Can they imagine you in the role?

 I was recently reminded of how important perception is.  Most people are familiar with (and often reject) the advice to dress for the role you want not the role you have. 

For many of us, this kind of approach seems so phony.    We often want to stand on the substance of our work and not the perception of others, and yet…

Once again, life doesn’t really work that way. 

I think that it is important to recognize that while substance is important, so too is perception.  Luckily, perception is not just about how you dress, it’s about the types of roles that people could envision you doing.

To get a new role, you need to help people imagine you in it.  This means, you need to stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone and start behaving the way that role requires.  

If the role you want is management then things like leadership and communication become critical.  If the role you want is executive, then things like presence and vision start taking a priority. 

The key is not to just develop the skills, but to demonstrate them to others.  Helping people imagine you in the role you want can dramatically increase your chances of getting it. 

Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment I somehow feel an urgent need for a makeover .

Do you wear your stripes with pride?

My UK school days have receded into the far too dim-and-distant past, but I still remember our uniform.

Through 9^th grade, the winter uniform at our all-girls school (junior high and high combined) was a traditional gray pinafore (skirt and bib), with striped shirt. 10^th graders, however, were allowed to ditch the bib and wear a plain gray skirt. (The ultimate was in the final two years at senior and prefect level, when dress-code was further extended to any style of black skirt and solid color shirt.)

A typical ruse of the 9^th graders (and later even 8^th graders) was to unstitch the bib from the skirt, and replace with some kind of temporary fastening (velcro, poppers, or even just safety pins)! During the day, the bib was dutifully attached, with no outward signs of tampering. However, as soon as they left school premises in the afternoon, to head off into town or meet a group of boyfriends, they ripped off the bibs thereby achieving the appearance and status of those a year senior.

Of course, if they got caught by a teacher ‘sans bib’ there was hell to pay, but that just added to their sense of bravado – sounds pretty tame in comparison to what many teens get up to these days, doesn’t it!

On the other hand, 10^th graders were not amused. They felt they’d earned the right to wear their senior uniform with pride, and that that right was undermined and devalued by the rules not being observed. (…and ‘they’, of course, included those who had themselves played the popper-game a year previously!)

In the military, uniform and rank are strictly observed. Each rank is immediately recognized for exactly what it signifies, by anyone with knowledge of the hierarchy. Officers wear their insignia proudly on their sleeves. There’s no opportunity to hide or misrepresent one’s position.

Not so in the corporate world.

Decades ago, the title of Secretary was a respected position. A true secretary had excellent typing and shorthand skills, as well as a great deal of responsibility for the smooth running of their bosses’ calendars and lives. Then, mere typists started calling themselves secretaries to inflate their resumes. Firms started advertising for personal secretaries, hoping to attract the cream of the crop, then personal secretaries became executive secretaries, until the word fell into such disrepute that the alternative terms Personal Assistant or Executive Assistant were spawned.

In 2007, Wharton School’s Knowledge@Wharton published an excellent article: Chief Receptionist Officer? Title Inflation Hits the C-Suite, discussing the cheapening of titles, and the reasons behind inflation infatuation! But it’s not just C-level; the same issue pervades every level of the corporate chain.

While companies have figured out that “many times it is cheaper to give people a title increase than a raise increase”, I believe they have created a rod for their own backs, not only by devaluing the titles, but more significantly by demeaning and alienating the employees who have genuinely earned their ‘stripes’.

As the article above notes: “Firms should be deliberate about how they give these title awards out to employees, because each additional person who gets a C-level title dilutes the currency of the title structure.”

How meaningful are titles where you work, and does your HR department care? Have you earned your stripes, or are you one of the unjustifiably bib-less? Do you see over-inflated titles as a necessity to represent your company effectively, or just an ego-trip at the expense of others?

Yours sincerely,

Chief Senior Principal Vice Managing Dogsbody and Bottlewasher

Software buyers vs. users

As builders of software, we are always trying to make sure we invest wisely in the features we offer our customers.  There are never enough resources to do everything we’d like to do so prioritizing is a way of life.

