A Talentist

Reboot

I had retreated from public engagement for over three years. During that time I studied, learned, and reflected deeply. I earned clarity on the purpose of my efforts. I am returning to the public arena with a commitment to teach, learn and build a community through this blog. 

Teach

The previous posts on this blog had a "howl at the moon" quality; a Rage Against the Machine approach that often detracted from goal of teaching. With this reboot, I am going to share what I know in more rigorous, thoughtful and expansive way. I will still direct my indiganation and satirical surpirse at the powers that be, but in another forum (yet to be determined). Thoughtful, open and committed readers should expect to be introduced to new thinking about the world of talent (i.e. human capital), and hold me accountable if I fail to deliver.

Learn

My purpose is to positvely change the world of talent. In order to do that, I am going to put more effort into atttacting great thinkers and builders to this brave new world. My goal is to increase the engagement of these "new pioneers" through this blog and learn through thouhtful, public reflection upon their wisdom. I expect this to lead to evolution in my thinking and knoweldge. 

Build a Community

There are many people who care about the world of talent. Most of those people don't have careers in the current field of human capital. My goal is to expand the boundaries of the community, providing a forum where people who are open to my beleifs can share their thoughts as well. I believe this will lead to opening the apperature on the world of human capital.

This blog is part of my new business (Talentism LLC). I want to accomplish the goals I have artciulated above, and at the same time create a space where my business can thrive. My design will be publicly reflect on realities but not solutions. Our current bad thinking arises from the lack of a shared goal and being in agreement on what problems stand in the way of achieving that goal. There can be great value in fostering and sustaining a spirited, open debate about our goals and problems (i.e. our reality). Occassionally I will even explore the roots of those problems, the motive force behind our reality rather than the symptoms. 

The solutions to those problems will be the domain of my business and will be offered through my products and services to my clients. But I won't lose sight of my over riding purpose: to posiitvely change the world of talent. I believe that having many people in agreement on the nature of the goals and problems is likely to lead to opportunity and innovation, expanding the talent economic pie, and therefore my piece of it. And so my hope is that someday soon I will have many excellent competitors, each with their own approach to helping their customers and clients, but all chipping away at a common set of opportunities.

Next Post: Beliefs and Principles

Working Myself Out of a Job

I have a great mechanic. His name is Steve. I treasure him like a lamp that has a genie that grants all my mechanical wishes. The man is a genius: efficient, effective and cheap. It is a pleasure to spend time with him, watching him work.

Sometimes I talk to him and tell him how he should expand his business. He doesn’t do tires, or cleaning, or interior repairs, or wheel alignment. I keep telling him he can raise his prices if he was more of a one-stop shop. I tell him I want to give him more of my money because I really don’t understand all this car stuff and I would rather be spending my time focusing on things that I know I am good at and that people pay me to do.

But this weekend I had an epiphany. After reading about how I should put myself out of a job I called Steve. I told him that I didn’t want him to be a one-stop shop anymore. I wanted him to teach me how to fix my car. I boldly announced “All you are is a tax on my driving. It’s time for you to realize how little value you really add! Steve, if you were a good mechanic you would be thinking about how to put yourself out of business!”

Steve said that I should come right over so that he could start to make himself obsolete. There was a twinkle in his voice that made me a bit uneasy, but I didn’t care because I was about to put Steve out of a job. I had important work to do.

I arrived confident of my ability to do whatever it is that Steve does. You see, I am a driver. I had never really thought of it until I read that great article, but the logic is unassailable: just like a manager manages people, and therefore needs to know everything there is to know about people, a driver drives a car, and so needs to know everything there is to know about cars. I used to just hop in the car and go, blithely confident that specialists would handle all the details. But I was completely wrong. If I could drive a car it was without a doubt: I could fix them, build them, design them, pave roads for them... I could do it all.

And let’s face it: how hard could it be? I mean Steve is no rocket scientist. He is a freakin’ mechanic for goodness sake. He turns a wrench and smears oil on himself to look busy. Time to take my rightful place as the master of my driver domain.

