The Hiring of Leon Panetta

Just when we thought Caroline Kennedy was the only person unqualified for a job she’s seeking, the qualifications of Barack Obama’s expected nominee to be Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, have been called into question, according to the Washington Post. As I noted in my post on Caroline, assessing a job candidate’s qualifications involves the objective and subjective.

Panetta was a Congressman from California for a number of years and then President Clinton’s Chief of Staff. He clearly has political experience. It’s fair to say that he has almost no intelligence experience. It’s obvious right now that subjective analysis is carrying the day.

There’s another point that provides instruction to anyone doing hiring. The Obama team didn’t discuss Panetta with anyone on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence or anyone in the CIA or extended intelligence community before Obama made his decision and Panetta’s name was leaked to the media. So, people who presumably know the most about the objective and subjective requirements of the position in question had no input.

Sound familiar? A manager or supervisor is hired without anyone he’s going to supervise getting to weigh in. The message is that those making the hiring decision know more than the employees who do the work. Each time this happens, the opportunity of making employees feel part of the team is lost.

This has been a rare misstep for Obama and his team, and it may end up working out ok. One wonders if Obama may be starting to suffer from what most executives seem to suffer from: they know more than anyone about everything. Executives, managers and supervisors at all levels who can avoid or overcome this ailment are leaders, because they give their employees what every employee wants: to feel part of what’s going on.