Now that people report to me¹Other than my children, I guess I have to admit I am a supervisor. 

Being a supervisor is weird. I do not have formal training, and I am not that interested in going back to school to study business²I do think about going back to school, but not for an MBA.. 

My boss recommended a few books to me, and I have enjoyed them. However, mostly they make me look back at my old jobs and work situations. They have yet to give me any inspiration for my current job. Perhaps in 10 years whatever I am in school studying, something I learn will make me look back at THIS job and make it all make sense. Because, that is what happened when I read Patrick Lencioni’s, “The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive.” I got the answer to a puzzle that had bothered me for a long time.

Back a million years ago, I thought I would leave my current job and go back to doing Systems Engineering for a corporation. I was tired of the restrictions of my position, and I thought going back to engineering would make everything ok. I had had an job offer to rejoin my old company 8 months before, but I didn’t take it. I would have left my current organization short staffed. They told me I had to start within two weeks of accepting the position, and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around leaving my co-worker in the lurch. So I stayed. For a while.

Yet, I remained bored in my position, so I accepted an interview to work back at my previous company. Again. What a didn’t realize is there was a new hiring requirement in town. Everyone who interviewed had to be evaluated if they were hungry. And humble. And smart³I won’t touch on this one further. I know I think I am smart, and other people do too. Yep, doesn’t sound humble, does it?.

The thing is, it wasn’t until after the interviews that it became clear that the evaluation of my lack of humbleness was going to mean I wasn’t offered the job. On the other hand, after the interview, I didn’t want the job. The same headaches I had left behind were facing me in the interview room with two people I really didn’t want to work with again. I knew they were each a little misogynistic and quite happy to make me uncomfortable. As I am sometimes wont to do, I gave as good as I got. I walked away not wanting the job and not getting the job. Alls well that ends well, right?

But the phrase – Hungry. Humble. Smart. It continued to bother me. Where did it come from? And why did my old organization think all new hires⁴Or rehires needed these qualities. What made them think the people working there doing the interview were hungry or humble⁵I totally admit, they are a smart group of people. Each and every one of them..

Five years later, doing my reading assignment for a new boss, I finally discovered the answer. You see, the Extraordinary Executive in Mr. Lencioni’s world created a culture that was best suited for people who were hungry and humble. It made them chase deals but not be jerks. So someone somewhere, between when I left and when I interviewed the second time to come back, decided that they needed people who were hungry and humble too.

Except, the team wasn’t really hungry⁶I mean, they lived in the Midwest. I heard the culture there described as midwestern passive aggressive recently. Quite accurate in my opinion.. And, they certainly weren’t humble. I mean, they claimed to be humble. One of my favorite meetings with my boss’s boss was when the guy told me he wasn’t very smart about analog systems. That might have seemed humble unless you noticed the five patents for analog circuit designs on the wall behind his desk. And the smirk on his face. He talked the humble talk, but never quite understood that his walk came off as hubris not humility.

I really like that guy, but I didn’t have an easy time working in his organization.

When I look back at myself when I started my first job in engineering, I was humble then. And hungry. I was grateful for the opportunity to work in engineering. But working the job beat the humble out of me. It took a long time until I was comfortable not being humble but not being a jerk. Life is a journey, and if we are lucky, we learn a few things along the way.

I think the mistake they made, the company looking for hungry, humble employees, is that they were not looking for people who fit their culture. They took the definition of a “good” culture from Mr. Lencioni’s book and decided that they wanted to have a “good” culture. Thus, picking new people who would have fit into the fictional culture would make their own culture better.

I don’t think it works that way. I think, in order to create a team environment and make the workplace successful, you have to understand your own culture and select people to join it who will enhance it and expand it, not try and fit what your culture is into something other people think is a good working culture.

I am glad I finally know where the desire for hungry and humble people came from. I am glad I didn’t get an offer. I am really glad I did my reading assignment. Like I said, I am not sure it is making me qualified to be a supervisor or understanding more about my current job, but I like to get closure. I guess we all do.