DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

India’s Dynamics and Detours

By Sheryl Riddle

I have been to India on business more than six times over the past two years. Never have I been anywhere so dynamic and fast-moving – close to the very edge of frenetic.  Driving across Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru and beyond, the vibrancy of India is obvious. The ever-present construction of roads and buildings is evidence of growth in this burgeoning market. Yet, what a difference a few months make. Companies have seen upwards of 30% year-over-year growth, but this year brings a detour to the dynamics of the past few. The detour is called lessening growth, sudden reductions in hiring and even downsizing, which as been most dramatic for Multinationals who have left skid marks in India as they put the breaks on expansion and volume, whether in outsourcing to India or doing business on the ground. Now companies in India are facing new road signs.

• Stop: Watch Your Cost Management and Profits
• Yield: Now’s A Good Time to Restructure
• Reduce Speed Ahead: Stop Hiring and Consider Cut-Backs
• No U Turn:  Don’t Go Back The Way You Came, Refocus Your Strategy and Drive Ahead

Now let’s not feel too badly for India because when you go from 30% year-over-year growth to 20% growth, well…I bet there are a lot of companies in other global markets that would say “20% growth….we’ll take it.”

Sheryl Riddle is senior vice president, Consulting Services for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Is There a House in the Doctor?

By Mike Hoban

You’ve probably seen the television show “House M.D.” or at have least heard of Gregory House, a Sherlock Holmes-type of a physician who leads a diagnostic team at a fictional hospital.  House is brilliant and relies on his intellectual horsepower and his hunches to find cures to puzzling and life threatening ailments. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that House is cantankerous, insulting, arrogant, insensitive, condescending, impulsive and eccentric. If there were such a thing as “The Executive Derailment Society,” House would be its poster child. 

Would a doctor like him really be allowed to conduct himself like that in a real healthcare setting today? Is it okay to achieve results at any cost if you’re able to save lives? Is there a House in the doctor?

My experiences consulting in the healthcare industry and talking about this with several “insiders” including one of my brothers and my daughter Rebecca, both of them docs, suggests that the answer is usually no. Which also means, on occasion, yes.    

Hospitals tend to be mission and values driven and most take those seriously and act upon them: Treat people with dignity, with respect, with compassion; stewardship; the patient comes first. House-like behavior from a physician would seemingly not be tolerated at institutions which truly live their values.

Yet, in many hospitals doctors are not employees – they are business partners, so the institution loses some leverage for managing behavior. And doctors with great reputations can be huge cash generators for their affiliate hospital(s).

One executive from a Catholic hospital described the challenge they face with this exact situation. It calls for skillful and courageous conversations to address the Attila-the-Hun behaviors. If not handled with tact, the physician could leave and take her referrals with her. If not handled at all, employees will rightfully conclude that there is hypocrisy and that the values don’t matter as long as you can bring in the bucks. It’s a tightrope walk. 

 “House” might also be an overbearing engineer, a sharp-elbowed sales person or an offensive Ops Manager, technically gifted but lacking in fundamental people skills.  How does your organization handle them?

Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

“Turn Off, Tune Out, and Drop In”

By Barry Stern, Ph.D. 

I made a minor tweak to my 14 year old son Jake’s routine the other night. Picking up on the pressure he was feeling to stay “connected” I suggested he go old school and take a “Facebook Vacation”. Miraculously to me, he took me up on it. Instead of keeping up with the teenage cyber-chatting Jones’, he went dark for a night of solitude. Miraculously to him, he enjoyed the peace of his respite and being alone to explore his thoughts and activities he loves.

When I was Jake’s age, counterculture hero Timothy Leary implored teenage souls to Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out. While many misunderstood this catchphrase as endorsement of psychedelic experiences, his message in fact was far more serious, difficult, and still relevant. In reality, he was imploring us to begin a voyage of “personal development” towards self-discovery and reliance. Leary also anticipated Jake’s experience through his notion of the technology enabled “cybersociety” which would vastly change the way we communicate.

