DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

Are We Ignoring Our Strengths?

By Rich Wellins, Ph.D.

I just got back from Manchester, England and I had the opportunity to introduce two workplace thought leaders: Marcus Buckingham (of Gallup and Strengths fame, whose bestselling book titles that include First Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths) and Daniel Pink, author of yet another blockbuster, Drive. Both spoke about a different type of workplace, one that is based on trust, high autonomy, intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) motivation, self mastery and using one's strengths.

A timely topic after two miserable years.

I conducted my semi-annual "in-the-air" survey with a dozen people on the way over from the U.S. Thirteen out of the fifteen people I bothered on the flight felt the workplace was tougher and far crueler than two years ago. How bad? I asked them to choose between the worse of two evils: flying or going to work Monday mornings. Sixty percent hated work more than flying!

What got me thinking again was Buckingham's appeal again to design work around strengths. Engagement scores worldwide have gone nowhere. Buckingham says it’s no wonder considering that, on average, we spend less than 15% of our time working on things that relate to our strengths.

I gave some thought to that on the way back related to how our talent management approach can either hinder or accelerate a strengths-based approach. My thinking is that we are still far too focused on fixing "weaknesses" under the guise of development opportunities.

Here is a set of questions to get you thinking about strengths-based talent management systems:

1. If you are in a leadership position, have you helped those working with you to clearly  get in touch with their strengths so you all know what they are in the first place?
2. Where possible, are you designing individual jobs to maximize the use of a person's strengths?
3. Does your succession planning system try to match a person's competencies and "personality profiles" to the specific strategic goals your company needs to execute upon. One size executives for one size roles does not hold water anymore. Different strategic priorities require different sorts of leaders.
4. Does your performance management/developmental planning process focus on fixing weaknesses (e.g. you need to be better at this) or maximizing strengths (you are really good at this, how can we make you even better)
5. When you design a leadership curriculum is it around a needs analysis that gives priorities to group deficiencies? Are you trying to make poor coaches into better coaches or good coaches into excellent coaches?

It really hit home to me that our talent management systems are unfavorably balanced on the side of fix -it. Perhaps a real change would be welcomed by the workforce—drive higher levels of engagements in tough times, and ultimately drive the performance of our organizations.

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

Is 'Fun' the Answer to what Ails Us?

By Mark Dembo

So, it’s been declared that the recession is over – long over, in fact.  According to National Bureau of Economic Research, we officially emerged from the worst economic slump since the Great Depression in June of 2009. Shouldn’t that mean that our organizations should be humming along, brimming full of engaged, motivated and productive people?

A quick walk through the halls, cubicles, and shop floors of many companies these days would tell a far different story, not to mention the almost 10% of the US workforce that remains unemployed.

Robert Hall  of the NBER, quoted in The Wall Street Journal,  is quick to point out: “Many people ‘think recession means bad times, and there’s no question we’re [still] in bad times.’” 

The fact remains, that while economic growth has returned, those on the front lines of our organizations are still faced with having to do more with less, more pressure to perform, and ongoing anxiety that more cuts could loom on the horizon if Wall Street expectations aren’t met next quarter.

Many progressive organizations, looking to overcome this general workplace malaise, are turning to creating “fun” workplaces; tying into the theory that a happy worker is a productive worker. There’s certainly no doubt, and plenty of research to back up the theory that if we are happy we are likely to feel better about ourselves and about the work that we do. And if we feel good about ourselves and our work, we will be more engaged, and by extension be more productive. All great stuff!

But, this raises the question: does mandating “Fun” in the workplace have the desired effect, or does it just start looking like another forced corporate mandate? As Schumpeter writes in the Economist: “The most unpleasant thing about the fashion for fun is that it is mixed with a large dose of coercion.” (I can only imagine what the performance review discussion of someone who wasn’t having enough fun might look like….)

The “fun” movement is well-intentioned – at its heart it’s trying to create a more engaged workforce, but what it’s missing out on is addressing the bottom-line of what makes and keeps people engaged and motivated. Study after study show the levers of engagement include having meaningful work, feeling that one’s work is appreciated and having opportunities to develop new skills.  

