In Germany, only about 40 percent of employees say they strongly agree that they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day. While this is an improvement from five years ago, when that figure was closer to 30 percent, it still indicates the majority of the country’s workforce isn’t maximizing their full potential. This, of course, should be a concern to Germany’s business leadership – mainly because this problem disrupts a company’s “flow.” The idea of flow, according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is the state in which an employee has the opportunity to perform tasks that make full use of their abilities and completely absorbs the worker’s attention. Csikszentmihalyi says flow is both the result of and a prerequisite for business excellence. This excellence can only be achieved by selecting employees that strive for it. Too many companies, Csikszentmihalyi says, hire employees based on the minimum competencies required to meet a position’s most basic requirements. Once an employee is hired, managers are expected to identify and train to fill performance gaps. A better approach is to hire an employee who has already has the talents necessary to excel.