Technology To Make The Heart Sing

ABC News person of the week, Allyson Townsend--an incredible young woman!

"She meticulously dedicates her time to signing out popular hits like Taylor Swift's "Back to December" in American Sign Language for her 15,350 viewers to enjoy on her YouTube channel, Ally ASL."

Watching her "sing" to people with hearing disabilities is so inspiring; I am deeply moved by her generosity.

Also, I am awed by the use of technology, like YouTube, for such innovative and humanistic purposes.

Here's to Allison and all the other selfless "ordinary people" out there who may never make it onto the news.

They are contributors to society above and beyond.

Technology To Make The Heart Sing

Rethinking Topgrading

Topgrading is a best practice for hiring top performers, developed by Dr. Bradford Smart, and used by many leading companies.

According to Dr. Smart—managers have only a 25% success rate in hiring star performers:

• 1 in 4 hires end up actually being a high performer (“A players”)
• 2 of 4 disappoint as mediocre (“B players”)
• 1 in 4 turns out being low performers (“C players”)

Smart blames this on ineffective hiring techniques—resumes, traditional competency/behavioral interviews, and candidate selected references—where candidates can provide incomplete information, play up accomplishments, downplay negatives, and deceive interviewers.

Instead, Smart’s practice of Topgrading calls for a much more thorough screening process and therefore one that yields up to 90% success rates; the techniques used include:

• Reference calls specifically with former bosses, not just anybody provided by candidates.
• Complete career histories including salaries, ratings, likes/dislikes, and reasons for leaving.
• Competency/behavior interviews (same as in traditional hiring), but augmented by a second chronological interview that walks through with candidates all of their jobs (from the first to the last) in somewhat painstaking detail and includes all of the following: success/accomplishments, failures/mistakes, appraisals by bosses, and key decisions and relationships.

Topgrading also calls for Tandem interviewing—using 2 interviewers at a time. Again, the idea is to be thorough and thereby more careful in the hiring process to yield better results.

While I certainly agree with improving our hiring competencies and doing everything we can to hire the “best and brightest,” I think the premise of having everyone be an A player, all the time, is really more than a little naïve.

People are not things, like gems or coins that you trade and collect and see who has the shiniest, most valuable collection. Rather, people are human beings, and they come to work, as they do to all aspects of their lives, imperfect.

While I understand that Smart means by A player is not someone who is perfect, but “one who qualifies among the top 10 percent of those available,” and that we should of course strive to hire the top qualified available people for all our positions, I also believe that people come in all shapes and sizes and finding top quality is not a one size fits all (i.e. like a caste system), rather we need to find and match the right person to the right job.

Many will say, that prior successful behavior is the key determinate to future success, however, if your not failing, your probably not trying hard enough—so I think we need to look at people as a composite of who they are, what they’ve done, what their potential is, where do their interests lie, is it a god fit, and so on. It’s more than just are they “top 10” (grades, schools, appraisals, etc.). Remember the movie Rocky, he didn’t start out a top 10, but ended up the world champion.

In the end, we are all a lot more than our career histories and reference checks, and timing and fit have a huge impact on whether we are successful in a particular endeavor.

I know that I have certainly seen top performers from one job “fall on their face” in another job that was just wrong for them, and vice versa, people who failed miserably in one job (due to a misfit in culture, organization, boss, duties, etc.), thrive when they are in a better suited opportunity.

So Topgrading’s scientific approach to hiring has the potential of missing the finer point that people are complex organisms. The quantifiable approach is helpful, but only when coupled with qualitatively looking at the fit being the particular organization, job, person, place, and time.

Moreover, in searching only for the A players, Topgrading has the potential to perpetuate the way of thinking that we must only look for those who are robotic, conformists that get the best grades and appraisals, rather than breaking the mold and looking for those that are non-conformist, innovative, and put everything into question. Who will reward someone like that? Not everyone. So in some cases, it may actually be the A players that are the worst players—it actually depends on the situation.

In summary, I would say yes, Topgrade to do due diligence as a leader and manager in looking for and hiring the best talent, but recognize that people have ups and downs—sometimes due to the job, sometimes due to factors completely outside the job, and sometimes its their own undoing—but don’t expect that every one you hire will be perfect, are you?

Rethinking Topgrading

It Pays To Think Big

As a kid, I remember being encouraged by my role models, who taught me to “reach for the stars”. They said things like: don’t be afraid to think big, work hard, put your best foot forward, and so on.

And I learned that in American society, it is a fundamental tenet that if you work hard, you can achieve your dreams. This is “the American dream.”

Sometimes as adults we feel that our dreams don’t matter. We work hard, but our hard work doesn’t guarantee success. We see that many factors determine success, including: talent, whether technical or leadership; a willingness to take risks; personal connections and networking, and sometimes even “just plain dumb luck.”

Nevertheless, our ability to envision success ultimately does affect our achievements. As Sheila Murray Bethel puts it in the national bestseller, Making A Difference: “Big thinking always precedes big achievement.”

