Sharing Ideas = Value

How do you view Talent? How do you see it contribute value through ideas? 

A recent post described how the Clinton campaign claimed Obama copied her “second stimulus” package, calling for a $30 billion package after she did. Obvious political maneuvering aside, this strikes as having a very “fixed mindset” perspective on the value of ideas. Is the idea itself really the thing of value, and just how much does it reflect the ability of a staff that decides to propose it? What we can do is look at this and reflect on how we view (and treat) ideas inside our organization, and what impact that has on how well we create value through Talent. 

Do you see Talent as largely a “fixed and invariant” quality in people? Or do you see that while people can have different strengths (and weaknesses), Talent is not completely fixed or determined and can be influenced by factors such as motivation, experience, management, and leadership? Check out Chapter 4 of Pfeffer and Sutton’s “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, & Total Nonsense” if you aren’t sure. Viewing Talent as a fixed quality originates from, and perpetuates, a “fixed mindset” in the organization vs. a “growth mindset.” One result is that people in that kind of organization have no incentive to contribute in the open sharing and collaboration of ideas; the downside is simply too great. A fixed mindset organization sees only the ideas as the unit of value, which in turn originate but are separate from the minds that brought them forth, and that the goal is to extract as many of them as possible that can be successfully transformed into profitable pursuits. Most measurements in that environment are around how much knowledge a person has, how many ideas they’ve come with, etc. People quickly learn to not share knowledge or ideas with others (i.e. the competition that copies your ideas), but instead fight for as many resources as possible to turn their ideas and knowledge into value before someone else does. This kind of culture breeds fear; fear of failure because that means less likelihood of obtaining future resources. 

A growth mindset organization recognizes that through everyone’s contribution, not hoarding, of knowledge and ideas does the maximum value get created. This doesn’t mean all ideas are equal in value and it doesn’t mean all ideas get the resources to move forward. Instead, the incentives are such that all contribution is recognized and performance is measured more on how a person collaborates with others to find and promote the ideas that hold the most promise for creating value. The notion of “copying ideas” just doesn’t factor in. Instead, it’s about turning knowledge and ideas into action. True, there will still be disagreements and competition for resources, but the open exchange and development of ideas are rewarded. In many cases, ideas will start from anywhere, possibly change the way people look at things, and trigger input from a diverse and informed set of supportive coworkers. Then, through discussion, experimentation, and testing, they will get developed and transformed into a sustainable competitive advantage for the company. In addition, a growth mindset organization sees there is value even in failure because something is learned that results in increased understanding. Since the failure is not hidden, everyone benefits from the greater understanding. 

Are you recognizing your Talent, wherever it is, for sharing ideas, contributing to their development, and assisting in their successful transformation into action? 

Are you providing the collaborative tools (like wikis, blogs, forums, and networks) to let them share their ideas, comment on other ideas, synthesize ideas, and be recognized for it?

Ode to Fusion Middleware

If you have read any of my prior posts I think it is clear that my praise of Fusion Middleware is not exactly in line with what I might normally be writing about. 

 In fact, I personally define hardware as something I can physically jump on and/or throw at someone vs. software which is usually the reason for why I want to throw the hardware.  So, other then the clue from the name  (I’m guessing it’s in the middle), I’ve not been really clear what “Middleware” has to do with anything I care about.  In fact, when I used the word in conversation with some non-tech friends, they had that pre-school reaction that comes with learning new words that sound funny; namely they laughed and tried to fit the word “Middleware” into every sentence for the next few hours.  Not far off the review from this WSJ article commenting on how no one outside of tech really understands what we are talking about. 

In the last few weeks I’ve been having a bit of epiphany as to why Fusion Middleware is really cool and why I care.   Of course, as the name implies, Fusion middleware is part of the core techstack we are using to build our Fusion Applications.   In recent weeks, we have been collaborating with the WebCenter team to bring forward their functionality to the best leverage for our customers and I was instantly reminded why I decided to join PSFT and then ORCL. 

