You've seen this talent story before.

There's an established star at your company. He/she has been widely recognized as the best, the industry/company standard, the go-to person. Their run of performance has been impressive and it looks like it will never end. Clients are direct dialing this person due to this reputation, which further cements the incumbent's position and just keeps the performance/results snowball going downhill. 

Then a funny thing happens. The veteran slips a bit, and a young upstart begins to rise and challenge their position. Suddenly, it's not easy to determine who's the best, and those observing start wondering what happened to the established star.

Need a visible example? Try "Woj vs Shams" in the professional basketball journalism space.

Adrian Wojnarowski is your incumbent star, known for breaking news in professional basketball space via something called the "Woj Bomb", which has been so prominent it's defined as the following by Urban Dictionary:

Woj Bomb - A breaking report made by prominent NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN that comes out of nowhere to have a huge impact on the landscape of the NBA

Woj generally breaks that news via Twitter. He's so connected he traditionally has been tipped by insiders and breaks news on social media before it's reported by the team. Note this is the product of years of work. A great example of this an Instagram post I shared years back from the NBA summer league. Click on this link that shares a picture of Woj interviewing 100 insiders in a row outside a public restroom in a Vegas arena, with the following caption:

"This is Adrian Wojnarowski, known to the basketball community as "WOJ". When you're following all your free agent news in the NBA, WOJ is the guy who breaks 80% of that news. He works for Yahoo, and as evidence for how the NBA feels about both Yahoo and WOJ having the power he does, consider the scene. He's taping video segments with guests, and the NBA put him OUTSIDE THE LADIES BATHROOM on the concourse with all the fans. To his credit, WOJ doesn't care. He just powered through it and solidified his power base for further rumors/news by interviewing 200 people. If you're into Game of Thrones, he's Varys."

Translation - most dominant stars in any industry have put the work in to arrive at their position of dominance.

But nothing last forever - especially total dominance.

Meet Woj's challenger - Shams Charania, a writer at The Athletic. He goes by "Shams", a natural counter to "Woj". And in the last year, he's eroded Woj's position of dominance, breaking as much news as Woj, to the point where followers of the craft are mocking Woj for reporting news that Shams beat him to, if only by seconds or a few minutes on Twitter.  

Which begs the question - how do established stars loose their grip to an upstart in any industry?  Some thoughts:

1--They start coasting and it creates an opening for a rising star.

2--The rising star is the unique talent willing to put in the crazy amount of focus and time to present a challenge to the incumbent.

3--The market changes - and the rising star connects with a new portion of a market that the incumbent isn't connected to.

Most of the time, all 3 factors are in play. For the Woj/Shams battle, I'm not sure that Woj has been coasting. But without question, Shams has put the time in, and just as importantly, he seems connected to a different part of the information market than Woj. In the case of Shams, that's being connected to players in a direct way in addition to the front offices in the NBA (Woj's territory).

Shams put in the time and connected with a new marketplace. As a result, most consider him even to Woj, who once was 100% dominant in breaking news.

Connection to HR? Understand the stars of today in your company won't be dominant forever. Be on the lookout for the rising stars who have the work ethic and focus to be top performers and support them. Note that youth alone doesn't give someone the right to challenge the star. They have to be talented, and just as importantly, they have to put the crazy work in to get to the level of the incumbent.

Who's the Woj at your company?  Do you have a Shams?

Talent pipeline 101.

And now comes Major League Baseball with a 67-page Return to Work (RTW) plan, which includes details about how pro baseball will handle their workplace in a RTW, including testing, travel, workplace details (on the field, in the dugouts), protocol for the road and contact with nuclear family as well as friends.

The plan, which was reported by The Athletic (subscription site, I pay) basically summarizes a day in the life of a pro baseball player as this:

No exchanges of lineup cards. New baseballs any time a ball is put in play and touched by multiple players. Players wearing masks except while on the field, standing six feet apart during the singing of the national anthem and “God Bless America,” sitting six feet apart in the dugout and, if necessary, even in the stands.

