Committing a felony is against team policy, and other things we shouldn't have to say

Is is quite possible that after the National Basketball Association, my next favorite league/sport to watch and follow is soccer's English Premier League. It is a fantastic sport to watch, and the top level of English teams like Manchester United, Arsenal, and Chelsea are some of the most valuable and popular sports teams in the entire world.

The Premier League club I support is Liverpool, (for reasons too boring to re-tell), and while I am not a super hardcore supporter, I do try and keep up with the off-season player transfers and signings by the club and other elements of club-related news.

But this bit of Liverpool team news that was reported earlier in the week, Liverpool issue list of 'unacceptable' words to fight discrimination made me pause for a moment, as it is once again, in classic 8 Man Rotation style, the worlds of sports and HR colliding.Click to enlarge

Rather than try to summarize the entire piece, I will just lift quote from the Guardian piece referenced above: 

Liverpool have issued members of staff with a list of "unacceptable" words and phrases in their efforts to combat all forms of discrimination at Anfield. (a pic of the leaked list of 'words you better not say is at right)

The guide, part of a wider education programme run by the club, details terms that employees should deem offensive under the headings of race/religion, sexual orientation, gender and disability. Most are self-explanatory and the guide advises that it is "important to understand the context of what's being said", as in the use, under gender for example, of "princess" or "don't be a woman" on the Anfield terraces next season.

Liverpool's list of what is "usually offensive and the club considers unacceptable" has been given to all full-time and casual members of staff who have contact with the public on matchdays or on a daily basis. The club were widely criticised for their support of Luis Suárez when the striker was found guilty in December 2011 of having used racially abusive language towards Patrice Evra but view their education programme as one of several proactive measures taken to combat discrimination.

That is fantastic, (sarcasm on). A list, organized by type of slur, of the things that you probably ought not to say at work, heck, you probably ought not to say anywhere.

I can only imagine the day the HR or Operations folks (or whomever crafted this list) sat around the conference table saying things like, 'There has to be more ways to offend gay people. C'mon - let's think darn it!'.

I get why Liverpool specifically, and football/soccer more generally take the issue of discrimination seriously enough to want to be extremely precise and particular about the standards of behavior and discourse that are expected, and what, again specifically, is unacceptable. There continues to be ugly incident after ugly incident of incredibly offensive and even violent actions that are in one way or another tied back to the sport. They can't pretend that is not the reality and recent history in their industry.

But then again, creating and distributing a printed list of these (mostly), obviously offensive words seems a little strange too. Did they really think their employees don't realize the N-word is offensive and it should not be used in the workplace?

A bunch of years back when he was the head football coach at Oklahoma University, Barry Switzer was asked during a press conference to try and explain the reasons for a recent spate of player run-ins with the law, including a couple of pretty serious charges like car theft and assault. After trying to talk about the team expectations and support structures in place to try and prevent such incidents an exasperated Switzer finally said, 'I didn't think I had to put a sign on the locker room wall saying that 'Commiting a felony is against team policy.'

That story is what I recalled when reading about the Liverpool 'list of things we shouldn't have to tell you not to say, but we can't figure out why enough people don't realize that so we had to make this list to be sure'.

People can be really disappointing sometimes I guess.

Three keys if you want to become a more data-driven organization

So you've bought into it -  Big Data, Moneyball for HR, workforce analytics - all of it. And whatever you call this increased reliance on data, analysis, and more objective information in your talent processes, chances are this represents a pretty significant change to the way you've always done business, how managers and leaders have made decisions, and perhaps most importantly how you evaluate and reward employees.

Of the many tough challenges you have to negotiate if indeed you are the designated numbers geek/quant in your shop, once again the world of sports offers three recent examples, (NOT AGAIN), that help to point out some key focus points or areas of concern as you hatch your nefarious plans.

One - Make sure you as the 'stats' person, knows how to translate the numbers into strategies that are likely to get buy-in from the team. From the SB Nation blog - How and why NBA coaches communicate advanced metric to players, an interesting piece on the Boston Celtics' new coach Brad Stevens and his desire to bring more data and analytics to bear in the organization:

The numbers don't always offer solutions, but they do tend to generate better options and that's all an NBA team can offer with each possession and every front office decision. That's the next step in the analytics movement. What started in blogs has been appropriated by front offices and has now trickled down to coaches. Communicating those ideas effectively to players is the final hurdle.

