Cheap Management Pick-Up Lines

 

“So, what’s your sign?”

Long considered the classic bad pick-up line, the above quotation immediately transmitted the following information to perspective available women:

·         The person speaking has a belief structure so bereft of logic that they actually believe that a person’s zodiac sign has anything to do with their personality type,

·         And that they believe that, should they have an allegedly complimentary sun sign, then it would be appropriate to pursue a relationship,

·         And, finally, that you are also stupid enough to believe the previous two bullets.

Now consider the parallels between singles mixing in a lounge with corporate recruiters seeking to hire managers. Through a combination of facts, half-truths, and out-and-out deceptions, each party seeks to assess what the other is truly about without divulging the poorer aspects of their own selves. It’s quite a dance, too, because, whereas the lounge scene has to do with the eventual attainment of love or sex, the latter has to do with the acquisition of the talent needed to generate profits, i.e., money.

When I was doing the research for my recently-release, must-have book, I came across another interesting parallel, between the worker archetypes that Michael Maccoby describes in his book The Gamesman (Simon and Schuster, 1978) and those of participants in massive multi-player on-line role-playing games (MMORPG), such as World of Warcraft®. In a 1996 paper by Richard Bartle, he posited that MMORPG players tend to behave in a manner consistent with one of four types, symbolized by the suits in a deck of cards:

·         Achievers, symbolized by diamonds, seek to achieve the stated goals of the game.

·         Explorers, represented by spades because they tend to dig around a lot, like to explore the environs of the game as seek out its secrets.

·         Socializers, or “hearts,” enjoy interacting with the other players, and

·         Killers (“clubs”) enjoy direct combat with the other players, even more so than their scripted adversaries.

I immediately recognized the consistency of the Bartle archetypes with those of Maccoby, who theorized four types of workers:

·         Craftsmen, who don’t really care whom they work for, but do care very much about the quality of their output. I believe these to be the equivalent of the Achievers, since the Craftsmen also seek to produce the best they can within their understood parameters.

·         Gamesmen don’t view their paychecks as food on the table or a roof over their heads – they hold their compensation to be some sort of token in an elaborate game, a game they intend to master. I think these are analogous to the Explorers, who also seek to ferret out the whole of the game parameters without necessarily obeying the rules of the particular quests.

·         Company men, who tend to take on the persona of the organization around them, are obviously the equivalent of the Socializers, and

·         Killers are similar to Jungle Fighters, who seek to eliminate their competitors (virtually everyone around them) through less-than-scrutable means.

That Maccoby and Bartle should arrive at such similar conclusions completely independently of each other indicated to me that they were on to something – if it really is the case that both workers and MMORPG participants tend to manifest behaviors consistent with these archetypes, could a given person’s most likely archetype be determined prior to their hiring? Or, if the particular person is already on-board, is there a way of determining their archetype in the event of extensive future interactions?

September’s theme is supposed to be on certifications, right? Well, here might be the ultimate utility of professional certifications: they are most attractive to one of the more coveted Maccoby archetypes, the Craftsman. The Craftsman, remember, seeks to be the best at what he does, and putting in the extra effort to master the craft and be recognized for it is very appealing. If a Company Man is mixed in with a group of Craftsman, then he will be interested, as well. However, it occurs to me that the only way the least attractive project team member archetype – the Jungle Fighter – would be interested in attaining a professional certification would be if such a certification might lead to a superior strategic position to belittle others, and, if such reasons exist, they are less than intuitive, outside of faculty lounges.

So, now the ultimate PM recruiting question becomes … what’s your deck-of-cards suit?