DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

The Moneyball Formula for Leadership

By Mike Hoban

So, what are the talent lessons that companies can learn from the largely true-story movie Moneyball? The entertaining and drama-filled film is up for 6 Academy awards this year including one for best picture but this is more than a story about baseball. It’s a story about finding the right – and affordable – talent.

Here’s a brief synopsis for those who have not seen it yet or read the book on which it’s based. Billy Bean is the General Manager for the Oakland Athletics in 2002 and adopts a new quantitative method (“sabremetrcis”) of scouting players, a methodology employing a little used metric of “on base percentage” as a key indicator of talent. In the movie, the algorithm was developed by a young math whiz who is subsequently hired by Bean to identify “overlooked” talent, since Oakland’s personnel budget was miniscule compared to that of the competition.

The quantitative approach is derided by most of the baseball establishment because it was counter to the traditional player performance indicators used to identify talent. It also cut across the grain of relying on talent scouts’ judgment and experience, based largely on more traditional metrics. Fast forward - Bean proves the cynics and skeptics wrong and the Athletics, with a team of low salaried players who were undervalued and in some cases cast off by other teams makes the playoffs.

There is a Wikipedia link for those of you who want more detail.

So back to the initial question – what is the “so what?” for companies regarding that talent acquisition story? Professional sports is a very different kind of industry than most, in which talent and the execution of talent is the overwhelming differentiator for win/loss success. Not technology, not market strategy, but talent. Besides, even if the metric of “on base percentage” is the holy grail of positive correlations for player (and team) success, what is the equivalent success genetic marker for those working in manufacturing or banking or healthcare? Good points both.

The lessons, therefore, are more about a concept rather than in the specific replication of the Moneyball tale. Even in sports other than baseball no one has suggested a new or creative performance metric to predict success which parallels the baseball example in the story.

So here are my takeaways:

• It’s possible to be very successful as an organization with associates and managers who lack what conventional wisdom would consider to be “Tier 1” credentials. Brand-name employment experience is a good thing, but so can be solid experience in an obscure no-name company. Ditto for education;

• It doesn’t take the biggest payroll to win. Super Bowl champion NY Giants rank #18 out of 32 NFL teams in payroll costs and the Super Bowl runner-up Patriots rank #23;

• Acquiring niche, non-superstar players who fit a system can be a formula for success. Granted, that goes against the popular principle of “top grading” but that’s the whole point of the story. Success through tried-and-true means would have made a far less compelling story;

• Sometimes finding the right talent for a role requires casting the net in unexpected or non-traditional directions as they did in Moneyball. For an important project management role, for instance, an organization might not only screen the internal data base for those having related PM experience but might also ask who has successfully orchestrated and organized a large wedding or a successful class reunion. Think about it - in both of those instances, planning and organizing skills are important as is relationship management to achieve the desired outcome;

• Accept that there is an element of risk in trying to find the uncut diamonds and be prepared to address that potential performance gap and move on. There was a higher degree of churn than usual in the Oakland club as General Manager Bean tried to assemble the right team using overlooked or under-appreciated players.

Readers – any other lessons you took from the story?

Mike Hoban is a Senior Consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI). www.ddiworld.com

 

Leadership Lessons in Holiday Pop Culture

By Mike Hoban

Christmas season film favorites are not just entertaining, some of them contain valuable leadership lessons.  So in the holiday spirit, here are some examples of well-known and mostly well beloved seasonal celluloid and their lessons.

        A Christmas Story

Leadership Lesson:  Sometimes you have to take some intelligent risks in order to reap big rewards, even if the skeptics and naysayers tell you that you might shoot your eye out.  Act upon your inner Ralphie. 

        It’s a Wonderful Life. 

Leadership Lesson #1:  You as a leader often have no idea of the unintended positive impact you have on others and unfortunately, there is usually no Clarence angel to show you.   Lesson #2:  Every time you hear a bell ring it means someone has earned his/her leadership “wings.”

        National Lampoon Christmas Vacation

Leadership Lesson:  As a leader, setting accurate expectations about the organization’s reward system can help you avoid disengaged and disgruntled employees.  An added bonus for viewing this movie is enjoying one of the very classic movie lines, as uttered by Chevy Chase’s character.  “Am I surprised?  Why Eddie, I wouldn’t be more surprised if I woke with my head sewn to the carpet.”

