Transparency In Performance Management - Should You Coach Talent in Front of Others?

We talk a lot about transparency in organizations.  That usually means the extent to which a leadership team is willing to communicate what's going on downward in the organization.

But - there are some hard knock cultures that think if your employee base desires full transparency, that it comes with some brutal non-negotiables.  One of those non-negotiables might be giving coaching in public.  Case in point - a company called Bridgewater Associates (hedge fund) which approaches transparency with a "cult of personality" flavored after their leader.  More from the New Yorker:

"Dalio (the founder of Bridgewater Associates) asked for another opinion. From the back of the room, a young man dressed in a black sweatshirt started saying that a Chinese slowdown could have a big effect on global supply and demand. Dalio cut him off: “Are you going to answer me knowledgeably or are you going to give me a guess?” The young man, whom I will call Jack, said he would hazard an educated guess. “Don’t do that,” Dalio said. He went on, “You have a tendency to do this. . . . We’ve talked about this before.” After an awkward silence, Jack tried to defend himself, saying that he thought he had been asked to give his views. Dalio didn’t let up. Eventually, the young employee said that he would go away and do some careful calculations.

After the meeting, Dalio told me that the exchange had been typical for Bridgewater, where he encourages people to challenge one another’s views, regardless of rank, in what he calls a culture of “radical transparency.” Dalio had no qualms about upbraiding a junior employee in front of me and dozens of his colleagues. When confusions arise, he said, it is important to discuss them openly, even if that involves publicly pointing out people’s mistakes—a process he referred to as “getting in synch.” He added, “I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.”

As you might expect, this company outlines how to get over everything you thought you knew about how to operate in Corporate America as part of the onboarding process:

"Dalio is serenely convinced that the precepts he relies on in the markets can be applied to other aspects of life, such as career development and management. And he has enough regard for his own views on these subjects to have collected them in print. Before our meeting, he sent me a copy of his “Principles,” a hundred-page text that is required reading for Bridgewater’s new hires. It turned out to be partly a self-help book, partly a management manual, and partly a treatise on the principles of natural selection as they apply to business. “I believe that all successful people operate by principles that help them be successful,” a passage on the second page said. The text was organized into three sections: “5 Steps to Personal Evolution,” “10 Steps to Personal Decision-Making,” and “Management Principles.” The last of the two hundred and seventy-seven management principles was: “Constantly worry about what you are missing. Even if you acknowledge you are a ‘dumb shit’ and are following the principles and are designing around your weaknesses, understand that you might still be missing things. You will be better and be safer this way.”

Dalio’s philosophy has created a workplace that some call creepy. Last year, Dealbreaker, a Wall Street Web site, picked up a copy of the Principles and made fun of a section in which Dalio appeared to compare Bridgewater to a pack of hyenas feeding on a young wildebeest. In March, AR, a magazine that covers hedge funds, quoted a former colleague of Dalio’s saying, “Bridgewater is a cult. It’s isolated, it has a charismatic leader and it has its own dogma.” The authors of the article noted that Dalio’s “emphasis on tearing down an individual’s ego hints at the so-called struggle groups of Maoism,” while his search for “human perfection devoid of emotion resembles the fantasy world in Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead.'

Natural selection. Inclusion of "dumb s**t" in the employee manual. Comparison of company to pack of hyenas.  Too much?  Probably.

But direct and you know what you're in for when you start, and I would assume you'd know those things as part of the hiring process.

360 Transparency. Only available at private, founder-driving companies for sure. 

REAL WORLD: This Sales Training Program Looks a Lot Like the Jehovah's Witnesses...

You think your Sales Training Class is tough?  Child, please.

Check out how the Edward Jones sales function rolls:

"Then there’s Edward Jones, a 91-year-old brokerage based in St. Louis that’s thriving by sticking to its old ways. It hired 2,682 trainees last year and plans to add a similar number this year, according to Steve Kuehl, a partner. Trainees at Edward Jones, which has more than 12,000 advisers, don’t spend their days pitching stocks to strangers over the phone. They go door to door, like vacuum cleaner salesmen. New brokers are brought to headquarters, where the company has constructed what it calls “role-play suites”—rooms designed to look like homes and offices, complete with doors that they can practice knocking on. They review tapes of themselves with coaches to improve their technique. “We try to help them learn how to present their value proposition in terms of helping people meet their financial goals,” says Kuehl. “The core is face to face.”