These are just some of the proposed protocols in a 67-page document concerning health and safety that Major League Baseball delivered to the Major League Baseball Players Association on Friday night. The procedures outlined in the document are subject to union approval and thus could change.

But my favorite are the diagrams that show how the dugouts are going to be handled. Some of you have been volunteers in youth baseball, and if you've every had a bad day trying to make 5 and 6 year olds keep their hands off each other, you may have tried a plan like MLB is pondering for Post-COVID baseball.

Highlights:

--Assigned seats 6 ft apart in dugout.

--Assigned places for water bottles and gloves.

--Banishing some players to areas outside of dugouts.

--No spitting or smokeless tobacco.

--No standing in entrance to dugout.

This plan is straight from the Baseball Mom handbook for 5 year-olds. 

"If you can't keep your hands off each other, I'll fix it."

See diagrams below for dugout details in 67-page guide (email subscribers click through for images):

Of Course, HR pros will love this method of brining order to a dugout. Whether it's MLB, a 5-year old dugout or your office break room, you're going to have to tell them what to do and where to go for awhile.

Or no juice boxes after we're done.

Yesterday, I posted my observations after leading a college recruiting roundtable - which led me to recommend you zig when others are zagging if you're starting to ponder an investment in campus recruiting.

Another observation - if you're a consumer product company, you might have an easier "in" to gather attention from the kids on campus than non-product companies.  No one has done it better recently than Natural Light (that's right, the beer).  Natural Light, better known as "Natty Light," the cheap beer of choice for college students across the country, has done multiple things to garner the attention of the college kid.  Earlier this year, they announced they would be giving away $1,000,000 to help 25 lucky drinkers pay off their student debt. In order to compete for one of these prizes, participants had to submit a short video showcasing a green tab from a can of Natty Light and share what made their college experience special.

Nice. Effective, right?

Well, they're back.  Natural Light has just announced a contest to put a student's resume on a NASCAR ride.  More details below and we'll talk after the jump.

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Natural Light is about to hook it up yet again for a recent grad that’s deep in the job search.

The beer brand is going to turn your resume into a NASCAR paint scheme that will appear on Chris Buescher’s #37 racecar at the South Point 400 in Las Vegas on September 16. Work experience, skills, contact info, head shot and all, will be painted on the car.

Natural Light and Censuswide surveyed 1,000+ employers across America and 4-in-5 agreed applicants need to find new ways to stand out when applying for jobs.

Is there a better way to get your resume noticed than have it plastered all over a car for a nationally televised race? Guaranteed your inbox and voicemail will be full after catching the eye of millions of recruiters while racing 200 mph around the track.

To be considered for the paint scheme, any person over the age of 21 can:

• Send their resume to [email protected]
• Entries are open between July 30–August 6. 

Here's a full mock up of where the resume details are going to go on the car (email subscribers, please click through if you don't see the image below)

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The interesting thing about these contests is that they really aren't related to college recruiting.  Natural Light is marketing to people who buy the iconic beer, in this case, college kids.  They want them to drink more Natty Light, which is why they're running the contest. 

Still, the creativity is key.  If you're thinking about starting college recruiting or want to make a bigger splash with what you're already doing on campus, think about how your product/service ties in with the lives of those you are trying to recruit.

Contests and awards that meet college kids where they live are key.

Good luck out there.  And if you're drinking Natty Light on campus, please drink Natty Light responsibly...

Went to Vegas this week with a few bloggers of note - Steve Boese,  Tim Sackett and Matt Stollak. Our destination had a nerd quality to it  - The NBA Summer League, where professional basketball hopefuls convene to prove they have what it takes to be one of 450 players who play in the best hoops league in the world.

Now - you should know that only about 20% of the players who attend and play in the Vegas Summer League are actual NBA players - the rest are draft choices and free agents who are scrapping and doing whatever it takes to impress the teams. 

