A Yardstick for Bosses

What makes a good executive? And how can a potential executive be spotted? Chicago's Social Research, Inc. went to work a little over a year ago to find a way to answer these questions. Last week it thought it had the way.

Businessmen read the results of S.R.I.'s survey with interest. Ex-professor (University of Chicago) Burleigh Gardner, head of S.R.I., had already won the confidence of such business clients as Sears, Roebuck, United Air Lines, General Mills and International Harvester by his skill in testing group reactions to advertising, selling and personnel programs.

No Apron Strings. When S.R.I, branched out into executive testing, it first had to find out what makes a good executive tick. After studying many business bigwigs, S.R.I, concluded that good executives work to be happy; material rewards and prestige are secondary. Though the average good executive gets along with almost everybody, he regards subordinates as "doers of work," feels a personal attachment only toward his superiors. He is often driven by a fear of frustration. He likes and even admires his father, but so far as his mother is concerned he has "left home" for good.

In testing executives for new jobs, S.R.I. depends chiefly on its own applications of psychologists' "thematic-apperception test," in which the subject is asked for his reaction to certain pictures. Among the ten pictures used by S.R.I.: a boy, leaning on his chin, contemplating a violin and bow; a boy and a woman in conversation; a boy at a window looking up into the sky; a man on a rope.

Typical reaction of those who flunk the rope picture test: the man is climbing down the rope. (Successful executives usually say he is climbing up.) The boy and woman picture is actually a test of aggressiveness, in which likely subjects see a boy leaving home no matter what his mother says. Less promising subjects see him waiting for her decision, or accepting her command to stay home. The reactions to S.R.I.'s pictures also give clues to such considerations as whether a subject becomes confused or lost in detail (a bad sign), and how active his imagination is: e.g., to a given picture he has no reaction at all or he is unable to decide what his reaction is.

No Success. With formal questioning and informal ("Tell me about yourself") interviews, the whole S.R.I, test takes only 40 minutes. Analyzers then take about five hours to weigh the answers "blind" (they never see the subject) and predict how the subject will do in a certain job.

Employers, who pay $15,000 for six months for the service, do not always agree with S.R.I.'s verdict. In three cases recently, the executives were promoted against S.R.I.'s advice. Said S.R.I, smugly: "Within four months all flopped on their new jobs."

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