Two - Make sure the team members know how to and understand the importance of doing more accurate self-assessments in light of the new measurements. It is great when management and leaders make the move towards a more data-driven decision making process, but don't forget the folks on the front lines.

Here is a great example from a recent piece on the WEEI Radio site by former Major League baseball player Gabe Kapler titled STATS 101: Why it's time to re-educate players in meaningful statistics:

To take it a step further, when we discussed our numbers with our agents, it was in the form of the traditional verticals, the ones we used for decades prior. We correctly assumed that our reps were using these statistics in conversations with the general managers of our clubs. We stood in the truth that our value — our worth as baseball players — was wrapped up in these metrics.

Times have changed, but substantially less among players. While progressive front offices have altered the way they evaluate us, we have lagged far behind in the way we grade ourselves. It’s akin to unhealthy communication in a relationship.

Three - Make sure what you are measuring and holding people accountable for, is actually at least largely in their conrol or influence. This really isn't exclusive to a more data-centric approach to business, it applies everywhere. We generally can only control what we can control and penalizing the clever point guard because the slow-footed center can't convert enough of his excellent passes near the rim is not a long-term winning strategy.

More from the Kapler piece:

 If, for example, we taught pitchers about Fielding Independent Pitching — which truly spotlights what a pitcher can control (walks, strikeouts and homers) and removes balls in play, thereby eliminating a fielder’s ability to have an impact on the outcome of a play and consequently a pitcher’s line — we place the responsibility right where it belongs. If we show a hitter how well hit balls and exit velocity/speed off the bat are being examined more and more closely, then the hitter will freak out less when crushing a ball off the pitcher’s forearm and having it ricochet safely into the glove of the first baseman for an out. He may walk back to the dugout thinking, “Ka-ching!” instead of throwing a water cooler and forcing some nearby cameraman to change clothes. 

Let's do a quick review:

One -  make sure you know how to communicate the value and merit of these new statistical approaches to the team. 

Two - make sure the team starts to do their own self-assessments through the lens of these new data-driven approaches

Three - make sure you are holding people accountable for numbers that they can legitimately influence and can they can own.

What other tips or recommendations do you have to transform an organization from one that relies on gut feeling to one that counts on the data?

Observations from the NBA Summer League 2013

I spent this past weekend in Las Vegas, (either my favorite city in the world, or one I'd like to see nuked, more on that in a moment), with my 8 Man Rotation bros Kris Dunn and Matt 'The Professor' Stollak, taking in two full days of NBA Summer League action.

Regular readers of the blog, and of the rest of the 8 Man gang, know that we think sports is an incredibly great and transparent laboratory where talent management, recruiting, coaching, and team building, (all the things that sound really 'HR-ish'), play out live, in real-time, and in public. 

And the NBA Summer League is a fantastic place to see lots of these angles live, up close, and in a setting that for big-time pro sports, is almost impossible for regular fans to replicate normally. Summer league is about young talent fighting to show what they can do, for aspiring coaches and team execs to get some in-game experience, and for everyone else to play 'NBA General Manager' for a few days and sort out who will be the next star, or harder, the next 10th man on the bench for a mediocre club. 

But nuggets of insight abound, so in no particular order, here are some observations or takeaways or lessons that we will probably never truly learn from the weekend's action: 

1. German Rondo. One of the two individual players our crew spent the most time discussing was Atlanta Hawk first round draft pick Dennis Schroeder. Schroeder, out of Germany, resembles in body type, mannerisms, and in style of play, current NBA star Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics. Thus, our crew dubbed Schroeder the 'German Rondo.' Schroeder even displayed a little of the quirkiness of Rondo, who is let's just say a 'different' kind of dude when he, after discovering his shoe was untied, purposefully fouled the man he was guarding so that play would stop and he could re-tie the kick. While German Rondo was working on the double knot, the Hawks summer coach, Quin Snyder, (I really should write about that guy too one day), unceremoniously pulled GR from the game, being none too pleased with the young player's decision to foul in that spot.German Rondo

The HR/Talent point? With the real Rondo, and it seems like with German Rondo too, sometimes, maybe most of the time, super talented performers are going to act, think, do and say things you wish they wouldn't. But that is often the price of admission. 

