About Objxs

The Goal.
When you hear the term 'fitted contractor' know that it was born here at Objecs in a claustrophobically small rented office space in Tempe, Arizona. In general, it is a method and tool for organizations, such as ours, that routinely need/use a handful of human traits to achieve a business objective. Our domain of work is technology but it could theoretically apply to others. For example, we have never hired a sales person, but we could theoretically adjust the model to identify traits found in successful sales people. The key point is that the method can be used on nearly any trait associated with a business outcome, including sales, data analysis, problem solving, math, entropy transitions, and many others.

How it began.
In the early days, our workers provided software-based solutions in a niche market of mostly astute families. Our small team was wonderfully bright and effective, but there was a statistical oddity in the number of team members having a disability (physical and or mental impairment). With little more than a casual nod to this oddity, we ignored it and set out for the greater question of how we could grow our team and keep the same level of performance. With our goal in mind, one of our staff developed an algorithm that seemed to help. It didn't actually solve the objective, but it did provide a new perspective on candidates that got us to where we wanted to go in a simple and elegant way.

The algorithm began with an assumption that everyone is gifted in some way. Returning to our previously noticed oddity of disabilities, it seemed that a known disability or trait in one area was often correlated to a strength/gift in another area, sometimes unknown to even the job candidate. The areas of our interest included: math, logic, spatial, vector mechanics, mentally tabling and manipulating large data sets, and pattern recognition, just to name a few.

The Question of IQ

In pursuit of perfecting such an algorithm we learned a lot about the pursuit of optimal human resources, some learnings more obvious than others. For example, plotting a growing list of desired traits of a new-hire contractor on one axis and ROI dollars earned on the other, resulted in a curve that was a close approximation of the normal distribution. This meant that workers with traditional well-rounded skill set showed diminishing returns in ROI calculations as the skill set grew. In other words, a jack of all trades becomes a master of none (arguably obvious). However, we could now more clearly see something we suspected, which was we were not just looking for new-hires with high IQ's. In other words, a higher and higher IQ is not necessarily a better and better match for our customer's needs (ROI). This was wonderfully comforting for people like me that are pretty average in the IQ area, but feel we are still strong contributors. Thank-you-very-much.

The math was telling us something that we already knew, that there was a tradeoff. We needed individuals that matched our desired trait/skill needs and in return we were willing to accept diminished capacities in other areas. The only thing missing was a construct of some type to represent this idea so that those of us that hire people could wrap our arms around it.

People as Platonic Solids

In hindsight, the idea of using Platonic solids in this way was pretty cleaver. It's an idea based on representing human traits of interest in both quantity and opposing orientation. It would be impractical to share the full story behind the model here, but in summary it offered a 3d model of thinking about human traits. In other words, with countless human traits, this approach kept us focused on a handful that we had interest in.

The result of using these solids in hand, was that I could more clearly conceptualize a human resource need as one of the five solids. I can hold one of the solids, actually or mentally, in hand and relate a new-hire to one of the five. I'm oversimplifying and I do admit it's probably as much an art as science, but I've found it very helpful, nonetheless. I'm convinced it helps with mistakenly discounting a candidate that might not otherwise be considered. I now believe that when we as HR professionals cannot see a person's gift we are not seeing the best of that person. If we can see a persons gift then we might be more likely to correctly offer or decline interest based on who they are instead of how they appar on a printed resume. Of course, we don't want every gift, we only want particular candidates for a given job opening.

For those that are new to the platonic solid terminology, there are five platonic solids, which are three dimensional objects where each face is a regular polygon. At least two of the five solids occur naturally in the universe in physical form. The way that we use them is to treat each facet/face as a trait and each solid must have some minimal mass. That mass can be thought of as IQ (IQ is an over-simplification of the actual mass definition). We require some minimal mass/IQ before we venture into the work of identifying a potential worker with a particular solid (Tetrahedron, Hexahedron, Octahedron, Dodecahedron and Icosahedron). Being fitted or matched to one of the solids and a particular type of work results in the origin of the term fitted-contractor.

Finding Super Humans?

No, I'm afraid we didn't end up finding super humans. However, this might be a good time in history to ponder what targeting intellectual traits means for humanity. My take on this has several general observations.

First, we as a specialty business don't want every job applicants gift found, but I've come to believe that every gift has a place, and every gift is wanted by someone somewhere. Secondly, I think we will find technology increasingly assisting with the identification of what we are each good at, our gifts. Third. No matter how gifted someone may appear on the outside, they may have unseen challenges that are as substantial in magnitude as thier gift. In other words, we should be carefull about wishing to be like someone else because the cost might be more than we could pay. The point being, we can all be thankful for who we are and who we are is beautifully perfect for some area of work.

Lastly, I have come to more clearly see how important intellectual diversity is in an organization - even when it's uncomfortable for them. I think of it in terms of cooking where too much of one seasoning can ruin a dish. Today, I stand in awe of what some of these kind gifted individuals can do when added to a sea of corporate-sameness.

Intellectual diversity is a beautiful thing, let's hope it's in the future wealth of nations.