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.

How to not be a c-player

  Was reading the HBR article called A new game plan for C players and it got me thinking.  Of course the point of the article was how C-players hurt your business.  They are bad for morale of the rest of the team and as a good friend of mine says “they can do negative work” suggesting that having a c-player around can actually cause you to spend more time fixing their work then just doing it yourself right the first time.

What struck me though, was that while we all tend to agree that yes, c-players are bad for our teams and yes, we should be better about taking action, I don’t feel that we actually spend time doing self reflection to see if maybe we ourselves might be performing at less then our own A-game.

I was reminded while reading this, that the most critical thing to “get right” for ourselves and our teams is a well aligned role to the individual.  Keeping all examples to myself to avoid offending anyone, I can say with confidence, that if my job were to help people who are lost get out of the woods it is clear I would be the worst suited for it.  If nagging people about deadlines and commitments is the job, then I’m a much better fit.  Just ask my husband.

I have had the fortune (twice actually) of finding myself interviewing for a position in which the job description was a complete match for my experience.  In both cases, these jobs were not only rewarding for me personally, I managed to deliver products that had significant monetary benefit for the companies that hired me.  By all measures this was A-player work.  I was happy, I was challenged and the work I delivered benefited. 

 On the flip side, I have also managed to get myself stretched outside of my core competencies in such a way, that the results of my efforts were so inferior I could not even fire myself, but had to give myself the task of cleaning up the mess first.  While, this made for a great poster, and I did learn a lot, in retrospect I know I should have done a better job in recognizing the signs and doing something about them, as a lot of people got hurt as a result of my c-player work.

So what is my real message here?  First I’d encourage us each to realize that we are each capable of both A-player and C-player work.  For the majority of us fortunate enough to be considered “professionals”,  life is not a huxley-esque situation where you are pre-defined as an alpha or an epsilon. 

It is up to us to best determine 

• How do we quantify our talents
• How do we align our talents with the jobs we are given
• How do we push ourselves to give our best performance

Not just for the benefit of the company, but for the benefit of ourselves.  Like anything else, the best way to “not” be a c-player is to take an active role in your own performance. 

What do you have to lose?