2. Data and the ability to use it will separate the winners and losers in almost every field. Matty the Professor was the only member of the crew interested much in actually gambling in Vegas, KD and I being mostly kind of uninterested/boring.  But the real point to me was the Stollak 'system' at blackjack that Matt tried to explain to me that I really can't understand, but seems to work for him. The point? It is a new world my friends - the folks that can figure out how to analyze data, think about problems through a lens of information and likely outcomes - they are the ones that will be telling us all what to do in a few years. The geeks took over the world in the last decade, the next one will belong to the quants.

3. Every job is creative. I probably dropped in on three different casinos on the trip and of the hundreds of interesting observations one can glean from the combination of gambling, alcohol, lights, sounds, and despair - how about this one - that creativity matters in every job. Every casino had scores of video slot machines, each one having its own theme or 'creative' behind it to try and interest and entertain the player, (so they will lose more coin). The best one I saw was a Van Helsing machine, (pic on right). For whatever reason I found it incredibly interesting that somewhere there was a meeting in the video slot making company where someone said 'I know, what about Van Helsing?', and some decision maker type shouted 'Yes!'You want to feed this machine a $20 spot, right?

4. Context is everything. How you stack up depends on who else is in the pool. And if you are having trouble standing out, you either need to get better, (hard), or broaden the scope of who you're being compared to in order to look better, (also hard, but probably less overall work). Or said differently, if you want to feel a little better about your life choices, (as shaky as they may have been), take a stroll through a Las Vegas hotel lobby anytime between 4AM and 6AM. Not a lot of 'high achievers' out and about I would bet.

5. Not all progress is good. A recent trend that I think is pretty ridiculous is the increase in hyphenated last names. You've seen more of them in the last 10 years I bet than in the prior 50. The Summer League poster child for this affliction was Chris Douglas-Roberts, playing for the Los Angeles Lakers. CDR (what we called him since saying 'Douglas-Roberts' all the time is just a hassle), has had a checkered career. Lots of talent, great athleticism, but a seeming disdain for most of the parts of the NBA game that seem too much like 'work', (help side defense, rebounding, general hustle). I can't blame CDR's apparent squandering of all that talent on his silly last name, but it certainly doesn't help.  New Moms and Dads to be? Do us all a favor and don't drop a 'hyphen' on your kids. They will thank you for it someday. 

6. Your most important leaders need to think about talent all the time. If you're business rises and falls based on the talent level of your team, then your leaders better put in the time to evaluate that talent. While the Summer League rosters are made up of rookies, draft picks, and guys trying to claw their way back into the league, and very few recognizable players are actually on the court, the stands are chock full of elite NBA coaches and executives. We spotted head coaches like Eric Spoelstra, Tom Thibodeau, Mike D'Antoni, and Mark Jackson in the crowd at different times. These NBA head coaches were there to watch players that mostly won't even get training camp invitations, much less playing time when the real season starts. But the 11th man on the bench matters to a great NBA team, heck, even the 12th man on the bench matters, and if you really care about talent in your organization you don't stop caring after the starting five.  And your leaders are the ones that need to set that tone.

7. Development means everyone. That, is if you are really committed to raising the talent bar in the organization. The Summer League is not just about finding which rookies and draft picks can actually play in the NBA, it's a bigger industry talent play. Announcers, halftime entertainment, anthem singers, even the guys selling T-shirts - it's all about building a pipeline and figuring out who is ready to step-up. Sure, some of the 'performances' were a little rocky, but that is why you work out the new talent on a smaller scale, in a setting that is close enough to the real thing, but one where there is opportunity to learn, and not a lot of downside if you fail. Mess up the national anthem at the NBA All-Star game? You will be a YouTube sensation within five minutes. Make the same fool of yourself in front of 1200 fans in Summer League? You will have a laugh and the ability to bounce back much more easily. Young and inexperienced talent almost always benefits from these smaller stakes kinds of plays.

