There is an old wisdom in this country, told in different forms across our various languages, that I want to bring into the boardroom today. You can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it is faster, cheaper, and far more reliable to hire a squirrel.
I have used this saying many times in my work over the years, in different contexts, and it has never lost its force. The point of it is simple. Some qualities can be taught, and some cannot. When you are putting together a serious enterprise, your job as the one doing the hiring is to know the difference. You select for what cannot be taught. You train for what can. Reverse this and you have a turkey in the tree. You can spend years patiently coaxing it upward. The tree will be no more climbed at the end of the exercise than it
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