Steve started me out on some simple problems. He told me that I needed to gap the spark plugs and ensure that the throd bearing was seated properly. I scratched my head a little. I hadn’t figured that specialist would develop their own language to describe all the complexities associated with their craft. And frankly, I didn’t even know that spark plugs need to be gapped or what the hell a “throd bearing” was. No worries! I quickly picked up a hammer and started beating the crap out of the engine. I figured I would have gaps in spark plugs in no time. Pieces of engine quickly started flying all over the garage. I felt good. I was getting stuff done.

Steve smiled and waited. When I took a break to get an energy drink he patiently pointed out that a hammer wasn’t the right tool, and that in addition to understanding the problem I needed to fix, I would have to understand what tools to use, how to use them and even show a certain talent for understanding how to read engine diagrams diagnostic outputs. He sort of absently stated “You know, an engine is a pretty complex thing. You have to know how all this stuff fits together and how to get this baby to really purr.”

Oh Steve! You silly bastard!

“Steve, you don’t get it” I confidently replied “I am a driver. Experts have told me that as a driver I can and should know everything there is to know about driving a car.” He looked a little puzzled, so I decided to become more direct.  “Everyone knows that mechanics are just hacks who work on cars because they can’t get a real job. This has got to be simple. I mean, I drive a car. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I would logically be good at everything associated with cars.”

Steve is a patient guy with a great sense of humor. He said “Of course! Tell you what.... here are all my tools, all my manuals, all my diagnostics, the keys to the shop and my phone number. Here is the web address of a course you can take about gaping spark plugs. You just go to it and give me a call when you need help!”

I expressed my gratitude and started to get back to work. As time passed, a shadow of a thought passed through my brain.

What if being a good driver doesn't mean what I think it does? What if the experts have just created a big mess because they are so focused on how broken mechanics are that they don't ever really ask what "being a good driver" means. What if a good driver is someone who focuses on core driving mechanics, handles stressful situations well and achieves their goal of delivering passengers safely to their destinations? My gosh, what if the experts, in their kind-hearted efforts to get me to be good at just about everything associated with cars, are actually making me a worse driver? What if there are people who have a real talent for fixing and building and designing cars, just like I have a real talent for driving them? Wouldn't it be better to find people who are the best at all of those things, so I could focus on being a better driver?

Nah! That can’t be right. Steve needs to work himself out of a job. That means I simply must be as good a mechanic as he is, or at least a functionally decent one. I got back to work, merrily banging away. Sure I had to call Steve a few times, and it took me forever to find the right information in the right manual, but after several days of hard work, I was done. I wearily turned over the starter, and watched as an electrical fire enveloped the engine block and destroyed everything I had worked for.

Dammit! Now I couldn’t be a driver because I didn’t have a car. Maybe I should just call Steve and have him do this the next time.

While waiting for the fire engines to leave, I had another epiphany. It turns out that getting Steve to work himself out of a job was expensive, risky and short-sighted. I thought just because I could drive I must know everything there is to know about cars. And back in the early days of cars that was probably true. But now the entire “car ecosystem”, with all its regulations, technology, options and complexities is way more than just turning a wrench. Its more than just having the right manual, or having access to the latest tools. It turns out that I need specialists to actually make my car run, to source raw materials, to hire designers, to set-up manufacturing facilities, pave roads, write laws and fill ‘er up when the car is empty.

Sitting around with Steve later that day, I decided to return to my earlier observation. “Steve, this car thing is pretty complex. You should offer me more services, not less. You should be positioning yourself as the guy who can get me the best possible driving experience, not just as a simple mechanic who makes difficult and complex work appear so easy it causes your customers to doubt your value and gives you a self-esteem complex. I know that you are going to bring on new technology so you spend less time doing all the old tuning and other grunt work you mechanics hate so much, but what do I care? As your customer, I just want the job done. Steve, you should realize that as all this stuff inevitably gets more complex and risky, and as transportation becomes ever more important to how our economy runs, that you should be looking to work your way into more jobs, not work your way out this one.”

Steve just looked at me and smiled. “Your a great customer Jeff” he said. “You just keep listening to the people who tell you how I should do my job better, and I’ll just keep taking more of your money.”

I Feel Better - Inspectors Will Thrive Too

I have spent quite a bit of time over the last seven years writing about how work is changing and about the rise of the creative as a key economic driver. I remain confident in what I have written. But as the sun sets, when I am left to my own thoughts, I am often disturbed by a potential flaw in my thinking. "What about the people who aren't creative?"