1. First, I love working with smart people.  I find a lot of energy and enthusiasm working with other excited, committed, smart people.
2. Second, I love the B-school concept of an unfair competitive advantage.  The power of the extended development team here at ORCL is staggering. 

Working with the WebCenter teams has reinforced my belief that working with internal teams, that build products for sale in their own right, provides an environment that I find personally engaging and rewarding.   I wonder if that qualifies me as a Happy Cow? 

 If you are using Fusion Middleware products in your environments today, I strongly recommend you give the WebCenter products a look.  They really are the bomb.

Is “High Potential” a label or a mindset?

I just finished reading an excellent book, Mindset by Carol Dweck.  This is one of those crossover books that combines social science with stuff you actually care about.  Similar to The Tipping Point (Sociology) and Freakonomics (Economics), Mindset considers psychology in sports, business, raising kids and more. 

Mindset’s main premise is that some people have a fixed mindset and some have a growth mindset.  In a fixed mindset, people believe that their traits and capabilities are set in stone and cannot be substantially changed (I am smart, I am bad at math, I cannot draw, I am a naturally gifted tennis player).  Meanwhile, those with a growth mindset believe that, by applying effort, they are able to develop abilities over time.  

The consequences of these mindsets are far-reaching.  With the fixed mindset, “talented” individuals must prove themselves over and over and are deathly afraid of failure.  Thus, they tend to stick with things they are already good at and avoid challenges.  However, those with the growth mindset are able to take mistakes and learn from them, believing that they are becoming better, smarter, tougher as a result.   

What struck me most was how easily others (parents, teachers, coaches, business leaders) could instill one mindset or the other merely by the use of labels and the phrasing of praise (“you’re smart” rather than “your effort really paid off.”)

I couldn’t help but draw parallels with the dilemmas of measuring and taking action based on potential.  Let’s consider these common questions:

1.  How do you really measure potential?  Organizations struggle to separate potential from past performance.  It is, of course, impossible to completely separate the two.  But often organizations get stuck in the fixed mindset and performance and potential end up being nearly equivalent.  On the other hand, I have started to see organizations include factors like “change agility” and “capability to grow.”  They are essentially measuring whether the individual has a growth mindset.  Exxcellent.  But, what if, as the book suggests, the business leaders have the ability to teach a growth mindset to all high performing individuals?  Is it really necessary to measure potential at all or do we just need to focus on teaching the mindset?       

2. How transparent do you make potential?  Most organizations do not tell people their potential rating, though they admit that high potentials “sort of know.”  They are given unique opportunites, are assigned to a pool, are offered a mentor, etc.  As a result, many organizations are starting to address the label head on.  The key here is in the communication.  Extrapolating from the book, a label of “high potential” could suddenly thrust a talented individual into a fixed mindset.  This causes the opposite of the desired effect.  Suddenly, all of those chosen for success are fearful of failure and stop growing.  As a result, these organizations are communicating high potential as a temporary indicator of hard work and ongoing development. 

Here’s a message that might work: 

“We’re recognizing your effort to grow and learn.  We will reward that effort by providing you more resources to grow and learn.   If you keep growing and learning, we’ll keep rewarding you.”

The answer is 42

For those familiar with Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, you may recognize the number 42 as “The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything” given by Deep Thought after seven and half million years of computational analysis; and, as I’m sure you will recall, not everyone was happy with the answer. Poor Phouchg (probably the VP of HR) grasped the seriousness of the situation right away, “We’re going to get lynched, aren’t we?” While Loonquawl (I’m guessing he was the CIO) was sure the problem lay with Deep Thought (and by association the software vendor who supplied its programming), “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and half million years’ work?”  But the problem, as Deep Thought explains, was not with the answer: “I checked it very thoroughly and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quiet honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

Like those who were present on the great day of The Answer, many of us look to our software applications to answer the really hard questions around performance, potential, risk-of-loss, and succession. The promise of predictive analytics and the possibilities associated with data mining lead many to the false hope that the answers to these difficult questions lie buried deep within their data warehouses. Many C-level executives believe it is possible to quantify a persons potential or risk-of-loss in the same way a mathematician uses a predefined formula to discover an unknown variable. They long to replace the personal (subjective) aspects of the appraisal process with a dispassionate (objective) analytic tool. But the human experience is anything but objective. Our experiences, relationships, thoughts and feelings are as unique to each of us as our fingerprints; and the practice of measuring qualities like job satisfaction, potential, and performance requires a distinctly human touch.