In our attempt to make the right choices, we talk to a lot of customers, collecting feedback, use cases and the like.  One risk I’ve come to recognize, is that in talking to our customers, we often confuse buyers with users.

Not unlike the mom who buys their child a series of interesting and educational toys, only to find them way more interested in the box, we sometimes find ourselves puzzled that the things we are most proud of in our solutions, are not actually that appealing to the end users. 

It’s not that we don’t realize that, as technology geeks, what appeals to us might not exactly be mainstream, or even cool.  It’s just that we are surprised at how little the requirements we are given from the buyer actually align with the needs or wants of the user. 

A lot of this confusion comes as a direct result of the success of our industry.   Technology used to only be available to the select few in an organization and it was all about organizational function and value. 

Now technology is about so much more.  Our entire lives are about technology and our expectations on what it can do are ever increasing.  We expect technology to improve our lives.  It is no longer good enough for the technology to provide value to an organization, at the expense of the individual.   To be successful, business applications must have utility across all groups who use them, and in our case, that is everyone in your organization. 

As we set out to design Fusion talent applications we spent a lot of time thinking about users.   What do they want and how do they expect technology to help them?   

Of course, we are still very anxious to delight HR departments with our choices.  We will never forget our buyers, but  the role of the manager and worker, at every level of the organization chart, has been (and will continue to be) a big part of our thought process too.  

That’s right, you heard it here first.  Fusion Talent Management is not only a cool toy, it’s also a wicked cool box*.

 

________________________

 *anyone trying too hard for bonus points on my analogy with the Sun announcement, needs to take some time off.  I am not talking about hardware here, just a literal cardboard metaphor.

Preventing Peanut Butter Pay

There tends to be a significant gap between what organizations want to do and what they actually do where pay is concerned. Sure, most companies buy into the concept of differentiating pay according to performance measures. But, the reality is that many are stuck in the simultaneous performance and compensation cycle, in which performance decisions are made within the context of compensation.

The result is that performance ratings are often a function of what compensation seems fair – this means that performance is no longer driving pay and managers often resort to a peanut butter approach to save headaches on the back-end. This is particularly problematic when budgets are shrinking and organizations know they can only provide meaningful rewards to a small portion of even their good performers.

So, what do you do? How do you prevent paying via peanut butter?

I have talked to many companies that are in this rut and are trying to get out. Here are some of the leading strategies I have heard:

• Use calibration sessions (with target distributions) to create final performance ratings that stick and cannot be altered within compensation.

• Use technology to automatically enforce the guideline rules in distributing the compensation so that peanut butter stays in the intended glops.

• Embed intelligent metrics directly into the compensation process so that managers can make informed, confident, and holistic decisions.

• The most thought leading approach appears at first to be pay-for -performance backlash: completely separate the performance process from the compensation process. Make the performance process more about future looking development and not about how much money you’re getting. Many months later, make compensation decisions using performance data and calibration activities. This actually allows for further performance differentiation while also taking the entitlement factor out of the equation (I performed the duties of my job, therefore I should get a fat raise).

On belay?

Let’s say you’ve moved into a new job, a new role, or even a new assignment.  How do you get your bearings?

You could, in theory, “learn” from the ground up – maybe there’s some documentation that is totally relevant to you, maybe your intranet has all the data and information that you need, maybe there are internal forums or blogs filled with helpful information… you’ve my best wishes finding the lot and making sense of it all.  Experience may be a great teacher, but you’ll have bloody toes if you choose to find every stumbling block by yourself.

Or you could go about building up a good, reliable network as rapidly and aggressively as you can.  If you do, you’ll probably have an interactive, self-maintaining map of those blocks much sooner.  And you’ll definitely have a whole lot more fun as you take on your new responsibilities.

