Happy Thursday!
I once heard this manager, who also happens to be THE most dedicated and passionate Little League baseball coach I’ve ever met, say that in his team both in baseball and at work, he always recruits for character as opposed to ability. “If the character is there, ability will come.”
Should this mantra also be applied in Corporate America at large? It seems without an Ivy League education, a bevy of certifications, and stellar recommendations, getting a foot in the corporate world’s door is close to impossible. What with unemployment still fluctuating in abysmal depths, companies dabbling more and more in temporary rather than permanent hiring, and job requirements getting increasingly more demanding, character appears to be relegated to the professional back burner. And shall we even mention the disturbing office backstabbing, haunting gossip and ruthless competition occurring in most companies?
Add to that the still pervasive racial and gender bias in Corporate, and you get a nice melting pot of deteriorating work environments and morale. Sounds like a dreary enough picture? Maybe so…
As this manager seemed to suggest, it may be high time to go back to corporate teams founded on character as opposed to ability. Sure, we cannot afford incompetent workers as a society as a whole, yet is foregoing the lasting impact of human character the solution? I would strongly disagree.
Since we let go of character in the workplace, since we started valuing profit over loyalty and fiduciary duty, we’ve dug a corporate hole into which the likes of Enron have buried our integrity and faith in our markets. Hence the slew of new regulations and legal requirements we now have to abide by, just to prove that our businesses are doing their job!
Maybe, only maybe, if we simply followed the advice of this passionate Little League coach, maybe we could go back to having a fair, equitable and thriving corporate world…

Along with some happy, successful Little League players…

Just sayin’…