        Miracle on 34th Street

Leadership Lesson:  Being seriously - I mean seriously - customer focused might mean sending your customer to someone else if they have a better solution, as Kris Kringle in the movie suggested that shoppers go to his sponsoring store’s arch-competitor Gimbels. Sometimes enhancing the long-term relationship and trust is more important than making an immediate sale.      

        Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (Stop Motion Animation Classic)       

Leadership Lesson: The power of diversity gets a lot of lip service but in this low-tech classic production it’s the odd, eccentric Rudolph who brings his unique and heretofore unappreciated quality (his glowing nose) to the table and enables Santa, the leader, to accomplish his task.  Despite that valuable lesson, it is a truly awful and annoying production and leaders are urged to acquire that lesson through other means.

        How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Leadership Lesson: You as a leader can overcome significant character flaws or executive derailers through self-awareness and intentional action.  Even a negative, narcissistic reputation like the Grinch’s can be repaired through authentic and consistent positive behavior.             

        Elf

Leadership Lesson:  Embracing, advocating and acting upon your beliefs and vision can enable others to believe in and achieve a desirable outcome, even if it seems preposterous to others initially.  Plus, every leader can increase his/her credibility with younger employees by knowing there are four main food groups: candy; candy canes; candy corns and syrup.

        A Charlie Brown Christmas (Animated)

Leadership Lesson: Good grief, leading by example can be a powerful way of capturing the hearts and minds of others in times when a paradigm shift is needed. Come to think of it, this is something of a theme for all of these seasonal productions.

Anyway, a most happy holiday season to all DDI Talent Management blog readers and I hope that I and my blogger colleagues have brought you some insights and inspiration in 2011.     

Mike Hoban is a senior consultant with DDI.

Are You an Exceptional Boss? Some Things to Ponder

By Mike Hoban

October 16 is Boss’ Day.  It’s interesting – it is not a Hallmark invention like many people suspect.   Nope.  A woman named Patricia Horoski, who was an employee at State Farm Insurance in Illinois, registered the holiday with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1958.  She thought bosses should have a day of appreciation of their own.  She chose October 16 because it was her father’s birthday and she considered him to be an excellent boss. 

If you’re a manager, would your team members consider you to be an excellent boss?  How likely is it you’ll get an e-mail, an e-card a high-five or some other sort of supportive acknowledgement from those who report to you on Boss’ Day?  Maybe it won’t happen because no one wants to be considered a suck up.  Or maybe because it’s a weekend day and no one remembers .  But maybe it’s because, well, they don’t consider you to be one of those excellent bosses. 

So there could be a good reason for Boss’ Day to come and go with nary a word from your team, but it’s still worth looking in the mirror and asking yourself the following questions:

• When was the last time you said to one of your direct reports, “Thanks for _____” (fill in the blank, being specific and timely)?
• How many times in the past week have you authentically asked your direct reports “What do you think?” and then acted on the input?
• When was the last time you admitted to your direct reports that you were wrong on a business decision you made?
• When was the last time you even admitted to yourself that you were wrong on a business decision you made?
• When was the last time you publicly credited one of your direct reports for excellent work, even downplaying whatever role you might have played in the outcome?
• Do you almost always resist the urge to second guess your team member on a decision she made on an assignment you delegated to her?
• When was the last time you told your boss he/she was doing a good job and why?
• How often do you speak favorably to your direct reports about your boss when he/she is not around?
• Could two or more of your direct reports describe a time in the last 6 months when you went to bat for them on a significant issue?
• Would most of your direct reports say that they trust you as a boss and as a person because of the specific things you do (and don’t do) in leading and managing them?

Those are some of the things that excellent bosses do.  And those are the kinds of things that give direct reports a reason to remember and acknowledge Boss’ Day. Work on giving them a reason for next year.

