Traffic, housing choices, and commitment

A couple of weeks ago I posted about an interactive map/tool for the San Francisco area that was developed (at least in part), to help people understand the decisions and tradeoffs related to their choices and opportunities for work and housing. Simply put, the tool helps you assess the costs and commuting times and options associated with Living in Location 'A' and working in Location 'B'. Some of these dynamics and tradeoffs are changing of course, but still for many jobs, the requirement for employees to be physically present in an office or other work location is a fact of life, and will remain so probably forever.

Decisions about where to work and where to live are never easy matters, but for some fortunate folks like C-suite executives or National Basketball Association head coaches, (yes, another sports reference), the decisions are a bit easier, as their comparatively more lucrative compensation packages provide more options and flexibility in terms of housing choices. Let's face it, there are not too many neighborhoods that an average CEO or NBA coach would feel were out of reach.

That is what I was thinking about this morning when I read a piece from the online Orange County (Ca.) Register about new Los Angeles Lakers Head Coach Mike Brown, and his decision to buy a home in a neighborhood called Anaheim Hills.  Only having been an occasional visitor to Southern California, that headline did not really resonate with me, but digging in to the piece reveals a bit more about the potential consequences and ramifications of Brown's decision:

According to Google Maps, (Brown's new home) that’ll be 45 minutes to practice without traffic (but an hour and 20 minutes with traffic) and 43 minutes to Staples without traffic (but an hour and 40 minutes with traffic.)

Brown is sacrificing proximity to his Lakers work to be close to Santa Ana’s Mater Dei High (emphasis mine). That’s where son Elijah will play basketball and son Cameron will play football

Everyone, even the occasional visitor to the LA area like myself, knows or at least is subconsciously aware of LA traffic, and the way in which it effects work and family life in that area. For new Lakers Head Coach Brown, who has a contract paying him (according to reports), $18.25M over four years, to elect to live in an area that will almost certainly present pretty significant challenges and stress simply getting to work has raised at least a few questions amongst supporters and media that cover the team.

Could it be that Brown, recently fired as the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers despite being named the league's Coach of the Year the prior season, is well aware of the total lack of job security that comes with being an NBA coach, and thusly elected to choose housing that was more in line with his non-work or family life? NBA coaches are notoriously known as incessant workaholics, and the league is rife with tales of coaches sleeping in their offices, missing important family events, and generally devoting themselves to the sport and their teams. I am not saying that is the right or intelligent approach, but it just has been that way for a long time.

Perhaps Brown represents a shift from that old-fashioned and unhealthy kind of approach to life as an NBA head coach, and by choosing to live closer to the center of his family life he is signaling that he sees that balance or fit between the two as being just as important as success on the court. If so, that is to be commended I think.

But I do wonder if the Lakers organization sees it the same way, and if they are looking at their new $18M coach who potenitally will be frequently stuck on the freeway, navigating LA's notorious traffic jams to try and get to the game or to practice, when it seems at least from the outside looking in that he had lots of other options.

What do you think? Should the Lakers or any organization care or get involved on the personal choices their leaders make about these kinds of things?

How far away from the Arena is too far?

The Authority on Talent - Webcast June 16

So here is the premise:

An authority is defined as the undisputed expert in a particular field. And, just as the CFO is the authority on finance and CIO the authority on IT, HR leaders are emerging as the authority on their organization's greatest variable expense—its people.

Does that description, the HR organization being recognized and respected as the organization's 'authority' on all things related to its people, seem to fit your views and the manifestation of your HR reality?The obvious image. Sorry.

Can 'HR' really be that ubiquitous to truly understand or at least appreciate the intricacies, nuances, particulars, and practicalities of the thousands of individuals that may be working in the organization, and each one's personal and unique set of attributes and circumstances that ultimately drive and effect individual and organizational performance?  It is a tall order for sure, and if you as an HR leader buy into the premise, HR as the 'authority' on people or talent or whatever you call the humans that work in your organization, then having the right tools, processes, education, and technology to make that vision a reality will be of prime concern.

This 'Authority on Talent' premise was floated by the folks over at Plateau Systems and this week on, Thursday June 16th at 12 Noon ET, I will join Kris Dunn and Mark Stelzner for a free webcast/conversation called 'Authority on Talent', to talk about this idea, and some of the ways HR professionals can raise their standing in a kind of organizational pick-up game. 

KD, Mark and I will talk about HR’s role as the Authority on Talent in the organization, focusing on the following questions: 

• What do HR leaders need to establish this authority?
• What’s different now from previous “seat at the table” moments for HR?
• What role does technology play?

These are kind of big questions, and while important, there is also the sense that we have been around this same block a few times before, and over the years all we really seem to be doing is re-phrasing the questions, churning out the same fundamental recommendations, while in reality not much at all is changing. It could be that while the questions are still the 'right' ones to ask, the expected and obvious answers are letting us down. Or it could be that we should be re-framing the conversation completely, and recognize that what HR has been trying to do for the last, well forever, just isn't working and it is time to change the geometry of the conversation.