The life of a young broker can be grueling. After the role-playing at headquarters, Edward Jones brokers return to their hometowns, where they go from one house to the next to compile a list of prospects. After Alex Freemon, a 2012 Georgia Institute of Technology graduate, practiced knocking on a model door in a classroom at Edward Jones headquarters, the company sent him back to Atlanta to walk the streets for 10 hours a day. His pay: about $30,000 a year plus commissions."

Three observations:

1. I want to know if they say "Have you chosen financial independence as your destiny?" when someone answers the door.

2. On a serious note, I'd love to spend a day in those role-play suites at corporate HQ. Do they have different characters?  The chain-smoking housewife? The alchoholic man in his 50's?  Who's home during the day that answers the door?

3. I wouldn't mind my kids doing this for a year. I'd think they'd learn a lot. Which is one of the reasons that the Morman faith and the JVs do this, I'm sure.

I'm intriqued - in a big way.

TRAINING FOR YOU: How Google Sets Goals...

Short post today, but if you choose to take advantage of it, you need to book an hour on your calendar to take advantage of the resource.

Video embedded below is from Google Ventures with a hat tip to TechCrunch.  It's a great rundown of how Google sets performance goals - how they make choices on goals that individual contributors are going to chase, how they negotiate what goes into that valuable space, how the goals are supposed to cascade, how they are (or aren't) part of the performance process, etc.

In short, it's goal setting 101 from Google.  Pretty cool rundown of how they do goal management.

What will surprise you is how some of the things you know are incorporated into Google's process.  But, as you might expect, there's plenty to learn from the Google way related to goal setting and the great news is that none of it is out of reach for you and I and the companies we represent.

This is training for you - the HR/Talent pro.  Book this on your calendar and consume it.  It's hard to find rundowns like this to help you and your company reset the bar on goal setting and how it ties to performance.  (email subscribers click through for video)

Apple's Tim Cook Wants "Wicked Smart" People - So How Do You Find Them? (Webinar)

I'm doing a webinar later this month over at Fistful of Talent on Wed. June 12 at 1pm EST entitled Brains Before Bros: Why Hiring Smart People over Experienced People is a Winning Talent Strategy (click this link to register), sponsored by my friends at SumTotal.  

Hire the smartest people you can find. Don't focus on experience.  Sounds trendy, right?

Before I hit you with the description of the webinar, I want you to read one of the most revealing quotes Tim Cook (Apple CEO) has ever given about how he's running Apple.  Check out the following response from Cook from a talk at the Duke Fuqua School of Business:

What qualities do you look for in terms of what you think will produce effective collaboration?

You look for people that are not political. People that are not bureaucrats. People that can privately celebrate the achievement, but not care if their name that is in the one in the lights. There are greater reasons to do things.

You look for wicked smart people. You look for people who appreciate different points of view. People who care enough that they have an idea at 11 at night and they want to call and talk to you about it. Because they're so excited about it, they want to push the idea further. And that they believe that somebody can help them push the idea another step instead of them doing everything themselves.

OK - that's what one of the smartest people in the room said about how to find people who can collaborate (and I think what he's describing is a business case for hiring the smartest people you can find, even at the expense of relevant experience) I think it's a smart way to think.  So much so that we created a webinar about it.  Join us at 1pm on Wed, June 12, and we'll hit you with the following goodies:

1. A rundown of the factors driving talent scarcity in today’s workforce and why it’s better to hire smart people and train for success.
2. FOT’s definition of “smart” and common false positives you need to consider when defining what smart looks like for your organization.
3. Three signs that your top talent may be looking to jump ship and how to reel them back in by providing the incentives they really want. (Hint: It’s not always monetary).
4. Five ways to keep training and development programs aligned with evolving expectations from top applicants and your existing talent – without breaking your budget.
5. We’ll close this webinar by bringing in Steve Parker from SumTotal to help you ensure your leadership team is creating the right environment to get the most out of your existing talent.

I think it's going to be a pretty interesting webinar, and I highlighted one of the areas above I'm most excited about - the definition of smart and how you find it - that would match Cook's description of what he's looking for at Apple.  I think there are some interesting things we'll dig into in that highlighted area of the Apple definition of smart (things like high cognitive processing speed, high assertiveness, low rules orientation, but all kept in ego check through a high team orientation) that could play into how your hire at your company.

Going to be an interesting one - join me on Wed. June 12 at 1pm EST entitled Brains Before Bros: Why Hiring Smart People over Experienced People is a Winning Talent Strategy (click this link to register).  Just hit the link or complete the registration form below and it is done - you're in.

