If assessment tools measure what can be standardized and quantified, how useful are they in predicting performance in a vaguely defined future?

Great question, Karen. It has been said that not everything that is counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. When we are talking about our human talent, truer words have never been spoken.

These days, the wrong things are measured more often than not, and little consideration is given to high performance qualifiers that are inconvenient to measure. For example: employee A has a poor sales performance, about 75% of company average. Poor performer for the future, right? But employee A also provided the input that helped employees B,C,D and E close 60% of their highest value clients. That is not measured, though. In an uncertain future, Employee A is more valuable to my team as a whole that a single superstar, because they have demonstrated flexibility and insight. Perhaps I just have them slotted in the wrong position.

There are many things that count which cannot be counted, and therefore are not integrated into assessment tools. Many more things that count are not counted, because assessment tools work on human averages rather than unique views of each employee. If you want to become set up for the future in the strongest position possible, assess humans through the lens of very insightful and experienced humans.

Remember a hammer is a tool, but cannot hit the nail on it's own and must be handled by a skilled and intuitive carpenter. Assessment tools are tools. Don't rely on them to hit the nail on their own any more than that hammer will work on its own.

Together, let's put the fun back into work!
Belldon Colme
belldon@belldoncolme.org

In Rare Find, George Anders points out some of the major deficiencies of typical assessment processes, which aren't experiential. He found that, regardless of the job, the most reliable predictor of future success is resilience, which is hard to measure in a standardized questionnaire-based assessment.