Why go to this event? First, we like hoops.  More importantly, I go because there's a huge morality play on talent going on at the Summer League.  If NBA veterans are the best 450 players in the world, what we saw is 451-1500, and the differences are pretty small between spots 350 to 450 in the NBA and the better players in the summer league.  Who decides? What makes the difference between making a NBA roster and going to Turdistan to play next winter?  

As it turns out, a lot of the NBA is probably no better at evaluating talent than the rest of us - and there's a lesson in that.   Here's Part 1 of the story of the weekend as told through my Instagram account (enable pictures if you viewing this in email or just click through - captions and comments included with the picture).

 

Welcome to my coverage of the NBA Summer League from Vegas, where I’ll be making observations about the mixture of Vegas and the NBA that are worth more than you’re paying. HQ: center strip at the Aria. First hot take: the Utah Jazz have the best culture in the NBA. More on that later. Hot take 2: it’s hot in Vegas in July.

A post shared by krisdunn (@krisdunn183) on Jul 9, 2018 at 10:54am PDT

 

From the NBA Summer League: Meet a Summer League matchup that matters. Colin Sexton vs Aaron Holiday. Sexton was a one and done from Bama, drafted 8th overall by the Cavs with the pic that the Cavs protected for when Lebron left. Holliday is a 3-year guy from UCLA drafted 23rd overall by the pacers. Which asset is the most valuable? It depends how close the gap is. Sexton won the scoring battle 19-12, but the gap was closer than that. At the end of the day, Sexton will get lots of minutes in a post apocalyptic Cleveland and Holliday will go to the bench behind veteran guards on a good Indiana team and remain an affordable asset. Result from the Summer League: Indiana is very happy, Cleveland is hopeful. Sexton 7th in top 100 in class of 2017. Holiday 88th in class of 2015. Margins are thin in the show.

A post shared by krisdunn (@krisdunn183) on Jul 9, 2018 at 3:53pm PDT

 

From the NBA Summer League in Vegas, v3.0: Danny Ainge, GM and President of the Boston Celtics plopped down next to us during the game after the Celtics played on Monday like he was a tourist from Des Moines who decided to pop over to the gym after growing tired of the games on the strip. I first saw Ainge at the Summer League two summers ago in 2016, when he was courtside in the small gym checking out that years 3rd overall pick - Jaylen Brown play in the Summer League. I'll never forget how hard he rode the officials that day, like he was Jaylen's dad. Brown struggled that Summer League and had a uneven ride his first year, but the results are clear - that pick was gold. Add the Jason Tatum heist to the mix, and you get why people are likely scared to make a trade with him these days. Danny's known as an talented trader as a GM, someone who naturally understands talent and the value of a having a talent plan. I sent this picture back home and my wife commented, "that is a possessed look on Ainge's face". That's the best description of Ainge at the Summer League I can provide. When watching a game, he's constantly taking a longer, intense look at players who make a play, almost like he's running what he saw through his own algorithm and determining whether what he saw was worth noting for the future. He does this, btw, when other people are trying to talk to him, a clear sign that he's more interested in evaluating talent than talking to people who want something from him. He didn't really have a reason or need to be watching a non-Celtic game at the Summer League from the stands, but there he was. Taking it in and watching guys who made a play run down the court with this look on his face. Last time I saw someone so notable take the time to evaluate players at the Summer League with next to no shot make the league, it was Danny Ferry, the former Duke star and GM of the Hawks. Ferry built the 60 win Hawks from scratch, which now seems like 50 years ago instead of 2014. Whether it's basketball or corporate America, great evaluators of talent don't stop evaluating - it's in their blood. #nba #summerleague

A post shared by krisdunn (@krisdunn183) on Jul 10, 2018 at 9:17am PDT

Part Two on your way on Friday!