I believe that creativity is an inherent human trait, and that when the economy inexorably shifts to valuing innovating and the creativity that drives it, that the number of people who are in a position to increase their standard of living will increase. I continue to believe that an economy driven by innovation will be more fundamentally fair and just than an economy that is driven by physical labor or an economy that is driven by analysis and communication. The point of this blog has been to express a desire for create social and economic justice through moving to maximizing each person's inherent value and productivity, putting them in control of their own means of production and putting the value of talent before the value of the management of capital.

But all that doesn't mean that there won't be people left behind. We have all known people who were just born to be bureaucrats and administrators. Bless them all, these people want to be told the right thing to do, and they value ensuring that the policy an procedure is followed to the last detail. They are the bane of my existence, and I am all too ready to casually dismiss their value. Often, after I have been told by yet another lawyer that I can't do something or another administrator that my vision is too risky, I think "You are on top now, but when the age of creativity rises you'll be in trouble." That is my darker, "Mr. Burns" sort of side, which I am working hard to get rid of.

But this morning I was watching the ongoing disaster in the Gulf, and I realized that I had been wrong. There not only is a place for the ardent administrator: they will in fact be in great demand. And none of this changes that the fundamental economic driver of the 21st century will be innovation and commercialized creativity.

Most industrial disasters, big and small, are not a result of bad planning. And they are not a result of bad leadership (except where that leadership diminishes the value and role of the administrator, as we shall soon see). The plans are usually in place, and the leaders say the right things about making sure that people do the right thing. What happens is that the role of the administrator becomes secondary to meeting some other deadline or objective. The administrator (including inspectors and other bureaucrats) will prophecy doom but be roundly ignored.

The present calamity in the Gulf is a perfect example. Bits of rubber coming up with the mud was a pretty clear signal that the BOP was not going to function as required. But the rig had a good safety record to that time, and BP had to get the rig capped to move to the next drill site. So the people who pointed out that things should be slowed down and precautions taken were ignored as being to sensitive to risk. Had they been listened to we would likely not have the disaster we now all face.

Administrators will continue to be overly sensitive to risk, and will often fail to update their models and analysis to add real value (rather than just prevent all the innumerable bad possibilities from occurring). But in a time of increasing complexity due to technological advancement and economic interdependence, the value of the inspector is growing.

The struggle between the forces of innovation and the forces of inspection will therefore rage, and this is a good thing. We will of course be left with a greater need for mediators, translators and integrators, those who can see the point of both side and effectively create solutions that answer the needs of both sides (the genius of the "and"). The role of leadership will change to value this role over the knee-jerk expectation for bold visions and calls to action. Perhaps this will be as important as systems architecture and translator. A thought for a future post perhaps.

But what excites me most is that all those people who want to be told what to do, who want to enforce rather than create and who see their purpose as safeguarding against disaster; those people are a key part of the future economic landscape. In fact their wages can rise and their conservative worldview can find a comfortable place in the unpredictable creativity of the future. They are the yang to the creative yin, both of which are needed to bring the system into harmony. That leaves me feeling even more optimistic about the future, and that's a nice way to feel on a beautiful Saturday morning.

Looking for a Good Recruiter

Note: I am frequently at odds with myself over posting something such as the following. I count many friends in the world of recruiting, all of them dedicated professionals who care about the value they deliver. And yet I can't help but feel that our profession is at a crossroads that many are ill-equipped to face, no less capitalize upon. It is my hope that these postings help prepare us all for our likely future.

The Clearview Collection (the name of the group of bloggers over at Glassdoor of whom I count myself fortunate to be a part) is primarily targeting candidates rather than recruiters. My purpose for the most part is to get candidates to take control of their careers, building on the theme of Brand Talent. My post this past week over at Glassdoor explained how a candidate can evaluate whether a recruiter is worth an investment of time. 

I started out writing on Glassdoor as a way to connect with candidates, to understand what they are thinking and feeling and to offer my meager advice about how best to take advantage of the changing world of work. But a funny thing happened on the way to that objective: my posts have become a Trojan Horse enterprise, sneaking better candidates into the world of the recruiter. I found myself believing that raising the candidate's game may be the only way to get recruiters to confront the realities of their changing industry.

