What's so great about top talent?

Pretty much every article or analysis of the drivers or pre-requisites for consistent high performance in an organization eventually mentions the concept of 'top talent.'

An organization needs the best or 'top' talent in order to continuously generate great new ideas, to execute their strategies, to improve productivity and efficiency, and so on. Some estimates of the comparative advantage provided by 'top talent' compared to average (and much easier to find) talent rate that advantage as high as a factor of 10. Whatever the actual factor is, and it probably varies pretty widely depending on the industry and type of work, there is pretty much universal agreement that while not always available (and affordable), acquiring 'top' talent should be most organizations goal.

But why, exactly?

What specifically do these 'top' talents bring to the organization? What do they actually do that is demonstrably superior to average talent and how would the answer to that question help organization's improve their recruiting and development strategies?

Well, a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study titled Why Stars Matter, has attempted to identify just what are these 'top talent' effects. It turns out that just being better at their jobs only accounts for a part of the advantage these high performers provide and that possibly the more important benefit is how the presence of top talent impacts the other folks around them, (and the ones you are trying to recruit).

Here is a summary of the findings of the 'top talent' effects from HBR:

The paper points to three different ways that superstars can improve an organization, and measures the magnitude of each in the context of academic evolutionary biology departments. The first, and most obvious, is the direct increase in output that a superstar can have. Hire someone who can get a lot of great work done quickly and your organization will by definition be producing more great work. But, perhaps surprisingly, this represents only a small fraction of the change that superstars have on output.

The researchers found that the superstar’s impact on recruiting was far and away the more significant driver of improved organizational productivity. Starting just one year after the superstar joins the department, the average quality of those who join the department at all levels increases significantly. As for the impact of a superstar on existing colleagues, the findings are more mixed. Incumbents who work on topics related to those the superstar focused on saw their output increase, but incumbents whose work was unrelated became slightly less productive.

So 'top talent' (mostly) gets to be called 'top talent' because they are simply better, more productive employees. But a significant benefit of these talented individuals is that they help you recruit more people like them, who in turn also are more productive than average, continuing to raise the overall performance level of the organization.

But this only works in the real world if indeed the top talent actually can help you (and actively help you) recruit more people like them.

The findings of the NBER study suggest that beyond their own performance, and the potential of them to elevate the performance of the rest of your team, the real benefit to organizations from 'top talent' is really tied up in whom they help you recruit next.

It might be something to consider adding to your interviewing and assessment process a question something along the lines of "If you were to come on board, who would you recommend we hire next?"

Have a great week!

Three quick performance lessons from the Oracle of Omaha

Legendary investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet dropped his annual shareholder letter last week, and as usual it is full of insights about investing and business and offers plenty for anyone interested in better performance - of investments, organizations, or individuals to think about and learn from.

1. On taking the long view

Buffett: "Games are won by players who focus on the playing field -- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard. If you can enjoy Saturdays and Sundays without looking at stock prices, give it a try on weekdays."

HR/Talent lesson: Like many investments, the true payoff on many talent decisions/initiatives are only realized in the fullness of time. New hires can take as long as a year to be fully productive, that big HRMS project could have an 18-month timeline, and that new recruiting blog or Facebook page you've set up is simply not going to catch in the first month. We want, or are trained to expect, a faster payoff or return on everything we do, but as Buffett reminds us, often patience will be rewarded. Probably the most difficult, and most valuable, ability for any manager is the ability to know just how long to keep pursuing a strategy and when to change course.

2. On understanding your strengths and weaknesses

Buffett: "You don't need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns. But if you aren't, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don't swing for the fences."

HR/Talent lesson: This is the classic workplace  trap of wanting to do everything yourself, followed closely by trying to staff your team with people that also think they can do everything. I am utterly convinced people are more happy, engaged, and productive simply doing the things they are good at more often than they have to attempt the things where they are not so capable. Let people build on their strengths, don't focus obsessivley on trying to push them into areas where they are not ready, or not as talented. Some folks will want to stretch and challenge themselves no doubt, but not everyone is that comfortable or that driven, and that is ok too.

3. On listening too intently to what others think

Buffett: "Forming macro opinions or listening to the macro or market predictions of others is a waste of time. Indeed, it is dangerous because it may blur your vision of the facts that are truly important. (When I hear TV commentators glibly opine on what the market will do next, I am reminded of Mickey Mantle's scathing comment: "You don't know how easy this game is until you get into that broadcasting booth.")

