Believe it or not, I get asked this question a lot, and it is akin to asking about the occupant of Grant’s tomb: Where can I go to find great advice about managing a workforce?

This question usually gives me a headache, and once I get done pointing out this blog and my monthly “Last Word” column that appears both at workforce.com and in Workforce Management magazine, I have to stop and think for a bit. And then it hits me—what about the Corner Office column in the Sunday New York Times?

Every week, America’s most prominent newspaper has a Q&A on leadership and management with a prominent business executive. The advice from these captains of industry goes from smart and sensible (like Yahoo’s Carol Bartz making a great case for ditching annual performance reviews) to head-scratchingly dumb (Carol Smith of the Elle Group claiming that women are inherently better managers than men are).

And there is this advice that is so glib and shoot-from-the-hip cool that it sounds good on first glance, but really, is just simplistic and silly when you examine it closely. Here’s what I’m talking about, from last Sunday’s New York Times: Mindy Crossman, CEO of HSN, claiming that her hiring philosophy is that “you only hire Tiggers. You don’t hire Eeyores.”

OK, I get the notion of not hiring someone like Eeyore, who is “generally characterized as a pessimistic, melancholic, depressed old grey stuffed donkey who is a friend of … Winnie the Pooh.”

I had a guy who used to work for me who had an Eeyore-like demeanor, and he was terribly depressing to hang around for more than about five minutes. But if hiring an Eeyore is a bad thing, why is hiring someone like Tigger (another friend of Winnie the Pooh) viewed as the better way to go?

Here’s what Mindy Crossman told the Times: [I don’t need people who] “have to be loud, but I need energy-givers and I have to get a feeling that this person is going to be able to inspire people. Are they going to be optimistic about where they’re going? Are they going to attract people who are like that?”

She’s right that high-energy people can be a great addition to a workplace, but who said that only high-energy, Tigger-like personalities inspire people? Plus, most workplaces are made up of a lot of different types of personalities.

People with a lot of energy are great in some ways for some things, but an office full of them? Somehow, I don’t think a place where everyone is bouncing off the walls makes for the best workplace environment.

And here’s one more thing: What kind of CEO speaks of their workplace and hiring philosophy in terms of fictional cartoon characters? I mean, I enjoy a good cartoon as much as anyone, but I wouldn’t describe my hiring or business philosophy in terms of Montgomery Burns, George Jetson or any other such character.

Maybe HSN’s Cindy Crossman wasn’t completely clear when she talked to The New York Times, but maybe that’s just the nature of the newspaper’s Corner Office column, because it seems to me that all too often the advice from these captains of industry is completely wrongheaded and seems to be what you should AVOID doing at all cost.

So it seems with Mindy Crossman, because her admonition that “you only hire Tiggers” is as foolish as it is shortsighted. Yes, it doesn’t pay to hire glum Eeyore types, but then again, bigger-than-life people who constantly overhype their worth and are bouncing off walls like kindergartners on a sugar high isn’t the workplace answer either.

Eeyore or Tigger? That’s a terrible choice to make, and thankfully, most CEOs know that hiring and business decisions aren’t as simple or clear-cut as that. If you look to cartoons for your hiring philosophy, well, be prepared to feel like Wyle E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner, because it’s likely you’ll be running into a lot of walls along the way.

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