Okay, so most people aren’t naturals when it comes to creating a network.  The usual excuses are that they’re “not comfortable” talking to people, they’re worried about “appearing needy”, they’re “already too busy” coping with their assigned tasks… the list goes on.  Agreed, being the ‘new kid’ on any team is usually uncomfortable, but taking the effort to discover those people who have the information you need and to methodically develop ties into them yields unusually handsome results  That said:

• It will need effort.  But if you spend a little time chatting with your teammates and/or at the water cooler and then moving outward, you’ll soon get a handle on who the ‘players’ are – the people who’re considered the ‘go-to guys’ because they’ve got something that you need in order to begin functioning more efficiently – knowledge.  They could be up or down the chain from you… they could even be outside your chain entirely.   But they’re people, and that’s all you should care about when you try forming a social connection with them.  (Okay, some organizational structures may actively block you making that initial contact.  And if you really, really want to have that person in your network, you’ll then have to use an alternate forum… maybe the golf club, the church, you get the idea.)

• It will cost you emotionally.  It is up to you to make the initial contact with each one of your potential member set – you’re the one wanting them in your network, while they may not even be aware of you – so this is sometimes the hardest part in the process.  But most people usually give other people one chance to impress them – so don’t blow it.  Sincerity (and maybe reaching out through a common contact) goes a long way here – without getting all windy and boring, explain who you are and why you’re contacting them.  ”Just to say hello” is usually a good enough reason – you’ve knocked upon the door and the door has opened.  If you’ve created a favorable impression, you’ll probably be allowed to knock upon that door again.

• It will need time – set aside a couple hours each week to grow and nurture your network.  Reinforce ties to those members who have been helpful; renew ties to those that have potential, recruit new members based on changes either in your role or in the organization, recycle ties within your network’s members (aka “a friend of a friend is a friend of mine”), and try and repair those ties that haven’t been very functional  Finally, if a member has failed you consistently, remove that tie very carefully – you could stop nurturing it and like most social connections, it’ll probably just wither away over time.

• And always, always, always remember that you’ve got to reciprocate – share knowledge whenever you can because that’s your network’s lifeblood.  It has to flow away from you as much as it flows toward you… because all “all take and no give” relationships invariably die young.  A network is made up of unwritten bilateral arrangements – to retain your privilege to knock upon a door, you’d better allow your door to be knocked upon.  And when someone knocks upon your door, you’d better be willing to share what you can.

Done right, the gains from having a robust workplace network are both immense and immediate.  You ‘become visible’, because you went out and got people to notice you and maybe convinced them to place you tentatively in their networks.  You can then ask any of them about what works now (hopefully documented), you can ask about what doesn’t work (also hopefully documented), you can even ask about what didn’t work (the mostly undocumented “also ran” ideas that didn’t pan out).  And, you can glean oodles about interpersonal and interdepartmental dynamics across the organization, which will help you recognize and react appropriately to what the organization considers ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

It is never too late to make new friends.

HR = Business … comes to life

“We didn’t have any problem selling the business case”

Ever said this? Ever had anyone on your HR team say this?

Last week, I heard this phrase uttered nonchalantly, yet proudly, at least 3 times. I was at the Bersin Impact conference. The conference theme, for the second year in a row, was “The Business of Talent.” Last year, the conference was excellent, but the stories tended to be more “in process” or “recommendy” in nature. This year, rhetoric and fact joined together in perfect harmony. Maybe Bersin’s research team has gotten even better at finding stories or maybe there are more stories to be had. Overall, I am very pleased with my HR comrades.

The best session of the conference – where it all came together – was the HR Leaders panel, in which 4 HR leaders talked about how they transitioned from HR strategy to business strategy and how it’s been working for them. These are 4 living, breathing HR people who have completely re-focused their teams and have made the whole process look obvious in doing so. Not easy, but definitely obvious.

There were some common themes among them:

• HR staff needed new skills and attitudes; the leaders provided the staff with targeted training and development opportunities.The folks that could cut it as “strategists” stuck around, and the others self-selected out (in search of more “traditional” roles).

