What on earth is Rosh Gadol?

These are terms that every Israeli knows, and like much Israeli slang they come from the army:

• Rosh Gadol (literally, a large head) – a person who sees the bigger picture, takes initiative, and goes beyond the immediate task at hand or the orders given to ensure that the end goal is achieved.
• Rosh katan (a small head) – one who obeys instructions literally and avoids any initiative beyond their exact wording, often to the detriment of the intended mission.

In Israel Rosh Katan is usually used pejoratively; in a culture known for its make-do spirit, initiative is highly prized, and someone hiding behind the letter of instructions while ignoring their spirit may well be considered either stupid or malicious. Therefore, in many situations a Rosh Gadol character is definitely seen as a favorable trait, for instance in job interviews.

And yet – this character trait carries some risks.

A manager’s dilemma: which “Rosh” do you want in your enterprise?

On the face of it, the Rosh Gadol employee is exactly what you’d want: surely, an employee who takes ownership, who solves problems flexibly as they arise, is better than one who follows orders with thoughtless precision even when there’s need to improvise?

Well, yes and no. For one, there are job types that would drive a person with the “large head” personality crazy, because they’re too repetitious, or boring, and provide no opportunity for thinking big. Luckily people come in all types, and some are a good match for these jobs too. I remember once talking to a production line worker in a factory, who told me she can’t understand how engineers can bear their jobs, with the endless crises and surprises. Now in her job, she had her tea break at mid-shift, and all was so nice and predictable… of course as an engineer I was thinking I’d rather die than have such a boring job as hers… it takes all kinds!

More importantly, there are cases where following instructions to the letter is important. Safety regulations are an obvious example, and adherence to manufacturing parameters and procedures can also be critical. The Israeli tendency to think beyond orders has given the country a huge boost in its evolution into the “Startup nation”, but there were many hurdles along the way until people learned that not everything is up to the individual’s initiative, and that some orders must be followed even if you can devise a better way!

The question of how to address the two personality types in a workplace is particularly critical in the kind of  hi-tech environment where I spent most of my career; and as managers, we’d given it a good deal of thought in the context of hiring, assigning and developing our engineers. Some cases are obvious: you want your R&D engineers to be Rosh Gadol, or they’d never invent the next (and hence, unspecified) big thing. The issue is what to do in jobs that at first glance seem to do just fine with less initiative, like sustaining  or maintenance engineering. Should you hire people who care more about their tea break than about bending the limits of the possible? And if you have this kind of people in these positions, should you leave them to their placid ways, or should you develop them to become a Rosh Gadol?

Nathan’s take: definitely Rosh Gadol – but you have to manage them right!

My personal position is clear: engineering positions should be filled with Rosh Gadol people. Here’s why:

• Anyone uninterested in thinking  for themselves in the face of trouble would make a poor employee in practically any job: it goes to character and values. Would you want to hire the kind of person who, on seeing the work at hand about to fail, would ignore it if they had no instructions? And what if it were another person in distress or danger – should your employee turn their back because it isn’t in their job description to help?
• The very essence of engineering is dealing with problems and unplanned difficulties. Problem solving without initiative and insight is far less effective.
• Most people suited to engineering work enjoy a job that gives them challenges and latitude to address them. Enjoying your job makes you a better employee and reduces turnover. With the new Gen Y Millennials, it is even a prerequisite for agreeing to work for you!
• It used to be that you had engineers and lower level technicians; these days even the technicians are doing engineer-level tasks, and need to use initiative.
• Narrow-minded employees tend to be good at one specialized task – and today we need mobility and flexibility as products and job paradigms morph at increasing speed.

So – you want engineers who take responsibility and go beyond their orders. The challenge you face as a manager is how to have such supercharged engineers yet keep things in control. It’s a bit like holding a tiger by the tail… and there are a number of solutions you should consider here:

• Spread the “interesting” and the routine work around equally. That is, don’t have 20% of engineers doing innovative work, and 80% doing only routine sustaining. Have every engineer spend 20% of their time on the leading edge. That way you can keep them interested and nurture Rosh Gadol traits while keeping in their mind the importance of the 80% (in hiring interviews I used to refer to this as the 80% bread / 20% jam of the sandwich; I made sure candidates were willing to do both).
• Make it very clear by training, indoctrination and role modeling that some procedures and directives are to be obeyed without question – notably in Safety and Quality. Make their separation from the rest of the work explicit.
• Empower all your employees to express their Rosh Gadol tendencies. This must be ingrained in the organization’s culture and values. I remember an example from the early Intel: there was this principle that if you find an orphaned “AR” (Action Required, an action item in Intel slang) you must pick it up and it becomes yours to address, regardless of your pre-assigned work. As you see I remember it 30 years later… it was very firmly drilled into us!
• Consider the implications for the command structure. For example, when I was a forensic scientist I worked in a lab where we had a very clear (but totally informal) hierarchy, such that at any moment the most “senior” person present was empowered by custom to make any needed decision for the lab as a whole. There was no possibility of “we have to wait for the boss”. With police work being full of the urgent and the unexpected, this made ours a very effective unit.

That’s my take… take it, or leave it, but tell us in the comments what you think and do about it!

Image courtesy Madeleine Ball, shared on flickr under CC license.

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