I’m not a big fan of American Idol since Simon Cowell left the show, but I am interested in the competitive aspects of taking a group of talented people and publicly narrowing it down until you have a single “winner.”
This got me to thinking: what can we take away from this kind of competition? Have we learned anything after many seasons of watching a singing champion chosen this way?
Well yes, there are some pretty big lessons we can take away from American Idol — especially if you run a business.
At its core, American Idol is all about finding and promoting the very best talent — something that a leader does every single day. But, how the show ultimately goes about finding and promoting the best talent leaves a lot to be desired, and it raises some issues that everyone should think about in their own talent development process.
The highly-competent-but-safe candidate doesn’t always make the best hire.
Are you satisfied choosing someone who is “safe” and won’t get you into trouble, or, do you go with the flashier choice that may have not only more upside, but perhaps some downside too?
Safe but unexciting choices yield safe but unexciting results. If that’s what you are looking for, then go to it. But, if you want to push the envelope and stretch for something better, you need to work on overlooking the flaws and quirks that many highly talented people bring to the table. If you don’t, you end up with someone like Taylor Hicks — the safest and most forgettable American Idol winner ever. How hot has his career been lately?
A committee approach to hiring doesn’t always yield the best candidate.
Lots of organizations like to have candidates get interviewed and evaluated by a slew of different managers before everyone weighs in with their opinion. It’s a “safe” talent acquisition approach.
American Idol works this way, too, with the judges and nationwide voters all weighing in on who they believe is best. It’s a time-honored approach, of course, but hiring by committee rarely yields the best candidate. For every superstar like Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson, you get a slew of middle-of-the-road winners like Ruben Studdard, Chris Allen, David Cook, and Hicks.
Idol would do well to limit the nationwide voting until late in the season, letting a smaller group of smart and insightful talent managers — the judges –whittle down the group until the final four or five are left. Doing this would surely help keep more of the highly talented but less traditional candidates in the candidate pool longer, and maybe, give one of them a chance to win.
You would also be better served by limiting the vetting of candidates to a smaller group of four to five key decision-makers rather than running potential hires through a gauntlet of managers up and down the food chain. I bet you’ll find this approach not only leads to making better decisions about talent, but is less stressful on the candidates and your organization.
You need to ask yourself — do I hire for competence now - or for growth potential down the road?
In most seasons, the American Idol winner reflects someone chosen for solid competence right now over someone who may have more upside in the years to come.
Except in very rare cases, high potential tomorrow is always preferable to solid competence today, but many leaders don’t agree. Making the safe choice won’t get you in trouble and may help the organization immediately, but going with the high-potential candidate is likely to yield a lot more if you can afford to be patient. In other words, you won’t build superstars taking the safe road, but isn’t building an organization of superstars what it is all about?
Yes, American Idol is all about top talent winning out, but like a lot of things in life, it’s less about finding the very best talent and more about finding someone who is highly talented and acceptable to a large group. It leads, in the end, to all-too-many vanilla choices, and while that may be acceptable for American Idol, it’s not the optimum way for you to get the very best talent into your organization.
In other words, you need to find people (contractors or employees) like previous judge Simon Cowell. That’s a tougher way to go, but in the end, you’ll have a lot better bottom-line results to show for it.
American Idol is just not the same without Simon, don’t you think?
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