• Learning the business – the pressures, pains, and nuances of the industry and their business leaders – and showing that they understood the business was essential.

• Demonstrating “fiscal responsibility” (shutting down non-business critical projects and self-funding business critical projects) earned them credibility.

The most important strategy, by far, was to talk to business solutions or impacts, rather than talent implications. For example, instead of talking about “engaging the workforce,” Michelle Golden of Turner Broadcasting talks to her leaders about the challenges of competing in the 24 hour news environment and how they could get better results.

Drastically changing our language to focus on impact, rather than implications, reminded me of a chapter in Made to Stick (yes, just finished this book along with Mark and Meg, thank you very much). Chip and Dan Heath suggest the “Ask Why 3 Times” rule when you want to get your audience to actually care about what you’re selling. They give the example of the drill bit. Perhaps you had planned to talk about it’s silvery, sleekness. But, before you do, ask yourself why would someone buy a drill bit? Answer: to drill a hole. But, why do you need to drill a hole? Answer: to put something in it. Why? Answer: to hang a picture of my kid. Ahh, and there is the impact of a drill bit – it allows people to hang pictures of their kids.

HR is selling the value of talent. However, to get business leaders to care about what we’re selling and to readily buy our business case, we need to move from language that seems obvious to us, to language that resonates with them. “Integrated Talent Management” sounds like “sleek, silver drill-bit.” But ask yourselves why 3 times, and you might find the picture hanging enabler the business has been waiting for.

Not One of Us

What can we do to foster Innovation? Support diverse networks that promote new, perhaps even heretical, thinking:

There’s safety in numbers
When you learn to divide
How can we be in
If there is no outside
All shades of opinion
Feed an open mind
But your values are twisted
Let us help you unwind
             - “Not One of Us,” Peter Gabriel

Although originally written with a political message, these lyrics describe a common occurrence within companies that stifles Innovation. It’s that we tend to form into groups of like-minded people and start to see things in terms of “Us and Them” (to quote Roger Waters.) These divisions in companies often follow the organizational structure, whose purpose was originally to help make things like command and control, decision rights, and resource utilization more “efficient.” Matrix organizations were introduced to try to solve some of the problems with hierarchical organizations, but there are still a lot of problems that remain, including those which are obstacles to Innovation.

As we discussed before, there isn’t a magic recipe for innovation, but there are plenty of ways to mess up the cake. To help understand how, let’s capture the problems associated with failure of innovation into two categories, as described in the excellent “Driving Results Through Social Networks” by Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas:

1. The inability to recognize opportunities and recombine expertise (in-house or accessible through extended networks)
2. The inability to test and prototype ideas rapidly when people do recognize opportunities

We can imagine situations where some companies* might not experience either or both of these problems often, if at all. However, many companies do experience these problems and their ability to gain competitive advantage through innovation suffers as a result. Cross and Thomas identify three key obstacles that contribute to the problems described above:

• Fragmentation – The kind of collaboration needed to more frequently recognize opportunities, recombine expertise, and rapidly test and prototype ideas breaks down right along organizational boundaries. This could be breakdown of integration and collaboration along functional lines, industry or product specialties, technical competencies, etc.
• Domination – Within a given group there are likely members with a lot of expertise/credibility, which was often acquired in the past when times were good. Their voices can often drown out novel ideas and/or drive innovation along traditional paths when what’s really needed is an entirely new approach.
• Insularity – Groups are often completely unaware of expertise outside that might very well be the key, most effective way to do something. The “Not Invented Here” syndrome is a classic example of this effect.

How can we overcome these obstacles? A good approach is to support networks that cross organizational boundaries. Those kinds of networks help encourage integration and collaboration that would otherwise be absent due to fragmentation. They also help identify expertise outside of the normal confines of an insular group. And by diversifying the sources of expertise, the ability for an entrenched way of thinking to dominate is lessened.

