Box-Checkers Don’t Innovate. So Why Aren’t We Hiring More For Curiosity?

Probably because it’s not explicitly easy to track.

I need to lay out this argument in a couple of steps. Let’s see how effective we can make it.

Step 1: A quote from Ginni Rometty

Female CEO of a legacy brand (IBM), so there’s some vetting there. I think IBM makes some terrible decisions around work-life balance despite claiming to care about it, but still, I ain’t the CEO. And being a female in a “tech” CEO role has to be soul-crushing at times, so much respect to Rometty in that context. Here she is talking to Stanford MBAs — future world-builders, right? — and she says this:

But being innovative also means asking employees to learn new skills, which Rometty approaches in three stages. First, she says, you have to paint the picture of where the company is heading. Then you have to compensate employees for learning these new skills to help the company get there. Finally, she says, you must reinforce the process by rewarding those who put in the time…