As always, you’ve provoked thought with your blog.

Here is some counterpoint on your conclusion that for early-stage enterprises a “pure hunter” is a better fit. (Your comment on 7/25/2010.)

In my experience, many entrepreneurs and promoters — pure hunters — who are focused on getting their business going, and not paying much attention to the “process” of their organization (including corporate paperwork and infrastructural pieces like professional accounting services, etc.) find themselves in big trouble down the road. Too often their own vision and self-assessment is too optimistic and they make promises that cannot be met. They overstate their abilities and make rosy (or outright foolish) projections. They underestimate the true cost of doing business and quickly find themselves insufficiently capitalized and spending too much time searching for loans and investments, rather than sales and profits to sustain the business. To these people, corporate or partnership paperwork, monthly accounting reports, paying quarterly taxes, etc., are deemed a tedious, time-consuming and sometimes expensive process that can be deferred because they’re not so urgent and don’t hurt anyone. Yet, those easily-identifiable errors are the reasons the vast majority of new start-ups and one-man (or woman) businesses fail, usually within the first year or two. Thus, in your context, if a business survives three years of operations, the creative and aggressive hunter is secretly both a hunter and a farmer, or is wise enough to engage the farmers needed to deal with the most egregious shortcomings of the “pure” hunter personality.

That said, as a man named HUNTER, and descended from 1,000+ years of HUNTERS, I would agree that a hunter is ALWAYS the BEST fit! But heaven forbid that I be a “pure” hunter! Under the definitions you’ve provided, I believe it’s always best to have a hunter/farmer combination in every enterprise, early-stage or otherwise. But that might be made up of a complementary team of diverse personalities, insiders and outsiders, etc., not just a single individual.

See, for great analysis of these traits in some of the most successful American businesses, BLUEPRINT TO A BILLION, by David G. Thomson, John Wiley & Sons (2006). I especially like Chapters 7-9.

Keep up the good work, Bob. Excellent points always.

Edward O. HUNTER (not Farmer)
Attorney and Corporate Governance Expert
Irvine, California 92612

Interesting case study. In my experience, it is better to promptly terminate or reassign people with personality disorders that affect their work, rather than to take time and resources to rehabilitate them. But the problem typically arises that those who get good service argue against termination and give high marks when reviewing the employee. This creates a record that contradicts termination and can give rise to wrongful termination claims and, typically, exhorbitant settlement demands.

Firing someone who is both excellent and horrible requires both strength of character in the boss, as well as documentation of the perfomance factors that justify termination. Clearly, in today’s world, this requires at least 2-3 specific warnings, and citations to specific examples of poor job performance including names of offended parties, etc. It also may require in some states an effort to accommodate the employee in another position to see if the employment can be preserved. In today’s world where discrimination is on every terminated employee’s mind and lips, the paperwork has to be timely and substantively specific.

To avoid problems from weak paperwork, weak bosses frequently end up paying substantial severance packages and citing RIF in a “layoff notice” (enabling unemployment benefits) instead of firing the bad performer on the record. Thus, the employee is taught to game the system, that bad performance can pay nicely, and that there is no need to correct his/her behavior, etc.

Likewise, the next employer is not told the real reason for the termination, so the cycle begins anew, unless the next interviewer has the skill and experience to discern the personality disorder to the extent it may affect the next job’s requirements. And therein lies the secret of great personality matching to each job!

Many thanks for a great blog, Bob!

Ed Hunter
Attorney and Corporate Governance Expert
Irvine, California