Your traditional approach to talent is stale–- start putting brains before bros and maximize your talent strategy today.

HOW MANAGERS BECOME CAREER AGENTS - They Help Employees Build Portfolios...

We did a FOT Webinar yesterday with our friends at Halogen Software entitled, "Get My Agent on the Phone - How Smart Managers Position themselves as Career Agents."

I'm a big believer that the best managers aren't the best because they parrot what they've read on the business bestseller list - they're the best because they attend FOT Webinars.

I kid - they're the best because they serve as a career agent for the employees who report to them.  They're not authoritarian - "do this because I told you so"... They view and commuincate everything they do through the lens of the employee.

One of the things we shared and talked about - managers who are truly agents for their employee's careers have a way at measuring performance goals by getting employees to do cool things towards that goal - that they then can market internally and externally to the broader world.

See the slides below and ping me if you want to throw it around. (email subscribers may have to click through to view)

Why Companies Stack Rank The Performance of Employees...

Capitalist Note - On the road talking to some folks about Performance today. Reminded me of the question asked in this post title, and the comments are probably better than the post.  Enjoy...

A sharp reader named Amanda writes:

"If you're a strong manager who regularly provides feedback and coaching, and you aggressively manage poor performance (either to improvement or out of the org), then why should it be impossible for you to have a team of strong to high performers? Furthermore, why wouldn't a company want that for all their teams?"

Which begs the question - why do companies stack rank performance and poison so much water?

The answer is pretty simple - most managers can't, won't or aren't boxed in enough to do what it takes to aggressively manage performance.  So poppa (the company) has to come in and say the following:

"We haven't trained you as a manager to truly manage performance on your own.  And you know what?  Even if we did, you'd avoid doing what's required because there's a bunch of daily straight talk involved.  So here's what we're going to do - rather than us training you and then you throwing away all that training because it's human nature to avoid confrontation, we're just going to have you rank your employees 1 through 10.  We may fire #9 and #10.  That's all you have to do - see you in December for that, right around the holidays.  Please go back to avoiding tough conversations."

Companies stack rank because it's the path of least resistance, the lowest common denominator for what needs to be done.

Amanda's one of the good ones.  The problem is most people won't do what she suggests.  Enter the stack rank.

MEETS VS EXCEEDS: The World Needs Ditch Diggers Too...

You're a manager of people.  Somebody on your team is just muddling through, meeting expectations and basically doing average work.  They're capable of more.  They don't seem to be feeling your "up with people" or "A-player" only vibe.  

You're telling them what great performance looks like in multiple areas. You look across the table and all you see is a zombie who's wondering what the special is at Buffalo Wild Wings at lunch. You've become Charlie Brown's teacher - that's what they hear when you talk.

What do you do?

You're only shot is to tell them what's in it for them if they chase the higher performance level you're promoting. What do they get if they chase that? That's what you have to figure out and promote.

It's a problem of motivation.

Figure that out and properly position it - and you have a chance to get better performance.

If they're still not responsive, you've got a ditch digger.  And the world needs ditch diggers too.

But do you need a ditchdigger?  That's another post for another day.

A DEEPER QUESTION: How to Measure Passion in an Interview...

You want candidates who are passionate about what they do for a living, don't you?

Of course you do. But passion for a profession is tough to get a grip on.  Find out whether the people you are interviewing have passion for what they do (or are simply paying the bills) through some of the following interview strategies:

1. Ask candidates how they stay up to date in their field.  If you see a glut of reliance on professional training and formal activities that happen in company time, you're probably not dealing with passion.

2. Ask a candidate to give you a big question in their field they'd like to solve and why. Ask them what they've done related to starting to figure out the answer.  Probe hard on the answers they give.  See any creativity?  You might have passion.  See lots of glittering generalities?  That's fake passion. 

3. Ask a candidate how they find others in their profession to connect with, and how often they connect with others in their field outside their company.

What do they talk about?  What type of information is exchanged? How have those connections helped them?

4. Ask Motivational Fit questions - When have your been most satisfied in your work at Company X?  Least Satisfied? If the answers show a consistent theme of talking about BS factors rather than a clear line towards being able to do interesting work related to their field, it's hard to project them as passionate in their field.