If you're watching/following the NCAA Men's Basketball Tourney this year, your bracket is shot, your team is likely gone and there's only one thing left to do. 

What's that thing you ask?  

Look at the rosters of the teams that made the Final Four and make a Talent observation.   Naturally. 

This year, that observation is pretty simple.  If it's long term performance you're looking for, you're likely better off not chasing the top 1% of available talent, you're better off in the 75th to 95th percentile due to performance and retention considerations.  More for the setup from the Newton Daily News:

If you take a peak at nbadraft.net to see who the top prospects for the upcoming NBA draft are, you’ll find a bunch of freshmen.  We live in a one-and-done world of college basketball. The rules force future NBA players to spend at least one season playing college basketball.

In the day of the one-and-dones, the four teams left in the NCAA Tournament are doing it with grown men.

Oregon has three freshmen on its entire roster, which is probably normal considering coaches bring in players every year to balance out rosters. Five Ducks are averaging in double-figures and four of them are juniors or seniors.

Gonzaga is probably one of the more successful programs in the country that does it with older players every year. The Bulldogs have freshman Zach Collins, who is projected to be a lottery pick. But he isn’t even one of the four Gonzaga players averaging in double figures.

North Carolina is a program one would think would be able to roll with the one-and-done model, but head coach Roy Williams has built this current roster differently. The Tar Heels lost in the championship game last year and are back in the Final Four with a team full of juniors and seniors.

South Carolina has the youngest team of any Final Four teams. The Gamecocks have freshman standout Rakym Felder and sophomores PJ Dozier and Chris Silva. But two of their top three scorers are senior guards who weigh an average of 218 pounds. Grown men.

The lesson for most of us is pretty simple.  Even if you can afford to chase top talent, it's probably not in your best interest.  Extrapolate the NCCA Final Four to your business, and the parallels are there.  You can chase top/top talent, but you'll likely pay more and have almost immediate retention concerns.  But lurking just underneath that talent pool is a group of candidates for any position that can deliver 80% of the performance for 60% of the cost/risk.  In addition, since the retention issues are diminished in this group, They'll deliver increasing performance over time because they'll stick around.

It's sexy to chase the rock star.  The Final Four is reminding us that the 85th percentile of available candidates is a place with pretty good ROI.

I'd rather my company be Gonzaga than Kentucky from a talent perspective.

Great college & pro sports coaches have more in common than just expensive suits—they've all got the same recruiting chops. And those recruiting chops are the same ones that your best recruiters have.

So who are the best of the best when it comes to recruiting for sports? And what exactly makes them the best? During this brand new episode of Talent Sniper Radio (The Kinetix Podcast), I'm joined by Kinetix Recruiting Director David Bach and we take a deep dive into the top 5 recruiters of the sports world (plus some honorable mentions) and why they stand out as the best.

From Nick Saban's process to Coach Calipari's brand, get your monthly dose of recruiting tips on Talent Sniper Radio—made for recruiters, by recruiters.  We even weave into the conversation whether each coach would make a good recruiter as part of our team.

(email subscribers, enable images or click through if you don't see the easy to use podcast player below)

If you came because of that title looking for a serious post on intern programs, think again.

I was in Auburn Saturday night for LSU/Auburn and Auburn has a kicker that kicks it out of the end zone... every.single.time.

After an Auburn FG in the first half, Auburn did what it always does - it kicked it out of the end zone.  But an enterprising young girl who works in the Auburn video/photo department and was a former ESPN intern thought she could shuffle from her position on the ground in the end zone and make the catch of the dead ball - from her knees.

The result was priceless.  Email subscribers, click through for the video.  Of special note is that she actually calls "I got it" before she takes it to the face.  Good news is that she was fine.  Obviously caught it on the cheek rather than in the nose.

I'd show this to your intern classes.  If you're doing it right, the normal work equivalent of this is at least part of the experience they should get with your company. 