HR/Talent lesson: I am a pessimist or a cynic I suppose, but I remain convinced that about 75% of the people you know really don't care about your career success, 20% are actively conspiring against you to various degrees, and maybe 5% are truly in your corner. You should care about what these 5% have to say, listen to their advice, etc., and everyone else should be ignored. Completely. And if you are not sure if a particular person is really on your side or not, then you can just assume they are part of the 95% you should be ignoring and thus, ignore them as well.

Once again, really solid advice and perspective from a guy who's credentials mostly speak for themselves. Think about the medium term and long term, know what you are good at (and like to do), and don't get caught up in what the crowd thinks - most of them hate you and want you to fail anyway.

Have a great week!

Why do old coaches get fired?

Taking a (needed) break today from the seemingly endless series of 'Robots that are coming to take your job and destroy everything you love' posts and getting back to something far, far more important - sports!

I caught an excellent piece on the AJC College Football blog featuring college coaching legend, and the current head football coach at my alma mater, the University of South Carolina, Steve Spurrier. Spurrier, also known as the Head Ball Coach, has has a legendary collegiate playing and coaching career. He won the Heisman Trophy as the nation's best college player in 1966, had a 10-year NFL playing career, and then has had a stellar college coaching run starting at Duke, then Florida, (winning a national title in 1996), and finally at South Carolina. At Carolina, Spurrier has led the Fighting Gamecocks to three consecutive 11 win seasons and become the most successful coach in school history.

But now, at 68 years of age, some observers are wondering just how much longer Spurrier can continue to put in the work and successfully compete at the highest level of college football, and in a position that is notorious for insanely long hours, tremendous pressure to win, and significant demands on ones time. Or, said differently, some are asking, 'Is Spurrier, or any coach of more advanced years, still able to get the job done?'

To that, in a recent AJC piece, Spurrier offered what I think was one of the sharpest observations about age and on the job performance, and one that resonates and applies just about in every field.

Check out the take below:

“I will tell you what is neat. You look around at college basketball now, and there’s Jimmy Boeheim, who is almost 70 years old. He has got the only undefeated team in the country. Larry Brown is at SMU. He’s 73, and I think they’re a top 10 team. Mike Krzyzewski is in his upper 60s and so forth. Coaches don’t get fired for being older coaches. They get fired for not winning. 

Love that take from the Head Ball Coach. 

Coaches, (or usually pretty much anyone working in a company/industry that cares about winning), don't get fired solely because they seem too old or that somehow the game or business has passed them by. Coaches (young and old) get fired because they don't win. Winning makes everyone look better, younger, smarter.

More from the HBC:

"It all comes down if you are winning and losing, if you’re recruiting well, and if your program is on the upbeat and it’s positive. That’s what we all shoot for and obviously it’s not that easy to do.

“But the age of a coach really has nothing to do with it.”

This may seem like a kind of throwaway concept, or just something really obvious, i.e. keep performing at a high level and usually anyone's job is safe. But as I know I have posted about on the blog here, and has become an increasingly prevalent dynamic in many US businesses, employees are getting older and older, and the percentage of people age 55 and up still in the workforce keeps climbing.

We could all do for reminding ourselves from time to time that unless there are some really specific and challenging physical elements to the job, that often age, by itself, simply does not matter when evaluating performance. And we have to get used to working with, learning from, and leveraging these older employees.

Old coaches get fired not for being old. They get fired for not winning. Which is the same reason young coaches get fired.

The downside of measuring everything

KD had a great post on HR Capitalist about the (potential) link between pay and performance at Gawker media, as evidenced by the below chart that showed that one writer, Neetzan Zimmerman, (his traffic is in light green on the chart) on the staff of 15 or 16 was responsible for 99% of the site's overall traffic, (and revenue, or at least the opportunity to earn revenue).

KD, rightly, concluded that this situation likely presented Gawker a huge and obvious 'Pay for Performance' situation, where if Gawker were truly taking the capitalist/meritocratist approach to business and talent management, they would have dropped about a third of the staff, allocated all that salary budget to Zimmerman, and told the remaining nine or so staff to shut up, (while showing them the traffic chart), if they didn't like being paid about 20% of what Zimmerman was getting.

While we don't know what Gawker actually did, we do know that Zimmerman left to chase something else, so at least it seems on the surface a gigantic rise in salary or performance related comp was not on offer.

But rather than talk about what Gawker should have done, (or do in the future with their comp/performance strategy), I'd rather think a little about a world where having the access to data and the analytical tools to actually do more data-informed performance becomes more and more prevalent.