Now before I get escorted from the building, let me clarify what I’m saying. Well defined competency models, clear organizational goals, and well integrated talent management applications are critical tools, which every manager should utilize, especially those who are new to their role. But managers must not abandon their responsibility in bridging the gap between the objective statistics generated from a data warehouse and the subjective nature of the human experience. As a colleague of mine is fond of saying, “managers need to have some skin in the game.” Calculating and calibrating a person’s performance and potential should be the natural outcome of a manager’s relationship with their employee and not a task to be completed once annually. Manager’s need to provide clear, honest, sincere feedback well before the appraisal period begins. This means meeting regularly with the employee, getting to know them, understanding what they like and dislike about their jobs, and helping them play to their strengths. These are tasks that can only be done by a person. Analytic tools may provide a good starting point for the evaluation, but they cannot replace the relationship between the manager and employee; because it is the manager, and not the application, who will understand that getting the right answer means asking the right question.

My social software success story

It just occurred to me.  I am not as new to social software as I thought.  I was doing some research earlier this week and came across the Wikipedia definition of social software.    I was originally trying to understand social bookmarking.  I’ll probably come back to talk about that experience in another blog….but the point for today is, I was on one of those random explorations through Wikipedia where you click one thing and then another and the next thing you know you are reading about the philosophy of artificial intelligence.  Hmmm, interesting but not why I came here.  And now it strikes me that the social bookmarking may be helpful when I start losing my place, huh? OK yes, like I said, that’s for another blog.

Anyway during this particular stroll through Wikipedia, I came across a  list of social software.  And there I saw it: match.com.   Match.com would’ve been my first foray into social software, I suppose. The year was 2003.  I decided to join just to see what would happen.  My first obstacle was uploading a picture of myself since I didn’t own a camera, let alone a digital one.  I finally decided to use one that my colleague (and Meg’s fashion consultant) had posted from the PeopleSoft User Conference.  Yes, a photo of me standing in the Meet-the-Experts booth with the dorky red “experts” shirt.  Of course I cropped out the actual booth, but still.  It’s a bit sad that the only picture of me is while I am at work, isn’t it?  And thus the reason I had turned to match.com in the first place!

And then I had to write a profile.  Torture!  I think I write the most boring self-descriptions known to man.  Though maybe I need more interesting subject-matter.  In any case, it was a rather drab, yet truthful, description of myself that I posted that day. So for a couple of weeks I fielded some messages from various guys (most of whom were just blindly messaging everyone).  Spelling was atrocious!  I’m sorry but I weeded out a lot of them for using horrible spelling and punctuation.  I mean, if you are going to cut/paste the same lame message to every girl in a 20 mile radius at least do a spell-check on it first.  And take the time to capitalize “I”. 

For my part, I was still a bit clueless on the whole message exchange process.  The messages were sent ‘blind’ but I kept messing up and replying directly, thereby revealing my true email address.  Most guys were pretty cool and pretended not to notice. Hey at least I can spell.  But I guess I established my inability to quickly master social software right from that first experience. So, one day a brief email came in from a cute guy with good spelling.  He thought it was interesting that I developed software for a living. (Again I am a dork.  What kind of a profile is THAT to attract guys?!? Didn’t I learn in college that you never reveal you major in Computer Science in social settings?  Unless it’s Triangle Fraternity.  Those guys were always cool with it. ). 

