How to Select , Retain and Grow talent in our company (Based on Articles and Books published by "Claudio Fernandez"

"Who Principal" - The outstanding leadership and the ability to build superior executive teams are the two essential and foundational prerequisites for remarkable corporate performance. 

"First get the right people on the buss, wrong people off the bus, and the right people into the right seats and then figure out where to drive the bus. " Quote from the Book "Good to Great"

PART 1

NEED AND CHALLENGES OF

FILLING ORGANIZATION WITH BEST PEOPLE

Hiring Great People Is Good for one’s Career

“Making great people decisions is an essential life skill….the most decisive skill in determining our career success, and also our personal happiness.”

Unless our business is very small, no matter how talented we are, how great we are at management or how hard we are willing to work, eventually we will have to delegate to other people. To succeed, we must run our business with talent and energy while attracting and serving customers. Our genetics, personal and professional development, and prior hiring decisions join together to determine if we will be an excellent employer or not.

Many of the important decisions we will make as a manager will be about the people on our team and how we accomplish our work through them. Making great people decisions is a factor in our success that we can actually do something about, unlike our genetic makeup. We can develop and improve our skills in hiring and managing talented people. Becoming an expert about people doesn’t come simply or quickly, but nothing we do will provide us with higher returns in terms of success and career satisfaction. Strangely, most managers believe they are better at people decisions than they are. However, improvement in this area will reward us with greater satisfaction in our work and personal life.

Hiring Great People Is Good for our Company

”Despite the urgent need to improve our performance in making people decisions, many organizations still lack effective succession programs, or indeed, any succession program at all.”

Making great decisions about people isn’t just great for our career; it is also great for our company. In his bestsellers Built to Last and Good to Great, Jim Collins looked at the factors that distinguish leading companies and found that successful companies have outstanding leadership. Further, those leaders build superb executive teams to execute their companies’ strategies. Conversely, CEOs who don’t fix their people problems, or who make poor choices about people, often lead their companies into trouble. These executives damage both their companies and their careers. In 1985, Peter Drucker said that executives get about one-third of their people decisions right, one-third are minimally effective, and the other one-third are simply failures. The good news is that we can improve our ability to make great people decisions.

Why hiring great people is difficult?

“Inept managers not only do their own jobs badly; they also destroy the performance (and potential) of the people around them.”

We probably can tell rather sensational stories about hires that looked perfect. The candidates had the perfect educational backgrounds, professional experiences and strong market connections; they interviewed perfectly. Yet, their job performance turned into horror shows. What went wrong? You may think you know how to hire better than actually you do. Hiring decisions are hard for four reasons;

1.     The odds are against us (Statistical Odds)

a.     Distribution of talent has a very large spread. In many cases, there are only a small number of exceptional performers.

2.     Difficult Assessments – “Assessing people for complex positions is inherently difficult”

a.     Impact of Assessment Errors

·  Even if having 90% accuracy in assessment we have 50-50 chance of selecting right individual. (solution increase more number of assessors having 90% accuracy)

b.    Unique Jobs

·  The higher we move up the organizational pyramid, moreover, the more unique these position become.

c.      Changing Jobs

·  What is needed today can be quite different from what’s needed tomorrow in VUCA situation of Market. (Versatile, Unpredictable, Complex and Ambiguous)

d.    Intangible Traits

·  Soft skills area – Result Orientation, Ability to collaborate, develop people, lead teams and manage change. Not accurate for self, how for others?

e.     Inaccessible Candidates

·  Higher the rank, lower the tolerance of thorough evaluation. Also some talented candidates not looking for the job.

3.     Psychological Biases – “Powerful psychological biases impair the quality of the decision making process”. To overcome below biases (1) Build Awareness (2)  have right advisors, both inside and outside organization

a.     Procrastination

·  Delaying the decisions when things seem to be going reasonable well, the tendency is to exaggerate the risks of change     and to disregard the opportunity costs of the status quo.

b.    Overrating Capability

·  Understanding whom we hire or promote to top positions are more capable than they actually are in case of individual self-assessment is usually inaccurate. They are highly optimistic. There is difference between motivation to perform and actual capacity to do so.

c.      Snap Judgements

·  When assessing a candidate, first impression play a major role, as do gossip and other second-hand informational about the candidate. Sometimes, one piece of bad information eliminates an individual who, on balance, may be the best candidate. We rely heavily on unreliable indicators such as a candidate’s charisma, to predict future performance.

d.    Branding

·  Over emphasis on Company where candidate is coming from

e.     Evaluating people in absolute terms

·  Attaching stigma – “Outstanding Manager” , “Loser”