And no Skippy - passion for something that's not work related doesn't count for you as an interviewer - it's nice to know you run marathons, but it has no impact on things that emulate from passion for the profession - continuous improvement, innovation, etc.  It does tell me you're not going to cost a lot for healthcare, though.  Thanks!

Start asking questions that give you line of sight for professional passion on your candidates. No fake passion or passion that doesn't produce results.

Or just keep looking for people that want to make the donuts and go home.  

BRUTAL HR TRUTHS: We've Decided It's Better to Avoid the Fact You're Failing...

Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed today - hashtag - #cynic.  OK, so I'm taking a page and even some content from this post at cracked.com (h/t to reader Matt L) and breaking down some brutal HR truths.

To quote Milli Vanilli - Girl: You Know it's True.  Let's do this.

------------

Let's lay out a harsh truth for the business of HR.

Half of your company/team is made up of people who are *******.  What's that stand for?  You fill in the stars.  I'll go low impact and say its stands for whiners.

You need performance and results.  We're generally prone to being nice with our workforces, which is a good idea most the time.  However, there's always a time when straight talk and a kick in the butt is overdue.  At that point, someone has to deliver a harsh message to all - performers and non-performers - because let's face it, we're too scared to round up all the non performers and do the straight talk to that group alone.

When the harsh message is delivered, you'll find out all you need to know about your people.  

For example - here's the crazy 7 minute clip of Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross (FYI - this is extremely NSFW, so watch it with earbuds or on the mobile out of the office - seriously):

OK, so you watched a bit of it or you already have seen it.  The point isn't in what Baldwin says, it's the reaction of the team to lecture.  There's whining.  There's excuses. There's people trying to disrespect Baldwin during the message by getting coffee.  

Here's an interesting reaction to the clip from cracked.com:

"It's brutal, rude and borderline sociopathic, and also it is an honest and accurate expression of what the world is going to expect from you. The difference is that, in the real world, people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way that they've decided it's better to simply let you keep failing."

#true. Think about that - take the language out of the equation and focus on this - "we've decided it's better to simply let you keep failing."  The interesting thing about this clip is how high performers, or people who want to be high performers, view it.  More from the investigative team (ha) at cracked.com:

That scene changed my life. I'd program my alarm clock to play it for me every morning if I knew how. Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that movie and that's the only scene he's in. As smarter people have pointed out, the genius of that speech is that half of the people who watch it think that the point of the scene is "Wow, what must it be like to have such an a**hole boss?" and the other half think, "F*** yes, let's go out and sell some g*dd*mned real estate!"

Or, as the Last Psychiatrist blog put it:

"If you were in that room, some of you would understand this as a work, but feed off the energy of the message anyway, welcome the coach's cursing at you, 'this guy is awesome!'; while some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk, you have no right to talk to me like that, or -- the standard maneuver when narcissism is confronted with a greater power -- quietly seethe and fantasize about finding information that will out him as a hypocrite. So satisfying."

The harsh truth is that because we don't want to offend, we've actually stopped telling people they're doing poorly.  Because half, or more than half, can't take it.  Which means we're trying to get our companies to perform with one hand tied behind our back.

Now get out there and sell some ***-****** HR real estate.

HR SLANG: "They've Gone Galt" (Ayn Rand Version)

The site is called the HR Capitalist, so it makes sense that some of the HR Slang we throw around has an Ayn Rand flavor.  The good news for you is that using HR Slang with an Ayn Rand twist makes you look smart to the capitalists who run your company.

Today's term - Going Galt:

Going Galt: (from urban dictionary) To follow the example of the character John Galt in the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. A person who goes Galt is a productive member of society who decides to reduce his or her productivity in order to thwart the efforts of unproductive people to take the fruits of his or her labor.

Usage:

"I can't get ahead. My taxes go up every year." 
"Easy! Just go Galt."

So that's your official definition - you'll need that for context and the first part of the description to others about what the term means.  Here's your HR version:

Going Galt: (HR/Human Capital version) Occurs when an high performing individual contributor is so revolted by how his or her manager/company manages non-performers that they cease to give a s*** about giving discretionary effort and as Peter Gibbons once so profoundly stated, "work just hard enough not to get fired."

Usage:
"When are they going to do something about Bob?  Why should I work hard?

"I haven't seen you tinkering around with that new product idea.  What's up with that these days?"
"That's on the back burner.  Great ideas don't matter here, everyone gets the same thing.  I've gone galt."

Performance is flat in the org?  Chances are your best people have gone galt.

Dis pravda.