I suspect like many conversations of this type, the truth is somewhere in between. But finding that truth sure isn't easy and while I am not at all convinced in an hour this Thursday that Kris, Mark, and I can truly get you or anyone any closer to that truth, one thing I can promise is that it will be an enjoyable, lively, and perhaps even provocative ride.

Thanks very much to the folks at Plateau Systems for putting together this webcast, and for trusting the three of us not to embarrass you (too much).

You can learn more and register for the free webcast this Thursday June 16th at 12 Noon ET here.

And if you do tune in this week - the Twitter hashtag for questions, comments, and snarky remarks is #TalentAuthority.

Bench Pressing and Basketball

With the National Basketball Association player draft fast approaching, fans, observers, and pundits alike love to speculate and predict the player draft order, and imagine the glorious future for their favorite team once this years' version of young Timmy 'The Flint Assasin' Sackett, or some other such prospect joins the squad.

Readers of this site, along with my pieces on Fistful of Talent, know that sports, and in particular how the talent evaluation and assessment processes that professional sports teams undertake as they consider which players to draft, recruit as free agents, trade, and compensate; make for some compelling stories and often illuminate applicable lessons for those of us with concerned with more mundane but similar workplace conundrums. None of the 'Sports and HR' parallels are more clearly illustrated than annual player drafts that all the major USA professional sports leagues conduct.

The purpose of these drafts is to help 're-stock' the talent pools in the league with new players, ones that have the capability and potential to raise the overall talent profile of the league and the individual teams. Essentially each season, younger, more talented players (or at least ones judged to have potential to be good players), enter the league while older and/or less skilled/more expensive players exit. It is a kind of a cool, virtuous 'Lion King' style circle of life, but will louder music and more tattoos.

The trick for talent evaluators and people in charge of player personnel decisions in the draft is how to assess the complex combination of a prospect's performance on the court to date (usually in college basketball, but sometimes just high school, or international play), the player's physical attributes, their personality and character, and finally whether or not that elusive 'fit' between style, physical traits, and mental make-up exists between the prospect and the team.

You will often see quotes from NBA or other sports execs talking about players they select as being 'Our kind of player', or 'His style fits how we like to play'. These quotes are as much about cultural and organizational fit as they are about hitting jump shots or ability to rebound the basketball. The rules of the game are the same for every team, but how they go about assembling the team and their philosophies about how to best accomplish the universal goal of winning the championship are all unique.

So in sports, like in most every other line of business, talent assessment and selection is really hard. So NBA teams have come to increase or expand the variables they assess and measure when it comes to the talent evaluation process for potential draftees. One of these variables is the number of times the prospect can successfully bench press 185 lbs, a moderate amount of weight for a well-conditioned athlete, certainly not a power lifter or bodybuilder burden, but also a weight that could present a challenge. The 185 pound bench press is meant to give a generalized assessment of the player's upper body strength, that at least in theory could translate to effectiveness on the court. But bench pressing isn't really basketball, they don't roll out a bench and some barbells in the 4th quarter of a close game. The other advantage to teams in using the bench press test, (and a myriad of other fitness and strength tests they use), is that every prospect takes the same assessments, thereby giving the teams a common data set across the entire talent pool from which to make comparative judgments.

But the data itself offers a team no competitive advantage - every team in the league has access to the same information. The trick is knowing how to interpret the 'measurables' (bench press, vertical jump, etc.), with the 'intangibles', (character, coachability, likeability), and finally a frank assessment of 'Can this guy actually play?'; in order to make the best talent selections. 

But back to the bench press, which is the reason I wrote this piece. Yesterday I noticed a tweet from Chad Ford, one of ESPN's basketball writers and analysts commenting on the bench press test results from a few of this year's current NBA draft prospects.  The tweet is below:

The implication of the tweet is a kind of red flag or warning about those few players unable to successfully bench press 185 pounds. That teams considering drafting these players may pause, and fans of teams that eventually do take these players might need to be concerned that their lack of demonstrable upper body strength (doing something that isn't actually playing basketball), portends poorly for their future performance as NBA players.

It is hard to say for sure if this poor performance on the test will actually hurt these players draft position, it certainly won't help it, but I think the larger point is about data collection in general. Whether it is an NBA team evaluating a power forward, or a software company assessing the background and skills of a candidate for a development job, our abiliity to collect reams of data about background, capability, demonstrable skills, and even mental make up has never been greater. We have access to powerful analytics tools to crunch the data and perhaps eventually to construct detailed and predictive 'success' models.

It could very well be the success on the bench press test does suggest future success on an NBA team. Or failure on the test predicts failure on the court.

But even if we can create those kinds of models, for basketball players or software developers, they will never be fool proof, as people and performance are ultimately likely too unpredictable to ever understand absolutely. We have to be open-minded enough to ignore our own models from time to time.

You may, even if you are not a basketball fan, have heard of a player called Kevin Durant. He is a star player for the Oklahoma City Thunder, has led the league in scoring, led the USA team to the Gold Medal in the World Basketball Championship last summer.