The guy-with-good-spelling and I wrote back and forth for a week and then he asked if I wanted to meet. I think he was just growing tired of my meandering emails as I’m sure you readers can relate. After my initial panic: meet!?!   So soon?  Well OK, I agreed.  I got to pick the date.  I shot down March 17^th because I didn’t want to forever ruin St Patrick’s Day if he was an idiot.  I settled on March 20^th.   We met at the local BW3s, a sports bar, where March Madness was underway, as well as the first shots of the Iraq War, which we assumed would be brief in it’s duration. We talked for a few hours, we ended up dating for awhile….

Five years later, he and I still connect online from time to time.  Just the other day I contacted him on video chat.  He was in the kitchen and I was upstairs in my office.  Just checking in with my husband to see how things are going in the lower half of the house.  Yes, that cute guy with the good spelling that I met five years ago is now my husband.  And I owe it all to social software.

Sweet on March Madness

 I grew up on basketball.  My mom went into labor at a University of Minnesota basketball game.  I not only attended every Canisius College home game as a kid, I wore blue and gold, I knew what a “Griffin” was and I got autographs from the (very embarrassed) team. 

March was always bittersweet.  I watched hopefully as Canisius lost in the conference championship or in the play-offs.  I watched as other teams in the conference, powerhouses such as Northeastern and Siena, went on to the “big show.”  When I was a teenager, I found myself “adopting” other teams – Syracuse, who I saw play Canisius once a year (they were so shiny in their orange brilliance!) and Duke, whose star player was from Buffalo.

By the time I went to Cornell, I had given up on the idea of my team participating in March Madness.  Well, the angels are singing!  Sure, I might need to adopt Tennessee (because my Grandma used to live there) in a few days … but for now, I’m all about Cornell!

How did Cornell do it?  Ivy leagues can’t hire talent (no scholarships) and it certainly didn’t have a legacy program.  Well, it appears that they’ve taken Mark’s messages to heart and focused on differentiating themselves on something they could impact – shooting, and particularly shooting 3-pointers.  How will this strategy fare against a couple of 7 footers and a legacy program?  We’ll be watching …

Sincerely yours

We are always hearing people complain that performance evaluations require a lot of work and always seem to miss the mark. Those of us who are looking to help automate the process absolutely agree that the systems today are too complex and we are, of course, looking to ease that pain point, but even when the paperwork is simple that still wont be enough.

The biggest problem here is not a software problem. Nor is it really the fault of the desire of HR to put down a repeatable system of measurement. Where the process breaks down is, of course, that it often lacks honesty, I mean real honesty.

I like the way Debora Dunn expressed this in the HBR article

“I feel there is no greater disrespect you can do to a person then to let them hang out in a job where they are not respected by their peers, not viewed as successful, and probably losing their self-esteem. To do that under the guise of repsect for people, is, to me, ridiculous.”

Maybe it is just that I have always been well aware of my weaknesses, that I find myself surprised that often people are not aware of where they are strong and where they are weak. I probably have to thank my family who were so quick to provide me with early feedback

You are a crybaby, a snob, a wimp, a bad dresser, a geek, stubbern, opinionated, always think you are right, and so on…

Why is it that our families are able to tell us these things and never have us doubt that they like us anyway. Maybe it is that these kind of phrases were followed up with things like “oh, and can I borrow some money?” I guess when you have mutually assured destruction you build an alliance that transcends brutally honest feedback.

Of course, some of my flaws have softened over time, in fact, I’m pretty sure few really know that I’m a crybaby anymore. I have also managed to build elaborate systems to work around some of my other flaws. For instance, my lack of fashion sense is currently solved by having a style coach and personal shopper on my team. While I didn’t actually post the job description that way, I did change the job requirements based on the skills of the individual.

Still lots of my core flaws remain and have produced quotable feedback items like

“Meg does not suffer fools gladly” or “sometimes a more tactful approach is appropriate”

In fact, as far as I can see there is really only one character flaw that was not first identified by my family. The reason is, that they are to blame. In my family the only way to get a word in any conversation is to quickly jump in during a pause. Turns out, that in the “real” world people see this as interrupting, who knew?