From where I sit, the millions of hours and dollars that have gone into providing recruiters with improved tools and processes have largely been worthless or wasted. It is not that all the work and advice is without value. It is that the value is not keeping pace with what the market needs.

Imagine if Chevrolet started marketing a car that they trumpeted as "every bit as good as the 1955 Corvette." The 55 Vet is a classic. Compared to a Model T, it was a huge improvement in transportation capability and value. But consumers today are faced with higher gas prices, faster travel speeds, more populated roads and longer average commutes. Therefore the average consumer doesn't pine away for an equivalent of a car that is 54 years old. They require high-mileage, trouble-free vehicles that has creature comforts that make the long suburban commutes bearable.

My latest post over at Glassdoor talks about four things that good recruiters look for in a candidate: business focus, problem solving, agility and purpose. Continuing with the car analogy, this is what I would expect from a recruiting Camry. This is what I believe the average business buyer demands. Nothing fancy. Just the basics. Unfortunately I would have to equate that level of capability to a recruiting Rolls Royce. The recruiting Camry isn't functionally superior to the Model T.

I base this conclusion on my own experience, not on the scientific method. I know of only two recruiters that even attempt to evaluate candidates for their abilities I listed in the post. It is not that they are incapable of doing so. It is that recruiters are caught between two worlds: what they were taught and what is needed.

What recruiters were taught is that hiring manager satisfaction is their number one priority (of course this is a generous assessment - there are many people who believe that recruiters continue to be taught about various tricks for putting butts in seats, many of which do no credit to the profession). The implicit assumption behind this teaching is that hiring managers are wise buyers of recruiting services. And I guess if you are a third-party recruiter you have to assume that whoever is signing the checks knows what they are doing. But if you are a corporate recruiter, you exist for the benefit of the business (rule 18), not the benefit of the hiring manager. The implicit assumption is that the hiring manager really knows how to best attract, engage and optimize talent. That is patently untrue.

Most hiring managers are too busy to understand the depth of their ignorance in the area of talent. They fail to understand the potential value of talent to their organization at the same time they over-estimate the risks of not homogenizing and controlling their teams. They write poor specifications, fail to understand biases that hurt their operational effectiveness, employ sub-optimal hiring processes that hurt organization productivity, evaluate risk improperly and fail to learn from previous hiring failures. This is the customer for recruiting services: march to their tune at your own peril.

This is the recruiting Camry: recruiters blindly accept job descriptions that are thrown their way by harried and distracted hiring managers, scanning resumes for keywords that they don't understand, eliminating candidates based on the "don't fit" criteria that they can't explain, and treating candidates like cattle. And this is not just in the trenches - I run into a lot of executive and retained search specialist who exhibit the same behaviors.

The entire system of recruiting (recruiters, candidates, management, consultants, specialists and hiring managers) continues to reinforce these behaviors even though they add little value. Woe be to the recruiter who dares challenge a hiring manager, or demands that a candidate stop bs'ing them and answer some questions directly. I am not saying that the needs of tomorrow are easy. But the problem remains: a recruiter who merely responds to quixotic requests from ignorant customers is bound to be automated or outsourced.

The standard retort to this indictment is that I don't really understand recruiting. I am glibly told that transactional recruiters will always be in demand because those same harried managers don't want to have to deal with talent problems themselves. The recruiter may not be doing brain surgery, but what they are doing is valued. The people who say these things are dangerously mistaken.

At the turn of the 19th century there were more people employed as household servants than as almost any other profession except farm laborers. The advent of household self-service destroyed the domestic help industry. Technological advancement always displaces work. Today I type my own memos, book my own meetings, arrange for conference rooms, book my own travel and manage a budget. How many of those tasks do you think were done by executives in the early 70's?

Transactional recruiting is a costly luxury. As costs continue to be eradicated more work will continue to be pushed from specialist (i.e. recruiters) to internal clients (i.e. hiring managers). The same trend that reduced the steno pool to a distant memory and that demolished the number of secretaries and AP clerks to just what is necessary to manage the work that hasn't yet been automated will inexorably reduce the role of the transactional recruiter. The technology exists to make this a reality today, but the corporate will required to force hiring managers to take the load has not widely existed. That is changing as companies look to deeper cost control as a competitive advantage. And that is the reason that what recruiters were taught and what is needed is growing into an ever widening gap.