But it isn’t enough to simply tell everyone to sign up and “get connected.” Software that supports the formation of networks is a very useful tool, but it won’t be effective if incentives run counter to collaboration, if goals are in continuous opposition between business units, etc. In short, the culture must at least give the individuals, and the tools they use to collaborate, enough support that it’s worth their while, as well as the company’s. This requires management to not only support, but also to participate in, the use of these tools and collaboration efforts.

* They might be, for example, companies where testing and prototyping ideas rapidly is fairly easy (internet technology companies come to mind) and sure enough, you see a typically higher frequency of innovation in those companies (which is, not coincidentally, very much the whole driving force behind their businesses.)

Alignment is not the goal, it’s a tactic

Once again, I think we can get confused as to what we are trying to accomplish with a Talent Management strategy.    Goal Alignment, by itself, is not something I care about as an individual. 

It doesn’t automatically make me more engaged and it doesn’t necessarily make me more productive.  All to often I hear HR departments (and Talent Vendors) talk about Goal Alignment as if it is a solution, it’s not.  It’s a tactic that can help you achieve a business solution.  Assuming, of course, you don’t suck.

As an individual, I don’t care about Goal Alignment.  I do care about a few things that goal alignment can help me accomplish though:

• I care about my compensation — If you are going to compensate me for achieving certain goals, I care.   If you are going to penalize my compensation for something I cannot control, I care.    Showing me how my compensation is impacted by corporate goals gets my attention.

 

• I care about achieving, especially achieving things that get me noticed (in a good way, not a Dilbert way).  Having my boss communicate those goals that are important to him (and thus need to be important to me) helps me make sure I am achieving the right things.

• I care about understanding the big picture.  Having a good sense of the why of what I’m doing and how what I’m doing fits into that big picture.  Understanding the commander’s intent is very helpful to me.  When corporate goals give me that big picture I care.

 

• I learn from good examples.  If my boss has shown me how his work is aligning with the company goals and how his personal goals are helping him better impact the company goals this makes a  concrete impression for me.

So please, can we quit talking about goal alignment as a solution and begin talking more about it as a very useful tactic.   Goal alignment is not going to fix your talent problems. 

Having a solid and clear vision of where your company needs to go and how your people fit into that strategy is what Talent Management is all about.    Until you have that worked out, goal alignment is not going to help. 

Understanding how individuals work and what they need must be part of the plan, or you will just be rolling out an administrative process that individuals will work around.   We need to be able to articulate what is in it for me with goal alignment, or we will fail.

More on innovation — can you spot it?

 Mark did an excellent job talking about the strategic value of innovation.  

I’d like to talk about the personal side of the equation a bit.  That is the fact that it is more important to be able to spot a great idea than to have a great idea.

Why?

Well it’s really just a math problem.  On your own, how many great ideas can you really have?  Especially, if you believe that it’s really 99% perspiration. 

BUT…. if you are good at spotting and leveraging great ideas.. wow you can really do something with that skill to make a difference.

So, I’d encourage you to attempt to open your eyes to the great ideas of others that are all around you.  Consider how you can take those great ideas into your own life and how you could modify them to be better [for you]. 

Who do you know that is good at something you want to be good at?

How do you get close to that person to learn their great ideas, strategies, mannerisms?

The point is, that it doesn’t have to be your idea.  In fact, it might be a whole lot better if it is not.  It just has to be something you take action upon to have a useful impact.

Another moment that makes you go hmmm… 

Photo Credit Thomas Otter

The New Carnival of HR is up!

Check out the latest Carnival of Human Resources at Jacob’s Maximize Possibility Blog, part of The Rainmaker Group. This carnival has over 20 posts covering a wide range of topics. This is a great opportunity to browse through them and possibly spot a blog you’ve never heard of that caters to a topic you are interested in. This month’s carnival features our own Vivian’s post that suggests that we look at performance reviews as a possible two-way communication opportunity – help your manager to help you by giving them useful feedback. Be sure to check out the carnival!