The Undecided Business of Hiring Stars

• - Harvard Business Review. Can “A” talent can be successfully integrated?

• - Context influences the success of “A” talent.

• - Management is a larger outcome determinant than individual talent.

Vancouver Canuck players are mostly imported from other cities. The Canucks can’t win a Stanley Cup. The LA Kings, current holders of the Stanley Cup also have a high percentage of imported players. Irony is, most of them are from Canada. How do you build a winning team? With homegrown or imported talent? More problematic, does recruiting “A” players into the Canucks reduce the imported player’s performance or raise the team’s overall performance?

In 2004 Harvard Business review did a piece on “The Risky Business of Hiring Stars.” There are both good and bad outcomes, but the answer is conditional. Half the successful CEOs in the Fortune 500 are long term employees, the other half are imported.

Some things to think about

1. Any talent, good or bad, functions as a direct result of how it’s managed. The context, the environment talent is hired into determines success.

2. If you have a good management culture, then bringing in “A” talent will accelerate your growth. If you do not have a great management culture, bringing in “A” talent will mean a lot of tears when they leave you in the first year.

3. After someone noticed peak performance can come from companies that don’t hire “A” talent, and that hiring alphabetically from a phone book might even be an improvement, the “past performance / future performance” idea fell into question. In the case of the current American president, it is true that a light resume is getting us very light performance.

4. You could deploy better talent at all levels but you’d be further ahead if you deployed better management at all levels. If you have a poor management culture, great individuals will never stick with your company.

5. Hiring stars draws you into that tricky territory of trying to punch above your weight class. Some “A” talent has a better idea of how a high performance company behaves than the company doing the hiring. You might be successful, but you may also fail. “A” talent goes sideways in the negotiations more often than any other hires. A beautiful woman has been known to tell a an average guy she doesn’t want to dance.

6. When you only promote from within, you also assume all the talent you’ll need for the next decade, is already on payroll. It’s a strategy you should wish on your competitor.

Bottom line, hiring a star increases your chances of success, but doesn’t guarantee them. The success odds are highest when culture and environment are closely matched to the new hire.

Don’t hire those who apply. Hire those you choose.

Regards,

Wolf

Partner

p.s. You shouldn’t hire from a phone book. Alphabetically or otherwise.

WHY YOU SHOULDN'T TEACH YOUR CAT TO BARK. "People are not your greatest asset."

Try reading your competitors employees’ Linkedin profiles. Ask yourself, why did they hire each person for the role? Why did they hire a bookkeeper who was assistant chef in a catering kitchen? Why did they hire a sales person who was a construction foreman? Why did they hired a new GM who used to ride a unicycle with Cirque de Soleil? Oh, wait, that’s our GM. This is such a fun game there’s even a book entitled “Why stupid people get hired and not fired.” People are not always hired for the right reasons. What you’re seeing is managers hoping to teach cats to bark. Instead of terminating the exercise and hiring a dog for the job, they continue to hold out hope that one day their cat will embrace barking. The saying tells us, “you could teach your cat to bark, but it’s much easier to get a dog.” If you want to convince your cat to bark, here’s what’s wrong with the idea.

1. Cat’s don’t have a great bark. Nobody pays attention, burglars ignore barking cats, strangers take videos of a barking cat and post it to youtube. Barking cats are not protection, they’re just odd.

2. You annoy the cat. Forcing cats to bark just makes them angry. Many of them will leave home if you keep pushing them.

3. Putting a cat on the barking job takes up considerable management time. Cats forget to bark, delay, avoid, or disappear. In situations that need a bark, your cat can’t be found. If you don’t push your cat to bark, it won’t get done.

4. Performance coaching doesn’t work. You might teach it to bark, but as soon as you leave, the cat will forget everything you taught it. Barking is not in it’s nature.

The same is true for employees. Jim Collins, (Good to Great), said, “People are not your greatest asset. The right people are.” In a barking role, a cat is never your greatest asset. In the same role, a dog can be your greatest asset.

Everybody is great at something, but they’re never great in the wrong role. Most of our management problems are caused by reluctant cats doing the dog’s job.

Here are five things to check for before hiring. Rate your candidate, how did they score on each item?

1. Interview, behavioural. What do you think?

2. Reference check, (history of doing the work)

3. Experience, skills, education, (can do the work)

4. Psychometric testing, (will do the work)

5. Culture, work family fit, (the workplace likes the candidate)

If you hire the right people, they will be your greatest asset!

Thank you

Wolf

Partner

Metrik Management Inc.

Executive Management Consulting

Everybody’s got a plan until they get hit

Category: Planning, randomness

With Purdy’s best chocolate, nut encrusted ice cream on a stick, we exited the mall and headed into the underground parkade. Ice cream makes you think you’re having a better day than you really are. Gazing down the vast line of parked cars neatly nosed into their parking stalls, I noticed one with its back end hanging well out into the lane. Someone had driven their car half way into its parking spot and left it there to go shopping. Inconsiderate people.

My legs started running before I knew why. It was my car that was hanging out into the lane. Even the ice cream wasn’t going to help this. There was a family of four with very long faces, standing, waiting for an hour, for the owner of the car to return, (me). They’d parked (nose to nose), directly facing me in the opposite spot. Their Dad had hit the gas instead of the brake and slammed into my parked car’s face. Very nice of them to wait.

My day, my car, my life, was re-routed not because of anything I did but because of an unforeseen event. Unplanned, rare, unlikely, yet here we were. This didn’t show up in my Daytimer. Two weeks, and $6500 later, (thank you ICBC), I have my car back.

I read Nassim Taleb’s “Black Swan” after reading “Fooled by Randomness.” I thought the first book was so good I didn’t care what Black Swan was about. In fact, it’s probably better.Taleb’s point with Black Swans is complex. Swans are white, but after you see a black swan, (the exception), your whole idea of swans changes. Black swans are improbable but cause everything to change. For example, the 9/11 World Trade Tower, the 2008 economic collapse, Russia moving into Crimea, health, divorce, the world is controlled more by black swans than by predictable historical events. You may not be planning for the very things that will direct your life. You can’t plan for black swans.

When I looked at my beloved G35, now renamed “Scarface,” I understood Taleb’s main point. What Taleb was saying was, “everybody’s got a plan until they get hit.” Or did Mike Tyson say that?

The thinking points that come out of this,

• What happened before, in no way contributed to what happened after. History is not much use with black swans. Business requires history, yet black swans ignore what you think you know.

• High impact, low probability events seem a long shot but when they happen, - they hit hard and all your plans will disappear.

• Learning from the past, cumulative knowledge is no help. I’ve parked in one thousand mall parkades and have never been hit. 30 years of driving experience had worked against me. I thought I was safer than I was.

We have to worry about our own strategic thinking, our errors, our planning. The bigger issue is the other guy, the system, the unforeseeable. Don’t push it, overplanning moves towards paranoia.

In 2008 we all had a business plan, then the recession hit. At the mall, I planned my day, then my car got hit.

It could be the things you can’t plan for really run your life.

Thank you

Wolf

Partner, Metrik Management Inc.

HR Management and Executive Search Consultants

p.s. Some related thoughts,“This morning I was asleep in bed, now I’m part of somebody’s plan.” - Woody Allan

“Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean I’m not being followed.” - Andy Warhol (?)

“If you see fraud, and don’t shout fraud, you are a fraud.” - Nassim Taleb

“Everybody’s got a plan until they get hit.” - Mike Tyson

The book, “The Black Swan,” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb