Select leaders with the right backgrounds, not just "the right stuff"

On the blog at Innosight, a website related to Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen, an observation is made about selecting top talent.

One of the tenets of Innosight's thinking is that organizations need to select managers with the right backgrounds, not just "the right stuff." An organization should look for managers with the right "schools of experience" to deal with situations that may be unfamiliar to the organization as a whole.

In Swamp Fox Insights: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in a Time of Profound Change, the second of four principals for growing high-impact companies is "Assembling Outstanding Leadership."

The most critical part of identifying the right CEO is developing a very clear profile of what is essential to lead a specific company launch as a guide for assessing potential candidates... Carefully review a candidate's accomplishments, his failures, what negative feedback he thinks references might give, and his reasons for leaving prior companies. The objective is to accurately assess the candidates’ past behaviors that have led to his success or failure as the best indication of future behaviors that can be expected.

Great minds think alike.