I was told of a group of Israelis, who underwent a psychometric test for junior management positions in the local civil service. They were examined on their Hebrew, given an assignemnt in time management, asked to identify the wrong picture in a sequence, and more.

At the end, one of the participants asked if the senior managers had undertaken such a test. Others laughed, but there was clearly more than a tinge of poignancy in the question.

Personally, I don’t see why drawing a tree with roots or a family with people of correct proportionate sizes means that you are capable to carry out satisfactorily an administrative task. But the whole exercise got me thinking.

Let’s take all these high flying bank execs and sales people around the word. Many have been earning fat bonuses for years on what have proved to be financially unsecure policies. They frequently obtained their position by going to the right school, knowing the correct person, or just through the gift of the gab.

Perhaps a better way to assess human potential is to make them draw pictures and analyse simplified test scenarios. It might save the world from a world recession.