But all is not lost. There is still a huge market opportunity for talent services. The changing world of work is challenging hiring managers too. Good hiring managers understand that just as manufacturing needed to bring in supply chain, robotics and computer control specialists to increase throughput, most hiring managers will need to bring in talent specialists to provide the capabilities needed to redefine who specifications are created, talent sourced and engaged, people motivated and organizations formed.

The two recruiters I mention above are already delivering this service. They force their clients to be clear about their desired business objectives, require that inefficient and ineffective talent practices be modified, challenge bad specifications based on their deep knowledge of the industry, the company and the businesses needs. They operate as true consultants, winning the trust of their clients so that when they have to deliver the hard news the client is open to change.

These recruiters usually don't have direct candidate relationships, because they know that this is increasingly the role of the corporate sourcer and the hiring manager themselves. Instead they are the translator of the businesses objectives into talent specifications, practices and processes that can be implemented, measured and improved upon rapidly. They don't just own the client relationship - they own the client's success. They take accountability for failure to make the numbers. In short, they are an integral part of the business. They are the ones who are truly at the fabled table.

And now to the punchline: Dolby is looking for someone to be the talent consultant for the sales and marketing organization. Put another way: I am looking for a good recruiter. Do you know of any? Would you be willing to loudly proclaim their existence in the comments section of this post, quickly desrcibing how this rare individual has already been delivering the next generation services that are described above? Or, if you are too shy for that public display, would you be willing to send me an email at [email protected] with your narrative and link to your public profile? And if you are in the market for a talent consultant, know what they are and how to use them, please let me know that as well. Creating a market for this higher-value recruiting is the best possible way to ensure the longevity of the profession.

A Welcoming Community

Being welcomed back to a community is a wonderful experience. Colin Kingsbury calling me "John" aside (it's my middle name, so I guess it makes sense), the many people who have reached out to congratulate me on my new position and to welcome me back into the recruiting world have warmed my heart.

Ami Givertz, one of the many friends I made over the last 4+ years of blogging, writing and speaking, asked me the following question via Facebook:

If I was asked what is the motivation behind your rekindling of Talentism is what would be the best answer?

To which I respond: 68 Posts !

As I said in that post (oh so long ago):

But the secret to participating in the creative economy ...is that I have to pay in advance, before I ever get anything in return. And the market that I am paying ...sits in silent witness to my authenticity, commitment and competence. Because each of the participants in my market is seeking the same things I am. Those customers can’t evaluate whether I am worth adding to their market if I am not trustworthy, consistent, and valuable. (In talent markets value gets discounted heavily for lying and flaking out.)

So what is my motivation? To reconnect to the community I worked so hard to engage those many years ago, and through that reconnection fuel my passion for innovating and making a difference through the world of talent.

Why now? That will be the subject for another post at another time.

Thanks again to everyone. Onboarding to a new position is my focus for the next month, but I will try to post as often as possible to answer questions. Hopefully, at some point in the near future, I will have regained credibility with the community and be able to start having some interesting discussions about how to make the 20 rules a reality.

28

Business does not exist in a vacuum. So while my purpose may be to build better businesses on a better business and economic model, there is no part of how businesses exist in a larger ecosystem that isn't worth examining. Take the education system for example. It's not just that the modern western education system is destroying something of incredible value to the businesses of the future (imginiation and curiosity), it is also that the system is creating massive structural inequalities that will eventually shrink potnetial markets for goods and services. Our education system is driving a massive wedge between the upper and lower classes in America, splitting the middle class between those willing to mortgage their futures to get into the right school district and those who either can’t afford, or think it is imprudent, to take that kind of risk. The fault line that is being created by a lack of corporate recruiting competence is leaving the poor completely behind. They can’t afford to move into the right school districts, to get access to an education and supportive peer group that will ensure that they will get into the right college so that they can get the right job. And since the poor are disproportionately people of color, the corporate system is blasting away at it’s foot in two ways: first, by ensuring that the possible pool of talent it can draw from is always scarce and reinforcing behaviors that are antithetical to sustaintable advantage in the creative age, and second, because diversity of background, opinion, perspective and thought are critical to the creative process. But since corporations are ensuring that every nervous parent in America is obsessed with homogenizing the unique perspectives, thoughts, opinions and backgrounds from their kids as they move in droves to exclusive gated communities, the talent pool needed to sustain competitive advantage is shrinking at a rate that is inversely proportional to the overall value of talent to the enterprise. That’s right: the corporate system of selection based on experience and education ensures that as the possible talent pool grows due to immigration and globalization, and as the potential value of that pool grows relative to the needs of the organization, that corporations will actually have an ever smaller pool from which to pick.