8. Your city (might be) gone.  At dinner one night the 8 Man crew, joined by special guest and longtime 8 Man friend Jennifer McClure, engaged in a pretty spirited discussion about our least favorite American cities, i.e. which one would you take out with a tactical nuclear strike if you were forced to pick one. There were a wide range of opinions and options slung around the table, (someone does not like New Orleans for example), but the oddest choice to me was when Jen dropped 'Las Vegas' as her pick for total annihilation. Odd in that we were having that discussion in Las Vegas. What city would you most want to take out if given the opportunity? Hit me up in the comments.

9. There's power in numbers. KD nailed this on his Summer League recap post as well. Next year the 8 Man Rotation Summer League trip back to Las Vegas is already on, and we want to go big. So that means you are invited. Yes, I mean you. Bros, gals, HR nerds - everyone.  Hit me up for details, or let me know you want to join our super-exciting NBA Summer League Facebook group where we will be sharing all the information to get ready for next summer.

Ok, at just over 1,500 words I am out. But just remember one last nugget from Sin City - there, and I suppose everywhere - you always want just the right amount of wrong, if you catch my meaning.

Recruiting the ninth best guy on the team

Note: Yes I am posting about sports again. If you are sick of it I am sorry, you can quit now and go somewhere else to read ANOTHER post about employee engagement or culture or some such. Tell me truly that you aren't sick of those too.

In college and professional sports 'stunt' recruiting demonstrations- mocking up team jerseys, creating fake pictures or scoreboard videos with the player in the new team colors, or imagined play-by-play calls of a player hitting a big shot or winning a championship for his or her would-be new team are not really new or all that novel anymore. 

College teams especially, and sometimes professional ones too, use these kind of demonstrations to try and impress the candidate/recruit, to get them to more clearly envision themselves joining the team, and to play into their egos somewhat - not only will they come to the school or team for the expected reasons, (get an education, make some money, etc.), but they will also achieve their bigger dreams as well - win titles, be idolized, create a legacy - that kind of thing. For big-time and highly sought after recruits these kinds of displays are kind of expected and probably don't do all that much on their own to sway the recruit's decision. After all, once the 5-star high school running back sees about a dozen of these same kinds of pictures/videos from every major college program in the country the effect of any of them is pretty diminished. 

But where these kinds of gestures can still be effective I think is at the next, or even next-next tier of recruiting - for those candidates that are not All-Stars or Top Talent or whatever expression you prefer. For the players/candidates that might only be solid contributors, important to the overall cause but not the most important factor, perhaps just a little bit in the way of treatment typicall reserved for the big time prospects can be the most effective lever the recruiter can pull.  

Take a look at this piece, Chris Copeland signs an offer sheet with Indiana after the team Photoshopped him into an ESPN Mag cover on the Indiana Pacers efforts to sign the former New York Knicks and now free agent Chris Copeland - a guy who just broke into the league at 28 years old, and on a good team like Indiana figures to be the 8th or 9th most important player.

From the Yahoo! Sports piece:

This isn’t a new exercise, teams have been Photoshopping potential free agents into would-be uniforms as part of a free agent pitch for years, but it’s still cool to see. Chris Copeland has signed an offer sheet with the Indiana Pacers, and before doing so the Pacers sent him this gift box (pic at right).

Copeland is a D-League alum that couldn’t even hook on with some of the better leagues that international basketball has to offer, playing in outposts like Belgium and the Netherlands before catching on with New York as a long range shooter and active defender.

Indiana’s biggest weakness in its run to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals was its depth, and in acquiring both C.J. Watson and eventually Copeland, the team has smartly shored up that pine with players that should fit right into (Pacer Coach) Frank Vogel’s system. 

Again, not that big a deal, I suppose, teams can and have been doing these kinds of stunts for ages. But what is distinctive in this example is the approach and attention paid by the Pacers to a guy, Copeland, who will almost certainly not be a star on the team, and will not even be a starter on the team. Sure, the actual contract offer ( 2 years for $6.1M) reflects that, but making the player feel as wanted and as needed as a big time recruit with the simple little photoshop magazine cover, (that probably took someone all of 20 minutes to do), shows that the Pacers understand what is important when working with talent.

There will probably be a few games next season where the contributions of bench players like Copeland mean the difference between a win and a loss. The NBA grind is relentless, and often teams have to get better-than-expected efforts from the 8th or 9th best guys on the team when the stars are not playing well or are tired or someone in the starting lineup gets injured.