Mike Hoban is a Senior Consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

The Important Leadership Conversation That Often Doesn’t Happen…

By Mike Hoban

There’s an old saw in politics you likely have heard which can be paraphrased as “If nominated, I will not run; if elected I will not serve.”  It’s called the Sherman Pledge (named after the Civil War general) and it’s about publicly declaring one’s intent to not pursue a particular office. Unfortunately, in business there are sometimes talent management decisions made without first testing assumptions about someone’s aspirations and intentions to see if there is a personal Sherman Pledge that needs to be revealed. That can make for an awkward situation, a poor talent decision and some egg on a few faces. 

Yet, there is an easy solution – you have a conversation. But I get ahead of myself…

I’ve personally experienced situations like the following: Rebecca, a results oriented supervisor, is seen as having the potential of being a mid-level leader and perhaps higher and is designated to be on the high potential list by a talent review committee. Or Ben, the supervisor of a software team, is seen as ready for promotion to middle management and there is an upcoming opening because of a retirement. Their respective managers then sit down with them and describe the good news opportunities and expectations and oops…        

Oops, as in “I’m happy that I’m highly regarded, but, um, that’s not really what I want to do, at least right now.” For someone like Rebecca, she’s knows that the hi-po track almost always means a relocation and different assignments in order to learn other aspects of the business. It’s a good principal for development, but Rebecca is active in her community, has an aging parent in town who is having health problems and has a husband who has recently started a Ph.D. program at the state university. Oops…

In Ben’s situation, the issue isn’t anything about a possible relocation, it’s about his passion for the work he is currently doing – he loves his job. The job he has. Ben has been writing software since he was in junior high and is a gifted coder. He was promoted to supervisor after three years as a software engineer for the company and he likes very much not only leading his team and providing technical guidance and coaching, he also carries several projects which allow him to do hands-on work. He sees the next level up role as more managing and less “doing,” and moving him further away from the kind of work that he gets jazzed about. Oops… 

The Rebecca and Ben situations are not purely about the classic performance vs. potential issue nor are they purely about the individual contributor track vs. management track. They are hybrid situations and suggest that peoples’ aspirations and values - perhaps today more than ever - are nuanced and don’t necessarily conform to the conventional wisdom guidelines that have served us well in the past. Work-life balances and values have shifted and upward mobility does not always have the allure it might have had traditionally.   

What’s the solution? On some regular basis, managers need to ask their direct reports about their aspirations and about what drives them so they, the managers, can accurately represent those goals and values in talent discussions so that the right opportunities can be identified and person/role mismatches can be avoided.  It seems simple but I’ve been in talent reviews where managers articulated just general impressions about what they think a well-regarded individual wants in his/her career. And someone at the table will ask, “Have you asked her about her specific career goals?” You can guess what the response often is. “Well, not directly…” Due diligence is part of the process, so managers need to have a safe but probing adult conversation about aspirations and career interests. It aids not only in development but in retention as well.     

Of course, some employees will give the safe answers or party line in a career conversation (“Yes, I’d like to be considered for other opportunities to contribute to the company…”) so they don’t get labeled as unambitious and get black-balled for opportunities down the road. The employee needs to trust the boss and the company.  Still, the time for that conversation is before one gets put onto the hi-pot list or before one’s name gets put into the hopper for a promotion, not after.      

It’s common sense but for various reasons it’s not common practice.

Mike Hoban is a Senior Consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Hollywood’s Cynical Take on Executive Integrity

By Mike Hoban

Did you see the movie “Unstoppable” about the runaway freight train and which starred Denzel Washington?  A fun and action packed popcorn flick for sure, especially as a $1 Redbox rental, but there was a brief scene in it which pandered to a jaundiced view of what corporate CEOs are supposed to be like. It was about integrity. It was blatant and snarky. And it was unnecessary. Yet, many viewers likely accepted it as a plausible and maybe even a probable way of how things work in the corporate world.

In the scene, several options to stop the runaway train are identified to prevent it from careening off the tracks into some fuel storage tanks in the middle of a downtown area.  Many lives and many dollars are at stake. The CEO is called to make the final decision (so far so good…).  Um, where is the CEO?  Playing golf, of course, with some other well-heeled golfers. His key question to his lieutenant, himself an archetypical “suit,” has to do with the share price implications of the options. Of course, he opts for the choice that minimizes the stock price downside. 