In 2007, when Durant declared himself eligible for the NBA draft, he was unable to bench press 185 a single time. 

And we know how Durant has worked out. 

Sure collect, assess, analyze, correlate, model - it's important. But don't forget, bench pressing is not basketball.

Looking for the positive, (and Phil Collins songs)

The crew over at Sonar6, a Human Resources Technology solutions provider, have released a new 'color paper', (kind of like a whitepaper, but in color, and way more fun to read), called '(you've got to) accentuate the positive'. This color paper is all about how as managers, and as humans, we tend to focus on the negative. We have performance conversations with employees that fixate on the one or two 'problems', while ignoring, or at least de-emphasizing the areas in which the employee excels.Phil Collins

And for the employee, this overweighed attention to the negative aspects of their performance can leave them frustrated, de-motivated, and perhaps even doubting their own ability and value as a member of the team.  The need to look for the positive and to end any performance related coaching conversation by 'closing upbeat' was also one of the themes in a webcast I participated in last week with Mike Carden from Sonar6 and Kris Dunn from Kinetix.

In the webcast Kris indicated a 3 to 1 ratio of positive feedback to negative (but constructive) feedback was probably the sweet spot for coaching team members whose overall performance was generally solid, but from time to time may need a tweak or a nudge to correct a behavior once in a while. Your mileage may vary, but I think most of us would admit, a relentless focus on what we are doing wrong, and why we stink, eventually drives us to the point where we would either shut down, rebel, of simply walk away.

So why was Phil Collins mentioned in the post title?

I recently came across an article (apologies but link to the original post is now dead), in which the author had a kind of litmus-test question he asked of people he met, that he might work with, or perhaps even hire on to his team. He would ask them to list their Top 5 Phil Collins songs. The idea being that Phil Collins has a large and wide enough catalog that just about anyone should be able to find at least something positive in what is considered by some a morass of negative.

This question, while certainly not scientific, provides some insight into the way a person thinks. Can they really find something to like, to single out for praise, and are they generally inclined to see things and situations in that manner. It stands to reason if you believe that in performance coaching in the workplace, that finding and accentuating the positive aspects of a team member's performance is one of the keys to making lasting improvements, then you had better have managers that can actually find the positives, even, as in the case of the Phil Collins catalog, they can be hard to uncover.

What do you think? Would you ask a managerial candidate to name their Top 5 Phil Collins songs?

What's your Top 5?

1. Easy Lover

2. Sussudio

3. Fill in the rest in the comments...

PLEASE SHUT UP - and other bits of useful advice

This Thursday, April 14,  I will be joining the original HR gangsta, the HR Capitalist himself Kris Dunn, and the crew from your favorite New Zealand-based HR Technology company Sonar6, for the latest edition in the Fistful of Talent webcast series, this time in a little presentation entitled, "PLEASE SHUT UP: The Idiot-Proof Coaching Tool for Managers".  

Our friends at Sonar6 are hosting this event, and so far they seem curiously trusting in the eventual nature and quality of the content that KD and I will present. For that, we simultaneously salute and pity them.

Here are the details you need to know if you want to join over 4,000 of your friends, colleagues, and competitors that have already registered as we dop the knowledge this Thursday.

From the 'official' Sonar6 call to action:

"This month we’re teaming up with Kris Dunn and Steve Boese from Fistful of Talent to bring you The Idiot-Proof Coaching Tool for Managers.

On April 14, 4:00 PM EDT/1:00pm PDT (April 15 8am NZ / 6am Sydney) we’ll be introducing the tool at a one-hour webinar that will cover:  

• When managers should SHUT UP
• The best time to make team members brainstorm solutions
• How to wrap up the coaching conversation
• The top 5 ways managers screw this all up

This isn’t about technology (not even Sonar6!); it’s about having better performance conversations regardless of how you collect performance information.

And if you can’t make the webinar you can still grab the e-book, which will cover the same awesome stuff.

Register for the webinar & e-book today!"

Wow. Cool stuff. Very professional looking marketing copy.

But here is the reason I think this is good content. When you are talking, you aren't learning. Whether you are talking to your staff, your boss, or your kids - when your lips are flapping it is pretty much a one-way street heading out of town. Sure, you have to talk to get your super important points across. And the staff, your spouse, your kids, they are just hanging on every bit of wisdom coming out of your trap, right?

Sure.

On the webcast this Thursday we'll shed some light on why zipping it can be the best strategy in your management bag of tricks. We will share a simple 6-step tool, (I know 6 steps sounds like a lot, but 4 of them are really easy, trust me), that will allow you and any managers on your team to more effectively coach the people that do the real work in the time it takes to nuke a Hot Pocket.

You should sign up for the webcast. Truly. If nothing else, to make sure you will have something to openly mock on the Twitter stream, (hashtag #idiot).

Actually I am not sure that Sonar6 wants to be associated with a hashtag of #idiot, but so be it.