·  Asking for Strengths and Weaknesses. How do candidate see him or herself from five years now.  (To improve on this (Ask questions in particular context))

f.       Seeking confirmatory information

·  Stick to hypothesis made in beginning , not being ready to reframe or change it instead, anyhow seeking confirmatory information

g.    Saving face

·  Try to justify wrong people decisions to save face

h.    Sticking with familiar

·  Hiring from same company or known individuals

i.       Emotional anchoring

·  Judging candidate relative to someone familiar (or to each other) rather than on their own merits.

j.        Herding

·  Not speaking up own doubts or queries due to fear of looking odd to what others are saying or look offensive to their opinions

4.     Wrong Incentives – “Misplaced incentives and conflicts of interest can easily sabotage these decisions”

a.     Candidate circumstances

·  Not checking whether candidate’s circumstances can push them toward either self-serving dishonesty or unfairly self-critical honesty.

b.    Political pressures

·  Pushing known candidate and compromising merits due to pressure of some influential or important person in fear of not offending him/her or his/her opinion.

How to Know When we need a Change

Do we still believe that our organization is great at people decisions? Consider what 75% of the executives surveyed said about their firms in a study by McKinsey & Company:

·        They did not “recruit highly talented people.”

·        They did not “identify high and low performers.”

·        They did not “retain top talent and assign the best to fast-track jobs.”

·        They did not “hold line managers accountable for people quality.”

·        They did not “develop talent effectively.”

Sometimes the need for change is obvious. When your CEO retires or dies, or the owners decide to sell the company, we know there will be a change at the top. When our company decides to expand through a major investment in a new business, we know staffing changes are the inevitable result. When public firms engage in mergers and acquisitions, their CEOs always claim that nothing will change, but we know better. Firms that adopt a radically new marketing strategy will require leadership changes.

Some changes are less obvious. Successful companies grow and try to keep their formulas in place as long as possible, often for far too long. Management has to make changes to keep the engine of success pulling the expanding load. Talented leaders will be looking to the future and planning ahead for changes. Since we may get resistance in the midst of change, we must plan in advance to avoid failing. Stay honest and deal with every issue in the present while keeping a clear view of the future. Root out every tendency to stay in a past that is dead and gone.

	PART 2 How to view Candidates

 

Following Criteria are evaluated for selecting a candidate at organization. The criteria and its weightage shall be different for different position while evaluating the same. This document provides a base or pool of criteria from where we can pick and choose few or several among depending on need. However tools for evaluating these criteria are not part of these document.

1)    Job Knowledge

                               i.            Professional Degree

                            ii.            Industry Experience (Years)

                         iii.            Function Exposure (Years)

                         iv.            Technical Knowhow of the position

                            v.            Language Verbal and Written Skills required for the position

                         vi.            Organization Hierarchy match between previous and position applied for

                      vii.            Having Conventional or unconventional career (to check portability of working with different people and different scenarios in different Organization context, Major jobs shifts suggest that a person is seeking learning, challenge and growth and has wherewithal (infinitive) to master new companies, sectors, cultures and strategies)

                   viii.            In case of rehiring (Check)

                                                             i.      Benchmark against the field of candidates (comparison with available talent in market)

                                                           ii.      Accepting Trade off - What expect can be compromised, now realized that it can be ignored. Can’t have it all. If you realize that no one person can do the essential of the job, you might consider hiring multiple people with complementary skills or developing the candidate who comes to the closest.

                                                        iii.      Timing and Circumstances - Depends on how the x skills are now more useful to the organization

                                                        iv.      Be Aware - Be aware of changing circumstances. Never assume that people who were great at yesterday's job will be good at todays. And never assume that people who aren't stars today couldn't be tomorrow.

2)    Intelligence Quotient

                               i.            Numerical Aptitude

                            ii.            Logical Reasoning

                         iii.            Creative Logic

                         iv.            Lateral Thinking

                            v.            Problem Solving

                         vi.            Memory

3)    Emotional Quotient – must for today’s “VUCA - Volatile Uncertain Complex Ambiguous” business environment

                               i.            Flexibility and Adaptability (to the change)

                            ii.            Resilience  (Rebounding , Springing Back)

                         iii.            Empathy (Understanding and entering into another’s feeling)

                         iv.            Organizational Awareness

                            v.            Relationship Management

4)    Leadership Potential

                               i.            Right kind of “Motivation” - Fierce commitment to excel in the pursuit of unselfish goals. High potential have great ambition and want to leave their mark, but they also aspire to big, collective goals, show deep personal humility, and invest in getting better at everything they do. Wants to have a positive impact on others for the good of larger group or organization. He gets satisfaction from seeing others succeed and values mission over personal reward.

