Anyone who wants to run a successful business needs the right number of people with the right skills, knowledge, and values to accomplish the organization's objectives. But as Google engineering vice president Alan Eustace pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, the most important thing is to attract and hire the right people in the first place rather than try to dramatically improve them after they're on the payroll. Training is important—and necessary—for most employees at various times in their careers; but even the most expensive training can't replace the value of having the right people.

In this chapter we outlined staffing as a continuous process from human resource planning to recruiting to selecting to developing. These are cornerstones of effective management-so much so that we have split them off as a separate category of managing. (The traditional management categories bury these activities under " Leading.") This process of staffing and developing people is so important, in fact, that the must successful corporate leaders believe it should consume most of their time. The reasoning is that hiring and developing the best employees makes it easier for leaders to do their jobs in the long run.

Even if managers are aware of the importance of human resource planning, recruiting, selection, and development, many fall into the various traps that exist within these practices. Human resource planning can degenerate into paralysis by analysis at one extreme or wishful thinking on the other. Recruitment practices often become sales jobs that inflate newcomers' expectations, which crash into frustration with or disrespect for the employer. Selection practices such as traditional interviews are notorious for lulling managers into false confidence that they have a special gift for picking the right candidates when, in fact, the best choices didn't get job offers. Employee development can also be a house of cards, where managers expend huge budgets on training programs with uncertain returns. Overall, staffing and developing isn't just the cornerstone of effective management; it is its testing ground.