By showing the ninth best guy on the team that he is still important, that he is wanted, that he too, can envision himself on magazine covers the Pacers teach us all a lesson about making talent feel important.

Even those who are not so-called 'Top Talent.'

Have a great Tuesday everyone! 

The Celtics, Coaching, and Compensation

The Boston Celtics shocked the professional sports world earlier this week when they named Butler University Men's Basketball Coach Brad Stevens to be their new Head Coach, replacing the recently departed long time coach Doc Rivers.

The signing of Stevens as the C's new on-court leader was notable and surprising on several levels:

• None of the NBA writers or pundits seemed to have Stevens named as a potential replacement for Rivers or even in a fuzzy, 'sources say' kind of way

• Stevens has no prior NBA experience as an assistant coach or a player, the most common kind of experience possessed by first-time NBA head coaches

• There has been a recent history of failure at the NBA level for a number of very high profile college coaches, i.e. success in college coaching hasn't not been carrying over to the NBA

• Stevens, at 36, immediately becomes the youngest head coach in the NBA

• And finally, while at Butler for the last six seasons, Stevens' teams had success, including reaching the National Title game twice, (losing on both occasions), he had not reached the 'top' of the college coaching ranks reserved for the leaders of most historic and storied programs like Duke, Kentucky, or North Carolina.

All in all, the announcement of Stevens, by all accounts an excellent coach and still rising star in the profession was one that took nearly everyone off guard. And it may or may not work out for the Celtics and Stevens, but dig just a little deeper into the details of the deal, and the former coach Rivers' contract, and then it begins to make more sense from a pure Talent Management perspective.

The Celtics are a team that is in rebuilding mode - they recently traded away two of their most highly paid and best performing players Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets, and rumors are circling that their other key franchise player Rajon Rondo might be next to be shipped off. The team clearly wants to build around some younger players and hopes to utilize the increased number of draft picks acquired in the recent trade with the Nets to stockpile more young, (and importantly, cheaper), talent.

And in essentially trading Rivers, the former head coach who has over 12 years experience as an NBA head coach and led the Celtics to the NBA Championship in 2008, for the much less experienced Stevens, the C's also give us all in the talent game a lesson and reminder of the tradeoffs that organizations have to make when chasing talent, and more importantly, aligning the talent strategy to the business and organizational reality.

Rivers with his years of experience, demonstrated success in the job, and reputation amongst the players was a very highly compensated coach - he had 3 years and $21 million remaining on his Celtics contract. At $7M per season, that is the kind of compensation that elite NBA head coaches can expect.

Stevens, by comparison, signed for 6 years and $22 million. Still a lot of scratch, but by NBA head coaching standards not so much. 

You pay Rivers, or similar, $7 million a year because he is a proven championship coach. These are incredibly hard to find. But the Celtics are not going to be a championship-caliber team next season, and probably for two or three more after that. They are essentially starting over after six or seven years of really high-level, title-contending play. Paying an elite-level coach top of the market compensation in this scenario makes no sense. It's wasted money (not to mention Rivers himself losing interest in the club as well).

So you make the smart move - bet on a younger coach, hopefully on the rise, at half the salary of the last guy knowing that in the next couple of years anyway, his inexperience in the role won't matter too much because the team isn't ready to contend.  Maybe it works out, and the Celtics look like geniuses for locking up a great coach at a bargain rate.

But the key here is the Celtics know who they are right now. For all their storied history and many championships over the years, they are not an elite team at the moment. And that fed into the call and the decision to release their elite coach, some of their elite players, and move in a new (and cheaper) direction.

All organizations say they want to attract and retain the 'best' talent. But sometimes doing what is necessary to land the 'best' talent doesn't make sense from a broader organizational context. And when you need to move off what is needed to land the top talent in terms of compensation, then you also likely need to think more expansively and creatively about who you can bring in. Maybe you place a bet on an up-and-comer. Maybe you don't worry so much about '10 years experience doing exactly the same job'.

Maybe you find a way to land the next star employee before the competition does.

You have to know who you are, and make talent decisions accordingly.

Have a great weekend!