So, why are these elements still lacking in so many organizations, while the move for fun is gaining steam?  Why, with so many companies offering pool tables, rock climbing walls, free lunches, and allowing employees to wear wacky costumes to work, are only “20% of workers…“fully engaged with their job”?

To create engaged workforces in today’s world we need to strike the right balance; yes, we may need to ask more of people, but we also need to help make the connection from the work they do to the meaning they can gain from it. As one reader commented in the Economist:  a “fun work environment is created by people who enjoy what they do, have a purpose and have what they need to be successful.”

No, there may not be as many opportunities for advancement in today’s flatter, leaner organizations, but we can be a catalyst to help people learn new skills and stretch in ways that will benefit the individual and the organization. We can listen better to the needs and concerns of our workforce. We can arm our leaders with the tools to help them coach, mentor, and develop their teams.   

At the end of the day, perhaps the way out of the malaise is what we’ve known all along: great leadership makes for great organizations.  

Mark Dembo is a manager for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Talent is the Strategy

By Victor L. Magdaraog

Fade in

In the beginning there was a person.  He was an entrepreneur named Talent. He had an idea. Despite the odds he plodded on until others believed in him. He converted his idea into something tangible. He created value for others and they loved him. More and more were happy with his idea. The idea grew and expanded and Talent needed help, so he created a firm. 

Fade out.

In recent years, companies struggled with defining how to make their organization’s talent agenda more strategic. Leadership pipelines, succession planning, analytics, workforce development, engagement—all these were conceived and designed to get the talent agenda to the board room. Some firms realized it was the right thing to do and simply put the talent agenda in the boardroom even if they were not sure why. They just knew intuitively that it belonged there somehow.

Others called for alignment with business strategies. But this fell short of making talent truly strategic: most saw “alignment” as merely attaching the talent strategy as an appendix of the business strategy. In most cases, this was because the strategy planning process followed models that looked at externalities to craft the business strategy: competition, suppliers, customers, new entrants, industry configuration and the like. 

Where was talent? Oh, it’s part of the organization. Talent was an internal piece; it was only an afterthought in strategy formulation.

Rewind.

Didn't we start with Talent in the first place? Think about it, do strategies create talent, or does good talent create excellent strategies? Where do strategies come from? The traditional view is to look at external factors, craft the strategy, then mobilize resources including talent. But firms still generate weak strategies and execute poorly.

Maybe the way to look at this is to start with talent. Paul Romer, an economist, suggests that there are new factors of production—people, ideas and things.  Translation: Talent, ideas, and organizations. Come to think of it, business strategies do not create talent, good talent create excellent strategies! Much in the same way as organizations don't learn, people do. Look at the great firms around you.

Look closer.

Zoom in.

Talent is the strategy!

Victor L. Magdaraog is a Vice President with Development Dimensions International (DDI) in the Philippines

Wanted: Quantum Physicist, for Leadership Development

By Matt Paese, Ph.D.

I’ve never met a quantum physicist who switched careers to go into HR. My guess, although I have no evidence of this, is that once you become a quantum physicist you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about career changes, and if you do, you don’t think about leadership development. But on the slim chance that one did, I bet he or she would have a thing or two to say about how we’re going about cultivating great leaders.

In Tuesday’s New York Times, an article in the Health section encouraged: “Forget what you know about good study habits”. Forget using a favorite study space, or creating a consistent routine. Mix it up, the research suggests. Switch locations. Space out the sessions. Study at different times of the day. Give your mind some different background stimuli, and you’ll learn more, and remember longer. Makes sense to me.

But the article also highlighted a point that many have rejected: The more you’re tested, the better. Sorry students. Turns out testing is a valuable learning tool, beyond the mere assessment of knowledge or aptitude. Practice tests and pop quizzes, because of their repetition and the interval between them, facilitate better recall and longer retention, and a significant body of control-group-based research bears out the findings.

This prompted one researcher to invoke an axiom of quantum mechanics: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which is not a first aid technique. The principle holds that the mere act of measuring something alters its very nature.