Granted, the job of a CEO is to balance stakeholder interests, which includes being the enterprise guardian for the equity of stockholders, the true owners of the company. But the scene was not about how business leaders have to courageously manage competing interests or wrestle with the grey space or navigate through institutional dilemmas. To this viewer, it was about painting the business leader in one dimension, as only caring about the money and probably his own stock options. It was Gordon Gecko clutching a three wood.

Because of the headlines of recent years, many people are cynical about business leaders and the values they hold.  Yes, there are rogues and book cookers in business and perp walks for executives seem to have high entertainment value. But there are seamy side members of most professions and my experiences and personal optimism lead me to believe that the vast majority of managers and leaders are honest and hard-working. 

Headlines about insider trading or egregious greed are headlines because they represent a deviation from the expected. Does Hollywood really need to fan the flames of some misguided populist thinking which posits that the corporate suites are integrity-free zones? I suppose a story about a CEO with high integrity and a strong moral compass wouldn’t sell many tickets.    

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

Technology + Trust = More than an Antidote to the Big Snow

By Mike Hoban

A funny thing happened on the way to the recent blizzard in the Midwest – many offices were closed but a lot of work got done. Meetings were held; customer issues got resolved; information got shared; orders were placed. How? People working at home with enabling technology. But while the gizmos make telecommuting and distance management increasingly more viable and more effective, it’s the humanware rather than the hardware or software that is the key ingredient in the sauce of success.

Sure, the ubiquitous laptops with web access, smart phones, virtual networks, web cams, and on-line data bases all made it possible to avoid having to risk life and limb to get to the office while the 2011 Snowpocalypse was raging. But as regular telecommuters and distance managers have discovered, creating alternative working arrangements that actually do work also requires self-management and trust. And let’s not forget measurement and accountability. In fact, the gadget stuff is the easy part.

Technology is an enabler for home-based work, but it could also enable chaos, low productivity and an absence of accountability. Think Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Distant or virtual management arrangements by definition lack line-of-sight in a literal way and does require some application of the old principle of “trust but verify.”

Lead and managing from a distance obviously isn’t a recent development. Communicating with and managing others in far off places has been a challenge from the earliest days of far flung empire. In many cases there had to be an act of faith that the subordinate across the country or across the ocean would be performing in a way that carried out the mission of the organization. But technology helps us go beyond that act of faith.

Last week I had a call with a director in a high tech firm who’s housed in Germany and who has direct reports in another German city, as well as in Prague, Beijing and the U.S. and who almost never sees those people face-to-face. Oh, and he himself works from his home office rather than the regional office some 100 kilometers away. We discussed what he does to provide leadership and direction to those direct reports and he identified several solid practices:

• Set very clear performance expectations, business results and behaviors
• Have very solid metrics which measure performance and have those metrics easily accessible by everyone
• Have regular phone calls to review progress, challenges, etc. The director from Germany I talked with has a weekly call lasting an hour with each person
• Listen for and probe for issues and challenges that might manifest themselves through body language in a face-to-face meeting but have to be discerned through voice tone/volume and nuance on the phone. Install video cams if the technology is available to pick up those emotional signals and to also provide for a more human connection.

And of course in addition to the controls, there is the trust that is necessary to ensure the work gets done and the management support is provided. Not every boss is cut out to be a virtual boss and not every employee can be trusted to work at home or from a distance. But it does represent an attractive alternative for many organizations and employees not just as a Plan B for inclement weather, but as a Plan A.

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

Talent Management by the Numbers - 5 Great Talent Losses in 2010

By Mike Hoban

“Leave the world a better place.”  Emerson is purported to have said that and I’ve always found it to be both an inspirational and aspirational principle.  In the year 2010, a number of talented people departed the earth who indeed left it a better place because of who they were or what they did.  What follows is my own short list- in no special order - of mostly well-known people with talent who passed on this year and who made the world and my world specifically a better place and why. 

They’re inspirations for the rest of us as we think about what we contribute as employees, bosses, entrepreneurs and citizens of the world.   