                            ii.            Curiosity - A penchant (strong liking) for seeking out new experiences, knowledge and candid feedback and an openness to learning and change.

                         iii.            Insight - The ability to gather and make sense of information that suggest new possibilities

                         iv.            Engagement - a knack for using emotion and logic to communicate a persuasive vision and connect with people

                            v.            Determination - The wherewithal to fight for difficult goals despite challenges and to bounce back from adversity.

5)    Leadership Abilities

                               i.            Strategic Orientation - An ability to engage in broad, complex analytical and conceptual thinking

                            ii.            Market Insight - A strong understanding of the market and how it affects the business

                         iii.            Result Orientation - A commitment to demonstrably improving results (key business metrics )

                         iv.            Customer Impact - A passion for serving the customer

                            v.            Collaboration and Influence - An ability to work effectively with peers or partners including those not in the line of command

                         vi.            Developing organizational capability - A drive to improve the company by attracting and developing top talent

                      vii.            Team Leadership - Success in focusing, aligning and building effective groups

                   viii.            Change Leadership - An ability to drive charge through people, transforming and aligning an organization around a new goal

6)    Values

                               i.            Respect

                                                             i.      Empathetic listening

                                                          ii.      Giving due importance to other department’s work

                                                       iii.      Acknowledgement of communication

                                                       iv.      Language & Tone of communication

                                                          v.      Resolving conflicts in private and appreciating in public

                                                       vi.      Mentoring/coaching – maintaining self-esteem

                            ii.            Teamwork & Collaboration

                                                             i.      Transparency of intentions

                                                          ii.      Support team members’ development

                                                       iii.      Provide help in difficulties

                                                       iv.      Recognizing contribution made by each team member

                                                          v.      Involving team members

                                                       vi.      Setting clear expectations

                         iii.            Commitment & Ownership

                                                             i.      Giving priority to organizational goal over personal goal

                                                          ii.      Alignment with organization’s vision

                                                       iii.      Achieving results within given time

                                                       iv.      Dealing with obstacles (Positive attitude)

                                                          v.      Taking responsibility of mistake & rectifying the same

                                                       vi.      Provide an environment of freedom & support

                         iv.            Trust

                                                             i.      Transparency

                                                          ii.      Alignment of actions with words

                            v.            Relationship

                                                             i.      Spending quality time

                                                          ii.      Understanding each other

                                                       iii.      Managing emotions or developing coping skills in crisis situation

7)    Portability - Able to effectively transition from one role, company, industry or country to the next, not only bringing their unique strengths to each but also growing stronger in the process

                               i.            Ability to work in various platforms

                            ii.            Ability to work on various products

                         iii.            Ability to work with various kind of people

                         iv.             Ability to understand politics

8)    Reading people around the world - Global context. Model developed by Dutch Researcher Geert Hofstede five dimensions. Can be assessed with same way on Intelligence values, leadership abilities, EI, Portability. To assess club with the person (on roll or consultant) with the same country

                               i.            Power Distance - Reflects the willingness of weaker members of organizations to accept an unequal distribution of power; it is quite high in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Arab world, and very low in Anglo and Germanic countries

                             ii.            Individualism - Measures the degree to which the person is distinguished from the group; North America and Europe are highly individualistic, while Asia, Africa and Latin America have much stronger collectivistic values

                          iii.            Uncertainty avoidance - Indicates tolerance for ambiguity; it is quite high in Latin America, many southern and eastern European countries, and Japan and lower for Anglo, Nordica and Chinese cultures

                          iv.            Masculinity - Scores the distribution of roles across genders; Japan and several European countries rank as highly masculine, while Nordic countries are much less so

                             v.            Long-term orientation - Whether people focus on distant rather than immediate outcomes; it is high in East Asia, moderate in Europe, and low in Anglo countries, the Muslim world and Latin America

9)    Reference Check – ( Encourage validity from candidate and cross check)

                               i.            Self Awareness and Humility - Can speak of strengths and weaknesses, driven by Personal or social motives

                             ii.            Reduce Social Pressure - Tell them references will be checked at right time. Do not discuss compensation, incentives always on fit.