Now, I’ve never been a quantum physicist, and I’m not preparing for a career switch, but I got curious about this one. So I did what so many leadership development professionals recommend every day: I looked it up. My own miniature action learning project.

Turns out there’s a bit more to the HUP, as I’m now calling it (I’ve coined the acronym myself in an ego-preserving attempt to demonstrate one thing that HR professionals clearly do better than quantum physicists: come up with acronyms). The HUP is actually quite fundamental to quantum mechanics. And if you haven’t been paying attention to the latest in physics, quantum theory has pretty well stomped on classical theory as the best candidate for explaining all the mysteries of the physical world, birds and bees included.

Why? Classical theory has proven inadequate in its presumption that particles in the world hold, for example, constant positions. Among other problems, sometimes classical theory just can’t find things (e.g., electrons), because they’re constantly in motion. Quantum theory, however, recognizes that sometimes particles or organisms must be understood not by where they are, but rather by the trajectory they are taking – where they are going and have been.

In a similar vein, study and testing that occurs across a series of events and measures better suits the manner in which our minds naturally acquire and retain new wisdom. Once again, movement and trajectory better suit and describe nature. Location and position oversimplify.

So what would the quantum physicist have to say about developing great leaders? My guess is that we would be encouraged to examine leadership over time, and to gather multiple observations, to learn the trajectory of growth, or lack there of. Quantum wisdom would recommend that we assess routinely, and check for patterns.

Heisenberg might remind us that simply conducting a leadership assessment affects leadership, so while we would be wise not to over-assess and create paralysis, we would do well to adopt a consistent means of taking stock of where we are in our quantum world.

Of course, a real quantum physicist would certainly have much more to say about the HUP and my conclusions, if one ever comes to HR.

Matt Paese is the Vice President of Executive Solutions for  Development Dimensions International (DDI)

Meet the Pretenders

By Scott Erker, Ph.D.

 Do you remember how to hire good people? That sounds like a ridiculous question, but for many organizations it has been quite some time since job openings were posted on a career site or job board. But as the potential for economic recovery becomes more likely, we must keep in mind that today’s hiring environment differs dramatically from yesterday’s.

I often hear about the challenges associated with managing candidate pools and a common theme has been that while the pool is large (this would typically be a good thing), it is the size of the pool that also makes it hard to find qualified candidates. To make matters worse, candidates—especially those who have been out of work for a while—have become much better at demonstrating to recruiters that they are a good fit for the job even though this might not be the case. I call them ‘the pretenders.’ Consider this:

• Many candidates have been on the market for an extended period of time and have had a lot of practice interviewing and meeting with recruiters. With practice, they are learning the ‘right things to say’ even though they may not truly have the skills or experiences they seem to have on the surface.
• Resumes have been polished and re-polished, making them look good on paper where skills and experiences can be exaggerated.
• Armed with a wealth of information, today’s candidate is better equipped to predict what you’re looking for and could possibly fool you into believing they’re EXACTLY what you’re looking for.

My point in raising this issue is not to cast job candidates in a bad light. They are doing the best that they can under difficult circumstances. The issue is in how staffing professionals can bring the highest quality people into the organization and avoid being misled by practiced and polished candidates. Some ideas:

1. Update your job requirements and competency models to reflect today’s role. Don’t use last year’s job profile and ask hiring managers to provide up-to-date job requirements so that you avoid sourcing candidates for the wrong job.
2. It’s not like riding a bike. Conducting effective interviews is a skill that degrades over time. Refresh hiring managers’ skills so they can ask the right questions; avoid stereotype biases; make a nervous job candidate feel at ease; and objectively score interview data.
3. Don’t rely on gut feel for hiring decisions. Upgrade your recruitment arsenal and collect and review data to provide an objective view of candidates’ capabilities and qualifications.

Companies that polish their selection systems can avoid falling into the trap of hiring someone they don’t really know—and who is pretending to be the best hiring choice.

Listen to Scott's Podcast Hiring Success: The Importance of Culture Fit.

Scott Erker, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President of Selection Solutions for Development Dimensions International.