Montana Memories

On The Montana Trail!

I hit the trail the end of last month – The Montana Trail, that is.  It was part of the State of Montana’s annual HR conference.  Actually, it was just part of the workshop I did on Role-Based Assessment and the CHI Indicators.  The Montana Trail is a group experience designed to help a large group of people quantify the value of a Role-diverse, coherent team.

The Sheriffs of The Montana Trail

The most exciting part, for me, was finally meeting the team that’s been using Role-Based Assessment to drive change through their state.  Now keep in mind that not only does this state have a visionary Governor but they are also one of the very few states that is gaining in jobs, not losing them.  So you know they’re doing something right and they have the stamina to keep driving till they get everyone home safe from the trail drive.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

With very little preparation from me, the Sheriffs – AKA the HR team -  jumped right in and made the game theirs.  They got their ten gallon hats, found a cowbell for me to call the rounds with, made sure I had pictures to show at the office (and here!), and, in general, made me feel as if I’d known them forever.  (That means a lot to this former New Yorker.)

But I shouldn’t be surprised.  That’s what coherent teams do.

The Intern Diaries: The Beginning of the End

I agreed to expanding our internship program without too many expectations.  After all, even though they had the RBA results that predicted they would be successful to varying degrees, they are still in college, with no experience to speak of.  Well, I am now convinced more than ever that giving people with potential a chance – and giving them the Role-appropriate challenges to meet – is a better strategy than bringing people on with fat resumes but nothing else.

The interns are beginning to leave and on their last day they have decided to make presentations to us, and their fellow interns, on what they accomplished and what they learned.

Crystal was the first to leave this week.  She’s going to visit family in China.  She had been the last to join us, a week after the others, so she had the shortest time.  But oh did she ever use it well!  She presented market research on one of our ’skunkworks’ projects complete with data, analysis, suggestions – better than marketing presentations I’ve seen from senior executives.  But no wonder – as a strong Action Former who is also capable of being a Vision Mover, she is a powerhouse at any age !  And she learned enough about herself to be very clear on her entry level career goal – product management.

She was closely followed by Lindsay, now on her way back to Texas.  Since Lindsay is primarily a Communicator, I suggested to her that she just do an informal verbal presentation.  So I was surprised when she showed up with a PowerPoint.  Turns out while she didn’t think she had done much, when she started listing what she’d actually accomplished, she felt it would work better to do some writing.  I laughed.  Communicators are often thought of as lazy because they like to talk.  Even they can think of themselves that way.  But oh my, was she ever convinced as page after page of her accomplishments filled the screen.  Let’s just say the Social Marketing Optimization is in her future, whether she stays in her psychology major or not.

Best of all, while it is the beginning of the end of internship, it is not even the end of the beginning of these wonderful relationships!

The Intern Diaries: Week Six

What a week!  All six interns are now Certified Role-Based Assessment Consultants!  Week six and they are more than just onboarded – they’re integrated into our life, as a team and as the individuals that they are.

There was an article in the paper this morning advising workers to ‘brand’ themselves to make themselves layoff-proof.  Not a bad idea but it happens naturally when you, the management,  (a) know people’s Role,  (b) recognize and respect them for it, and (c) don’t force them into tasks they aren’t suited for and, therefore, dislike.

So herewith are their brands, at least as I see it:

Tristan is the techno-suit.  All the nerd stuff and he still dresses for success!

Rebecca is the journalista.  Give her an idea and she turns it into a piece of writing that fits the column width!

Kyle is the ‘give-it-to-me-I’ll-get-it-done’ guy.  I need it, I get it – does it get any better?

Crystal is the campaign planner.  Her favorite place is the conference room, favorite tool is the conference room whiteboard!

Kartik is the organizer.  And re-organizer.  If there is an efficiency to be had, he advocates for it!

And Lindsay is the deal broker.  She knows what’s going on and she knows where we want it to go, so she figures out how to make the contact happen!