It all goes back to: Think big, try hard, put yourself out there, and you can achieve great things.

Wired Magazine (December 2009), in an article titled, “Hiding In Plain Sight,” states that “Today’s tech giants all have one thing in common: They tried to change the world.” For example, look at the mission of the following organizations:

· Google—“to organize the world’s information.”

· Microsoft—“a computer on every desk and in every home.”

· Facebook—“the social graph of the planet.”

· eBay—“to create an entirely new global marketplace.”

Of course, while we know that there are real life constraints and that not every child who wants to President can be and not every company that wants to be Microsoft will be, it is still thought—imagination, big thinking and vision—that creates the foundation for greatness.

We should not only teach our children to dream big, but allow ourselves to do so as well.

It Pays To Think Big

The CIO’s Inner Circle

Executives, such as CIOs, need to surround themselves with plenty of smart and talented people to be successful leaders. Even the greatest of CIOs is not superman and cannot go it alone. He/she needs a diverse workforce with the full spectrum of capabilities to tackle the most challenging problems facing the organization.

In building our teams, leaders need to understand themselves and how they relate to others. Some common instruments that help to do this are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI). Myers-Briggs classifies people according to their preferences for introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. Similarly, the SDI charts people according to their altruism, assertiveness, and analytic. Both of these give people insight into their own personalities as well as provide a typology for those we work with.

MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2009, provides yet a new profile to categorize the support network of leaders in “Profiles of Trust: Who to Turn To, and for What”.

The profiles of people in the CIO’s support (“trust”) network comprise 8 types that “reflect differing combinations of the three facets of trust—ability, integrity, and benevolence.” They are as follows:

1. Harsh truthtellers—“sought out for their honesty…what needs to be said, not necessarily what people want to hear.”
2. Moral compasses—“respected…for their unwavering sense of right and wrong.”
3. Loyal supporters—“values are closely aligned with those of the support-seeker [leader].”
4. Star players—“experts renowned for their talent, but not necessarily for their ‘people skills.’”
5. Average Joes—“moderate levels of ability, benevolence, and integrity.”
6. Dealmakers—they “’get things done,’ often directly and unceremoniously, in a manner reminiscent of, say, a Tony Soprano.”
7. Cheerleaders—“provide unconditional support…willingness to ‘be there’ no questions asked, to lend moral support.”
8. Trustworthy partners—They ‘have it all’…they are capable, have high integrity, and have the support-seeker’s best interests at heart.”

“Executives are likely to build a support network based on different types of relationships with different people (who span the above eight profiles).” For example, when actionable advice is needed, those with high ability and integrity will be called upon. When looking for emotional or political support, those high in benevolence and integrity are especially valuable. And when looking for raw information, the “average Joes” with all three attributes in moderation are there to assist.

Of course, the specific people called upon for their subject matter expertise will vary according to the occasion and the needs of leadership. And regardless of who is called upon, and when, to provide their support, everyone serves a vital purpose.

So to me, what it important here is that everyone in a diverse workforce is infinitely valuable. And while no one person or type of person can do everything, everyone can do something. Those executives who build the breadth and depth of talent around them will have the human capital assets to thrive in any situation.

The CIO’s Inner Circle

Talent, Determination, and The Total CIO

To become a great CIO or a great anything, what is the driving factor—talent or determination?

Fortune Magazine, 27 October 2008, has a book excerpt from Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin.

Often, as individuals we’re afraid that if we don’t have the inborn talent then we can’t really compete and certainly won’t succeed. But that isn’t true!

Here’s an interesting anecdote about Jeffrey Immelt and Steven Balmer. “One of them recalls, ‘we were voted two guys probably least likely to succeed.’” They played waste-pin basketball with waded-up memos at P&G before becoming CEOs of General Electric and Microsoft.

Research shows talent is not the decisive factor:

“In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before the individuals started intensive training…Such findings do not prove that talent doesn’t exist. But they do suggest an intriguing possibility: that if it does, it may be irrelevant.”

So if innate talent is what makes for high achievement, what does?

The answer is…”deliberate practice” characterized by the following:

• Stretch goals—“continually stretching an individual just beyond his ir her current abilities.”
• Repetition—“top performers repeat their practice activities to a stultifying extent.”
• Feedback—“in many important situations, a teacher, a coach, or mentor is vital for providing crucial feedback.”
• No pain, no gain—“we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over…if the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them.”

So what do you do if you want to be a great CIO or successful in any professional endeavor?

• Set goals.
• Plan how to reach them.
• Observe yourself/self-regulate.
• Self-evaluate.
• Adapt to perform better.
• Repeat.

This is where determination comes in and makes the difference between success and failure.

“What you want—really, deeply want—is fundamental because deliberate practice is an investment. The costs come now, the benefits later. The more you want something, the easier it will be for you to sustain the needed effort.”

In any case, “the evidence…shows that the price of top level achievement is extraordinarily high…by understanding how a few become great, all can become better.”

Talent, Determination, and The Total CIO