25

Whether thoughtful or not, conscious or not, the modern western education system acts as if its purpose is to systematize, normalize and homogenize the K-12 education experience. It focuses maniacally on least common denominator proofs of a young person's ability to work at home (homework being an increasing part of most students grades), take standardized tests, commit facts to memory independent of meaning or context, dissect problems into component parts that an outside expert has already validated and ensure that behaviors that are celebrated in most creative institutions are crushed and burned early. All of this is being coupled with an insane drive on the part of parents to have their children do more homework, take more standardized test and get homogenized even further. Desperate to find validation in a complex world that seems to change its theories regularly about what constitutes good parenting, parents are only too dutifully running to take all the guess work out of education. 10 = 10, and that’s good enough for them.

22

The night after my social experiment with the sure and senseless band teenagers my wife reminded me that I may have an especially jaundiced view of those fine little fellows, as the entitlement mentality of the average American is a sure way to send me over the edge. Perhaps I was just being too hard on them, all evidence to the contrary. But my thoughts were reinforced the next day as I was talking to one of the fellow chaperons who I had met on the trip. It turns out that he was a software engineering executive at a mid-sized corporation. He laughed and said “We are all in big trouble. The same thing happened to me. But it’s worse than that. I can find lots of kids to hire these days, kids that come from fancy universities and have great degrees, but they are almost completely incapable of solving problems outside of a narrow band of well defined issues. Against the advice of my recruiting department I have started looking at second-tier schools where I can find kids who didn’t always get the best grades but know how to achieve an objective and make something happen. These kids that come from privilege just can’t seem to add value.”

Who Are You Going to Blame When Your Straight "A" Student Doesn't Do Well?

The Corporate Executive Board is one of the most respected business think tanks in the world. The Corporate Leadership Council is the arm of the CEB that deals with HR issues. In 2005 the CLC conducted a study called "Realizing the Full Potential of Rising Talent: A Quantitative Analysis of the Identification and Development of High-Potential Employees". While the study is only available to CLC members, it should be required reading for every educator, academic and business person.

The study is long and contains much interesting information. For instance, the survey behind the study found that 78% of CFO’s were focusing on revenue growth over cost control. At the same time, the study found that 74% of respondents to the survey indicated that “skill / leadership gaps have a negative impact on product innovation.” A Chief Human Resources Officer in the study is quoted as saying that the skills gap is troubling because:

“These are the people we will call upon to lead us to stronger business performance over the years to come. They will launch new businesses, they will find new ways to strip out costs, they will build better customer relationships, and they will drive innovation. Really, the future of the organization is in their hands.”

The study went on to say that “Employee potential grows when employees are pushed outside their comfort zones in news, personal (and at times painful) ways.” The study examined which of these "growing experiences" had the most beneficial impact on the employee’s ability to grow. 22 factors were sited. Of those, only 4 were factors that are learned or reinforced in education institutions:

• Using specialized skills for daily tasks
• Engaging in business forecasting or planning
• Understanding markets, competitors or customers
• Designing new products (which I would argue is actually a creative exercise)

Only one of those factors ("Using specialized skills for daily tasks") makes into the top five (number 5, actually).

And the top three experiences that have the highest impact on employee growth?

• Modifying work to adapt to changing circumstances
• Creatively solve problems
• Persuading senior managers to take different actions

All three of these capabilities are actively and purposefully destroyed in K-12 education. Students are penalized for changing assignments with diminished grades (as my previous example about my son’s homework shows), penalized for solving problems in new ways (try telling a math teacher that you got the right answer by solving the problem in a different way and see what reaction you get), and teachers almost always discourage students from engaging with them openly about things that could be done differently in the classroom.

So let me frame this for you directly:

The Corporate Leadership Council asks it’s members (which include most of the Fortune 500) "What is important to your business?"

The members overwhelmingly say “Growth.”

The CLC then asks its members “What’s stopping you from growing?"