Maybe I should have titled this ‘Six Weeks, Six Brands’.  I didn’t know how long it would actually take, given that they are new to the business environment,  but this is just about average for Coherent hires who are given Role-appropriate work scopes.

I’ve said it before: hire for Role and Coherence and you’ll get productuvity and teamwork.

The Place of Experience in Hiring Decisions

Sometimes someone in a group email discussion says something so well, you have to wonder why they haven’t been blogging about it.  Mark Talaba, blogger at Talabesian-Coordinates had this to contribute on the issue of experience as an indicator in hiring decisions:

“Some people – in the process of acquiring experience – have made lot of other people miserable, and have caused teams to underperform.  Such persons may yet have a ‘history of success’ – but as success can arise from many factors, not the least of which is a team’s ability to perform despite handicaps, even successful exploits are not a reliable indicator.

“One real tragedy of making “experience” a primary indicator in hiring decisions is that, during the past 20 years, there has been such fluidity in the job market that some really bad team players have had the opportunity to turn a series of short-term jobs (which used to be a red flag) into an enticing story of “broad-based experience.”  (A good topic for some investigative reporting!)

“As the concept of Coherent Human Infrastructure takes root, and as organizations come to realize that Coherence and Role are the ‘missing pieces’ of the Quality-of-Hire/Talent Management puzzle, I believe that demand for a pre-hire assessment of ‘teaming characteristics’ will grow exponentially.”

I have to agree.  It’s pretty well known in entrepreneur circles that many of the CEOs who’ve failed in that job a few times are more desirable recruits than the virgins, at least to less Coherent VCs.  In contrast, the interns, collectively, have virtually no experience.  It’s their teaming and their Coherency that make them so amazingly productive.  (Another episode of The Intern Diaries will be here shortly…)

The Intern Diaries: Week Four

Around the fourth day after Mr. Sperm meets Miss Egg, differentiation begins.  (If you slept through high school biology, differentiation is when cells start to get specialized.)

Ok, biology lesson is over.  I was just mulling over how week four of the Interns could be subtitled, The Week of Differentiation.  It isn’t that they weren’t fully formed individuals when they arrived.  It’s how we see them and assign work to them that’s undergone some subtle changes.

Lindsay is continuing to work on social marketing optimization because she’s a star Communicator.  Not surprising.  This line from her Role-Based Assessment pretty well covers why I wanted her for this project:

She will quickly make contacts throughout the organization and get to know almost everyone. She is especially cooperative and will also try to do almost anything she is asked to do. Her focus is on interpersonal interaction and trying to get everyone to work together harmoniously. She won’t do this by direct means but by attempting to broker the arrangements that bring people together in a positive manner. As a result, she is likely to be respected by those she has contact with.

But we needed to get the database cleaned up so despite the fact that she also had this in her report: “She will not want to do organizational tasks…”, there she was in the conference room with some others, working on exactly that task, with music emanating from someone’s laptop, a pile of snacks, and the sunniest of good natures.

Meanwhile, Kartik, the Action Former, whose report included the following, managed to reorganize, clean up, and optimize my consultant certification files.  Here’s Kartik in a nutshell:

This candidate is the type of employee who can be found in the front of the group with marker in hand, developing a list of things that need to be done or important points or assignments. He is the consummate organizer. The key is that he does not organize for the present but as a way of getting things ready for the future. His style is one of handling many things simultaneously. He believes that multi-tasking in a rapidly evolving environment is essential to keep on top of everything.

The others too have their unique qualities and it’s amazing how much more productive they are when we recognize them, give them work they enjoy, and celebrate the results.

It just makes good business sense.

Happy ending: Lindsay has a project beginning Monday that is totally about communicating with people, while Kartik will get a great new organization project!