Stewart Udall – Udall did as much as anyone in the past 75 years to spearhead both environmental consciousness and subsequent concrete action.  As Secretary of the Interior for two different presidents (Kennedy and Johnson), he oversaw the addition of four national parks, 8 national seashores and many other national monuments, historical sites and wildlife refuges.  As a tireless champion of the environment, he helped pass some of the original environmental legislation which we now take for granted and in his lifetime wrote 9 books on environmental and historical topics.  An interesting - and heroic - side note about Udall.  He forced the integration of the Washington Redskins football team in 1962, because the stadium was federally owned.  For me, he was always an interesting, prescient and thoughtful man and we are a greener planet because of him.   Udall was 90 years old.

John Wooden – Easily the most famous college basketball coach in history, Wooden led his UCLA teams to 10 national championships in 12 years, 1964-1975, including 7 years in a row, an unthinkable achievement these days.  But Wooden was more than a great coach who had great teams.  He was decent; likeable; honorable.  It’s tempting for sports fans to dislike teams who seem to win too much and need some comeuppance (think the Yankees), but Wooden was such a classy and humble individual that I and so many others had nothing but admiration for him and routinely rooted for his powerful UCLA teams.  He also created a series of lectures called “The Pyramid of Success” which was his motivational view of how to succeed not only in basketball but in life itself.

The write-up in Wikipedia provides a touching story about what kind of man he was.   

Wooden was just four months shy of being 100 years young.

Leslie Nielsen – His special talent?  He made us laugh.  I know he made me laugh.  Who could forget the now classic line Nielsen deadpanned in the 1980 movie Airplane:  Rumack (Nielsen):  “Can you fly this plane, and land it?”  Ted Striker: “Surely you can't be serious.”  Rumack:   “I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.”  Creating laughs and mirth surely (oops) qualifies in my book as making the world a better place.  After Airplane established him as a comic actor, he starred in several “Naked Gun” movies, always as a very clueless Lieutenant Frank Drebin who innocently stumbled his way through improbable situations and LOL-quality puns. 

And while his characters spoke clever lines written by others, Nielsen had his own home-grown funny lines as well.  One I like best is “Doing nothing is very hard to do...you never know when you're finished.” His talents will be missed.  He was 84.                     

Ted Sorenson – Whatever one’s political leanings, I think it’s hard for anyone to not be impressed and inspired by Ted Sorenson’s famous words written for JFK’s inaugural address in 1961:  “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  It set a tone.  It set a standard.  It established a new voice for America.  As a young boy, I remember hearing those words as the youthful president spoke them on that cold January day for all the world to hear.  Sorenson was 32 years old when he penned those words – pretty heady stuff. 

Sorenson was 82 when he passed on October 31.               

Fred Morrison – Fred who?   Many other talented people passed away in 2010 who made their mark on both the world at large and on my world and it was difficult to whittle it down to five.  But the final slot belongs to Fred Morrison: the inventor of the Frisbee.  It is hard to imagine a world without Frisbees and it was Morrison who designed the first ones made out of plastic in the late 1940s.  It went by the name of “Flyin-Saucer” and in the early 1950s was improved and rechristened the “Pluto Platter.” 

However, it wasn’t until he sold the rights to toy maker Wham-O in 1957, who improved it further (incremental innovation), put marketing dollars behind it and re-named it “Frisbee” that the product, um, took off.  Morrison went on to become a millionaire, and parks, beaches and college campuses have not been the same since.  This innovator was 90 when he died earlier this year.                   

So yes, there were quite a few withdrawals from the world’s talent bank this past year.  We all can’t be presidential speech writers or environmental statesmen or “made-ya-laugh” headliners.   But we all can strive to do our parts in our everyday lives so that when others talk about us when we are gone there are indeed positive legacies that people appreciate us for.  Talent is not just about intrinsic gifts, it is also about what we do about the gifts we have, no matter how modest we think they are.

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

Would a Pay Raise Keep You Around?

By Mike Hoban

Last week Google announced it would increase its employees’ pay by 10% to help ensure it can attract and retain the best and the brightest talent. The company has had some notable talent defections to competitors such as Facebook.