                          iii.            Realistic Job Previews - Inform what will be the challenges at job , Positives and Negatives

                          iv.            Encourage to discuss role with others - Encourage to candidate to share upcoming role and his or her readiness with close friends, colleagues or trusted acquaintances

10)                       Reference Check – (From outsiders) -

                               i.            Comprehensive and relevant list of people to call - Former bosses, peer and subordinates at several previous places of employment. Narrow list by specific skills we want to measure. Former bosses are great at assessing strategic orientation and need for achievement. Peers can help to measure influence. Subordinates are often the best judges of leadership

                             ii.            Provide the referee with the right incentives - Start with highlighting how important it is to have a reliable reference, since the candidate in the end won't benefit from getting a job in which he is likely to fail. Explain that no candidate is perfect and all have their individual strengths and weaknesses; plus, it's useful to know as much as possible so if the person is hired you can provide the right kind of integration and support. Emphasize that the referee's comments will be kept completely confidential. And speak in persons or on the phone rather than via e-mail. It's easier to solicit the whole truth when you can bear hesitations or emotions in a person's voice or see it on his or her face.

                          iii.            Help referee to avoid frequent biases - Avoid broad question. After checking the person's relationship with the candidate, be specific about the job and its challenges. Ask whether referee has seen the candidate perform under similar circumstances. And the-only then-ask what the candidate's exact role was, what he did, how he did it, and what the consequences were.

Sample of Interview Evaluation form for “Marketing Manager”

Sr.	Context Rank	Context	Performance evaluation criteria	Weightage	Rating (1 to 5) -	Score
1	1	Knowledge	MBA in Marketing	8
2	1	Knowledge	Marketing exposure (Domestic or International both valid)	8
3	1	Knowledge	Chemical Industry Experience	7
4	1	Knowledge	Knowhow of New Product Marketing	6
5	1	Knowledge	Knowhow of New Market Development	6
6	1	Knowledge	English Communication Verbal	5
7	1	Knowledge	English Communication Written	5
8	1	Knowledge	Exposure in handling people under him or her	5
9	2	Intelligence	Analytical thinking and Decision Making	6
10	3	Leadership Competencies	Result orientation	5
11	3	Leadership Competencies	Market Insight	5
12	3	Leadership Competencies	Team Leadership	5
13	4	Potential	Determination (achieve goals despite of challenges)	8
14	4	Potential	Engagement (connect with people)	8
15	4	Potential	Right Kind of motivation	8
16	5	Values	Zeal & Enthusiasm (Entrepreneurship spirit)	5
OVERALL SCORE				100

	PART 3 INTEGRATE AND SUSTAIN

 

Integration Process – After selecting a best fit candidate for above procedure need to do following for integrating and retaining of employees. It is addressed through various policies which are not mentioned over here but a broad conceptual guideline is intended to be shared.

1)    Accelerated Integration - When a new person joins your team or takes on a new role, there is a threat of rejection and the strategies for success is help him or her to integrate and learn about following steps ;

a.     Lear about - Processes, Team, Organization Goals, Stakeholders, Culture, Organization Structure, Immediate priorities and long term aspirations

b.    Check he or she is working effectively by monitoring ongoing health of score card

c.      Encourage them to meet with everyone who will play a role in their success (or failure) - Out reach should be in fiver direction - Boss and other bosses, across to peers, down to subordinates, out to clients and in to personal contacts such as family members and friends

d.    After 30 days evaluate their professional goals achievement

e.     After 90 days, consider lining up a 360 degree review and from then on for a year check in monthly

f.       Give critical information on governance (how things operate in organization culture)

2)    Making People count 

a.     Bring Diversity in teams

                                                             i.      First, fight your biases against diversity

                                                           ii.      Encourage to educate and train about self and others - e.g. knowing Team Member personality type by MBTI and using this knowledge to solve conflicts

b.    Coaching

                                                             i.      Emotional Competencies Training

c.      Building a culture is compassionate coaching - Great leaders are great listeners who make their employees feel valued, see the bigger picture and feel a part of something important. Positive cheerleaders, committed guides, conscious of the state and progress of their team and the individuals in it. They are also timely provocateurs, offering the right dose of tough love when necessary

d.    Developing culture of unconditional love

                                                             i.      Select members only after very careful evaluation so they are best

                                                           ii.      Than helping people in difficult circumstances. "Culture eats strategy for Breakfast". Culture cannot be duplicated by competitor

e.     Train Leaders - Development efforts for employees, complementing one another skills. It is much more effective to concentrate on the competencies in which your people stand the best chance of getting better, and those that offer the greatest benefits to your team, depending on your business and strategy. Training leaders in competencies that match their career stage and team, unit or organization's broader goals

f.       Find Alignment in Team by having complementary skills - Ensuring that team members have skills that complement each other, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts

g.    Lock Step pay structure - Eat what you kill compensation replaced by "Best practices Lockstep" structure with best values and culture practices. So Star - A category employee wont left to have great team members. "Why be a lone wolf starving when you can hunt with others and feast together?"