The Quadruple Bottom Line

A customer sent me an email after my last post, A Family is a Team, saying it was “good to confirm my belief that your research and work is grounded in an understanding of human relations, not just work relations.”  Got me thinking about the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ – often expressed as ‘people, planet, profit’.  It’s a great idea, that you can put human capital and your ecological footprint on your balance sheet.  But he’s got me thinking that this doesn’t go far enough.

The operative word is relations.

When Triple Bottom Liners calculate the value of people, they do things like count their graduate degrees.  Ok, it’s a start but, really, a lot of overeducated people don’t bring more value to most enterprises, especially the ones who think it makes them better than other people.

Relations.  That’s the operative word.

Until we understand what happens when people relate – how they create synergetic value – and how to measure it, we’ll continue to ignore the wellspring of corporate creativity and never know when it’s running dry and what to do about it.

Why do we tolerate unproductive relationships at work when we don’t tolerate them at home?

A Family is a Team

My uncle Phil passed away late Monday night and today was his funeral.  He was around 93 or 4 as far as I can calculate.  As we gathered at the cemetery, it was eerily reminiscent of a virtual team team coming together for some face time.  Some people see a lot of each other, some are only seen at the obligatory times of life transitions.  And some stay in the shadows and are never seen.  One is the subject of brief discussion.  No one’s heard from him in years and no one seems to miss his presence.  No, I think, it’s exactly like a team.  You don’t get to choose your relatives and, most of the time, you don’t get to choose your team.   You work with what you have, respect each for who they are, and try your best to do what needs to be done.

Phil went to work every day, selling fur coats in New York City, well past his 90th birthday.  After Jeanette, my aunt and his life partner of over 50 years, died, age caught up with him.  A leg infection finally stopped him from taking the subway from Forest Hills every day. It was at that point that I realized we had more in common than family.  We were hidebound entrepreneurs that had no intention of ever hanging up our boots.  But now he was resigned to moving in with his daughter and her husband.  They took him to work with them – they run a small clothing shop – but there isn’t room on a team for two who want to do the same thing.  Especially when one has no industry experience and flagging energy.

So I’d call him when I was on the street in Philadelphia, walking from home to office to appointments, whenever I had a few minutes. We talked about business – mostly his – since in both our minds he would soon return to it and market intelligence would be vital to his commercial success.    My inputs were limited, but appreciated – the first day it was cold enough for people to wear fur, what the Walnut Street furrier was showing in his window, what the fur protesters were saying.  It was a way of staying in the game – being on the team.

Today we celebrated his place on our family team, we of rapidly declining numbers.  Among the mourners was a young man I didn’t remember.  But I recognized his name: Phil’s employer of many years, Neustadter Furs.

A work team becomes family.  It can be difficult to tell where one starts and one leaves off.

Right Size, Right Fit

If people are what make business work, why are they getting laid off while companies fail to cut back on other, presumably less important things?

As CEO, should you keep the corporate jet, continue to fly first class or bite the bullet and go coach?

What is the sound of one stock dropping?

Ah, modern day koans.  There is no one right answer.

But apparently there is a “right size” for organizations, determined more, it seems, by the state of the economy than their – and their customers’ – needs.

I would venture that “right size” is not a very useful concept until you marry it to “right fit”.

One team of “right fit” people can do the work of an army of those who would rather be someplace else, even though they have the skills, abilities and resumes that get them hired.

What does a right fit team look like?

Come visit us.

Giving thanks

It’s been a year of new products, new markets, new customers, new networking contacts. All of those are dependent on people, so it’s people I’m most thankful for. I hope you are too. Or at least if you are thankful for your new toys you’ll realize that it’s people that make you having them possible.

To all my people – the TGI team, the people who aren’t formally on the team but are part of it nonetheless, the people who will be part in the future – I hope you’re celebrating the holiday with people who you really appreciate and who really appreciate you. You deserve it and if they are smart enough to have gotten a seat at your table, so do they.

And now I will tear myself away from work and go join those at the table that invited me today!