Perhaps that slightly fatter paycheck will bolster retention. It sure can’t hurt and it should at least bolster morale, although early estimates also indicate that it will add $400 million to Google’s operating expenses for 2011. There are many factors besides money involved in peoples’ individual decisions about the question “Should I stay or should I go?” (and yes, that is an old song by The Clash), so the jury is out about the ROI of Google’s decision. 

However, it does re-surface in a very public way the old debate about what motivates people to not just stay with an employer, but to stay with an employer and be productive and innovative and engaged. Oh yes, and loyal.  Is money the key to what we might call “deliberate retention?”  That answer to the question is absolutely unequivocal: "it depends." 

Seriously, it really does depend. For individuals just trying to make ends meet, money might be the most important element in that person’s “hierarchy of needs” structure. Personal growth and interesting, challenging work are not likely to be on the short list of “gotta have’s” for such an employee. (you can listen to Dan Pink talk more about this idea).

Yet, for many of us in this knowledge work world and as Daniel Pink opines in his book Drive, there are other factors besides money that inspire us and which help drive our decisions about where to cast our professional lot.  He suggests the key factors are autonomy, mastery and purpose (of course, Maslow called it “self-actualization”).

Our choices are based on our values and since everyone’s values are sui generis, it’s not going too far out on a limb to suggest that with retention, there is no one size that fits all. There’s no silver bullet. Yes, “It depends.” 

Google made its decision partly based on internal employee survey data and I’m sure they know what they’re doing and admittedly, the company’s market cap is somewhat greater than my own. But I’ve come to believe in what I call the “20% Rule.”  That is, few professionals will leave a job for less than a 20% pay raise even though most employees get a pay raise when they change employers. People leave for other reasons (the jerk boss; the dead-end career path; the toxic culture) and just happen to make more money in their new job. 

So if someone was looking to move to a different company, would a pay increase be the clincher to stay? (see survey to the left) Everyone has to answer that question for themselves but I think overall the answer is no. All of us would welcome a generous pay increase (ahem, boss – are you reading this blog??) but if we were truly unhappy, I think the corporate tithing would not be a compelling reason to stick around if there were other options. Look at all of the “Best Places to Work” data. What makes them the best is not that they pay the best.

People who base their choice of employers strictly on the size of the paycheck run the risk of becoming unhappy mercenaries. Traditionally, the “golden handcuffs” philosophy bought retention, but didn’t necessarily buy commitment.  And retention without commitment is a formula for mediocrity.  

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

Cast Your Vote at the Office

By Mike Hoban

Election season is here in the U.S. and candidates for local, state and national offices are out stumping for votes. So if the democracy thing is such a great idea, why not elect our bosses at work? And why not vote for our most senior organizational leaders? 

Preposterous? Perhaps. Impractical? Way so. But it’s also a provocative question which can lead to interesting conversations at the neighborhood barbecue gathering about what we would value in our leaders if we could indeed vote them in or out of their positions. 

And before being too dismissive, let’s recall that there are some quasi-democratic traditions in the workplace. In Germany, there is a law which provides for the arrangement called “co-determination” (Mitbestimmung), in which worker representatives are elected to the Board for all companies with more than 500 employees. Other European countries have Works Councils with similar employee representation. Closer to home, in many Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) in which the company shares are owned by the employees, there are provisions for elected employee advisory boards.  And then-UAW head Douglas Fraser served on the Board of Chrysler Corp. in the early 1980s as a union representative.  

Voting of leaders also comes into play with professional or affinity associations, co-ops and unions. With publicly traded companies, the Board of Directors is elected by shareholders in a balloting process. And let’s not forget that most athletic teams elect team captains from the peer group and in a few organizations with empowered teams, peers elect their team leaders. 

So there are many successful examples – Mitbestimmung has been in place for over 35 years - of how the voting process is used for electing organizational or team leaders.  However – and this is a big “however” – none of those examples are about electing someone’s day-to-day manager and all of the dynamics that go with it, such as positional power, decision making authority and accountability. With all of the elected representative examples above, it is about representation, which focuses on policy and organizational choice-making.  Peoples’ direct supervisors or company leaders are not elected in those organizations.  And the team captain role on athletic teams is largely an honorary or ceremonial role with no true decision making authority. 

