Written by
Simon Stoker
"All the windows and the glossy stuff is a waste of time if a strong wind comes along and you haven't got the thing pinned down to the foundations."
This is what Neil Barnes, new forwards coach for the All Blacks, said about set-piece foundations this week.
Barnes wasn’t dismissing the “pretty sh*t”, as he called it. He just knows the order matters.
In talent acquisition, it feels at times as if that order has inverted. Not closing the loop with candidates seems in many places to be treated as excusable. Recent strong winds: market reversal, shifting business confidence, changing candidate behaviour, have exposed where foundations weren’t pinned down.
Did the basics become inconvenient? Has something more presentable, or “prettier”, filled the space?
Or has our aspiration for higher value work quietly distracted us from the foundational work that justifies the function in the first place?
If Barnes is right, the "pretty sh*t" is fine. It just needs the foundation underneath it first.
"All the windows and the glossy stuff is a waste of time if a strong wind comes along and you haven't got the thing pinned down to the foundations."
This is what Neil Barnes, new forwards coach for the All Blacks, said about set-piece foundations this week.
Barnes wasn’t dismissing the “pretty sh*t”, as he called it. He just knows the order matters.
In talent acquisition, it feels at times as if that order has inverted. Not closing the loop with candidates seems in many places to be treated as excusable. Recent strong winds: market reversal, shifting business confidence, changing candidate behaviour, have exposed where foundations weren’t pinned down.
Did the basics become inconvenient? Has something more presentable, or “prettier”, filled the space?
Or has our aspiration for higher value work quietly distracted us from the foundational work that justifies the function in the first place?
If Barnes is right, the "pretty sh*t" is fine. It just needs the foundation underneath it first.
