Minimal thinking required

Our new sales guy sent out his first quote today and it's a lot more professional than we're used to. He may be the first sales person I've seen that can actually write. I once thought of giving all sales candidates a writing test but figured that would scare off some potential talent. Plus, the writing should be handled by the marketing department anyway.

Speaking of which, our marketing guy actually delivered the FAQs we had asked for and did a decent job. Amazing.

He was still a little gun-shy about making decisions on his own. The previous sales director had him so beaten down he couldn't say boo without getting his head bitten off. So we are trying to give him work with minimal thinking required. Eventually, we'll re-train him to be better than he was; much like the 6-million dollar man.

Which brings up an interesting hypothesis. If you want to drastically change an employee's behavior, bring in a specialist to brow-beat and intimidate them into questioning every decision and move they make. Once you get them down to that whimpering state you can start molding them into the image you prefer.

It's probably easier to hire the right person to begin with.