But for just a few blog-minutes, let’s play that fun game called “What If?” What if we could elect our bosses, what kind of a person would you vote for to be your manager or to lead the company?  With public office elections, voters sometimes describe their ideal candidate in rich detail but then behind a closed curtain punch the ticket for someone else who might not be so ideal, but someone who can represent their personal interests more effectively.

So how would those personal interests and preferences play out at the workplace ballot box for you? How would you balance your personal preferences in a boss with what might be best for the overall company?  Would you re-elect the boss you have if he/she were up for election? Of course, it also depends on who else is running and whether negative campaign ads were permitted. 

It’s an interesting and provocative question and young newbie employees without much workplace context would likely tend to have very different ideas about who they would elect as a boss. Ask some young ‘uns that question and listen to what they say about it.Many would probably like the possibilities of voting for one’s boss as it aligns with their “open source” and free-to-act generational value system.       

Finally, check out this blog, which raises a similar question – who in your company besides your boss would you like to work for. It makes you think about identifying effective leaders in your organization.

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

And the most undervalued leadership skill is…

By Mike Hoban

Delegation. Granted, it’s not as sexy or as au courant or as seemingly transformational as other leadership competencies such as vision creation or organizational talent building. In fact, the name itself sounds a bit stodgy and shop-worn, compared to its cousin “empowerment.” When’s the last time you saw a CEO’s picture on the cover of Fortune magazine proclaiming him or her to be best-of-breed delegator? Me neither.

But it’s a foundational skill for leaders and I find in my executive coaching work that it’s a competency many leaders struggle with. That leadership philosopher, Tommy Lasorda, who just happened to make a living coaching in major league baseball, said it so very well: “I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly, you kill it; but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.”  Drucker or Deming never said it so compellingly or so succinctly.

Not delegating well can be a barrier to a leader’s – and the organization’s - success. Decisions get bogged down; staff doesn’t get developed; managers put too much focus on what Juran called the “trivial many” instead of the “vital few;” managers get burned out working too many hours trying to handle everything themselves. Being a poor delegator can also overshadow and contaminate even a good leader’s reputation (“Micromanager!”).

Let’s get specific about what this thing called delegation is. Effective delegation is about defining the “what” but allowing others to have a substantial hand in defining the “how” within established constraints. That is, the manager needs to define what the outcome is, what the “specs” are (cost, timing, quality, satisfaction, etc.) and where the chalk lines are drawn on the field for discretionary and independent action on the part of the delagatee. Technically, that’s called “defining latitude.” When a manager defines both the whats and the hows it’s not delegation – it’s simply a task assignment.

At the same time, Lasorda also said holding the dove too loosely is also a bad thing.  Just providing the “whats” to someone and giving him/her absolute freedom for getting it done without any guidance is not delegation. That’s called abdication and is akin to throwing the non-swimmer into the deep end of the pool.

Seems simple enough, so what’s the deal with not being able to do it effectively? Well, let me count the ways…

Some managers:

• Are unwilling to let go of tasks or activities they like to do and which got them promoted over the years;
• Have a perfectionist type of personality and find it difficult to not do things themselves because ONLY THEY can accomplish it with the excellence that they think is needed;
• Need to always be in control and find relinquishing even the “hows” to be an unnatural act;
• Take on too may things because they believe their own staff is already overworked and they don’t want to further overwhelm them.

In most cases, the above tendencies are “fixable,” assuming the individual has self-awareness and has made the decision that the cost of the fix is less than the cost of continuing down the delegation-free zone. The perfectionist personality is probably the most challenging because those people’s “wiring” contributes to and often drives the behavior.

One final point. Delegation is not about letting go of the appropriate attention to detail. It’s about finding the right balance. Steve Jobs is considered by many to be a spectacular CEO and he has steered Apple to great success in the last 10 years. Yet, Jobs is notoriously hands-on when it comes to product and functional design and he gets very personally involved in many of the decisions about product style, look-and-feel, color, etc.—things you’d expect a CEO to delegate to others. But he also focuses on the big picture – the strategy, cultural caretaking, talent management, alliances, board relationships, etc., and in fact considers his obsession with the product details to be part of his strategic focus.

Come to think of it, this delegation stuff is pretty sexy and transformational after all…

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