Just a few days ago, a wonderful client asked us to help her organization boil their Talent Management “word soup”. I began to reflect on our struggle to nurture and prod associates transformed into prisoners of corporate cybersociety gone wild. Our symptomology is vast – apologetic “out of office” messages, 24/7 availability, “global” mandates hopelessly disconnected from local cultural realities issued through finger flicks on enter keys, cowardly e or v-mails in lieu of more difficult but resolution-oriented face-to-face engaged conversations - the painful list is endless.

Amidst this swirl of connectivity, consistency of message trumps reaching out and cybertouching associates. Now is the time for simplicity, for back to basics, for true commitment to quality of life. Perhaps time to make it fashionable to Turn Off, Tune Out, and Drop In to accelerate associates’ personal journeys of development and connectedness to the vital few corporate actions that really matter.

So ask yourself:
•    How truly committed are you and your company to quality of life?
•    How clearly and consistently are you communicating the 3 or 4 key “how’s” of your unique culture?
•    How clearly does leadership across the enterprise at all levels reinforce those simple messages?

The rest is just word soup.

Barry Stern is vice president, Consulting Services and Delivery for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

CRM, Styrofoam Peanuts and Talent Decisions

By Rich Wellins, Ph.D.

Last week I was on a flight from Atlanta to Pittsburgh, seated beside a sales manager leading a team tasked with selecting the company’s new Customer Relationship Management system. The team had been on it for six months. His PowerPoint® deck was over 70 strong. No lack of analysis here. The new CRM software had a hefty $5 million price tag.

The next morning I read an article from Chief Executive magazine “The Costs of CEO Failure”, discussing how CEO turnover is costing the U.S. economy $13.8 billion a year, not including lost shareholder value, caused by mistakes, failed strategies and organizational upheaval. Imagine the cumulative cost of mistakes one or two management levels down where there are hundreds of senior managers in an organization. 

So, reflecting on our CRM story, many companies devote less than 1/2 of 1% of the time and resources in making senior manager selection or promotion decisions as the CRM team spent making their new platform decision. We run into companies that use the nine-box method (a matrix to assess performance and potential) for their high po’s. The problem is that the boxes are filled with light-weight, fluffy Styrofoam peanuts, not real, solid data. In making any internal or external senior leadership promotion decision, it is just plain malfeasance not to use more due diligence. Some things to consider:

• Are you stacking your candidates (internal or external) based on both current performance, and their ability to handle new responsibilities?
• Are you using multiple sources of data—like performance appraisals and ‘personality’ instruments—as well as management opinions?
• Is your process led by a talent management professional who can help guide you through these critical decisions as well as provide objective “second” opinions?

We sometimes hear that a process for senior leadership decisions is ‘too expensive.’ In the words of Edward Lawler, noted leadership guru at UCLA: “Decisions about people should be made with the same rigor, logic, and precision that are applied to decisions about capital investment, products, technology, and physical assets. To do anything less is to risk creating an organization that cannot perform effectively.” 

Please share—how rigorous are your talent decisions?

Rich Wellins is senior vice president at Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Down, But Not Out

By Scott Erker, Ph.D.

If the staffing function were a fighter in a boxing match, it has just taken a series of one-two punches and is leaning on the ropes. However, there are signs that staffing is coming back into the fight which I saw last week at the 2009 SHRM Staffing Management Conference. While attendance was down from last year’s record numbers, there was buzz about a few significant topics.

First, companies are buckling under the weight of too many candidates for too few jobs, causing manual staffing processes to break under candidate volume. Pressure to hire the right person is extremely high and fear that an eventual turnaround in the economy will drive massive turnover from employees that accepted a ‘placeholder job’ to pay the bills. This fuels interest in ways to find candidates who are invested in the culture of the organization–long term.

Second, legal issues got a lot of attention as the number of grievances filed with the EEOC and OFCCP has increased for two consecutive years and this is likely to continue as this recession drags on. Social media is another legal concern – the temptation to use easy access people searches (thank you Google) to gather information about job candidates is tremendous, yet they risk crossing legal boundaries protecting applicants from discrimination.

While staffing may be down, it’s certainly not out. How is your company hiring for critical functions and preparing for the turnaround?

Scott Erker is the senior vice president of Selection Solutions for Development Dimensions International (DDI).