So what is a manager to do here?

1. Realize that honest feedback is not mean, lack of feedback is mean
2. Recognize that feedback is not just constructive. In fact, the best feedback is pointing out those traits that you want to continue. It works with puppy training and it also works with humans. Yes, you heard it here first. Positive feedback works better. Try it.
3. Remind people that they will make more progress if they play to their strengths and get support for their weaknesses. When possible, help move people into roles that play to their strengths.
4. Understand that feedback has the most impact when it is timely. When you observe a behavior that warrants a comment, give it, as soon as you can.
5. Finally, be sincere. Sincere in your motivation about why you are giving feedback and sincere about the content of the feedback you give. If you really care about the people who work for you, then you want to help them. You are not filling out the form because HR is forcing you to, you are providing feedback because you want the person to benefit.

Sincerely.

Helping happy cows stay happy

I can’t vouch for the science behind the Happy Cow theory but their commercials do make me smile. Over the past couple of weeks there have been some great discussions around the benefits of employee mobility. Amy, Meg and Mark have waxed eloquent on the advantages of allowing an employee to move up via promotion or move on by finding a new role in the organization. Sometimes though, the employee is already in the right job and keeping them engaged and successful (read happy) means helping them grow where they are, to cultivate new skills within their current position.

Over the past year I’ve been struggling with the question of whether I’m still in the right role or even on the right career path. I’ve been working in the software industry for more than ten years now, but this wasn’t actually part of the plan. Life is funny that way. Most of us have a pretty good idea of what we want to do after we finish college, but then we hop on the job train and ten years and a whole lot of miles later we find ourselves in a career we didn’t even consider as undergraduates. That said I really do like the work I’m doing. I just feel like there’s something missing – that I still haven’t reached my full potential. So is it time for me to move on?

As I nearly always do when these sorts of questions creep into my thoughts, I asked my good friend and informal mentor to lunch. (I am so bad in this regard that an invitation to lunch now carries the implied message: “I’m having a career crisis!”) Anyway, we have lunch and, as usual, my friend patiently listens as I explain all of the reasons why I need to quit my job and find my true path in life. When I finished, I was confident she fully understood my problem and was now going to reach into her bag – the one labeled All the Answers – and give me the one that would solve my career crisis. But instead of an answer, she asked me a question: “Rather than quitting your job, have you thought about how you could grow your current role to include what you feel is missing”?

It was a really great question and one that I hadn’t considered. Rather than give up all the things I loved about my job, why not find ways to grow the job into something even more interesting and fulfilling. Too often employees find themselves in great, if imperfect, careers and so go hunting for something new. However, the truth is for most of us the perfect job simply doesn’t exist. But there are a great many jobs that are nearly perfect; so maybe the trick is to find an almost perfect job and see how we can improve it. Strong, effective managers will consistently cultivate a culture of mobility and encourage their employees to develop new skill sets to grow beyond their current roles; but there are times when the job itself needs to be grown to ensure the goals and aspirations of the employee can be fully realized.

The Mismeasure of Talent

A recent column from WSJ highlights the challenges facing us when dealing with the intangibles that often dominate talent work. It shows that measuring this “invisible work” is a challenge that often leaves talent without a sense of achievement. Moreover, when measurements are insufficient or incomplete, or when the wrong measurements are being used by management to compensate, it can cause more harm than good. When something is hard to measure, we know it often doesn’t get measured and what’s easier to measure gets measured instead. Since intangibles such as “quality”, “productivity”, “satisfaction”, etc. are seen as too difficult/impossible/imprecise to measure, they often don’t get measured. But we’ve seen in books like Patrick Lencioni’s “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees)” that immeasurability is a key destroyer of engagement. So what does that mean for your talent, where a lot of what they contribute isn’t easily measured, often doesn’t get measured, and thus makes it so they can’t assess their contributions or success?

