Imagine what organisations could actually get done if they hired people who genuinely had the capacity to do the job, rather than relying on qualifications, job titles, or long lists of previous roles.
In my work, the most common problem I see has nothing to do with effort, attitude, or commitment. Most people are trying hard.
The real issue is that too many individuals are placed in roles that are beyond their ability to handle the complexity involved. When that happens, the organisation begins to slow down in subtle, but persistent ways that no amount of energy or goodwill can fix.
You can usually see this very quickly from the outside. Decisions that should be straightforward take far too long, not because people are being careful, but because they are struggling to think through the issues clearly.
The same problems keep resurfacing, sometimes with new names or slightly different symptoms, but at their core, unchanged.
Managers respond by adding meetings, introducing more controls, and layering supervision on top of supervision. All of this creates very little progress, because none of it addresses the underlying mismatch between the job and the person doing it.
Keep Reading
- Chiefs to supervise food aid distribution
- What is the role of a COO?
- Pay compression: What every manager needs to know
- Executive assistant job
When an organisation starts underperforming, leaders often reach first for explanations that feel more comfortable. Strategy is questioned.
Culture becomes the focus. Systems are redesigned. These things matter, but they are rarely the best place to start. A simpler and more uncomfortable question should come first.
Do the people in critical roles have the mental capacity to deal with the demands of those roles? When the honest answer is no, improvement becomes hard work.
Training can help around the edges. Better processes can reduce friction. Clearer reporting lines can tidy things up. But none of this changes the basic reality that some roles require a level of thinking that cannot be learned quickly, or at all, once adulthood is reached.
People can learn new skills and acquire knowledge, but their ability to deal with complexity, make sound judgments, and solve unfamiliar problems has limits.
When a role consistently stretches beyond those limits, the organisation pays for it every day through slow execution, poor decisions, and constant rework.
Over time, this creates frustration on all sides. Managers feel they are forever correcting and supervising.
Senior leaders feel progress is harder than it should be. Employees feel overwhelmed without always being able to explain why.
When the right people are in the right roles, the difference is obvious. Decisions are made more quickly and with greater confidence.
Fewer matters need to be escalated. Managers spend less time checking work and more time thinking about what comes next.
Supervision becomes lighter, not because standards have dropped, but because people can be trusted to handle their responsibilities.
If those people are paid properly and treated fairly, running the organisation becomes noticeably easier, and attention shifts from control to performance.
The basics of hiring are not complicated, but they are often ignored. Some people are simply better at thinking clearly, dealing with complexity, and learning quickly than others.
That matters more than most of the things organisations focus on during recruitment. Integrity matters. Knowing the job matters.
Personality matters in some roles more than others. The mistake is pretending that interviews, especially unstructured ones, and impressive CVs are reliable substitutes for real capability.
Most organisations rely heavily on interviews. These reward people who are confident, articulate, and comfortable talking about their work. They are much less effective at revealing how someone will perform on the job.
As a result, organisations miss capable people who may not present well and hire people who look impressive, but struggle once the work starts.
Years of experience and formal qualifications are often treated as proof of ability, yet in practice, they tell you very little about how someone will actually perform once they are in the role.
What is surprising is how casually hiring is often treated, given its impact. Hiring decisions stay with an organisation for years.
Once someone is in the system, every weakness becomes expensive. It shows up in delays, supervision, rework, and missed opportunities.
Fixing a bad hire is difficult, slow, and often politically awkward. Preventing one is far cheaper, but it requires more discipline and honesty at the point of selection.
When organisations get hiring right, many other problems shrink on their own. There is less need for heavy training just to get people to a basic level.
Constant restructuring becomes unnecessary. Endless rules and controls lose their appeal. Capable people work things out. They learn quickly. They make fewer avoidable mistakes.
Think about sport. Serious teams do not sign average players and hope coaching will turn them into stars. They select carefully and use training to sharpen ability, not to create it. Organisations should think the same way.
Training should improve performance, not compensate for weak hiring. Structures should support capable people, not protect the business from poor decisions.
If leaders want to improve results in a lasting way, the most effective place to start is simple. Hire people who have the capacity to do the job. Everything else becomes easier once that foundation is in place.
- Nguwi is an occupational psychologist, data scientist, speaker and managing consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, a management and HR consulting firm. — Linkedin: Memory Nguwi, Mobile: 0772 356 361, mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or visit ipcconsultants.com.