The members overwhelmingly reply “Lack of people who can innovate.”

The CLC then asks “What experiences would help the people who you most rely on (your high potential employees) to grow so that they could help you innovate?"

The members reply “Unlearning what they learn in school.”

Most kids show up to school creative, curious and brave. Most kids leave school programmed and afraid. As a parent you might be able to rationalize this destruction if it helped your kid live a healthier, happier and more productive life. But as this shows, it doesn't. It actually does just the opposite: if your kid is getting straight A's there’s a good chance they won't be a high potential in a world that demands innovative approaches and innovative thinking.

Think about that the next time you tell your kid the only thing that is important is getting good grades. Who are you going to blame when they eventually get bad reviews at work?

What Does “Good” Mean, Anyway?

I am a big  fan of Dr. Steve Hunt. One of the most fascinating and wide ranging discussions I ever had about the world of talent was with Steve as we traveled to a lunch together. Steve is very bright and a deep thinker about most things near and dear to my heart.

So I read Steve’s article this morning over at ERE with great interest. I generally agree with his basic assertion that “hiring the wrong person is worse than hiring no person at all” (depending on whether the position is efficiency or effectiveness focused). But I am still left with the most fundamental question: what does the wrong person mean?

As I have discussed before, “good” and “bad” are terms that reference quality. (If you have a spare moment, read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and then read the Wikipedia entry on quality for two different takes on this fascinating topic.) Quality is defined by the scope and frequency of variation to a specification. So I have to assume that when people talk about a “bad hire” they are saying “I hired against a specific description and the person ended up not meeting that specification.”

If you have worked in a company for any length of time you know that the truth is more often “we really didn’t know what we needed, so we hired the perfect person, but not for this job.” Most bad hiring decisions have little to do with candidate misrepresentation or salesmanship, nor do bad assessments generally lead to bad hires. The problem is almost always a bad specification. And that means that Steve should be saying “Not knowing what the hell you want is worse than making any hiring decision whatsoever, right or wrong.”

“Back that up!” you say in alarm. Love to.

The Corporate Leadership Council conducted an extensive study of the hiring of executives. Executive hiring is instructive because most companies will wait to hire the right executive rather than just fill the seat and hope the investors look the other way when it goes wrong. There can be little dispute that more time and effort goes into the average executive hire (either an outside or inside placement) than the average mid or junior level position.

The CLC survey covered member companies such as HP, First Data, Nestle, Pepsico and RBC Financial: all companies known to think more progressively about HR practices than your run-of-the-mill company. So how did companies such as those feel about executive hiring? 59% of the survey respondents said that “Failure of externally hired executives” was a “significant problem”, with another 17% saying it was a “moderate problem.” Only 24% of the respondents said it wasn’t a problem at all.

So much for external hiring. What about internal promotion as an alternative? 50% of the respondents said that “failure of internally promoted executives” was a “significant problem”, with another 25% saying it was a “moderate problem.”

Later in the same study there is a quote that drives it home. A VP of HR for a manufacturing firm, commenting on the efficacy of their internal high potential program says:

We select our high-potential employees based on performance out of practicality—it’s the only measure that our managers trust. But it’s not sufficient. The success rate of our HIPOs might be 50% at best. Managers are beginning to recognize that the link between performance and potential is incomplete, but until we find something with greater accuracy managers will continue to use it.”

In other words – pick anybody and flip a coin. You’re success rate will be roughly the same as wasting everyone’s time and a lot of money ensuring that you get the “right” candidate. We can’t seem to reliably pick external candidates even when the vetting process is exhaustive and we are willing to spend a lot of money to get the right person. We can’t seem to reliably pick internal candidates even after we have watched them work in the same culture, in the same company, as the new opportunity.

For all the process work and lean staffing and other initiatives which make valid claims to reduce waste in the talent supply-chain, the dirty little secret is that we have bad specifications. And given that our spec is wrong, talking about good and bad hires is largely an exercise in futility. We need better specifications.

(I hope that Steve will still let me buy him a drink when I see him in Boston in a couple of weeks.)

(Quote and data from “Realizing the Full Potential of Rising Talent (Volume 1): A Quantitative Analysis of the Identification and Development of High-Potential Employees” published by the Corporate Leadership Council in 2005)