Who am I?  Who cares?  Good questions.  It's my site, so I'm going dig in once in a awhile by telling you more about who I am - via a "Stuff I Like" series.  Nothing too serious, just exploring the micro-niche that resides at the base of all of our lives.  Potshots encouraged in the comments.

I like sports movies that transcend sports and tell us about life, relationships and influence. 

Oh yeah, and I just like great quotes that I can repeat to my friends.  Because I'm a white guy from GenX, and that what the **** we do.  Whatever stereotype you're thinking about from a Title 7 protected class, you should stereotype people of my "ilk" this way.  Quoting movies, preferably sports movies.  And I'll never call you a racist for doing it.

Here's my top three sports movies, pulled from a post my good friend (also white, male and GenX) Steve Boese did over at his blog:

He Got Game: Denzel, Spike Lee, a backdrop of hoops and Ray Allen starring as “Jesus Shuttlesworth”.  I love the story of a complicated father/son relationship as Denzel tries to parlay his way out of prison by encouraging his son (Jesus) to play at Big State U, which just happens to be the school of choice for the governor.  Great music spanning a lot of tastes from dramatic orchestra scores to Public Enemy.  Spike Lee perspective in Camera shots.  Fun fact: One of my sons got asked at church at a young age what the last name of Jesus (son of god, not Ray Allen) was.  That’s a trick question in a church setting.  My young son didn’t miss a beat – he raised his hand like Horseshack in Welcome Back Kotter and enthusiastically said, “Shuttlesworth”.  Welcome to the Dunn family, where everything has a hoops influence.

Bull Durham: You haven’t lived until you’ve had a son who’s played baseball and coached with another guy who knows all the lines to this movie.  The game in front of you actually becomes secondary.  You sit down next to a 10 year old in the dugout and say, “get a notepad, because it’s time to practice your cliches.”  Two minutes later, the kid is repeating the wisdom of Crash Davis - “I just hope I can help the team” and “It’s a simple game – you throw the ball, you catch the ball”.  After he has the cliches down, you bring the kid inside for senior level Crash Davis: “Anything that travels that far should have a stewardess” as an example.  Then, the fun is suddenly over when he commits two errors in the field and you resume screaming at him to "man up”.  Sports movies can only take you so far.

Any Given Sunday:  A must for any sports fan who wants to think about talent from the lens of sports.  While I agree with Tim Sackett that the Pacino speech is classic, I’m going deep in this movie and tell you that hall of famer Jim Brown is the hidden gem.  Playing the role of Defensive Coordinator, he steals the movie from Pacino and Jamie Foxx with two scenes that are coaching classics.  The first scene involves Brown going on a sidelines diatribe towards his defense and a player encouraging him to calm down before he has a stroke, to which Brown replies, “I don’t get strokes Mother#######, I GIVE THEM”.   The second scene involves Brown addressing the team at halftime and using a chalkboard diagraming X’s and O’s, with the following gem: “Now you’re dumb enough, so we made it simple enough.  We made this #### real ####ing simple (as he pounds the chalk against the board)”.  Who among us couldn’t use that line at times in corporate America?

Hit me in the comments with your favorite sports movies, the reasons for the favorite and your money quote from the film.  You don't even have to be white, male and GenX to comment, but I suspect many of you will be...

For those of you not down with the whole comparing our corporate talent lives to the world of sports thing...

As Eddie Vedder once said, this is not for you...

However, if you see sports news, signings, roster decisions and more through your lens of HR, Talent and/or Recruiting, then do we have an eBook for you...

It's the next installment of the world-famous free Ebook on Sports and HR - The 8 Man Rotation - The 2015 Season.

What is The 8 Man Rotation?

It is a group of my HR pals (and me), Lance Haun, Tim Sackett, Steve Boese, and Matt Stollak (me is Kris Dunn) who make it a habit throughout the year serving up the HR/Talent version of the 'hot sports take', helping you to see and then exploit what happens in the sports world in your HR shop.