                                                             i.      Value comes from collectively creating and seamlessly sharing information - When leading a team of any size, do whatever is in your power to make the incentives for meeting collective goals outweigh those for individual performance. Then adopt the kind of people practices and culture that will keep the strongest wolves in your pack.

h.    Promotion - The fact is that giving people bigger jobs with fancier titles and larger salaries won't make them better. More complex assignments will. Potential should trump seniority and that-when it comes to the jobs that help leaders grow most complexity always beats size

                                                             i.      Interesting and challenging work, short term project based assignments. Allow them to stretch and find new muscles

                                                          ii.      Leadership Pipeline – Managing self to Managing Mangers

i.       Improve Team Performance - Above average pay but essentially with… Autonomy (the freedom to direct our lives), Mastery (the desire to achieve excellence in what we do), Purpose (the knowledge that what we do is in service of something bigger than ourselves)

                                                             i.      Setting difficult but attainable challenges.

                                                          ii.      Eliminate distractions so they can become immersed and work at maximum efficiency.

                                                        iii.      Point them to a greater cause - what good will come from their work, whether it's "everyday low prices" at Walmart, or to be "the fabric of real time communication for the web" at Skype

                                                        iv.      Do pay well to - Ideally above average. But realize that money will never motivate the wrong people to do the right thing. Instead incentivize all the right people you have picked with the opportunity to play independent roles on your team, to master their skills, and to pursue broader team, organizational or societal goals.

3)    Manpower Planning

a.     Look externally for more candidates, ideally periodically but certainly a planned succession approaches or following an unexpected departure - it is critically important to consider both insiders and outsiders, particularly for this role. Executive search firms can add great value here, but make sure to avoid or at least be aware of contingency arrangements or percentage fees that often cause them to favour external appointments over internal ones

b.    Robust transition - Outsiders who join the company three to four years before they become CEOs do just as well as insiders with much longer tenures

c.      Start planning very early - Ideally when the new CEO takes charge, but never later than three to four years before be or she expects to leave

d.    Require the borad to conduct periodic emergency succession drills – Since about 50 percent of CEO successions are unplanned.

e.     Create and maintain a clear outline - Of what you need from the CEO role, informed by the board and detailing all the required competencies, then regularly assess your leader against it. This might seem hard to do, but if you do it at lower levels, shouldn't you also do it at then to where it matters the most?

f.       Build internal bench identifying assessing and developing potential CEO candidates. And do benchmarking them against the best external talent

4)    Teams that thrive - Bringing Stars Together - Team effectiveness review to be measured on following 6 criteria –

a.     The best get even better when they work together. As a leader, it's your job to build a diverse, effective, committed group capable of achieving collective greatness;

                                                             i.      Openness - How much a team values engaging with the broader organization and the outside world and builds the connections to do so

                                                          ii.      Energy - How ambitious the team is, and how much it takes the initiative and maintains long-term momentum at a high level

                                                        iii.      Resilience - How well a team can hold itself together, even under severe internal or external stress, and remain effective

                                                        iv.      Alignment - How well team members understand the larger collective purpose, and focus their actions and those of the team on that objective

                                                           v.      Balance - How well a team understands the importance of diversity of skills and strengths and is willing to incorporate them

                                                        vi.      Efficiency - How well a team understands the need to optimize resources and theme and drives efficiently for results

5)    Thriving on Crisis- Hire the best in crisis to later build the strong team

a.     Keep long-term perspective - don’t become short-sighted and irrational during difficult times, visionary leaders and organizations stay calm and use them to their advantage, sprinting away from their competitors and never looking back

b.    Don’t freeze hiring - selective hiring of high performing employees from competitors

c.      Think twice before firing anyone

d.    Selectively invest in talent - even if you have to downsize elsewhere at the same time. Sooner than you expect, the crisis will end and you will be thriving.

6)    True Leading Boards

a.     Board member assessment –

                                                             i.      Values and behaviour : Collaboration (an openness to teamwork and robust, rigorous debate) and influencing And integrity and independence (a desire to take principled action, even at personal risk, for the good of the company)

                                                           ii.      Judgement related competencies; Result orientation (a strong focus on long-term value and a willingness to challenge the status quo) , strategic orientation (an ability to help shape and implement corporate strategy by raising key issues and providing relevant advice and counsel)

b.     Promote someone for board member- by encouraging deserving employee to participate in services