In business, we don’t like it when people allow their emotional “baggage” to get between them and a smart decision.
Interestingly, we generally expect such behavior.
Generally.
With one critical exception: When planning.
During the planning process, we tend to assume that people are perfectly able to get their acts together on call. Never mind that we are surrounded by so many examples of peoples’ shortcomings that we put little prayers in our cubes asking the Good Lord for the patience to deal with them. When it comes time to plan, we’d rather ignore the reality of human emotionality.
Look at how you hire new people: you know that what makes a great employee has more to do with attitude (positive emotional disposition) than knowledge. You know this, yet when planning your workforce, you ignore it. Instead of hiring emotional maturity, you hire technical experience. “I can’t afford to wait while they get up over the learning curve,” you say.
It’s like you forget that no matter how small the learning curve appears, a negative emotional disposition makes it insurmountable.
Stop fighting the fact that (other) people are emotional. They are. Deal with it.
What to do
Specifically, when hiring, compare the risk of bringing on “unexperienced talent” with the risk of hiring “untalented experience.”
More generally, when planning, get out of your office and get real. Talk to people. Watch how long it takes them to do their work, and compare that to what you think it should be. Find out who talks to whom, and who people refuses to work with. Doing so will keep your brain rooted in the gritty reality in which you live… where people are emotional, imperfect, and real.
Including people from all levels into your planning process isn’t just a nice thing to do to make them feel good, it’s a very specific, very powerful way to make sure your plans survive contact with reality.