Compiled and edited by mighty Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak, the 2015 Season is the best yet of all the 8 Man Rotation editions, coming in at a ridiculous 106 pages, all about the intersection of HR, Talent Management, Recruiting, Leadership and sports. And in 2014, we have a great introduction from Talent Pro Paul Hebert as well.

Of course you don't have to read all 106 pages (you should), you can bounce from topic to topic, and article to article, as Matt did a great job organizing a year's worth of sports takes into a coherent volume.

So please check out The 8 Man Rotation - The 2015 Season here - it's worth it! (embedded ebook appears below - click through if you can't see it) 

The 2016 NBA Finals continue tonight with Game 5, as the Golden State Warriors look to close out the Cleveland Cavaliers and take their second straight NBA Title.

What can you learn from the Warriors about talent?  Pretty simple, actually - look to evolve how you view
talent as the rules of your game change, and after you reset what you value most, think about what behavioral characteristics matter most to make your team a group of interchangeable parts that can successfully work as a team.

Oh yeah - almost forgot - after you accomplish that, make sure you retain the talent for long stretches.

Is that all?

Yeah, that's all.  Let's go though it via a nice piece Zach Lowe did over the weekend at ESPN.  First, load up on talent that takes advantage of industry changes with the biggest advantage.  For the Warriors, that means the 3 point shot:

"If the Warriors seize history Monday, it will be viewed as the closing argument in the bombastic, warped debate about whether a "jump-shooting team" can win at the highest level. The two pivotal games of this Golden State sequel -- Game 6 against the Thunder, and Game 4 in Cleveland -- will rightfully go down as watershed moments when even the skeptics realized how much more three is than two.

The Warriors in those two swing games outscored the Thunder and Cavs 114-27 combined from 3-point range. At some point, the math becomes overwhelming. Almost nothing else matters. Three isn't just one more than two. It is 50 percent more, a gargantuan bonus in a game of finite possessions."

That number in two huge games is crazy.  But getting to that number is not only about shooting, it's about defense. That's where Lowe shows how roster construction and probably a bit of luck has made the Warriors not only flashy, but a "grind it out" group of teammates you'd love to have working for your company:

"Pigeonholing the Warriors as a "jump-shooting team" has done them a disservice, and frustratingly boxed in much of the discourse surrounding their rise. Talk to almost any Golden State player or coach, and they will say the same thing: "We are a defense-first team." The Warriors ranked No. 1 in the whole stinking league last season in points allowed per possession. They slumped to No. 5 this season, in part because they were so good, they destroyed teams without having to defend at anywhere close to peak intensity.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a team communicate and switch who they're guarding so seamlessly. The Warriors swap assignments on the fly without even a millisecond of finger-pointing confusion that might open scoring windows.

By the way: that switching is a big reason LeBron has struggled at times attacking the basket. A lot of the folks screeching about LeBron "not taking over" miss the point that it's hard to "take over" when the defense doesn't even have to rotate. LeBron is a freight train going to the rim. He makes it look easy, and a lot of his critics hold that against him when it gets hard.

You don't get a head start when Iguodala just passes you off to Livingston. You've covered no north-south ground, and the Warriors have ceded no territory. You just face another like-sized defender, with his feet set, squaring up to wall off the paint. LeBron can't just run over those dudes. He has to work his crossovers, squeeze around them, search for crevices opening toward the rim."

Whether you're a hard core basketball fan or just passively watching the game tonight because someone in your family wants to watch, don't get suckered into believing the success of the warriors is all about shooting. Outscoring your opponents 114-27 from 3pt range over two games is as much about organizational development and coaching on the defensive end as it is about individual talent in an area like shooting.

Watch how in synch they are on defense. In doing that, you'll understand that Golden State has more than talent - they have an organizational plan.

And yes, you'll probably get a glimpse of Riley Curry tonight after the Warriors take the title.