One of the most common reasons true pay for performance isn't done, or isn't done successfully, is that it just is really hard to accurately and fairly quantify and measure performance in the first place.  Unlike the staff of writers at Gawker, who can be reasonably and pretty fairly judged on their performance by web traffic to the site for their articles, which is both easy to measure and not subject to the whims of any manager's opinion or rating biases, most of the rest of us have jobs perhaps a little more complex, variable, and nuanced.

The kinds of jobs that don't allow easy and clean measurement, and consequently don't facilitate easy comparison of workers within and across work groups. So we invent things like competency models, and core job functions, and 360s, and talent reviews and calibration in order to come up with some kind of repeatable, reasonable, and defensible method to rate and review folks. And after all that the difference between the annual salary increases for the 'best' performers and the average performers might be a percent or two. 

But going forward driven by the amazing technological advances that are on the horizon we will live in a new world of increased connectivity, improved capability to capture data about the effectiveness of previously untraceable things from a new and improved set of wearable devices, company-issued apps or smartphones that will both broadcast and track our every move, and the nascent internet of things that will provide data on our interactions with machines, (and how fast and effectively we respond to their needs). 

Yep, in the (near enough) future almost all kinds of jobs and the relative performance of the people doing those jobs will be measurable. We will be able to measure everyone. Everything that they do. All the time.

Man that will be great.

<You had better get back to work now. Trust me.>

Every environment has too much information to process

Most of the folks reading this will probably agree to both of the following statements:

1. I am a frequent multi-tasker.

2. I think I am pretty good at multi-tasking.

Because we pretty much have to be, right?

There is always too much going on, too much work to do, too many family and personal commitments (I bet someone is reading this post right now on their smartphone while 'watching' one of their kids play soccer or in a dance rehearsal), too many things to read, too many social networks that need attention - you get the idea.

And the truth of it is that in just about every situation we encounter (save for any time spent in long-term solitary confinement), we are always juggling, choosing, focusing on some, and trying to eliminate other messages and stimuli in our environment. Think about the simple, everyday act of driving a car for example. You are simultaneously monitoring road conditions, gauges on the car's dash, the weather, traffic signals, other drivers, pedestrians, those idiots on their bicycles that give you dirty looks when they're the ones who are the menace, and more. 

And some of you have become so good at it that you can add applying makeup or carrying on a Twitter chat (not recommended), while behind the wheel.

But I think the driving example is a perfect illustration of how we trick ourselves into thinking we are actually much, much better at multi-tasking that we really are. We get deluded into thinking we are good at it, or we simply accept the fact as a given that we have to be good at it, and continue onward in fruitless quest to be great, (or at least pretty good), at everything at all times.

And now there is new research that suggests that not only are we not as good at multi-tasking as we think we are, that prolonged multi-tasking actually makes us worse at multi-tasking itself - kind of a counter-intuitive spin on 'practice makes perfect.'

Check this excerpt from the Priceonomics blog - a look at some recent Stanford University research into multi-tasking and it's effect on task completion and task juggling.

People generally recognize that multitasking involves a trade-off - we attend to more things but our performance at each suffers. But in their study “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers,” Professors Ophira, Nass, and Wagner of Stanford ask whether chronic multitasking affects your concentration when not explicitly multitasking. In effect, they ask whether multitasking is a trait and not just a state.

To do so, they recruited Stanford students who they identified as either heavy or light “media multitaskers” based on a survey that asked how often they used multiple streams of information (such as texting, YouTube, music, instant messaging, and email) at the same time. They then put them through a series of tests that looked at how they process information.

People generally get better at activities they do often. But that may not be true of multitasking. Since heavy multitaskers often switch between research and emails or Facebook chats and work, we'd expect them to outperform the light multitaskers at switching back and forth between the two tasks. But they actually performed worse as their delta was higher than that of the light multitaskers.

The professors conclude that frequent multitaskers seem to “have greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment, [be] less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory, and are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task sets (task-switching).” More colloquially, the multitaskers were more easily distracted from a single task and worse at switching between tasks.

Let that sink in - we get worse and worse at multitasking the more we do it.

If the conclusions from this study are at all accurate, then that does not bode too well for those of us that have conditioned ourselves to be constantly hopping from one thing to the next. And technology, it seems to me, isn't really helping in this regard. Rather than trying to exploit technology to make things simpler, more clear-cut, and maybe more efficient, I think most of us are simply using it to consume more, interact more, do more, and attempt to be (virtually) in five places at once.

So let's re-visit the two statements that led off this post and re-word them a little.

1. I am a frequent multi-tasker. (ok that one will probably still be valid for a while)

2. I think I am pretty good terrible at multi-tasking, and the more I do it the worse I get.

What tips or ideas do you have to combat the seemingly overwhelming urge to multi-task?