Almost Been There, Almost Done That – You’ve heard the saying “Been there, done that.” It’s often said to let someone know you have the shared the same experience that they are telling you about. I was thinking about this in terms of jobs and organization charts. If you hire somebody that’s “been there, done that” then there is a pretty good chance that he will be able to get the job done. If you hire somebody that’s “almost been there, almost done that” he is likely taking a step up in his career. There’s more risk with a person like this, but he might bring more energy to the job as well because it will represent a new challenge. But every once in a while we hire someone who has “never been there, never done that.” This seems odd, but it could have been the next person in line, someone that gets along with people, your good friend, the boss’s nephew, etc. I know a person who was an individual contributor for his whole career. He was a knowledgeable about marketing, so they made him a manager responsible for a worldwide group. What happened? In terms of supervisory skills, he had “never been there, never done that.” It wasn’t long before he and his entire group were ineffective. Here’s a fun idea. Take you current org chart and highlight the people into categories: BTDT, ABTADT, NDTNDT. This might give you an idea of where your people risks are. For even more fun, look at an org chart from a couple of years ago and see how many of the missing names fall into each category. And when you go to make a new hire, use this as another tool to gauge the risk of hiring that person.