Las empresas eligen a sus directivos de la peor manera posible

"La realidad de los ascensos. Un nuevo estudio revela que las empresas eligen a sus directivos de la peor manera posible."

(Fuente: Business Insider - Aki Ito)

David Deming, Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School acaba de publicar los resultados del estudio en National Bureau of Economic Research.
https://lnkd.in/d3Bz2SPk

"¿Cómo elegir a las personas adecuadas para poner al mando? En los primeros tiempos de la Revolución Industrial, los propietarios de las fábricas se limitaban a elegir a miembros varones de su familia aunque no supieran nada del oficio. Desde entonces, llevamos siglo y medio intentando perfecionar el arte y la ciencia de los ascensos. Los días del nepotismo descarado "intentan" ser sustituidos por sistemas meritocráticos, pero ¿funcionan?"

"No, no funcionan. Los resultados del estudio nos llevan a concluir que las prácticas dominantes que utilizan las empresas para ascender a los directivos son tan malas que, en realidad, sería mejor que se eligieran sacando nombres al azar de un sombrero."

"In some groups, the managers were chosen at random, by lottery. But in other groups, managers were selected based on their own preferences. The researchers call this self-promotion: The people who most wanted to become managers became the managers. Employees who want a bigger title and more responsibility express their interest in moving up the corporate ladder and do the requisite lobbying to clinch the role. The louder you are about your ambitions, the more likely you are to realize them."

"But the study found that the groups in which managers were selected by self-preference actually performed worse than the groups in which managers were chosen by lottery. And therein lies an irony at the very heart of corporate life: The people who most want to become managers end up being bad managers."

"To understand why, the researchers looked at the traits of the people who were eager to be in charge. These self-promoters, as the study called them, turned out to be pretty full of themselves. They tended to overestimate their ability to perceive other people's emotions — a key component of good management."

"And in what will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, self-promoters in the study tended to be male. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect (cuñadismo en spanish) for management: In corporate America, few things are as dangerous as the overconfidence of mediocre men."

"Good supervisors, the study found, have nearly twice as much impact on team performance than good rank-and-file workers — which means companies are losing out on quite a bit of productivity by choosing the wrong managers."

¿Quiere esto decir que hay que seleccionar a los directivos por sorteo entre los empleados? Por supuesto que no. Hay técnicas para mejorar sustancialmente la elección de los managers. Quien quiera saber la respuesta que lea el paper que he compartido arriba.

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