Scanning the B-scanners

John Batchelor Program 12/11/04--the B-scan test)

Most "people problems" I've encountered in the workplace are a symptom of an unrecognized operations problem. If my experience is any guide, the problem is rampant in today's business world. In any case, many people are put in management positions even though they have never been trained to spot when a department problem is operational in nature. Without that training, childishly simple solutions are invisible to them. So they face an impossible situation, if they want to keep their job.

How they cope creates the "problem employee." If they have a really bad character, that's when you see coping behavior verging on the criminal, and even including it. But for heaven's sake, all it usually takes to correct the problem employee is changing or developing an operational procedure.

Why do so many departments resist operations manuals? From my experience, it's often because of the King of the Hill syndrome (females are not immune). The KOH became rampant when the paternalistic corporation virtually disappeared -- when companies stopped showing loyalty to good employees.

The KOH executive/manager insulates himself from being fired by keeping his knowledge of key procedures mostly in his head. The reasoning is, "Don't put it down on paper so someone can take over your job by following a list of dummy-proof instructions."

The problem is that in today's business world, you have to keep updating. The King of the Hill doesn't want to do that, because to update means setting out (revealing) the many key things to know about present operational routine.

So KOH keeps trying to make the inefficient procedures work -- and covering up what doesn't work. At some point, the sleight of hand creates hell in a department, which (in a large corporation) can spill into a division, then turn the entire company into hell.

So what I find unsettling about the B-scan test is that they're looking for personality types who are capable of adjusting to hell.

I just glanced through an article on B-scan and saw that it was adapted it from a standard test used in prison to spot a "psychopath." But adapting that test to the business place overlooks the obvious: prison is hell and when in hell, any coping mechanism that works is the rule. So, here's what the B-scan testing standard will unleash in vast numbers on the business world:

One of the worst candidates on this season's Apprentice (Jen) has gotten as far as the Final Two. This is despite the fact that she is a walking textbook of incompetence. How did she get so far in the competition? We eventually learn that she aced the system; she learned while going through college and getting an advanced degree how to provide all the expected responses.

Thus, Apprentice instructs on how an incompetent can end up at an executive level at a large corporation. Often, the company must decide while under time pressure. That means they have to choose the least objectionable candidate. Jen had learned this. She learned how to give answers to interview questions and present behaviors that make her the best choice from a bad lot. She knew that she was competing not against the best among the remaining Apprentice candidates but against the worst. She mastered the lowest common denominator.

That situation underscores what's wrong with the B-scan approach. It will lead to a Kafkaesque situation in the business world, if the B-scan becomes the rage. Corporations now seem to weight their hiring criteria toward mastery of spreadsheets and sales/marketing techniques. That means a great many managers who fit the criteria can't recognize an operational problem if stands up and shouts, much less deal with it effectively.

The upshot? The Hans Brinker approach to dealing with antiquated operations procedures. Imagine your finger plugging the dike, day after day, then see how fast you would transform into the Employee from Hell. The solution would not be to define and correct your "personality disorder," which is actually a stress reaction. The solution is more emphasis in schools on teaching the operations side of business.

Many company disasters I've encountered could be fixed simply by writing up an operations manual for departmental procedures. I have seen departments that are straight out of Charles Dickens. Computers didn't help. The deparment just grafted the computer capability onto the Victorian-era way of doing things.

How is B-scan going to fix that problem? It's just going to produce more job candidates such as Jen in her performance on Apprentice.

As to whether B-scan will come to dominate the corporate world--from the article I just read, no doubt about it. "Literally thousands of [psychological] tests appeared in the wake of recent financial scandals and the Sarbanes-Oxley federal regulations..."Board members are scared," says Egon Zehnder, the world's fourth-largest executive search firm. "They want something objective in case of lawsuits -- like a test you can show the board and say, 'Hey, the guy's got good numbers.'"