Great People Decisions: Why They Matter So Much, Why They Are So Hard, and How You Can Master Them

If you read one book about making great people decisions, this is the book you will want to read. The book is easy to read and understand; yet rich in content and advice for practical application. It's a book for anyone who manages people or is responsible for hiring or developing others. It's truly one of the best books I've ever read on Talent Management.

Picking and developing teams, cast correctly for the specific job to be done is one of the most critical capabilities for leaders Claudio has over 20 years of experiences in the field and this book not only highlights some of the key lessons and concepts, it also provides some useful tools and ideas to use. Having worked in a number of countries, picking people and building teams becomes even more important and difficult to also get the cultural dimension right. A great and recommended read as this is one of the key discriminators between winning and losing.

I was once told by a successful CEO that any hiring decision started at $1,000,000. Even for a front line worker; when you account for hiring costs, training, salary and benefits, then take into account the average number of years they will stay with the company, it is not hard to see how easy it is to reach that amount. Imagine now the costs of bringing on a middle manager or senior executive and you understand why hiring will be the most important part of your job. Claudio Fernandez Araoz pulls aside the curtain and lays out an approach that is not magic, gut instinct or smoke and mirrors, but a rigorous approach that allows you to build a high performance organization. I have used this material in my current position to build a team that has redesigned the way our company delivers service. It not only allowed me to find the strongest candidates, but it helped to integrate them into the organization in a positive and productive manner. This book shines a light on the most important decision you will make as a manager and delivers its content in clear and consistent manner that is devoid of the jargon that weighs down other books on this topic.

There were a number of things that impressed me about this book. Starting with the author: He is one of the top executives at one of the best worldwide executive search firms, an in demand lecturer, and an accomplished writer with famous articles in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review (directly on the subject of people decisions). So he has an impressive resume, but the book makes clear that he has spent the last 20 years dedicated to becoming a world-class expert in this area. The book is backed up with many references and summaries to the best academic and industry studies, this is not just one man's war stories (although there are interesting stories to back up points) but it is instead a carefully thought out and researched framework utilizing his own extensive expertise but also that of other experts in the field. He is successful at taking a very fuzzy subject and organizing it, simplifying it, making it understandable and actionable, and even providing key "watch outs" based on his experience. It is interesting reading with a number of interesting points made along the way. Some of my favorites include a description of how dramatic an impact a good vs. bad CEO can make on a company's performance, and as a side note he remarks that this may justify relatively high CEO pay (although he is careful to point out that it does not justify some of the outlandish packages that have been in the press in recent years). My other personal favorite was a comparison of the disciplines of personnel decisions and advertising, the later of which decades ago was also thought of as purely an "art" but over time has become more and more based on "science", and his prediction that personnel decisions will also bend to science over time. Certainly this book helps push that process along significantly. It's hard to find any significant faults with the book. It is mostly illustrated with examples from upper management and the discussion is also focused on upper management but the author acknowledges this focus and suggests that many of the same principles apply to lower level management. The author lets slip that English is not his first language, but there is no way to tell that from his writing, which is fluent, clear, and very well organized.

This book should be required reading for every hiring manager and every HR person. The author offers up a comprehensive understanding of the biggest challenge in most businesses -- how to get the right people in the right jobs. When the wrong people are hired, whole teams and companies can feel the negative effects for years. Araoz carefully deconstructs the many reasons why the most important job in business management is so poorly done. Then he describes in fine detail how to do it right.