There is a joke about the drunk who dropped his keys in the dark alley but spends all his time looking under the streetlamp “because the light is better.” That joke often comes up in discussions about measuring the intangibles related to talent. The column has several examples showing folks being measured on things that are readily available like timeliness and budget, but not on harder to measure things like “doing things right” for instance. Measures like timeliness and budget can be very important but often only describe part of the picture and are insufficient to making good business decisions. For example, how can you make the tradeoff between timeliness and “doing things right” that is acceptable from a risk/reward perspective if you aren’t measuring “doing things right”? What ends up happening is people start to focus only on the timeliness measure and both customer satisfaction and employee engagement falter because “doing things right” just isn’t happening like it used to, but nobody is really sure by how much or why (if it’s even noticed at all.)

Of course, the question arises of what does “doing things right” mean, but that doesn’t justify ignoring it. In fact, it misses an opportunity to actually figure out what it means so that it can be measured. Something like “doing things right” or “calming an angry customer” might be activities that produce the very outcomes the company really needs to achieve strategic success. The outcomes are something that can be measured and if you can find a relationship between those activities and an increase in desired outcomes, then you are on your way to making the intangible more visible and measureable. In addition, this helps the employee feel relevant by showing how their job really makes a difference. Measurability and relevance go together and support each other. They are employee engagement concepts that fit directly into a framework for making better decisions regarding talent.

It’s really management’s responsibility to provide the connection between the impact talent has on strategic success and what measurements should be used for determining talent’s effectiveness in achieving that success. Not providing a way to measure that contribution objectively and in the context of the company’s goals exacerbates employee disengagement. However, it’s also management’s responsibility to accomplish this by listening more to both employees and customers and tackling the challenge of taking that input and transforming it into useful measurements. Imagine what benefits would be gained if management listened more to the employees who knew about “doing things right” or to customers who were once angry but now satisfied, as described in the column.

Measurement does not have to be an “all or nothing” affair either. At times, it is sufficient to just know with reasonable confidence that something got better or worse (e.g. went up or down, perhaps) when an input changed. Other times, it’s enough to know with reasonable confidence that something went above or below a certain threshold, or cutoff point, without having to know by how much. Both of those can be determined with lower cost, for instance, than trying to determine exactly how much an outcome changes when an input factor is altered by a certain amount.

In addition to Lencioni’s book that shows how relevance and measurability impact employee engagement, check out “Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital,” by John Broudeau and Peter Ramstad. It shows how those two concepts fit very well into their HR Bridge framework that improves your strategic success through better decision making regarding talent. Also check out “How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business” by Douglas W. Hubbard, which shows how to avoid the trap of trying in vain to be overly precise when measuring intangibles when in actuality the most relevant, useful, and actionable information might be obtained at a fraction of the effort. Much of that is enabled by having a purpose to the measurements defined by the framework presented in Beyond HR.

$30 Gift Certificate to Olive Garden

Some people like parties.  Others like stock options.  Still others are good with a plaque or trophy.  My mom?  She likes the Olive Garden.

My mom, like many of her cohorts, is retiring this Spring.  This is good for my mom and good for me (because my parents are moving closer upon retirement), but it isn’t good for the New York state public school system. 

My mom has been teaching chemistry and math for 20+ years, revising her lesson plans each year to optimize their effectiveness in getting through to kids.  And what is happening to all of this amazing knowledge come June?  It’s getting tossed.

My mom is ahead of her time when it comes to computer programs; she is also very organized.  (that’s right, we are nothing alike)  So, I asked her what it would take for her to create a knowledge database to transfer this information to younger teachers. 

“Oh, I’d never do that,” she said.  “What a waste of time!  I just want to retire.” 

“OK,” I said, “what if you received a $30 gift certificate to Olive Garden?”

“Hmm … yeah, I’d do it then.”

It’s just not that hard.  Retain the knowledge, incent by individual, ask questions.