which means that others in the company will have to work even harder while they look for a new candidate.

Secondly, the organization itself stopped looking once it had (seemingly) found what everyone was agreeing to be “the candidate”. I see this a lot --- an organization should interview right up to and then through the time that a replacement is found. Because you never know whether or not a candidate will change his or her mind at the final second.

An expensive lesson learned.

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Follow Your Brain (Part Deux)

An individual who works for another company I have invested in came by to pick up a check.

I had met this young man before. In fact, I had once interviewed him.

Having recently completed “Atlas Shrugged,” (and now working on Ayn Rand’s next-most-popular novel, “The Fountainhead,”) Ms. Rand’s philosophies are presently in my head.

So, I initiated a conversation with the young courier. It went something like this.

“Have you ever read Ayn Rand’s book, “The Fountainhead,” I inquired.

“No, I haven’t. But I do know that I am not a fan of Ayn Rand.”

“Oh really,” I said, expressing surprise, “So you’ve read her other works?”

“Well … no. In fact I have not read any of her writings. But I do know that she is much-maligned on the Internet.”

“So, how can you know that you disagree with what she says? After all, aren’t you really making your decision based on pure hearsay?”

He shrugged his shoulders. And what I got from that was the fact that he has more respect for what he hears on the Internet than what he can learn by actually finding out for himself.

Interesting.

And ironic. For a great deal of Ayn Rand’s writings are about the very topic of … thinking for oneself. In fact, Ms. Rand frequently writes about how popular opinion is influenced by … well … popular opinion!

It got me thinking about my days in school. I clearly remember my junior and senior years in high school when some rather serious and significant cliques formed based almost exclusively on such audacious and outrageous things as the types of clothing one wore; and/or the type and style of music you listened to.

In high school, for example, the “costume du jour” often was comprised of shoes called penny loafers (penny optional), madras shirts and even belts. (Actually, those costumes were for the Greentree kids … being from Castle Shannon and Dormont, we just didn’t have that kind of dough.)

This got even worse in college. I had a late-night radio show where I played hardcore oldies and R & B while my peers screamed for bands like “The Guess Who” (yuck, even to this day, yuck) and “Country Joe and the Fish.”

So I guess my high school and college years were my first introduction to a phrase which has become a good and reliable friend of mine ever since --- “Masses are Asses.”

Just go with the masses and you’ll never have to think for yourself.

Most people find masses to be “safe.” There is a famous story about a computer salesperson who, and even though possessing the far superior product and service, still lost a multi-million dollar IT deal to IBM. He lost the deal because the buyer, and while fully cognizant of the fact that he was buying a lesser solution for more money, lived by the credo, “No one ever got fired for buying from IBM.”

So I guess the salient word truly is, “safe.” The safe pick is the smart pick if you want to “get along.” The risky pick is the out-of-the-box pick.

Masses get behind “safe” all the time. They choose and then defend “safe” stocks, “safe” candidates for political office, and, of course, “safe” business strategies. Masses ridicule and eschew any solution, theory, candidate, or stock pick that sounds even the least bit antithetical to “safe.”

I’m often torn between whether it is the massive corporations or our governments that innovate less. (BTW, and this is a secret that few know, boards of directors are also at the top of the “play it safe” list. In point of fact, most boards are really about 10% “action” and 90% “filler.” Hell, most board members don’t even know what purpose they serve by showing up!)

Recently, a salesperson for one of my companies told me a story about a sales call he went on. “Ron, you would have hated it. This guy only gave me time because I had chased him for months. I am convinced that our meeting, such as it was, was nothing more than a ‘reward’ for my persistence.”

The young Paduan continued, “Our meeting consisted of him lecturing me about his business (I’d already heard the story --- twice) and why it was not going to my product. Of course, my product represented a radically new and clearly better way of doing things.

So, he droned on about his life and his business until, and in his mind, an ‘appropriate’ amount of time had elapsed. He obviously had reached the point where he felt he had fully repaid my persistence.

So, and at this point, he unceremoniously invited me to leave.”

It is our fear of being different that forces us into our familiar “boxes of conformity.”

Why this is, I’ll never know. But the plain and simple fact of the matter is that most people just don’t want to think for themselves. Most people instead want to be told what to do next and even how to do it.

I guess this is because such a course is “easy.”

But what a boring and banal way to go through life!

I’ve always said that the most pathetic people on Earth are those who cannot or will not think for themselves. I get a kick out of all the people who buy the “philosophies” of individuals like Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump.

Here these guys are, telling you how they got filthy rich and actually putting it in a book so that everyone can emulate what they’ve done.

What a bunch of crap!

First off, if Trump, et al. really had some magic elixir, do you think he’d be sharing it with the world? Why would he? Why would he not instead feed it to himself while laughing all the way to the bank?

(Maybe Don Trump’s six bankruptcies should be a clue here.)

But people pick up these books like they were Krugerrands. Then, they go even one step worse and read them. (I remember reading Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal” while on my honeymoon. After one-and-a-half chapters, I buried it in the sand. Hopefully, no one has dug it up yet.)

The moral to this entire tome is obvious. Find great people by searching for those who simply will not be influenced by the masses. Find people who stand on their own conviction and will fight you to the death if you try to turn them into just another automaton.

Hopefully, some of the things I’ve said here today will resonate. But I’ll just close by saying that I have never in my life met anyone who “copied” his or her way to success. The really successful people are those who look at the facts and make their own conclusions about what those facts are saying. Then, they react with appropriate and relevant products and services.

Ron